Text Key

"Audible speech."

'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'

Attack Of The Graske

Chapter 6 – What Is This Christmas?

It was a relatively simple piece of advice; dress for winter in 1883. The Doctor had shown me to the wardrobe and turned me loose as soon as we reached the door. It's not like he could just turn me, the leggy young thing with just enough curves in roughly the right places wearing skinny jeans and too many animal prints to overlook, loose on the streets of Victorian London and expect things to go well.

Of course, the Doctor's own look wasn't all that different and he hadn't made any moves towards blending in himself, but the Time Lord had a tendency to get away with those sorts of things.

So what was I looking for?

Well, first; not a dress.

It wasn't like I wouldn't wear them, but right now, I was not in the mood to wear them. I wanted as much skin covered as possible - an old preference to keep old scars from getting stared at - and as much freedom of movement to go with that and, while one of those things was feasible in Victorian fashion, the other didn't go along with it.

If I'd wanted to flex my powers, I could have gone out wearing something else. Just grabbed something comfortable and just given people the psychic nudge needed to overlook the objectionable parts over as unimportant, but that would have led to the Doctor noticing things that I was simply not ready to have a conversation with him about ever.

So, men's clothing it was.

I brushed my hand over the racks as I tried to find something that jumped out at me. Anything that could catch my attention – ah!

Ah.

I brushed my thumb over the deep green velvet of the frock coat. Plush and soft as forest moss, just like another I knew that was just like it.

Against all of my better impulses, I pulled it off of the rack and brought it up to my face. It even almost smelled the same; honey-scented and herbal, carrying the sensation of warm sunlight behind it, though Selby's scent had traces of pine and deep forest mystery that this lacked. Which made sense, considering this coat belonged to the Doctor, but the rational thought didn't help much with smoothing over the homesickness.

I forced the thoughts away. I'd find him again. Eventually. Nobody was ever lost forever where I was concerned - only for a while. So what if 'a while' could be a decade or more. What was a decade in the face of eternity?

A decade spent feeling lost, wondering if my next big fuck up would turn a tangible number of years into a hard never, a treacherous voice reminded me. If I failed to entertain, my 'patron' would take my friends – my family – away.

Sometimes I wondered if it wouldn't just be better to let them go. Let them forget that I'd dragged them into my mess and crawl off to die on my own-

A zap of static electricity sparked my fingers from the coat, releasing my death grip. Almost on reflex, I smoothed out the indents I'd left in the velvet.

It wasn't really my style, even if it would fit in with the era. It was a terrible idea, something the Doctor would recognize… but it would feel nice, for a moment. I wanted to, but I knew better. But…

"Goddammit, just wear the fucking coat if you're going to agonize this much over it, Delaine," I snarled at myself. "Christ, you're on the clock."

The rest of the outfit followed quickly, each choice either a clean mimic or a subversion of what Selby would have chosen. The waistcoat was from Eight's later life, a pair of trousers that were definitely not, a borrowed pair of shoes that I thought were safely nonspecific… and just because I couldn't resist a bit of drama, I threw on a top hat and one of the Third Doctor's cloaks on over it, one concession 'winter' made as an afterthought.

For all the time I wasted on the coat, I could get dressed quickly when pressed. The only point of difficulty was the bit of black satin I was trying to get into something resembling a proper tie, but only managing to turn it into a floppy bow.

One of the others would be better at this. Or Selby. But, fuck it, it would do, I decided as I stalked back towards the console room. It was a valid sartorial choice, I had over sixteen thousand years' worth of experience in my head when I bothered to use it, and I'd run out of fucks to give about this kind of shit somewhere around eight hundred.

Not that it stopped me from occasionally giving a fuck anyway, given the anxiety disorder and bisexuality, but that was me; backwards and contradictory to the last.

If the Doctor recognized any part of the outfit, he didn't make any comment about that beyond raising his eyebrows halfway to his hairline.

"Glad to see I'm not the only one here making an effort at blending in," I said, giving his outfit an unsubtle and unimpressed once-over. Absolutely exactly what I had expected; the sum effort of nada.

He ignored the snipe. "Just two questions," he said, before raising a finger. "Does it hurt being so sarcastic all the time and isn't that cape a bit too tall for you?"

"It's December, it's warm, and I'm a 5'6" cocktail of sarcasm, depression, and assorted candies. Just about everything is too tall for me," I replied, pulling the cape a little higher onto my shoulders.

I could have adjusted it to something closer to my size, if I'd taken my limiter off and disregarded any qualms about messing with other people's property. But I didn't, because I'm not an asshole who alters other people's clothes for fun.

"Besides," I added as I spun the top hat between my fingertips before shoving it on my head. "Isn't that hair a little tall for you?"

The Doctor almost reached up to smooth down his spikes.

"Anyway," he said, dropping his hand down a few inches to point back at the door with his thumb. "We should be going. The Graske aren't going to stop themselves."

As we stepped out into Victorian London, I was struck by the odd but increasingly familiar feeling of belonging and not belonging all at once. Some of the others had once called streets identical to these 'home' - or at least, home territory - and I remembered all of that, but it wasn't as tight as my 'own' memories were. Like attempting to rely on someone's second hand stories or muscle memory, only to be reminded that those weren't your muscles you were calling on.

You could do it, sure, but not… quite as perfectly as they could.

That was something I could have fixed, if I took the limiter off. Smoothed over the gap and got their input on the situation. Of course, the immediate judgment of being here with the Doctor would be there as well, but…

I shoved that what if to the side for later.

As it was, Victorian London was nostalgic, especially under snow. The moon, much fuller than the cat's grin sliver of Christmas 2006, cast the snow in shades of silver and blue while the fires of street lamps, furnaces, and even the odd metal barrel cast their own warm, flickering light into the fray.

The streets were cobblestoned and, almost against reason, people seemed almost as thick on the ground as they had a hundred and twenty-three years in the future, if not thicker.

Well, 'twas the season for defying both cold weather and logic, after all. Carolers had to sing their hymns and 'God Rest You Merry Gentlemen', the last minutes shoppers had to make that final dash for gifts and food, and the urchins still needed to beg for alms as much as they did any other night of the year…

Actually, even more so, given that there was a good mass of them huddled for warmth in a disused alcove and most of the people on the street were ignoring them.

The Doctor gave me a look as I started rooting through the pockets of my borrowed coat. "What are you looking for?"

"Era appropriate Earth money," I growled as I fished out another useless bit of clutter. Why there were three pairs of glasses in these pockets, I didn't know, and there certainly didn't need to be half of the other junk in here either, but none of it was anything these kids could use.

The Doctor followed my line of sight over to the group of children. "I'm not usually in the habit of carrying the stuff," he admitted, his earlier excitement waning. "And it's not as if it will do a lot for them."

I bit my tongue to avoid making an acidic comment. No, a bit of money wouldn't make a huge difference in their lives right now. I knew that. But one meal, one night of not starving, would make a small one. Invisible in the grand scheme of the universe, probably, but to the kids themselves? They'd remember it.

A tangible kindness in the face of death was always memorable.

So I was going to cheat.

"Any sign of the Graske?" I asked, loosening my limiter as the Doctor's attention jumped back to our surroundings.

From my point of view, nobody looked to be acting particularly strangely and there wasn't any out-of-context material to go by, but all I needed was the Doctor not looking at me for a moment as I walked over to the group of kids, picking out the ringleader relatively easily.

"Hey, kid."

"Yes'm?"

I pulled a half-dozen of glass bottles out of my Warehouse, using the pockets of my borrowed coat to conceal the action. Clean water would go a long way, as would the bags of jerky that I passed over to the kid next. Finally, I pulled out an assortment of coins - appropriate to the era - and a handful of loose pearls bundled up in a small satin sack.

"Find an honest jeweler to handle those - and be careful with the money, alright?" I told him as I passed over the last. "Stretch it as far as you can to keep everyone warm and fed."

The kid nodded at me and I slipped back to join the Doctor, tightening the limiter back on as I did.

The Time Lord gave me a slight look, but didn't say anything.

"I didn't see any sign of our scaly little friend," he said instead as we walked further along the street. "Probably has enough sense to hide until he picks out his victim - the TARDIS is sure he's close by here though, so keep an eye and ear out. I don't imagine people will be very quiet once he makes his appearance…"

As we passed a carriage, the horse snorted, ears swiveling around as it eyed a pile of baskets and packages in front of it.

I followed its gaze. Horses were skittish at the best of times, but for one accustomed to the busyness of London to react in such a way to a seemingly inanimate object…

"Doctor–"

Before the rest of the warning could pass my lips, the Graske burst out, sending the smaller baskets rolling and people screaming as it rushed into the street. I couldn't blame them; it was hardly an attractive creature. From this range, I could see the sickly yellow, almost reptilian look of the alien's eyes, along with the razor teeth and crocodilian details of the scale pattern.

It quickly produced its teleporter again, pointing it at one of the urchins that had dared go further out into the street. The blue-white light that signaled an imminent switch shot out and struck the boy squarely in the chest. The Doctor had whipped out the sonic screwdriver almost instantly, but it was too late. The boy had stopped twitching, looking up with luminous gold eyes, and the Graske had activated his teleporter, vanishing from the street.

"I've got the signal!" the Doctor said, grabbing my arm and dragging me out of the crowd. "Back to the TARDIS!"

The Doctor loaded the sonic screwdriver into a slot on the console, a smile spreading over his face as the numbers came out into something decipherable. Between the urchin's abduction and the Graske itself, the coordinates were clear and the scanner screen was showing the picture of a very distinct violet-hued sphere covered with deep glittering gashes in its surface, chasms that ran down miles and riddled with subterranean tunnels and cities.

"And there we are," he said, twisting the last switch before throwing the dematerialization lever. "Griffith, the legendary planet of the Graske. Arriving in five minutes."

"Legendary for what?" his companion asked.

She'd shed his Third self's old cape, draping it over the back of the command chair, revealing what he'd half-suspected from the glimpses of bottle green sleeves from beneath the cloak; she was wearing his Eighth's velvet frock coat, though buttoned closed rather than left to hang open as that incarnation had usually worn it.

"Exotic sausages and cured cheese. Actually, I'm not sure," he admitted. "Bit daft, using their home world as their primary base of operations, but considering how many other worlds they have at their disposal…"
"How many do they have?" she asked.

"Besides Griffith? None. I did say they weren't terribly good at the whole 'conquest' thing, and most won't have anything to do with the Graske these days. Not without an exorbitant price tag attached."

''Exorbitant'?' he thought at himself.

'Don't cast your disapproving mental gaze in my direction,' his Sixth sniffed. 'That particular word choice falls entirely on you.'

"So that leaves their dreams of conquest to be carried out from the back garage. Impressive," the girl said, rolling her eyes. "I have just one question."

"Shoot. Or rather, ask away," the Doctor corrected himself. "I don't like guns. Don't like using them, don't like having them pointed at me, don't like having them anywhere around me. Just an all-around general dislike."

"Alright, alright, I get the picture," she said. Any trace of her light and playful mood from when they first met was gone, transformed into a snappish manner that screamed 'all business'. "Anyway, back to the Graske. Even I know that causing a paradox is a bad thing, but they're collecting people from at least two different eras in the same city. What's the chance of them collecting the ancestor of one of their previous victims? Are they new to time travel or just stupid?"

"Bit of Column A, bit of Column B," the Doctor replied with a shrug. "They're reasonably adept in the technological and scientific areas, but 'common sense' is a bit scarce on the ground on Griffith and the Groske got most of it."

"Dare I ask?"

"Sister species. Bit less prolific, a far sight richer in the basic logic and morality departments. Also, blue." He pulled a few more switches and dials, looking at the screen read out. One final defense on the Graske's base of operations, this one likely unintentional; the method of time travel they were using was so tangled and disjointed that if he brought the TARDIS to the heart of it, it stood the risk of destroying the whole ball of yarn.

Just one more reason to stop them, the Doctor supposed. The entire thing was a hazard to the space-time continuum of the universe, a deathtrap of physics just waiting to collapse on somebody and take out a species or six.

The TARDIS materialized on the surface of Griffith, the final thud echoing dimly through the console room.

"Can't get any closer to their base than this," he said, grabbing the sonic screwdriver out of the console. He paused right before opening the TARDIS doors. "Any complaints about going in through the back door?"

"I was half-expecting to go intru da window," his companion muttered.

'I like this one.'

'Yes. Also – shh!' the Doctor said as he shoved the voices of his previous selves back into the back of his mind. "Nah, this place doesn't have any," he said as he pushed open the TARDIS doors, revealing purplish stone and the black-finished metal that made up the Graske's back access door. The metal was rusted, chipped and generally carrying an air of disuse, but the electronic lock was still functional… and short work for the sonic screwdriver.

The inside was no better, cobwebs hanging off of bundles of wires and cords that hung from the ceiling like jungle vines, dust-covered and half-rotted from age and disuse. Sections of the floor were similarly rotted out by rust and other damage. The lighting – what there was of it – was barely present, the twinkling of LEDs and power crystals the most reliable light source in the gloom.

"I'm going to need a tetanus shot just looking at this mess," the girl muttered as she followed the Doctor into the hallway, stepping gingerly over a gap in the flooring. Her steps were barely audible at all, something that the Doctor was quietly grateful for. "You sure this is the right place, Doctor?"

"We're headed straight for the biggest complex space-time event on the planet," he replied, swinging the sonic screwdriver around in the dark like a drowsing rod. No cameras present, nor any other identifiable security measures beyond the locked doors. He'd expected that from the condition of the passageway to begin with, but it was always nice to have such expectations confirmed. "If this isn't connected to our time-travelling bodysnatcher, I'll eat my hat."

"You don't have a hat."

"Ah - then I'll eat yours," the Doctor said as they came to another sealed airlock and started working on the code to this one.

It was strange that the Graske's locks were designed in such dramatically different patterns, but perhaps it spoke to the relative age of the doors - this one seemed slightly newer than the last, though not any less disused by any inhabitants of this place.

"Must have a thing about porches, seeing as they seem to have as many doors as Jim Morrison," he muttered as he got started working on the mechanism. This one was a touch more complex than the previous sets, requiring not only a handful of electronic codes be solved, but a physical key to release the final mechanism. Not that that particular detail stopped the sonic screwdriver, but it did take a minute of dialing through the different settings.

It was just before that final lock released that the Doctor remembered something. "This is going to sound horribly rude, but what's your name?"

"…Delaine."

"Oooh, is that French?" There was something pleasing about the structure. Maybe because there was room to play with the stretch of the syllables. There was a pleasing undertone to the meaning of the name as well, even if it was as simple as 'from the alder grove'.

"Irish," Delaine replied, crumbling that chain of thought. "Means dark challenger."

"Ah." That… was more fitting for the person wearing it, given the teeth she flashed every now and then.

The lock had finished its release, the hiss of the hermetic seal as soft as a whisper as the door prepared to slide open. The Doctor crouched, pressing his companion back behind him as the door slid out of the way and revealed a bustle of activity in the room – not decrepit or disused like the hallways they'd come from, but reasonably well-lit for all it was filled with the low fog of cold storage.

Graske wandered around everywhere, testing the various connecting bits of the storage freezers where they'd stowed their victims. Surprisingly, those victims were not all humans, with there being at least twelve different alien species visible in storage. There was even a Raxacoricofallapatorian in one of the tubes – possibly a Slitheen from the color, but it was impossible to say for certain through the frost –, half-calcified from the chill of suspended animation.

"The Graske need to keep them alive to sustain their changelings," the Doctor explained quietly, nodding over to a case not yet frosted over. Inside, the urchin from earlier was frozen, dead to all outward appearances as aliens like the one who'd abducted him checked over the settings of his cyrostorage casing. "They'll all be trapped here forever if we don't stop them… at least until the Graske cause a paradox and collapse the entire space-time tangle they have going here. Either way, not a happy ending."

"And if they've got a record for having their grand plans collapse under them, they've probably have a –" her eyes widened and the Doctor barely got a glimpse of the Graske and its energy pistol before Delaine pulled him out of the line of fire, the tiny blast of plasma shooting past them into the tunnel. Maybe it would find its mark in a ruined wall or ricochet fruitlessly until it finally found a mark or died out on its own.

That was less of a concern than the problem of more of those violet-hued streaks of energy flying around them, duly ricocheting around the storage area like a storm of furious fireflies, striking and sparking off of what could only be important equipment. One of the stray shots fried the lock mechanism on the Slitheen's tube and the hulking alien burst out almost instantly, swiping at the closest Graske. The small alien just barely escaped with all of its limbs intact, screeching as it ran in the opposite direction at top Graske-speed.

The Doctor wasn't entirely certain that would be fast enough to outrun a sufficiently motivated Slitheen, but that was a secondary concern to the fact that his companion was very much not beside him anymore. So where was she – oh.

Oh!

That was brilliant.

Delaine was over at what could only be a control panel, flipping switches back and forth as different sections exploded into sparks as the internal machinery melted down. There was a barely traceable method to her madness, though how much of that was luck or knowhow was hard to divine without knowing her exact thought process.

She finally settled on a large luminous button, punching it as a Graske noticed what she was up to. It started to move toward her, but it was too late; Delaine had activated the teleporter and every cyrostorage tube lit up with blue-white transmat light.

They didn't wait to watch that light fully dissipate, though, instead racing through the ruined tunnels back to the TARDIS as the unhappy howls of the Graske echoed behind them. As soon as the TARDIS doors were closed, the Doctor punched in the coordinates for Earth and pulled the lever, only relaxing as the wonderful sound of dematerialization filled his ears. Then he laughed.

His new companion – Delaine, Dee-laaaine, it had a good cadence for all the lack of a last name – was splayed out in the command chair almost as an afterthought, one leg thrown over an armrest while the other supported her head, her brown hair splayed out like a tangled, frazzled halo as she chuckled around gasps for air. Almost to spite that loosening of image, the rest of her borrowed outfit was as pressed as it had begun, save for the odd bit of cobweb caught on velvet.

"Brava brava," the Doctor said, brushing his hand back through his hair as he frowned. "No idea why I said that. Maybe I like opera… But a good show for your first night out."

"Maybe that mouth's built for Italian," the girl murmured as she picked up the top hat she'd discarded, spinning it around in her hands.

"Molto bene..." he tried before grinning at the way the words rolled around his mouth. "Ah, always fun discovering the new quirks. Now, wasn't that better than spending Christmas all on your lonesome?"

"Mmm, probably," Delaine replied around a smile that slowly grew into a proper grin as the black hat's spin slowed down to rock back and forth between her fingers. "More fun than I was expecting to have any time soon, at least."

"Would you be interested in doing it again?" the Doctor asked.

There were words that could have described the way her eyes opened and shot over to look at him, all of them required a bit of nuance that simply weren't there. 'Surprise' fit the best, though there was an edge that he might have quantified as 'panic' or 'shock'.

Whatever it was, it was quickly gone.

"You're asking me to come with you," Delaine said slowly. It was the same not-quite question as earlier; every word was measured and devoid of inflection, as if they were being tested for quality… or weakness.

"Well, yes," the Doctor replied, "unless you aren't interested…"

"Why wouldn't I be?" she said before looking away, spinning the hat again. The casualness seemed somewhat counterfeit, given that the rest of her manner had enough tension to cut someone. "I'd just think, with your personality you'd have all sorts of people hanging around…"

There'd been many hanging around over the years. Oh, maybe only one or two at a time – three at the most crowded, though the Doctor rarely counted Kamelion – but there was no question that there were dozens, if not hundreds of people in his past.

The Doctor didn't mind much. People came, people went. Time, as always, moved on. So long as he wasn't alone, it was fine. Survivable.

"Oh, I've got Rose around lately. She's… a bit younger than you?" the Doctor said as he set in the coordinates to pick the blonde up, pushing aside the fact that he couldn't actually get a clean in on Delaine's age down besides 'young-ish but not that young'. "She's nineteen anyway. Left her at an ABBA concert that I need to pick her up from now, so you'll be meeting her before too long…"

"Ah," Delaine said before sitting the top hat down over her face. "Joy."

"A bit more enthusiasm would be nice, if you don't mind."

"I'm so ecstatic it defies description," the brunette deadpanned quietly, fiddling with her leather bracelet for a moment before appearing to drop off into a light doze, almost in spite of the awkward position she was laying in, her arms wrapped around herself and his Eighth's green coat in an almost aggressive cuddle.

The Doctor shook his head as he turned his attention back to piloting the TARDIS.

It would be interesting to see how Delaine and Rose interacted. Rose's optimism and energy against the dry, sarcastic, and ever so distinctly severe nature of Delaine… though it wouldn't be fair to say that either of their personalities could be summed up so simply; Rose could be childish and territorial and Delaine had showed off her silly side within seconds of entering the TARDIS.

'Of course, you're working with the assumption that they'll actually get along,' his Fifth said. 'But there have been cases – '

'Adric was a one-off, and most of the other conflicts of personality resolved themselves,' the Doctor thought back, but it was a thought to consider. Would that dry sarcasm in the face of danger rub Rose the wrong way? Would Rose's energy offend the stiff sensibility of his newest companion?

What was Delaine? Brave or reckless? Dramatic or pragmatic? Serious or silly? Why not all of those, shifting with the situation?

The Doctor would just have to figure it out, but the first question was this – in the face of that…inexplicable flash of fear, why had she said yes? Because she liked her first taste of adventure or because she'd been alone without anywhere to go? Maybe all the answers were right, mixed together in a slurry of other details that he wasn't privy to.

The Doctor then considered the second question.

Why had he asked her in the first place? Because she'd caught his eye or because he'd recognized something in that lonely figure sitting on a rooftop at Christmas, watching all the other people living their lives on the streets below, only to slap on a carefully constructed playful and carefree front as soon as they were called out on that solitude?

It was a deep question, one that he didn't entirely think he had an answer to, and one he was glad to have his thoughts on scattered as Rose stepped back into the TARDIS, still bouncing on her heels from whatever ambient excitement had been the atmosphere at the concert and the faint sheen of sweat glistening under the lights of the TARDIS.

"How was the wait?" Rose asked as she hopped up to where the Doctor was standing, turning around on her heel only to stop as she saw the slumped figure currently occupying the command chair. "Who's that?"

"Somebody who hasn't had any sleep in the last twenty four hours and needs it badly," Delaine muttered, lifting up her top hat just high enough to cast an unimpressed glance in Rose's direction. "So if you don't mind…"

Rose turned to look at the Doctor, the question clearly scribbled all over her face.

He reached up to rub the back of his head. "Ah, got bored, decided to go on a little side trip, picked up a new friend… Her name's Delaine. Don't let the clothes fool you; she's your contemporary. I'm sure you'll get along fabulously."

"Wait," Rose said, doing a quick double-take, looking at Delaine, back to the Doctor, and then back again. "'Her'?"

Between the headache from the others screaming at me for the situation I'd gotten myself into and Rose's yelling at the Doctor, I had a feeling that I was going to suffer the next few days.

Author's Note

Beta'd by littleditto

Updated on 9/3/2017, touched up on quality, continuity, and detail.

Updated 12/3/2022 againnn. Mostly to polish up some explains and also remove some internalized sexism that had bled into the original version. If you suffer from NLOG (Not Like Other Girls) disease, stop it. Get some help. Do not let that shit progress to TERFdom. You deserve better than hating others for what you reject in yourself.

And so Rose Tyler arrives.

A confession; Ten and Rose are one of my least favorite Doctor/Companion duos. Most of you probably guessed by the fact that I used 'Rose fucking Tyler' right at the beginning of the last chapter.

That's not to say I don't like them. I don't dislike Series 2, though I think it's a bit overrated, save for the episodes I think are underrated, and I think there's definitely some aspects during Ten's run that should have been followed up more strongly (Ten's god/messiah complex especially when it comes to deciding what way he thinks history should go, Ten's tendency to fuck up and just kind of shrug it off, etc.) or handled differently (Martha getting shafted by every story because of Rose's lingering specter), but most of those issues have been played with by Big Finish or different comic runs, which have actually seen me enjoy both of them in different ways.

The main problem is the fandom.

Bad behavior from fans has tainted Rose Tyler and the Tenth Doctor by association - not to say such things are exclusive to that part of the Doctor Who fandom or to fandom spaces in general, because it's very much not, but as someone who spends a lot of time in Doctor Who related spaces on Tumblr, AO3, FFnet, Discord, and other places, I have simply just seen More Shit regarding Muh Roes that has made it so I actively block her tag and have made a point of having to tag posts regarding my own opinions of the character/her fandom 'anti-rose tyler' on tumblr.

Which has led to people that worship the art I've done of her or Ten on my art blog blocking my main. Yes, I do think it's funny, but it's also the right choice as a fan - just avoid people you don't vibe with rather than waste energy fighting them all the time. I do the same thing to the Rose stans who are shitty about Martha, it's fine.

(I don't mean that it's fine to be a racist though, because there are a contingent of those fans that definitely are. Seriously, analyze your biases, people.)

Why am I writing for Ten and Rose then? RNGesus commanded it via dice roll. I am still salty about the chart used to decide it being unfairly tilted towards the revival Doctors, but it has given me a reason to rewatch the Tenth Doctor's run properly as an adult and I have enjoyed my experience with that so far, and I was intending to give all the characters as fair a shake as I could even going in with a standing dislike because of the aforementioned fandom guilt by association.

Thankfully, that dislike has largely melted away, even if the fandom for those two is still on my shitlist and there are multiple tags still blocked on AO3 because of them.

Kind of forgot that I'd written Delaine with a playful – if occasionally mean and regularly sarcastic – sense of humor (how much of that is forced at the moment is up in the air) before I got these chapters back from my beta, so I'll be fixing that at the appropriate times in the future. Also emphasized her uncomfortableness with the Tenth Doctor's face.

Yes, there are going to be a fuckton of Classic Who references in this. Hell, maybe 50% of the fic will be grounded in the Classic. Maybe more. I'm going to drag every one of you into it.

On the updated version: Added in the Selby stuff after it gained a lot of importance later, polished up a few scant bits of writing. Other than that… not much.

'Delaine' as a name, has a few different meanings. The first one I was ever exposed to was 'descendant of the challenger / dark challenger' which it still my favorite and metal as hell. The second was the 'from the alder grove' which… is kind of tame compared to that, but not bad. And then I recently stumbled across the interpretation 'dark water' or 'dark river' based on the interpretation – the name is a… translation/modernization of 'Dubhshlaine' – that the 'shlaine' part is in reference to the River Slaney… which when taken back to the original Irish, gives us 'slaine' which can translate to 'healthy person', 'farewell', 'security' …or 'challenge'/'defiance', bringing us back around to the first again.

The more I find out about my name (I think I did mention I used it because I never see it in anything, right?), the better it gets.

Adric and Kamelion were companions of the Fifth Doctor. Adric was a teenage alien math genius from another universe and Kamelion was an easily mind-controlled shapeshifting robot. Both have the distinction of being on the list of companions gotten killed through travelling with the Doctor, though Kamelion bears the dubious honor of being killed by the Doctor himself.

Very little of value was lost on either occasion (well, in Adric's case, the dinosaurs and the last bit of potential the writers ignored for the character), though the serial where Kamelion beefs it for the last time also features Peri Brown (one of my Classic favs) trying to squash a cockroach-sized Master with her shoe.

'Beef it' – oh god, Rocket Power is over fifteen years old. I didn't even watch the show, I just had a subscription to Nickelodeon Magazine. Which ended its run about eight years ago.

God, time is kicking my ass.

A few more Highlights of Rassilon.

The Roulette of Rassilon (Russian Roulette with a gun that was designed for two things; deleting its target from history and not firing at Time Lords). Played between Rassilon (Time Lord) and a squid alien (not a Time Lord). Conclusion: obvious.

Profane Virus of Rassilon – not actually made by Rassilon but was created in the same spirit of douchy-ness. Overrides and reprograms electronics to destroy themselves. Last seen making a time machine crash into itself.

The Death Zone (of Rassilon) – think the Hunger Games, but older, more Doctor Who, and less rules. Only known rule is no Daleks or Cybermen allowed, because they're apparently 'too good' at the Game. According to the 'official' history of Gallifrey, Rassilon is the one who put a stop to the Game, but considering that he helped develop the technology that made the Game possible and his character, he probably was the one who started it in the first place. On semi-related note, the Tomb of Rassilon is located there, despite him not being dead. Seriously, at best it's a kind of suspended animation because he's still mentally active (using his psychic powers to fuck with everyone in the building, turn people into statues, that sort of shit) and comes back for real later in the revived series, never mind all the shit he pulled in Big Finish. SO REALLY –

Yeah, the fandom nickname of Assilon isn't entirely unfounded.

Anyway, feel free to ask any questions in the comments / review section. I will either answer them in-story or in the next Author's Notes. Reviews, criticisms, and commentary are, as always, welcome.