or_timelords: (Default)
or_timelords ([personal profile] or_timelords) wrote2008-12-19 09:34 pm

This could prove to be interesting.

from [livejournal.com profile] laser_not_sonic

If you woke up one morning and found me in your bed, what's the first thing you'd think or say?

[identity profile] watch-is-me.livejournal.com 2008-12-25 08:32 pm (UTC)(link)
[The Doctor's long finished lacing up his black Converse by the time his other comes bounding back down the stairs. He recognizes that approach to stairways, using the balustrades more than the actual stairs; it really looks rather hazardous, when seen from the outside. Huh.]

[His other's choice of clothing gets another raised eyebrow from the Doctor. It's clear what his other is doing, here. Leave the "right" outfit behind, for him. For the day he chooses to wear it. Other Doctors have told him that day will come.]

[Well. Other Doctors haven't lived in his universe. He wouldn't wear the coat and suit anymore than he'd wear his Fourth's long scarf or the celery-lapel look that his Fifth fancied. It's not him.]

Right. [No comment, although his tone implies comment.]

[identity profile] watch-is-me.livejournal.com 2008-12-25 11:48 pm (UTC)(link)
[Oi, that's right—being in the TARDIS and not being able to feel her, that must be enormously disorienting for his other.]

[He kicks off from where he's been leaning against the end of one of the racks, running a hand through his hair as he thinks.]

Locating an alternate TARDIS in an alternate universe... Hm. Never done that before.

Mine won't work in your universe, she'd lose power, I'm not risking that, so that means... [Hmhmhm, he looks up at the ceiling, far above them, his tongue to the tip of his mouth.] I dunno.

You could try walking outside with your fingers crossed, go through the first doorway you come to, a bit like Wonderland out there, all roads lead to Rome. Or home. Or Neverland, you never know.

OR! Ororor—it might work, dunno, well, can't know until we've tried—[And he does his own bouncing, pulling his glasses out of a jacket pocket and sliding them up his nose for no clear reason other than this is a *puzzle* and those require the smartie glasses, and hopping over to his other]—I'll put you through to my TARDIS, you tell her what she's looking for, you know, give her a feel for yours, and she'll see if she can't make contact. She loves the multiverse, mine, like the Rift but better, I wouldn't be surprised if she can get a signal out along any Time Vortex that's ever been, is, or might be, from here.

So—[he wiggles his eyebrows at his other, and puts his hands up, ready to establish contact again]—shall we give it a go?

[identity profile] watch-is-me.livejournal.com 2008-12-26 03:24 am (UTC)(link)
[Hm, this is a bit of a dilemma, isn't it? The Doctor has to stop and consider. Something else he's never tried, and he wonders why. All of those universes. He could run properly—but...those other universes aren't his. He's lost Gallifrey, he's lost the Earth, he won't lose his universe.]

Well... I know she'd be fine in the multiverse, nothing's nullified here. But...beyond that? In my universe?

Hm. If we could synchronize a doorway in yours to a doorway in the multiverse, synchronize that with a doorway into your universe...create a kind of tesseract-slash-extension-cord-slash-umbilical, well, it might be a bit of a security risk, you'd want to keep an eye on it, make sure nothing came over from your universe but energy, but...

Yes. Like the Subtle Knife, right, there'll be some net loss of energy, but the multiverse ought to compensate for that, I think it would work. Do you think it would work? I think it would work.

[identity profile] watch-is-me.livejournal.com 2008-12-26 04:36 am (UTC)(link)
Right, yes, exactly, it's like a terminal, a hub, shortcut between universes, breaks all the rules of time and space, I love it.

[And the science talk, the technobabble, he loves that, too. Hasn't had much opportunity, really, not until recently. No audience, and it needs an audience.]

Ready, then? Allons-y! [And he brings his hands back to the other Time Lord's temples, a mirror to earlier, but he's pleased this time, not angry or distant, and the drums will be less—or not so much less as different, more a part of him than an infection, an invasion. More complex and less militant, almost as though there might be music behind them, but it's too far away to hear.]

[This connection isn't about letting his other into his mind—only in so much as his mind can serve as the connection between his TARDIS and his other. That's where he places his own mental focus—on that point at the back of his thoughts where everything that he is merges out into something greater, the ship around him, her reassuring, total presence, the constant adjustments of systems, the gold and spark of almost-thoughts, almost-memories, almost-emotions, sensations from a sentience that's beyond even his total comprehension but that is also part of him. There are flecks of that gold in him, where there shouldn't be, and out there, in the flow of her, the occasional flash of the wrong kind of memory, of being limited and small and quick and bright and easily hurt.]

[The harder he focuses on that connection, the less-threatening the drums become, until they almost fall away into the pulse of him and her, and of the greater Time Vortex beyond, that alien place apart from everything that he can touch, just barely, through her.]

[The TARDIS is curious. She's been helping him, but there's someone else here now, like her Doctor but not, someone else who might be able to help, and she curls forward through her Doctor's mind, like an anemone unfurling, twists of light along shared nerve endings, looking for the other. Wary, afraid the new one might hurt hers, but willing to make him welcome. For now.]

[identity profile] watch-is-me.livejournal.com 2008-12-26 07:12 am (UTC)(link)
[And the TARDIS' reaction to the feel of the other Doctor and his TARDIS are similar to the two Doctors' reactions to meeting each other. Curiosity, amusement, puzzlement, fascination, the macabre lure of seeing what might have been, of looking at oneself in a mirror where the glass is ever-so-slightly warped.]

[He feels so much like hers, but not. He's had others with him, and she's had so much time with just hers, where she's been all he's had. Precious time, for her, but wrong, for him, and she's known that. Known it would end, and, hello, it has been. Ending. And she's helping it along now.]

[It's quiet, too. This one needs his TARDIS, his her, but not...in the same way. He's whole in himself, still, and she remembers when hers was like that. Entirely wrapped away in himself, all of those emotions and thoughts and she only ever caught fragments of them, pieces, and never quite understood.]

[Now she's seen everything he is, felt her way through all of his memories, his moments, and feels each one with him, the ticking and pops of his thoughts as an undercurrent to her own larger being and the far thunder-sheet din of his drums, and she still doesn't understand.]

[Except maybe the drums. There's a very good chance she understands those more than he might expect, but, well, he's never thought to ask, has he? Of course he hasn't.]

[When she gets to the place in his mind that's his TARDIS, she laughs. That's the only description for her reaction. Oh, hello, that's...well. HA. Of *course* she'll call this other self of hers over. She wants to meet her. Rather a lot.]

[They can trade ideas.]

[Even as she's curling back through the linked minds of the two Time Lords, she's calling out to her other self, across the Time Vortices of all the universes.]

[This, she thinks, ought to be good for all of them.]
ext_251183: (Default)

[identity profile] time-dimensions.livejournal.com 2008-12-26 06:40 pm (UTC)(link)
[Her Time Lord has disappeared, and it doesn't please her.]

[Not that he hasn't been away from her before; he leaves quite often. He often feels the need to 'explore the universe', as he calls it, and while she doesn't understand, she lets him get on with it. It's good for him; he thinks too much if he stays with her for too long without going anywhere. And so far, he's always come back.]

[This time is different, though. He didn't leave of his own volition. He was here, and then he stopped being here. And she doesn't know where he's gone, and that's the part that - yes, she has to admit, it worries her. She can feel the universe, all that was, is, may be, and never can be, and she can tell that his current persona is not in there. It's rather impossible; not that he hasn't crossed into other universes before, but always with her - reluctant - help. He can't do it on his own, he's corporeal. Corporeal life forms, even Time Lords, are too flimsy and fragile to cross the space between dimensions on their own.]

[It's the only explanation for his absence, though, and yes, she's worried. It's not an unreasonable worry. He's her Time Lord. She doesn't want to lose him.]

[When she hears the call, it startles her at first. It's yet another impossible thing, a call from one of her sisters. She's the only one left; the only TARDIS in existence who is still active, still with her Time Lord. She listens, though, because sometimes, impossible and impossible cancel each other out. This seems to be one of those times; her sister speaks of a multiverse, and there's no way such a thing can exist. But her sister also carries the mental imprint of her Time Lord, and it's like that of her own, but not. She is an alternate, the TARDIS quickly enough realizes, this is herself in another universe. And she says that she knows where her Time Lord is.]

[So she follows her call, and she finds the multiverse, and it's quite impossible. She hadn't thought that there were things that could still surprise her on this scale, but the multiverse - it's new. She's not sure what she thinks of it, but it will have to wait till later. Her sister is right there, and she can also feel her Time Lord again. It's somewhat of a relief. She can feel another one; in fact, she can feel many other ones in this multiverse. That's very odd; it will take some getting used to. For now, she only wants her Time Lord to come home.]

[identity profile] watch-is-me.livejournal.com 2008-12-26 06:52 pm (UTC)(link)
[This isn't something the Doctor's ever done before, sharing his connection with his TARDIS with another Time Lord. It's not something he would do, except with this one, another self; and the experience surprises him. The theory's straight forward enough, but the actual experience...]

[He's let the TARDIS far into his mind before, needed it, when the drums were at their worst, let himself become the undermind instead of the over, in his own head, but only every once in a great while. It's comforting and the best answer to the drums he's yet found, but it's also frightening, something he doesn't understand; he feels like he could lose himself, in the exchange. Feels the ghost-memories of being lost before, his essential self laced throughout hers, bodiless and centerless. Remembers, as she remembers, and there's not enough of a divide between the two of them.]

[It's not supposed to be like that.]

[So this, now, letting his TARDIS use his mind to connect with his other...]

[For the duration of the connection, he's...gone. Or not gone, it's more like being turned inside-out mentally or as though someone's stirred water and oil so hard that they actually have mixed, not just emulsified, but properly mixed. He has to trust her to proceed as he asked her to, because he's not really there to ask any longer. He's a part of her, the part of her that's thinking/knowing that she needs to make connection with the other Doctor and call his TARDIS and then sort herself out so that she's two halves again and let the one half go back about its business.]

[He's the part that feels her understanding of the drums and wants to know more, but that's not part of what the moment is about and the rest of him/her isn't thinking about that right now, so he lets the wanting pass and forgets.]

[He's the part that feels bemusement and sympathy more than amusement, when s/he taps into the other Doctor's memories of his TARDIS.]

[And nostalgia. S/he can remember being more like that.]

[The call goes out, through him/her into the Time Vortex, and then s/he begins to turn him/herself right side out again, the oil and the water to settle out into their component parts.]

[The Doctor blinks. Wow. Wow, okay.]

Blimey. That—that worked. Did it work?

[He hasn't noticed yet, but his hair's standing on end, as though he just suffered severe electric shock, and wisps of golden energy, like mist in lamplight, are sublimating from his skin into the air around him.]

[identity profile] watch-is-me.livejournal.com 2008-12-27 02:55 am (UTC)(link)
"Good! What? Sparkling?" Someone is not completely oriented yet, and he's just had several totally unrelated, he doesn't think, well, they're related, they just lacked transitional phrases, sentences thrown at him, and now his other's running off, corduroy jacket flapping and blue Converse eating up the short distance to the wardrobe door.

And he is sparkling. He frowns and waves his arms, and the golden energy disperses. Artron energy. Mm. Not as much as when she'd rebuilt him—that had been worse than regeneration, he'd been lit up like a Christmas tree for days after—but still, levels high enough to be visible. He'll want to go by his laboratories after this, see if he hadn't done himself any harm.

Not just now, though.

Right now, his TARDIS tells him that his other's right, and the other TARDIS is here, outside, already; so he legs it out of the wardrobe and into the hallways, sprinting after his other to the console room.

The outer doors will already be open when his other arrives in the console room; no button-pushing required for such simple functions on this TARDIS. The Doctor and the TARDIS both want the doors open, and so they are.

[identity profile] watch-is-me.livejournal.com 2008-12-27 04:20 am (UTC)(link)
The Doctor makes his way across his own TARDIS' console room to the doorway, where the two TARDIS have "docked" with each other. A very precise materialization, that—one of those miracles of accuracy the TARDIS achieves when she wants to, and rarely when he does. The more things change, the more they stay the same, even across universes...

He's left most of his "sparkle" behind—though, as he lets his hand trail across his TARDIS' controls as he passes the console, a faint haze of energy follows the path of his hand. It's impossible to say whether the energy moves from his hand to the TARDIS or from the TARDIS to his hand—and, in any case, he doesn't notice the phenomenon.

When he gets to the TARDIS' almost-touching doorways, he leans across the small gap, and knocks on his other's TARDIS' doorframe.

"Permission to board?"

His tone says it's a joke, but...well, he did absorb the sense that his other's TARDIS is a bit...different from his.

[identity profile] watch-is-me.livejournal.com 2008-12-27 05:29 am (UTC)(link)
He does, stepping across the small gap between the two TARDIS. He can still feel his, of course, at such close proximity, but he can't feel the one he's standing in now, except at a very, very distant twice-remove—the far-away sense that his TARDIS is in contact with this one. It's always bizarre, being in a TARDIS that is his but isn't his.

He lets his hand rest on the doorframe of his other's TARDIS for a moment. Thank you, the gesture's meant to say.

It looks just like his, his other's TARDIS, except...

Leaning in to look at the console closer, he pushes his glasses (which he's not yet bothered to take off) further up his nose. "No, you've still got the strange-force hypothetical-particle relay bypassing the Keppler resonance arc?"

And even before he's finished that sentence, he's looking over other bits of wiring and circuitry, commenting to himself on their state of affairs and how it could be improved, his expression somewhere between amused and 'oh, really, come on, you can do better than this, look at this.'

[identity profile] watch-is-me.livejournal.com 2008-12-27 05:06 pm (UTC)(link)
"You know, I think she keeps this one twitchy on purpose, I've jimmied it to within a decade but—hm?" The other Doctor looks up from tapping the casing of the yearometer. "What? Oh, tea. Yes. Tea would be brilliant, thanks." And he recognizes the expression on his other's face; it's something along the lines of 'I'm trying to be polite but would you please just shut up and let me get on with doing things my way, because my way works, and I really don't want to snap at you but I will if you keep it up' crossed with a bit of the old standby, 'Did you really just insult my TARDIS?'

Oh. Oops.

He slips off his glasses and pockets them, standing back and away from the console. He really wants to get out his sonic screwdriver and have at those controls—it's become almost a hobby of his, maintaining his TARDIS—but it's not his place. It feels like it should be, but it isn't. Crossing his arms across his chest, hands tucked under his upper arms, an old posture kept over from his Ninth, he gives his other a small, slightly apologetic grin. Got carried away with myself there, sorry, you know how it is.

"I'll get it myself. You carry on." He starts towards the door into the interior proper, but stops himself on the way. "Oh, and the console room might be best, if you're...if you're stopping over."

They haven't talked about it, not out loud, but that's where it's felt like all of this has been leading, the understanding backgrounding their mental communications, the intent of their actions so far.

[identity profile] watch-is-me.livejournal.com 2008-12-28 03:02 am (UTC)(link)
The Doctor has canisters and boxes and packets of tea scattered across one of the kitchen's tables; there was a particular kind he wanted, and he was curious to see if his other had it, and and his other did, but not where he keeps it, and while he was looking for that one kind, he found other kinds that he doesn't have, and some of them seem to be from places and times he hasn't been yet, and so of course he had to look through them all and hey, look at this, it's that performance tea from the Emperor of the Shattered Sundial, he'd almost forgotten he had that! ...Does he still have that? Well, regardless, his other does, and it's very good tea.

He glances over from where he's pouring hot water into a glass mug, the ball of tea at the mug's bottom beginning to unfurl intricate layers of herb "petals" as it's submerged.

"What, already?"

[identity profile] watch-is-me.livejournal.com 2008-12-28 04:59 am (UTC)(link)
The Doctor strolls into the console room, mug in one hand. The tea in it's steeping, the little ball of herbs spreading out into a full red faux chrysanthemum, complete with yellow center and green leaves at its base. It smells like flowers, too, and honey, warm and dark and far-away enough to be tantalizing instead of cloying.

"D'you remember the Emperor? He told me, us, me, well, you could set your clock by how long it takes this tea to bloom, there's an equation, compensates for differences in water temperature..."

He takes a sip of the tea as he properly takes in the view through the doors. Hm. That would explain why his TARDIS feels amused.

"Well. Full marks for precision, but I'll have to dock you on orientation..." Which isn't meant any more harshly than was his other's comment about the Keppler arc. In fact, the Doctor is smiling as he takes another sip of his tea. Nice to see he's not the only one who has trouble with parking.

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