Assorted Other or Multi Era Gen (everything gen featuring Doctors other than Nine, Ten and Eleven and/or their companions, except those drabbles involving specific characters and relationships that have chapters of their own)
Title: The Benefits of Humans
Rating: G
Character/s: Four, Adric.
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 53: Nonsense. Set during the Tom Baker era.
The Doctor sometimes thinks that humans are more trouble than they're worth. They're so emotional that he's surprised they don't explode, and they're always talking complete and utter (though often wonderful) nonsense.
Now that there's only himself and Adric stuck together aboard his suddenly not-quite-big-enough ship, though, he misses human companions. There's only enough room on the TARDIS for one overly-logical know-it-all.
He thinks it's a crying shame that it would be considered unacceptable to just push Adric out onto the next inhabited planet and leave him there.
Though he'd probably miss having someone else to do all the prattling.
Title: The Black Sheep Painted White
Rating: G
Character/s: Eight (mentions of Three and Six)
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 76: Lost Causes. Set during the Time War. References multiple Classic Who eras.
After his stint stranded on Earth in his third body had ended, he'd thought the Time Lords had given up on him, figuring there was no changing him. Then he'd been called back to trial and put through another regeneration. He realised he was still the black sheep, but they were willing to try painting him white when they saw fit.
So he wasn't surprised they'd called him back to Gallifrey with the rumblings of a War spreading. It suited them to make an effort with him again, and yet again he'd come running. He really should stop doing that.
Title: Peace Babies
Rating: G
Character/s: Four
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 79: Peace. Set during the Tom Baker era.
For a man who goes about getting into (and sometimes causing) trouble on a massive scale, the Doctor really abhors violence and fighting. War is the dirtiest word imaginable to him, and he hates that it's often a necessary evil.
He's violently dispatched enemies before, of course. It's a necessity to save the universe sometimes. Someone has to save all those unsuspecting creatures. But in the end, he's still the sort to gallivant around time and space offering peace in the form of a sugary sweet from a little planet called Earth.
"Jelly baby?" he offers with a toothy smile.
Title: Born Under the Wrong Suns
Rating: G
Character/s: Theta Sigma
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 94: Prodigy.
In any other place in the universe, Theta Sigma would be considered a prodigy. But Gallifrey is all about book-learning and emotional detachment. He loves books, really, but he's not so fond of tests; he can barely sit still for them. As for the emotional detachment, that's a lost cause. He loves the universe without ever having seen it. Once he's out there, he's going to dive in headfirst.
The Time Lords don't know what to do with him. To them he's anything but a genius. He's a failure, if anything. Theta tries not to let that get to him.
Title: True Warfare
Rating: PG
Character/s: Eight, Nine
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 248: Bivouac. Set during the Time War.
He stands on his TARDIS, about to end the war with a simple press of a button. It feels like there should be mud and spilt guts and lack of shelter for this to amount to true warfare. Without that, it would seem easy for him to distance himself from the imminent deaths.
But the responsibility is as heavily his as if he were killing them face-to-face. Someone has to remember the horror, and he'll be the only one left.
The button is pushed.
They all die. Only he's reborn.
He remembers every second of the fire engulfing them all.
Title: Through Until the End
Rating: PG
Character/s: The Doctor, Jack
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 255: Comfort.
It's somehow appropriate that the only person who will bear witness to the end of the Doctor's long life is Jack. They've both affected each other's existence in so many ways that the Doctor can't begin to describe them.
Jack sits with the Doctor as he bleeds out. The Doctor takes Jack's hand and squeezes weakly.
It's the Doctor who's dying, and yet he feels like he should be doing the comforting here. After all, it's the people who have to live on who feel the real pain of death. And Jack has such a long time still to live.
Title: Anywhere But Here
Rating: G
Character/s: Theta Sigma
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 256: Greek Alphabet. Set pre-series.
He's never been accepted by his people. He's different, and therefore wrong. He wonders that they can't see how that makes them just like those legends his teachers tell of the Daleks.
The others at the Academy laugh at the fact that the crèche cared so little for determining his personality that two letters in Old Earth Greek were considered an appropriate name.
He dreams of leaving them behind. Perhaps that planet and time period from which his name originated will accept him. Or another time and place.
Theta Sigma just knows that he wants to be anywhere but here.
Title: The Upper Hand of a Twisted Arm
Rating: PG
Character/s: Eight
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 264: Third Doctor Titles, using 'Inferno'. Set during the Time War.
The Time War had raged for too long, and everyone involved was aware of it. The Time Lords had come up with an option to end it that the Doctor couldn't abide. The Doctor had a plan that the Time Lords railed against with every atom of their beings. It should have created a stalemate, but it didn't.
The Doctor had the upper hand. He was just one man; not an easy target within the whole of time and space.
He acted.
Everything inside the Time Lock disintegrated, accompanied by the screaming of the universe setting itself right. Gallifrey burned.
Title: An Enemy in Common
Rating: PG
Character/s: The Doctor
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 282: Predicate.
He's the Doctor. He's the last of a powerful species of overseers who had the ultimate authority over the universe. The Doctor didn't always agree with the Time Lords about everything, but he never questioned that they had rights and dominion over the progression of time. Now that authority falls to him alone.
So when he declares that the war on Gavrox IV will end that night, he expects that they will listen.
The war does end, then, but only because the factions have found a common enemy; the alien who tries to assert himself over them.
The Doctor flees.
Title: Letting History Play Out
Rating: PG
Character/s: Ten, Five
Author's Notes: Written for Challenge 303: Crash. Set during 'Time Crash'.
He looks at his fifth self, who has just recently lost Adric. He thinks he knows grief. He's seen nothing yet.
The Doctor considers warning his younger self of what is to come. Of preventing himself from being alone, the only Time Lord, with Gallifrey having burned years ago and the Master having died in his arms just yesterday.
But then, he might miss out on meeting Rose Tyler, and Martha Jones, and Peri and Ace and all those wonderful people he's loved over the years.
He can't do that, but he still wishes he could spare himself the pain.