Categories > TV > Doctor Who
TITLE: Sideways
SERIES: Doctor Who/CSI Miami
RATING: PG
CHAPTERS/ONE SHOT: One-Shot
GENRE: General
PAIRING/S: N/A
SUMMARY: He had to hide himself. Little did Gallifrey's top brass know that he was hiding in plain sight. Takes place after Season 23 [Doctor Who] and current CSI Miami season.
1.
In this universe, in this section of the scratched spiral of time, it was a devastating loss for the Doctor. Found guilty of genocide, yet more lenient than usual after he rid the Matrix of the Valeyard and the Master, he was exiled to Earth yet again. This time, they let him keep his own body. It made for easier surveillance, they said. Easier said than done. And Time Lords are so good at shooting off their mouth and following it up with horrendous blunders.
They told him to call in on a regular basis. He called in once, then never again. So they sent a search party. It came up inconclusive. The CIA sent some of their finest agents with tracking devices that located Time Lords by their brand of DNA. Nothing. Except for one sighting, but the man was too ginger to be him. Or could he be? They tried to investigate, but a pushy blond with a Southern accent forced them out of the building and left them to their own devices. Which, of course, failed miserably, causing them to retreat with their tail between their legs.
Later, during a regular clean up of the court's file system, a new head inquisitor issued a follow-up team; however, no trace of the blond Time Lord could be found anywhere. It was suspected that one of him escaped during the incident dutifully known as the 'Spiral Scratch' episode, among the many, many copies of himself. It was the one copy that had lived through every companion and was finally alone. He was a loose cannon, but try as they might, the CIA never managed to get a hold on him. No one could.
In the blink of an eye, one man had faded into the universe, never to be seen again.
2.
People would comment on his unnaturally red hair and blue eyes. Well, the blue eyes were real, but the hair - Well, let's say it's a gift Time Lords have, with their vast and curious knowledge of physiognomy. Besides, he'd never admit in a million years about the bottles of Betelgeusian hair dye covertly placed underneath his bathroom sink.
Slowly but surely, he created himself a past. Paperwork once thought lost sprung up from forgotten boxes in courtroom basements. He made a family. He created friends in high school, in college. He even made a romantic interest. He didn't expect to fall in love with these people, so it came as a surprise when he did - very easily, actually.
And then, in New York City, on a cold day, he killed a man. Arguably, because the man killed his 'mother'. And just happened to be his own 'father'. It was then that the old persona began to fade away and the new one set in. He loses a mother. He loses a wife. He loses a partner. In the end, he loses himself. And that suits him just fine. After all, many come to Miami to forget who they are. He just never thought it would hit so deep.
He thinks he'll fit just fine in Miami. He's forty-seven and head of the homicide division for the city. Sometimes, he thinks of his family; of Raymond and his dead mother. He thinks of sweet miss Marisol and what was and what could have been. Even Tim Speedle enters his mind, but always during the night, in the sanctuary of his dreams. The images are not as vivid and blood-soaked as before, and sometimes he and Tim are able to walk out of the city, unharmed, and enter the unassuming blue box in the police protected storage house.
There are rare occasions when there's a familiar scent in the air or a song on the radio or just a feeling in the air, and he's plunged headfirst into his old old life, the life of never ending restlessness and worry for his own neck as well as those of anyone around him. Back then, it was different - there was no call for back-up, no faint hope of a dead end or a lucky call. He remembers the girl he could never have and the man who he will one day turn into. It's those rare, sullen days where he's forced to call in sick; the past keeps him to his bed, shaking and shivering and going over the images like a moth-bitten reel of film. No one asks questions afterwards, and he doesn't give questions. By now, he doesn't have to. Even these moments are started to become more and more sparse. And it's starting to scare him.
3.
The Miami-Dade psychologist said that he had a tendency to overly trust people, then completely drop them once they did wrong. He also had an insatiable martyr complex. And he was damned stubborn, too.
But he was a good guy. He was always smiling, although sometimes at inappropriate moments. He called his fellow colleagues by their names, their first names if it was a really good day. They respected him back in return, even to the point of calling him 'H' for short; a quirky, endearing nickname that stuck as soon as it was used.
There were problems when he first came on. The head of homicide at the time was Megan Donner, who was dubious about the mystery man. When the standard medical reports came in from New York for official scrutiny, Donner nearly had a heart attack. She soon became H's only confidant about his true past, promising to keep mum about the whole dirty deal if he proved to be as good as NYPD claimed he was. She left her job feeling a hell of a lot more confident in him than when she first saw him.
A day after his interview with Donner, the mystery man was revealed to the top brass. At one glance, they said no to the coat. Hell, they said no to the entire wardrobe. After much pouting and shouting, they asked if there was any article of clothing he could wear that could be the emotional equivalent of his technicolor clothing. And there was - just one, to be exact.
He loved his shades. Silhouette titanium model 8568, to be exact. His crew even gave them a cutesy nickname - the Sunglasses of Justice. On the outside front he wasn't so sure about it, but on the inside he was rather chuffed. Then again, he tended to be chuffed about a lot of things.
Another thing was that he stood sideways to the people he was talking to. Well, he couldn't exactly put his hands on his hips all the time like the old days, could he? Might accidentally set his gun off one of these days. Besides, according to his figuring, it added to the enigma taken away by the lack of the technicolor screamcoat. Sometimes he considered putting it on one more time, as a stunt, for Halloween or Casual Friday or /anything/, but he figured Eric and Ryan's collective looks and badly-hidden laughs would be enough to keep it away in the closet where it belonged.
He was one-hundred-percent sure that he and his colleagues were going to be great working together when, on one Christmas in which there were several homicides and he had to pull in work with the laft shift, he found a wrapped present on his desk. It was from, of all people, Alexx, who was not known for giving gifts. Inside was a small painted figurine of a ginger cat, with a note saying that "Donner said you'd like it". The next day, they were the only two to truly get it when, in the middle of entering files into the upstairs cabinets, he make a short, sweet noise like a 'meow'.
Finally, there was another place in the universe where he could belong without feeling uncomfortable or rushed. Although sometimes the hours weren't all great, but they never were.
4.
It was three in the morning, and he was too nervous and skittery to be hanging around a crime scene.
He was shivering in a police-issue blanket outside a meat locker. Inside was a dead body, hacked up and rolled inside some plastic sheeting. Someone handed him a cup of coffee, the lid steaming visibly in the night air. The man looked up to see a ginger-haired man with bright blue eyes.
"A-are you the p-police?" he stuttered out, partially speech impaired by the freezing temperatures. He watched the detective pull out a pair of black shades and place them over his eyes.
"Consider me someone who protects the rights of others," Horatio Caine said, smiling sweetly with triumphant exuberance, standing sideways.
5.
Horatio told the boy, who called himself Herbert, not to be nervous, to take his time about what he had seen or not seen. It turned out he hadn't seen anything, but he heard a noise, which may have led to something if the killer's girlfriend had not made an eleventh-hour look at her conscience and called the police for a quick tell-all.
In the interrogation room, they were alone - Horatio and Herbert. Horatio took off his black sunglasses, sat down in the chair facing the other man and smiled as though it were all a perfectly normal thing to do.
"So, we did a background check on you, Herbert. Standard police procedure during an investigation, I'm sure you are perfectly aware. From California, are we?"
"Err, I was born there." Herbert began twiddling his thumbs nervously, looking anywhere but Horatio's calm blue gaze.
"But you left at the age of five. Why is that?"
"Well, er, my father wanted to see more of me than just a couple of times a year, so me and my mom, we, um, moved back to his house."
"Did he live far?"
"Yeah, really far away?"
"If it's summer here, it's probably fall there. Krontep's usually quite lovely this time of year."
Herbert paled visibly. "W-what? Where's that?" He laughed nervously, but Horatio looked like he was having none of it.
"Come off it, sir. I know both of your parents very well - one better than the other. Must be nice being the son of a warlord. Here he's making more peace treaties in his reign than in his whole planet's history. We can just chalk that up to his wife's abhorrence for violence, can't we? Got that from me, I suppose."
Herbert let out a deep shaky breath, like he had been holding it for some time. "How did you know?"
"Government records, unless tampered with, are usually very trustworthy. And your mother was very careful not to let the red tape tangle her into a web she couldn't break out of. Besides, who else would name their son Herbert unless they actually met the man himself?"
"Yeah, she said I was named after---"
"The writer, H. G. Wells. Very nervous man, suspicious by nature. Seems you got some of his character by proxy."
Herbert looked at Horatio blankly, then visibly loosened up, slouching back into his chair. "So, Detective Caine, what is it--"
"Lieutenant Caine, actually. Oh, please proceed."
"All right. /Lieutenant Caine/, what is it you wanted to ask me so badly that you dragged me into the interrogation under the obviously false pretenses of follow-up questions with the one-way mirror shut off so no one can see us?"
Horatio leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table in such a fashion that it almost offended Herbert with its fluidity.
"I want you to tell me how my old friend Peri is, of course."
SERIES: Doctor Who/CSI Miami
RATING: PG
CHAPTERS/ONE SHOT: One-Shot
GENRE: General
PAIRING/S: N/A
SUMMARY: He had to hide himself. Little did Gallifrey's top brass know that he was hiding in plain sight. Takes place after Season 23 [Doctor Who] and current CSI Miami season.
1.
In this universe, in this section of the scratched spiral of time, it was a devastating loss for the Doctor. Found guilty of genocide, yet more lenient than usual after he rid the Matrix of the Valeyard and the Master, he was exiled to Earth yet again. This time, they let him keep his own body. It made for easier surveillance, they said. Easier said than done. And Time Lords are so good at shooting off their mouth and following it up with horrendous blunders.
They told him to call in on a regular basis. He called in once, then never again. So they sent a search party. It came up inconclusive. The CIA sent some of their finest agents with tracking devices that located Time Lords by their brand of DNA. Nothing. Except for one sighting, but the man was too ginger to be him. Or could he be? They tried to investigate, but a pushy blond with a Southern accent forced them out of the building and left them to their own devices. Which, of course, failed miserably, causing them to retreat with their tail between their legs.
Later, during a regular clean up of the court's file system, a new head inquisitor issued a follow-up team; however, no trace of the blond Time Lord could be found anywhere. It was suspected that one of him escaped during the incident dutifully known as the 'Spiral Scratch' episode, among the many, many copies of himself. It was the one copy that had lived through every companion and was finally alone. He was a loose cannon, but try as they might, the CIA never managed to get a hold on him. No one could.
In the blink of an eye, one man had faded into the universe, never to be seen again.
2.
People would comment on his unnaturally red hair and blue eyes. Well, the blue eyes were real, but the hair - Well, let's say it's a gift Time Lords have, with their vast and curious knowledge of physiognomy. Besides, he'd never admit in a million years about the bottles of Betelgeusian hair dye covertly placed underneath his bathroom sink.
Slowly but surely, he created himself a past. Paperwork once thought lost sprung up from forgotten boxes in courtroom basements. He made a family. He created friends in high school, in college. He even made a romantic interest. He didn't expect to fall in love with these people, so it came as a surprise when he did - very easily, actually.
And then, in New York City, on a cold day, he killed a man. Arguably, because the man killed his 'mother'. And just happened to be his own 'father'. It was then that the old persona began to fade away and the new one set in. He loses a mother. He loses a wife. He loses a partner. In the end, he loses himself. And that suits him just fine. After all, many come to Miami to forget who they are. He just never thought it would hit so deep.
He thinks he'll fit just fine in Miami. He's forty-seven and head of the homicide division for the city. Sometimes, he thinks of his family; of Raymond and his dead mother. He thinks of sweet miss Marisol and what was and what could have been. Even Tim Speedle enters his mind, but always during the night, in the sanctuary of his dreams. The images are not as vivid and blood-soaked as before, and sometimes he and Tim are able to walk out of the city, unharmed, and enter the unassuming blue box in the police protected storage house.
There are rare occasions when there's a familiar scent in the air or a song on the radio or just a feeling in the air, and he's plunged headfirst into his old old life, the life of never ending restlessness and worry for his own neck as well as those of anyone around him. Back then, it was different - there was no call for back-up, no faint hope of a dead end or a lucky call. He remembers the girl he could never have and the man who he will one day turn into. It's those rare, sullen days where he's forced to call in sick; the past keeps him to his bed, shaking and shivering and going over the images like a moth-bitten reel of film. No one asks questions afterwards, and he doesn't give questions. By now, he doesn't have to. Even these moments are started to become more and more sparse. And it's starting to scare him.
3.
The Miami-Dade psychologist said that he had a tendency to overly trust people, then completely drop them once they did wrong. He also had an insatiable martyr complex. And he was damned stubborn, too.
But he was a good guy. He was always smiling, although sometimes at inappropriate moments. He called his fellow colleagues by their names, their first names if it was a really good day. They respected him back in return, even to the point of calling him 'H' for short; a quirky, endearing nickname that stuck as soon as it was used.
There were problems when he first came on. The head of homicide at the time was Megan Donner, who was dubious about the mystery man. When the standard medical reports came in from New York for official scrutiny, Donner nearly had a heart attack. She soon became H's only confidant about his true past, promising to keep mum about the whole dirty deal if he proved to be as good as NYPD claimed he was. She left her job feeling a hell of a lot more confident in him than when she first saw him.
A day after his interview with Donner, the mystery man was revealed to the top brass. At one glance, they said no to the coat. Hell, they said no to the entire wardrobe. After much pouting and shouting, they asked if there was any article of clothing he could wear that could be the emotional equivalent of his technicolor clothing. And there was - just one, to be exact.
He loved his shades. Silhouette titanium model 8568, to be exact. His crew even gave them a cutesy nickname - the Sunglasses of Justice. On the outside front he wasn't so sure about it, but on the inside he was rather chuffed. Then again, he tended to be chuffed about a lot of things.
Another thing was that he stood sideways to the people he was talking to. Well, he couldn't exactly put his hands on his hips all the time like the old days, could he? Might accidentally set his gun off one of these days. Besides, according to his figuring, it added to the enigma taken away by the lack of the technicolor screamcoat. Sometimes he considered putting it on one more time, as a stunt, for Halloween or Casual Friday or /anything/, but he figured Eric and Ryan's collective looks and badly-hidden laughs would be enough to keep it away in the closet where it belonged.
He was one-hundred-percent sure that he and his colleagues were going to be great working together when, on one Christmas in which there were several homicides and he had to pull in work with the laft shift, he found a wrapped present on his desk. It was from, of all people, Alexx, who was not known for giving gifts. Inside was a small painted figurine of a ginger cat, with a note saying that "Donner said you'd like it". The next day, they were the only two to truly get it when, in the middle of entering files into the upstairs cabinets, he make a short, sweet noise like a 'meow'.
Finally, there was another place in the universe where he could belong without feeling uncomfortable or rushed. Although sometimes the hours weren't all great, but they never were.
4.
It was three in the morning, and he was too nervous and skittery to be hanging around a crime scene.
He was shivering in a police-issue blanket outside a meat locker. Inside was a dead body, hacked up and rolled inside some plastic sheeting. Someone handed him a cup of coffee, the lid steaming visibly in the night air. The man looked up to see a ginger-haired man with bright blue eyes.
"A-are you the p-police?" he stuttered out, partially speech impaired by the freezing temperatures. He watched the detective pull out a pair of black shades and place them over his eyes.
"Consider me someone who protects the rights of others," Horatio Caine said, smiling sweetly with triumphant exuberance, standing sideways.
5.
Horatio told the boy, who called himself Herbert, not to be nervous, to take his time about what he had seen or not seen. It turned out he hadn't seen anything, but he heard a noise, which may have led to something if the killer's girlfriend had not made an eleventh-hour look at her conscience and called the police for a quick tell-all.
In the interrogation room, they were alone - Horatio and Herbert. Horatio took off his black sunglasses, sat down in the chair facing the other man and smiled as though it were all a perfectly normal thing to do.
"So, we did a background check on you, Herbert. Standard police procedure during an investigation, I'm sure you are perfectly aware. From California, are we?"
"Err, I was born there." Herbert began twiddling his thumbs nervously, looking anywhere but Horatio's calm blue gaze.
"But you left at the age of five. Why is that?"
"Well, er, my father wanted to see more of me than just a couple of times a year, so me and my mom, we, um, moved back to his house."
"Did he live far?"
"Yeah, really far away?"
"If it's summer here, it's probably fall there. Krontep's usually quite lovely this time of year."
Herbert paled visibly. "W-what? Where's that?" He laughed nervously, but Horatio looked like he was having none of it.
"Come off it, sir. I know both of your parents very well - one better than the other. Must be nice being the son of a warlord. Here he's making more peace treaties in his reign than in his whole planet's history. We can just chalk that up to his wife's abhorrence for violence, can't we? Got that from me, I suppose."
Herbert let out a deep shaky breath, like he had been holding it for some time. "How did you know?"
"Government records, unless tampered with, are usually very trustworthy. And your mother was very careful not to let the red tape tangle her into a web she couldn't break out of. Besides, who else would name their son Herbert unless they actually met the man himself?"
"Yeah, she said I was named after---"
"The writer, H. G. Wells. Very nervous man, suspicious by nature. Seems you got some of his character by proxy."
Herbert looked at Horatio blankly, then visibly loosened up, slouching back into his chair. "So, Detective Caine, what is it--"
"Lieutenant Caine, actually. Oh, please proceed."
"All right. /Lieutenant Caine/, what is it you wanted to ask me so badly that you dragged me into the interrogation under the obviously false pretenses of follow-up questions with the one-way mirror shut off so no one can see us?"
Horatio leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table in such a fashion that it almost offended Herbert with its fluidity.
"I want you to tell me how my old friend Peri is, of course."
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