Alphabet Soup

Challenge: Write 26 drabbles or oneshots. The inspiration for each will be a word starting with a different letter of the alphabet. Pick the words yourself. Anything goes.

Spoilers for all five seasons of the new series. Many pairings, mostly canon, some not. Disclaimer: Not mine.

Part One: A-F

APPLES

Amy likes apples, and Rory has always been very, very happy about that.

There was this saying Rory's mother told him when he was six. "An apple a day keeps the Doctor away." Apparently little Amelia Pond had never heard the expression, and, perhaps out of spite for the man who had stolen her heart (before Rory had even met Amy, no less), Rory made it his solemn duty to prevent her from hearing it.

So apples are Amy's favorite fruit, because they remind her of her Raggedy Doctor.

And they're Rory's favorite fruit because he hopes it'll keep the Doctor away.

Amy still loves apples. Now, he's her (kind-of) boyfriend, and they're sitting out by the duck pond (funny, but there aren't any ducks) eating apples.

Whether or not the Doctor exists, Rory will still like apples. Just so he can hope that the Doctor isn't real, because if he is, maybe he'll spirit Amy away and take her off on those grand adventures, and leave him behind.

Without her.

(Of course, that's exactly what happens – except the Doctor spirited Rory away too. Now his name is Mr. Pond, and he's centuries old, in his head, and formerly plastic. Right, and not so right.)

(And Rory discovers that, by chance, his favorite fruits aren't apples, they're pears. And he still hasn't figured out why the Doctor finds that so funny, but that's quite alright. Really. It is.)

BEARS

"Like bears," the Doctor says suddenly, flicking a switch on the console.

Rose blinks out of her morose thoughts. "Huh?"

"Bears. Or maybe bees. They always go for the sweetest thing there is – honey. If there's honey around, there's no stopping a bear trying to get to it."

"What are we talking about, exactly?"

He continues on, ignoring her, and Rose is a little exasperated, if amused. This regeneration talks too much. She doesn't really mind. "So the bears, they'll try and attack each other, or ward each other off. All they want is the honey. It tastes so good. They can't get enough of it. So how does one bear gets chosen over another?" He looks at Rose. "Well?"

Rose frowned. "Well, the stronger bear gets the honey, right? Scares the other one off. Is this going somewhere?"

He looks up at the ceiling, and hits another button. "Not really."

"Why's that?"

"The thing is, the stronger bear, he wants the honey. But he doesn't want to eat the honey, because he's afraid if he does, then when he's finished, it'll be gone. So he leaves the honey alone. And the honey doesn't get eaten at all."

"That's stupid."

"What?"

"Honey's honey. It's supposed to be eaten. Otherwise, why would you bother with it at all? Just because the honey doesn't last long, doesn't mean you can't enjoy it while it's there."

The Doctor stares at her, and breaks into a grin. "Rose, never change!" he declares happily. Suddenly the contemplative mood is gone, and he's his usual mad self, and the TARDIS begins to whir and grind and slowly heads back to Earth, so they can tell Jackie that Mickey's gone.

She smiles back, and decides to figure that bear thing out later. It can wait.

CAMOUFLAGE

Every few days, it hits her just how normal everything is.

She'll be walking down the corridor, munching on a bagel and scanning through lines of reports, when it'll occur to her that she blends in perfectly. She's another drone. Yes, one of the top drones, but still a drone. Just one more Torchwood employee, dealing with aliens and stuff on a regular basis. In normalcy.

Sure, sometimes something exciting happens, but most of this job is paperwork and thinking and… normal. Like every other person in the universe, that's what she's become now.

And for that brief moment, she'll remember, and it hurts. She'll remember the days when she was special. Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth; that was her. Now she's just Rose Tyler, Division C Analyst and Field Agent.

Another human, trapped on a lonely Earth, looking to the stars.

And then the moment passes, and she gets back to work, because what else can she do? Time moves forward, in a linear progression of cause to effect, and she would be silly to think it might move otherwise.

DREAMS

He sits on a park bench, and stares.

He's supposed to be hunting some bloke down. Some idiot who left his partner to die and ditched the Agency, who was last seen on Sol-3 (Earth), sometime in the twentieth century. A slippery fellow, to be certain. There've been rumors about him, saying he was the first Agent ever.

The man on the park bench really doesn't care at the moment. He looks at his watch again, still finding it impossible to believe, but it's true. This is Earth. April 2020, to be precise.

And she's there.

But she can't be.

And she is.

A woman with the brightest red hair, a playful scowl on her face, shouting. She's holding hands with a dark-skinned man who is apparently much more easy-going, because he's just laughing her off. They're wearing wedding rings. Married.

And there's a little girl with her face, and a littler boy with her nose, and they're going down the slide together, laughing while their parents happily bicker.

He watches for a bit. Suddenly, the boy falls and scrapes his knee. The husband looks at his wife, who says it's his turn. The husband runs to the child, smiling.

Then the man on the park bench gets up, and walks over to the smiling woman.

"Hello," he says. "Is your n-n… You're Donna?"

She whirls around and looks at him with a raised eyebrow. "Yeah, and who're you?"

"D-d-do you remem-member me?" he stutters.

She frowns at his face, puzzled. "Yeah, no, sorry. Don't think we've met. You alright? You look a bit pale."

"F-F-Fine."

She shrugs. Then she turns around, hearing a wail, and heads towards her husband, who is utterly failing to keep their child calm.

Lee swallows. He whispers three silent words, which she never will never again know he said, hits the device on his arm, and disappears through time and space.

Happiness remains, for him, a dream.

EVENING

He knew the Doctor was somehow involved the moment he heard about it. The ghosts, the building, the aliens… He had to be somewhere. Elton had no doubt whatsoever – the Doctor had saved them all.

Out of respect for what the Doctor had done, he read the entire list of the dead.

So many names. So many lives, taken, reasonless. People convinced they were doing the right thing. Not right, but not wrong.

And now they were dead.

His eyes passed over the names, and then he froze.

"Elton?"

"Jacqueline Tyler," he read aloud. "Jackie."

Ursula quieted. "I'm sorry."

"Rose, too."

"Both of them?"

"Yeah."

"Elton?"

"What?"

"It's okay."

"Maybe," he replied solemnly. "I just hope he got to tell her."

"Tell her what?"

Elton's lips quirked up. "What do you think? It's Rose."

"I'm sure he did," Ursula said with certainty. "I know he did."

"Good."

FREEDOM

Once upon a time, he had been free.

Yeah, he remembered it. And he wishes he didn't.

In this place, they surgically pick him apart now and then. He's a curiosity. None of them can figure out how he became the way he is. But they're humans, sweet, beloved humans. He might have been one once, but he's not sure. He made a mistake, a very stupid mistake, and he knows exactly how wrong it was. So maybe he's not human. Or maybe he is. Does it matter anymore?

What does human mean when there is nothing left for you to be human about?

This room is so dark, so cold.

Somebody stands at the bars, and snaps their fingers. The familiar whirr sounds. The person stares in fascination.

They snap their fingers again, and it's gone. They leave

Adam once knew freedom. But he hasn't for a very, very long time.

He can only blame his own misguided, idiocy.

And that's about as human as he can get.