[Action! - Ethan and Lucy]

[stayandgloat]

[So eleven o clock comes around, and in all due time Ethan heads up to Lucy's room with a copy of Ziggy Stardust, and Hunky Dory. His motives are... for the most part fairly pure, he honestly quite likes the Master, he's fond in general of people who are a little broken, and he absolutely loves David Bowie. So all in all, a morning spent

Comments

[sellyoumysoul]

[It takes a moment for Lucy to even look up. She's become unused to anyone doing anything so civilised, not that she had expected Harry to be courteous, not for a long time. He could whatever he liked and she would still go with him. Anywhere.

Eventually she rises. Hadn't she arranged to see somebody? It's possible that it hadn't happened at all, and she has to check in her journal to make absolutely sure. She floats barefoot to the door and cracks it open.]

...Ethan...?

[stayandgloat]

[Ethan tilts his head slightly to peer through the open crack in the door. He smiles.]

Lucy. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.

[He holds out a hand for her to shake, wondering if she's actually in one piece enough to recognize the small ritual of greeting.]

[sellyoumysoul]

[Lucy stares at the hand for a moment, then steps back and pulls the door open the rest of the way. She's still dressed in a long satin nightgown; the months of being told what to wear, and do, and think have left her unfamiliar with simple rituals.]

You're going to come in...aren't you?

[stayandgloat]

[Ethan closes his hand, and nods.]

I am.

[He steps into the room past her, clearing his throat slightly as he noted what she was wearing. As a general rule he's a bit of a lecherous bastard, and she is really quite attractive, but still, Ethan can't help but feel ever so slightly like he's invading a level of privacy that leaves him feeling slightly uncomfortable. He clears his throat again and holds up the records, giving Lucy a slight smile.]

You said you had your mothers record player?

[sellyoumysoul]

[Had she said that? But it's true, anyway.]

Yes... [She waves vaguely towards the device that took up a corner table on the other side of the room; it's practically an antique, but beautifully well-preserved. Underneath it on a shelf is a stack of vinyls, mostly classical music inherited from her parents.

She sits down on the bed and draws her knees up to her chin, watching the strange man.] Why...why is my room here? Did this ship...take it?

[stayandgloat]

[Ethan carefully begins setting up Ziggy Stardust to play through on the record player, turning his head slightly as she asks him about the Barge.]

You're here because you're dead my dear.

[He pauses, contemplating, before adding,]

Think about it, when people die, their life goes away, but it doesn't disappear. It has to go somewhere. Good lives go to heaven, bad lives are supposed to go to hell. Some of us end up here. Your room just followed you.

[Carefully, he puts down the needle, and five years begins to play. Ethan closes his eyes for a moment, and just listens to it.]

[sellyoumysoul]

Yes...Harry says that this is what comes after the end. The end of everything. People and planets and stars...coming into this darkness to die. The other worlds shining on the horizon...

[It makes her feel comforted, vindicated, to have somebody agree with her Harry, even a little bit. She sways her head to the slow march of the music, her hands pressing into the mattress and her head falling back.]

[stayandgloat]

[Ethan gives a half laugh, before turning his head ever slightly.]

But if this comes after the end of everything, then how is that really the end? How is anything ever really the end.

[He stares at her for a minute. He does like the Master, partly even admires him, but Ethan has never believed that the universe could ever just stop. The great void of Chaos which existed before existence was nothing more than infinite potential. So even if the universe returned to that immense nothingness? All it would mean would be that anything could be created again. Ethan extended his hand to Lucy]

Would you like to dance?

[sellyoumysoul]

[She looked at him, not knowing how to address the first of his questions because as far as she was aware, what Harry told her was true. Maybe everything had ended, and then still moved on, and those two truths could coexist because Harry said they could. Besides, nothing was ever capable of staying the same, alive or dead. She'd seen that.

The request makes her blink at him in confusion, her hair half-covering her face.]

I don't...Harry wouldn't want me to. He wouldn't like it.

[stayandgloat]

Harry won't mind.

[Ethan replied soothingly.]

In fact? When I first came here? He danced with me as well, to this very album. Of course he wouldn't mind.

[It wasn't like he was asking for anything particularly indecent, but there was a small part of him that wanted Lucy to dance with him, purely because it meant she'd take a risk on something that "Harry" might not approve of.]

He even said to me, in your journal, someday he'd like to watch me dance with you. Remember? Maybe not today, but someday.

[sellyoumysoul]

I think...he did say that that. Didn't he? [She reached for her journal, she wanted to make sure, but then her hand slowed and stopped, hovering over the book. Diaries were unreliable. The one she'd kept on the Valiant had gone blank, hundreds of words unwriting themselves in the space of moments, but it hadn't unhappened the things she'd seen]

There were lots of things he said he'd like to watch me do. But he didn't...not really...he was always so busy. [Lucy rose from the bed like a puppet, limbs limp and uncoordinate.]

[stayandgloat]

He did say it. Trust me.

[Ethan reached out to take one of Lucy's hands gently, he wondered how many time she'd heard that since her wedding day. On the record, "Moonage Daydream" began to play.]

Always busy? I suppose ruling the world could fill up a mans day, couldn't it? So what did you do?

[He put his other hand on her waist, then waited for some sign that she actually knew what was going on, and that this was how you danced with another person, before doing anything else.]

[sellyoumysoul]

[Lucy lifted her free hand, fingers twitching nervously before they settled on his shoulder. She kept her distance from him as best she could. Just because Harry had said he would want to watch...that didn't mean he'd want her doing it in private. Not at all.]

I would do...whatever he wanted. I would...watch. I watched his children burning through the world. I watched people dying. So much dying. [Her gaze settled into a thousand-yard stare as she spoke, her awareness shifting away from the here-and-now of her room.]

[stayandgloat]

[Ethan relaxed a little as it became clear that if nothing else? This was a ritual which Lucy remembered. He stepped back, slowly, moving with her to the music.]

His children? Not both of yours?

[Ethan felt like he had a pretty good idea of the big picture here, but he was still eager to work out the details. Perhaps what he found most strange was the idea that this delicate, careful, sycophantic creature, had been her husbands killer, but unless the Master had lied to him about how his end came, she must have been.]

[sellyoumysoul]

They were...both of ours. I suppose. We found them together, at the end of the universe. Harry saved them. The last of the human race...given new life. Ready to fly.

[She slumped under the weight of the memory, her cheek against Ethan's shoulder.]

[stayandgloat]

[Ethan shifts his weight slightly, wary of her sudden slump and slightly worried that in a moment he'd just be propping up a limp body.]

Mmmm. The last of the human race, destroying itself?

[He rocks back slightly, still moving in a strange, careful dance with her, still moving to the music.]

Were you sad for them?