Doctor Hooey 2.3
May. 13th, 2007 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nobleplatypusChrysanthemum woke up to an aching skull and a low, steady, unidentifiable murmur. After lying still for a minute, her head hurt no less, but the murmur had resolved itself: it was the Doctor. He seemed to be exploring their surroundings, and was keeping up a running commentary as he did so.
"... And the bars are... but how did they manage all this?" The Doctor still sounded intrigued, but in a less pleasant and more worried sort of way. Chrysanthemum opened her eyes and was confronted with a low, dirt ceiling criss-crossed with roots. There was a hole--more of a tunnel, really--that cut straight up through about ten feet of earth before reaching the planet's surface. It also bathed her in indirect sunlight, which made her head hurt even worse.
Chrysanthemum cleared her throat. "I take it we were ambushed?"
The Doctor looked over at her and flashed her a grin that was a bit less enthusiastic than normal. There was a smudge of dirt on his forehead. "About time you woke up. And yes, we were."
Chrysanthemum nodded. "I'm going to murder you," she informed him as she sat up and examined their surroundings. The floor and three of the walls were much the same as the ceiling: dirt, roots, and the occasional small rock. The fourth wall was a mass of fibrous roots stretching from roof to floor, too thick to squeeze through. There were quite a few small gaps between roots, and she got the impression that there was another space on the other side, but through the gaps she could only see darkness. There was another pool of light besides the one she was sitting in. It was illuminating a small pile of rubble about six feet to her left. She looked up at the tunnel. She looked down and saw that her clothes were all smeared with dirt, then sighed and squinted back up at the light.
"Is this how we got in?" she asked as she stood up and brushed ineffectually at her pants.
The Doctor glanced up at the tunnels, then nodded. "Yep. Already tried getting back out that way, but it's no good. They're guarding it." He turned back to the wall of roots and examined it closely. When he continued speaking, his voice had a careful, casual quality that immediately put Chrysanthemum on high alert. "Forgot to mention--I know where we are, now."
"In a cell?" she guessed, squinting up at the light. "I don't see anyone up there."
"Oh, they're there," the Doctor assured her. "Try to climb out, and they'll drop things on you until you give up, the fuzzy little bastards." That explained the pile of rubble under the other tunnel, then. "Anyway, yes, we are in a cell, on the planet Snug'll, if I'm not mistaken."
Chrysanthemum stared at the Doctor, her emotions a cocktail of disbelief, fury, resignation, and faint amusement. "'Snug'll'?" she repeated.
"No, thank you," the Doctor said absently as he sniffed at one of the thicker roots and flicked it with a finger. "I'm trying to figure out an escape plan."
Had the Doctor obviously meant the comment as a joke, perhaps punctuating it with a saucy wink, she would have shaken her head and forgiven him. But he'd been completely deadpan, and the presumption that "snuggling" could conceivably be on her List of Things To Accomplish While Imprisoned Underground (coupled with the presumption that he, a mad alien she hardly knew, would even be on her List of Potential Snuggling Partners) was so ridiculous and insulting that she was stunned speechless. Fury warred against a tag team of disbelief and amusement, but disbelief was weak and quickly succumbed to fury. Amusement put up a bit more of a fight, but in the end, fury triumphed. Chrysanthemum crouched, and a moment later, a sizable clod of dirt hit the Doctor square in the back of the head with a satisfying whumph! The Doctor yelped and whirled about to face her, one hand clamped to the back of his head.
"What was that for?" he cried. A second clod of dirt exploded against his shoulder, but he didn't move, seemingly too shocked by the attack to react. She sent another dirt clod winging his way, but this one he managed to dodge. "What's the matter with you?"
"With me?" Chrysanthemum shrieked, finding her voice as her fingers closed around a rock. "What's the matter with me?"
"Whoa, now," the Doctor said, holding his hands up and eyeing the rock nervously, "let's not do anything we're going to regret."
Chrysanthemum hefted the rock, which was about the size and shape of a mobile phone. "I sincerely doubt that I'm going to regret this."
"Can't we talk about this?" he asked as they circled one another. "Talking's nice, isn't it?"
"Nicer than snuggling?" Chrysanthemum snapped, her empty hand clenching into a fist.
The Doctor's hands dropped, and he stared at her in naked disbelief. "Wait-wait-wait... this is all about you just wanting a snuggle?"
"I'm going to murder you!" she repeated, but this time, she meant it. She slung the rock at the Doctor, who didn't dodge quite quickly enough and took it in the arm.
"Ow! Stop that!" He stared for a moment as Chrysanthemum hunted about on the floor and picked up another rock. "You're not stopping!" he accused. She hurled the rock, and he ducked to the side. "Right. I didn't want it to come to this, but circumstances being what they are..."
Chrysanthemum wasn't listening. She chucked another rock, not waiting to see if it connected, then turned to look for more ammunition. She spied a rock about the size of a chicken egg, but before she could reach for it, a thin band of garishly-patterned fabric whooshed over her head, looped around her middle, and was pulled tight, pinning her arms to her sides. She struggled, but the scarf held strong, and within moments she found herself pushed up against the wall, swiftly and effectively immobilized. So the Doctor isn't a complete pansy, she thought grudgingly.
"Now," the Doctor said cheerfully from behind her, "we can talk."
"I don't want to talk!" Chrysanthemum growled, her cheek pressed against the cool, damp earth.
"You want to throw things at me, I know. Or snuggle. You haven't been terribly clear about what you want, in fact." He turned her around so she was facing him and could see his expression of frank confusion. "What do you want, anyway?"
She glared at him. "I want you to untie me," she began, trying to maintain a calm, level tone of voice and failing, "I want to get out this subterranean pit that we're in, and I want to get back in the WARDIP," now she was shouting, "so I can go home!"
"I see," the Doctor said, looking a bit hurt and taking his hands off her shoulders. There was an awkward pause, during which they both avoided looking at one another. "Well," he finally broke the silence and motioned for her to turn back around, "I suppose we have gotten off to a bad start." She turned, and the scarf was loosened, then removed. He slung it over his shoulder as she turned back to face him. "But don't worry," he continued, some of his latent enthusiasm reasserting itself, "we'll get out of it somehow. Then I can..." he paused, running his hand through his hair and looking momentarily bewildered, as if he'd lost his train of thought. "...Take you home," he finished in one hurried breath, like a sigh. "Right." After a brief hesitation, he turned, went back over to the fourth wall, and resumed examining the roots as if nothing had happened.
Chrysanthemum frowned, torn between the little voice in her head urging her to apologize and the little voice in her head insisting that if anyone owed an apology, it certainly wasn't her. He was the one who had walked into an ambush on a planet with which he was apparently familiar. He was the one who had probably known exactly what was going to happen when he'd led her into those trees. This was all his fault.
But every time she left him, or expressed a strong desire to leave him, he'd give her that kicked puppy look, that look that said, You wound me to the very core, but it's all right, I won't hold it against you. She half-suspected that he'd spent hours practicing that look in the mirror, just to get the perfect balance of pain and forgiveness, but it was the sort of look that also said, I haven't had to spend hours practicing this look in front of the mirror, because I've had reason to make this expression often enough in my real, everyday, miserably lonely existence. Pity me.
Well, I don't, Chrysanthemum thought viciously. This is still all your fault, Doctor. But anger was an exhausting thing to maintain, so she sighed and made an attempt to lighten the mood a little.
"So," she said, "a planet called 'Snug'll.' That's... cute."
The Doctor wrinkled his nose. "Hardly."
"And we've run afoul of the natives?" She suspected running afoul of the natives was something to which the Doctor was accustomed, and he did have the decency to look a bit guilty.
"Yes. Well, sort of. I wouldn't call them 'natives,' really... they're not from around here." He straightened, then shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked at a clod of dirt. Chrysanthemum gave him a sharp look.
"Oh?" she said, arching a brow. "Where are they from?"
The Doctor pursed his lips. Was she imagining it, or was he turning a bit pink? "Earth," he said delicately, "as luck would have it."
"Really?" Chrysanthemum planted her hands on her hips, and the Doctor squirmed. "Well, you referred to them as small and fuzzy. Are they bunnies, perhaps?"
The Doctor acquired a sudden interest in an unremarkable root in the wall. "Oh... some of them are, I'm sure." He poked at the root and frowned when it failed to provide any sort of helpful distraction.
"Chipmunks?" she suggested, and his shoulder hit the wall and stayed there. "Raccoons?" He grimaced. "Squirrels?" He bit his lip. "Wombats?" She threw up her hands in exasperation, and he allowed his forehead to thud gently against the wall, giving her a good idea of where the original dirt smudge had come from. "Throw me a bone, here, Doctor!"
"I really couldn't say," he said to the wall, speaking as if each word pained him, "but I think most of them are bears."
"Oh," she said, eyes widening. After an awkward silence, she ventured, "Jesus, bears? Are they going to eat us or something?"
He looked over at her in astonishment. "What? No! Haha, ha! No. Er... no." He cleared his throat and went back to leaning his forehead against the wall.
Chrysanthemum sucked on her teeth and peered at him. "What aren't you telling me, Doctor?"
"Well," he said, drawing the word out as if stalling for time (which was almost certainly what he was doing), "they aren't exactly grizzly bears. Or black bears. Or brown bears. Or sun bears. Or spectacled bears, or polar bears, or sloth bears, or panda bears. Well, they might be any of those, really, but they aren't really any of those, if you follow me."
"No."
"Right," he said, rolling sideways so that his back was against the wall and heaving a monstrous sigh. "Well, I'm sure there are bunnies, too. Maybe even a wombat or two, who knows?"
"Doctor!" she said sharply, more than a little bit impatient. "What the hell is going on? Are you going to tell me who's captured us, or not?"
He looked sideways at her. "You'll laugh," he said mournfully.
"I'm sitting in a subterranean cell, I'm covered with dirt, and I have a headache. I could use a laugh," she argued.
"Well," he said, raising his eyebrows in a resigned sort of way, "they're... um..."
"Good day, prisoners!" cried a rather squeaky little voice from the general vicinity of the fourth wall. Chrysanthemum turned, startled. It took her a moment to find the source of the voice: a small, furry, brown creature had managed to squeeze its way through a gap in the roots (she couldn't think of any other way it could have gotten in without her noticing). It blinked at her with two black button eyes, and with a start, she realized just what it was she was looking at.
"...Erm. Teddy bears," said the Doctor.
"... And the bars are... but how did they manage all this?" The Doctor still sounded intrigued, but in a less pleasant and more worried sort of way. Chrysanthemum opened her eyes and was confronted with a low, dirt ceiling criss-crossed with roots. There was a hole--more of a tunnel, really--that cut straight up through about ten feet of earth before reaching the planet's surface. It also bathed her in indirect sunlight, which made her head hurt even worse.
Chrysanthemum cleared her throat. "I take it we were ambushed?"
The Doctor looked over at her and flashed her a grin that was a bit less enthusiastic than normal. There was a smudge of dirt on his forehead. "About time you woke up. And yes, we were."
Chrysanthemum nodded. "I'm going to murder you," she informed him as she sat up and examined their surroundings. The floor and three of the walls were much the same as the ceiling: dirt, roots, and the occasional small rock. The fourth wall was a mass of fibrous roots stretching from roof to floor, too thick to squeeze through. There were quite a few small gaps between roots, and she got the impression that there was another space on the other side, but through the gaps she could only see darkness. There was another pool of light besides the one she was sitting in. It was illuminating a small pile of rubble about six feet to her left. She looked up at the tunnel. She looked down and saw that her clothes were all smeared with dirt, then sighed and squinted back up at the light.
"Is this how we got in?" she asked as she stood up and brushed ineffectually at her pants.
The Doctor glanced up at the tunnels, then nodded. "Yep. Already tried getting back out that way, but it's no good. They're guarding it." He turned back to the wall of roots and examined it closely. When he continued speaking, his voice had a careful, casual quality that immediately put Chrysanthemum on high alert. "Forgot to mention--I know where we are, now."
"In a cell?" she guessed, squinting up at the light. "I don't see anyone up there."
"Oh, they're there," the Doctor assured her. "Try to climb out, and they'll drop things on you until you give up, the fuzzy little bastards." That explained the pile of rubble under the other tunnel, then. "Anyway, yes, we are in a cell, on the planet Snug'll, if I'm not mistaken."
Chrysanthemum stared at the Doctor, her emotions a cocktail of disbelief, fury, resignation, and faint amusement. "'Snug'll'?" she repeated.
"No, thank you," the Doctor said absently as he sniffed at one of the thicker roots and flicked it with a finger. "I'm trying to figure out an escape plan."
Had the Doctor obviously meant the comment as a joke, perhaps punctuating it with a saucy wink, she would have shaken her head and forgiven him. But he'd been completely deadpan, and the presumption that "snuggling" could conceivably be on her List of Things To Accomplish While Imprisoned Underground (coupled with the presumption that he, a mad alien she hardly knew, would even be on her List of Potential Snuggling Partners) was so ridiculous and insulting that she was stunned speechless. Fury warred against a tag team of disbelief and amusement, but disbelief was weak and quickly succumbed to fury. Amusement put up a bit more of a fight, but in the end, fury triumphed. Chrysanthemum crouched, and a moment later, a sizable clod of dirt hit the Doctor square in the back of the head with a satisfying whumph! The Doctor yelped and whirled about to face her, one hand clamped to the back of his head.
"What was that for?" he cried. A second clod of dirt exploded against his shoulder, but he didn't move, seemingly too shocked by the attack to react. She sent another dirt clod winging his way, but this one he managed to dodge. "What's the matter with you?"
"With me?" Chrysanthemum shrieked, finding her voice as her fingers closed around a rock. "What's the matter with me?"
"Whoa, now," the Doctor said, holding his hands up and eyeing the rock nervously, "let's not do anything we're going to regret."
Chrysanthemum hefted the rock, which was about the size and shape of a mobile phone. "I sincerely doubt that I'm going to regret this."
"Can't we talk about this?" he asked as they circled one another. "Talking's nice, isn't it?"
"Nicer than snuggling?" Chrysanthemum snapped, her empty hand clenching into a fist.
The Doctor's hands dropped, and he stared at her in naked disbelief. "Wait-wait-wait... this is all about you just wanting a snuggle?"
"I'm going to murder you!" she repeated, but this time, she meant it. She slung the rock at the Doctor, who didn't dodge quite quickly enough and took it in the arm.
"Ow! Stop that!" He stared for a moment as Chrysanthemum hunted about on the floor and picked up another rock. "You're not stopping!" he accused. She hurled the rock, and he ducked to the side. "Right. I didn't want it to come to this, but circumstances being what they are..."
Chrysanthemum wasn't listening. She chucked another rock, not waiting to see if it connected, then turned to look for more ammunition. She spied a rock about the size of a chicken egg, but before she could reach for it, a thin band of garishly-patterned fabric whooshed over her head, looped around her middle, and was pulled tight, pinning her arms to her sides. She struggled, but the scarf held strong, and within moments she found herself pushed up against the wall, swiftly and effectively immobilized. So the Doctor isn't a complete pansy, she thought grudgingly.
"Now," the Doctor said cheerfully from behind her, "we can talk."
"I don't want to talk!" Chrysanthemum growled, her cheek pressed against the cool, damp earth.
"You want to throw things at me, I know. Or snuggle. You haven't been terribly clear about what you want, in fact." He turned her around so she was facing him and could see his expression of frank confusion. "What do you want, anyway?"
She glared at him. "I want you to untie me," she began, trying to maintain a calm, level tone of voice and failing, "I want to get out this subterranean pit that we're in, and I want to get back in the WARDIP," now she was shouting, "so I can go home!"
"I see," the Doctor said, looking a bit hurt and taking his hands off her shoulders. There was an awkward pause, during which they both avoided looking at one another. "Well," he finally broke the silence and motioned for her to turn back around, "I suppose we have gotten off to a bad start." She turned, and the scarf was loosened, then removed. He slung it over his shoulder as she turned back to face him. "But don't worry," he continued, some of his latent enthusiasm reasserting itself, "we'll get out of it somehow. Then I can..." he paused, running his hand through his hair and looking momentarily bewildered, as if he'd lost his train of thought. "...Take you home," he finished in one hurried breath, like a sigh. "Right." After a brief hesitation, he turned, went back over to the fourth wall, and resumed examining the roots as if nothing had happened.
Chrysanthemum frowned, torn between the little voice in her head urging her to apologize and the little voice in her head insisting that if anyone owed an apology, it certainly wasn't her. He was the one who had walked into an ambush on a planet with which he was apparently familiar. He was the one who had probably known exactly what was going to happen when he'd led her into those trees. This was all his fault.
But every time she left him, or expressed a strong desire to leave him, he'd give her that kicked puppy look, that look that said, You wound me to the very core, but it's all right, I won't hold it against you. She half-suspected that he'd spent hours practicing that look in the mirror, just to get the perfect balance of pain and forgiveness, but it was the sort of look that also said, I haven't had to spend hours practicing this look in front of the mirror, because I've had reason to make this expression often enough in my real, everyday, miserably lonely existence. Pity me.
Well, I don't, Chrysanthemum thought viciously. This is still all your fault, Doctor. But anger was an exhausting thing to maintain, so she sighed and made an attempt to lighten the mood a little.
"So," she said, "a planet called 'Snug'll.' That's... cute."
The Doctor wrinkled his nose. "Hardly."
"And we've run afoul of the natives?" She suspected running afoul of the natives was something to which the Doctor was accustomed, and he did have the decency to look a bit guilty.
"Yes. Well, sort of. I wouldn't call them 'natives,' really... they're not from around here." He straightened, then shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked at a clod of dirt. Chrysanthemum gave him a sharp look.
"Oh?" she said, arching a brow. "Where are they from?"
The Doctor pursed his lips. Was she imagining it, or was he turning a bit pink? "Earth," he said delicately, "as luck would have it."
"Really?" Chrysanthemum planted her hands on her hips, and the Doctor squirmed. "Well, you referred to them as small and fuzzy. Are they bunnies, perhaps?"
The Doctor acquired a sudden interest in an unremarkable root in the wall. "Oh... some of them are, I'm sure." He poked at the root and frowned when it failed to provide any sort of helpful distraction.
"Chipmunks?" she suggested, and his shoulder hit the wall and stayed there. "Raccoons?" He grimaced. "Squirrels?" He bit his lip. "Wombats?" She threw up her hands in exasperation, and he allowed his forehead to thud gently against the wall, giving her a good idea of where the original dirt smudge had come from. "Throw me a bone, here, Doctor!"
"I really couldn't say," he said to the wall, speaking as if each word pained him, "but I think most of them are bears."
"Oh," she said, eyes widening. After an awkward silence, she ventured, "Jesus, bears? Are they going to eat us or something?"
He looked over at her in astonishment. "What? No! Haha, ha! No. Er... no." He cleared his throat and went back to leaning his forehead against the wall.
Chrysanthemum sucked on her teeth and peered at him. "What aren't you telling me, Doctor?"
"Well," he said, drawing the word out as if stalling for time (which was almost certainly what he was doing), "they aren't exactly grizzly bears. Or black bears. Or brown bears. Or sun bears. Or spectacled bears, or polar bears, or sloth bears, or panda bears. Well, they might be any of those, really, but they aren't really any of those, if you follow me."
"No."
"Right," he said, rolling sideways so that his back was against the wall and heaving a monstrous sigh. "Well, I'm sure there are bunnies, too. Maybe even a wombat or two, who knows?"
"Doctor!" she said sharply, more than a little bit impatient. "What the hell is going on? Are you going to tell me who's captured us, or not?"
He looked sideways at her. "You'll laugh," he said mournfully.
"I'm sitting in a subterranean cell, I'm covered with dirt, and I have a headache. I could use a laugh," she argued.
"Well," he said, raising his eyebrows in a resigned sort of way, "they're... um..."
"Good day, prisoners!" cried a rather squeaky little voice from the general vicinity of the fourth wall. Chrysanthemum turned, startled. It took her a moment to find the source of the voice: a small, furry, brown creature had managed to squeeze its way through a gap in the roots (she couldn't think of any other way it could have gotten in without her noticing). It blinked at her with two black button eyes, and with a start, she realized just what it was she was looking at.
"...Erm. Teddy bears," said the Doctor.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-13 10:38 pm (UTC)Will they be whored off every night to see which toy gets to sleep in their beds? XDD
They should totally have the most ridiculas, fuzzy supposed-to-look-like-some-kind-of-animal-but-has-been-warped-beyond=recognition, stupposed to be cute but just plain scary toys as their leader. Who has a name like Mr. Fuzzle-snuizzles. And is hidiously pink and girl yet is still somehow male.
Well, obviously this is your fic so I can't impose ideas, sorry XD;;
This was great and the whole Snug'll/snuggle thing was very Doctorish =3
no subject
Date: 2007-05-14 05:54 am (UTC)Will they be whored off every night to see which toy gets to sleep in their beds?
*SPLORFLE* Ack, it's too late for me to be waking my parents with my laughter!!
And you're on the right track! In fact, the Doctor's going to try very hard to make sure they don't find out Chrysanthemum is a human for pretty much that very reason. But I'm jumping the gun, and I don't want to spoil you. Too much. ;)
Glad you liked the Snug'll/snuggle thing. I had changed the planet's name several times, and when I tried 'Snug'll,' that exchange just popped right into my head and made me snicker aloud in my desk chair. I liked the way the Doctor just dug himself deeper and deeper. XD
no subject
Date: 2007-05-14 09:19 am (UTC)Hell, what kinda crack pipe was I smoking? XD;
Sorry for the bad spelling, my brain has been turned into mush.
=D glad I made you laugh any how! So, he can't let them find out she's human? I can so see him tyring to convince them that she is, in fact, a very large type of talking rubber plant. Maybe even going so far as to pour some water over her ("Can't let the precious thing wilt, now can we?")
I always find it hard to name imaginary places, I ususally end up with something only I can pronounce, and even then I'm pronoucing it wrong! (I think my last made up name was the Kingdom of Essenbourgh or something)
I particularly liked the exchange because of the Doctor. He's all "This is serious biscuits, we're trapped on Snug'll"
Chrys "Snug'll?"
Doc *automatic ego and ignore anyone but me pilot kicks in*
Say the wrong thing around him and you might end up married!
Not that that's a bad thing...
no subject
Date: 2007-05-15 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-01 09:53 pm (UTC)There's a moment in the upcoming chapter(s) that could be interpreted as shippy as well. Should be fun times. ^_^
Oh man... just wait till I post the next two chapters. It is going to be awesomesauce! And creepy!
no subject
Date: 2007-05-15 01:53 am (UTC)"You're not stopping!" *laaaaughs*
And you need to get on AIM so I can show you something really funny.
And blah.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-01 09:56 pm (UTC)