Doctor Who - Metroid - Crash Course in Hospitality
The intermittent beep seeped its way into the dream she shouldn’t have been having. Echoing through caves on a planet which no longer existed. Catching the attention of an explorer who might’ve been. “Gray Voice?” She found herself asking with the wistfulness of exhaustion, barely above a whisper. “Old Bird?”
“Um, it’s the Doctor, unfortunately.”
That’s how the dream ended, kicked away with a rush of instincts and training, getting her head straight and body alert. No more caves. No more solitude. Why was it so bright? Why was there a beeping? Why was there a doctor? What happened? Destination. Space Pirates. Damage. Crash. Injured. Dying. Beacon. Cryosleep. Beacon? Beacon! Head cluttered, hand raised grabbing onto the doctor’s wrist, vision clearing and making out a head of jaw-length blonde hair, pierced left ear and a smile, animated even as it held itself in place. Why were they smiling? They were being attacked by a galactic bounty hunter? How would anyone stay smiling with a cast iron grip threatening to break their wrist?
“It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt you. It’s okay. I’m the Doctor. Found your ship,” she began, without a hint of registering the hold on her wrist. “Caught onto your beacon, in fact, lucky that. Might’ve missed you entirely if we hadn’t stopped off for repairs. It’s okay. Now-” she raised her free hand, showing it to be completely bare besides the looseness of her silver coat’s sleeve, dropping down to reveal a lanky arm “-you’ve got nothin’ to worry about with these fiddly digits, but if it’s fine with you, I’ll step right back to give you room and we can start fresh and proper. Okay?”
There was something almost comical to that. The smile. The offer. The pleasantness. The room. Medical bay. She was in a medical bay. Nothing fancy, but letting herself stare past her captor/host told her enough. That would explain its brightness. Artificial. Lowlight. Ship. Visor. Where were they when she needed them most?
“Can I have my wrist back?”
Hire hand? Space Pirates? Galactic Federation? False sense of security? Let my guard down? Taken down without a fight? Unarmed? I got careless.
“Please.”
Space Pirates would never be this creative.
Her grip loosened yet even loosened, the Doctor remained in place, as if snatching it out would cause more trouble than it would be worth.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she assured with a softer tone. “If I had any intention of causing you harm, it would’ve been the opportune time while you were in cryosleep? It’s quite bad of me to have even considered that, isn’t it?”
Definitely not them. Definitely not anyone I know. Her fingers opened further and the Doctor, slowly, withdrew her wrist and, for the first time, showed mild discomfort, rubbing at the bone white patches of skin around the wrist.
She waited for something to prove her deduction wrong, a sudden flaring of movement, something aimed in her direction and the grin to devolve into a sadistic embodiment of success. It never came. This doctor continued to rub at her wrist, working out the first spark of guilt before they met their blue eyes.
As if noticing something they uttered “Oh, right!” and took several steps back until they bumped into a counter littered with medical equipment. “Sorry. It's a bit distracting. Not used to these wrists,” she offered, again raising one as if to make the point clear as possible, still marked by her grip, and again smiling.
They looked at them, took in everything they could, how tall they were (roughly twenty centimetres shorter than herself), their style of dress (she put the most extreme modifications to her Power Suit to shame with the mismatching qualities, but like that, it came together as though it were always meant to be), the way they held themselves (facing them, hands on the counter, leaning back, rhythmically tapping their left foot) and their surroundings. A bare bones medical bay, though bare bones was a massive upgrade from a damaged cryopod incapable of providing for her medical needs. Her injuries! Why hadn’t she noticed?
She was up, world thrown into alignment, with a mild ache rather than searing pain which had beckoned off into cryosleep.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” she could practically hear them wanting to come to their side and explain, but like she promised, she holds herself back, anchored to the counter. “It’s a patch-job. Your scans were off so the system couldn’t calibrate to your biometrics. And well,” there it is, the tone shifting ever so slightly into a seamless ramble mixed with trying to bridge the gap, “it’s invasive to use nanites on anyone so Tarak Ink had to do. Takes longer to heal, but the results speak for themselves.” She sounded almost pleased as if trying to make a sale yet it was sincere.
Looking down at herself, she sees the dried red paste, smoothed to such a degree it could be mistaken for skin if not the distinct outline where it was chipped and cracked along the edges, over the wound down her left side, itself held together with a series of stitches just visible through the coverage. She ran her hands over it, fingers tracing the barest bump of the thread itself.
“The stitching should dissolve along with the paste once everything’s healed, clever how it knows to do that. Three or four days. Tops,” she explained, then did a rap of her fingers against the counter’s edge and chirps up without missing a beat. “You gotta be starving after all this? Tea. Biscuits. Protein bars.” Her words tapped off as if she was quite aware of what the last bit implied.
Crash. Ship. Beacon. Curious. Rescue. They would’ve found their way onto her ship and why wouldn’t they have looked around before finding her.
They looked at her, one hand still resting on the covered wound, still holding back on a final judgement. Definitely not Space Pirates. Can’t be working in an official or unofficial capacity for the Galactic Federation. There’s always a tell with them. A certain way they act around me. Not a merchant given the region of space. An explorer? The thought hung for several seconds in her mind before she put it to the one side.
Out of the blue they made an O face. “Oh! No. Sorry. I should’ve made sure-” without missing a beat she pulled her hands away from the counter and began to sign with the odd pat of hands connecting -to ask if you can hear me or not. Not done this in a long while. Might be a bit rusty. Universal Standard? Learned this from the- She stopped, hands twirling like the gears in a clock with the same energy as her voice. Chozo. Bit of an issue with the-
No. No. It can wait. Not now. “S...S...Samus,” she croaked with a stutter, voice straining to even be heard as a whisper, causing the Doctor’s hands to hold their place like an orchestra waiting for the conductor. I can hear. Damage to my vocal cords. She signed, then pointed at her throat where, as the Doctor squinted to see, the faintest scar, rough and long, stretched across it, then she was back to signing, though slow and apprehensive: You are….good at this.
“Gotta make things a bit easier in the universe for everyone. Never hurts to know a bit. Can’t be verbal all the time,” she said, and thoughtfully stared at Samus before saying more. “Tea?”
Who drank tea in this day and age? This doctor it seemed. Definitely not Space Pirates, she thought and raised her hands. Yes.
This one's an oldie but a goodie of a fanfic I wrote and posted years ago (2020) on AO3.
It's the team-up/crossover no one but me asked for, Samus Aran and the 13th Doctor.
The first chapter in a story I never wrote much more than this and a few notes. I wished I'd committed to it at the time instead of just leaving it to gather dust.
Once I got a few other things done and dusted I'll come back to this with a redux version of the first chapter and go from there.
Things that would be different in a redux of the idea? Yasmin Khan would be there from the get-go (the original idea didn't include her at all and I feel rather bad for having done that). Samus would have both arms. Post-Dread. Originally this was written taking place post-The Timeless Children and having the Doctor be travelling solo after escaping imprisonment (this was before Revolution of the Daleks aired and showed how that escape happened).
All art by sapphicbump.bsky.social (a wonderful artist who you should follow wherever you can - here, bluesky, tumblr, not twitter - and support them on Patreon).
Samus Aran's design in the artwork is based on a version drawn by sarracenian.bsky.social (go follow them there and support them on Patreon). His take on her character is top-tier.
