Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 73rd cycle. Now cycle 74!


"The Benevolent Doctor"
Glee/Doctor Who crossover #6 (following "Guardian of the Array")
from Glee: Santana, Brittany, Artie, Puck, Sugar, Quinn
from Doctor Who: 10th Doctor, Martha

1. And Then There Were Five

March 2012 – Lima, Ohio

Right away, Artie had known he wouldn't have a choice. For the time being, as much as he was keeping Gemma's request in mind and trying to keep the flow of information to a minimum, he wouldn't be able to pretend as though they could ignore what they'd just found out. It wasn't just them, not just him and Puck and Sugar who had once met the Doctor, it was Santana and Brittany, too. They'd discovered it all because of him, because he'd gotten one glimpse at the get well soon card Brittany was drawing for Quinn and he'd recognized the blue thing that was meant to be the TARDIS. Now they had agreed to share their story and, because they had pulled her into this now, they were in the process of finding Sugar so she could be there, too.

"Got her," he caught Puck's voice and turned to see him coming up the hall with the girl in tow.

"What's going on?" she asked, looking confused. "He wouldn't say, just that it was urgent." Artie wanted to sigh, but he held it back.

"In here," he nodded, and they followed him into the empty choir room. Puck shut the door, as Sugar saw the two Cheerios sitting there, waiting.

"What are they doing here?" she pointed.

"We could ask you the same thing," Santana frowned, while Brittany waved at Sugar.

"They've met him, too," Artie explained to her, and she stared at the pair in shock.

"The Doctor… You've met the Doctor, too?"

"Wait, you did?" Santana stood. Sugar nodded. "Well he gets around, doesn't he?"

"Alright, so tell us," Puck crossed his arms.

"Hold up," Santana shook her head. "Before we say anything, how do we know you're not just messing with us?"

"How would we do that?" Artie glared. "It's not like it's all over the place, the Doctor and…"

"Well clearly it is, if we've all met him," Brittany piped in, and Santana pointed at her as though to say 'yes, good point, exactly.'

"Okay so yours was a he, that's one thing," Artie looked to the other two.

"Is that an option?" Santana blinked.

"Apparently. Artie met the Doctor but she was a woman, and I know you're going to say 'well then it wasn't him,' but we swear to you it was, it's like he can change or something. What did yours look like?"

"He was tall," Brittany started, and Santana hesitated before following on.

"He had this hair that sort of stuck out over here," she mimed over her head. "He wore a suit, and he had a sort of long coat."

"Then that's another one," Artie, as usual, found his being intrigued would trump his desires to keep the information in check. "Puck and Sugar met one… version, I met another, and you did, too, that's three so far. I don't even know how many there are."

"When did you meet… her?" Santana asked, finding it hard to picture the image in her head as anything else.

"I was eight, not too long after my accident," Artie answered. "We ended up in Indiana in the eighties, there were aliens, but they had this shield that made them look human, so they could blend in and be safe, kind of like witness protection." The Doctor had removed the adjustment in his glasses that had allowed him to see the aliens despite their shields, which he guessed he wouldn't have needed anyway, but then he had to think, if they'd fixed the individual shields back then, then what was to say there weren't shielded aliens outside of the Indiana town. He wouldn't be surprised if Coach Sylvester was one…

"A few years back, when I was in Dayton with my mother and my sister," Puck added. "I didn't meet the Doctor for a while, I was with a friend of his, Jack. There was some woman trying to wipe out my descendants, so we had to stop her. Then there was a prison, that's where I met him, and Rose." There was a pause.

"I was six… but I remember," Sugar nodded, her thoughts travelling to another world and another name. "There were some people in trouble, and we tried to free them. They didn't all make it out…" They had never seen Sugar Motta so sombre, and it was a strange effect to witness. The others stared at her for a beat, and then turned back to the Cheerios.

"It was a couple years ago for us, too," Santana started. "In the summer, we had this camp, and we went on a trip to the Grand Canyon."

"I was going to go to that," Puck remembered. "But my mom said we couldn't afford it."

"Well, we went, and that's where it happened, that we met them."

"Was Rose with him?" Sugar suddenly asked.

"Who?" Santana asked.

"When I met him, and Puck, too, he was travelling with a girl, her name was Rose."

"No, we didn't see her. Our Doctor did have someone though, her name was Martha."

"She was really nice," Brittany smiled. "She helped us with… well…" She paused, looking to Santana to make sure whether they should carry on or not.

"We were on our trip," Santana nodded. "You didn't really miss much," she tossed a look to Puck. "I mean the Grand Canyon was great to see and all, but our guide was a pain, we barely got to do anything, and they wouldn't let us get closer, even though plenty of other people were doing it…"

"Santana…" Brittany cut in, sensing she was rambling off.

"Right, sorry. Anyway, after a while, we got bored, and we wandered off. We didn't know they were there, the Doctor and Martha. They weren't the ones we saw first, first we saw the ship."

"Didn't know it was a ship," Brittany shook her head, though she was smiling, like she could still see it for the first time.

TO BE CONTINUED (SUNDAY)