Doctor Who: Timekeeper

I would love to write Doctor Who for a few years. Just saying.

I hope you enjoy this sample, the full 5000 word story is up on ao3.

The Doctor has been retired. It’s been a long eternity of saving worlds and resetting universes. Finally, it’s the Doctor’s turn to just sit back, relax, and watch the ends of the worlds.

Lira, officially Lambda-3, trudged hot and sweaty through underbrush, and like the rest of Green Team was far too somber for a zookeeper after a successful expedition. She was proud to say she led the best team of keepers on the preserve. On this trip to the Jungle Island of Vbaath, they had successfully captured representatives of every species within the preserve’s catalogs and preparations for relocation were well underway. Where they were relocating to was the open question.

She slapped at a high pitched buzz in her ear, smashing the mosquito against the sweat-slicked bronzed skin of her neck. The shower when she got back to the ship was going to be heavenly. If there was one silver lining to the Preserve losing its funding and its planet being sold to space miners was that the mosquitos would be annihilated along with the rest of the planet’s biosphere.

In an effort to fulfill their final duty, the Preserve had begun collection efforts believing a new home could be found by the time they were done. They had not. Lira had listened in to the reports when the communication satellite was in position above Vbaath, growing more and more anxious each night as Lead Lambda broadcast the news. No government, no church, no titan of industry, nor any lord most ancient and noble wanted to take on the expense of caring and feeding for even two members of fifty thousand different animal species extant only here on the Planetary Preserve. And then there was the matter of what happened to the zookeepers.

…

Continued on archiveofourown.org.