Hello, friendly species of the universe.
It would be lovely if this turned out to be a multi-chaptered one-shot and drabble fest like I plan it to, but we'll see. Each chapter relates to a word or phrase that has sparked my imagination and turned into a scene, a sentence, a thought, or otherwise… There might even be more than one chapter relating to a single word. This'll be mostly Nine, Ten, and Eleven-centric, but who knows… If I eventually watch enough Classic that I feel comfortable writing the previous Doctors, I just might. : )
Disclaimers: I don't own the BBC, Doctor Who, Stephen Moffat, the Doctor, or even the very smallest star. Give a college kid a break.
Mathematics.
Eleven.
Amy always had been more of a deep sleeper than Rory was.
Judging by the peaceful expression on her slumbering face, she couldn't even hear the clangs and crashes coming from the depths of the ship-
But Rory could. Loud and clear, for over an hour now, and it was driving him mad.
Groaning inwardly, he gathered his dwindling willpower and flung off his covers, clambering down the side of his and Amy's ridiculous bunk bed to go hunt down the Doctor and shut him up.
As he walked into the control room, he picked up a piece of paper that had fallen off the Tardis's dashboard and stuck to his bare foot, curiously eyeing the Doctor's scribbled handwriting. His light blue eye flickered up and down, scanning the messy figures and haphazardly scrawled equations until his gaze lighted on a rather blatant mistake in the calculations.
He glanced around the empty control room. "Doctor?"
At the sound of his voice, something clanked to the floor beneath him, and a billow of white smoke hissed out from the seams in the glass flooring of the control room.
"No, no, no, no, no, no! Oi, stop that!"
There was a long pause, abbreviated by the sound of levers creaking and followed by a thud. The Doctor's voice shot up through the fog that was seeping up through the floor and enveloping the cabin. "Not now, Rory!"
Rory frowned, tapping his foot in exasperation. With what felt like excruciating patience, he followed the railing around the console with his gaze until he found the stairs that led to the engine room and rested his eyes there, waiting for the Time Lord to surface.
As expected, the Doctor's head popped up after only a second, messy hair even more frazzled than usual and face smeared with dark blue engine grease. "Don't breathe that vapor in. It'll probably kill you."
Rory's eyebrows flew up, and he did his best to follow the instructions, coughing and stumbling out of the smoke as the Doctor disappeared again. "What are you doing?" he called out, equal parts bewildered, irritated, and curious.
The Doctor yelled through the smog, "I was… well, there was this lovely little moon- Ahh! No, don't do that!"
Rory stepped toward the stairs. "Doctor?"
"Well, ahh… mostly I'm trying to prevent a violent explosion in which we all die. What?" With the last word, he popped his head out of the engine, looking rather quizzically at his companion. He spoke again, but this time his mumbling was to himself. "What was it? The calculations were nursery rhymes. The mass of the moon, the amount I'd have to increase the gravitational field to pull it into orbit. Of course, the reflectors were off, but I really don't need-"
"These calculations?" Rory cut in, waving the sheet of paper.
"Yes, those." The Doctor took the sheet from him, cast it a dismissal glance, then tossed it over his shoulder carelessly. "I wonder if it's-"
` "It's the calculations," Rory repeated. "Because they're wrong."
"What?" He looked at Rory, seeming incredulous and slightly offended, but starting up the stairs to grab the piece of paper to see what he meant. "Of course they're not wrong. How are they wrong?"
Rory opened his mouth, but an explosive whump! underneath them interrupted his words. The Doctor immediately abandoned his cause and dove below again, yelling, "Not now, Rory!"
"But two plus two doesn't equal-"
A howl came from beneath and the Doctor appeared at the gap in the floor again, coughing and waving away smoke, while what looked like a vitally important piece of engine lay smoldering in his right palm. He balanced it very carefully, watching it with a wary eye as he tried not to move. "Uhhh, Rory, right now, let's just play like I'm the smart one and you're the not one. Ow!"
He jolted, and the piece of engine fell from his hands to the ground below. He dropped down with an exclamation, chasing it beneath.
Fwump! A spout of acrid flame shot up through the floor in front of Rory, just missing him, and the Tardis pitched to the side, knocking him to the floor. He groaned, rolling over. "What the hell was that?"
The Doctor's voice drifted up from the engine, strained. "Nothing important… ish. Ahh!"
Another spray of sparks flew across the control room as something in the dashboard rather ominously crackled. Rory got his feet underneath him, shouting through the floor, "Doctor. Two plus two equals four."
The Time Lord's head popped up again. "What? No, it doesn't!"
Rory coughed. "One, two, three, four- it's four."
"No, it's not, it's- it's-" The Doctor held up two fingers on each hand, counting aloud, then stopped and counted again. "… four. It's four!"
He looked up with a delighted grin and laughed aloud. "Magnificent!"
Vanishing beneath, he started banging around in the engine again before hurtling back up and running around the dashboard like a madman.
"Aaand recalibrating! Ha!" The Doctor flipped a final lever, and the Tardis jerked sideways, throwing both him and Rory in a heap against the door.
The Doctor was up again in an instant, laughing in glee. "It works! That's brilliant, four. Never thought of it that way." He beamed at Rory, clearly very proud of himself.
Sprawled on the floor, Rory rubbed his ribs where a bony elbow had caught the skinny alien's fall and blinked, at a total loss. "What are you on about?"
The Doctor stepped over him and flung open the doors. "There, see?"
Rory rolled over onto his stomach and peered over the Time Lord's toes. His eyes widened as he realized just what the Doctor was so excited about and he stumbled to his feet, joining him at the door.
"Is- is that a moon?"
The Doctor looked a bit perplexed by the fact that Rory evidently was not seeing the same thing he was. "No. Well, yes, but I was showing you the strength of the short-distance gravitational field."
"By putting a moon in orbit around the Tardis."
"Yes!" the Doctor threw his arm over Rory's shoulder and grinned. "Shall we show Amy?"
Rory shook his head, incredulous, and pulled the tweed-clothed arm over his head again. "No," he responded decisively, turning toward he and Amy's room. There had been enough explosions already without adding a sleep-deprived Amy to the mix. He'd had enough noise. "Good night, Doctor."
Well, that was fun.
Fav, follow, or leave a review! And to bribe you into doing so, I have a tiny little drabble inspired by the same word the one above was, and I will send it to you if you do any of the three! Thanks for reading ^.^
