#ruby sunday imagine

[jamiedc-they-them]

Rest (Platonic)

Summary: Travelling the universe is something you adore, with your sister and newfound best friend, but old demons still haunt you, no matter what...

Notes: Bad headspace, needed a comfort fic and it turned into a vent fic I'm sorry :))) Also in this, R is Nb and Aroace, but it barely plays in. So do substitute what you wish :))))) topics covered in the case of trigger: Depression; Suicidal Ideation; Premature Birth; survivor guilt.

You couldn't remember the name of the system you were in, but it looked breathtaking. a shimmering horizon. It reminded you of your favourite book series, Dune, with the number of stories going on at once, and yet the small scale it seemed to have in such a vast galaxy. That, and the beauty of the shimmer of the sun as it ran off the planet, this one being a shade of red instead. It was odd, how despite the distance things seemed to rhyme. It reminded you of one of the things you heard the Doctor say:

"No job. No boss..." Yeah, that was you, but not by choice. You were looking. Looking with all you had in you. Ruby used to joke with you. "you're putting in a full-time effort to at least be paid for it."

You leant your head on the Tardis door, sighing. You wish you had the freedom he had, and yet you were human and tired. So, very tried.

"Hey," you jumped at the sudden voice. Turning, you saw the Doctor. He smiled at you, "you alright over here, babes?"

You snorted at the nickname. Your asexual-aromantic nature, along with just how your brain worked in a desperate attempt to fit in with society, made you read it the wrong way when he first used the nickname. He, seemingly with second nature, spoke to you about it. He was open, that was one of the many things you loved about him. He was open. You could go to him about anything and everything. And you did. You, him, and Ruby had good chats on your adventures, sometimes just having a picnic and talking. Hell, he was the one who helped you feel at home in your gender expression as a non-binary person, showing you some dresses to wear. Whatever you wanted to wear on the day, he was there to help. Ruby helped with a bit of makeup when you wanted it, and the three of you became inseparable.

But still, all this running around. Ruby had already gone to bed. Yet, here you were, mind still running amok.

"Can I ask you something?" you ask. The Doctor nods, leaning against the other door, his full attention is on you, "do you ever sleep?"

He smiles, part of him knows you're joking, but it doesn't fully meet his eyes. How can he read you so well? Are you that predictable?

He looks out at the system you're in as well, "I do," he says, "should see me on that console some days. Just out like a light," he even clicks his fingers to emphasise the point. You hum.

He then turns serious, "But I do. Don't worry. I mean, it took 15 generations, but I do rest, Y/N. Just, the hyperactive mind sometimes," he taps his head, "always onto the next thing, you know?"

You nod, not meeting his eyes and looking out at the system again.

"Ruby ever tell you about how I came to be in this world?"

The Doctor shook his head, "she didn't," he said, "but I always felt she thought that it wasn't her place to. I never wanted to pry."

You nod, appreciative of your two friends, "Premature. Didn't weigh much at all, like a pound or so, can't remember UK measurements for babies," you smile, "but yeah, not a lot at all."

The Doctor nods, smiling a bit at your humour, but stays silent as he lets you continue, "Some of the kids on my ward didn't make it...and I just, I don't know. With all we've seen, you know? Fate and all that? With Ruby's snow and everything...maybe it's like, like - I don't know, sorry," you put your face in your hand. Your hand goes into a fist, and you knock it on your head a few times.

"Hey. Hey, no," The Doctor says, voice gentle but having a bit of firmness to it, as he pauses your movements, "it's ok," he says, "take your time. I'm here," he puts your hand to his chest, and you can feel the two hearts beating, "I'm listening," he promises, "I'm right here. Take all the time you need."

You don't even clock the accidental pun. You just look at the eyes of your best friend. How you've grown to care and love this man in such a space of time, you don't know, but you have grown attached to him, and him to you. His earnest gaze, love of life and all around him, and time he makes for you and himself, you think it is. Someone who just has this comforting aura around him and how he exudes it to all who need it.

You don't deserve -

"Hey," he says again, dragging you out of your mental hell, "I'm here, Y/N."

"I just -" You can feel the emotions inside of you - they may not always come out externally, but here they are. Tears, you can feel the tears pricking at your vision, "why did I make it, you know?"

The Doctor softens. His gaze went from concerned, to protective, to loving, to sadness. The emotions all dance around each other at once, then coalesce.

Physically, that comes in as a hug.

"Oh, honey," he says, hand going to your head, "I may have met many a human, but none like you. They're all unique people in their way, and I am so, so, sorry that one way that you are is with this pain."

"Who's in pain?" a tired question is asked. You both part, seeing Ruby rubbing her eyes and stretching. Her eyes are still shut, and she's wearing some pyjamas she found in the wardrobe.

She locks eyes with The Doctor first, a silent moment of communication passing by in an instant, before she looks at you:

"What's wrong, Y/N?"

"I, uh -" you stutter. The Doctor puts a hand on your shoulder. He feels you shake under it.

Ruby softens as well, "oh, sweetheart," she says, holding out her hands, "why don't we take a seat, yeah? All of us?"

The Doctor looks at you: your call.

You sniffle a bit, before nodding. Before you move, you put a hand to The Doctor's, giving a squeeze. You move to your sister. He shuts the doors.

Ruby takes your hands, giving them a soft squeeze, before sitting with you on a sofa that the Tardis had recently added to itself near the console. You had passed out a few times on there, and it (or she? you weren't sure how to refer to the TARDIS) created it for you.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

"Oh, no, don't apologise," Ruby says, trying to meet your eyes as you look everywhere but your sister, "I'm not angry at you. Not ever. Not with this, especially. I'm not expecting you to just be ok with what happened."

"Trauma never fully goes away," The Doctor says, crouching down near you and putting a hand on your knee.

"It feels like it should though, right?" You argue, "You said that, like, you're the one who is more open."

The Doctor smiles a soft one, "I am," he says, "but that doesn't mean it just goes away. It never does. It lingers. What I'd say though," he says, "is it's leaning on people and talking about it that can help you take a step forward if you ever stumble. It can manifest in different ways and feelings."

"It's just --" you look at Ruby, her face falling more at the pain in your eyes, "you're trying to solve your birth mother's identity. And" you look to The Doctor, "you have your pain. I just - I don't want to add to that."

The two best friends look at each other, before you. Ruby holds you tightly to her. The Doctor sits next to you on the sofa, hugging you as well.

"Oh, love," Ruby says, "I'll say it as many times as needed, you're never a burden. Ever. We've always got time for you. And" she pushes back a bit - The Doctor with his hands around your shoulders - and puts her hands on your cheeks, "you are always going to be my sibling. And you are always going to be one of the best people I know, ok?"

You bury yourself in Ruby's shoulder. She kisses your head before holding you tightly.

The Doctor and her meet eyes. They'll make good on this promise.

You pull away from Ruby, the pair having a hand on your back.

"I'm tired," you say. Despite the meaning going both ways, given the way you rub at your eyes, they can tell which way the pendulum swings right now.

"Understandable," The Doctor says in a non-judgemental tone. He looked at Ruby, and she nods.

"Here," The Doctor says, holding out a blanket. You take it. You then notice that he's given a blanket to Ruby as well and holds his one.

"What -" you sniffle, "what are you doing?"

"Sleeping here, of course," Ruby says.

You look between the two, "Guys, no -"

"This is your safe space," The Doctor says, "and I love that. We're your safe space, too. I know you're tactile and love deeply. So, why not combine the two?"

You chuckle. You don't know what to say.

You look to Ruby, and she just nods, before getting up.

Ruby lays down near the sofa on one side, The Doctor on the other.

"Thank you," you say.

"Always," they say in sync.

You all rest. Or find it, in the end.

The Doctor is right, the trauma may never fully leave you. But this is your safe space. It holds value to you and has helped you both find yourself and through many a crisis. And it always would.

As they always would.

[dandelionjack]

> new series release (space babies) coincided with the uk seeing the northern lights for the first time in years

> the devil’s chord coincided with paul mccartney’s long-missing hofner bass guitar being found, by a doctor who fan no less

> boom coincided with an actual meteor crash

> 73 yards is coinciding with a rise in bizarre supposedly-occult animal sacrifice rituals in britain (the folk horror part) and rishi sunak finally calling a general election (the political drama part)

> hypothesis: russell t davies has somehow managed to tune in to the universe’s divine frequency ??

> conclusion: messing with the forces of fate, cause&effect and coincidence, even if it’s for the pop culture franchise you’re showrunning, actually turns it into an egregore, but only if it’s been going for long enough (sixty fucking years to the dot) and watched by enough people (tens of millions). which it has

> ergo, postscriptum: television magick is real and is being unintentionally performed by the creators + audience of the world’s silliest science fiction show

> /jk. unless?

[starsgambit]

they LEFT rogue there. again. now the doctor has regenerated and?????? justice for my boy rogue???? He’s stuck in superhell AND his boyfriend is GONE. they’re just gonna abandon the gay storyline???? are they going to make it heterosexual???? dont get me wrong, i’m excited to see what billie piper will bring to the table but this season finale was just abrupt and disappointing.

[thetorturedlovergirl]

Now that The Doctor exists in Barbieland (you know… because they are releasing The Doctor and Ruby’s barbies) it’d be so funny if one of Barbie’s million jobs was to be a companion.

She def was an old companion of The Doctor Barbie and sometimes still travels with him.

[likemonstersinlove]

Anyone else got the impression the soundtrack just before the sutekh reveal was the same as the one in the sound of drums???

[cactiaintracist]

every new episode makes the headcannon that 14 and Donna are just chilling somewhere so much funnier.

Donna and 14 being suspiciously absent for years when everybody abandoned Ruby just thinking “not my problem” is funny

Now just imagine Donna and the Doctor sipping mojitos on a beach whilst Rose, Donna’s teenage daughter, is getting into all sorts of alien shenanigans with a freaking god of death at UNIT

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

plot twist: Ruby is the Master under chameleon arch

[thedrowsydoormouse]

So I’ve been doing a little bit of thinkin’ after the two new episodes of Who about Susan Twist and I had a lightbulb moment I haven’t really seen anyone else talking about just yet.

Spoilers ahead for Wild Blue Yonder, Church on Ruby Road, Space Babies, and the Devil’s Chord. Ok, onto the theory!

We all know Susan Twist is going to be more than just an Easter Egg, but I think everyone is taking the actress’s name too literally. She’s not playing Susan.

She’s The One Who Waits.

She’s there. Always in the background. On the periphery. Watching. Waiting. Because everything leads back to her.

And the first time we see her is in the scene that has the first major world shift in the episode that set up this entire plotline about invoking superstition at the edge of the universe and letting something through.

And who do we encounter pretty much immediately after? The embodyment of Play (Toymaker). And then a little later in we meet the embodyment of Music (Maestro).

Which raises the next part of my theory: What is The One Who Waits the embodyment of?

Death

Death just sits, and waits, and watches, biding their time because everything has its time and Death comes for everything in the end.

And every time we’ve seen her, things start going really wrong. In WBY, she was one of the last people we saw before the Tardis landed on the spaceship, Donna almost died, and the Doctor almost let a NotWe loose on the universe. In Ruby Road, she’s watching Ruby and her friends perform the same night they nearly get crushed by the giant snowman head. She was one of the crew in Space Babies who were forced to leave the station and abandon all those babies to die. And in Devil’s Chord she was in the cafeteria when Paul and John are talking to the Doctor and Ruby about music before getting angry and leaving which, had the Doctor not intervened, would’ve lead to literal nuclear winter.

I feel like too many people are focusing on just the previous lore from the past 60 years which, for any other context makes sense. But this isn’t your granny’s Doctor Who anymore. The tone shift started in WBY means we need to think outside the Blue Box (that’s bigger on the inside) to figure it all out and for once, I think being into SuperWhoLock may have finally paid off! The NotWes are shapeshifters. The Bogeyman was basically a thought form (tulpa). The literal baby eating, musical goblins. The Toymaker and Maestro are both functionally gods. And which god waits patiently in the background?

Death.

It’s not a perfect 1 to 1 with Supernatural but if you find the midpoint between the two everything starts to click into place.

The final Big Bad of the season is The One Who Waits which is Death and not even the Doctor can fully cheat death, they can just keep running. So in the end the Doctor doesn’t actually defeat Death. He just traps them or delays them enough to get away so he can just keep running.

(Also Mrs. Flood is just a normal human who’s past was changed by the Doctor. In the start of the episode, before the Doctor properly meets Ruby (I don’t count the encounter at the club) she has no clue what the Tardis is. But as soon as the thing happens on the roof her past changed to include an encounter with the Doctor when she was younger (I think it’s going to be the episode with the slug things we’ve seen in the trailers because there’s a girl with blonde bangs in a season where coincidence is the driving force behind everything so it has to mean something) which is why her entire personality shifts by the end and she becomes nicer and suddenly knows about the Tardis and knows that Ruby has to go with the Doctor. She’s not Susan or Ruby’s mom. She’s just someone they save along the way.) 

[time-lord-medical-malpractice]

Ruby Sunday, I know your last boyfriend turned out to be super evil, but I'm available next weekend, and I don't have a reactionary podcast.

[harleybird]

Ruby's Song

Doctor Who | The Devil's Chord

Bonus window scene:

[monochromemoomin]

WAIT I HAD A THOUGHT

if the TARDIS has been having sutekh related tummy troubles ever since wild blue yonder does that mean that the 14th doctor’s TARDIS is also haunted??

[roxannepolice]

OK, but. the Toymaker being the child of the god of death and not wanting to play with them.

NO, MOM, YOU CAN'T JUST KILL OFF ALL NPCS, YOU CAN'T SELL THE LOOT THIS WAY!

Also, consider the grandchild Maestro.

Grandpa, what the fuck was that thing about showing up on Mozart's door and ordering a Requiem?

[veshialles]

I don't want any spoilers bc I'm waiting to watch with my bestie when she returns home from her trip, but I'm kinda dying to know why there's apparently a scene where Ruby and the Doctor are sitting in what appears to be scrap TARDIS parts from previous "desktop themes"??

the chair from 11th's coral tardis(?), a hexagon from 13th's TARDIS walls, and another that seems to be from lower levels of 11th/12th's console room??

[no-brain-just-good-omens]

i’m rewatching 15’s season can you imagine how donna would have reacted if the doctor started singing in front of her

[thehumanwiki]

I wonder what would happen if the Maestro from Doctor Who, who is music incarnate, knew about microtones. Like, if they saw this—

would they explode.

[faeleven]

7B - which had good ideas but suffered because Moff was too busy with the anniversary to edit - managed the revelation that the companion the Doctor believed was supernatural was actually an ordinary woman much much better, because the narrative was constantly pointing out that the Doctor’s fixation was both incorrect and unfair to Clara.

This was more like if Neville was revealed at the end to be the chosen one after following Harry Potter for seven books. You can’t lead the viewers to a conclusion, pull the rug from under them and then laugh at them for not getting it when they were never provided the dots to join.

happened to see this ask right after rewatching the bells of st john but yes exactly! 7b wasn't moffat's best work but he clearly had the conclusion planned out from the start and that was reflected in how the narrative treated clara and the doctor, whereas rtd was setting up something totally different from what he ended up doing. with clara, the doctor (and the audience to an extent) go in thinking she's some crazy, weird, impossible thing, but in 7b itself all the signs continually point to her being an ordinary human and the doctor just ignores that because of his fixation on her "mystery". the exact opposite of s14 where no one thought ruby was anything but human until RTD started surrounding her with weirdness and specifically drawing attention to it. the message he's sending to fans is "don't try to analyze my writing or predict* where I'm going with things, because I don't care about thematic consistency and will just pull plot points out of thin air"

*caveat that I don't necessarily think a twist should be predictable, but I do think that looking back after everything is revealed, you should be able to feel that it was done with intention and not by spinning a wheel.

it's hard to have any real analysis of this series because it doesn't have that sense of being crafted intentionally. some episodes in it were good, but as a whole it's incoherent. any discussion of its themes or ruby's character is necessarily either extremely shallow or driven by fan theories that have taken what little the writing gave us and run with it.

RTD says he wants to provoke reactions, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but I do think he's going about it all wrong. if he made something that had genuine depth and was thought-provoking, fan discussion would naturally follow AND would keep going for a long time. instead he's chosen to chase after moment-to-moment shock value and soundbite reactions, and as a result I don't see this new version of doctor who having much lasting popularity.