For just_muse_me: Complicated Life
The Doctor does not believe in fate. He believes in time. He believes that things have a way they are meant to be and that though flux may occur, though events will change, in the end time will eventually take it’s course and whatever will be will be.
It sounds very similar, but it’s not. It’s really not.
The idea that fate brought him to the small restaurant somewhere in Northern New England on a cool Saturday afternoon in October was not one that would ever cross his mind. There was no unseen force in this situation, no mystical being telling him which direction to choose, there was simply chance. It was nothing more than the course of events, the passage of time, which was as visible to him as the coloured, fallen leaves cracking beneath his feet as he walked.
The café was, at first glance, warm. Couples and families sat at small tables complaining about the weather, discussing politics, swapping stories, laughing at obscure inside jokes only they could understand. It was one of those places where everyone seemed to know everyone, and everyone had something to say about everyone else. He was in his typical element, he assumed, as the awkward outsider, the tall man in the long coat and battered trainers that some may vaguely remember seeing out of the corner of their eye, but who most would forget instantly the second he left.
All he really wanted was a cup of tea. There appeared to be seven different kinds of tea, each with varying flavours, none of which appeared to be just plain, old, simple tea.
“Excuse me,” he asked, as politely as he could, stepping up to the counter, “You wouldn’t happen to have-“
“You!” the woman behind the counter exclaimed, suddenly, “You’re back!”
He raised an eyebrow, “I-“
“I thought I told you never to come in here again!”
“Really? What for?”
“Like you don’t know!”
“Right,” he said, scanning the room again, “Are you sure it was me?”
“Of course I am,” she said, “You really think I wouldn’t know you? Your eyes don’t blink enough! I want you out of my restaurant right now, or I’m calling the authorities, just get out!”
He turned around, a bit confused, and walked out the door. Through the window outside, he could see the woman’s eyes glaring at him with an intensity he rarely saw in anyone, let alone small town restaurant owners. What had he done to her?
What will he do to her?
Time only knows. Eventually, it will tell. He blinks, for the first time in at least five minutes, and takes a step forward.
A few weeks later he arrives one year earlier and once again, simply wants a cup of tea. He’s had an unbelievably long day sword fighting a Cleadonian prince while simultaneously taking down their army with a pack of gum and a toothpick, and he’s hoping perhaps this time, he won’t get thrown out in his attempt to sit down for a moment.
He braces himself as he steps inside. No one seems to be glaring at him, no one screams, no one runs, and as he walks up to the counter in the back of the café, he suddenly finds himself greeted with a smile.
“Doctor,” says the restaurant owner brightly, “Been a while since we’ve seen you here, cup of English Breakfast?”
“Er…I was hoping for tea, actually.”
The woman laughs, “Not one of your better ones, even the conductor joke was better than that.”
“It’s Doctor,” he corrects, “and, which conductor joke would that be?”
“Oh you know, the one with…” she looks behind her, into the kitchen, and suddenly looks concerned, “…I’ll tell you later, bit busy today, I’ll have your tea out in a minute.”
She grins at him once more before disappearing into the kitchen. Over the chatter of the café’s customers, he can hear her shouting something about a broken toaster oven, and noticed smoke visible through the round window on the door. A few minutes later, she reappears with a cup of tea, two sugar packets, and a packet of cream.
“Sorry about that,” she says, “bit of a mess back there.
“Is everything ok?”
“Oh yeah, we’re fine,” she answers brightly, “put out the fire, got the other toaster working, it’s all good. Nothing like a crisis to start the day, right?”
“Right,” he agrees, grinning back at her. He blinks, and takes a sip of his tea.
“You know you’re right,” she says, suddenly.
“About what?”
“You really don’t blink that much.”
“No, I don’t,” he puts down his cup, and looks up at her, “What’s your name?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I’m a bit scattered.”
She laughs, “its Rachel.”
“Rachel,” he says, “it’s nice to meet you, er…again.”
“You too.” They grin. After a moment, she walks off to help another customer, and he finishes his tea. He gives her a wave before he leaves, grinning again when she returns it.
About a month later he shows up again. He’s not sure where he is, in her timeline. He was trying to get to somewhere completely different. But of course, he doesn’t really mind. He’s grown rather fond of the small café, the American-made English tea, the dodgy appliances, the animated conversations with Rachel at the counter. Really, if has to accidentally land somewhere, he decides he’s glad it was here.
He opens the small door as usual, and walks down to the counter. There’s a draft from somewhere, he notices, cooling the room to a much chillier temperature than usual. The smell of coffee, typically near overpowering, was duller, and not quite as strong. He’s greeted by a burly man in a black T-shirt, who hands him a menu without saying a word. The man finally sets eyes on him when he moves to take his order, and suddenly freezes.
“It’s you,” he says, simply. His eyes are wide, like he’s seeing a ghost.
“It’s me,” the Doctor replies, sighing. He’d almost forgotten about that first encounter. “Let me guess,” he says, “Rachel told you to watch out for me, and now you’re going to throw me out, am I right?”
“Dead on,” the man replies, “You’d better get out of here.”
“Could I talk to Rachel first?” He asks. He’d like to know how this all started.
“No,” says the man, curtly.
“Why not?”
“Because she’s dead,” he says, angrily, “You didn’t know? She was found dead on the floor in the back, all cut up, bruised, and with a tall man who doesn’t blink enough.” He pauses, “I can only assume that was you.”
There is an unbelievably tense silence, during which the Doctor says nothing. His expression remains solid. He stands up, and turns around, walking slowly out the door, and back to the TARDIS.
From now on, Rachel becomes his only priority.
She’d known who he was and was friendly with him as early as October 1991. By October 1992, he was banned from her café, and by December, she was dead.
He set the TARDIS for November.
He stands outside in the cool air and watches her do her job. He watches her take orders, watches her deliver orders, watches her chat with customers, argue with a deliveryman, and fight with a clearly defective blender. Time was in flux around the restaurant, nothing about it was cemented or fixed or set on a specific path. It was all uncertain.
It was exactly what he wanted.
Official investigations into her death were a bit difficult as he was, apparently, the chief suspect. Instead, he asked around town. No one was sure what, exactly, had killed her. A few assumed it was the mysterious brown-haired man mentioned in the report, but for the most part, people seemed to just write it off as having been “weird.” One day she was alive, the next she wasn’t. So it goes.
A few weeks later, he turns up a few weeks earlier.
“You should come with me,” he tells her, in between sips of tea.
“Come with you where?”
“Anywhere.”
“Sure,” she says, sarcastically, “I’ll come with you and we’ll go anywhere. Then tomorrow, we can go somewhere.”
“I mean it,” he says, “I can take you anywhere, really, anywhere at all.” He looks up, directly at her, “You should really come.”
Her eyes meet his, unsettled. “You really don’t blink enough.”
He sighs, and blinks. “There, better?”
“A bit…”
“So what do you say?” He looks up at the clock, he doesn’t have much time. It’s a tricky business, changing the course of established events, even when they’re in flux. He has to be precise, his timing has to be perfect.
“I can’t just leave here,” she says, “I own a restaurant, if you remember. Besides, I don’t even know you.”
“Of course you do,” he says, switching his gaze somewhat frantically between Rachel and the clock, “We’ve met, we’ve chatted, we know each other’s names, what more is there to know?”
“Casually chatting with someone and knowing them are two different things,” she says, slowly, somewhat suspiciously, “Why do you keep…”
“You really should come with me,” he says again, his desperation growing, “Really, things are about to happen, very, very bad things, which you may not survive if you don’t come with me.”
“Right,” she says, skeptically, glaring at him, “I have to go make toast.”
She turns towards the door to the kitchen just as the second hand reaches eleven. He has five seconds, she has five seconds. He looks back towards her, desperately, then back at the clock, then takes out the sonic screwdriver, turns around, and presses down.
With a loud bang, the toaster explodes.
Rachel screams, then gasps, then turns around. He’s hoping she didn’t see him doing that. He’s desperately hoping she’ll decide that an exploding toaster qualifies as something very bad, and that in the next two seconds, she’ll agree to come with him.
But deep down, he knows she’s smarter than that. She can put two and two together, and with that, he can feel time fix around her.
“I never want you in here again,” she says, inevitably. And so, he leaves.
Two months later, on a cold December evening, he unlocks the door and steps inside the café. It’s dark, and far, far more quiet than it’s supposed to be. He walks quickly through the dining room, steps for the first time behind the counter, and pushes through the door into the kitchen.
Rachel’s body lies cut and bruised on the floor next to the freezer.
The wounds are clearly human in origin. She was beaten, then stabbed, then thrown against the freezer, and killed almost instantly. There was nothing out of the ordinary involved in this, nothing supernatural, nothing alien, just human brutality.
In some ways, he’d expected something more.
He barely registers the sound of the police pulling up in front of the restaurant, and doesn’t look up when they enter the room. He keeps his eyes on Rachel’s, her terrified, lifeless eyes. When the officers finally demand he identify himself, he simply responds, “I’m the man who doesn’t blink enough.”
He bends down slowly, and looks at her again, her mangled, broken body lying so uncharacteristically lifeless on the floor. He closes her eyes for her. Then he stands, steps over the body, and before anyone can stop him, he runs.
If fate truly did exist, it would taunt him as time does now.
A month later he ends up accidentally in front of the café. It’s early April, flowers start to poke out from beneath the now melting snow, though the air retains a distinct crispness left over from the cold. He shakes a bit of slush off his shoes before taking a step inside.
Even in spring, the restaurant is warmer than the air outside. He walks directly to the back as usual, and waits to be served.
“Hello,” says Rachel, smiling as she always used to, “What can I get you?”
“A cup of tea,” he says, “English Breakfast.”
“Coming right up,” she says, and hands the order over to a passing waiter going into the kitchen. “Haven’t seen you in here before.”
“I’m just passing through,” he says.
“Do you have a name?”
“The Doctor.”
“Just the Doctor?”
“Yep.” The waiter hands Rachel the tea, and she puts it down in front of him. She studies him for a moment, watching his face as he picks up the cup, takes a sip, and puts it down.
There are so many things he wants to tell her right now. He wants to tell her to walk away, to never look back, to this leave this place and resist the urge to return. He wants to tell her she’s not safe here, wants to warn her look out for murderers, and knives, and explosions, and men whose eyes don’t seem quite right. He wants her to know what waits for her.
“There’s something odd about you,” she says, jokingly.
“I don’t blink enough,” he replies, and silently goes back to his tea.
Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 2,193
It sounds very similar, but it’s not. It’s really not.
The idea that fate brought him to the small restaurant somewhere in Northern New England on a cool Saturday afternoon in October was not one that would ever cross his mind. There was no unseen force in this situation, no mystical being telling him which direction to choose, there was simply chance. It was nothing more than the course of events, the passage of time, which was as visible to him as the coloured, fallen leaves cracking beneath his feet as he walked.
The café was, at first glance, warm. Couples and families sat at small tables complaining about the weather, discussing politics, swapping stories, laughing at obscure inside jokes only they could understand. It was one of those places where everyone seemed to know everyone, and everyone had something to say about everyone else. He was in his typical element, he assumed, as the awkward outsider, the tall man in the long coat and battered trainers that some may vaguely remember seeing out of the corner of their eye, but who most would forget instantly the second he left.
All he really wanted was a cup of tea. There appeared to be seven different kinds of tea, each with varying flavours, none of which appeared to be just plain, old, simple tea.
“Excuse me,” he asked, as politely as he could, stepping up to the counter, “You wouldn’t happen to have-“
“You!” the woman behind the counter exclaimed, suddenly, “You’re back!”
He raised an eyebrow, “I-“
“I thought I told you never to come in here again!”
“Really? What for?”
“Like you don’t know!”
“Right,” he said, scanning the room again, “Are you sure it was me?”
“Of course I am,” she said, “You really think I wouldn’t know you? Your eyes don’t blink enough! I want you out of my restaurant right now, or I’m calling the authorities, just get out!”
He turned around, a bit confused, and walked out the door. Through the window outside, he could see the woman’s eyes glaring at him with an intensity he rarely saw in anyone, let alone small town restaurant owners. What had he done to her?
What will he do to her?
Time only knows. Eventually, it will tell. He blinks, for the first time in at least five minutes, and takes a step forward.
A few weeks later he arrives one year earlier and once again, simply wants a cup of tea. He’s had an unbelievably long day sword fighting a Cleadonian prince while simultaneously taking down their army with a pack of gum and a toothpick, and he’s hoping perhaps this time, he won’t get thrown out in his attempt to sit down for a moment.
He braces himself as he steps inside. No one seems to be glaring at him, no one screams, no one runs, and as he walks up to the counter in the back of the café, he suddenly finds himself greeted with a smile.
“Doctor,” says the restaurant owner brightly, “Been a while since we’ve seen you here, cup of English Breakfast?”
“Er…I was hoping for tea, actually.”
The woman laughs, “Not one of your better ones, even the conductor joke was better than that.”
“It’s Doctor,” he corrects, “and, which conductor joke would that be?”
“Oh you know, the one with…” she looks behind her, into the kitchen, and suddenly looks concerned, “…I’ll tell you later, bit busy today, I’ll have your tea out in a minute.”
She grins at him once more before disappearing into the kitchen. Over the chatter of the café’s customers, he can hear her shouting something about a broken toaster oven, and noticed smoke visible through the round window on the door. A few minutes later, she reappears with a cup of tea, two sugar packets, and a packet of cream.
“Sorry about that,” she says, “bit of a mess back there.
“Is everything ok?”
“Oh yeah, we’re fine,” she answers brightly, “put out the fire, got the other toaster working, it’s all good. Nothing like a crisis to start the day, right?”
“Right,” he agrees, grinning back at her. He blinks, and takes a sip of his tea.
“You know you’re right,” she says, suddenly.
“About what?”
“You really don’t blink that much.”
“No, I don’t,” he puts down his cup, and looks up at her, “What’s your name?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I’m a bit scattered.”
She laughs, “its Rachel.”
“Rachel,” he says, “it’s nice to meet you, er…again.”
“You too.” They grin. After a moment, she walks off to help another customer, and he finishes his tea. He gives her a wave before he leaves, grinning again when she returns it.
About a month later he shows up again. He’s not sure where he is, in her timeline. He was trying to get to somewhere completely different. But of course, he doesn’t really mind. He’s grown rather fond of the small café, the American-made English tea, the dodgy appliances, the animated conversations with Rachel at the counter. Really, if has to accidentally land somewhere, he decides he’s glad it was here.
He opens the small door as usual, and walks down to the counter. There’s a draft from somewhere, he notices, cooling the room to a much chillier temperature than usual. The smell of coffee, typically near overpowering, was duller, and not quite as strong. He’s greeted by a burly man in a black T-shirt, who hands him a menu without saying a word. The man finally sets eyes on him when he moves to take his order, and suddenly freezes.
“It’s you,” he says, simply. His eyes are wide, like he’s seeing a ghost.
“It’s me,” the Doctor replies, sighing. He’d almost forgotten about that first encounter. “Let me guess,” he says, “Rachel told you to watch out for me, and now you’re going to throw me out, am I right?”
“Dead on,” the man replies, “You’d better get out of here.”
“Could I talk to Rachel first?” He asks. He’d like to know how this all started.
“No,” says the man, curtly.
“Why not?”
“Because she’s dead,” he says, angrily, “You didn’t know? She was found dead on the floor in the back, all cut up, bruised, and with a tall man who doesn’t blink enough.” He pauses, “I can only assume that was you.”
There is an unbelievably tense silence, during which the Doctor says nothing. His expression remains solid. He stands up, and turns around, walking slowly out the door, and back to the TARDIS.
From now on, Rachel becomes his only priority.
She’d known who he was and was friendly with him as early as October 1991. By October 1992, he was banned from her café, and by December, she was dead.
He set the TARDIS for November.
He stands outside in the cool air and watches her do her job. He watches her take orders, watches her deliver orders, watches her chat with customers, argue with a deliveryman, and fight with a clearly defective blender. Time was in flux around the restaurant, nothing about it was cemented or fixed or set on a specific path. It was all uncertain.
It was exactly what he wanted.
Official investigations into her death were a bit difficult as he was, apparently, the chief suspect. Instead, he asked around town. No one was sure what, exactly, had killed her. A few assumed it was the mysterious brown-haired man mentioned in the report, but for the most part, people seemed to just write it off as having been “weird.” One day she was alive, the next she wasn’t. So it goes.
A few weeks later, he turns up a few weeks earlier.
“You should come with me,” he tells her, in between sips of tea.
“Come with you where?”
“Anywhere.”
“Sure,” she says, sarcastically, “I’ll come with you and we’ll go anywhere. Then tomorrow, we can go somewhere.”
“I mean it,” he says, “I can take you anywhere, really, anywhere at all.” He looks up, directly at her, “You should really come.”
Her eyes meet his, unsettled. “You really don’t blink enough.”
He sighs, and blinks. “There, better?”
“A bit…”
“So what do you say?” He looks up at the clock, he doesn’t have much time. It’s a tricky business, changing the course of established events, even when they’re in flux. He has to be precise, his timing has to be perfect.
“I can’t just leave here,” she says, “I own a restaurant, if you remember. Besides, I don’t even know you.”
“Of course you do,” he says, switching his gaze somewhat frantically between Rachel and the clock, “We’ve met, we’ve chatted, we know each other’s names, what more is there to know?”
“Casually chatting with someone and knowing them are two different things,” she says, slowly, somewhat suspiciously, “Why do you keep…”
“You really should come with me,” he says again, his desperation growing, “Really, things are about to happen, very, very bad things, which you may not survive if you don’t come with me.”
“Right,” she says, skeptically, glaring at him, “I have to go make toast.”
She turns towards the door to the kitchen just as the second hand reaches eleven. He has five seconds, she has five seconds. He looks back towards her, desperately, then back at the clock, then takes out the sonic screwdriver, turns around, and presses down.
With a loud bang, the toaster explodes.
Rachel screams, then gasps, then turns around. He’s hoping she didn’t see him doing that. He’s desperately hoping she’ll decide that an exploding toaster qualifies as something very bad, and that in the next two seconds, she’ll agree to come with him.
But deep down, he knows she’s smarter than that. She can put two and two together, and with that, he can feel time fix around her.
“I never want you in here again,” she says, inevitably. And so, he leaves.
Two months later, on a cold December evening, he unlocks the door and steps inside the café. It’s dark, and far, far more quiet than it’s supposed to be. He walks quickly through the dining room, steps for the first time behind the counter, and pushes through the door into the kitchen.
Rachel’s body lies cut and bruised on the floor next to the freezer.
The wounds are clearly human in origin. She was beaten, then stabbed, then thrown against the freezer, and killed almost instantly. There was nothing out of the ordinary involved in this, nothing supernatural, nothing alien, just human brutality.
In some ways, he’d expected something more.
He barely registers the sound of the police pulling up in front of the restaurant, and doesn’t look up when they enter the room. He keeps his eyes on Rachel’s, her terrified, lifeless eyes. When the officers finally demand he identify himself, he simply responds, “I’m the man who doesn’t blink enough.”
He bends down slowly, and looks at her again, her mangled, broken body lying so uncharacteristically lifeless on the floor. He closes her eyes for her. Then he stands, steps over the body, and before anyone can stop him, he runs.
If fate truly did exist, it would taunt him as time does now.
A month later he ends up accidentally in front of the café. It’s early April, flowers start to poke out from beneath the now melting snow, though the air retains a distinct crispness left over from the cold. He shakes a bit of slush off his shoes before taking a step inside.
Even in spring, the restaurant is warmer than the air outside. He walks directly to the back as usual, and waits to be served.
“Hello,” says Rachel, smiling as she always used to, “What can I get you?”
“A cup of tea,” he says, “English Breakfast.”
“Coming right up,” she says, and hands the order over to a passing waiter going into the kitchen. “Haven’t seen you in here before.”
“I’m just passing through,” he says.
“Do you have a name?”
“The Doctor.”
“Just the Doctor?”
“Yep.” The waiter hands Rachel the tea, and she puts it down in front of him. She studies him for a moment, watching his face as he picks up the cup, takes a sip, and puts it down.
There are so many things he wants to tell her right now. He wants to tell her to walk away, to never look back, to this leave this place and resist the urge to return. He wants to tell her she’s not safe here, wants to warn her look out for murderers, and knives, and explosions, and men whose eyes don’t seem quite right. He wants her to know what waits for her.
“There’s something odd about you,” she says, jokingly.
“I don’t blink enough,” he replies, and silently goes back to his tea.
Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 2,193