What kind of things? Interesting things? I love things. Ask anyone.

[themadmanwithabox]

There's a room here for everyone, Doctor.

Even him.

There's always the problem and the peril and the chance that one of their adventures takes them to somewhere dangerous. These days, it's practically written in the small print. Here, though, an inescapable hotel with terrible fears in each of the rooms where one is personalized for you like a very painful nightmare version of an individualized jammy dodger, well, that's not the usual fare.

Still, what's usual? He'll find a way out. He'll save the day for Amy's sake, for Rory's, for the others. It's just that as he's walking down the hall, there's a room. Right in front of him, a room numbered eleven and calling out to him. His feet are moving before he can even consciously make the decision and oh, that's clever, that's something he'd like to better understand when he isn't feeling the constant pull towards a simple little hotel room door. Monsters and devils can wait when there's a mysterious door involved. It pulls you. It calls to you in whispered voices. It wants you and who's the Doctor to ever deny?

It's a simple gold-polished handle. It's a painted door. It's room number eleven and it will contain the very worst of his fears. Geronimo. There's no hesitation when he opens the door to find out what's waiting for him, what could possibly frighten the Doctor so terribly that he brings on a monster, and finds...

Chicken.

There's chicken on spits turning around and around in a rotisserie and a kitchen surrounding them. He steps in and there's chicken. He steps back and he's back in the 1980's earth-styled hotel with supposedly no escape. Behind door number eleven, there's chicken. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he carefully hangs a 'do not disturb' sign on the door and follows the smell of barbeque wafting before him to explore why his worst fear appears to be the kitchen in yet another hotel.

Or maybe it's what Rita means about the halls changing. Maybe he's been banished to the bottom and has to work his way back up to the top. The Doctor whips out his sonic screwdriver and approaches the spinning chickens with severe suspicion, scanning them for alien life or maybe hidden nightmares? The trouble is, the scans reveal that they're chickens. Normal earth chickens.

Oh, and they're also quite tasty, according to the readings.

"And here I am surrounded by chickens with Casanova nowhere to be found. Typical," he remarks under his breath, thinking that'd be more than a debt repaid with one of these tasty things.

We can only be captains of our own souls.

[digyourman]

It was a tenuous acceptance, being in this place.

( mild spoilers )

A city boy all his life, Larry knew shit about plants. His mother had kept some sort of vine perched in a faded red pot on her kitchen windowsill, and that was where his expertise stopped. He'd never even been to the conservatory in Central Park. Yet when he'd visited the hotel offices and looked at the list of available jobs, his eye had kept jumping back to the landscaping crew. It felt wrong, somehow, to choose something that kept him inside all day, and his hands needed something to do. Not a distraction, a benediction.

That's how Larry Underwood, New York City born and bred, more accustomed to concrete than compost, was now outside beneath a blue sky with dirt caked under his fingernails and the sun at his back, packing soil around lavender plants in an English garden. Somewhere, Larry knew, the Judge approved.

It's all the same to me

[weighted_reality]

He presses play and he can hear the crescendo leaking out of Eames’ headphones as he slots himself into a corner of the elevator. One hand locks on the bar for stability and the other holds the detonator. Édith has begun to sing and Arthur begins to count. Even in dream time, the seconds don’t seem to follow the proper measure. His heart beats like a hummingbird’s but the music he can hear through the dream layers sounds even slower than it should be.

No, nothing from nothing. No. I regret nothing. Arthur translates in his head, taking measure through the words. None of the good, none of the bad. It’s all the same to me. Édith’s voice swells despite her lyrical indifference and Arthur takes the words as a promise, hoping  that this will work. He presses the button and distantly, he can hear explosions. The elevator shakes and he closes his eyes and hopes.

He falls in zero gravity, hits the floor. The elevator dings and Arthur opens his eyes, flooding with panic. This isn’t the truck falling into the river. He’s suddenly alone, half sprawled on the floor of a different elevator, watching the doors open into a lobby he doesn’t recognize. This isn’t his dream. Or Yusuf’s. Or Eames’. And this sure as hell isn’t the airplane.

Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong and Arthur can only assume he’s fallen into limbo.

He has to find a way out.