| Date: 30 December 2007
Characters: Professor Yana, The Tenth Doctor Location: outside Link to IJ: thread #23046 |
 The Professor's first day without the drums was turning out to be a frustrating one. He'd expected it to be an adjustment; he'd heard those drums all his life, after all, and he'd reasoned that it would take a while to get used to their absence. Logic hadn't prepared him for the reality, though, and he was unsettled and uncomfortable. He'd gone to retrieve the temporal mechanics book he'd forgotten in the dining room and found that it might as well have been written in another language, for all the sense it made.
Frustrated and irritable, he'd gone for a walk outside, and started thinking, and putting puzzle pieces together in his too-damned-quiet mind. He wasn't sure he liked the picture that seemed to be forming. When he got tired of walking (half-hoping he'd run into the Doctor and half-hoping he wouldn't) he sat down on a bench and tried to quiet his racing thoughts. |
 His day had been peculiar, too. He was left a little confused and a little shaken by what had happened, not helped at all by his run-in with a very young, short version of the Master. Not that he regretted it. He just, flatly, did not.
He saw the Professor, sat down beside him, leaned forward with his arms on his legs and squinted up at the sky. "Professor." |
| The Professor looked over at him and gave him a wry grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Doctor." |
| "You look kind of like someone Jack dragged in." |
| That surprised a laugh out of him. "That's kind of how I feel. What about you? Any ill effects from your trip into my head?" |
| He grinned, a little. "I'm all right. Talk to me." |
| "All right." He hesitated, then made up his mind. "Tell me, Doctor, why is there a Time Lord in my head?" He wasn't positive that it was true, but he thought it fit. |
| He stared, but only for a minute. "Because he's you. Or was you, before you turned into you. " |
| "He's me. Doctor, I'm as human as they come. If you cut my hand off, it's not going to grow back." |
| "No," he agreed. "Used to be part of you might be a better way of putting it." He paused. "I'm sorry." |
| "Used to be? Is he gone completely, then?" He sighed, looked away. "What are you sorry for? I wanted the drums gone, they're gone. Nothing to be sorry for." |
| "I don't know," he said, candidly. "And I'm sorry because what you think you want isn't always what you want and you're clearly uncomfortable."
Still didn't regret it. |
| He looked down, rubbed the back of his neck, looked up at the sky. "It's not that I want the drums back. I don't. It's just...things that made sense yesterday don't make sense today. How does that happen, one of your people's consciousness in a human mind? I didn't even know he was there." |
| "I don't know," he lied, and lied convincingly. "I'm sorry." Because that really fixed anything, ever. "I wish I could do more to help you. " |
| The Professor shook his head. "You haven't done anything but help me since I met you." His voice was gentle. He grinned self-deprecatingly. "I'm an old man," he said. "It takes me more time than it should to get used to change. I get there eventually, though." He looked the Doctor in the eyes and said sincerely, "I wanted the drums to stop. If I had it to do over again, I'd still want them stopped."
He was sure about that, at least. |
| "You aren't so old," He said, because it was the easy thing to say and because it was a lot easier than trying to deal with the weighter subject, especially since he wasn't sure how. "Not by my standard, anyway." He grinned quickly. "I'm glad you don't regret it." Okay, so maybe he'd touch on it, at least a little. "And I am sure you'll be able to work out everything you need to work out. You're brilliant, Professor and that's nothing to do with the drums." |
| "Nothing to do with the drums, but how much was due to him? There's a temporal mechanics book in my room that makes a lot less sense today than it did yesterday."
"...And you've got some interesting standards, if..." He trailed off, thinking, different versions. He looked speculatively at the Doctor, grinning a little now, "How old are you, anyway?" |
| He shook his head. "I don't know the answer to that first question," he admitted. "But I know you'll be able to figure things out on your own, just fine, if you've got some time."
He didn't know any such thing, but he was good at wishful thinking. He looked back, waggled his eyebrows a bit at the look, then raked his hand through his hair and looked up at the Professor. "Oh, nine hundred something, I think." |
| The Professor laughed. "I was prepared for some ridiculous number, but not that ridiculous. Nine hundred and something--might as well round it off and call it a thousand." He was teasing. And grateful for the wishful thinking. |
| He looked horribly offended. "Don't do that," he protested. "I'm going backwards to get away from a thousand." |
| "If you figure out how to do that, you'd better tell me," he said, grinning at the offended look.
"So where were you before you wound up here? After the end of the universe, where did you go? The beginning, just for variety?" He was still teasing, a little, but also very curious. |
| "If I figure out how to stay away from being a thousand years old? Really simply: Deny it. Eventually you'll be senile enough to believe it yourself." He returned the grin, because he couldn't not. It was a good expression for the Professor.
"I was actually in the twenty-first century, in Cardiff. Went there straight after the end of the universe." |
| "Who was I talking to who had come here from the twenty-first century--oh, Toshiko. And Jack, now that I think of it. The twenty-first century...that's practically mythical to me." |
| "You must be having a grand time, here, then." He paused. "You are exploring, aren't you, not just sticking your nose in a book?" |
| "Of course," he said, and bit his lip. It might have been convincing, if he hadn't looked sort of like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. |
| He huffed a sigh. "Professor Yana...."
Yes, he was chiding. |
| If he hadn't found the library quite so early... He grinned sheepishly. "Hadn't seen that many books in one place in my life." |
| "Reading is all well and good, but if you don't ever leave the library you're going to miss out on something fantastic."
...He felt like he'd had this conversation before. Probably and something years ago, come to think of it. |
| The Professor smiled, fond and indulgent and a little mischievous. "So, Doctor, what am I missing out on?" |
| "A twentieth century near ghost-town! What's not to love. You said it was nearly mythical to you. You should be prying into everything." |
| "Is there anywhere you haven't pried yet?" |
| "Here? Everywhere and when?" |
| "I meant here." For now, anyway. |
| "Oh, loads!" He had no clue what was here, he hadn't poked most of it, but mostly he was poking the Professor. |
| "Then let's go and find out." There was a little bit of a challenge in that grin. |
| He stood up and held his hand out. "All right, let's." |
| The Professor stood, too. "Pick a direction." |
| He looked up and down a street, put his hand on the Professor's back and headed down the street and to the left. "Direction picked." |
| "So," the Professor said as they walked, "Twentieth century ghost town, hm? Metaphorical ghosts, I assume?" |
| "I should hope so!" He didn't pause long before he amended, "Unless you mean figures from the past, walking around. Then, maybe not so much." |
| "How do you mean?" |
| "People from points all through time, all coming here. Some from much further in the past than others." |
| "And some from much farther in the future." He grinned.
"Any pattern to it that you've seen?" |
| He laughed. "When we find someone from the dawn of time, we might have found something of a pattern. Just now, there doesn't seem to be much of one." |
| He chuckled. "Now I'm trying to figure out what the first sentient species was."
"Do you think it's just accident, then, us being here? It's as likely an explanation as any, I suppose." |
| "No idea," he admitted, after a thoughtful silence. "I hope so. What do you think?" |
| "I can't even begin to speculate. Although I met a very sweet, brilliant young woman recently who said that it shouldn't be possible to travel between universes accidentally, and that this can't be the space between universes because, well, something about a void, I don't remember exactly." |
| "Blond hair, dark eyes?" He asked, watching the Professor as unobtrusively as he could manage. He still felt compelled to keep an eye on him. Of course, he wanted to keep an eye on everyone, and keeping them all in the TARDIS was getting more appealing as time went on and he met more people from his past. People he'd lost. |
| He shook his head. "Dark hair, tiny little thing, said her name was Susan." |
| "Oh! Oh oh oh." He paused, and frowned, just a little. "I really need to see her." |
| "Oh, do you know her?" |
| "She's my granddaughter." |
| "Your grand- Oh, right, nine hundred and something, I suppose that is old enough to have a granddaughter." He's amused by the idea anyway. |
| "Just barely," he agreed, with a decidedly wicked gleam in his eye. "Right about the void, too. Or would be if this place didn't exist and we weren't here. " |
| "So...right except in all the ways it's wrong?" That wicked gleam's contagious. |
| "Exactly!" He sounded, and looked, at least a little delighted at the Professor's expression and tone. "It's impossible - but only until it's not anymore." |
| He laughed. "I like that. Never really liked the word 'impossible' anyway. I like it better when it's only temporary." |
| "Everything is temporary."
He sounded more sad about that than anything. |
| "Even the universe," he agreed. "Although I suppose a hundred trillion years is about all you can ask of a universe." |
| "I can ask anything I want," he said, sounding just short of petulant. Just for a second. |
| The Professor tried to hide his grin. "Yes. Yes you can," he said, and he didn't sound patronizing at all. |
| He shot the Professor a look that was half-glare and half-amusement (probably at himself). "Thanks for the permission," he snarked. |
| "You're welcome." |