The Doctor (
thelasttimelord) wrote in
ten_fwd2015-05-23 03:28 pm
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Entry tags:
Timelord in Ten Forward
The Doctor is sitting on the window ledge again, one knee up and one leg hanging down, tapping on his absolutely, ordinary PADD. (That has been upgraded and hacked with a sonic screwdriver that would make The Sixteen Ways since Saturn12 split to retrograde pieces and stopped having Green Light Parties during the year of AppleBlackslash look slow even.)
There are more people, again. He doesn't need the PADD to tell him that. Every molecule of his body is attuned to every new rip of space and time that deposits them here. To every path being walked by every person who shouldn't be right here. (To the spot where Jack is, and everything is wrong.) To the nexus of this room, and the other parts of the ship that they are most drawn to.
The PADD can't tell any of Them any of that either.
But it does let him see what the Enterprise has on these new people so far.
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The Doctor, as per this law, has now attracted a black cat who appears out of nowhere and tries to sit on the PADD.
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The Doctor is, thankfully, not adversed to distractions.
If his companions are to be believed -- and they are never to be believed, never; okay, maybe just this one time, or that one time
, or always-- distractions are the drive that keeps the universe moving, the TARDIS ticking and the Doctor running through all of time and space, making delighted faces and righting the wrongs he cannot seem to stop landing on. Quite like this one.The ship, and the time-ripping problem. Not the cat.
The cat actually gets a laugh and a head tilt, mouth curving outward fast as a flare.
"Well--" The word drawls itself out, all pomp and warmth. "Aren't you an interesting one."
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A good natured, if slightly exasperated,
IrishEire man came up and snapped -amused - at the cat, "When I said go find a seat, I meant an open place to sit."The cat blinked at him from the Doctor's lap. Can't he see that this is an open place to sit? She can sit there after all. That means it's open.
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The Doctor didn't look all the bothered. He hadn't always loved cats, but this one wasn't on his dashboard and he never had minded the sympathetic aliens who lived along side humans. He tucked the screwdriver under the curl of his pinky to his palm and petted the cat's head with the side of his thumb.
"She's a fine companion, this one" He said with an easy, affable turning curl of a smile. Though his expression turned amusedly twinkled as he added. "Little bit more to her than meets the eye, though, I think?"
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Because every test they've run on her says perfectly normal house cat. There's absolutely no indication of anything that would give her the ability to teleport.
Miss House Cat That Teleports starts up a rumbling purr, rubbing her head against the hand.
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"It's a good choice," The Doctor says to the purring cat. Talking to her absolutely as though he could be understood by her, and understand in return. It was not so complicated a language to begin with, when one went about understand every race in the universe had their own and it could be figured out, with the right amount of respect, dedication and time.
He grinned, manic and wide. Pleasure at the great of simplicities and agreements. "I've always been a fan getting around myself. Here and there. Space is a great thing to be able to cross and move around in. Though, if you pardon the suggestion of a lifetime's work, should you ever get around to trying it, time is quite a grand place for it, too. Harder. Take longer to live through getting to. But oh."
There was the wide grin and bright eyes. Because, oh. Oh. There was nothing better in all of time, than time, itself.
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"She's a good familiar. She even listens to me most of the time."
She's an excellent familiar. There's no better familiar than her. She's much better than that stupid soul eating raven or dippy pink owl. Birds are stupid and only dinner. They should be grateful she doesn't eat them.
Trever's gaze flicks down at her. "You shouldn't say that about the others."
He clearly understands cat too.
"As for traveling through time and space...I'd love to be able to do that. Sadly we haven't even gotten portal rituals near working yet and the gods would probably be ... cranky... if we tried time travel."
Trever works with one of the premier ritual mages who focuses on portals. His experiments tend to end up with explosions...
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The Doctor remained amused at the cat, stroking it and allowing the PADD program to close. He'd had his own companions with those kinds of feelings. At this point, this far in, he, at times, felt he'd had one of every kind, and yet every time he thought someone new and breathtakingly brilliant appeared again. Forever making that certain and unchanging.
"Your gods that invested, are they?" Ten amusement stayed. "Can't say I ever did that well listening to what I should and shouldn't do where it came to those kind."
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"Quite. They've lost enough power as it is, time travel might make it worse. Besides our leylines are pretty damaged. Time travel might be make it worse. I'm not a ritual mage so my theory is shaky." Trever shrugs.
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Ten stroked the cat, heedlessly.
"That sounds like a rather interesting world you come from."
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Trever scratches the back of his head. "I guess... I mean, it seems pretty normal to me. Everyone else's world is interesting... and weird. A lot of people look at me funny or don't believe me when I say everyone has magic or that magic exists. The idea that such a thing could be real is ... just... how do things work?"
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He says it like it's a matter of idle curiosity; there's no judgment. Hell, if Jack had a sonic whatever (he still maintains the blaster was cool, even if the screwdriver's gotten them out of a lot of situations), he'd have done the same. No, Jack's just sauntering up and making conversation.
Talking about nothing much. It's something he and the Doctor have gotten pretty damn good at since they wound up here. But it's not like he could walk by without saying anything.
Not after waiting so long for him.
So, there's Jack, wandering over and nudging out a chair with one combat-booted foot, and flopping into it with a flapping of greatcoat.
"Learning anything interesting?"
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It might still be the same words he'd use if another person asked, but it might not be so honestly articulated for any other than hime and one other. One who is not here. Not anymore. Another badge he wears, without wearing, tucked in a pocket of a jacket. A voice in his ears he hears, laughing and sweet, and would swear not to be.
"There are several new people, again." He's flipping through their files with each small tick and swish of the blue light. Through their scans and medical records. Still searching for a pattern, that even at months has eluded the ship and himself. Random people chosen the worlds over. Pockets and stand-alones.
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It used to be Jack and Rose doing the scrambling. Always the two of them, always together. Now, it's just Jack. Just Jack and he can't tell the Doctor what he knows about the future, or what Torchwood's records say he knows, the thing he can't let himself believe is true, because it can't be. Because Torchwood can't have killed Rose, not even Torchwood One, not even Yvonne and her insane excuse for research that left Daleks and Cybermen fighting it out in London.
(She's gone from here, and that makes him wonder if he'll ever see her again. Is she gone now, forever? Gone back to her timeline and life until she somehow dies at Canary Wharf?
He misses her, again, as much as he ever had. Maybe even more, because now he misses her youth and her life and her hope when he's so very old.)
"Still no obvious selection criteria for our friend with the temporal meddling habit?"
It's light, the same idly curious tone he'd been using a moment before, as he asks the question he knows the Doctor is asking himself, because he and Rose and Jack have been asking it ever since they got here.
Jack's asking himself that question in a different light now, with Rose gone.
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Even if the universe has a constant scratch running through it, one of those old style gramophones sticking and skipping anytime Jack is close. No. Correction. Not any time he is close. Anytime he is anywhere within the reach of The Doctor's vastly wide sense. But even then. Even if it is like a rip in the heart of what is, of everything that makes of him.
It's easier. Easier to breathe. Easier to frown. Easier to keep flipping through files. Talking.
(Easier to pretend it's not half-again as sycophantically selfish to hold to a single flickering candle flame in the dark.)
The Doctor turned the PADD, tapping a corner on his forehead as he looked at Jack. "There hasto be one. Q can't simply be playing dice with all the people in all the universes and timelines. Each new group appears on a perfectly cyclical clock of dys. Even when they he doesn't come or go during it. Even when they don't disappear in the same fashion." H
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Sometimes they were, and sometimes they were random.
That any random selection, though, would produce this many variants of the Doctor and this many of his companions was hardly likely.
Jack leaned forward in his chair, his blue eyes watching the PADD rather than the Doctor.
"And the story that he does all this for his own entertainment and nothing else is hard to buy."
Of course, he and the Doctor had both seen the terrible things that could be done in the name of entertainment. (So had Rose.)
Even that wasn't random. They'd been taken to the Game Station for a reason.
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The Doctor continued to tap it there, against his forehead, as though somehow the light bounce of repetition would set free something in his mind that hadn't been yet freed in every month, week, day, hour, minute, second since his arrival. Every part of light speed traveled. Every bit of time and space ripped apart and sewn together in this room. The nexus point of all of it.
"Not this long term," The Doctor Agreed. "And not with so few appearances. It's ant farm covered in ants, but no one standing at the side and tapping their finger on the glass." He pushed his fingers through the weave of time and pulled things out and pushed them in. But then he forgot about them entirely except for scattered seconds.
Like a child who had set up a toy and who then walked away, or forgot, until he next remembered.
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No offense was intended to the Doctor of course, but he was far from the only being who could mess with the nature of reality that Jack had encountered in over a century of working for Torchwood, and time spent wandering time and space and simply waiting, even before that.
It was a hell of a lot of time and effort to go to in order to do who knew what, but. What seems logical to a powerful alien creature and to Jack was never necessarily the same thing. It was, though, important, now more than ever. Because Jack knew what was supposed to happen to Rose, back in their timeline, and he'd have given almost anything to stop that.
"Maybe he is tapping his finger and we just don't see."
If the words were a little dark, well.
They'd both been in that particular situation before.
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The Doctor actually rolled his head to look at Jack for the first part, given that it was easy to read in the inclusion of himself as being in there. They had enough travels before and enough issues that laced into and out of the seams right now, that it would have been impossible to miss at least some comparison, or to question if there was a comment in it.
"True," The Doctor said, though his face twisted with a frown.
He slid his trainer-shod feet further down the ledge and let his head fall back, tilting it from side to side.
The PADD dropped back into his lap, and he thought about all of the edges of it, again. Because none of it felt like it fit.
"He just hasn't seemed the patient, maniacal, bide your time, sort. Megalomanic, sure. But the files they have on him, and the few people that have met him. He comes off as someone who wants the spotlight on him, people to be talking about him, and impressed, or in agreement, with whatever new idea, or opinion, he's come up with."
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Jack stretched back in his chair, idly watching the PADD.
"He does seem the type. It doesn't feel chaotic or random. Not with so many versions of you and your companions here."
It was nothing he hadn't said before, but how often had they talked about this since they arrived here? And there were still no solutions.
"Then again," he said, dryly, and shrugged. "Here we are, talking about him."
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He'd like to say it doesn't matter. That flick of a smirk on Jack's mouth that turns toward a small laugh, that The Doctor doesn't jerk back from just the slightest. It's not even a jerk. It's not. It's a roll of his head to look out the window. It's a reminder he doesn't need that. Shouldn't. Jack's amusement or approval. That smile. Like if he wasn't looking, maybe he wasn't acknowledging that it had mattered for a second there, or that he'd wondered, or that might have mattered, or that Jack had caught that enough to respond to it.
The Doctor tapped his fingers in a manic fashion on his thigh right about the PADD, willing his mind to give him something new. Something he hadn't thought of hundreds and millions of times already. Something to answers the rips in time and space all through this room. Ugly, glaring things. Opening and closing at the will of Q's snapped fingers. (The way he still had the Tardis locked up somehow that The Doctor hadn't been able to get around.)
But there isn't. There isn't something else, and The Doctor feels like a jangle of restlessness.
Which is probably the reason he looks back, saying more light than anything, "We could talk about you instead."
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When it came to weird, though. Well. Jack probably had something going in those stakes himself. Maybe not so much weird as unique.
He'd pretend that was part of what draws him constantly back to The Doctor, that sense of familiarity, of a commonality between them, but he knew he'd be kidding himself if he did. There were much simpler needs at play.
When The Doctor looked back, his hand tap-tapping at his leg, Jack met his eyes, but only for a moment.
He shrugged.
"What's to talk about?"
Everything. Lifetimes and friendships and saving the world and not saving the world and trying, always, to be a better person because of what The Doctor had taught him. But it was always easier to pretend otherwise.
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Jack tenses so fast. Even at the flippant joke. The rider from his own words moved into an alternate topic, and not an attack. Still he shrugs, but he doesn't rise to the occasion. As though the Doctor might have jumped to it as being the next biggest Q-Worthy replacement.
(Which. Maybe it is. But.)
The Doctor raises his eyebrows like a child amused at his own bait, at a curiosity that landed in his lap, more than someone about to spring. Not in the mood for that fight. Or it's strings. Head tipping. Mouth curled toward something of a tease-taunt, because he'd meant nothing more than Jack being the alternate for being next to him. And it's easier to just roll with that, maybe as though he didn't catch Jack's freeze either.
"Oooh, you finally outgrow being your own favorite topic, too?" Jack Harkness and his flippant flag of a smile, with a million lines and a million stories of people he used them on, while throwing them everywhere around the Tardis, too. An impossible thing, and he knows it. Just as impossible as the rest of Jack now. But The Doctor isn't in the mood to add more things to the list of things he's lost. So he smirks, bright eyed, "I would've thought that one would've been impossible."
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"Maybe I've changed," he says, seizing on the tease, because it's an out. Though if the Doctor had truly asked ... well. There are many things he'd say that he wouldn't to anyone else he knows.
"You know," he says, laughing, "my friends are always trying to get to find out about me. And my past. They'd say it's just about impossible to get me to talk about myself."
The grin he flashes is still the same, even if there's just a hint more age around the lines in his eyes than there was all those lifetimes ago.
"But that's just because they apparently don't appreciate my rich stock of historical anecdotes."
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The Doctor raises his eyebrows in challenge to that statement of Jack's growth even over centuries at about the same time Jack laughs, and honestly, in some place he doesn't want to think about, and can't even go about really letting himself ignore enough, it's good to see him laugh. To see someone laugh. Someone who matters. After. Still.
Smoothes out a rumple of complicated gratitude -- that isn't blood, or judgement, free -- at the fact it is still all in there. Jack. Inside the biggest mistake, and sacrifice, and gift Rose Tyler made (that wasn't saving The Doctor, himself). "And yet none of us ever managed to get so lucky?"
The Doctor let his head loll toward one side, smart aleck of a smirk creasing his mouth, making him look so bright and so free of any troubles. "People never do have quite the same kind of appreciation for history you want them to."
Certain young Time Agents not uncounted in that either. But then Jack's appreciation for history wasn't why he was kept.
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Or maybe he just didn't have the same stock of stories to draw on, stories not from hopping in and out of time like he had as a Time Agent and a con-man, but from living it. Living it, breathing it, experiencing it, which was, as it turned out, so very different from just hopping in and out.
Jack laughs.
"It's such a hard thing, teaching people to appreciate all of time and space."
And if there's a suggestion in his tone that he does include himself as one of those hard lessons -- well. Those lessons made him who he is today, and he tries, he does, to instil them as best he can on his own team. In his own way.
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"And you'd know how?" The Doctor balks, turning sideways and letting his feet dangling. Hands catching the sides of the wall. But there's nothing cruel about a bit of it still. It's lively and chiding, leaving the dark loop to the space behind his back for a second. "Because you think you've got a little bit of it under your nails now?"
Living in one place forever. Unlike the Doctor, running through every time and every space, never having to worry about new covers and new lives. Just this same one. Not that he didn't lose people all the same. Out live them. Out run them. But he always came back to that still spinning blue marble. His favorite one. World. People. New or old or planet-gone and spread into the universe, into the people like Jack. Between Rose and him.
(He could have done so much worse. He got lucky back then.
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"Greetings, good sir." Merlin's voice was warm and as curious as the rest of him.
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The Doctor let his PADD lean forward and thump his chest, eyebrows raising with a low whistle and a wide smile. "That's a nice trick."
Definitely not something he'd never seen, but not something he'd seen any of the new arrivals manage.
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"Something I picked up, long ago, homewards and time lost. Mostly useful for getting around this place, these days." He arched an eyebrow at the other man.
"You seem less than startled. Have you been in this strange place so long, then?"
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The Doctor made a noise, face all squished up, that was judging distance and time length, but not coming up entirely on either side of the line with that question. Before he just gave up a bright grin, hand raising. "Dozen of one, two dozen of the other. It's a while, but I've been places longer before. Whatever it is, it can't last forever."
Almost nothing lasted forever. Except him, and time. It was easy to take it and toss it back. "Yourself?"
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"A little here, a lot there. Less now, but more then." He nodded. His meaning was clear, to him, but less than obvious to most.
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The smile was manic, with a kind of pleasure that couldn't be masked or faked. "You have to appreciate their zeal."
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"Are you enjoying your stay here? It seems an interesting voyage, and it holds one of the most dear of all people I have ever known, so it is as much home as ever there has been." His words were spoken softly, but surely and with a firmness that might surprise others, but ever had been his way.
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"Oh? You one of the lucky souls who came in groups from somewhere?" It was a delightful, and sometimes frustrating, hair rending, mystery he kept turning over all with all the others. It's own spinning plate. How some people came in groups all from the same place, and some people came in singles never to have another of their own appear with them.
"I like them." The Doctor said, shifting his weight bouncily between his feet after the man released his hand. "Very full of big ideas and idealism, this group." His eyes were bright and his smile was unruly. The best kind of adoration. "Out there, exploring the stars, full of hungry curiosity, trying to do it peacefully, without disturbing anyone else's chart to the future."
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Merlin eyed the other man. "There ever are such times, when the darkness if pushed back for some small hours and the light reigns."
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Settling in means keeping her distance for now. When Beverly isn't in the Arboretum or practicing Mok'bara somewhere quiet to meditate, she's spending short bursts of time in Ten Forward. Her typical fare seems to include a cup of tea, doesn't matter what kind, and a bowl of fruit. This she takes to a table, a different one each time, where she will sit long enough to eat it all, usually about an hour if she takes her time, and then she'll leave. Today is no different. Well, except for the person sitting close by she doesn't recognize.
Beverly offers a small smile and nods her head at his PADD. "Got some interesting reading?" she asks curiously.
She might also be one of the most interesting if he can tell that she's been pulled through space-time like this more than once.
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The Doctor looked up, easy, widely manic smile for the red-headed woman. "Isn't it always?"
He ran thus thumb across it clearing the screen, even without looking away from her or setting free even a wrinkle from his face. "There's always something new to learn from it. No matter what you're reading, or how many times you read it."
It might have been a bit of a cheat that he could go back, talk to authors, talk to the people who'd just read the books for the first time, skipping through time and time and time, getting to have the next of whatever he wanted, or just being so far in the future it all already existed, long scattered as dust, like treasure to mine from time.
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She isn't sure what she's expecting. Maybe an actual answer, maybe a turn around Deep Space 9's Promenade. Maybe nothing at all. Still, this is her hour or two today to talk to people and she has to admit she's curious.
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The Doctor smiled, affable and easy, as he slid down from ledge and on to his trainers.
The brown coat billowing behind him in the riot of quick movement, all lively life in opposition from the still, contained focus of only a minute ago. Proper attention could not be paid to new people by being apart though, and she was still quite new by the look at the time trailing around her. It wasn't that simple -- none of it ever was here -- but that part, at least, was.
"Oh, you know." His grin goes wide. "This and that. New knowledge of the world, written in another words, showing you the world through their eyes, bestowing another viewing point and just like magic you consider things from a completely different point of view, learning on their context."
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"One might say that's a good way of looking at this situation entirely," she says carefully. "It's a learning experience. For all of us, displaced or not."
At this point, she has no idea who knows of her displacement and who doesn't. That has been a learning experience for her, too, figuring out who notices and who doesn't. Then again, she isn't wearing the right uniform, so that's a big red alert if anyone actually is paying attention.
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The Doctor took the chair, twisting it around and dropping into it with a rustle of long trench coat around him and his nice suit, arms crossing on the back, bright expression. He liked this group well enough, and off the clock he didn't feel entirely like he needed to remain on ceremony. Not that he ever stood on ceremony, in any time, if it was between him and what he knew he needed to get done.
"True. Very true. There is a lot that could be learned and shared and come up with in this situation." That he might not like for all the ripping and twisting of time going on, but. "Things that might never be shared or learned in any other time or place. It's definitely unique."
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It could be either or both. For her personally, it's a touch of both after all. Who's to say it isn't both for a lot of other people here, especially those who have been here a long time?
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"Where did you get your upgrade?"
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The PADD screen cleared with as little as a quick upsweep of one fingertip on the screen itself, even as he looked up all bright. Very little anything like apology or guilt in it, even though there is some surprise for someone sneaking up on him and noticing it. A lot of people about these parts don't.
"You could say I'm a dab at these kinds of things sometimes!" The Doctor confided, brightly, through a grin. Never one to look down a reason to be proud of his skills being helpful for him. Even if the persons in question had no idea what those reasons or purposes he needed them for were.
Even if it was for all of them. Including this one. Who just wreaked of time-twisting like a lot of the new ones.