| Date: 16 December2007
Characters: Brant Hysmith, Susan Foreman Location: hotel bar Link to IJ: thread #9278 |
 He wasn't exactly disappointed, but he'd definitely expected to spend tonight doing something more exciting than wandering around what looked a lot like a twentieth century ghost-town. Then again, he'd fallen through space and time and ended up here, instead of the Academy.
You'd think if you were going to fall through space and time, you'd at least land somewhere interesting. Not that Lane wasn't interesting - it just wasn't what he'd had in mind. After he left Lane sleeping, he'd explored the hotel for a while. He discovered the dining room and the bar, then went outside and took his explorations to the street. When light began to fade, in a uniform way that was less like a sun setting than someone dialing down the lighting, he went back to the hotel and returned to the bar. Where he discovered that this town might make the Boshane Pennisula look like a party-town on a pleasure-planet, the bar was impressive. He shouldn't drink. He knew he shouldn't drink. Especially in a strange place. There were drinks in every color imaginable, that smoked and fogged and iced and swirled and shimmered and glittered and gleamed. The bar won out over common sense. He settled down on a stool, a shimmering glass of something potent and silvery in front of him and, while he was definitely drinking it, he was also was doing a lot of just turning the glass on the surface of the bar. The reflection and bounce of light off the surface was pretty, the shine and gleam was distracting and he was. Homesick, actually. Realizing he was homesick prompted him to take a bigger drink than was really a good idea, his eyes went a little wide, and he coughed. "It's always the pretty ones," he murmured and wheezed. He was one to talk. |
 "That's not good for you," Susan said, her head tilted curiously as she stepped in behind the young man who looked around her age. Or at least, around her physical age, which was the exact same as her chronological age at the moment, but it was difficult to tell whether that was the case for him as well. "Dulls the senses. Makes the mind all foggy. It's no good when it's in the fog." |
| He turned his head at the sound of her voice and grinned at her. His eyes were still watering a little. "Are you my good sense? Because I swear I just had this argument with myself." |
| "I don't believe so," Susan said, a slight smile gracing her face as she near fluidly slipped onto the stool next to him, plunking her elbow down on the bar and propping her fist under her chin. "But since yours seems to have gone AWAL at the moment, I suppose I could provide a proper substitute." |
| "If it's gone, it's either because I gave it leave or it got lost in the fog." He was bantering, not trying to be aggressive at all. He kept his eyes on her and his grin was firmly in place. "If it being gone means you stay though, it has to stay gone. Coming back wouldn't be smart."
...He was bantering in weird logic circles and not because he was drunk, or even tipsy, so much as just getting tangled up in that bit of circular logic. |
| "Oh. Well, I'll stay whether it comes back or not," Susan said, returning the grin. It was nice to have someone her own age to talk to. It happened so rarely, after all. Even David was nearly ten years her senior.
"You look like you need company of a sort other than liquid," Susan said, her gaze flickering down to the glass briefly before turning back up to the young man. "It's curious, isn't it? Not knowing where or when we are." |
| He tilted the glass around and watched the way the stuff moved. "I'm not being stupid and drowning my sorrows," he promised, and was probably just a little defensive about it.
But only a little, because she was grinning and she was staying, and it really was nice to find someone close to his age to talk to. "I don't know if it's curious, but I sure am. I'm Brant. What's your name? Do you know how you got here?" He made himself stop what could have been an endless stream of questions, there. |
| "I can't say I would blame you if you were," Susan said simply, reaching out and patting his arm lightly, trying to be reassuring. "This certainly would be the type of situation where that type of reaction would be appropriate."
"I'm Susan. And I wish I knew. I'm not used to just being plucked out of time. Not without meaning to be, at least. And not without any sort of assistance," Susan said thoughtful expression. |
| "Weren't you just telling me that drinking was a bad idea?" he asked, without any serious argument. He was amused more than anything, and mostly just at himself and being patted on the arm. It made him feel like a puppy. It was not an altogether inaccurate comparison, but not one he wanted to have to make, because then he'd have to get bent out of shape about it, and he wasn't in the mood.
Besides, the rest of what Susan said was far, far more interesting. "What kind of assistance? Do you wander around time often?" |
| "Oh, that doesn't change anything I said to begin with. I just mean that such behavior is understandable," Susan said, her expression softening into a wistful smile at the question of wandering time. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to explain, being outside of the normal timestream as we seem to be."
Glancing right and left with a playfully furtive glance, Susan made a show of it, leaning forward and dropping her voice to the whisper as if she was relaying some top secret information, "I have, and I do. Or well, I did. I haven't had the opportunity in nearly a year." |
| "Even really dumb behaviour's understandable, sometimes?" he asked, and his grin brightened and warmed a bit.
He followed her glancing around and leaned forward when she did, getting that it was mostly play, but still really curious. "You sound like you really miss it," he said, his voice also low enough to count, at least, as a stage whisper. |
| "Of course. Nobody is brilliant and perfect all the time. No matter how much my grandfather likes to think that he is," Susan said with a teasing grin.
"I do. I really do. I didn't expect that I would as much as I do. But I guess you can't escape something that's quite literally hardwired into your DNA," Susan said. "It also doesn't help that it wasn't my decision to stop." |
| "Your grandfather thinks he's brilliant and perfect all the time? He's missing half the fun of living, then." He was teasing, at least probably, but he was very serious about some part of that statement, at least.
He waggled his eyebrows a little at her grin, then got distracted by her explanation. "Hardwired into your DNA? What? How? What stopped you?" ...Magpie. |
| "He thinks he's incapable of making mistakes. Or at least, he used to. It's hard to say what he thinks now. I haven't seen him in some time. I'll have to relearn all these things," Susan said, giggling a bit at the reaction to her expression before the questions started coming at her in rapid secession.
"I suppose I should have expected that," Susan said after a moment. "Do you want the long explanation or the short one?" |
| "You'll have to relearn what he thinks now?" he asked. He had the grace to look a little sheepish at realizing he'd added another question to the list of ones he'd just asked.
"Short's probably faster, but long'll save me asking you another couple of dozen questions when you're done." In conclusion: "Use your best judgement?" |
| "Well, it has been 800 years, he said. Some things are bound to have changed in that time. He was merely a sprite 400 or so when I saw him last," Susan said, a grin spreading across her face. "He's got the upperhand. It's only been a year for me."
"Directly to the point?" Susan said after a moment. "Simple enough, and you've probably already assumed it from that last statement. I'm not human despite the appearance. Which comes in awfully handy. You'd be surprised by just how many humanoid species there are." |
| He grinned and looked far, far more delighted than bothered. In fact t here was no bothered, just a lot of glee, that might not be entirely healthy. He refrained from bouncing, but only because he had some sense of dignity.
"I would not! Okay, so maybe I would, but not really. Eight hundred years? Wow, that sounds like a long time. I wonder if he's more or less insufferable now and I don't even know where to *start* with how confusing time travel must be and. " He was blinking a little, staring a bit and babbling a lot. |
| Susan had had a feeling that he wasn't the type to react with wide mouthed gapping and disbelief. And the eagerness with which the words were coming out in a flood was rather endearing.
"He seems less now, actually," Susan said, grinning. "With age comes immature, as it were. At least, that's what Mom always used to say. After a thousand years, you really do stop caring what people think about you. And it is rather confusing. But you get used to it after awhile. It makes more sense if you keep in mind that time is fluid, not linear. Things are always changing and fluctuating." |
| "Wait, with age comes immaturity? Are you sure that's right?" He heard the rest of it, but he was actually having to think about it as he went. "I'm kind of disturbed by how much sense that makes, and yeah, I know Time isn't linear but. Wow." He was honestly excited and wide eyed and awed. He wasn't bouncing, but it was close. "So, you're not human. What are you?" |
| "Gallifreyan," Susan said, smiling to herself. "More to the point, a Time Lady. Or, at least, I would have been if I'd finished my training. At best, I'm still just an apprentice." |
| "You didn't finish or you didn't have time to finish before you came here?" He prodded, unapologetically. The word Time in there really got his attention. |
| "I didn't finish," Susan said. "Grandfather and I left Gallifrey when I was very young, barely twelve. Our training only starts at eight, and it lasts at least a hundred and fifty years. It was a shame, really. Because I was making triplalphas in most of my subjects. My teachers said that I was well on my way to being the first student in a millennia to make Junior before turning twenty." |
| "...I have no idea what you're talking about, but it really sounds incredible and I'm sorry you lost the opportunity. Especially since your grandfather left again." |
| Susan's smile dimmed a bit as a haze clouded her eyes. There had been plenty of times during her time traveling with her Grandfather that she had just wished they could go back. And then he'd left her, and she didn't have any way home. No matter how much she wanted to. "I do miss it." |
| "What happened?" he asked, gently. The dimmed smile and look in her eyes was not lost on Brant. Not even a little. |
| "Grandfather stole his ship. We were criminals. We couldn't go back," Susan said vaguely. "And then he just left me on Earth." |
| "He just left you, stuck? Why?" |
| "Because he thought that was what was best for me," Susan said after a moment. "And I suppose, in part, he was right. But still, it wasn't his decision to make."
All right. Maybe Susan was a little bitter about it. |
| "No, it really wasn't. If you were old enough to be left you must've been old enough to decide where to be left. Who does that?!" He was definitely all fully of righteous indignation. He was getting good at that. |
| "Grandfather," Susan said simply with a slight laugh. "He always thought he knew what was best for me." |
| He covered her hand with his. "I'm sorry. I wish there was something I could do." He gestured to the bar with his head and inclined his eyebrow a little. "You sure you don't want to fog your mind?" It was a bad joke, but he was trying. |
| Susan just smiled, "Can't," She said simply. "Well, not unless I really focus. Alcohol doesn't effect us unless we want it to." |
| "In that case, you want to play with the shiny pretty colors?" |
| Susan couldn't help but giggle at that statement, "It is like a rainbow, isn't it?" She asked, poking at one of the bottles that was sitting on the bar. "I didn't think liquor came in this many colors." |
| "I haven't even seen paint this colorful," he admitted. "I'm not sure I've actually seen rainbows with some of these shades. They're pretty." |
| Susan grinned as she snagged a couple of the bottles, setting them along side each other in a meticulous order, a playful smile on her face as she tilted them slightly, trying to line them all up so that they lined up so that if you looked through them all, the colors all blended together by the time you got to the last bottle.
"Beautiful," She said, grinning. "I bet if we could get the light to shine on them, it would make a wonderful display," She said, bouncing off of her stool and over to the window. |
| He watched her arrange the bottles, then slid off his stool and to his feet. "Well, let's go find a light," he said, matter-of-factly. |
| Susan bounced happily on the balls of her feet, an amused smile spreading across his face as she reached out and snagged Brant's arm, giving it a hug as she glanced left and right, "Where should we look first?" |