A/N: I'm currently experimenting with a style of writing called a "50 Sentences" challenge – you are given a table of fifty prompts and have to write one sentence to go with each prompt. Naturally, sometimes the grammar gets a bit flimsy, but it's a fun exercise. For 2011, I am writing a series of 50 Sentences challenges (four per month) covering many different fandoms and characters. Since I couldn't find a decent category to put the series in (this really isn't a crossover, so the crossover options are out), I am posting each entry separately in its own fandom. This is the first ficlet in the series, and if you'd like to keep track of them, there's an index in my profile listing the titles and fandoms of them all.
Onwards!
Strange Brew
1. Bewitched
"Rory, please stop looking like your eyes are going to pop out, fish faces really aren't attractive at weddings – or ever, really," Amy said as she straightened her gawping soon-to-be-husband's tie moments before they walked down the aisle.
2. Bravery
There were many definitions of bravery, but challenging ten thousand Dalek war ships with a kettle and a bowling ball probably wasn't one of them… probably.
3. Charm
"Hello, I'm the Doctor," the Doctor said, straightening his bow-tie as he beamed at the crowd of armed Celts.
4. Intellectual
"And that," the Doctor said, putting his feet up on the desk, "is how you save the Earth from the bad, bad munchkins while coming with six questions as to how and why they came here in the first place, eighteen solutions to each one, thirty-six resulting hypotheses to each solution and a hundred and one statements supporting the bow-tie as a memorable item of haute couture."
5. Cooky
"Well, that's just weird," Rory said, looking at the line of eleven arguing and very different Doctors whose only commonality was that they all wore attire of varying degrees of peculiarity.
6. Filthy
"Trust me, Amy, you always have to be well-acquainted with the many uses of sewers," the Doctor said as they crept along the round stone tunnel in the darkness.
7. Family
The only day Amy managed to get the Doctor to remove his bow-tie was the way they did a group photograph – and even then, that was after a well-time bow-tie heist and the disparaging compromise that stated that if the Doctor was not allowed to wear a bow-tie, he must wear a fez.
8. Sense
The Doctor had a tendency to refuse to make any sense when it mattered the most – but even worse than that was his tendency to insist on making sense when things were about to go to hell.
9. Rubbish
"No, Doctor," the fourth Doctor said to his eleventh incarnation, spinning around the console and trying not to get his scarf caught on what he referred to as "the extraneous twiddly bits", "this design is much too steampunk, even for us – whatever happened to our refined sense of style?"
10. Wart
"Well, it could be worse," the Doctor said as he peered at his brand new face in a mirror for the first time, "I could have a wart, which would get me accused of being a witch, which would turn me into a newt, and then I would somehow miraculously get better – wait, that doesn't sound right…"
11. House
"So, did Time Lords ever have houses," Amy asked, "or did they all just happen to steal police box-shaped time machines, because why have a house when you can have infinite storage space and all of time as your backyard?"
12. Diary
River Song had a TARDIS shaped diary that she brought with her everywhere and everywhen; he was always very tempted to take a peek, not necessarily because he wanted to know his personal future, but more out of the curiosity that it may just be bigger on the inside and he wondered how anyone could write enough to fill a diary with infinite space.
13. Wand
"Hey, Doctor, your sonic screwdriver doesn't happen to think it's out of Harry Potter, does it?" Amy asked after she had pointed the screwdriver at the local TARDIS hammer, randomly said "Accio", and had it fly towards her, nearly hitting her on the head.
14. Alchemy
"Now, Nicholas," the Doctor said, putting a friendly arm around the alchemist's shoulder, "the secret to turning base metals into gold is to get yourself a sonic screwdriver (like this one), put it on setting 168 and turn it on – unfortunately, the secret to the Elixir of Life still escapes me since I've had absolute rotten luck in the past seven years or so."
15. Dotting
"And this is exactly why you should never play around with the desktop theme function," the Doctor said irritably, "because you'll never know when you might end up putting it on the Garish Polka-Dot design!"
16. Colour
"No, I have absolutely no idea why they decided to make police boxes blue, but I like it and changing its colour to red is absolutely out of the question – not to mention the chameleon circuit's still broken!"
17. Magical
Every time they landed, Amy could not wait to see what was outside those doors – somewhere new, somewhere fantastic, somewhere she could had never possibly imagined… it was a truly magical feeling.
18. Studious
"Go away, I'm processing information," the Doctor said from behind his ceiling-high pile of books, flicking through book after book and throwing them on the equally-high discard pile.
19. Haughty
Sometimes it seemed like the Doctor and River had a competition going on – whoever could be the first to gather the most information about their immediate surroundings and then lord it over was the winner.
20. Copy
The double-vision glasses were useful on Vortigern VI, but as soon as they were back in the TARDIS and the Doctor began talking to two Amy's and two Rory's, Amy had no choice but to swipe the Doctor's new favourite accessory and throw it out the door into the nearest supernova.
21. Voodoo
"No, it's a recently deceased corpse re-animated by a collection of neutron phasers with the absolute voracious need to eat animals and/or, preferably, people to keep up its energy supply – of course it's a zombie!"
22. Broom
"Rory, for the last time, do not challenge professionally trained sword-wielding fishy-people with a broomstick, it only ends badly."
23. Prophecy
"Prophecies," the Doctor said as he munched on popcorn, "are like Hollywood movies – there are some spectacular ones, there are some horrible ones, there are ones that make you cry like children, and then there are ones that make you want to slam your forehead against a wall – and all of them are best to be accepted strictly as fiction, unless you happen to be talking to a trillion-year-old pan-dimensional being shaped like an octopus, because that's when you get into trouble."
24. Spirit
For a nine-hundred-and-seven-year-old Time Lord (was it really that long already? Maybe he had miscounted, time got so confusing in the TARDIS, it was hard to measure out the years), he was doing fairly well: all of time and space was still his to explore, and he still hadn't grown bored of it.
25. Misstep
"You shouldn't have said that," River said, "because I shouldn't know what you know – that's the hardest part about meeting out of turn… why can't we ever get it right?"
26. Connection
The large Galuvian eyed the Doctor, its claws outstretched but unmoving as he jumped up and down, singing a particularly silly song that was apparently confusing it very much: "And the head bone's connected to the neck bone, and the neck bone's connected to the chest bone, and the chest bone's connected to the massive, slightly serrated and extremely dangerous if you happen to get hit by it wing bone—"
27. Sport
"I know an excellent sport we could try to play," the Doctor said to the unimpressed Amy, "and it's from a very exciting part of the world – it's from the ancient Aztecs and sure, the losers get sacrificed, but I think we can work around that rule—"
28. Points
Amy listened to the arguing Doctor and River, a crooked smile on her face as she penciled in a short vertical line on her pad of paper – Doctor, 3½, River, 10.
29. Robes
"Put those back, they're Gallifreyan robes – very precious antiques! – and so silly-looking they'll mess with the heads of anyone who looks at them!"
30. Resemblance
It was a very curious woman indeed who could so easily pick him out no matter which incarnation he happened to be – by some unknown sense, River could see the resemblance between his faces, even if they happened to look nothing alike.
31. Spell
"For the last time," the Doctor shouted at the retreating villagers, "this screwdriver cannot cast spells, there is no such thing as spells, and it's sonic – not a wand, sonic!"
32. Mark
The Doctor came and went and the TARDIS could materialise and de-materialise without a trace, but the Time Lord left his mark anyhow: people and places were ultimately changed, for better or for worse, when he dropped by.
33. Lifetime
The life of a Time Lord was incredibly lonely – so many years had gone by, and the loneliness was something he could never grow used to, no matter how many friends he found along the way.
34. Hold
"Just… stay with me, please," Amy murmured, putting her arms around Rory's neck and holding him tight, refusing to let go.
35. Draw
"If that's supposed to be me, why do I look like a radish in a dress?" Amy exclaimed.
36. Bond
Amy pressed a hand to her mouth to keep from bursting into laughter and breaking character when the Doctor, in his black-tie finery (plus bow-tie), nodded to her from the bar, casually stirring a martini.
37. Flamboyant
"Oh," the Doctor said, mildly surprised as he fished the round, orange flam (a type of fruit from the Jeryl System) out of the lake, "so it does float after all… I've always wondered about that."
38. Sacrifice
The man could be such an idiot sometimes, River thought – how many times, when he made up his mind on making a grand gesture, did someone, somewhere say "Doctor, you can't!" and how many times would it take before he got the message?
39. Hex
Rory had seen the progress of time throughout his long years guarding the Pandorica, and he had seen how people's opinions of the box had formed and changed and grown… but the one belief that stayed true for centuries was that the box was cursed, and that was the one comment that put him in danger of becoming a useless lump of plastic whenever he felt the urge to defend the box – defend Amy – from slander.
40. Spill
"Oi, time to talk, bow-tie man," Amy said, "why have we come to see my old psychiatrist and why are we giving her a bushel of apples?"
41. Potion
"What ever gave you the cause to be worried, Amy?" the Doctor asked as he downed the flask's contents in one gulp and fell off the balcony ledge.
42. Wanting
Time can be rewritten… it was a powerful idea, one that held him entranced for many hours of contemplation, but thinking was all his concerned mind would allow him to do – after all, if he began toying with time, it wouldn't be long before he gave in to his own desires and wants, and some of those longings should never, ever be given hope to rise again.
43. Growth
For those who knew him for a lengthy period of time but did not see him every day, their favourite question was "Don't you ever change?" – to which he would mysteriously smile and continue on with the problem at hand.
44. Professor
"Of course I'm a qualified teacher, I'm a Doctor, and all Doctors are teachers, or is it the other way around… or maybe that's only if the professor has the right qualification then they become doctors – you humans are so confusing…"
45. Castle
The castle crowned the top of the hill, its majestic towers shining in the moonlight, its spectacular grandeur dominating everything around it – naturally, it was the last thing the Doctor was interested in as he sauntered down the hill towards the curious village in the castle's shadow.
46. Smoke
"Why is it," Rory said, coughing as they sprinted down the hall through the swirling smoke, "that whenever we go somewhere, you feel the need to blow it up or set it on fire or somehow just wreck it beyond all repair?"
47. Always
Two thousand years – it didn't seem that long because she had been unconscious for pretty much all of it, but Amy knew how exactly long Rory had waited for her… and after that, there was nowhere she could possibly be except with him, forever.
48. Invocation
"Ingres est kobele nam iste faran hobele – oh, who am I kidding, none of these silly chants actually work – I'm the Doctor and I'm not going to be threatened by words on a page that can… that can… that can apparently cause smoke to rise out of nowhere, or did someone's shoes just catch fire?"
49. Demise
Amy knew that it would come to an end, one day – it was a fact she could not ignore – but even so, she dreaded it… after travelling in time and space, what back home could possibly compare?
50. Portrait
People across time and space had many records of him, but the Doctor never recorded his own image for himself, no pictures, no photos… perhaps that was the way with a man accustomed to regeneration and change – image meant very little in the long run because there would always be a time when he would look different.
fin