Fic: A Few Things and a Lizard (Dr Who)
Oct. 27th, 2015 12:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamyThe second ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spook_me absolutely refused to be spooky and just got very silly.
Title: A Few Things And A Lizard
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Fandom: Doctor Who, alternate season 8
Rating: PG13
Word count: ~2600
Author's Note: Written forspook_me and the prompt "Dinosaur"
Summary: When Clara doesn't join him after the events of "Deep Breath", the Doctor picks up another companion. A big, sexy woman with legs up to here, a tail that won't quit, and big, nasty, pointy teeth. The fix-it fic to end all fix-it fics.
A Few Things And A Lizard
Glasgow, 2014
He barely dared to look at the girl as she stood outside the TARDIS, staring at the phone. "Well?", he asked eventually.
"Well what?"
"He asked you a question," The Doctor (for despite the wrinkles and grey hair, it was indeed he) said with some trepidation. "Will you help me?"
Clara hung up the phone and looked at him for a long time before making up her mind. "It's not... I just need a break, you know? He… You've shown me so much, and I'm grateful, but I need to figure out who I am."
He nodded sadly.
"It's not goodbye. I'll still be here." She looked at the unfamiliar city around her. "Well, not here, because you're going to take me home first. But you know, you still have her."
"She's gone," he said.
"You have a time machine. And don't give me that crap about crossing timestreams. Didn't I teach you anything? Go be with her."
***
The TARDIS
The Doctor pulled a few levers.
The Doctor pushed a button.
The Doctor twirled a twirly thing.
The TARDIS, despite all his efforts, did absolutely nothing.
“What?”, he finally said to thin air before pulling another lever to no effect.
“Oh come on,” he continued. “You’re not telling me you’re…”
He pushed a button again. “OK, fine. Yes, I called her ‘sexy’. With a small s. I didn't mean - “ The TARDIS flashed a few lights but otherwise did nothing.
“Yes, her tail is objectively bigger than yours. Happy?” He pushed a button, and the TARDIS took off with an unusually smug fvworp.
After he materialized the TARDIS around his new companion at the last second, she was understandably confused at first. He gave her time - and extra room, which took a fair amount of redecorating - to calm down and find her bearings before crowding her.
He briefly considered a new speech, but he was happy with the one he'd thought up before.
“I'm the Doctor. I've lived for over two thousand years, and not all of them were good. I've made many mistakes, and it's about time that I did something about that. Will you help me?”
The huge Tyrannosaurus Rex he’d rescued from a fiery death in the Thames looked up from munching on the last few time paradox reapers and grinned.
"I'll take that as a yes. Off we go, then, we have a lot of times and places to visit."
****
London, 2005
As the ash from the Sycorax spaceship fell over London, The Doctor stared at the Prime Minister, cold fury in his eyes. "Don't challenge me, Harriet Jones, because I'm a completely new man. I could bring down your government with a single word."
"You're the most remarkable man I've ever met," she said, "but I don't think you're quite capable of that."
"No, you're right. Not a single word, just six." He walked over to her assistant, who had stopped staring up at the exploding spaceship and suddenly stared off into the distance at something else. The Doctor bent forward and whispered in the man's ear: “Don’t you think she looks tired?”
“Uh-huh… yes, sir?”
The Doctor swaggered off, content. The Prime Minister walked over to her assistant. "What did he say?"
“Um… Who?" He seemed thoroughly distracted.
"The Doctor! What did he say?"
"The… Oh. I-I’m sorry, ma'm, I wasn’t paying attention, I thought I saw a…" He craned his neck, looking for something. "It’s silly, but I could have sworn I saw a dinosaur running through Westminster. Why, was it something important?”
Harriet breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, probably not."
***
New York, 1938
Rory stared at the grey-haired Scot who claimed to be The Doctor. “You set a T Rex loose inside a hotel full of Weeping Angels.”
“She prefers Regina. And yeah.”
“OK. Why?”
“Didn’t you ever see Jurassic Park?”
“Um… Sure, but - “
The alleged Doctor clearly thought it was all very obvious. “The Angels are quantum-locked, yeah? They can only move when nobody sees them. Well, Tyrannosaurs can only see things that move. Therefore, a Tyrannosaur will never see an Angel.”
“So they’ll just kill it?”
"Her." The Doctor rolled his eyes in a spectacular fashion. “And no, they won't 'kill her'. Angels can only hurt those who can see them but don’t. It’s like Schrödinger’s cat, OK? There’s a box, there’s a cat, the cat is either alive or dead, and until you open the box you might as well say it’s both. But as long as you don’t open the box there’s no cat at all, just a box. And then you tie a bow around the box and you hand it to someone and call it a present for those stuck in the past."
Rory looked at him and nodded. “Right, so we've established that you’re The Doctor. But if she’s immune to them, how does that - “
“Because I’ve trained her not to step on people she can see.” The Doctor checked his watch. “That should just about do it. Here. Let’s clean up and get you two home.” He handed Rory a dustpan, and together they swept up the dust from a hundred trod-upon Angels.
***
Skaro, at the beginning
"We're talking about the Daleks, the most evil creatures ever invented. You must destroy them. You must complete your mission for the Time Lords."
"But do I have the right?" The Doctor heard Sarah Jane's arguments, and seemed to be replying to her, but in truth he barely noticed her. He stared at the detonator wires he held in his trembling hands, running across the floor into the incubation chamber where the first Daleks would be born. Every nerve in his body screamed that this was wrong, every thought in his head said that not doing it would be unforgivable. "Simply touch one wire against the other and that's it. The Daleks cease to exist. Hundreds of millions of people, thousands of generations can live without fear, in peace, and never even know the word 'Dalek'. But if I kill, wipe out a whole intelligent life form… Then I become like them."
When the messenger told him it wouldn't be necessary, that Davros had agreed to negotiate, the sense of relief was so enormous he didn't even hear the strange noise from inside the chamber. If he had, he might have thought it sounded a bit like a large reptile burping after a full meal.
***
London, 2008
This was it, Colonel Mace thought. The shining moment of UNIT: For once, after almost 50 years of getting their arses kicked by every passing alien, they had the upper hand. The Sontarans had tried to take over the world, to turn the very atmosphere against all life on the planet, and they thought humanity was helpless. Well, he'd bloody show them. "On my mark, men!" They stormed the factory, not noticing the large footprints leading into it.
Later on, when he had to report to the very surprised Doctor that there wasn't a single Sontaran there - as if something had swallowed them all up - he could have sworn the smug little alien grinned like a ninny for half a second before being as puzzled as him. Oh well. There would be another battle. One of these days, UNIT would be useful, damnit.
***
Malcassairo, 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 AD
The man who up until a few minutes ago was Professor Yana slumped over the TARDIS controls, feeling his body dying. Again. "Still, if the Doctor can be young and strong… so can I." He remembered this. Immortality. He knew what to do. Almost as if imagining an audience watching him in awe and terror, he stretched to his full height. “The Master… REBORN!”
The energy swept through him, fizzing and popping in every cell of his body, the time stream itself dissolving itself in him, breaking him down to wave forms and remaking him from scratch. When the energy receded, he opened his new eyes, blinked, and looked straight into the face of -
The Master came running out of the TARDIS like hell itself was after him. In his blind panic, he was no match for Captain Jack, who both tripped and tied him up within a few seconds.
"I'm glad you came to your senses," The Doctor said over the sound of the screams from the mutants outside the door.
The Master just stared at him. “You're one to talk about senses! Since when do you keep a bloody DINOSAUR in there?”
"A... what?" Martha glanced at the Doctor.
"He must be loopy from the regeneration. Now let's get out of here before - " The banging and screaming from outside the door suddenly changed into screams of panic, the sounds of dozens of people running from something very large, and a very hungry roar. "OK, anyone not in a hurry to find out what that was, in the TARDIS, now."
***
London, 2014
He grinned into the phone. "I love you."
"No, not like that. Not like it's automatic. Not like it's how you end the phone call, the sign off, the pat on the back."
"Clara - "
"Danny, I'll never say those words again. Not to anybody else, ever. Those words, from me, are yours now."
He was crossing the street and was just about to open his mouth and answer when -
CRUNCH
Danny looked up. Only a few feet away from the crosswalk, a car seemed to have had an accident. A rather spectacular accident, by the look of it. The driver stared in open-mouthed shock out the windshield, which was also where his car ended; where the bonnet should have been, there was just a flat hunk of metal, as if some huge animal had stepped on it or something. "You alright, mate?"
The driver nodded mechanically, still staring at the spot where his engine used to be. "A di-di-dino.."
Clara's voice on the phone, worried. "Danny?"
And he refocused on what was important and stepped into the rest of his life.
***
Cardiff, 2009
"You yielded in the past," the sinister voice spoke from the tank. "You will do so again."
Captain Jack's eyes narrowed, heroically. "When people find out the truth, you will have over six billion angry human beings taking up arms to fight you. That might be a fight you think you can win, but at the end of it, the human race in defence of its children will fight to the death. And if I have to lead them into battle, then I will."
"You've got enough information on this planet, check your records." Ianto stood beside him, prouder than ever. "His name is Captain Jack Harkness. Go back a hundred and fifty years and see what you're facing."
If the 456 had a response, it was drowned out by the noise as something huge crashed through the wall, burst through the glass case and swallowed the alien in one bite.
"...Oh," Ianto said once the dust settled. "Was that a..."
"I'll say it was," Jack said, cocking his head and admiring the legs of the dinosaur as it walked off towards the city centre.
***
Chiswick, 2014
"You're him, aren't you?"
The Doctor nodded and sat down next to the old man on the bench. "How is she?"
"She's happy. Mostly. Like most people. Only…" Wilfred Mott sighed and looked at the Doctor. "It's not that I'm not happy to see you. But he… you said it yourself. If Donna sees you, if she remembers what happened to her, what she almost was…"
"...it's too much for one human mind to bear, I know," The Doctor said.
"I appreciate what you did for her. But it just doesn't seem fair that she'd see that much and not remember it."
They sat together for a few minutes, watching the falling leaves. "Did you ever read about dinosaurs?", the Doctor suddenly asked.
"Dinosaurs?"
"Funny thing: scientists used to think dinosaurs had a second brain above their tail, since their regular brain was so small it couldn't handle something that big, and of course you humans with all your centuries of civilisation need some sort of explanation for how a whole class of animals can dominate the world for 50 million years. Turns out they didn't need a second brain, they did just fine with the one."
Wilf looked at him. "What are you saying, Doctor?"
"I'm saying sometimes very clever people can be complete idiots and underestimate just how much other people can handle."
There was a loud THUMP behind them. Wilf turned around and looked at the TARDIS, which had fallen over. "What was that?"
The Doctor winced. "Well, my current companion has some issues with, um, walls. Honestly, a second brain wouldn't hurt." He handed Wilf a necklace with a small silver-looking ball at the end. "This is... let's call it a safety valve. Just in case of overload. Give her this, and I'll drop by sometime and see if we can jog her memory a bit."
***
The TARDIS
"Feeling better?" The Doctor looked at his companion.
Regina burped and coughed up another ball of tinfoil. Eating every Cyberman in Canary Wharf had taken its toll.
"So, here we are then," the Doctor said, scratching her behind the place where her ear would have been if dinosaurs had them. "The last of our kinds."
Regina growled in sympathy.
The Doctor took a deep breath. "The answer to my next question, which must be honest and cold and considered, without kindness or restraint. Regina, be my pal and tell me, am I a good man?"
She looked at him, cocked her head, and opened her mouth -
"'Good' as in 'morally upstanding', not 'delicious'!", he shouted as he scuttled under the console, away from her jaws. "Okay?"
When she seemed to have calmed down, he crawled out. Regina was sitting over by the door, peering out into space. She'd eaten daleks, cybermen, sontarans, zygons, and countless others up and down the Doctor's time stream, she'd saved countless of innocent lives… And yet here she was, the last dinosaur. He looked up at her, and saw his face reflected in her scales.
Ah. There's an idea.
***
Earth orbit, 65,000,000 BC
Adric looked at the ruined control panel. On the view panel above it, the Earth loomed larger as the spaceship hurtled towards it. "Now I'll never know if I was right…"
"Really?", a voice said from behind him. "That's your big complaint? You're about to die and take 99% of the life on the planet with you, and your big worry is not knowing whether you got a math problem right?"
He turned around. The TARDIS was standing there, looking a bit worse for wear, and a grey-haired man was standing outside it. "Doctor…? You've regenerated again?"
The Doctor frowned, quickly counted on his fingers, then waved it off. "Well, for the record, you didn't get it right. You were completely wrong, the ship will crash even if you have another two hours, which obviously you don't, so chop chop."
Adric snapped out of his confusion and ran into the TARDIS. The Doctor followed him, closing the door behind them and then turning to Adric who stood there frozen in place, staring at the interior of the TARDIS.
"Yes, I've changed the desktop theme. Like it?" He snapped his fingers and the TARDIS took off, leaving the empty spaceship to crash into Earth.
"That's- that's not what-" Adric briefly reconsidered the positive aspects of a fiery death.
The two tyrannosaurs lounging on the other side of the control room eyed him curiously.
"Right, yeah," the Doctor said. "This is Regina and a, um, friend of hers. I'm giving them a ride to Kardlockas V, lovely forest planet, plenty of nice soft herbivores, great place to lay eggs."
Adric just stared back and forth between the dinosaurs and the Doctor. "But…"
"See, thing is, I could hardly stop the ship from hitting the Earth and killing off the dinosaurs. But sometimes saving just one is enough. I chose this face for a reason: to hold me to the mark. I'm the Doctor, and I save people. And reptiles." He waited for a response, but Adric had had a pretty intense day and currently didn't seem very talkative. "Right. Well, I expect you're tired, I've got your old room set up the way you liked it. Why don't you pop down and have a rest, and I'll drop you off on… Alzarius, was it?"
Alone with the two dinosaurs, the Doctor set the coordinates, then leaned back and put the kettle on. "Let's make ourselves comfortable until we get there. Tea, Rex?"
spook_me absolutely refused to be spooky and just got very silly.Title: A Few Things And A Lizard
Author: Beer Good (
beer_good_foamy)Fandom: Doctor Who, alternate season 8
Rating: PG13
Word count: ~2600
Author's Note: Written for
spook_me and the prompt "Dinosaur"Summary: When Clara doesn't join him after the events of "Deep Breath", the Doctor picks up another companion. A big, sexy woman with legs up to here, a tail that won't quit, and big, nasty, pointy teeth. The fix-it fic to end all fix-it fics.
A Few Things And A Lizard
Glasgow, 2014
He barely dared to look at the girl as she stood outside the TARDIS, staring at the phone. "Well?", he asked eventually.
"Well what?"
"He asked you a question," The Doctor (for despite the wrinkles and grey hair, it was indeed he) said with some trepidation. "Will you help me?"
Clara hung up the phone and looked at him for a long time before making up her mind. "It's not... I just need a break, you know? He… You've shown me so much, and I'm grateful, but I need to figure out who I am."
He nodded sadly.
"It's not goodbye. I'll still be here." She looked at the unfamiliar city around her. "Well, not here, because you're going to take me home first. But you know, you still have her."
"She's gone," he said.
"You have a time machine. And don't give me that crap about crossing timestreams. Didn't I teach you anything? Go be with her."
***
The TARDIS
The Doctor pulled a few levers.
The Doctor pushed a button.
The Doctor twirled a twirly thing.
The TARDIS, despite all his efforts, did absolutely nothing.
“What?”, he finally said to thin air before pulling another lever to no effect.
“Oh come on,” he continued. “You’re not telling me you’re…”
He pushed a button again. “OK, fine. Yes, I called her ‘sexy’. With a small s. I didn't mean - “ The TARDIS flashed a few lights but otherwise did nothing.
“Yes, her tail is objectively bigger than yours. Happy?” He pushed a button, and the TARDIS took off with an unusually smug fvworp.
After he materialized the TARDIS around his new companion at the last second, she was understandably confused at first. He gave her time - and extra room, which took a fair amount of redecorating - to calm down and find her bearings before crowding her.
He briefly considered a new speech, but he was happy with the one he'd thought up before.
“I'm the Doctor. I've lived for over two thousand years, and not all of them were good. I've made many mistakes, and it's about time that I did something about that. Will you help me?”
The huge Tyrannosaurus Rex he’d rescued from a fiery death in the Thames looked up from munching on the last few time paradox reapers and grinned.
"I'll take that as a yes. Off we go, then, we have a lot of times and places to visit."
****
London, 2005
As the ash from the Sycorax spaceship fell over London, The Doctor stared at the Prime Minister, cold fury in his eyes. "Don't challenge me, Harriet Jones, because I'm a completely new man. I could bring down your government with a single word."
"You're the most remarkable man I've ever met," she said, "but I don't think you're quite capable of that."
"No, you're right. Not a single word, just six." He walked over to her assistant, who had stopped staring up at the exploding spaceship and suddenly stared off into the distance at something else. The Doctor bent forward and whispered in the man's ear: “Don’t you think she looks tired?”
“Uh-huh… yes, sir?”
The Doctor swaggered off, content. The Prime Minister walked over to her assistant. "What did he say?"
“Um… Who?" He seemed thoroughly distracted.
"The Doctor! What did he say?"
"The… Oh. I-I’m sorry, ma'm, I wasn’t paying attention, I thought I saw a…" He craned his neck, looking for something. "It’s silly, but I could have sworn I saw a dinosaur running through Westminster. Why, was it something important?”
Harriet breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, probably not."
***
New York, 1938
Rory stared at the grey-haired Scot who claimed to be The Doctor. “You set a T Rex loose inside a hotel full of Weeping Angels.”
“She prefers Regina. And yeah.”
“OK. Why?”
“Didn’t you ever see Jurassic Park?”
“Um… Sure, but - “
The alleged Doctor clearly thought it was all very obvious. “The Angels are quantum-locked, yeah? They can only move when nobody sees them. Well, Tyrannosaurs can only see things that move. Therefore, a Tyrannosaur will never see an Angel.”
“So they’ll just kill it?”
"Her." The Doctor rolled his eyes in a spectacular fashion. “And no, they won't 'kill her'. Angels can only hurt those who can see them but don’t. It’s like Schrödinger’s cat, OK? There’s a box, there’s a cat, the cat is either alive or dead, and until you open the box you might as well say it’s both. But as long as you don’t open the box there’s no cat at all, just a box. And then you tie a bow around the box and you hand it to someone and call it a present for those stuck in the past."
Rory looked at him and nodded. “Right, so we've established that you’re The Doctor. But if she’s immune to them, how does that - “
“Because I’ve trained her not to step on people she can see.” The Doctor checked his watch. “That should just about do it. Here. Let’s clean up and get you two home.” He handed Rory a dustpan, and together they swept up the dust from a hundred trod-upon Angels.
***
Skaro, at the beginning
"We're talking about the Daleks, the most evil creatures ever invented. You must destroy them. You must complete your mission for the Time Lords."
"But do I have the right?" The Doctor heard Sarah Jane's arguments, and seemed to be replying to her, but in truth he barely noticed her. He stared at the detonator wires he held in his trembling hands, running across the floor into the incubation chamber where the first Daleks would be born. Every nerve in his body screamed that this was wrong, every thought in his head said that not doing it would be unforgivable. "Simply touch one wire against the other and that's it. The Daleks cease to exist. Hundreds of millions of people, thousands of generations can live without fear, in peace, and never even know the word 'Dalek'. But if I kill, wipe out a whole intelligent life form… Then I become like them."
When the messenger told him it wouldn't be necessary, that Davros had agreed to negotiate, the sense of relief was so enormous he didn't even hear the strange noise from inside the chamber. If he had, he might have thought it sounded a bit like a large reptile burping after a full meal.
***
London, 2008
This was it, Colonel Mace thought. The shining moment of UNIT: For once, after almost 50 years of getting their arses kicked by every passing alien, they had the upper hand. The Sontarans had tried to take over the world, to turn the very atmosphere against all life on the planet, and they thought humanity was helpless. Well, he'd bloody show them. "On my mark, men!" They stormed the factory, not noticing the large footprints leading into it.
Later on, when he had to report to the very surprised Doctor that there wasn't a single Sontaran there - as if something had swallowed them all up - he could have sworn the smug little alien grinned like a ninny for half a second before being as puzzled as him. Oh well. There would be another battle. One of these days, UNIT would be useful, damnit.
***
Malcassairo, 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 AD
The man who up until a few minutes ago was Professor Yana slumped over the TARDIS controls, feeling his body dying. Again. "Still, if the Doctor can be young and strong… so can I." He remembered this. Immortality. He knew what to do. Almost as if imagining an audience watching him in awe and terror, he stretched to his full height. “The Master… REBORN!”
The energy swept through him, fizzing and popping in every cell of his body, the time stream itself dissolving itself in him, breaking him down to wave forms and remaking him from scratch. When the energy receded, he opened his new eyes, blinked, and looked straight into the face of -
The Master came running out of the TARDIS like hell itself was after him. In his blind panic, he was no match for Captain Jack, who both tripped and tied him up within a few seconds.
"I'm glad you came to your senses," The Doctor said over the sound of the screams from the mutants outside the door.
The Master just stared at him. “You're one to talk about senses! Since when do you keep a bloody DINOSAUR in there?”
"A... what?" Martha glanced at the Doctor.
"He must be loopy from the regeneration. Now let's get out of here before - " The banging and screaming from outside the door suddenly changed into screams of panic, the sounds of dozens of people running from something very large, and a very hungry roar. "OK, anyone not in a hurry to find out what that was, in the TARDIS, now."
***
London, 2014
He grinned into the phone. "I love you."
"No, not like that. Not like it's automatic. Not like it's how you end the phone call, the sign off, the pat on the back."
"Clara - "
"Danny, I'll never say those words again. Not to anybody else, ever. Those words, from me, are yours now."
He was crossing the street and was just about to open his mouth and answer when -
CRUNCH
Danny looked up. Only a few feet away from the crosswalk, a car seemed to have had an accident. A rather spectacular accident, by the look of it. The driver stared in open-mouthed shock out the windshield, which was also where his car ended; where the bonnet should have been, there was just a flat hunk of metal, as if some huge animal had stepped on it or something. "You alright, mate?"
The driver nodded mechanically, still staring at the spot where his engine used to be. "A di-di-dino.."
Clara's voice on the phone, worried. "Danny?"
And he refocused on what was important and stepped into the rest of his life.
***
Cardiff, 2009
"You yielded in the past," the sinister voice spoke from the tank. "You will do so again."
Captain Jack's eyes narrowed, heroically. "When people find out the truth, you will have over six billion angry human beings taking up arms to fight you. That might be a fight you think you can win, but at the end of it, the human race in defence of its children will fight to the death. And if I have to lead them into battle, then I will."
"You've got enough information on this planet, check your records." Ianto stood beside him, prouder than ever. "His name is Captain Jack Harkness. Go back a hundred and fifty years and see what you're facing."
If the 456 had a response, it was drowned out by the noise as something huge crashed through the wall, burst through the glass case and swallowed the alien in one bite.
"...Oh," Ianto said once the dust settled. "Was that a..."
"I'll say it was," Jack said, cocking his head and admiring the legs of the dinosaur as it walked off towards the city centre.
***
Chiswick, 2014
"You're him, aren't you?"
The Doctor nodded and sat down next to the old man on the bench. "How is she?"
"She's happy. Mostly. Like most people. Only…" Wilfred Mott sighed and looked at the Doctor. "It's not that I'm not happy to see you. But he… you said it yourself. If Donna sees you, if she remembers what happened to her, what she almost was…"
"...it's too much for one human mind to bear, I know," The Doctor said.
"I appreciate what you did for her. But it just doesn't seem fair that she'd see that much and not remember it."
They sat together for a few minutes, watching the falling leaves. "Did you ever read about dinosaurs?", the Doctor suddenly asked.
"Dinosaurs?"
"Funny thing: scientists used to think dinosaurs had a second brain above their tail, since their regular brain was so small it couldn't handle something that big, and of course you humans with all your centuries of civilisation need some sort of explanation for how a whole class of animals can dominate the world for 50 million years. Turns out they didn't need a second brain, they did just fine with the one."
Wilf looked at him. "What are you saying, Doctor?"
"I'm saying sometimes very clever people can be complete idiots and underestimate just how much other people can handle."
There was a loud THUMP behind them. Wilf turned around and looked at the TARDIS, which had fallen over. "What was that?"
The Doctor winced. "Well, my current companion has some issues with, um, walls. Honestly, a second brain wouldn't hurt." He handed Wilf a necklace with a small silver-looking ball at the end. "This is... let's call it a safety valve. Just in case of overload. Give her this, and I'll drop by sometime and see if we can jog her memory a bit."
***
The TARDIS
"Feeling better?" The Doctor looked at his companion.
Regina burped and coughed up another ball of tinfoil. Eating every Cyberman in Canary Wharf had taken its toll.
"So, here we are then," the Doctor said, scratching her behind the place where her ear would have been if dinosaurs had them. "The last of our kinds."
Regina growled in sympathy.
The Doctor took a deep breath. "The answer to my next question, which must be honest and cold and considered, without kindness or restraint. Regina, be my pal and tell me, am I a good man?"
She looked at him, cocked her head, and opened her mouth -
"'Good' as in 'morally upstanding', not 'delicious'!", he shouted as he scuttled under the console, away from her jaws. "Okay?"
When she seemed to have calmed down, he crawled out. Regina was sitting over by the door, peering out into space. She'd eaten daleks, cybermen, sontarans, zygons, and countless others up and down the Doctor's time stream, she'd saved countless of innocent lives… And yet here she was, the last dinosaur. He looked up at her, and saw his face reflected in her scales.
Ah. There's an idea.
***
Earth orbit, 65,000,000 BC
Adric looked at the ruined control panel. On the view panel above it, the Earth loomed larger as the spaceship hurtled towards it. "Now I'll never know if I was right…"
"Really?", a voice said from behind him. "That's your big complaint? You're about to die and take 99% of the life on the planet with you, and your big worry is not knowing whether you got a math problem right?"
He turned around. The TARDIS was standing there, looking a bit worse for wear, and a grey-haired man was standing outside it. "Doctor…? You've regenerated again?"
The Doctor frowned, quickly counted on his fingers, then waved it off. "Well, for the record, you didn't get it right. You were completely wrong, the ship will crash even if you have another two hours, which obviously you don't, so chop chop."
Adric snapped out of his confusion and ran into the TARDIS. The Doctor followed him, closing the door behind them and then turning to Adric who stood there frozen in place, staring at the interior of the TARDIS.
"Yes, I've changed the desktop theme. Like it?" He snapped his fingers and the TARDIS took off, leaving the empty spaceship to crash into Earth.
"That's- that's not what-" Adric briefly reconsidered the positive aspects of a fiery death.
The two tyrannosaurs lounging on the other side of the control room eyed him curiously.
"Right, yeah," the Doctor said. "This is Regina and a, um, friend of hers. I'm giving them a ride to Kardlockas V, lovely forest planet, plenty of nice soft herbivores, great place to lay eggs."
Adric just stared back and forth between the dinosaurs and the Doctor. "But…"
"See, thing is, I could hardly stop the ship from hitting the Earth and killing off the dinosaurs. But sometimes saving just one is enough. I chose this face for a reason: to hold me to the mark. I'm the Doctor, and I save people. And reptiles." He waited for a response, but Adric had had a pretty intense day and currently didn't seem very talkative. "Right. Well, I expect you're tired, I've got your old room set up the way you liked it. Why don't you pop down and have a rest, and I'll drop you off on… Alzarius, was it?"
Alone with the two dinosaurs, the Doctor set the coordinates, then leaned back and put the kettle on. "Let's make ourselves comfortable until we get there. Tea, Rex?"
