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justmcshaneTitle: A Little Fun Detour
Length: 3594 words
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who, The Adventure Zone
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences
Warnings: General Pain, Mutilation, Memory Alteration, Character Death
Characters: Ace McShane, Seventh Doctor, Edward & Lydia, Lucretia (briefly)
Summary: The Suffering Game has two new contestants. It may never let them go.
Alternate Links: AO3 and whofic
I wanted to take a break from my current (ridiculously longfic) project to write something for the triple birthday of my favorite actors (Sylv, Sophie, and Anthony Ainley!!), and apparently that means that I make the Doctor and Ace feel pain. Like, a lot. This has nothing at all to do with my previous taz/dw crossover. It also cannot possibly be canon in either the Doctor Who or Adventure Zone universes, for reasons that will become apparent. Enjoy. Actually, you probably won't enjoy.
Go suffer, I guess.
(…my god, it's half past eight…)
i.
The Doctor explains the whole deal with planes and planar systems to her while he’s checking the scanners over and over, and while he appears to be entirely invested in the explanation, he’s got a worried frown on his face that’s only really ever present when something’s very wrong with the state of Time, or Space, or both at once – or something equally important.
Suffice to say, Ace is a bit distracted by the implications of that.
“Wait,” she says, “so there’s other dimensions? But attached to this one?”
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d be surprised,” he says, and taps distractedly away at the console. “You’ve seen much stranger things.”
“Yeah, but – still! A Plane of Fire – a Plane of Magic – really? It all sounds a bit, you know…” she struggles for words for a second, “…high fantasy, I guess?”
“It’s all about different ways of looking at the world, Ace,” he tells her. “From your point of view, it may seem utterly preposterous, but for the inhabitants of the place that we are about to visit, it is simply the way things are.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she says, and then, “oh, it’d be wicked to have magic, though. D’you think they’ve got any spare I can use?”
He laughs properly then, and then tells her that there’s a Gallifreyan artefact that slipped over into this plane at some point or other, and they need to recover it before it can do any more damage.
“It’s strange that it should be in the middle of a forest, really,” he says, “but hopefully it shouldn’t take too long.”
She shrugs her rucksack over one shoulder. “Well, no time like the present. Come on, then. I want to see some magic!”
>>
ii.
A few hours into walking through what the Doctor refers to as ‘the Felicity Wilds’, the posters start appearing. They are simple but striking – neon words against black background. Big, tall billboards.
LOOKING FOR ANSWERS, DOCTOR? one asks in bright pink. COME TO WONDERLAND!
“Looks like they’re expecting you,” Ace says, trying not to show how unnerved she is by this.
The Doctor nods grimly, and points. “You too, it appears.”
She looks, and sees that there are just as many other billboards bearing her own name. DOROTHY MCSHANE – THERE IS CLOSURE FOR YOU WAITING AT WONDERLAND! VISIT TODAY!, says one, and the others are all variations on this.
“Should we be worried?” she asks.
“Immensely so,” he says, and leads her down the dirt path lined by billboards and advertisements towards a building that is just visible in the distance.
It’s in the middle of a huge clearing that almost seems to be carved out of the forest in a perfect circle. And in the middle of that circle is Wonderland, because there’s no way that it can be anything else. Floodlights with no apparent source catch it on all sides, making it seem much bigger than it is – a squat, cylindrical tent-like structure decorated in black and white.
Ace scowls. “Oh god. It’s a circus. You’ve brought me to another bloody circus.”
The vertical black and white stripes that cover the outside of the tent are spinning – at first slowly, then ridiculously fast, like a roulette wheel. As the Doctor and Ace approach the tent – there are no visible entrances to speak of – the spinning pattern begins to slow, coming to rest on a black stripe that ends up right in front of them. A door forms out of the black, coalescing into existence, and above it, two names are written.
THE DOCTOR (?)
and
DOROTHY MCSHANE
Neither of them moves. They exchange a long glance.
“Doctor,” Ace says slowly. “Words can’t describe how much I’m not liking this.”
“I can’t say I’m feeling very good about this situation myself,” he says. He looks at the door. It’s open, but there’s nothing beyond it that’s remotely visible. Just inky blackness. “Ace, I would not blame you in the slightest if you turned tail and went back to the TARDIS right this instant.”
“I want to,” she admits, and then says, “but you’re going in no matter what, aren’t you?”
He gives her a look that says multitudes. “I need to know.”
“Then I’m coming with you.” She is resolute, as always. “You need somebody to watch your back.”
>>
iii.
The masters of ceremony within Wonderland are elves. Beautiful, gorgeous elves with flashy attire and eyeliner sharp enough cut through a steel beam and plummy, self-assured accents. They pose and beam and stalk their way up through a maze of neon lights and runways, to the beat of a thumping electro-core soundtrack that echoes through the room and vibrates the ground beneath their feet.
Ace would be impressed if she wasn’t so on-edge about the entire situation. Elves – real elves. And she doesn’t trust them in the least. Their smiles are far too fake, plastered on; and there’s a subtle sense of wrongness that the wild part inside of her doesn’t like at all.
The Doctor’s fingers are clasped tightly enough around the handle of his brolly that she knows he’s thinking the same thing.
“Hello, and welcome to Wonderland –”
– the elf woman’s smile is as blinding and sharp as the lights are –
“ – whatever you seek, you will find it here!”
The Doctor’s gaze is sharp. “You seem to already know what we’re looking for.”
“We do indeed.”
“Two hearts,” murmurs the male elf, suddenly behind them – a hand on the Doctor’s back, light as a feather; and narrowed eyes. “How… interesting…”
“Get off him,” Ace snaps, even when the Doctor doesn’t move to shake the elf away.
“Oh, you have spirit, dear,” laughs the female elf, even as her twin reappears abruptly next to her. “We do love spirit here in Wonderland! I’m sure you’ll fit right in here.”
“Are you ready for your trials to begin?” the other elf asks.
“Yes,” says the Doctor.
“Bring it on,” Ace says.
>>
iv.
The first time Ace spins the Wheel, it lands on skull.
The Doctor has already spun – he landed on hand, and agreed to lose a single finger without hesitating or even glancing at her. It’s missing now – a glaringly obvious gap, the ring finger on his left hand gone, carved away neatly and bloodlessly. It astounded her how readily he had agreed to it – although maybe it shouldn’t have. Small sacrifices for the bigger picture, after all.
“So,” Ace says defiantly, staring up at the roof where the voices of their hosts have been emanating from. “What’s this one mean, then? Do I just die instantly? Is that it?”
“Ace,” says the Doctor softly. A warning. Don’t bait them.
A chuckle, low and sultry – sending shivers up and down Ace’s spine. “Nothing so dramatic, darling!” It’s the male elf. “All the skull means for you is that, at some point in the future, you will face some pretty bad luck.”
“We can’t tell you what exactly that means, I’m afraid,” chimes in his twin, voice dark with amusement, “but I will be honest. It won’t be great for you.”
“So what is it to be, Ace?”
She doesn’t look at the Doctor. Bad luck doesn’t sound too awful, does it? Not compared to what he just lost, anyway. She’s had worse days than whatever they can throw at her, no problem.
“Sure,” she says. “Bad luck it is.”
The lights over the door flash green. She doesn’t see the look on the Doctor’s face as she leads the way into the next room.
>>
v.
The neon lights are growing old quick, losing the glamor and intrigue that they had harboured at the beginning. She sees flashes of color even when she closes her eyes, and there is always, always, that awful thumping baseline.
She knows, even if they get out of her alive, this experience will never leave her.
>>
vi.
Backpack, the Wheel says.
Ace mutely strips off her jacket – her badge encrusted jacket, the one thing that’s carried her through every adventure, every twist and turn, and deposits it on the Wheel. It spins, and when it slows once more, the jacket is gone and one of their four red lights has turned brightest green.
“Oh, Ace,” says the Doctor.
She shakes her head, refusing to admit defeat. “It’s fine. Only a stupid jacket, anyway.” In the neon darkness of Wonderland, she hopes he can’t see any traces of the tears she’s biting back.
He rests a hand lightly on her shoulder for just a second, and then steps up to spin. It lands on clock.
“Oh, dear me,” sighs one of their hosts – the woman, who Ace has learned by this point is named Lydia. “Taking time from a Time Lord? What a delicious treat!”
“I’m rather afraid,” chimes in her co-host – Edward, Ace knows his name is now – “that any time we take from you will not be visible! Which rather defeats the point!”
There’s a distant giggle. “Now, in this kind of case,” says Lydia, “we would take the beauty from our guests, as a sort of compromise – but you don’t have much of that to speak of, do you, you silly little man?”
“Kindly get to the point,” says the Doctor. His tone is soft but impatient.
“You’re no fun,” sighs Edward, from somewhere up above. “Well, if you agree to this sacrifice, we will take the time that is meant for you. You will die sooner than planned – die in a much less dignified manner than you would have done originally! What do you say, Doctor?”
There is a moment where he breathes in deeply, and then he looks at Ace and he exhales again.
“Very well,” he says. There is a brief, intangible flash, and nothing seems to change physically, but he looks utterly exhausted all of a sudden. Another one of the lights flickers over to green, and now they’re halfway there.
Before she can stop him, he spins the wheel again.
Body.
The elves take what they call vitality away from him, claiming that he and Ace don’t quite run on the same rules as everybody else in this world and it would be unfair if they didn’t come up with some equivalent. Ace can’t work out what’s the difference between taking this and taking time, but doesn’t want to ask. She can see him sag a bit, leaning on his umbrella heavily and gasping for breath, but he straightens up soon after as if nothing has happened. As if there isn’t a streak of grey in his hair now, barely visible.
She can see he is about to spin again, but just about bodily drags him away before he can do so. “No,” she nearly yells, and then softer, “no, Professor. You don’t get to do this for me. We’re in this together, remember?”
He looks at her, and just shakes his head sadly. It’s like he can’t find the words to speak.
She swallows, and goes to spin the wheel.
It lands on brain.
There is a sound like Edward is clapping his hands together in utmost delight. “Oh, wonderful! Ace, dear, in order to progress here – and this is your last sacrifice for this round, mind you, so it’s worth thinking this over – you will have to lose a memory.”
“Don’t you dare,” the Doctor snaps as he props himself up on his umbrella, suddenly a lot livelier. It’s unclear whether this is directed at her or at the elves.
“A memory.” Ace definitely doesn’t like the sound of that. “Which memory?”
“Nothing bad,” Lydia is quick to reassure her, “or rather, nothing good – we won’t take anything from you that you don’t want to forget already. Ace, darling, if you accept this sacrifice, you will forget the unfortunate events that took place during your time in, hmm, Yorkshire, 1942, I believe?”
Ace’s breath catches in her throat.
“You won’t remember any of it,” Edward says, “Maiden’s Bay, the Haemovores, Fenric – ‘kill her’ –”
She can’t stop herself from flinching at this. “And if I say no?”
“Then you’ll just have to spin again,” Lydia says. “But you’ll have to do it twice, to make up for this.”
She looks over at the Doctor, who is barely able to stand. Compared to what he’s lost, this is nothing. What has she suffered so far – a jacket, and some bad luck that hasn’t even happened yet? It’s time she took her share of this.
“Take it,” she says. There’s a brief moment of dizziness where she’s not sure where she is or what’s happening, but then reality reasserts itself and the Doctor is by her side, gripping her arm.
“Ace. Ace,” he says.
She looks up. The final green light has clicked on. The door is open. She can’t remember what she sacrificed. “Did I… do it? Whatever it was?”
He looks sad and immeasurably old, although that might just be because of his own sacrifices. “You did. But you shouldn’t have had to. Does the name ‘Sorin’ mean anything to you?”
She searches the depths of her memory, and comes up with nothing. The name is already fading from her mind as she shrugs. “No. Should it?”
There is a considerable pause from him, and then he shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it, Ace. Let’s keep moving.”
>>
vii.
They choose TRUST, always. When given the choice between that and FORSAKE, it is by solemn, mutual agreement that they never leave the person on the other side of the fogged-over glass to suffer.
“That’s not how we do this,” Ace says when one of their hosts drops in, twirling an elegant, neon-bright parasol, to ask them why, in Pan’s name, are you being so benevolent? To the risk of your own lives – your own goals, for the sake of – what? “Betrayal isn’t how we play the game.”
There’s something wrong about that, ever so slightly, but… no. It’s gone.
“It will get us nowhere,” the Doctor agrees. He is limping heavily now – has to have Ace support him half of the time. “Once we agree to compromise our morals, even for this, we have crossed a line.”
“Suit yourself,” smirks the elf, and is gone.
Their invisible opponents are almost never so kind.
TRUST, the Doctor chooses. FORESAKE, comes the reply from on the other side of the glass, from a group of humans decked out in full adventuring gear.
(Ace breaks her baseball bat defending him from the twisted creatures that form in Wonderland’s monster factory. He helps the best he can, of course, but there’s only so much he can do with his umbrella.)
(She thinks her ribs must be fractured.)
TRUST, Ace decides, the next round. FORESAKE, is the response.
The woman – human, with a young face and dark skin but hair that’s already white as the moon – clutches her long oak staff to her chest and mouths, sorry, I’m so sorry, to them over and over again. There are tears in her eyes, and Ace can hardly blame her as she fades from their sight.
(The next fight uses up half of her remaining cans of Nitro-Nine, and by the end of it the Doctor has blood running down his face and cuts and scratches all over his arms, and she knows her ribs are broken.)
(She’s not so sure she can forgive the woman on the other side of the glass.)
>>
viii.
“This sucks,” she says, during one of their brief reprieves. Black smoke billows from her mouth, barely visible to the human eye, and she winces.
He just nods.
They’ve worked out that this place runs on suffering, somehow. It’s not hard to miss. Any negative words – expressions of annoyance, disappointment, grief – they’re all converted into black smoky energy and spirited away somewhere upwards. It’s probably safe to assume the place is eating it or something, so it’s best to not voice any negative thoughts. Not that it’s a problem for either of them, because (apparently) they’re both emotional masochists. She never thought that something like that would be handy, but the universe has a way of surprising you with stuff like this.
>>
ix.
And –
Swords.
“If you choose to accept this sacrifice, Ace, you will lose a fight – literally! You will have a fight taken from you, stripped away as if it had never existed.”
“Fine,” she snaps, and screams as her left leg burns like a jolt of electricity has coursed through it, and suddenly she can’t stand on it any more. The Doctor catches her by the shoulder as she stumbles, spits angry, barbed words at their hosts, their destroyers; but all he succeeds in doing is adding to the mass of black smoke above their heads.
(She learns quickly to walk with her leg half-fried by the memory of a Dalek’s scorching attack, using his umbrella as a crutch. She can’t afford not to.)
>>
x.
And –
Mind.
“Another memory, I think – there’s plenty of those to spare from you, Doctor!”
“There’s a lovely young lady in your past, far in your past,” says Edward. “I believe her name was Susan…?”
“No,” snaps the Doctor. There’s no hesitation whatsoever, and his eyes are cold and hard as flint.
“Oh, that’s a shame!”
“You’ll have to spin again; you know – twice.”
“Then so be it.”
Backpack.
He throws his hat onto the wheel, with only a split second of reluctance. When they tell him that this isn’t enough; he needs to give up more, he digs deep into his pockets – gives up his old battered pocketwatch, his 500-year diary, the old shattered pieces of what looks like a fractured star medallion.
They disappear into nothingness.
He spins again.
Eye.
(His left eye is gone, now – it has gone white and cloudy and she knows he can’t see out of it anymore.)
He never complains. Not once.
She wonders if she’d feel better about all of this if he did.
>>
xi.
(In the next room, things do not go well at all.)
>>
xii.
Even with a missing finger and a missing eye and a lot of other missing things besides, the Doctor still gets her out of that room in one piece. She’s bleeding and battered and yes, her ribs are definitely broken, but he does… well, something that she can’t quite remember.
She’s barely conscious. The Doctor is covered in blood that is far too dark to be human, or Time Lord for that matter. Something has happened here, something that he doesn’t tell her about and she doesn’t asked about.
“Is it worth it?” she manages to gasp out, even as he bandages her with the few medical supplies that he manages to gather from his pockets. “Whatever we’re here for. Professor, is it worth all of this?”
“No,” he says, and he sounds so miserable and exhausted that she can’t even bring herself to be mad, “no, Ace, it isn’t. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry –”
Black smoke is pouring from his mouth, billowing upwards. She watches it drift away into nothingness.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
>>
xiii.
“ – for the bonus round, you get to decide what game you want to play! All three are terrific little diversions, but this time you only get to pick one!”
Escape Game. Healing Game. Recovery Game.
“Healing,” Ace says instantly, just as he turns to her and says, “escape.”
They turn and stare at each other for a moment.
“But, I thought – ” she says.
“ – no – ”
“ – we’re just going to – after all we’ve been through -?”
“I told you,” he snaps. “It’s not worth it.” And then, softer, “we’ll find another way. Later.”
>>
xiv.
The Escape Game is a game of chess. It’s their mistake, because the Doctor is very, very good at chess when he wants to be.
He plays for hours against all number of creatures and beings that the Wonderland elves summon from the black mist. Some are recognizable, some are not. The Doctor never speaks; never responds to the hissed, whispered words that emerge from the smoke-people; and doesn’t flinch in the slightest at the elves’ running commentary.
They invent new rules, new excuses – try to trip him up, catch him out, but he just keeps on playing. It’s the most intent that Ace has ever seen him. He’s barely blinking.
And eventually (he is like the tide when he is furious; unrelenting and unstoppable) he wins.
>>
xv.
But –
“Oh, dear – did you forget?” Edward says.
“You thought you were getting out of it that easily?” Lydia asks. “The Escape Game only allows one player to leave Wonderland! And I believe that you have an unpaid debt with us, Dorothy McShane!”
“You’re no use here alone, anyway,” Edward adds. “You’d crumple within minutes. And you’re not looking for anything in particular. You’re only here because he is.”
The Doctor’s grip is tight on Ace’s wrist. “Don’t,” he says. “Don’t, don’t –”
“Bad luck!” says Lydia with a wicked grin in her voice, and from above, something large, heavy and metal comes crashing down. It misses the Doctor neatly by inches, she is torn away from him by the weight of the massive object that crushes her completely.
>>
xvi.
She doesn’t even have time to scream.
>>
xvii.
She definitely doesn’t have time to say goodbye.
.
.
.
They don’t deserve his mercy.
(He burns Wonderland to the ground, and does not look back.)
