On the Hunt (Open):

[lucie_bleeding_miller]

This was seriously starting to bother her. Ever since she and the Doctor had arrived here, she'd barely seen him.

He looked different since they'd arrived. He wore different clothes -- no more of the poncy coat he'd been wearing in their previous adventures, and more of a... darker look. Shorter hair, too. And his attitude was... different. He was from somewhere in her future; he'd experienced things she hadn't yet.

And he was avoiding her. She was sure of it now. Whenever she thought she found him, he found some excuse to leave and ditch her, sometimes before she even showed up.

And as soon as she found him, she was going to kick his time-traveling tail almost as hard as she'd kick Q's if she saw him.

So she traveled the various portions of the Enterprise where she was allowed, peering in dark corners, trying to find her best friend: the infuriating ponce who kept avoiding her right now. Sure, both she and the Doctor tended to treat "forbidden" areas as "gentle suggestions" more than laws as a general rule, but she liked Picard so far, and was willing to obey his edicts for the time being. But if she couldn't find the Doctor soon, she'd start poking around wherever she could get to.

Comments

[tragic_optimist]

It must have been quite the sight, seeing the Doctor when she found him. He was in a place she may not have expected, but he was in a place that, in all honesty, wasn't too surprising a location.

The schoolroom was mostly absent of children as the older man was messing with the various educational computers, attacking them the way a starving man attacked a banquet meal. He had his sonic screwdriver out, occasionally poking at the machines until they gave some kind of satisfactory answer. He didn't even notice Lucie stalking in, so engrossed he was with what he was doing.

[lucie_bleeding_miller]

"Ahem!"

She made the single word into an accusation.

And then she waited, an impatient expression etched onto her face.

[tragic_optimist]

The Doctor doesn't react directly to the accusation. He continues to look directly at the handheld computer (Starfleet called it a PADD. The Doctor thought of it as either unintentional or a great creative pun on their part) while poking at it with his sonic.

"Hello Lucie. Don't mind me, I'm just reviewing how their universe works. Did you know they have no real equivalent to the Time Vortex?, Well, at least not one I can tell. But their technology is a good deal behind the Time Lords. Still, remarkable stuff. Faster than Light Drive just eighty years after your time!"

[lucie_bleeding_miller]

"Eh, yeah. Real fascinating, Doctor." She stepped forward, her tone still prickly. "Maybe you missed my 'Ahem'?"

[tragic_optimist]

"No. No, I indeed hadn't."

The Doctor sighed a bit. He had been avoiding this moment. Ever since they arrived here, meeting the other form of himself, his future companions, and his subsequent meetings with people like Guinan and Trunks...he's been avoiding his best friend.

His dead best friend. Who hadn't even witnessed the beginning of the end of their friendship. She didn't know about what the Daleks did to her planet. She didn't know about Susan and Alex. She didn't know about Auntie Pat.

And yet here she was. Alive again. With the worst memories still hanging about her like miasma.

"I think it's safe to assume this is no mere 'heya Doctor, howya been' meeting."

He didn't mean to let some menace and coldness slip into his voice. Honest.

[lucie_bleeding_miller]

She's never paid any attention to his menace and coldness before. She moved towards him, invading his space to look up at him closely.

"One? Never try my accent again. You're bleeding terrible at it." She raised a finger at him.

"Two? You want to tell me why you're avoiding me? I thought we were friends, Doctor!"

[tragic_optimist]

"I've been trying to learn. I need to get back to where, to when I belong. I need to get you back, and the more time I spend around you the more likely I'll let something loose that you aren't supposed to know."

Like you piloting a Dalek saucer to your death by nuclear detonation.

"I don't mean to be avoiding you, Lucie, but right now, it's better. Because you are my friend. And I'd rather not see you harmed by something you aren't supposed to know."

[lucie_bleeding_miller]

"Doctor, you've taken me to the future dozens of times. What's so different about this time? Sure, you know a bit about what might be coming for me. So what?"

Her expression grew concerned. "I didn't... say something to you in my future, did I? Something really daft, and that's why you're avoiding me?"

[tragic_optimist]

"What?"

All that anger that he was summoning to push her away, to stay away from his fool self before he let her know what happened? All that despair and fear and anger that he had stored away trying to make his best friend see that she made a poor choice in trusting him? It all evaporated with the words there. That she thought it could have been somehow *her*.

And then he began to chuckle.

"No, no, not at all, Lucie. It's more...I come from a later point in your timeline, and if I say anything it'll affect your personal timeline."

[lucie_bleeding_miller]

"Doctor, there's at least one other Doctor around here, and someone who traveled with yet another one... there are people from different universes right and left... time already looks like Swiss cheese after it was executed by firing squad."

She stepped closer. "I know it's bad, okay? But here's what I know: when the going gets tough, the tough gets the hell out of the way of the Doctor and Lucie Bleeding Miller. When we work together, we can save the world. You and me? We can save all of time. Maybe even let the other 'you' help just a little."

[tragic_optimist]

"Oh yes. That's the proper place for the universe to be, out of the way of The Doctor and Lucie Bleeding Miller, all right," The Doctor says, the edge coming back to his voice a bit, before his expression softens again.

"Perhaps we can. Get the other Doctors help, I mean. Also, the gentleman who is the friend of the other me. I tend to collect a very high caliber of acquiantences and friends, perhaps we can do this. Possibly give Q a proper tongue lashing about the temporal ethics of bringing the same Time Lord into a single place during multiple lives."

[tea_earlgrey_hot]

Well, that is a compliment indeed. There are some on his ship who would not even give that much quarter.

Nevertheless, her search has brought her at last to an area of the ship he happens to frequent, and given how unusual it is he finds himself curious as to her purpose here.

"Ms. Miller," he greets, inclining his head. "Are you looking for something?"

(We can say this thread is set before the one above, with the Doctor)

[lucie_bleeding_miller]

She peers around, not noticing him at first, but when he speaks up, she looks at him.

"Oh. Hi, Captain. Trying... to find the Doctor. Ah, I mean my Doctor, not the older one. Who's younger."

absolutely!

[tea_earlgrey_hot]

He closes his mouth, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out again in a haplessly amused sigh. He nods.

"Of course," he says, because the concept of older and younger and multiple versions of the same individual are now nearly commonplace in conversation. This is what his life's work has become. "Has he gone missing long?"

[lucie_bleeding_miller]

She sighed. "Well, truth be told, I've barely seen him since we got here." She bit her lip in frustration. "I think he's avoiding me."

[thelasttimelord]

The thing about time and memory and remembering, like clothing from wardrobe, is that it has a lot to do with choice. What you choose to pull out and what you choose to put away. But the rules have changed here, and even the Doctor's ghosts of the Past and the Future Past are running around here. Invention new paths that should never be possible, and yet continue to wind themselves up together.

Even if he put away a lot that life, those lives, from ... b e f o r e ... he would recognize that hair anywhere.

Maybe it seems senseless and careless, not turning around, but it isn't either. Not that he would entirely be able to deny that part of it is taking advantage of the broken laws of time and space here, just as much. But then. One did not ever expect the rules to bend so much that one saw a dear friend, a best friend, a very very dead lost friend, during the prime time of their life that could never be crossed again. Doing what they were always best at. Getting into trouble while unsupervised.

"What's this? What have you gotten yourself up to now?" He shouldn't be smiling either. But he was, too.

He couldn't help it. He was already waiting for the second she'd whip around. Who could. It was Lucie bleeding Miller.

[lucie_bleeding_miller]

She turned on him, and chuckled. "Oh! Hi... um... Doctor. I was just... talking to you. I mean, younger you. My Doctor, I mean." She puzzled at the thought.

"Do you... remember the conversation we had? I mean, do you know how this all ends?"

[thelasttimelord]

The Doctor rocked a little on his trainers, hands in the pockets of the long trenchcoat over his suit, having to marvel a little too much. Even caught out here, doing whatever she was doing, that she didn't entirely clarify, she wasted no time in getting to the point. Or asking about points that might be in the shouldn't be discussed regardless of which rules were broken book.

"This ship? This us, right here and now in this place?" It's not entirely a rebuff.

He knows she'll probably skewer straight through the feint of topic. She always was clever, and she took no guff from anyone. Most especially him. It was one of the best things about her. Knowing he was always getting the most to the point, unabridged, unrestrained, honest opinion she had. Because she gave nothing less than. He needed it so much while she was there. And he'd needed it so much more ... once she wasn't.

[lucie_bleeding_miller]

"No, Doctor," she replied, exasperated. "I meant the last episode of Lost. Yes, I bloody well mean this ship right here and now, what did you think I meant?"

[thelasttimelord]

There are too many things which all fit the answer to that question dancing on the head of a pin, and filling up his own. Because nothing should have ever been able to take this fire from her. Not even knowing, forever and always knowing, they die, she would have died eventually somewhere else, even peacefully untouched by him, his life, this life, could change that.

(And.



And he's selfish.



Because he doesn't want to know what the life without her would have looked like.)

"That finale's a bit rubbish, honestly," The Doctor said, head tilting, rocking on those trainers a little more, even though he knows he's treading water on the words that have to come after the ones rolling out everywhere. "Good concept, but not the best application the American's could have had going for themselves. It was really over the heads of most of the audience."

Because he knows. He does know. The questions she should ask. That he can't answer. That she doesn't know she should.


Maybe he's asking to annoy her. Maybe he's missed even that. That temper.


There really isn't a no to that one either.

[lucie_bleeding_miller]

She wishes she had something to throw at him.

"Oooh, how do you get more frustrating with age? You could just say, 'yes, Lucie, I totally know how this is going to end because I already lived it once, but I can't say anything,' or, 'Well, no, Lucie, I don't remember because of some scientific gobldigook that I'm actually just making up as I go.'" She made a parody of a stuffy version of the Doctor's speech. "But no! Go on and keep dancing around my actual question, then!"

[thelasttimelord]

He can tell himself he shouldn't love this face, or the sharp edge of her tongue, but it would be like telling himself not to miss every bygone age of every era or every planet he ever got to touch. And more. So much more. Because each of them is more. Because each of them was his for just a little while, and so much longer than he deserved, and he's so bad at the end. He's always so bad at the ends, and the goodbyes.

Hundreds of years and you'd think he'd get better at that part. Even the ones that were hundreds of years gone.

(But she isn't gone. Again. Lucie Miller. Not dead. Standing in front of him. All fire and brash wit.)

"I'm living it three times over at this very moment as we stand here, Lucie," The Doctor says, with rather more severity and lightness than the situation warrants in both directions. (And her name. Oh, her name. There's still something at once poison and rebellion in saying it. In being able to again. Out loud.) "There are three of me, and two of the TARDIS, and nothing has fallen apart across months of time." Which is so far beyond possible its trenches have stopped digging to become disquieting blackholes.

"You want a simple answer to it, and there isn't one. Yet. Logically, yes. Somehow, my earlier self left here for me to be able to get here, the same as I will have had to leave for my later self to have been able to been pulled here as well." Beat. "Logically." He stressed the words again. Fingers in the air, fingertips touching as he stresses it. "Which nothing here is yet."

Not when he's standing face to face with Lucie Miller, and she's right up there with all of that.

[lucie_bleeding_miller]

"But you don't remember any of it," she nodded. "So... that's... odd, yeah? Probably Q shenanigans... and I still want to find that Q fella and give him a piece of my mind."

She breathed out slowly.

"You remember what you weren't telling me, though, right?"

[thelasttimelord]

The Doctor looked at her. The traces of lightness he'd clung to until that moment blow away like the last leaves before a winter. Before the ability to be able to look at her and know. Know absolutely without the full recollection of it yet, and the knowledge of the look between his earlier self, that was later than her, and himself that first day.

Because he is still himself. No matter where he goes. No matter the face. No matter the clothes.

And it means, his words, are not the past tense of hers. "Yes--" It's simple, and he makes himself say it, wishing he could say something else, mean something else, knowing something else was coming for her. "--Lucie Miller--" The name imprinted on his heart in guilt and grief, the last one at his side, at his hand, before the universe taught him what the truest grief and the truest loss and the truest destruction could be.

He nods, severe and straight-forward as a winter dawn. "I do know what I'm not telling you."

[lucie_bleeding_miller]

She had thought for a moment that she could have tricked him. Claimed, "Oh, younger you told me to ask you; it's too fresh for him to say, but maybe you can bring yourself to tell me."

But there it is. That coldness. That... sadness.

Whatever she'd done, she'd broken his heart. She's certain of that now. No matter what her Doctor had said. She'd clearly betrayed him deeply.

She couldn't betray him again.

She bit her lip. "I'm sorry. I... shouldn't have asked." She paused, and debated saying anything further. But she didn't want things to be left unsaid between them. "I just hope that maybe, this time, since time might get changed, maybe I don't have to do whatever I did to so hurt you. But... Doctor, I'm... so, so sorry for whatever it was. Or will be."