Yes, much better now. And back to the discussion --
Well, as you might imagine, the mood lifted immensely when I found the Tharil communication terminal amidst my possessions and was able to make contact with others, including the Doctor.
Ah, the Doctor. The instrument of my discovery that there are worlds outside of my own, the renegade mentor who showed me that Time Lords can be so much more than the academic living dead... He truly is the ultimate beneficent-subversive, you know. And I was utterly seduced by these qualities. In a mental capacity, you understand. There were times when the possibility of something physical hung between us in an extremely palpable manner...but I never took the step that would have made such occur. I think I loosened up quite a bit after my first regeneration, but perhaps not enough.
After I left him...for many fine, socially-active reasons that seemed very noble at the time. And they were noble, and my work was needed and important. But I know that a large part of my motivation to depart was because I didn't know how to handle myself around the Doctor.
We've met up, even traveled together now and again since that time. Sometimes it has been just like old times, and sometimes our different objectives brought us into conflict. The War had a lot to do with the latter matter. But the War is past now, and we both survived.
So here we are. I find myself in need of rescuing, or at least aid. And then there's the rather cliche' matter of being possibly the last two members of our race. So I look towards the Doctor with a mixture of hope and...pulling back, because I still have no idea where things will go, and I feel out of my depth when I don't know what's really happening.
I also know that the Doctor has other relationships at present, and serious ones at that. I don't know how I fit in with those, or if I do at all. Ah, the matters of the hearts.
Matters of the heart are supposed to leave you out of your depth, I think. I avoided them for nearly a century and a half for that very reason. Purely physical relationships are so much simpler.
I don't really know the Doctor, and what I do know...well. He swooped in and carried my mother off without so much as a by your leave, and I haven't a clue if he has any notion of how to see she's cared for, and Byron gets careless about such things, so I worry, which doesn't give me the highest opinion of him.
But he seems the type to want to rescue you. Aislinn says he's lonely for his own people, which I can understand. More than that, I don't know, except that she likes you and that is a far more rare thing than you might imagine.
I've been glad for this opportunity to meet those in the Doctor's circle (and extensions thereof, such as yourself), but at a distance. There's less confrontation involved, and it's easier to get used to things over time.
For all the people he has known and journeyed with, many things about the Doctor remain a mystery. As I was saying to Aislinn, much of his life prior to his decision to leave Gallifrey is fairly unknown to others besides himself.
There have been a number of times when I thought I might journey to Earth to have a chat with his Granddaughter, and ask about that time. But then I would shelve the idea because it seemed overly nosy. But I have a feeling that the things that occured during that time directly impact the emotions involved in the relationships he has had since then.
It also has a lot to do with the culture we come from, too. 'Sterile' and 'dessicated' are excellent adjectives to describe Gallifreyan culture. Love there is a complicated thing, and I expect that this is largely behind my own reticence to hold back at the thought of intimacy, and the Doctor's difficulty with long-term involvement.
I don't wish to be a rival to Aislinn for the Doctor's affections. Having so recently experienced war, I have a great desire for emotional peace.
There are days I'd beg you to be that rival and make him send her home, but I'd ask you not to tell anyone that. She'd be upset if she knew.
'Sterile' and 'dessicated' seem horribly sad words to me, especially when coming from someone like you. Intimacy is terrifying, yes, but it's an experience of being alive that ought to be embraced by anyone capable of it. Your people--you and the Doctor at least--seem capable of it, so you are denying yourself something amazing if you back away too often or too far.
As for the Doctor's history, he does seem to keep that close. It's one of the reasons I don't trust him much. Not that he should tell me anything, of course, but. *wry* Aislinn and I have always had a rather fluid relationship in the parent/child way. Sometimes she's more like a baby sister than my mother. Which, well. Probably shouldn't go beyond you and me either.
She's not usually the jealous type, or the type to cause war over anything. Too many years with Byron. But I would not...see her hurt. And I don't know how to prevent it.
Believe me, I'm extremely good with secrets. I can keep yours.
Powers over time require very careful control, and over the millenia, that control has extended out over the entire culture of our world. There were a group known as the Shobogans who rejected the control and technology and went into the wilderness to form an indigenous tribal society...but they more of a small curiousity than anything else, to the Time Lords. For the rest of us Gallifreyans, we seem to fall into three groups:
* Those who toe the party line and are generally no fun at parties. These are the stuffy fuddy-duddies who don't like change, and who seem to have no creativity or senses of humour. If it weren't for the Doctor, I might have been one of these, and I shudder at the idea.
* Those who go renegade, but either for the cause of good or at the very least for the cause of innoffensive adventure. The Doctor is certainly the icon of this group (which I number myself amongst), but there are others as well. The first group generally didn't know what to do with us. I think there may be hopes that others of the Renegades still live.
* Those who go bad. The Master and Faction Paradox are chief amongst these, the Rani and the Meddling Monk to a lesser extent. There's a large possibility that some of these survived as well. The Master, in the past, has been deviously hard to kill and keep dead.
So -- those who fit in, and those who don't.
One thing that makes Aislinn different from the Doctor's other companions, as I remarked to the Doctor himself, was the longevity of your kind. As I'm sure the sidhe know, it can be a bitter thing to see your lovers age away and die, while you live on. Easier, I daresay, to find reasons to leave while they're still in their prime, and you remember them at their best. But that won't be the case with Aislinn. And of course with another Time Lord, we may regenerate, but we're used to that. And I'm actually a good bit younger than the Doctor. I'm only on my third regeneration, and he's had nine of his (he's been living dangerous, being the thrill-seeker he is).
I can tell that right now, Aislinn is in a particularly precarious position, what with the entire marriage faux pas of the Doctor's. But hopefully things will strengthen, and maybe this will teach the Doctor a lesson about being a little more perceptive about matters between a man and a woman. And even if he does come out to perform the gallant rescue of my tempest-tossed self, it's going to take some time. Time heals all wounds, they say. Or at least most of them.
Yes. Those of us who tangle with mortals know something about losing them. Even the Doctor is young by our standards. He'd still be considered a child with you, me and Aislinn mere babes. It's a hard thing to think about, and why most of us only get truly involved with other Sidhe. Of course, there's something compelling about mortals...heartache or no.
It doesn't seem as if Gallifrey was that much different than many other societies in that way, though clearly more techonologically advanced. We can't use magic to do to time what you do through science. But almost everyone has a party line somewhere that's no fun, and the people who want to shake it up, and then those who fall outside it completely. That it's a pattern that repeats through so many worlds and peoples would make an interesting study, I'd think.
Aislinn is almost always in one precarious position or another all on her own without any help. But perhaps he will figure that out, figure her out, before it gets worse.
They do say that. I am not convinced of the truth of it.
Is she? But then again, feeding off of passion, emotion, creativity and artistry does take a person to heights and then drops them into great depths. And as the Doctor gets older, his experiences weigh heavily upon him. Particularly because of the War. We are all walking wounded, those of us who have survived. And there has not been a major war involving Gallifrey for a very, very long time. But when it came, it was devastating.
I am not used to feeling so raw, myself. I have always prided myself that although I have bursts of passion, I always return to an even-keel temperment. It is easier to assess things that way, easier to consider things objectively. But I expect that subjectivity is the realm of the Leanan Sídhe.
An odd idea is brewing in my mind. It strikes me that whereas opposites do indeed attract, they often drive each other as much apart as together. And yet like often attracts like...but it's easy for things to stagnate between those who are too much alike. There are varying levels of similarity and difference between the Doctor, Aislinn and myself. I wonder if an odd gestalt might come about that is more beneficial than destructive? Although again, I hesitate about investing too much in this idea because it is far too early to say.
You've been through a horrifying trauma. Of course you are still raw from it, as is he. How could you not be? You have to give yourself permission to grieve and heal from it. An even keel will come eventually, if that is really what you want.
It is an interesting concept. Why do you find it odd?
Because on both Gallifrey and Earth, the most traditional pairing is that of two together, not three. Not that the Doctor (or I, for that matter) have every been traditional, and from what I know of Aislinn, she has made non-traditional choices in the past as well.
The trick with such a combination would be assuring that no one feels the 'odd man out', and no one feels that their needs are being pushed aside for someone else's.
Arrrgh. I feel myself once again pulling back from contemplating this idea. I tell myself, fantasies are not real life -- one can play out what you will in a fantasy, and it hurts no one. And yet there is still great reticence, even in my dreams.
You know, I think what we all really need is to go and get exceedingly drunk together, and kick in the doors of our inhibitions. Red wine isn't going to do it -- we need ginger beer.
Yes, well. Earth humans at least. But non-traditional choices have pretty much defined Aislinn's life. Such things are tricky, but one of my oldest friends is involved in such a relationship, as is my step-grandfather, so. It can be done on an intimate three-way scale.
Or, well, Warren and I just usually bring people home to play with, but I don't think that's what you're talking about.
*g* Byron will have a fit which will be amusing as hell, if you manage to talk her into it. He's been trying to get her into bed with him and Rose for ages and she keeps saying no. Then again, that could be more a not cheating on the Doctor thing.
I'm not particularly fond of it, but it does have a decidedly quick intoxicating effect on our systems. It would serve the purpose decently well.
I am not suggesting that I want to immediately go piling into bed with the Doctor and Aislinn -- although Aislinn is extremely lovely. But the most intimate form of contact that the Doctor and I have previously had is that of a close embrace in order to jointly fit into one transmat beam, holding hands while crossing a Paris street, and my once helping him walk out of a torture chamber. To even contemplate a kiss seems exceedingly daring at this point.
Well, I daresay it is a matter you would have expertise in. But...yes, I have. I had a lover after I left the Doctor while in E-space. Yes, one may talk about rebound affairs and such, but the Tharils' interfacing with time is a particularly physical one, as opposed to how Time Lords use technology to perceive time. The experience was astonishing, to say the least.
It's what I live for, so, yes, it is one of those matters. Astonishing experiences are rare to come by. To be able to interface with time in a physical fashion...it sounds amazing, indeed. A skill to be envied.
Back on Gallifrey, Time Lords usually use technology to reproduce. So I wonder if an act of intimacy between two Time Lords would be similar to what I experienced with Lazlo.
I can't say I've ever made love in the rapids of a very swift-moving river, but I got the impression that doing so might be a very pale comparison to what I experienced.
Well, as you might imagine, the mood lifted immensely when I found the Tharil communication terminal amidst my possessions and was able to make contact with others, including the Doctor.
Ah, the Doctor. The instrument of my discovery that there are worlds outside of my own, the renegade mentor who showed me that Time Lords can be so much more than the academic living dead... He truly is the ultimate beneficent-subversive, you know. And I was utterly seduced by these qualities. In a mental capacity, you understand. There were times when the possibility of something physical hung between us in an extremely palpable manner...but I never took the step that would have made such occur. I think I loosened up quite a bit after my first regeneration, but perhaps not enough.
After I left him...for many fine, socially-active reasons that seemed very noble at the time. And they were noble, and my work was needed and important. But I know that a large part of my motivation to depart was because I didn't know how to handle myself around the Doctor.
We've met up, even traveled together now and again since that time. Sometimes it has been just like old times, and sometimes our different objectives brought us into conflict. The War had a lot to do with the latter matter. But the War is past now, and we both survived.
So here we are. I find myself in need of rescuing, or at least aid. And then there's the rather cliche' matter of being possibly the last two members of our race. So I look towards the Doctor with a mixture of hope and...pulling back, because I still have no idea where things will go, and I feel out of my depth when I don't know what's really happening.
I also know that the Doctor has other relationships at present, and serious ones at that. I don't know how I fit in with those, or if I do at all. Ah, the matters of the hearts.
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I don't really know the Doctor, and what I do know...well. He swooped in and carried my mother off without so much as a by your leave, and I haven't a clue if he has any notion of how to see she's cared for, and Byron gets careless about such things, so I worry, which doesn't give me the highest opinion of him.
But he seems the type to want to rescue you. Aislinn says he's lonely for his own people, which I can understand. More than that, I don't know, except that she likes you and that is a far more rare thing than you might imagine.
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For all the people he has known and journeyed with, many things about the Doctor remain a mystery. As I was saying to Aislinn, much of his life prior to his decision to leave Gallifrey is fairly unknown to others besides himself.
There have been a number of times when I thought I might journey to Earth to have a chat with his Granddaughter, and ask about that time. But then I would shelve the idea because it seemed overly nosy. But I have a feeling that the things that occured during that time directly impact the emotions involved in the relationships he has had since then.
It also has a lot to do with the culture we come from, too. 'Sterile' and 'dessicated' are excellent adjectives to describe Gallifreyan culture. Love there is a complicated thing, and I expect that this is largely behind my own reticence to hold back at the thought of intimacy, and the Doctor's difficulty with long-term involvement.
I don't wish to be a rival to Aislinn for the Doctor's affections. Having so recently experienced war, I have a great desire for emotional peace.
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'Sterile' and 'dessicated' seem horribly sad words to me, especially when coming from someone like you. Intimacy is terrifying, yes, but it's an experience of being alive that ought to be embraced by anyone capable of it. Your people--you and the Doctor at least--seem capable of it, so you are denying yourself something amazing if you back away too often or too far.
As for the Doctor's history, he does seem to keep that close. It's one of the reasons I don't trust him much. Not that he should tell me anything, of course, but. *wry* Aislinn and I have always had a rather fluid relationship in the parent/child way. Sometimes she's more like a baby sister than my mother. Which, well. Probably shouldn't go beyond you and me either.
She's not usually the jealous type, or the type to cause war over anything. Too many years with Byron. But I would not...see her hurt. And I don't know how to prevent it.
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Powers over time require very careful control, and over the millenia, that control has extended out over the entire culture of our world. There were a group known as the Shobogans who rejected the control and technology and went into the wilderness to form an indigenous tribal society...but they more of a small curiousity than anything else, to the Time Lords. For the rest of us Gallifreyans, we seem to fall into three groups:
* Those who toe the party line and are generally no fun at parties. These are the stuffy fuddy-duddies who don't like change, and who seem to have no creativity or senses of humour. If it weren't for the Doctor, I might have been one of these, and I shudder at the idea.
* Those who go renegade, but either for the cause of good or at the very least for the cause of innoffensive adventure. The Doctor is certainly the icon of this group (which I number myself amongst), but there are others as well. The first group generally didn't know what to do with us. I think there may be hopes that others of the Renegades still live.
* Those who go bad. The Master and Faction Paradox are chief amongst these, the Rani and the Meddling Monk to a lesser extent. There's a large possibility that some of these survived as well. The Master, in the past, has been deviously hard to kill and keep dead.
So -- those who fit in, and those who don't.
One thing that makes Aislinn different from the Doctor's other companions, as I remarked to the Doctor himself, was the longevity of your kind. As I'm sure the sidhe know, it can be a bitter thing to see your lovers age away and die, while you live on. Easier, I daresay, to find reasons to leave while they're still in their prime, and you remember them at their best. But that won't be the case with Aislinn. And of course with another Time Lord, we may regenerate, but we're used to that. And I'm actually a good bit younger than the Doctor. I'm only on my third regeneration, and he's had nine of his (he's been living dangerous, being the thrill-seeker he is).
I can tell that right now, Aislinn is in a particularly precarious position, what with the entire marriage faux pas of the Doctor's. But hopefully things will strengthen, and maybe this will teach the Doctor a lesson about being a little more perceptive about matters between a man and a woman. And even if he does come out to perform the gallant rescue of my tempest-tossed self, it's going to take some time. Time heals all wounds, they say. Or at least most of them.
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It doesn't seem as if Gallifrey was that much different than many other societies in that way, though clearly more techonologically advanced. We can't use magic to do to time what you do through science. But almost everyone has a party line somewhere that's no fun, and the people who want to shake it up, and then those who fall outside it completely. That it's a pattern that repeats through so many worlds and peoples would make an interesting study, I'd think.
Aislinn is almost always in one precarious position or another all on her own without any help. But perhaps he will figure that out, figure her out, before it gets worse.
They do say that. I am not convinced of the truth of it.
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I am not used to feeling so raw, myself. I have always prided myself that although I have bursts of passion, I always return to an even-keel temperment. It is easier to assess things that way, easier to consider things objectively. But I expect that subjectivity is the realm of the Leanan Sídhe.
An odd idea is brewing in my mind. It strikes me that whereas opposites do indeed attract, they often drive each other as much apart as together. And yet like often attracts like...but it's easy for things to stagnate between those who are too much alike. There are varying levels of similarity and difference between the Doctor, Aislinn and myself. I wonder if an odd gestalt might come about that is more beneficial than destructive? Although again, I hesitate about investing too much in this idea because it is far too early to say.
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It is an interesting concept. Why do you find it odd?
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The trick with such a combination would be assuring that no one feels the 'odd man out', and no one feels that their needs are being pushed aside for someone else's.
Arrrgh. I feel myself once again pulling back from contemplating this idea. I tell myself, fantasies are not real life -- one can play out what you will in a fantasy, and it hurts no one. And yet there is still great reticence, even in my dreams.
You know, I think what we all really need is to go and get exceedingly drunk together, and kick in the doors of our inhibitions. Red wine isn't going to do it -- we need ginger beer.
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Or, well, Warren and I just usually bring people home to play with, but I don't think that's what you're talking about.
*g* Byron will have a fit which will be amusing as hell, if you manage to talk her into it. He's been trying to get her into bed with him and Rose for ages and she keeps saying no. Then again, that could be more a not cheating on the Doctor thing.
You're fond of ginger beer?
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I am not suggesting that I want to immediately go piling into bed with the Doctor and Aislinn -- although Aislinn is extremely lovely. But the most intimate form of contact that the Doctor and I have previously had is that of a close embrace in order to jointly fit into one transmat beam, holding hands while crossing a Paris street, and my once helping him walk out of a torture chamber. To even contemplate a kiss seems exceedingly daring at this point.
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You have had more intimate contact than that with someone haven't you? Purely professional curiosity...
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Well, I daresay it is a matter you would have expertise in. But...yes, I have. I had a lover after I left the Doctor while in E-space. Yes, one may talk about rebound affairs and such, but the Tharils' interfacing with time is a particularly physical one, as opposed to how Time Lords use technology to perceive time. The experience was astonishing, to say the least.
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It's what I live for, so, yes, it is one of those matters. Astonishing experiences are rare to come by. To be able to interface with time in a physical fashion...it sounds amazing, indeed. A skill to be envied.
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I can't say I've ever made love in the rapids of a very swift-moving river, but I got the impression that doing so might be a very pale comparison to what I experienced.
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