zagreus sits inside your head...

[sits_inside]

Here is the Doctor.

Or rather, here is Zagreus.

When he knows who he is at all, of course.  At the moment, he doesn't seem to have noticed he's wandered into the Nexus at all, looking thoroughly distracted and muttering darkly to himself.  'Zagreus seeks the hero's ship/ Zagreus needs the web to rip/ Zagreus sups time at a drip-' he pauses briefly to

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[the_5thdoc]

Across the room is another Doctor. Or is it? The figure does look rather like a Doctor you might have known, but there's something rather... off about him. Perhaps it's the way his eyes are wide and don't seem to focus on anything. Maybe it's the lack of the customary friendly smile on the man's face. Or possibly the slightly mad giggles he seems to erupt into for no obvious reason.

How long has he been sitting here, idly picking apart pieces of the universe into component atoms? For a being that has no concept of time, it would be difficult for him to tell you. But he's clearly picked up on threads of the conversation, and speaks in a lilting voice to no one in particular:

Zagreus? Zagreus? No, no. I am Zagreus. My special, my secret name. Zagreus! But if I'm Zagreus, how can he be Zagreus?

[sits_inside]

He's quite used to disembodied voices, to apparitions that look familiar when they oughtn't to be, and for a moment, Zagreus pays as much attention to the other Doctor (or Zagreus) as if he'd been just another talking cat or noise of footsteps or phantom professions of love from a girl whose name he can't remember.

But then he looks again. The words are his words. This man has stolen them from him, and the darkness behind his eyes flickers, seguing into confusion for a moment because surely he knows him. He remembers wearing clothes like that once, stupid stripey trousers and an inexplicable jacket, and he frowns at him.

'Alice through the Looking Glass,' he mutters, and an unhinged sort of laugh comes out with the words. 'Soon all will be Zagreus, and it shan't matter anymore.'

Yes, yes, that makes more sense than trying to figure out why this man looks so familiar. That makes his head hurt, and without his big, shiny ball of... stuff, it's simply not worth the effort.

[the_5thdoc]

The Doctor tilts his head, puzzling at this oddity that claims to be Zagreus. He rises to his feet, picking a twisted path across the room (surely it's a trail that must make sense somewhere inside the Doctor's head) to this stranger who is clearly not Zagreus, can't be Zagreus. He stops a few feet from the man, walking a slow circle around him and peering at him from every angle.

He begins muttering as he paces around the man:

Zagreus? Impossible! Or is it unpossible? I can never quite remember... But you can hardly be Zagreus because I am Zagreus. There can't be two of us... can there?

No, no, no. You're just here to fool me. But Zagreus sees you...

He prods this Zagreus in the chest with a finger. He feels real enough, but that would just be silly. Well. Sillier.

[sits_inside]

Zagreus frowns at the Doctor- at Zagreus, whomever he is- because he does look familiar, desperately so. So much, in fact, that Zagreus rather thinks he must be the Doctor's ship again, trying to tell him something. Ah, yes, that would be it. Tormenting him with images from the Doctor's past, claiming to be him, claiming his name, his special, secret name, a name of power.

... But then the projection pokes him. Which projections oughtn't to be able to do at all, as far as Zagreus knows, and in a snap of instinctual movement, he catches the other man by the wrist, slender fingers gripping hard enough to leave bruises.

Voice low, he speaks, and there's the low crackle of unnatural anti-thunder around his words, a fizz and hiss of chemical reaction against this universe. 'I am Zagreus. And I know you... Doctor. Trying to fix me, are you? Kick me out of his head? I'm not- oh god

[the_5thdoc]

The Doctor staggers backwards at this assault... if it can even rightly be called that. He peers at the other man, Zagreus-but-not-Zagreus, blinking slowly. The Doctor has always loved a good puzzle, after all, and this is nothing if not puzzling.

"You... you're me," he says softly, without much conviction. "Me..."

He suddenly lurches forward, grabbing the other man by his shirt-front. His voice is breathless, panicked. "You! You're... you're... we're... Zagreus?" He pauses, gulping air like a drowning man, and stares wide-eyed at the the stranger he's clinging to. He continues, a bit more calmly, "You... we... the Doctor? Oh no... no, no, no, no... this isn't good at all..."

[sits_inside]

'Yes! Yes yes yes yes, you're- I was you, you see. Few regenerations back. And I know- I know I never encountered anti-Time in that body.'

This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, it's all wrong, and he can't concentrate on why it's wrong, not with the back of his mind roaring with anti-Time, with Zagreus, threatening to overwhelm him at any moment. He wants to speak to the Zagreus in his other Self, he gloats, imagining the way he might ravish the universe with one such as himself at his side. The Doctor wants an explanation, he wants to understand, has to understand, but he can't get a grip on the words he needs to ask.

'Doctor,' he grits out, in a hiss of breath, but he can feel his control slipping, and a low, cracked chuckle follows the name. Again, his hand tightens in the other man's lapel, twisting the fabric, but this time it's slow and deliberate. Dangerous.

[the_5thdoc]

The Doctor looks down at the other Doctor's -- for certainly it is another Doctor... something about the man tickles future memories -- hand in his coat, blinking curiously. It's as though, after piecing together the puzzle of who this man was, he cannot quite put the pieces together to determine how or why the fingers attached him have come to rest in his lapels. He looks up into the other Doctor's eyes and though, to him, they're still the unfamiliar eyes of a stranger, eyes he's yet to see in the mirror, it's obvious that they're several shades too dark...

"Zagreus. Zagreus. You've already claimed my mind," he pauses here, and the rest of the sentence is more snarled than spoken, "...as much as you've claimed his. What else do you want of me?"