June 20 // Delirium, OPEN

[walkingmyfish]

Date: June 20 (some time before the CLANG!)
Characters: Delirium, etc.
Location: Library
Summary: Delirium returns from a long walk through the stars.
Warnings: None

Comments

[theshortdoctor]

The Doctor was in the library, silently reading a copy of Waverley by Sir Walter Scott. He was at the very end, the scene where the protagonist and the Jacobite rebel were waiting out the night together in prison, before the morning of the Jacobite's execution. The Doctor was more than usually engrossed by the novel, though his eyes frequently stilled on the page as he wondered how Jamie was faring in the aftermath of Culloden, if he had escaped the redcoats and slave-catchers and kept his head down enough to survive. Somehow, the Doctor didn't expect that he had. If only he had the TARDIS, he could go back and make sure. Time Lords be damned, he wouldn't let Jamie be the victim of random, pointless human violence. Even if the High Council and CIA and the lot of them tried to prevent him from landing in that place and time, he'd find a way.

[walkingmyfish]

Delirium looked around the library, he gaze quickly falling on the Doctor. Having never quite understood the art of quietly reading to oneself, she considered most people in libraries to just be taking a rest, or waiting for something interesting to happen. She walked quickly over to his chair, half on her tiptoes as if she was sneaking up on him, and stopped just shy of him, bending at the waist to stare at him over the top of his book.

"Hello! " she said cheerfully, her technicolour hair falling down past her ears and over the pages. "What are you doing?"

[theshortdoctor]

The Doctor looked up quickly, blinking away his thoughts. After a moment of confusion, he smiled softly and said. "Oh, nothing much. Reading a sad story." The Doctor closed the book without marking his place, folding his hands together and turning to face Delirium. "And just what have you been doing, my dear? I haven't seen you around in quite a while."

[walkingmyfish]

"I went for a walk," she said, hoisting the stick and knapsack from her shoulder and resting it against a nearby table. "But then I came back. Not on purpose, the first time. Maybe this time. I was getting how you get when you're all alone for a while and don't want to be anymore."

"Why is it sad?" she asked, looking down at the book.

[theshortdoctor]

"Yes, yes I know what you mean," the Doctor said gently, feeling a pang of sympathy for this strange, other-worldly girl. She didn't fit in very well with the rest of the people in the colony, he could tell. He knew, from his time on Earth and in other places, what it was like to be an outsider, to feel lonely. "I rather feel like that myself, these days." He picked up one end of the book, then let it fall back flat on the table. "Well, it's sad because it reminds me a friend of mine who isn't here. We were together for a long time, but he was taken away, and I didn't want him to be." He spoke to her as he would a child, not consciously because he thought she was sub-normal in her mental functions, but because it seemed to be the way she was comfortable with communicating. He wasn't there to judge, after all. The universe had all sorts. That was what made it magnificent.

[walkingmyfish]

Delirium sat down on the floor and pulled her knees up to her chest, then stared up at the Doctor as he finished speaking. At least the story itself didn't need cheering up; that had been her first worry. The story was sad because the Doctor was sad. She tilted her head sideways, considering what he'd said. "Who took him away?" she asked. "Can you get him back?"

[theshortdoctor]

The Doctor didn't respond for a while. He wasn't sure what to say to those questions, though the answers were simple enough: my people and I will, whatever it takes. Instead he smiled faintly, shaking his head and said, "I can't do much of anything from here, trapped in one time and place. It's very strange for me, staying still. Once I get away from here, that's another matter."

"And until then, I suppose I can always make some new friends."

[walkingmyfish]

While she waited for the Doctor to respond Delirium pulled a small clump of gummy bears from a pocket. They panicked and struggled for a moment while she disentangled each gooey one from the others then, after she set them down, they walked in confused circles on the floor. "Then you should go away from here and get him," she said. Looking up at him again she remembered that most of the others here couldn't just step outside the walls. He wasn't human, she could tell, but it looked like he was still bound by the laws of physics. That was too bad. It hadn't yet occurred to her that she couldn't leave either, as she still considered herself a volunteer.

Not leaving the Doctor much time to respond to her previous statement, she continued on. "Is that what you do when you're somewhere new? Make new friends?" she asked, poking one of the gummy bears with a finger and knocking it onto its side. It wriggled and then stood up, and she smiled at it. She'd meant the question to be specific to the Doctor, but it sounded more like

[theshortdoctor]

The Doctor sighed heavily, shaking his head more. His first incarnation might have been angry by now snarling and snapping that she was a foolish child to suggest such a thing without any conception of how it was impossible, but he had changed since then. He was more patient, more understanding and forgiving of the flaws and quirks of others. "I wish it were that simple. If there were any way I could, I would have by now. I miss him very much."

"Yes, it's a good way of going things, I've found." He watched her playing with the gummy bears, his curiosity somewhat drawing him out of his melancholy mood. "Are you making them do that?" he asked politely.

[walkingmyfish]

Delirium gazed up at the Doctor. He looked... conflicted, and unhappy, and other things she couldn't quite remember the name for. She thought about Barnabas, and Dream and Destruction and Desire and Despair and Death and even Destiny. She missed them all terribly, and so far she hadn't been able to find them anywhere here. If what the Doctor felt was anything like that, it was bad. She wanted to say something that would help, something like Destruction had said to her before he left. "Then I hope you can someday," she said, concentrating hard on the words. "Sometimes that's what you need, is someone to hope with you."

Just as quickly, Delirium was back to her distractable self, glancing back down at the gummy bears. "Not exactly that," she said, picking one up as it tried to climb up her foot and setting it back down nearer to the others. "They move because I'm here, but they go where they want."

[theshortdoctor]

The Doctor smiled at Delirium - her flights of fancy and moments of seriousness and propensity for non-sequiteurs reminded him a little of himself. He pointed at the marching gummy bears and asked, rather eagerly, "Can you teach me to do that?"

[walkingmyfish]

"I don't know," Delirium said, considering the idea. If they were in her own realm, certainly, but here her powers seemed somewhat less than they had been before, even in the waking world. She picked up the rogue bear that had been on her foot moments earlier, then pulled another from her pocket, de-animating it with a breath. She offered the two bears to the Doctor in the palm of her hand, one motionless and still, the other keeping a cautious distance from its inanimate comrade.

[theshortdoctor]

The Doctor took the two bears, observing the way that Delirium handled them with fascination. He wondered what sort of creature she was, how far her powers extended. He felt a twinge of guilt at this curiosity, knowing that it was more than his usual impulse to enjoy and explore the universe and its various inhabitants. He had rather more mercenary intentions in view at the moment. Still, there was nothing necessarily wrong with that. He wouldn't lie about his intentions if she asked. He just wouldn't divulge them at present.

"Remind me where you are from," he asked conversationally.

[walkingmyfish]

She leaned forward, resting her chin on her knees and watching what the Doctor did with the gummy bears. "I'm from..." she trailed off. Where she was from was still a question Delirium didn't know how to answer, at least not in relation to this place. Her realm? Earth? Destiny's garden? Everyone? She really wasn't sure. And then there was the matter of when she was Delight. Did that count? People usually never asked before. They just accepted that she was.

"I'm from a lot of places, I guess?"

[theshortdoctor]

"What a coincidence," the Doctor said genially, rubbing his hands together, "I'm from a lot of places, too. Maybe a few of them are the same places." He sifted through his memory for anywhere particularly beautiful and strange that he had visited that had had creatures like this girl. Nothing came to mind immediately, but he did forget quite a lot. Best way to know was to ask.

"Do you mind if I ask... what you are?" he continued, "You don't seem to be a human, like many of the others. I'm a Time Lord, myself."

[walkingmyfish]

"I'm Delirium," she replied, fixing the Doctor with a curious look. What an odd question; he already knew that. "I'm a lot of things, like lost and flying fishes and not sleeping and the time right before dinner when you haven't eaten in a long time. But that's a part I don't like. I like dessert best."

"I haven't met a Time Lord before. Except if they didn't say so. Sometimes people don't say so if they're different."