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yellow-faerie · 2 months

Note

Could you talk about one of those Doctor Who aus?

Hello! Thank you anon for the ask :) I have a few AUs that I'm currently rotating in my head but my favourite at the moment is the one I just call The Modern AU - it's official name is The Doctor Project but that's not what I call it. This took me a hot minute to write up because it is a lot.

(Also if you wanted to hear about any of my other AUs, I put some brief descriptions in the tags :D)

The basic premise is that the Doctors are all human and a team that worked together for their variety of expertise during the early 2000s to repel an alien invasion and the effect it has on each of them and their general lives. Also the Tardis is there as the only sensible one of the lot.

Some doctors do have more story fleshed out than others, mostly due to the fact that I'm still quite new to a lot of the eu stuff like Big Finish and the books and certain Doctors I would feel better about having engaged with some more of it before getting some proper stories fledged out (mostly because I hope it will give me some more inspiration lol)

I'll put some more general outline below the cut for anyone interested :)

[Warnings: mentions of abuse, discussions of war and the aftermath, complicated relationships to disability, implied torture ]

First Doctor

So the First Doctor is the oldest of the bunch, a retired surgeon and medical doctor (he used to work at Royal Hope Hospital) who was brought into the Doctor project for his research into medicine.

He spent most of the War in London due to his old age making it difficult to run around cities infested with alien invaders but he does get sent out periodically (mostly when one of the others gets too injured to be moved from their current location which happens a few times).

He had a daughter, Gillian, when he was quite young but he and his wife split up, and his daughter spent most of her time with her mother instead. However, he was the one to gain custody of his daughter's daughter (Susan) when Gillian died as his ex-wife had also died.

When the Doctor was conscripted, Susan was about 15 and stayed with their neighbour Steven over the course of the war, and Vicki and Dodo, two girls he fostered as well while their parents were off fighting.

Due to the secure nature of the work that the Doctor Project was doing, she and her grandfather only exchanged a few letters over the course of each year, and they were always heavily edited, and she found herself finding a lot of the emotional support she was lacking from her two teachers at Cole Hill, Barbara and Ian.

When she left Cole Hill Sixth Form, a year before the war ended, she moved back into her grandfather's house but kept in contact with Barbara and Ian who helped her with finding a job and advice on living alone, etc. This would break GDPR and a host of other protection laws these days but it's the middle of an alien invasion, let's pretend that doesn't exist. They didn't know the Doctor at all until after the war when he returns and it's a bit weird for everyone.

Especially since Ian is completely furious at him for leaving his granddaughter alone, mostly because people meet Susan and get the immediate urge to protect her; they do mostly get over that particular hurdle though as more comes out about how the war ended, although the Doctor doesn't help matters much by being his usual grouchy self.

His usual grouchy self made worse by the fact that everything has changed a lot since he had left home. Susan is in training to be a nurse and has these faux-parental figures she trusts so implicitly, and is decidedly more wary around him; he has also been fundamentally changed by living four years in various bunkers while working against an invisible clock to defeat a foe more technologically advanced that they are.

Eventually things do settle down: Ian and the Doctor apologise to each other, Susan and the Doctor have enough heart-to-hearts that it clears the air between them, that sort of thing.

There's not a whole lot of plot to any of the First Doctor's stuff but the vibes and the setting are pretty much in place.

Second Doctor

The second doctor is probably about forty when he's conscripted and he was a physics lecturer at St. Andrews university, specialising in sound and acoustics and waves, that sort of thing. He invented several new versions of sound systems which is what got him noticed for the Project.

St. Andrews is where he meets Jamie, actually, who was working as a guard; they bonded over a mutual love of music, Jamie in particular on the bagpipes, and then over other mutual interests.

I'm imagining they got married before the war (as this is an alternate history anyway, I'm making gay marriage legal earlier because no-one can stop me) when Jamie went on to fight in the army and the Doctor got conscripted into the project. Both of them being in different deployments so regularly meant letter writing was even more difficult.

After the war, the Doctor gives up the whole lecturing thing, as the project had left him with a bad taste in his mouth over the work he had been doing. Instead, he takes his knowledge of music and goes into conducting an orchestra, as well as giving music lessons on the side.

In like...any instrument; he's not even very good at playing a lot of them but he has the technical know-how to make someone else very good at playing them, if they can get past his eccentricities.

Zoe is the first violin in the orchestra who he gives personal tutoring too in a vague attempt to get her to put some feeling into her music. She's technically very brilliant and knows her way around most string instruments with almost military precision, but she was taught in a very wooden way and the Doctor is attempting to bring that out of her.

Victoria, on the other hand, takes piano lessons from him except she's around like four times a week and barely ever actually plays the piano and they always give her supper because her home life is...not the greatest. Her father's very absent and her mother's dead. It's all a bit iffy.

Eventually, Jamie probably calls Social Services who are overstretched in the aftermath of the war as it is, but she manages to find herself to a very nice foster family (the Harris') who make sure she keeps having her piano lessons. Although they continue not to really be piano lessons.

[I feel that I should put a note on Ben and Polly here; they are sort of known to both One and Two as Polly is Barbara's niece (and quite close to her aunt) and Ben is Two's half brother (but not that close all things considered) - they are the sort of people who come around for birthdays and Christmas and the one off weekend, and give you very thoughtful advice and presents, but that's sort of the limit of your relationship with them.]

Third Doctor

The Third Doctor studied chemistry at university, trying out multiple different branches, and had managed to get noticed for a variety of things such as creating a few new medications, discovering the compounds of some rarer chemicals, that sort of thing (I will admit, I don't know what makes a chemist famous).

Sarah Jane is his younger sister by about twenty years: when she was younger, she had a bit of a hero worship of him going on but nowadays she's much more sensible.

He worked at Cambridge with Liz before the war, and a lot of the breakthroughs they made together; they (and by they I mean the Doctor has while Liz is facepalming in the background) have a bitter rivalry with the Oxford researcher Emil Masters (the Delgado Master).

They are married but they keep that out of their professional rivalries.

After the war, however, the Doctor stays with UNIT. He's the only one of the doctors to do this and it's mostly because he doesn't trust that unit won't make terrible decisions with the research the Doctor Project produced, so he stays as a Scientific Advisor and pokes his nose into everyone's business to keep his conscience clean.

Jo is his assistant as per canon, only now she is being invited around for supper four times a week at his house and is probably inheriting everything that both the Master and the Doctor own when they eventually die.

They turn up to her wedding to Cliff when her parents don't.

Once again, this is incredibly vibes based rather than very much plot; there's probably going to be something to do with Jo falling out with her family, but that's about as far as I got with it. It's mostly fluff at this point lol.

[Also a note about the incarnations of the Master: while the doctors aren't actually related, the incarnations of the Master are because I find that entertaining, and also there are less of them]

Fourth Doctor

The Fourth Doctor is an environmental activist before the war! He got a PhD in ecology and then proceeded to throw away a promising career in academia (his parents' words) to gallivant around the planet doomsday prophesying.

What he's actually doing is blackmailing people into implementing climate saving machines, etc. so that he isn't Doomsday prophesying; he actually meets Sarah doing this because they both get thrown in prison for getting nosy around a nuclear power plant and thus is the start of a beautiful friendship/relationship, it's really unclear to everyone else.

He has two sisters; Winifred (although everyone calls her Fred) who is Romana I, and Romana who is Romana II. Romana turns 18 just before the war and Fred turns 25 around the same time, while the Doctor is 30ish.

Romana immediately joins MI6 (she had always wanted to be in the secret service) and the Doctor gets roped into the Doctor project, which means that when Fred dies during the war, neither of them get informed for months due to the lack of proper communication channels.

This is something they both feel very guilty about, especially considering the fact that they have two nephews who got immediately lost in the overworked system without any other relative around who could look after them.

Anyway, also during the war, the Doctor gets captured by the aliens, and held for a good few months; he barely ever acknowledges that this ever happened to anyone, even when he is literally hospitalised after rescue. He just...pretends that everything is fine and dandy actually.

His doctor is actually Harry who then gets roped into the whole Very Secret Doctor Project thing for like a month until the Doctor was determined to no longer need constant observation etc and then he's just sent back to his ship.

However, Harry has better communication with home than the Doctor, and also shore leave, so he's sent to basically tell Sarah Jane that the Doctor is alive and alright - they immediately hit it off and so after the war, Harry and she hang out a lot until he's also living in the house with her, the Doctor and their gaggle of foster children (their are a lot of orphans after the war and so the three of them foster).

The actual content of their relationship is debateable - they could be a throuple, it could be that two of them are a couple and the other is third wheeling like a boss, it could be that none of them are romantically involved at all - but they do care for each other a lot.

Also the children are Luke and Sky from SJA and Leela, who's probably about 16. They have a dog, too, called K9 because the Doctor has called every dog he has ever owned since he wasa child K9, and just added a MK on the end; currently they're on Mk IV.

After the war, they just sort of settle back into what they were doing before; Sarah Jane writes for her newspapers and magazines, Harry takes up a civilian doctor's position again at New Hope and the Doctor returns to blackmailing people into Doing Better, only none of them are all that alright after the war and hiding it affects how well they are with other people.

There are some arguments had, mostly with the Doctor and Sarah Jane as Harry is much more mild mannered - with each other, with various siblings, with annoying work colleagues - until they at least admit that something is wrong, and then they go from there.

Fifth Doctor

The Fifth Doctor is the computer guy. He studied computer science at university and as well as developing quite a lot of high level software, he also developed cheaper hardware storage stuff.

With a lack of people I wanted to make him related to, I made him a Cranleigh - I think this was so he could go to boarding school and hate literally everything about it apart from cricket. His notes say that he cuts most communication with his family after going to university so they're not that important to the story.

During the war, he gets caught under a collapsing building at one point which causes nerve damage to his spine which affects the communication between his legs and his brain, periodically causing the connection to short out and his legs to collapse; the collapsed building also means that he can get quite a lot of pain in his legs, and should really be using crutches (only he forgets to bring them with him a lot).

Before the war, he works for some sort of big tech company who fund a lot of his research but after the war he doesn't particularly want to do research any more - nor work for a big tech company - and goes on to lead the IT department at Royal Hope. Which consists of Turlough (who is there because he needs a job after school and he heard that IT jobs were really easy actually) and possibly a few other characters (I've heard of some that exist in audio format, so when I get there, I may edit this).

He also fosters two kids in the aftermath of the war: Adric, who's mother was Fred and who's older brother died in the time that they were lost in the foster system, and Nyssa, who's father Tremas Masters (the Ainley Master) got imprisoned for murdering both of his wives and very sweetly asked his old university roommate if he might very kindly look after her for him.

Tegan is Nyssa's girlfriend and is subsequently always around at their house, to the point that the Doctor just gave her a key and makes supper expecting that she'll be there.

As for Peri, she and the Doctor meet at the local garden centre, and now she comes around to help look after his garden because her apartment is too small for a proper one (she and Six keep saying that they're saving up for an actual house but that might be a commitment too far).

There are the inklings of an actual plot idea I had here? In my head, somehow the Master escapes prison and intends on escaping the country with his daughter, only the Doctor is like no??? You can't do that to Nyssa??? And someone gets hospitalised.

[A note about Royal Hope, and also Cole Hill, and other reoccurring places: occasionally, the characters coincidentally working at these places is an actual coincidence, but the rest of the time it's because the Tardis has a lot of sway with people and she is always pushing the doctors and their friends to work in similar places so that they actually talk to each other again.

Or something like that. Honestly it's just plot contrivance because I like putting them in the same working environment, it makes it easier for me]

Sixth Doctor

The Sixth Doctor studies law and philosophy, being a lawyer both before and after the war. He's a really good one too, just really obnoxious.

I don't have a lot for the Sixth Doctor yet because I know he has a few audios that I want to listen to for some ideas, but I am very fond of the two seasons we got of him so here's what I have:

Peri meets the Doctor because he represents her in court when she's fighting her stepfather over something; after the court case (which they win) they go out for a few dates, and even though he's obnoxious and incredibly big-headed, he's also weirdly sweet and gentlemanly and so they get together officially.

Then the war starts and the idle talk they had of getting married/getting a house gets pushed aside while the Doctor joins the project and Peri helps with farm work by using her botany to develop crop something or other.

The war really did affect the Doctor. When he was younger, he suffered from Bipolar Depression but got it under control with medication and therapy, but the war and it's aftermath dragged that out of the depths which definitely put an extra strain on his and Peri's relationship.

When it's really bad, he did try to strangle her (like in the show) which did cause her to leave; but she does come back eventually, after the Doctor calls to apologise, and he does get it back under control.

At some points, it's really not the healthiest relationship, but it doesn't stay like that forever; it's something I really want to get into with my writing and I have the outlines of a fic over the period that he and Peri spend sort of separated.

On a lighter note, some of the other characters of the era! The Master keeps appearing on his doorstep after escaping prison looking for help and the Doctor keeps refusing to give it because he did try to kill Five; he once is a prosecutor against the Rani for unethical experimentation and she straight up sends a hit out against him; the Valeyard is his coworker who hates the Doctor a lot more than the Doctor hates him; and Mel is straight up just his personal trainer at the gym who got WAY too invested in his life.

Seventh Doctor

The seventh doctor is a high level tactician for the MOD before the war, and is actually one of the ones to help collect the other doctors together. He actually continues to do his MOD job while doing the Doctor Project which means he's the only doctor to really have a good understanding of what's happening around the world in real time.

However, he doesn't really have anyone to write home about. He grew up in foster care and it took a lot of effort to get to where he was at the outbreak of war, and so he didn't exactly have that many friends about.

The exception to that is Mel who he grew up with in part and so he does send her the odd letter.

After the war, he gets made redundant by the MOD and goes on to become a PE teacher at Cole Hill; he always dresses like he might be lecturing on politics or history, and stands on the sidelines while watching the students. Or he actually lectures on history or politics; honestly the amount of PE that's done is reliant on the mood.

He also ends up living with Ace; officially, she's his foster daughter, but she's so fiercely independent that she insists that they're roommates and he was willing to accept that.

I wish I did have more for him but I'm hoping that as I get through the Audios and books and such like, I'll get a better understanding of his era and the characters around it to make something a bit more developed.

Eighth Doctor

I'm only eight or so audios into this doctor's travels with Charley, and I have yet to read the Eighth Doctor Adventures (although I am looking to) so this isn't at all a complete section.

The Doctor is an expert in psychiatry and neuroscience, specifically in memory, mostly due to his own issues with memory throughout his childhood.

I'm still debating what the actual cause of the memory issues are, but I'm thinking that it might be because he had epilepsy as a child that was believed to have gone as he grew into adolescence but returned due to one (or multiple) head injuries during the war. I know there are certain types of epilepsy that can really affect the memory.

Either way, the Doctor also seems to be a bit of a romantic and very easily swept up in someone else's life; I see him, before the war, having a disastrous marriage to Grace Holloway which breaks down over four years of not seeing each other and ends in divorce as Grace returns to the states.

After the war, I think that he rents out the rooms in his house which is how he meets Charley, but that's about as far as I can really go with other relationships in his life because I haven't seen anything else of his stuff.

Ninth Doctor

The Ninth Doctor is an expert in mechanical engineering and is the one who does the main body of creating the Moment (the thing that takes out the alien invader's mothership).

He is the son of the War Doctor who's the General who Seven went to with his idea of creating a project to end the war, and the one who officially leads them. He mostly raised the Doctor single-handedly but was not exactly the most caring man in the universe.

The Doctor has a lot of very complicated feelings about his father which don't really get resolved because he (the War Doctor) sacrifices himself to set off the Moment.

Anyway, the Doctor never really wanted to get into Academics and become some sort of fantastic mechanical engineer but his father really pushed it (especially when it became clear the Doctor would never join the army); so after the war, he becomes a sort of freelance mechanic and works with Mickey.

Which is where he meets Rose. Rose often comes to visit Mickey at the end of his shifts because they're friends and live close together, and so she and the Doctor meet regularly there until they are both like...want to go travelling?

Rose was 19 when the war started, and runs the Bad Wolf magazine which she basically created at the beginning as a sort fo morale booster and also because she didn't like how the newspapers were reporting and wanted to make something that wasn't filtered through a hundred government filters; Sarah Jane actually writes for it during the war and on occasion afterwards, and is quite a good friend of Rose's for all that they don't see each other face-to-face all that often.

Still, after the war, sales of Bad Wolf kinda drops off a bit but Rose really loves the magazine and so wants to try something different: she wants to travel so she can see the world, and show people how people are rebuilding and getting their lives back in the aftermath (and help out where she can). She tells the Doctor this and then he offers her his van, and they start travelling together.

They live out the back of his van for years and they're quite happy to do it; they get married in Paris, periodically come back to visit Jackie (who is naturally rather displeased about this life choice they've made - although it's fine because they paid for her to come to Paris for the wedding), and just generally having a good time. They're like van lifers except not obnoxious about it, and when they eventually have Mia, they move back to the UK somewhat permanently (they still travel on holidays) so that she is living somewhere steady and permanent in her upbringing.

We also can't forget about Jack - he was a pilot during the war who also wrote for Bad Wolf, usually entertaining and slightly flirty pieces, and after the war, Rose and the Doctor invited him to travel with them after a few years. When they settle down in London, he moves to Cardiff for a bit on a 'journey of self discovery' where he meets the various Torchwood team (I have to admit I haven't got around to watching Torchwood yet).

He is Mia's godfather (so is Mickey, and Shareen is her godmother) and he dotes on her like no-one's business.

Tenth Doctor

The Tenth Doctor is an expert in anthropology and archaeology. He's Donna's little brother although there isn't much of an age difference between the two of them.

Of all the doctors, he's probably the one I've had the hardest time with.

I know he has a wife who died during the war (I'm thinking that this might be Astrid, for lack of someone better), and that Donna's boyfriend Lee died during the war as well - a lot of people did, during bombings and attacks and that sort of thing - and that with his wife he had a daughter (Jenny) (although I'm also playing around with the idea that he also had a younger daughter, that being Sally - as in Sally from Blink).

In the aftermath of the war, then, he and Donna move in together to help each other out, and eventually their mother and grandfather join them as old age arrives.

Donna meets Shawn in the aftermath and they get on well, and have a very healthy relationship and marriage. On the other hand, we have the Doctor who has the worst situationship ever with Martha.

In the aftermath of his wife's death, he meets Martha who got her medical licence during the war and has been working at Royal Hope since then, and I know that they probably hook up a few times in what is absolutely not recommended.

This is where I get a bit stuck on how things develop from here. I've been getting fonder and fonder of Tenmartha as I think on it more (although Martha does not deserve him) but I do quite like the idea of the two of them coming out of trying to force a relationship and being like...oh we're much better and healthier as friends.

Also, although that epilogue for them came out of nowhere, I do think that Mickey and Martha have a lot of potential as a couple.

There's a lot more I would like to develop here but I shall see what happens as I start writing some more of this.

Eleventh Doctor

The Eleventh Doctor was chosen for his mathematical skill. He's also the youngest of all of them, having just finished his PhD at age 20 as the war broke out.

He's the adopted son of Brian, so Rory's younger brother by a few years, and used to follow him and Amy around like a duckling that had imprinted on the closest moving thing. He did end up going to university quite young (honestly like most of the rest of the doctors) and it's there that he met Strax, Vastra and Jenny who took him under their wing as they were older students.

The war happens before he can really start a job and after the war, he struggles for a bit to find his place, but eventually ends up working with his old university friends in the Paternoster Detective Agency.

Amy and Rory get married after the war - Rory is a nurse at Royal Hope, which he was training for before the war, and Amy is a painter. She always intended on being a model or something like a fashion reporter, but during the war she found painting brought her (and others) the joy that could sometimes be very lacking in such a desperate time.

Her favourite artist is Vincent van Gogh.

They have Melody, although her birth is rife with complications, and so they decide to settle very happily with just the one daughter. She is doted on so completely by everyone, especially her uncle; there's a period when she's like four or five when she is convinced that the Doctor is a secret agent of some sort and gets really into all the spy sort of things.

She makes him play dress up with her and she calls herself River Song because it sounds cool and secret-agenty and the Doctor is her quirky sidekick.

[I debated with putting River Song in as a separate character but I wasn't quite sure what I would do with her? There's potential there for an AU of sorts where she is there, but I unfortunately never quite vibed fully enough with River for her to be a major player in the Main AU]

He lives with the Ponds for a bit after the war, and then moves in with Craig, but when Craig moves out with Sophie, he mopes about it and moves back in with the Ponds.

It's around this time that he meets Clara; she's an English teacher at Cole Hill and her mother went missing nearly five years ago. After trying to get the police to do anything at all, and then saving up the money, she hires the Paternoster gang to find out what happened.

What actually happened is still a bit of a mystery, but she definitely isn't still alive, which the Doctor is the one to tell her the news.

I don't think I'm going to do anything romantic with them but I do think they're quite cute together, so I might dabble. But also I quite like the Doctor being aro and I can see him just living with the Ponds and never leaving.

Twelfth Doctor

The Twelfth Doctor is an astrophysicist. He's spent a lot of his life developing telescopes and astral bodies, but after the war, he mostly just lectures. He's such a longstanding part of St Luke's university that they probably couldn't fire him for anything short of murder.

He's married to Missy quite young, actually, although they never had children; she has spent like half of their marriage in prison though, and now spends most of her time hanging around the Doctor's office being annoying to all his students.

During the war, he did get blinded. It's something he has a complicated relationship with, and does not like it when people mention it around him. He uses a cane when he moves around and wears sunglasses because it hides that his eyes aren't necessarily looking at the person he's talking to.

Again, he has a complicated relationship with it.

Nardole is his teaching assistant, only he's massively overbearing about every aspect of the Doctor's life (only he just manages to be endearing enough that the Doctor doesn't just fire him on the spot).

Bill is, like in canon, someone the Doctor tutors, only now instead of getting to see the galaxy, she has he, Missy and Nardole giving her wildly different yet equally terrible dating advice, which somehow works to get her with Heather.

As for Clara, I genuinely don't know what to do with her; she's such a big part of the Twelfth Doctor's story that I do really want to have her be an important character, but I don't know how. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Thirteenth Doctor

The Thirteenth Doctor is an expert in microbiology. She's a government researcher into disease for the few years before the war, but after the war, she becomes an A&E nurse. She found that she preferred chaos and wanted something that was less science based but still within her interests.

She's fostered by Graham as a child, which is how she knows him, and subsequently how she comes to know Ryan and Grace, when Graham meets them. Her mother was Tecteun who she was taken away from when she was twelve due to the fact that Tecteun was a piece of shit (as in canon).

She wrote a lot to all of them during the war; out of all the Doctors, she probably spent the most writing letters (apart from maybe Six who wrote to Peri...so much, he spent so much time agonising over writing letters to her).

She knew Yaz from school and they both moved to London after the war - they met up again when they both returned from the war, and they decided that a change of scenery from the place they grew up might do them good.

London was one of the main targets during the war so there was a lot of practical work and training to do in both the police force and in nursing (which is what the Doctor wants to go into); they stay in shared accomodation and volunteer to help with the rebuilding effort in some of their free time.

When the rebuilding is mostly finished and everything has started to even out again, they stay in London; the Doctor has a job at Royal Hope and Yaz has found her footing in the local police force. They visit Sheffield a lot though, and invite Ryan to stay with them a lot, so he can get away from all the Old People.

Fourteenth Doctor

The Fourteenth Doctor technically doesn't exist. The Doylist reasoning for this is because there was far too little that separated the Fourteenth Doctor out to make him his own character in a modern AU; the Watsonian is because there was meant to be a Fourteenth member of the Doctor Project but he died in transit to the first meeting. Out of respect, the rest skip over the number that was meant to be his.

I've played around with the idea that the Fourteenth and the Tenth Doctor were siblings/related/possibly twins but I think this might be more of an AU sort of thing.

Fifteenth Doctor

Obviously we haven't had the Fifteenth Doctor's actual first season yet or much of anything for him (very excited for it though) so this is very much a work in progress - I'll make more decisions about his story after the season has come out and I've watched it; from vibes alone though, I think he'd be possibly an expert in sociology, and after the war he would own a club or something similar, where Ruby would get herself a job.

Notes and Stuff

Congratulations for getting this far lol! This AU is very precious to me and gets bigger every time I watch a new episode/listen to a new drama/rewatch/relisten/etc.

There are a few general things I'd probably note: all the Doctors have like...actual names (mostly John or a variation there of) but I refer to them all as the Doctor because that's what rolls off the tongue more easily.

Another thing is Idris/the Tardis - on one hand, the original idea was that she would die and her funeral would be the thing to get the Doctors back together so to say, but the more I think about it, the more I would like her to live.

I'm planning on writing some fic for this AU and posting it to AO3 - there's a Sixperi fic I really want to write, and I'm a sucker for some family fluff with various Doctors - and I might draw some stuff, so stick around if you're interested :)

I've only been really into Doctor who for four or five months, and with such an expansive EU (and frankly, such a lot of main content), there's a lot I don't know (although I very much intend to know it one day). If you got this far, I would honestly love to hear your general thoughts and ideas on the AU, a lot of the Eleventh Doctor stuff I worked out was developed from conversation I had with a friend!

Anyway, thank you for getting this far! And thank you for the ask to let me ramble, it took me a while to get all the rambling together but now I've finished, I'm really pleased I got here.

#Doctor Who #First Doctor #Second Doctor #Third Doctor #Fourth Doctor #Fifth Doctor #Sixth Doctor #Seventh Doctor #Eighth Doctor #Ninth Doctor #Tenth Doctor #Eleventh Doctor #Twelfth Doctor #Thirteenth Doctor #Fourteenth Doctor #Fifteenth Doctor #Doctor Who Modern AU #Time Petals #Sixperi #Thoschei #also if you are interested in hearing about any of my other AUs #I can elaborate on those too #I have a Bad Wolf sort of fic where Rose ends up travelling with each of the Doctors in turn #(because I'm a Rose girlie at heart)#I also had an idea for an Eleventh Doctor fic where he actually did come back when Amy was still seven #And another where Mel is a Time Anomaly (don't ask me where that idea came from lol)#Also one where Romana stays with the Doctor and the two of them spend the rest of eternity giving the Time Lords the middle finger #I am about to listen to the first season of the Gallifrey audios but I just think Romana should get to hang out in the TARDIS being iconic #for the rest of time #I also have another modern AU where the Doctor is multiple people

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spookyspaghettisundae · 23 days

Text

Ain’t Gonna End Well

Blood circled the drain.

This time, it wasn’t someone else’s blood. Pinching her nose only proved that it came from her own nostrils.

Though Chloe Grant wanted to chalk this up to dry air, stress, or a whole host of other common things, she wondered if it wasn’t related to her experiencing reality itself warping around her. Changing around her with every alteration of the timeline.

There had to be side effects. Right?

Enshrouded in the heat and steam of her shower, she watched in stunned silence as the drips of blood mixed with water like a cloudy red mist on their way down the drain.

The doorbell rang. She cursed.

With a swipe of her hand, the water’s flow cut out and she pawed at a towel outside the spacious shower cabin.

The doorbell rang soon again, well before she had any realistic chance at getting dressed. Watery footprints marked her way out of the bathroom, and her wet hair would soon soak the back of her shirt.

Her pulse began to race. Not out of frustration or fury, but something else. Something that didn’t fit. A strange anxiousness, or even a creeping sense of dread—the same heart-pounding anticipation that had accompanied her upon her last crossing of time, the same uncertainty over what lay beyond an Anomaly. Like something else had wanted to cross over. Like it had always wanted to cross over and enter the past, or present, or future. And change whatever was supposed to come.

After a long and patient wait, the doorbell rang a third time.

Like destiny itself was knocking at her door.

By the time she had slipped into pants and a shirt, the doorbell hadn’t been rung again. As if the visitor had left already.

She paused in the hallway to the entrance. The floor was cold.

A shadow awaited outside the front door.

Her heart pounded.

When the doorbell rang a fourth time, she shuddered. Neared the door. Opened it.

A familiar motorcycle was parked in the driveway. A familiar, handsome face awaited outside—and her pulse began to calm at the sight of Valentín Ruiz and his symmetrical visage. He pulled the black beanie off his head to reveal a crop of short dark hair, and nodded in greeting.

“Grant,” he said. His big brown eyes scanned her down and up, registering the absence of socks or shoes, and the pearls of water on her flushed skin. He thrust a thumb back over his shoulder and asked, “Should I come back later?”

She shook her head and ushered him inside.

On the way into the kitchen, she spotted a note from Danielle on the counter:

JOB INTERVIEW @ TI, BACK FOR LUNCH W/ SURPRISE!!!

Dan had drawn a smiley face underneath the note.

Chloe Grant suppressed a grin and resisted the urge to crumple it up before Ruiz might read it, too.

“Can I get you anything?” asked Grant, flicking on the stove to heat up a kettle of water.

Ruiz grimaced and shook his head.

“Nah, I’m good. Just came to talk. Got some stuff to talk about, need to get it off my chest.”

Her heart skipped a beat.

He scratched the back of his head. Rolling his jaw, he looked like he was chewing on the words before he uttered a single syllable. Then his admissions flooded out without further warning.

“Shit, I don’t even know where to start, but I guess I’ll start at the top. You might wanna sit down for this.”

He gestured to an empty corner, looked around, and almost looked exasperated at the absence of chairs in her roomy kitchen.

It only now dawned on Grant that this was the roomiest house she had ever lived in. It had somehow gotten bigger in the last time shift. She wondered if Future Proof’s paychecks hadn’t also gotten bigger in this timeline.

“I know it ain’t my fault that Carter’s… dead, but I can’t help but feel like I should have done something, or more, or sooner. You know?”

She needed to marry the events of conflicting timelines. In a previous one, Ruiz’s actions and affiliation with Celava as a spy harbored a very clear connection to Carter’s death. In the current reality, however, she struggled to see the connection between Carter’s death and Ruiz.

Then again… had the Apex Predator and its biomechanical implant anything to do with Celava and Ruiz��s industrial espionage for them?

Her nostrils flared and she pinched them again.

No blood on her fingers.

The conflicting timelines were messing with her head.

What even were memories anymore? Just more confusion to wrestle with in therapy?

“I know what you’re thinking, but I came to you ‘cause I got a good feelin’ about you, Grant. I’m gonna to tell you something, confide in you, and I can only hope you hear me out to the end, and don’t jump to any conclusions. Please?”

His husky voice cracked on the last word.

She tilted her head. Her lips curled into a weary smile. The mere thought of having to repeat conversations because of temporal anomalies somehow exhausted her on a level she had never even considered before.

The tea kettle on the stove began whistling.

She talked over it.

“You leak Future Proof’s information and data to a red-haired woman named Loretta Corsino, whom you sometimes meet at a café downtown. I know.”

His chin dropped, leaving a mouth wide agape.

“You… know? How?” He snapped his mouth shut, upon which his otherwise trademark confident grin took shape. “Shoulda known. That is what Spencer hired you for, huh? Counter-intelligence? So, have you been keepin’ tabs on me since day one?”

“No, man. I spied on your spying in a different timeline—without Spencer telling me to—and you came clean when I confronted you about it. Hell, I might know more than you do at this point.”

Staring at her, he squinted. The grin faded.

The kettle’s whistling reached a fever pitch. She switched off the stove and removed the kettle. Pouring herself a cup of tea, she looked up at him. Pink color from the tea bag swirled like mist in the hot water, reminding her of her own blood circling down the shower’s drain.

“Though I don’t know what all has changed. Maybe your motivation’s different in this timeline, maybe you’re playing me, or angling for something. Wouldn’t that be a doozy?”

“God damn it, Grant. Were you going to tell me, or what?”

“Hey, I confronted you last time. The time you don’t remember because… well, it… never happened, because, well, hell, I don’t know why the hell not.” She stopped rambling into mumbling and then punctuated it all with a sigh.

She softly lifted and dunked the tea bag in her mug. The reddish mist still swirled, with all the water turned pink.

“Okay, well, what do you know that I don’t?”

She shrugged.

“Actually, not that much. Corsino plays at working for the feds, but she is actually in the private sector. Works for a UK-based company named Celava—Celava Semi-Conductors. Energy, reactors, particle accelerators, real high-tech. The works.”

“Shit. That’s more than I could figure out.”

“I can’t really take all the credit for it. Dan did the legwork. I just tailed you and Corsino a lot, didn’t learn half as much in twice the time as she did.”

“Is she… Bennett, is she still digging on us? On all of this?”

Grant licked her lips.

Dan, in fact, wasn’t. In fact, Danielle Bennett wasn’t having any of this—any of the espionage, counter-espionage, the research and development, let alone the dangerous field work and specimen containment that Grant and Ruiz and the others were conducting for Future Proof.

She could still hear Dan in her mind, urging her to quit the job. Yesterday.

“No, man. She’s outta the game.”

And Grant had been thinking about doing the same.

Indeed, she had just been thinking about it again, under the shower. Both before and after the nosebleed.

She pinched her nostrils again. No blood.

Good.

Ruiz stared at the mug between them and scratched his head again. Shook his head again.

Clearly, it was taking a bit to wrap his head around everything. His expectations had crashed face-first into Grant’s surprise knowledge.

“Celava, huh? You think they made those things? Those… Apex Predators, from the future?”

Grant shrugged.

“Might not even be from the future, for all we know.”

She said those words out loud before ever having thought them. It sent a shiver down her spine.

It’s from 2,000 years into the future. I have no earthly idea how anything on our planet would evolve this fast.

Burch’s words echoed in her mind.

Ruiz had nothing.

“It’s not your fault,” she told him. “Even assuming Celava sicced that thing on us as a hit against FP personnel, well…”

The words died before she finished uttering the rest.

Funny how Ruiz hadn’t been there when disaster struck.

His eyes glistened, glittering with sadness. Yet a hint of suspicion flashed within her mind.

Sending another shiver down her spine.

Enough with the paranoia.

She shook her head, silently arguing against herself.

“You’re dubious of Spencer, I get it,” she added. “So am I. Sometimes, at least.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am. I hoped for the good in you, hoped I wasn’t makin’ a mistake by talking to you, telling you all this. Honestly, I’m glad you already knew. Makes things almost easier, I guess. Though… I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I have a family to support.”

Family?

He didn’t have a family to support before the time shift.

Ruiz continued, “I thought I could just walk away if push comes to shove. Corsino didn’t seem like the type to get me iced with wetwork, but after the thing with Carter? Shit, with what I heard about what happened down there, I’m surprised only he was killed. That thing on the autopsy table is no run-o’-the-mill dino, that thing is a fuckin’ monster. If someone from Celava or another corpo team was behind that, if they wanted people dead, shit, then I just… I just don’t know anymore.”

Grant bobbed the tea bag in her mug. Squeezed it out with a spoon, then put it aside.

She didn’t know what to say.

She didn’t think he was wrong about anything he was saying.

His waterfall of words continued. “Shit, Grant, I don’t care, but I feel like I could have at least done something. Or done somethin’ sooner. That kid didn’t deserve to clock out like he did. I don’t know—it feels like I have his blood on my hands.”

In some ways, Ruiz did. In another time, in another world.

But if she understood the changes in reality correctly, then those times and worlds had ceased to exist. Recursive changes that rippled forward through time, evolving into a new and singular reality.

In other ways: Ruiz was innocent, as far as she was concerned.

“Tea?” she asked, extending the mug to him like a peace offering.

Ruiz graciously took it. The pink liquid’s surface shimmered as it shook, as the mug shook in his hand.

He had the shakes in this timeline, too. Seemed like some things were inescapable.

She said, “Fuck it. Just quit. Dan’s right—we can’t keep doing this kinda work forever. Job’ll kill us, one way or another. If you opt out now, they’re not gonna have a lot to lord over you.”

He gripped the mug in both hands, suppressing the tremors.

She turned and prepped herself another mug of tea.

“And, no, before you ask—you can’t smoke in here.”

“How’d you—never mind.” He sipped his tea. His nostrils flared as he inhaled the steam from his mug. “I can’t just up and leave.”

He turned his back on her, to stare out into the backyard lawn of her new home.

The grass outside was perfectly trimmed, the tall fence obscured any features of the neighboring houses in this patch of suburbia, and it now looked and felt all so deeply artificial to Grant.

“I can’t,” he repeated. “I can’t. I take responsibility for my actions. We can only stop this machine from the inside. Whether it’s these Celava kooks, or Spencer and his own legion of mad scientists, I think this time Anomaly shit and messing with it is going to doom us all. Real apocalypse shit. You know that lady on the board—”

“One of the corpo horsemen of the apocalypse? Yeah, I know who.”

He scoffed with the hint of a chuckle.

“Yeah, that one. You know her cronies are engineering some kinda new bio-weapon for us to use on the specimens in the field? You know as much as I do, that ain’t gonna end well.”

Ever so slightly, the world darkened around her at the thought.

“Mhm.”

“Are we the bad guys? I think we’re the bad guys if we don’t do anything about all this shit.”

He turned. Locked stares with Grant.

His eyes glistened still, wet with a sheen to suggest tears being held back.

“I just don’t know anymore,” he said. “On good days, I’m thinking Spencer might be the good guy in all this. You know he might be from the future, right?”

A feather dropped. It shattered the mirror of reality in Grant’s mind, and she fell through it—

Something she had never considered, yet—

Ruiz added, “Corsino told me some stuff about him. I looked into it myself, and some things are pretty fuckin’ odd. Guy appears outta nowhere in the business world, all his history is so vague that nobody can really confirm it, and he ends up building an international corporation, with an HQ literally built around an Anomaly that connects the present to the future. Oh, and, uh, if you look at how he made a killing on the stock market, you’d think he knows shit before it even happens. Motherfucker invested in all sorts o’ tech companies before they got big, like some motherfucker who knew the numbers to win the lottery multiple times over.”

Another sip.

She hadn’t looked into this, but with what she knew, it checked out. For now, it made sense.

In her mind’s eye, she sat across from Spencer at the CEO’s desk, in the clinically cold corner office he occupied atop the towering skyscraper.

The man shaped like a knife shook her hand and welcomed her on board.

Malachi Spencer had always had a strange air about him. More than a sense of superiority. It was like he knew everything.

Grant jolted as if she had been shocked—the doorbell rang again. Like she had sensed it before it happened. The hairs on her neck stood on end.

An overwhelming sense of dread filled every fiber of her being.

Ruiz squinted again. He sniffed, took another sip of tea, and washed away any deeper emotions before they could fully surface. Saved by the bell.

“You expecting someone?” he asked.

“No…”

Grant wandered back down the hall, heading towards the door.

The sense of dread grew as she sensed an overwhelming presence, and spotted three shadows through the milky glass of the front entrance.

Her feet were ice cold by now.

She opened the door.

Malachi Spencer stood there, dressed in a brown winter coat, looking as sharp as ever.

Two taller men in suits flanked him—sporting sunglasses and earpieces, towering hulks of bodyguards she had never seen in Spencer’s company before.

Then again, as it now dawned on her, she had never met Spencer outside of Future Proof’s skyscraper.

“Miss Grant,” said Spencer, enunciating every syllable with a sharpness to match his exterior. “We need to speak.”

With a curt wave to his hired muscle, he directed them to wait outside and invited himself in. Grant stepped out of the way without thinking, though her ears flushed with heat, with anger welling up deep down over the audacity of him just barging in like this.

She closed the door and followed him into the kitchen—

Had he known?

Upon laying eyes on Spencer, astonishment crossed Ruiz’s face.

The words spilled out of Spencer’s lips with absolute authority and precision. “Before either of you ask—I knew you were here, and we need to speak as well, Mister Ruiz.”

Spencer straightened the collar of his coat yet didn’t deign to remove it, despite the warmth indoors. He exchanged a glance with them both.

Ruiz asked, “Did you chip us or something when we signed up?”

Spencer glowered.

“No, Mister Ruiz. You’re carrying around cell phones. It’s dead simple to know where my employees are at all times. I just need to ask Singh to trace you, and you may be found without fail.”

The expression on Ruiz’s face faded from astonishment into vexation, like he had just been punched in the face.

“Sorry,” Grant said with a tremor to the word, suggesting she wasn’t sorry at all. “But what are you doing here?”

Spencer arched a brow.

“I know enough to guess what this meeting between the two of you is about. There are rogue elements in Future Proof,” Spencer said. He raised a slender hand to shush them before either Ruiz or Grant could interject. “I know about your espionage for Loretta Corsino, Mister Ruiz, and I encourage you to keep doing what you’ve been doing. I am counting on it.”

Ruiz and Grant exchanged another glance.

It really was as if he had known everything already.

“Keep it on the downlow, though,” Spencer continued. “You two are not the rogue elements I am concerned about. I trust you both to continue doing your work inside and outside the company to the best of your abilities, and to the full extent of your conscience. That extends to Bennett.”

He peered down at the pink liquid in Grant’s second mug.

“Your tea is growing cold.”

She didn’t care about her tea right now. Pinched her nose again.

Still no blood. She hoped she had seen the last of it.

Something about Spencer felt like he was about to unload more on them. Before he could, Grant cleared her throat to get some words in.

“Well, if you’re going to play with an open hand today, how about you go all-in? The more we know, the better we can operate. At this point, I think we all know a bit too much to the point of being a liability, but not enough to really sniff out these rogue elements. I’m guessing that’s what you want us to do, right?”

“Correct. Like you, Miss Grant, I remember other timelines. Mister Sears—yes, I remember him—was one such rogue element. I wiped him from existence,” said Spencer with a clarity, honesty, and brutality that pummeled Grant in the gut like an avalanche of stones. “I discovered his trail and connection to Celava, and all the skeletons in his closet that he put in there to undermine us. I made sure he would never exist.”

She could feel the blood draining from her own face.

“Woah, woah, hold up. You’re saying you killed Sears? You—you what, you scrubbed him from the timeline? Are you insane?”

Ruiz said nothing. Sipped his tea. His hand no longer shook.

He answered instead of Spencer, saying, “No. He’s just cold as ice, and reminding us of what he’s willing to do if we mess with his well-laid plans. Ain’t that the truth, Mister Spencer?”

Spencer’s absence of a reply weighed heavier than any verbal threats he could possibly utter.

His silent, deathly stare drilled into Ruiz, then swept back to Grant.

“The important part is that we are on the same page. I am from the future, and there is a disaster that I am trying to prevent, but have not yet found out how to. Celava and its lackeys are the engineers of humanity’s destruction, and you just had a taste of that with the Apex Predator ending Carter’s life in Containment.”

Grant’s nostrils flared again, as she held back her sigh, hot air escaping through her nose.

She jutted her chin out, feeling defiant, and shook her head.

“You gotta give us more than that. I am about one push away from walkin’ away from this job.”

A lie.

More than ever before, Chloe Grant felt a sense of responsibility. A deep-rooted sense of duty. She wasn’t even sure towards what, or whom, but she felt responsible for everything that would follow from here on out.

Despite everything she had just told Ruiz about not feeling guilty over Carter’s death, she wondered how many deaths she would cause if she simply walked away from everything now.

How many lives were hanging in the balance.

But she wanted the truth. She wanted to hear it from Spencer’s mouth.

“Very well. Everything eventually points to Malcolm Wright, owner and CEO of Celava, building a colony out of time, deep in the past. He wants to control Earth’s timeline by altering events, natural resources, and even the genetic makeup of biological organisms. Worse, he is using tech that he steals from governments and organizations like our own, hoping to master the Anomalies. He is inviting disaster, more than I could ever threaten by wiping out a single rat in our organization. I’ve seen all the evidence I need, and the underhanded attack of the Apex Predator in our headquarters was the final piece of the puzzle.”

The mug was still lukewarm.

Grant chucked the teabag into the sink and took a long sip of tea.

Needed to gulp it down. Needed more time to process.

Time. Oh, what a joke.

Of course, there would be no way she could easily digest everything Spencer was dropping on them now. She’d have to slowly piece it together… and hope he was telling the truth. The whole truth.

“There’s more I will share, but for now, I want you to prepare for my next task for you. The two of you will be flying to Rome, using false identities. I need you to invade Celava’s offices there, and dig up any dirt you can. Your plane is leaving tonight. Expect a generous raise for your efforts, and all expenses are paid for.”

Ruiz squinted again. The sharpshooter’s eyes sought out contact with Grant’s again, like he was looking for someone to tell him what to do next.

Then he just grinned, like he had been told a really stupid joke.

Grant chewed on her lip.

Not because she was unsure, but because she knew exactly what she was going to do.

She was going to fly to Rome.

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