ten_fwd | Intro-ish Post (With Options)

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Intro-ish Post (With Options)

This Doctor had been getting settled in on board the Enterprise - well as much as he can. He still baulks at the jabs he had to be given, but since they didn't contain anything that was harmful to him, he allowed for them.

Now, he has an agenda. He knows the TARDIS is somewhere on board and now that he has a map and listings, he's going to go there to find it.

The Doctor is making his way down to the cargo hold, but going about it the long way around. May as well investigate the ship on his way. If he can get to the TARDIS, he won't be staying long anyway, so he might as well explore something new as he goes along.

It's all terribly human. Basic, really. And they think it's the best thing. About the only thing he's really interested in is this Q character. He doesn't mind humans most of the time. He just doesn't like being 'stuck' with them. And there's so much humanity here - with nothing to escape it.

B: TARDIS Cargo hold Plot: Open To All
After his adventure with Trever and his cat, the Doctor finally arrives at the cargo hold that is marked as containing the TARDIS. He sonics his way in (whether or not that was necessary) and looks around. Some of the items look familiar and others seem alien - even to him - which is saying something. It isn't long before he sees the TARDIS, standing there in all her glory. He confidently strides towards her. When he gets there, he gives a loving stroke to her. "Hello, Old Girl. Now, let's see about getting out of here."

The Doctor needed to vent his anger and frustration at not being able to get back to his own universe. So he made his way to the training room. He had told Clara he had cheated against Robin Hood with his archery skills. But that doesn't mean he's positively rubbish at it. He just wasn't sure of his aim at a ship with rotating bits. If he were to be perfectly honest, which he rarely is, he just needs a bit of practice. He was disappointed that he couldn't get into the Armoury, so he would have to make-do with one of the holodecks. Pity. It's never quite as good as the real thing. Now, if only someone else with archery skills were around. Nothing like a little bit of friendly competition when it comes to brushing up on skills.

{{OOC: I'm happy to backtag however long people are interested in playing with these plots.}}

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Helena had indeed met a Doctor here, the one in the long brown coat, though most of what she actually knew about him and his universe had come from knowing Sarah Jane Smith in the last place she'd been in. Sarah Jane had told her about some of the travels she'd had, about the Doctor and his TARDIS.

Though as for nosey human, Helena was more curious than she was nosey. Most of the time. But she didn't take offense to his response. Instead, she was amused.

"My mistake, I should rephrase that to you returning to where you came from." Helena was still new around here, she didn't know the logistics of what was keeping them here, not like when she'd been in Niflheim and the Grasp had kept her and the others it brought in relatively close proximity to it so they couldn't escape. For all she knew, he could actually get back to where he came from. Helena, however, wasn't interested in leaving. There was nothing back home for her, and Zoey was here, so she would make this her home.

Besides, who didn't want to travel the stars and see distant planets and aliens? Helena had dreamed of it her entire life, and now she was finally getting to do that. Nothing was going to stop her from it as long as she had a say in it.

"That's a bit better. And I don't know yet. Depends on the force that brought us here."

He faces the TARDIS again and gives her another loving stroke. Then he turns to face the woman again.

"You're a quick learner. So you've been in a situation similar to this before?"

"Someone by the name of Q apparently brought us here. How precisely he did that, I do not know." But knowing the person responsible was part of the battle, was it not? It gave a target that could be figured out through investigation anyway.

Helena couldn't help the smile on her face that was slightly tinged with pride. She did pride herself on being a quick learner. She wasn't a genius for nothing.

"Once, yes. I'd been taken out of my world and brought to a place called Niflheim by the Nysgods. Q brought me here from there." Why Q had brought her here also eluded her. She at least knew why the Grasp had taken her, that she had something to offer the Nysgods. Or at least that is what she suspected anyway.

"Yes. I talked to members of the Enterprise crew as well. He apparently has god-like powers."

He frowns, slightly distressed. And then what is basically a stream of conciousness flows from his lips. "I'm worried what it did to her... being dragged here. She is very powerful, but she has her limits. The Time Lords locked her controls out once. But even then, I had access to her. I could tinker and keep her company. Figure out a way to unlock her controls."

And now, he was too scared to even try. It had been far more devastating than it should have been when he returned to Gallifrey's coordinates only to find that his Home world was still missing. For all he knew, he had failed. His plan might have destroyed Gallifrey just as completely as when he had used The Moment. He didn't want to face such failure where his TARDIS was concerned.

"I suppose a person would have to have that amount of power to do this. The Nysgods had a creation of theirs, called the Grasp, that brought us to their world. It was, however, broken and despite our efforts to fix it, we never could." They had, however, managed to utilize its power to be a new engine for the Egime that had rescued them from the Wylds.

Helena listened to him, tilting her head a bit. "Perhaps the trip here merely drained her power and she just needs to replenish it?" Perhaps a silly suggestion, but sometimes such machines needed to re-power themselves. She was also assuming the TARDIS had technology in it that didn't burn out as easily as her time machine had. Course when it had been sitting in the Warehouse for over a century doing nothing but collect dust and then suddenly having to send two people into the past to accomplish something, she supposed the circuitry getting badly damaged was a side effect.

"Sometimes such a journey for a person can scramble their minds and bodies for a time until they adjust. Perhaps that is at least part of the issue here?" She was trying to be helpful.

"I know what you are trying to do, but you don't understand."

He looks almost defeated. "She's not just the mechanics. She's a living creature. So a power-drain is more serious for her. And without getting inside and running readings, I have no way to know if this universe even has the right energy for her or not."

Helena softened at seeing the way he looked. "I am sorry. Considering she is a living creature, perhaps she is simply in a state of shock currently. Perhaps with a little time and the right touch, you will be able to get inside and see what can be done."

There was little she could offer in the way of help. She didn't know the inner workings of the TARDIS, nor did she feel it was her place to ask that. That was perhaps a question later down the road if they struck up some sort of acquaintance. Especially considering it was obviously a topic he held close to him. And she well understood such topics.

"Is there anything I may do to help?" It was an honest offer, a more general one that he was free to turn down. But Helena's first instinct was to help people, and the way he spoke it seemed as though he was losing a loved one. Helena knew what it was to lose someone so loved. She knew loss more than many would realize as she kept her pain carefully hidden. Though anyone who knew what loss looked like would be able to tell that she'd once lost someone close to her.

The Doctor gives a small shrug. "She's not dead." He taps the side of his head. "I would know. But she's diminished somehow. Makes it harder to know specifics about her."

And of course that's the part that worries him. He can't tell any specific emotion. And he can't tell if the little he can sense is from her, from the other Time Lords, or from her reflecting the moods of everyone else.

"I don't even think there's anything I can do to help. I can't get in. But it doesn't feel like it's her preventing it. It's like there's another force at work here. Which, given what I've researched about this 'Q' would make sense."

He can tell that Helena has lost someone. But he's not good with touchy-feely and he's really not good in the face of other's loss.

"Knowing why it's prevented doesn't make the separation any easier. Nor does it mean there's a way around it."

A part of him has this idea to just start sleeping down here. At least the TARDIS would have one of him around that way. He takes a breath, to clear the emotion and stands up straight. "I'm the Doctor, but since there are other mes here, that's probably fairly obvious by now."

"No, it does not make it any easier," she agreed. Helena understood that better than most people. Knowing the reason her daughter died didn't help ease the pain of having lost her. But luckily for the Doctor, Helena isn't one to freely talk about her grief. It's something she rarely discusses, even with those she trusts the most.

"Though who is to say a way around it cannot be figured out? I for one laugh in the face of being told something is impossible to do, but that is what an inventor does, create the impossible. Perhaps learning the laws of time, space and physics that govern this universe, there may be a way to eventually circumvent what was done to the TARDIS?" Of course figuring that out would take some time, probably more than some time, really, but nevertheless there was a possibility there. Q still had to operate around the laws of this universe. Powerful though he may be, Helena didn't think he was a god. A magic-user, perhaps, she'd met a couple of those in her time in Niflheim, but not a god.

"I am Helena Wells. Well, H.G. Wells if one wishes to be technical." Helena said with a bit of a smirk. Now she simply needed to wait and see if he questioned the fact she was a woman claiming that. "It is a pleasure, Doctor. I met one of the other yous here, the one with the long brown coat. Though in the previous place I'd been kidnapped to, I met someone who knew you. Sarah Jane Smith. She is who I learned of you from initially." Helena hadn't met a version of the Doctor in Niflheim, but she'd listened to Sarah Jane tell her of her adventures with him quite often. So now that she'd met not one but two of the Doctors, she could at least get to know the man himself.

At the mention of her name, the Doctor smirks. He's not so silly as that. Besides, he's a time traveller. He laughs at archaeologists, he's not going to be so easily fooled. "Named after the writer. You know that I travel in time, yet you're expecting some kind of surprise at the mention of your name."

And that's all he can get out before she mentions Sarah Jane. "Y-you knew Sarah Jane?"

His expression is nearly as fond as when he looks at the TARDIS. "That's good. The universe needs Sarah Jane Smith."

"No, I am H.G. Wells. You are not the only time traveller here. Did you really think The Time Machine was only a novel?" Helena returned with a smirk. Because of course she'd built a time machine and used it. Things just hadn't gone the way she'd intended them to. And then her 'time traveling' to the 21st Century had been less of time traveling and more she'd been a conscious statue for the duration.

Though her smirk turned into a fond smile at Sarah Jane. "She is a brilliant woman, and a very good friend. She spoke highly of you." Helena definitely missed her. She missed the friends she'd made in Niflheim, especially Sarah Jane and Dorian. But they were not the first friends she'd lost in her life, and they most likely wouldn't be the last.

"You're an H.G. Wells, maybe. But, unless you're a Time Lord or have regenerative capabilities, you're not the H.G. I know."

He takes it all in stride. Again, Time and Space traveller. Takes more than that to rattle him. Especially after meeting Robin Hood.

"She is. I haven't seen her in far too long..." Over a thousand years. My how time flies. "But last you saw her, she was doing well?"

"Considering the various dimensions, yes I am an H.G. Wells, though I am the H.G. Wells in the dimension I am from. I may be nearly one hundred and fifty years old, but I certainly am not a Time Lord. I am perfectly human." Helena did mean she was actually that old. Physically she didn't look her age, but she had lived each and every one of her years. She had simply just been a conscious statue for one hundred and ten of those years. That experience had been torture, plain and simple, and had broken her mind multiple times over. Still, she'd managed to pull herself back together as best as she could. The cracks were still there, the anger she carried from the experience still simmered under the surface, but she pushed it aside. She never spoke of that experience because how could one describe the feeling of being conscious for over a century and being unable to do anything but replay the memory of one's daughter's murder over and over again without interruption? It went beyond description, really.

"She was, yes. She was happy. I think she missed you a bit, but she had made quite a few friends, even had a boyfriend. Though she was returned back to where she had come from before I was brought here. So I would assume she returned to her adventures with you." Though Helena hadn't actually been clear on what point in time Sarah Jane had been from. Still, she'd assume whenever she went back to, she was most likely having adventures.

At the mention of her age, the Doctor pulls out the sonic and starts to scan her. "How many times have you died in those years?"

He's starting to think she might be another fixed point, but when he looks at the readings, its obvious that she's just a normal human. Just very good looking for her age. Sarah Jane's information goes into his head, but doesn't need commenting. He'll think about it later. For now, this is much more important.

Seeing the device he used that seemed to scan her, she arched her brows a bit. "Technically, I died once. That was undone by a bit of time travel to save the world. The explosion that killed me unleashed devastation on the world that needed to be reversed." Well, it hadn't just killed her. Mrs. Frederic had died due to the Warehouse being destroyed. Pandora's Box had been destroyed, thus leaving the world without hope, and chaos had apparently reigned in the initial timeline of her world. So there was potentially some amount of that. Her timeline had been rewritten.

"Almost died, I lost count of those." She added that mostly as a quip. Helena certainly wasn't a fixed point in time, but she was probably an anomaly of a sort.

He's rebooted or changed the universe more times than he cares to think about. That wouldn't change someone as fundamentally as creating a Fixed Point. He relaxes just a bit.

"Rewriting time doesn't count. So. The question is: how are you so old and so young-looking? The readings don't indicate anything overtly strange, given that you're a time traveller."

That was a question Helena didn't like answering considering the topic still greatly upset her in several ways. However, she would answer considering she opened the door for such a conversation. And she also needed to talk about it and not keep it bottled up inside.

"I was bronzed, a process that is akin to cryogenic freezing except one's body is encased in bronze, turning them, in essence, into a statue. The very large negative to this process is the person bronzed remains fully conscious for the duration. I was in that state for one hundred and ten years." That was the very basic, least personal explanation of it. There was an undercurrent of anger to her voice. Bronzing was, in essence, torture, and she had been broken and twisted from the experience. She'd pulled herself back together since, but that had been a monumental undertaking. Undoing over a century's worth of damage to her mind was not easy.

The Doctor tilts his head with an expression of curiosity. "I was right. Weeping Angels are the kindest killers."

Well, until the group that was into snapping necks, but he'd rather not think about that. If she was expecting sympathy, the Doctor is the wrong person to tell the story.

"And you were conscious the entire time? Or did you have periods of waking and sleeping? How did you measure time? Were you in a public place that you would watch people?"

And there go the questions, because this was new and interesting.

Weeping Angels in the same context as killers was something she'd never heard of before, but considering the current conversation, she filed that away to ask about later. Right now, Helena was doing her best to mentally separate herself from her experience so she could keep her emotions out of it. Helena was exceptionally good at compartmentalizing her emotions, so much so that it was actually a fault of hers because it meant she tended to not deal with things she should until it was almost too late to do anything to fix the problems.

In regards to looking for sympathy, she wasn't wanting it right now. Getting sympathy would only tap into the emotions she was currently pushing away. If she was going to get emotional, she would rather do it later when she was alone, or with Zoey being there.

"There were no periods of sleeping, I was awake the entire time. No, I was not in a public place nor was I able to see or otherwise sense anything outside of my own mind. My only company were my thoughts and memories. Said thoughts were only terrible ones." Terrible ones that had taken a toll on her mind. Helena crossed her arms, managing to keep her face neutral while she stuffed her emotions down inside of her.

Rose had once asked if the Isolus went mad with boredom travelling through space for thousands of years. The Doctor nearly went mad with grief when Amy and Rory were taken from him by the Weeping Angels. He knew that Jack experienced nothingness when he died and before he came back....

Those thoughts went through the Doctor's mind quickly and a look of compassion comes to his features. Somehow his 'furious face' now has a softness to it that didn't seem possible a moment before. And he can piece the rest together, as only someone who's lived over two thousand years can understand.

"It drove you mad. Splintered you in ways I dare not imagine."

His thoughts flash briefly to the Master... Well, that would be a reason he'd rather not imagine it.

"How did you... put yourself together again. It's not like they have self-help books or therapists that would be qualified for such a thing."

Some people may say that Helena, and indeed no one, had deserved to be bronzed, but she felt that she deserved it sometimes. That was, of course, mostly the guilt talking in those moments. When she was stronger than the guilt, she knew she hadn't deserved it and that it had made her worse. Someone who experienced unimaginable grief and didn't know how to handle it needed to be shown how to handle it.

Needless to say, Helena had repressed hers and embraced anger and hate because they were easier. She could handle those emotions. But grief was not something she had been able to handle.

The compassion on his face did not go unnoticed. Helena's shoulders dropped slightly, into a slightly more relaxed and less defensive posture. It wasn't an easy topic to discuss, but she was better at it than she had been a couple years previous.

"I lost much to the experience, and it changed me in ways I had never thought possible before." She drew in a breath, reflecting back on things for some moments. "Someone stood up to me when I was so lost in the madness that I thought bringing about another Ice Age and killing us all was the answer. She saved me from myself. As cliché as it may sound, love is a healer. Not completely, but it has helped immensely. Friends, a boyfriend, and now a girlfriend, they have all helped me put myself together." Helena gave a lot of credit to those around her, including Zoey. But she knew they weren't the only ones who should get credit.

"I also have a strength and a will to live I never fully realized I had until I wanted to pull myself together. I wanted to be the best person I could be again, though it is difficult. That darkness I let myself fall into will always be there, but I do not wish to be consumed by it again."

And then her hand lifted and she began fingering the locket she wore around her neck. It was something she tended to do unconsciously and when she was thinking of her daughter. It had been her daughter's murder that had propelled her onto this path.

The Doctor can relate to that more than she can imagine. Different situations - his was first the destruction of Gallifrey, then going back in time to save it. Then learning he may or may not have saved it. It is still lost to him.

Until recently he would say 'Love' is not only too cliché but too human for him to understand. But, that's one thing PE and Clara had taught him. "Love isn't an emotion. It's a promise. And not even the Cybermen could destroy that part of humanity."

He notes the way she fingers her locket. It's not unlike the way he would stroke bits of the TARDIS, especially after she had been in that human body. It reminds him of how it felt when Susan... "You lost someone close to you."

It was stated as fact. He would have no way to know if it was lover, child or dear friend. Emotions were funny things that way. But he knew the gesture - a little too much.

Helena had fought against the notion of love, but after she'd stopped letting the anger consume her, letting Myka in had helped her more than she could ever say. Having someone who cared enough to help her despite everything had given her the proverbial push to get herself back on the right track. It was a constant fight with herself, but Helena was willing to wage it because it meant she could be the person she wanted to be, and perhaps she could be good enough for Zoey.

She gave a little nod at his statement. "My daughter. She was murdered when she was eight years old. That is the reason I built my time machine, to try and save her. I only succeeded in becoming a witness to her murder." And it had been that memory that had broken her, the one that weighed on her the most. Some days she felt like she'd failed as a mother, unable to protect her daughter when it had mattered the most. It was a guilt that cut deeper than any of the other guilt she carried, and it was also guilt she almost never let see the light of day.

But she also knew if she had saved Christina and altered the events of her life like that, chances were she would not be here now. She would not have met Myka or even Zoey. And she wasn't quite wanting to change those aspects of her life. For all the pain, anger and guilt she carried, she knew it was worth it for the people that she had in her life currently.

And there goes the sympathy as quickly as it had arrived. "Of course you did. It's what humans always do: 'Oh, I got a time machine. I can just change things willy-nilly.'"

This is why Time Lords watched over the cosmos. Because it needed to be protected from pudding brains who thought they could do whatever they want without repercussions. Honestly, sometimes it's enough to make him think he should just avoid humans all together now.

The berating was expected. It was what Helena always expected upon telling her tale. She hadn't been in her right mind back then, and she just gave a nod, her face remaining neutral and not giving away anything that she was thinking or feeling. "I made plenty of mistakes, and I am now living with the consequences of those mistakes."

Well, living was open to debate, really, because what Helena considered living wasn't most people's definition of it. Hers tended to be more along the lines of 'existing.' Though that was changing lately with having Zoey.

"I did it to myself, and I only blame myself." At least she took responsibility for it. Though Helena also put the blame on the shoulders of the men that had thought killing an eight year old girl was a good idea. Helena had made them pay for that little mistake. Very very painfully.

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