Pictures at an Exhibition: Writing Workshop #6
If the Doctor has his choice and he is in a mood, he meets with her in Glasgow, on a bridge that isn't, but could be just as well. It's all vaguely black ops, like a something from a film she once saw as part of a video art piece, but that was set in Paris; it's crossed with some snippet out of William Gibson about a Venice cyberscape and mixed with a black and white picture of David Tennant and Billie Piper near the river Clyde.
This is definitely not Paris, but part of Britain, his Britain, always the possesssive, all yellow sunset barely cracking through mottled grey skies and stone, a chill to the air and them in anoraks. And while he is not Scottish, he maintains the affectation because it suits him, almost as much as brown pinstripes and Converse All-Stars. It is a place to be Serious. They don't bicker here, or have pints, because the city of grey and gold is just out of reach.
The conversation begins abruptly, as most of his do, though whether this is him being him or her having ADD is unclear.
"You shouldn't be so worried," he says, hands stuffed in his pockets because he refuses to wear gloves even as a human. Like a five year-old, he sways back and forth. When she looks at him blankly, he gives her the 'you're a stupid human' look and continues. "About the love bit, I mean. Am I not bloody allowed just because the fanboys say..."
"The fanboys say," she says, unconsciously picking up his accent and tone, "because it was canonical, and not a queer Welshman's childhood fantasy come to life, like Rose."
"Oh, that is pish," he exclaims, looking incredulous, and there is that look in his eyes implying that he's ignoring the mention of Rose. "I was totally shagging Fred, bad sex or no, and they know it. And..." A sigh and he gets more serious. "I loved all of them, you know. Even fuckin' Turlough--is," he gestures vaguely into the air, indicating someone not present, "she ever going to get over that whole business? Because I am NOT having him in the same place as someone I am dating, make that In Love With. And not to mention Jane. No bloody way."
She snorts and tries to fix her hair out of the cowlick. "Her business, not mine."
"Leave it, it won't stay. And besides, he's not blond. God, he was a pain in the arse, a ginger pain in the arse..." And he rambles on for a few minutes about Turlough, and there's something in there about penguins, and Antarctica, which she's sure isn't canonical either, but whatever. "...And my point being," he concludes, "that I am perfectly allowed to be in love. It does not make me out of character, period, full stop. And if it's wrong, I don't want to be right."
Her sigh is similar to that which she gives her mother. "Okay." And another sigh. "It doesn't mean I don't bloody worry about it, yeah?"
"You can worry about it, but it's a fact and it's not about to be changing, that's for certain." He wrinkles up his face, then adds, "Besides, tell them I say, and since I'm not going anywhere, they can all go to hell. Hell was cold, by the way. And really kinda boring."
Getting him to stay focused is the real problem. He rambles about like...well, a rambling thing, careening from subject to subject. Sometimes he talks in an Australian accent for no apparent reason, other times he suddenly falls asleep or withdraws in on himself, also for no apparent reason. And there are endless, endless pop culture references and singing, until it's uncertain if it's his predilection or hers.
He likes parallel structure, or maybe she does. History, revisionist, repeating itself.
When on various occasions and often quite suddenly, he tells her he hates himself, he looks as if he is about to throw up. She knows better than to talk him down from it, as it's entirely impossible. The wordless raging and sobbing that no one ever, ever sees, go on there, on the bridge at sunset. There is no TARDIS there, and she brings him no comfort, only waits it out until he withdraws in on himself. Oddly, even then he almost never shuts up, displays his pain like a flag. Which is really too much like her.
"Please," he says, looking at her with those eyes of his, even though he knows there's nothing she can do about it. All she does is watch it all and takes it down, like the journalist she'll never be.
Sometimes it's not Glasgow but an amorphous inside space, small, dimly lit, and warm. There is always a couch. There is always coffee. And if Sara's there, the space morphs into the break room in Vegas. Sometimes he's horny and gives her a plaintive look until she agrees to do something about it ('just go wank' is met with the 'idiot' look). Sometimes he's arrogant as hell and smirking over something. And she'd never known he could swear so much when he's angry, though it's worse when he's that fierce, determined calm.
But right now, the Doctor is having a beer and sprawling over a hardwood table and chairs. "I like this me," he says, and he isn't drunk. "I hate myself, but I? Like this me. It means I can actually do things, like have friends and a family--and don't go on about canon," he adds, "What do they know about me being human? Nothing. And my ex-girlfriend being here who I exploded, and Ace too? And Jack, what the fuck was that with Jack anyway? Not to mention all the interesting people who all seem to need help...and advice. They don't know how I'd behave, how I'd adapt. So they can all go suck arse."
She cocks an eyebrow at him, rather in his style, and sips her glass of Shiraz, but she secretly agrees and starts to grin, then laugh So does he.
"They don't know dick," he says, still laughing and slapping his knee, and he looks at her like how he looks at the companions she'll never be. They'll never go anywhere together but here, but here is a big adventure.
And it's all right.