ten_fwd | On the Hunt (Open):

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.

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"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"But we can't do that if you keep avoiding me!" Her brittle anger is beginning to crack, and she absently wipes at a tear threatening to escape from one eye. "I know there's something you're not telling me, like you're punishing me for something I haven't done yet, but Doctor, we know time can be changed. Maybe I won't do whatever it was you're mad at me about that I haven't done yet."

She's not crying, dammit. She's not going to cry.

Oh no.

Not this.

He had only seen her cry twice before.

The first time was when his secret, his betrayal of her was revealed. She left him, running back to Earth and into the hands of the Meddling Monk.

The second time was when she sacrificed herself. Knowing that there was no way to save herself, she took that saucer and destroyed the Dalek Time Controllers device.

And here she was, crying for only the third time he was aware of. Because he had been avoiding her. This only stabbed that pain he felt, that part of him that he had thought he had put away and compartmentalized just like every other friends death he has had to suffer in his long and eventful life. But this brings the pain back up again, raw and harsh in a manner he's not known in a long time...if not ever.

"Oh no you don't, Lucie Miller. You keep those right where they are," he said, ignoring that his own eyes were burning and wishing for release.

"Oh, no you don't!" she swore, giving him a light kick to the shin. "You don't get to tell me what I get to feel, Doctor! You're my best bleeding friend, and I don't know what I did to get you to want to avoid me, but I don't think I've done it yet, and maybe if you tell me what I did, I can avoid it this time!"

She knows they could fix whatever was set wrong. She was there when all of reality was rewritten by Morbius. She was there when the Doctor almost died to set it all right.

And the memory of almost losing the Doctor sets her emotions to jag again, realizing that she must have lost him again in the future, and she holds back another sob.

Which she covers with another (mostly gentle, really) kick to the shin. "Doctor, tell me what I did wrong! I want to be your friend again!"

Edited 2015-05-27 03:37 (UTC)

"Ah! The shins! Why always the shins," The Doctor yelped as he started to rub the now sore and hurting parts of his legs. Lucie may have not been trying all that hard, but that was a sharp kick and he was far more delicate than he would want her to believe.

After all, it took one moment to leave him just as raw as her death had. Just a small showing of tears.

"I can't say much, but I can say this: you did nothing wrong, Lucie Miller. I'm just older. You can forgive an old man for being cranky, can't you?"

So much left out. So much that can't be said.

And she knows he's still not talking. He's still keeping a secret.

But she wipes the tears back. At least he's trying, even if he's still keeping a secret. "Well, you are pretty old," she admitted with an attempt at a chuckle. She moved to his side to gently bump against him with her shoulder.

"Look, Doctor... tell me this, at least. You've never kept a secret from me before, really. This time... it's important, right? And you'll tell me eventually?"

Internally, it hurts. It hurts so much that it was those words that she had to use. And of course she had to use those words. Because in the whole of possible combinations of words in the universe to use, it had to be the implication that he never kept secrets from her.

But it's now that the weight of seven previous lives worth of experience weighed in on him. In particular, the schemer. The life that he most resented. And yet, for this moment, he needed that conniving. Because he couldn't trust himself now otherwise.

"Yes. I will tell you eventually."

She smiled and threw her arms around him in a tight hug.

"Thanks, Doctor. I knew I could count on you."

"Yes, my dear Lucie Miller. You can count on me."

He uses the hug, which he returns with gusto, to hide his face from her. It is just a moment, a single moment of looking away, but his face is now hard, pain and anger show on his face.

But before the hug breaks, he's back to his smiling older self.

On the Hunt (Open):

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