#the not things

[trashboatprince]

Trust no one, not even yourself.

My absolutely amazing friend @doberart did this beautiful commission piece of Fourteen and the Not-Doctor! Thank you so much, Dober! They look fantastic! <3

(Psst! Commission her! She does such cool art!)

[beelzeebug]

I love it when a creature pretends to be human but gets it very wrong because I too am a creature that's pretending to be human and getting it very wrong

[swarm-of-bees67]

watching Midnight makes me think about how similar the Not Things are similar to the Midnight Entity. They both prey on the doctor's weakness of being curious, preying on the fact he can't stop thinking/talking. I don't think they're of the same species but thematically similar. I just think it's cool.

[carveredlunds]

something about the way the villains in the specials were all alone. the meep is the last of its kind, the not-things had each other but they didn't understand being alive and in physical forms, and the toymaker is a unique eldritch being. something about how each of the villains were isolated, working for their own purpose. the meep wanted to rule the universe, the not-things wanted to reach earth to copy the life forms there, and the toymaker wanted to wreak havoc on humanity. they were each alone, and none of them took 14's offers of help or alliance. but, in the end, when all the monsters were defeated, 14's happy ending was not to be by himself, as he ended his run the first time, but to choose family and home and love. this is not a well-articulated thought at all, but there's something there.

[ofpineapplesanddawns]

Rewatched Wild Blue Yonder and just... gosh, I love the Not-Things, they are horrifying, a villain that either wears your face, knows you inside and out, or both. I love when the Doctor is forced to fight themselves in some way, like with the Dream Lord from Amy's Choice, or when the Second Doctor faced that evil man that shared his face.

So, I decided to write up a little thing with Fourteen and their Not-Thing confronting one another during the running about before all four are in the same room together.

This takes place after Fourteen ran into the Not Donna.

As always, I use they/them for Fourteen for personal choices. The Not Fourteen uses them as well.

On with the fic!

--

They felt too tight under their own skin, too angry and hurt by that confrontation with... with the Not Donna.

She played the Doctor like a fiddle, and oh how they sang their mournful song of sorrow and guilt, because they thought she'd hear it and understand. No, only their Donna could, not this copy. Not this monster that laughed as their misery, played with their emotions, got them talking.

She knew about the Flux, about the guilt that still ate at them, even now, even with this face.

The Doctor had screamed and raged, kicking and throwing a fit, like a child, when they had escaped. They still felt the urge to continue, but they needed to keep going, before the Not Donna or the monster with their face found their Donna.

There was a shifting sound, a door opening, and the sounds of old trainers on the metal floors.

"Oh." Came the voice of an old self. "It's you, not her."

"Better that way." The Doctor frowned, turning to see themself, standing at the other end of the room.

Well, standing wasn't... the right word.

The Doctor watched as the stolen form contorted and snapped itself from the uncomfortable position it had been in when entering the small space, before the Not Doctor was standing up right. They cracked their neck in a casual way, and the Doctor frowned.

"Your mind games of deception won't work on me. Hard to do that when you're wearing my face."

"A face you still haven't figured out why you're parading around again." Said the Not Doctor, so casually. Even the stance they put themself in was, hands in the pockets, rocking on their feet. The Doctor noticed they were missing their tie, odd.

Then they watched as it shifted and formed out of their neck and shirt.

"Ah, thank you." The copy said, smiling, too many teeth showing. "I nearly forgot about it. Took it off to trick your idiot friend, shocked she noticed it vanished off the floor when she was rambling and rambling away about some nonsense."

The Doctor felt their eye twitch. "Don't talk about her like that."

"'s what you think, when she goes on and on about whatever dumb human thing is going on in her life."

"No, I don't."

"You doooo..." They sang song, spinning on their heel before facing them again, grinning. "I know what you really feel."

"She's my best friend, I love her."

The smile faltered. "But not enough to tell her the truth about yourself. About what happened in those fifteen years you were gone. Or was it two hundred. A thousand? Over a billion years?"

The Doctor frowned deeply, fists clenched at their sides as they watched the Not-Thing stroll around the room as they spoke. "She might remember some things, but she doesn't know the blood that stains your hands. All those lives you ruined because you couldn't stop playing games with time and space. With. Your. Friends."

"Stop it."

"The Time Lord Victorious, do you think she'd be your friend if she knew you damaged a fixed point? After you wouldn't let her change Pompeii?"

"Stop it. Stop it, right now."

"Or how you ruined the lives of the Ponds by constantly interfering? Couldn't just leave well enough alone?"

The Doctor's teeth clenched. "They were my friends, I wanted to be part of their lives just as they wanted to be part of mine."

"They lost their daughter because of you. You led to her being kidnapped and eventually killed."

"She lived a long and beautiful life, I made sure she had good memories! We had twenty four years together!"

The Not Doctor was smiling still. "You took a young girl's life and turned it into a puzzle and then a game. Clara was normal, perfectly normal, but you couldn't let go of the fragments."

The Doctor swallowed. "S-she told me off for it, I stopped chasing the mystery."

"After it was solved. And you kept her around, when she wanted to leave. You couldn't let her go. And then she died. Stuck forever in one point in time. Especially now because the Time Lords can't fix it. Thanks to you."

They hated this, they hated this, stop, stop!

"And Bill, poor Bill! She loved you like a grandparent! A mentor! And then there was... oh, what did we call them? The Fam?" The teeth were pointed, the smile horrifying.

"They weren't ours! They were my family!"

They stopped pacing and turned to look at them, tilting their head unnaturally. "Did you ever stop to think that if you hadn't gotten them involved in your adventures, all of them would be perfectly fine, living their lives? Grace wouldn't have died."

The Doctor looked away.

"And Yaz? What about her? The heartbreak in that poor girl's eyes when she realized that you were leaving her be-"

"SHUT UP!" The Doctor had moved and there was a sharp pain in their knuckles. A small spark of gold went across them, the last lingering threads of regenerative energy.

The Not-Thing was on the ground, clutching their cheek. They looked at the Doctor with such cold, dark eyes, did they look like this to people? To those that feared them?

A smile came back to the Not Doctor. "I know you so well, Doctor. You can't stand thinking about the truth, can you? Knowing that I'm just voicing your thoughts aloud..."

"Doctor! Where are you!?" Came an echoing shout from somewhere nearby.

The Doctor looked at their counterpart and snarled. "I've dealt with worse than the likes of you, and you know it. Mind games are just a cheap trick."

And then they ran, leaving behind the creature wear their face, using their voice to hurt them.

And they knew that the thing was aware of how they really felt about the truth.

--

I am such a sucker for Fourteen angst. :)

[pizzaboat]

I'll now headcanon that the monster from Midnight was just a not thing. Cause they're formed on the edge of creation and that edge is constantly pushing out-

Maybe it was created when that planet didn't exist and nothing had formed there?

Also, can not things really die? They're nothing. Do they have traditional mass? They can turn into anything and I wonder how vulnerable they really are to damage

The sun, an explosion? Are the really dead? Who knows.

[clairedelune-13]

You know, I see a lot of people comparing WBY with Midnight but its also got something in common with Flatline.

An unknown species that gains information through mimicry, or some form of it.

The Boneless are just as creepy as the Not-Things cuz they eventually grow smart enough to almost win.