| Date: 16 January 2008
Characters: , Location: dining room Link to IJ: thread #37400 |
 He was restless. He was used to being confined to a fairly small area, with a limited population, but he'd been geared up to go somewhere - finally. Jack was fantastic and he was having a good time meeting and talking to people, to be sure, but this morning he was at loose ends.He took a cup of coffee from one of the server androids, found out where it was meant to be going and took it over himself. "Hey," he said, with a quick, sweet grin as he offered the person their coffee. "Mind some human company?" |
 The Doctor was reading his book on time travel again but he was very happy to talk to someone instead, especially when he recognised the voice of the newcomer as Jack's."I never mind human company," he chuckled, glancing up to smile at Jack - and then stopping and staring, mouth open. Because although he was aware there were multiple Jacks here - he'd met two of them already - he hadn't been expecting one anywhere near this young. |
| "Great. Thanks." He pulled his chair out and sat down, one leg folded under him. "What are you reading?" he asked. It wasn't much of a question, though, because even as he asked, he cocked his head to the side to read the title. |
| The Doctor was still staring. At the question, though, he came to himself enough to shut his mouth, but he still looked a bit glazed as he shifted the book round through 90 degrees so Jack could read the title. "Thanks for the coffee," he said inadequately. |
| "My pleasure," he said easily. When the book straightened he finished reading and looked back to the Doctor, and gave him another one of those grins. "Did the book come from the library here, or did it come with you?" |
| "This? Oh, this is from the library here. It's a human book. Very amusing!" The Doctor grinned back, automatically. "The books I have in my own library are actually useful. Not that any of them are here with me. I sort of left my TARDIS behind." |
| He managed to follow half to two-thirds of that. "I keep meaning to check the library here and getting sidetracked before I get there. Where'd you get taken from, if you left your TARDIS?" Not that he knew what a TARDIS was, but he was quite willing to pretend like he knew more than he did. |
| "Um, I sort of got taken from my TARDIS," the Doctor admitted, looking a little embarrassed. "I stepped out of it into a hotel room and when I tried to go back in there was just a wardrobe there instead of the TARDIS." He frowned, backtracking a little. "You know what a TARDIS is? Have you met another version of me here already?" |
| "Sounds frustrating. At least you didn't stay in the closet?" he offered, a bit lamely. He shrugged, and looked a little embarrassed himself. "No idea," he admitted. |
| The Doctor grinned. "Oh, I do try not to stay in closets, yes. And it's very rude of me not to have introduced myself. I'm the Doctor." He offered a hand, and a friendly smile. |
| He took the hand. "Another one?" He was confused, yeah, but he sounded just the slightest bit depreciating about it, at least. |
| "Oh, you have met another me, then?" exclaimed the Doctor, shaking the hand enthusiastically. It was disconcerting to be shaking what felt very much like Jack's hand, attached to someone who was so very, very young. And who didn't know him. Well, obviously he wouldn't know him at that age, but... it was disconcerting. "And you're..." He stopped, remembering that Jack had only just started calling himself Jack when he first met him. And he didn't know Jack's real name. He frowned. "What are you called?" |
| He returned the handshake firmly, then retrieved his hand back. "I. Don't know," he admitted. "If I've met another you, then. I met someone calling himself the Doctor. Strange man. We had an interesting conversation about his heart and his pants." He could completely believe that they were two versions of the same person. Appearances aside, they were both a little pecuilar. "Brant. I'm Brant." |
| "Ah, right, nice to meet you, Brant." The Doctor beamed. "Two hearts?" he inquired. "And I'm not asking about the pants." |
| "Two hearts," he agreed with a nod. "And please dont' ask about the pants. I'm not even sure what happened there." |
| "That's me, then. Well, probably. Unless it was the Master - I hear he's around too somewhere - but probably me." He let the pants thing go. "Leather jacket, Northern accent, ruggedly handsome?" |
| "Leather jacket, some sort of weird accent and kind of funny looking?" |
| The Doctor grinned, because after all, this was Jack, and Jack would never have admitted to thinking him ruggedly handsome. "Yeah, that'll be me," he admitted, with a dramatic sigh. "Regeneration before this one." |
| "What before this one?" He asked, because he was just confused. Confused and interested and hey, beat the hell out of bored. |
| "Regeneration. When I get fatally wounded, I don't die, I just regenerate into a different body. Very useful ability." |
| "Means you weren't fatally injured, doesn't it?" he asked, a little prissily. |
| "No, it means I would have died if I hadn't been able to regenerate." |
| "Doesn't that make it a mortal wound?" |
| "Mortal/fatal - aren't they the same thing?" |
| "Mortal means subject to death. Fatal means bringing death?" |
| "Well, someone's been paying attention at school, hasn't he?" |
| He blinked, just a little owlishly. "Someone's feeling a little prickly, aren't they?" |
| The Doctor sighed. "Someone's feeling his age just a little bit, and isn't very comfortable having his English corrected by someone who's barely out of high school." He paused, studying Brant. "If you even are out of high school." |
| "...Out of what school?" he asked, blankly. There was a translation glitch in there, somewhere. |
| "High school. Where kids go to learn? Upto the age of - oh - about 18?" He screwed up his face, trying to remember what such schools were called in the 51st century, but drew a blank. |
| "I'm done with that," he said, and managed to only look a little offended. |
| "Have you?" the Doctor said mildly. "What're you doing these days, then, Brant?" As if he didn't know. Well, he didn't really know as such. Just assumed. It wasn't like Jack had ever actually talked about his past. |
| "Waiting around for this place to spit me back out so I can get on with my life, mostly." Bitter? Maybe a little. He had been particularly bored. |
| The Doctor made a sympathetic face. Well, he hoped it was sympathetic. He wasn't very good at these things. "It must be hard when you're just on the verge of starting out in life." He grinned. "On the other hand, I'm enjoying the chance for a well-earned rest!" |
| "I kind of got the idea you could use one from the other you." That was fairly hard to express. "To be honest I'm not really looking forward to getting tossed back out. There are some great people here that I'm really going to miss - even if I don't know I miss them." |
| The Doctor took a tentative sip of his coffee and decided it was cool enough to drink. He looked at Brant over his cup. "There are people I'm going to miss too. Well, one in particular. Especially as there seem to be multiple versions of him running about here." He almost winked, but stopped himself in time. It was clear that Brant had no idea he would know the Doctor in his future, and he was too used to trying to preserve timelines to deliberately tip him off. "It makes it hard to believe what I put him through - what I'm going to put him through." |
| He shook his head. "Why does it make it hard to believe?" he asked, curiously. No, he had no idea, and that was more than fine. Mostly, though, he was just plain missing the point, and not quite capable of making the intuitive leap that would have gotten him there. |
| The Doctor rubbed a hand through his hair and stared into space. "Seeing him again. Seeing him after I abandoned him, discovering how long I let him wait for me. And then seeing the version I knew before, and realising what I'd abandoned." He sighed. "It's complicated." |
| He wrinkled his forehead, tried to follow along and then gave up. "It sounds it," he said, sympathetically. |
| The Doctor snapped back into brilliant-smile mode. "My life tends to be. You live for 900 plus years and things have a habit of getting complicated. Add time-travel into that and, well..." |
| He shook his head a little. "I can't even imagine trying to keep that straight." |
| "It gets easier with habit." He drank some more coffee. "So who're you not looking forward to leaving behind?" He was curious to know what kind of friends young Jack had made here. |
| "Just about everyone I've met, so far," he said, unapologetically and with a bright grin. "And the coffee." |
| The Doctor's eyebrows shot up. "Everyone? You obviously haven't met any of the more... unsavoury characters, then." |
| "Obviously not." He smiled faintly, and shrugged slightly. "But I'm not complaining." |
| "I haven't met any either." The Doctor grinned brightly. "I did hear about one, but it'll be a much nicer holiday if I don't run into him." |
| "I suppose not everyone who gets sucked into the middle of nowhere can be great." |
| "Well, no. But a lot of the people here seem to be connected to me somehow, and unfortunately I know quite a lot of not-great people." |
| "You're 900 something years old, of course you know a lot of people - great and otherwise." |
| "Ye-ah." The Doctor drank some coffee with an appreciative smacking of his lips, then leaned back in his chair and looked Brant up and down. "So... Brant-with-no-last-name. Where do you come from? And when, for that matter?" He didn't want to think about the Master being here. And they were reasonable questions. It was what everybody was asking each other. |
| He was actually mildly uncomfortable with that look, and he couldn't have said why. "I don't know how to tell you when, since you're not human," he admitted, candidly. "As for where. The Boshane Peninsula." |
| "Where's that? And I'm pretty familiar with human time," he said mildly. "More familiar than with my own, these days." Because his own didn't exist any more. |
| "It's on the edge of the Ishtar Galaxy, and about the 51st century, give or take." |
| "Don't you know what the date was?" |
| "I can give you the date, but it's not earth, and the rotation on its axis doesn't take 24 hours, and it's trip around the sun doesn't take 350 something days, so there's all this slip and slide in the math and translation and it's just not worth it." |
| "Oh, I see. So you don't actually know what date it was on Earth, then?" |
| "Right." |
| The Doctor drank some more coffee. "Still, 51st century, and the Ishtar Galaxy... Long way away and a long time in the future, for most of the people here. We really have got people coming in from far and wide, haven't we?" |
| "Yeah," he agreed. "It seems like it. It's neat." |
| "Neat isn't exactly the term I'd use. More curious, or possibly disturbing." |
| "I like neat." He grinned. |
| The Doctor smiled back affectionately. "You have a lovely smile, Brant." |
| "Thanks," he said, honestly. "Do you want a refill?" |
| "Nah, think I'll go out and get some fresh air, if that's all right with you. Too much caffeine makes me hyper. Well - " he considered, head tilted, and grinned. "More hyper. It was good talking to you, though, Brant." He winked. "And take care of that smile. You might find it comes in useful one day." |
| "Yes, sir," he agreed with a sort of casual, flip, salute and stood. "I think I'll go find that library," he added, as he left. |
| The Doctor watched him go, with an ironic little smile at the salute. Some things, it appeared, never changed. Then he stretched, sighed, and got up to go and see how many more Jacks he could bump into. |
