Beyond the Roundels

Title: Better Left Unsaid
Author: lost_spook
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 651
Characters/Pairings: Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart/Liz Shaw
Notes/Warnings: None.
Summary: There are some things neither of them need to say.

For jjpor in the 500 Prompts Meme: #402: You mean that much to me / And it’s hard to show - Brig/Liz.

***

“Miss Shaw!” barked the Brigadier, practically into her ear, before he startled her further by tugging her towards him.

Liz opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she thought of such manhandling, but stopped as a green energy bolt shot past her. She could feel the heat of it on her back. She had, she realised, come very close to being vaporised, not something she’d had on the agenda for this morning.

The Brigadier steadied her, and then drew back slightly, a careful movement that was perfectly explicable to Liz, much as she stepped back from him with a not entirely grateful, “Thank you, Brigadier.”

“Miss Shaw, this is a battlefield, and I suggest you –”

She shoved a piece of paper into his hands. “The Doctor sent me to tell you that he’s worked out a way of de-activating the Hrels’ broadcast, but he needs more time to get a device ready to counter-act it.”

“I see,” said the Brigadier. “Thank you, Miss Shaw.”

Liz couldn’t help herself. “Besides, it’s not a battlefield, it’s a tennis court. Well, it was until half an hour ago.”

“Whatever you want to call it, you should keep well away from it – tell the Doctor to come himself next time!”

Liz raised an eyebrow, though she’d learned from her error enough to be keeping as close to the fence as she could now. “Let’s be honest, Brigadier, I’m far more expendable than the Doctor.”

“Nonsense!” said the Brigadier. “And if that’s all, Miss Shaw, then I suggest you go back to helping him.” Then he hesitated, and asked, “How much time does he need?”

Liz had wondered that herself, but the Doctor could be infuriatingly imprecise for such a brilliant scientist. “He said a few more minutes.”

“Very well,” said the Brigadier, moving forward again, as Liz ran back towards their temporary HQ in the nearby sports hall. It wouldn’t have been worth stopping there just to say that she understood only too well what the Doctor’s few minutes could mean to the men – even to the Brigadier. She turned back halfway, watching him already off shouting orders at his men. She pulled a face and then hurried off in search of the Doctor. He at least had a use for her, most of the time.

Arriving at the makeshift lab, she caught sight of herself in a mirror and nearly gave a shriek. That beam had singed the ends of her hair! Really, she thought, it wasn’t something a top Cambridge scientist ought to expect in the course of her day. Well, she amended with scrupulous fairness, not unless she was more than usually careless about safety in the lab.

Then she thought to herself that she would complain to the Brigadier about it, providing they all survived, and smiled at the idea.


“Miss Shaw,” said the Brigadier, much later when they had survived, and she did try taxing him with her complaint. “Are you seriously proposing that UNIT should foot your hairdressing bill?”

Liz tugged at a strand of her hair. “Well, look at what you’ve done to it.”

“It looks perfectly fine to me.”

She glared. “Oh, you would say a thing like that!”

“Well, I don’t know what you expected me to say,” said the Brigadier, with rather too much perception for her peace of mind. “It’s been a very long day – I suggest you go home.”

Liz hung back in the door. “Too long all round, I’d say,” she agreed, more soberly. “Maybe I could buy you a drink?”

“Miss Shaw?”

She shrugged. “Well, you did save my life earlier, didn’t you?”

“Did I?” he said, at his most bland, and then he walked out of the door ahead of her. “Thank you for the offer, but best not. Paperwork that won’t wait – you know how it is.”

Liz gave a short, rueful smile. “Oh, yes. I do.”

***