Narnia crossover bunny

[curuchamion.livejournal.com]

I have a whole lot of plot bunnies collected, but I haven't time to post them all tonight. However, this one is long enough to warrant its own post anyway.

Username: curuchamion
Era (if any): Fourth Doctor/Narnia crossover
Characters/Pairings (if any): Fourth Doctor; Puddleglum, Aslan
Plot Bunny Summary: Where did Marsh-Wiggles come from? Gallifrey!

Any Other Notes: This is because Tom Baker played Puddleglum on the BBC's "Chronicles of Narnia" miniseries in 1990. When I started watching Who, I was quite boggled by this fact, and began trying to dream up an explanation. This fic fragment is the result - except I've got no idea what happens after the point I've gotten to!



An unearthly groaning resounded outside Puddleglum's wigwam.

The old Marsh-wiggle frowned. No living creature could be making that sound, surely? Even on his long-ago journey to the far North, when he had helped to rescue Prince Rilian, he'd never heard such a noise.

Grumbling possible and gloomy explanations such as echoes of distant battle or previously-unheard-of weather conditions, he poked his head out of the wigwam. He saw absolutely nothing unusual, so he went all the way outside, still grumbling.

The noise grew even louder. Then two things slowly appeared, fading into view as if they had been shrouded in thick fog, although the day was clear and sunny.

One of the things was a person - a Lion - whom Puddleglum recognized at once, though he had never met him before. "My Lord Aslan!" he gasped, dropping to his knees.

"Arise, Puddleglum," Aslan purred. Puddleglum stood up and took off his steeple-crowned hat. He didn't feel that it was exactly polite to be looking at the other thing that had appeared, instead of at Aslan, but he couldn't help himself. Meeting Aslan was at least something he had imagined before; seeing a large blue box, as tall as his wigwam though not quite as wide, appear out of thin air was completely outside his experience.

As the Marsh-wiggle stared, one side of the blue box opened - he could see now that that side was a door - and a tall man came out.

Puddleglum's pale eyes nearly popped out of his head. It was not the man's clothes that surprised him, though those were strange enough; except for his hair, this man looked exactly like Puddleglum himself!

Until he grinned, a wide and oddly dangerous-looking grin. "Hello," he said. "I'm the Doctor. You must be the fellow Aslan was telling me about. Puddleglum, is it?" And he put his hand out to be shaken.

Puddleglum shook the hand and nodded. Between his awe at meeting Aslan and his astonishment at his grinning double with the blue box, he was completely tongue-tied.

"Be seated, both of you," said Aslan. They sat down, Puddleglum cross-legged, the Doctor lounging against the side of his box, and Aslan between them.

"Do you know, Puddleglum, how the Marsh-wiggles first came to Narnia?"

"No, Lord," Puddleglum answered. "Weren't we created with the Talking Beasts and the Dwarfs on the First Day? Although," he mused, his usual talkativeness back now that he actually had something he understood to talk about, "I've never heard Marsh-wiggles mentioned in the tales of the Beginning. Jackdaws, elephants, flying horses, yes, but no Marsh-wiggles. I'd think it perfectly natural if we'd simply been overlooked..." He was babbling a little from nervousness.

Aslan shook his mane. "No," he rumbled. "You were not overlooked. Like the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, the Marsh-wiggles came originally from another world." He indicated the Doctor with a sweep of his head. "From the Doctor's world. Doctor, tell us the tale of the first Renegades of your House."

"Er, yes," said the Doctor, rather startled. "Um... a little background first, if I may?"

Aslan nodded.

The Doctor was silent for a few seconds, gathering his thoughts. "This blue box is a TARDIS," he began awkwardly. "It's like a... a ship... that sails among the stars. And through the web of Time. My people use them to travel all over the Universe - the world. All the worlds, and all the times."

He seemed a bit flustered, and Aslan and Puddleglum waited patiently for him to speak again.

"And we have lots of other technology - machines - tools and things that no one in your world has even begun to imagine. Anyway, ages and ages ago, in the days of Omega and Rassilon..." The Doctor shook his curly head. He would probably have done a much better job if he'd been able to tell the story the way he knew it, instead of having to rephrase everything.

"Ages ago, when the TARDISes and the other machines were just being invented, one of my people - a great-great-many-times-great-uncle of mine, in fact - decided that time travel was too dangerous a secret for anyone to know, even for us. He tried to persuade the others to destroy their time-travel machines and be content to travel only in space, but he failed. One of our..." The Doctor stopped again, trying to translate the story of Omega and the Eye of Harmony into something resembling Narnian terminology, then gave up. "Never mind. The point is, he failed. So he gathered some other people who felt the same way, and they left my world. That's all I know," he finished.

"They came to Narnia, in the years before the coming of the White Witch," Aslan told them. "They landed in these marshes, destroyed the ship that had brought them here, and swore to live as Narnians for the rest of their lives and raise their children to do the same."

"But..." Puddleglum began. He didn't quite know how to say it without sounding rude, but this tall man looked nothing like a Marsh-wiggle - shoes on his feet, curly hair on his head, no webbing on his hands. "How did they become Marsh-wiggles?" He waved his own webbed hands vaguely.

Aslan smiled. "The story of how the Gallifreyan Renegades became Marsh-wiggles is a long tale, and one that need not be told now," he said. "All you need to know is that since the day they landed, the Marsh-wiggles have served the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea faithfully in word and deed. They are as true Narnians as any who were created in the Beginning."

"But surely, Lord," Puddleglum said, "surely you didn't bring the Doctor all this way simply to tell me this story?"

"No," said Aslan, and there was a rumbling in his deep voice that seemed almost like a chuckle. "No, the Doctor is here to take you to another world. A brief visit only," he added. "He will explain everything on the way. Are you ready to leave?"

"If it's only a short trip, Lord," Puddleglum replied, standing up and dusting himself off. "I haven't packed anything - though there's little enough to pack--"

"Enter the TARDIS," Aslan told him, "and do not be frightened at what you will find there. The Doctor will return you here when you have finished."

"Finished what, Lord?" Puddleglum asked, but Aslan had vanished.