I believe I can see the future ‘Cause I repeat the same routine. I think I used to have a purpose.

[a_lonely_god]

Some three or so days after the Doctor's fight with the Master and the subsequent fallout, the TARDIS materialized suddenly right next to the Frontierland Shooting Gallery. No one came out.

Comments

[una_harlequin]

The sound always reminded Una of a nail file drawn across a piano wire.

She emerged from her tent and was somewhat surprised to not see the Doctor anywhere in evidence. She waited; still nothing. She went up to the door and tapped lightly.

Nothing. Something was clearly wrong; the question was whether or not the something-wrong involved not wanting to talk to her. Except there'd been nothing in his manner the last time suggesting that this was actually the case.

So she ducked back into her tent, retrieved the key from its hiding-place, and let herself in.

[a_lonely_god]

The Doctor was facing away from the door, standing quietly with his hands in his pockets. Even from the back he looked disheveled; his hair was a mess and he wasn’t wearing his suit jacket but just a rumpled white shirt with grease stains and the sleeves rolled up. There was a bit of steam coming from a vent somewhere under the floor, making a soft hiss.

“Why am I here?” he asked softly, almost as though he was speaking to her. But then his head tilted to look up at the ceiling and he asked again, shouting. “Why am I here?! What is it I’m supposed to do, what do you want from me?! Just tell me already! Do I stop him, save him, what?” One hand dragged through his hair, as he added a bit more softly; “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I can’t even seem to save myself.

“And you!” he added, the vehemence returning suddenly as he rounded on the console, giving it a solid kick. “You couldn’t find your way out of a wet paper bag!”

Turning away from the console with a grimace, his gaze fell on Una.

[una_harlequin]

She almost said don't take it out on her, but she had a feeling it wouldn't be appreciated.

"Hello," she said, uncertainly. "Are you-" She broke off. He was obviously, manifestly, not all right at all.

[a_lonely_god]

He looked at her as thought he weren’t entirely sure who she was.

“What da…” he started after a moment, and then seemed to reconsider the question. “Did we recently have a conversation in which the phrase ‘borrow a cup of sugar’ was used several times?”

[una_harlequin]

She squeezed his hand. "I'd be surprised if it didn't," she said wryly. "I ... think I know a little of what you mean. It's like the way I can't find the paths out of here. Normally with the right tools, or even if I just really empty my mind and concentrate, I can find the ways between worlds and times, but here and now," she shook her head. "Nothing. And if it's bad lilke that for me, it must be a thousand times worse for you."

She tilted her head at him. "And I expect being largely grumpy most of the time isn't ... helping other matters, is it?"

[a_lonely_god]

He finally looked up at her, really looked with a clear expression, and gave her a soft smile. “Maybe we’re not so different, eh? For all the ‘disconnects’.”

“When… when I got here I was so clear about what I wanted, and I was willing to do so much for it. Now it’s gotten all muddled. Even things with you.” He squeezed her hand back. “I’ll be better, though. I will.”

[una_harlequin]

"Nomads of the Time Streams, both of us," she said. "Optimists. Idealists. Meddlers. I could see that much from the beginning. I don't think we'd have gotten on so well otherwise."

The kettle started to whistle, and Una gave his hand another squeeze and went to take care of it before it started shrieking. She returned to the table a little while later with a teapot in one hand, cups in the other, and a packet of chocolate biscuits under her elbow.

"What did you want?" she asked as she set out the tea things. "Not the muddle now-what was so clear to you back at the start?" She smiled gently. "Sometimes-not always, but you never know-sometimes getting muddled is just losing sight of what you were looking for in the first place."

[a_lonely_god]

The sugar was already on the table; the Doctor had removed the top of the jar and was poking a finger idly into it. A little spilled out onto the table.

“I think- the last year, before I came here, when I was… when I was his prisoner on Earth, I thought- you see I never knew about the drums. He never said a word, all these years, and suddenly. Well it changes things, doesn’t it? And I thought maybe I could save him. But I made a mistake, a really really big… and then I was here and I thought… I’d been given a second chance, you know? And it was so- it is so- important. So important.”

He was doodling the twenty third anti-matter stability equation in the sugar. “And then of course there’s you, and I don’t even know how to start unraveling that one.”

[una_harlequin]

She nodded to the silent query and smiled. "Yes. She is, I suppose." Her gaze went a little distant. "My best friend and lover, Columbine to my Harlequin and Jerry's Pierrot. And somehow we always circle 'round back to each other." She was tapping out the eccentric rhythm of the Entropy Tango again.

And it's kiss, kiss, kiss
Fear and hate we have dismissed
And it's wish, wish, wish
For a better world than this
So say goodbye to pain and woe
And we'll stop the Entropy Tango

[a_lonely_god]

The Doctor was silent for a while, watching the kettle.

“That’s what you meant about a geometry you’re accustomed too,” he finally said.

[una_harlequin]

Her breath caught a little, but her expression didn't change.

"Yes," she said simply.

A thoughtful silence, in which she decided he deserved more than that. "I have never been a terribly conventional person," she said, and she found that even she was amused by the level of understatement there. "It's part of the way I've chosen to live, I expect. I can't be putting obligations on people and we ... understand each other, Jerry and Cathy and I. Normally I conduct my affairs with rather more intelligence than I have done of late." She sighed. "I'm sorry for putting you on the sharp end of the stick."

[a_lonely_god]

The shortness of the initial reply took him momentarily by surprise, and there was a small juvenile -hurt- part of him that didn’t want to accept her apology, but he said; “That’s alright,” and -mostly- meant it. He waited for the kettle to whistle.

“Jack and Rose and I were a bit like that, I think, for a little while,” he added finally. “So maybe I sort-of understand.”