[oneshot] from the enduring past and future (1/2)
Title: from the enduring past and future
Pairing: gtop
Rating: pg13
Genre: au, romance
Warnings: swearing, discussion of mental illness
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: legit, full-fledged doctor who au after an anon on tumblr asked me for a scrap of it over the summer, though it's turned out to be more of an alternate reality than anything. top is the doctor. gd is his (on-again, off-again) companion. 12,290 words.
A man in a box falls out of the sky when Jiyong is eleven.
It is a Sunday, sometime in early spring. Jiyong has just walked out of SM Entertainment headquarters for what he does not yet know is the last time. His mother is late, which is strange because she is never late-and the next two blocks that he walks to the closest subway stop are deserted, which is strange because they're part of an extensive shopping district, and therefore never deserted.
Jiyong settles down on the stoop of a closed café outside the station, watches the stream of traffic dwindle until no more cars trickle by. The typical sounds of the city are replaced with an eerie sort of silence, an uneasy calm before the storm that has the little hairs on his nape rising, his entire body singing with inexplicable tension.
The streetlights wink out one by one.
It's already been a strange night, so Jiyong is not particularly surprised when he hears the series of strange wheezing noises, and then a resounding crash from behind the building that sends his heart leapfrogging into his throat. Curiosity killed the cat, he thinks, in Dami's high voice, but his feet take him around the corner anyway. Prudence never got anyone anywhere.
He squints into the darkness. Something very big and very blue is lying on its side in the alley. As he tiptoes closer, the top pops open and steam starts pouring out, thick and heavy.
Jiyong freezes. He hears someone cursing inside the box, and then a grappling hook-a grappling hook-comes sailing out the opening and catches on a tangle of plumbing attached to the far wall.
The next thing he knows, there are two arms levering out of the box, and a tuft of bright turquoise hair that seems almost fluorescent pops over the edge. "Jesus," the man huffs. He tips out and collapses in a heap on the ground.
Don't talk to strange men you don't know on sidewalks, the Dami in his head says pointedly. "Are you okay, ajusshi?" Jiyong tries, blinking his apprehension away. The man seems harmless enough. His clothing's rumpled and he's dripping water everywhere, like he's just stepped out of a torrential downpour.
"Ajusshi?" He looks up, still panting a little, and squints at Jiyong. "Where am I?"
"Apgujeon," Jiyong says. "Seoul. South Korea."
"Shit," he breathes, voice going deep with concern. "I guess there's a first time for everything."
The box makes an ambiguous coughing noise and three blurs of white fly out of it. The man catches two; the last one lands straight in Jiyong's hands, shimmering silver and humming gently.
"Oh, no-come on. Why do you do these things to me?" The man glances at Jiyong and waves him over. "Come here and hold that right there for a minute, will you?" he calls, gesturing at a smooth expanse of wooden paneling.
Jiyong runs forward, a sort of acute urgency pressing at the back of his mind. He puts his hands where the man is pointing and watches the blue wood subsume the white material until it's completely gone.
The man feeds the two other pieces into the box in the same manner, forehead furrowed in concentration. "There. Good as new." He smiles at Jiyong. "You're a natural. Are you sure you haven't done this before?"
Jiyong shakes his head mutely.
The man reaches back into the box, pulls out a mirror out of thin air and holds it up. "Blue hair, huh? That's new." He tilts his head to the side and seems to give it some more thought. "More interesting than ginger, I suppose."
Jiyong frowns at the growing puddle at the man's feet. "Why are you all wet?"
"Fell into the swimming pool when the TARDIS crashed," he replies, easy as pie, as if it's every day that someone asks.
"You have a swimming pool," Jiyong says flatly, "in there. Am I supposed to believe that?"
The man's eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles. "You can come see for yourself if you like." He's about to say something else when his knees buckle and the air whooshes out of his lungs in a swirl of golden light, like fairy dust.
Jiyong gawks at him for a minute before coming back to his senses. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Fine, fine-just, just cooking, still. New body, new rules."
Jiyong has no idea what he's talking about. He shakes his head. "What's a tardy?"
"TARDIS," the man corrects gently. "It's a time machine." There's a soft expression on his face, something true and honest in the deep lilt of his voice that makes Jiyong want to believe him.
"A real time machine," Jiyong breathes. "A real time machine?"
The man's apparently finished checking himself out, because he tosses the mirror inside the box and hobbles to his feet again. Jiyong can hear the echo of the mirror banging against things on the way down (down where?), which shouldn't be possible, but-"Who's asking?"
"I'm-" don't tell him, he's a stranger, "I'm Kwon Jiyong."
"Dragon, huh," the man says in English.
"Yeah," Jiyong says, twisting his fingers together. "What's your name?"
He screws his face up in concentration, like he's trying to decide what to tell Jiyong. "People call me a lot of things. You can call me TOP."
"Top of what?"
"Just TOP," he says, grinning. "Like the kind that spins. Look, you don't happen to have anything to eat, do you? I'm starving."
"If you can break into the café," Jiyong says, jerking his head toward the mouth of the alley. He leads TOP to the locked entrance and watches as TOP pulls what appears to be a buzzing pen out of his pocket and aims it at the lock. Jiyong's mouth drops open when something clicks and the door swings wide open on its hinges. "How did you do that?"
"It'd take too long to explain," he hedges, and rubs his stomach for good measure. "Food first, talk later."
"Right," Jiyong says, rolling his eyes. "I think they keep nonperishables behind the counter."
TOP ends up with a spread of various snacks and proceeds to systematically devour all of them.
"Chocopie?"
"Thanks."
"Shrimp chips?"
"Do you think they'd go well with the Pocky?"
"Um-"
"Is that mochi? Pass it here."
TOP squashes a handful of shrimp chips into a mochi and Chocopie sandwich and stuffs it in his mouth. "Eurgh." He wrinkles his nose and keeps chewing. "You know, that wasn't so bad."
"You're so weird," Jiyong says, laughing.
"A good kind of weird, I hope."
"Maybe." Definitely.
"Still hungry," TOP grumbles. He inhales the last custard tart on the table and tosses an empty chip-bag behind him. "Isn't there anything else?"
Jiyong thinks for a moment. He slings his backpack off his shoulders and unzips it, pulls a paper bag out. "How about this?" The apple shines dully in the low light. "Sorry, it's all I have left from lunch today."
"Ah, thank you," TOP says, taking it from his hands. "You drew a face on it."
"Not much to do when you're a trainee," Jiyong explains. He shrugs, shuffling his feet. "Not when you aren't a very good one, anyway."
TOP eyes him shrewdly, then tilts his chair back and exhales some gold-air out of his mouth again. "A bit of advice. If you don't like where you are, you should go somewhere else."
"Sure, TOP-ajusshi."
"Just TOP is fine." He flicks a wet strand of hair out of his eyes and takes a bite of the apple. "You should come with me. I do have a time machine." He sees the look on Jiyong's face and chuckles. "No, no, that would be kidnapping, wouldn't it? Frowned upon."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jiyong says, "but I'd like to come. With you. If that blue box is really a time machine."
"Of course it's real," TOP says. "Would I lie to you?"
"I don't know," says Jiyong. "If you took me with you-where would we go?"
"Any time, any place," he says, spreading his hands out and grinning.
"I could see anything I wanted?"
"All the stars and galaxies." He looks like he wants to continue but the faint wheezing noise from outside cuts him off. An expression of pure panic crosses his face and he dashes out of the café.
Jiyong shrugs his backpack back on and follows him outside. The box is going translucent in the low light.
"Oh, for God's sake-not again."
"What's wrong?"
"New body, new control room, new sonic screwdriver, new everything-" TOP's babbling nonsense and Jiyong furrows his brow, stares up at him. "The TARDIS is trying to leave without me. Cranky girl, this one. I have to hop in and fix some things, alright? Wait for me."
"What? Aren't you going to take me with you?"
"It won't take that long to fix whatever's going on-give me five minutes, tops, and then I'll come for you."
Jiyong scoots backward, mouth twisting. "People always say that."
TOP crouches down and grabs Jiyong's shoulder. "Look at me. I will return. I promise. Five minutes, just five minutes-would I lie to you?"
"No," Jiyong says, the sudden, acute certainty of the fact buoying him up-and he feels, somehow, lighter than air. "No, you wouldn't."
He grabs the grappling hook and tosses the rope over the side, hoists himself up onto the edge. "See you soon, Kwon Jiyong." He jumps in. A moment later, the TARDIS flashes out of existence.
"Yeah," Jiyong says, to empty space. He sits down to wait, arms hugging his knees. "See you soon."
The man in the box doesn't return.
Jiyong rattles through two doctors, four psychiatrists, and one other mental health specialist before the summer's out. In the fall, he listens the Wu-Tang Clan at Taeji's house for the first time. In the fall, he signs on as a trainee with YG, meets Teddy and Jinu and Dongwook-hyung, wraps himself in layers of song and dance and rap because music is the only other thing that feels like it could be home.
He doesn't look back.
(Only he does, all the time. It's something that percolates in the dark spaces of his mind and seems to seep into every aspect of his life, whether he likes it or not:
He goes to sleep and dreams about it, the time traveler and his big blue box coming back to whisk Jiyong away. He debuts in 2006 and sings about it. He travels to forget about it, drown it out, goes to Paris to visit Daul and London to see Daniel and New York and Hawaii and Queenstown for work.
It's not the same. It could never be the same. A promise of galaxies is not something so easily erased.)
Jiyong's first solo album drops the month after he turns twenty-one.
It is a Sunday-one of those clear, autumn dusks when the weather hasn't quite decided yet whether to err on the side of summer or winter, and so resolves itself in a kind of crisp balminess. Inkigayo is later today, and it will be the first time he performs on a music show without Youngbae, who is in Japan, or Seungri, who is in America, or Daesung, who is still recuperating in the hospital after the accident.
It happens in his dressing room after the tech rehearsal, right after the noonas put the final flourishes on his makeup and file out the door. A half-forgotten wheezing sound starts up in the corner of the room and Jiyong watches the familiar blue box materialize next to the vanity. His stomach lurches with a stupid kind of hope, fingers digging into his thighs.
The same wet muddle of turquoise hair pokes out the door like it's only been a moment since he'd left-like it's actually only been five minutes. TOP (and of course it's him, Jiyong would recognize him anywhere, even after all this time) looks around and frowns.
"This isn't right," he says. "I said Apgujeon, girl-where have you taken me?"
"You," Jiyong manages, crossing the room in three long steps. "It's really you."
TOP raps on the door twice and sends him a puzzled look. "Who are you? What's going on?"
That cresting feeling of hope mutates into anger and Jiyong seizes a fistful of wet shirt, shakes him. "It's Jiyong, you absolute idiot."
He can see just when the reality of the situation hits TOP like a brick to the head. "No, that can't be-how long-"
"Ten years," Jiyong says. "It's been ten years."
TOP brings his hand up and brushes it against the bright blond strands of Jiyong's hair. "No."
"Ten years," he repeats, swallowing.
"I'm so sorry."
"Yes, I'm sure you are." He wraps a hand around TOP's wrist. "Who are you?" he asks. "Tell me the truth. You aren't-you aren't human, are you? But you aren't just something I made up in my head?"
"No," TOP says. "I'm a time traveler. You knew that already."
The laugh that drops out of the mouth is slightly hysterical. "They said I was crazy, you know. That I made you up. Attention seeking, because I didn't have anything else, and overly imaginative to a fault. One of them said I was manic-depressive. And maybe-probably-I am all of those things, I don't care-but I didn't hallucinate you. You were real."
"I am real." His hand slides around to cup the back of Jiyong's neck. "You can feel me, can't you? I'm right here."
Jiyong tries to hold onto the anger but the harder he tries to grasp at it, the faster it slips away. All that's left is a sort of lightheaded, bone-deep weariness.
TOP glances down and sees the big block letters on his hoodie. "What's GD?"
"Me," Jiyong says. "G-Dragon."
A flicker of warm amusement passes over TOP's face. "I like Jiyong better, I think. It's-more personal, you know?"
"Not my job to be personal," Jiyong says drily.
TOP holds him at arms length and studies him for a long minute. Then: "Are you still coming with me?"
Which is, of course, the million-dollar question. "Why me?" he asks, voice sharp.
"I've been alone for quite long enough," TOP says carefully. "New body, new rules."
"You need a friend?"
"A companion, yes. And the TARDIS came back to you. She found you. You've had your hands on one of her warp nacelles, after all. She doesn't forget something like that."
Jiyong's eyes narrow. "And what makes you think I want to leave? You made me wait for ten years. How do I know you're telling the truth-that you aren't some madman-"
TOP tightens his grip on Jiyong's shoulder. "You were the boy who saw a strange man with blue hair crash his spaceship into a café, and you didn't run away. Why not?"
"I wasn't scared."
TOP lets go gradually, then digs around in his pocket and pulls a half-eaten apple out, shoves it in Jiyong's open hand. "You've waited long enough."
Jiyong turns it over. The wobbly smile is still drawn in the skin with permanent marker. The flesh hasn't even started browning yet.
"I promised you the entire universe," he continues, voice quiet and low. "I intend to keep that promise, even if it takes me another ten years."
Jiyong bites his lip and meets TOP's steady gaze. "Let's hope not," he finally murmurs, and doesn’t quite manage to hide his smile when TOP grins toothily at him. "First, though-we need to get you out of these wet clothes."
"Is that a proposition?" TOP asks, raising an eyebrow. Jiyong flushes.
"Don't be ridiculous. Do you want to catch a cold?"
"I'm a Time Lord," he replies testily. "We don't catch colds."
"Better safe than sorry," Jiyong insists, and pushes him into the walk-in closet. "I'm not sure any of my stuff will fit you, but-"
TOP waves a hand. "The TARDIS will take care of that."
"Okay, then," he says, gesturing at the variety of choices at their disposal. "Go wild."
TOP runs his hands down a rack of clothing and sends Jiyong and nonplussed expression. "Don't you have anything normal?"
Jiyong rubs over his face. "Just choose something and we'll see how it looks."
"Do you work in fashion? Is this haute couture?" TOP unhooks the white bolero and holds it up to the light. "How do you even wear this?"
"Never mind," he says flatly. "You can keep your filthy wet shirt on and we can leave."
TOP digs deeper into the sea of clothing. "Don't you have anything practical? Like-I don't know, a trench coat? A blazer that doesn't look like it could put my eye out? Is this a blood pressure monitor?" He tosses the red armband and a metallic vest over his head.
Jiyong picks the vest up off the ground and hangs it back on the rack. "What about this?" he asks, reaching through to the back and unearthing a red camel coat that looks like a sad leftover from one of their older promotions.
"It could work," TOP says, scrutinizing the fabric. "Hold that thought."
It takes another ten minutes for him to choose a shirt. In that time, Jiyong decides that TOP's an even pickier bastard than he is, which is saying something. The closet's a riot of messy color by now, clothes and hangers strewn all over the place. Jiyong selects a random pair of dark sheer jeans and combat boots and drops them into TOP's arms. "You're wearing these."
"But-"
"No buts," he says, voice stern. TOP gazes at him forlornly and Jiyong shakes his head, swallowing a laugh. "You are such a child. Strip."
"Right here?" TOP says, quirking an eyebrow again. The soggy button-down comes off before Jiyong can say anything in response. He sees a flash of smooth, pale skin-and then TOP's shrugging the striped shirt on, hands smoothing the fabric down.
He's wearing boxers with little bears on them underneath his damp dress pants. "Really?" Jiyong says, the corners of his mouth curling up of their own volition.
"Don't hate," he says mulishly, and tugs the jeans on before sliding the boots over his socks.
"Need me to lace those up for you?" Jiyong says drolly.
TOP rolls his eyes and does the ties himself. He stands up, stomps around.
"Fit okay?"
"Fine." He takes the jacket out of Jiyong's hands and puts it on last, gives a little twirl. "How do I look?"
"Dry." Really, really good, actually, he thinks, but the words die unspoken in the back of his mouth.
It's odd-he's never been embarrassed about broadcasting similar appreciation before, but it seems different with TOP, foreign and bizarre in the way it fills his chest. He sighs as TOP leaves the wreckage of the closet behind him, follows him back out into the dressing room.
"Listen," Jiyong says, clearing his throat. "Hey! Wherever-whenever we end up going, you'll be able to have me back in an hour, won't you?"
"You could be back in less than a second, if that's what you wanted." TOP must see the dubious look on his face because he pats Jiyong's shoulder reassuringly. "Yes. Don't worry. What's in an hour?"
"Nothing important," Jiyong lies, which is when the dressing room door swings wide open and Youngbae walks in.
"Hey, Jieun told me you'd be in here," he's saying. "Are you ready for-" He trails off uncertainly when he sees TOP and the TARDIS.
"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be in Japan," Jiyong murmurs.
"Thank you for that warm welcome," Youngbae says, and then gapes some more in TOP's direction. "That isn't-it can't be."
"This is TOP," Jiyong says reluctantly.
"What? TOP?"
"It's nice to meet you," TOP says, the very picture of politesse.
"Jiyong, he was your imaginary friend," Youngbae stutters, shutting the door firmly behind him. "How can he be here? He was never real-"
"He is very real, as you can see," Jiyong says, unable to stop the mild irritation from bleeding into his voice. "He has a time machine, and I'm going with him. I'll be back soon."
"You can't just leave," Youngbae says. "I came to see you perform-"
"Perform?" TOP asks, clearly interested.
"I'm kind of-" Jiyong lets out a frustrated sigh. "I'm a rapper. It's not important."
"How can you say that?" Youngbae asks. "Of course it's important." He turns to TOP and gesticulates wildly. "He's written about you in his music before, you know?"
TOP glances at him, eyebrows rising. "Is that true?"
Youngbae yanks the hem of Jiyong's hoodie up and points at the Heartbreaker logo emblazoned on his shirt. "What do you think this is?"
"That's enough," Jiyong says quickly, turning away from the stricken look on TOP's face. "Look, man-just let me go, alright? I've been waiting for this for so long-"
Youngbae cards a hand through his hair and exhales. "You've been waiting for this album for years," he mutters, loosening his grip on Jiyong's clothes. "And what about the songs you're writing for 2NE1? For us? You have responsibilities."
"I'm not leaving forever," Jiyong snaps, stepping away. "It's a time machine, Youngbae. I'll be back before you can count to three. Promise."
Jiyong shoves TOP into the TARDIS and shuts the door behind him before Youngbae can protest any further. He turns to face the room-and sags against the smooth wood at his back, momentarily stunned by the full splendor of what he's seeing.
Youngbae knocks hard on the door and yells something through it, but Jiyong can't even hear what he's saying over the loud rush of blood in his ears.
TOP grins and spreads his arms. "What do you think?"
Jiyong inches forward, entranced. It's the sheer immensity of the thing that hits him so hard it becomes a little difficult to breathe. The room is fantastically large, like something straight out of a science fiction novel, filled with spinning dials and heavy levers and a hundred other things he can't find the words for-and for the first time, Jiyong can really believe everything that's happened. "It's-amazing," he says, almost choking on the last word. He swivels his head around, tries to take it all in. "There really is a swimming pool somewhere in here, isn't there?"
"Things have shifted around a bit, admittedly. She's still settling in, see, like me-but, yeah, yes, somewhere in there," TOP says. He eyes Jiyong with a certain degree of trepidation. "So, do you still want to come?"
"Will I have to repeat myself all the time if I do?" he asks, very wry. TOP just regards him quietly, waiting.
When Jiyong straightens up it feels like he's shedding all the baggage that's been hounding him for years: the anxiety, the weariness, every old hurt sliding right off-not forgotten, per se, but contained now, surmountable. He takes the steps up to the control panel two at a time and touches one of the bright switches, listens to the whirring and clicking of the TARDIS's innards at work.
"Of course I'm coming," Jiyong says. "You wouldn't be able to get rid of me if you tried."
A brief expression of staggering sadness flickers over TOP's face, but he wipes it away the next second with a soft intake of breath and a wide smile, reaches up to crank a lever. The TARDIS shudders and lurches to the left, and Jiyong laughs, hanging on to the railing for dear life. "Where to first?"
The first day passes in a literal deluge of new sensory information (the dissonant melody of the TARDIS's engines, the sick, lumbering roil as they ride elephantine creatures across a vast terrain of blue sand in the Andromeda system, the sweet, sticky smell of juice dripping from the taupe-colored fish-fruit that TOP catches just outside of Anagonia's immediate atmosphere)-and so do the second, and the third, and the fourth, until every moment seems to bleed out into one long, static eternity. In space, he learns, there is no absolute time.
"Is this how you always feel?" Jiyong asks. They're squashed in together at the door of the ship, legs dangling out into the inky black, watching one of Jupiter's moons rise. "Like you're sealed off in this vacuum, standing completely still?" He leans back on his arms. "How old are you, anyway?"
"Guess," TOP says, lips curling with amusement.
Jiyong blows his bangs up with a huff. "You look like you're in your twenties, but something tells me that isn't right, is it?"
"Nine-hundred twenty-seven," he replies, grinning at the incredulous glance Jiyong sends him. "So you kind of got it right. The twenty part, anyway."
He whistles. "Nine centuries old and still a child," Jiyong observes, and ducks when TOP swats at him lazily. "What the hell, so do you-do Time Lords not age?"
"We regenerate," he explains.
Jiyong stares at him blankly.
"It's a little complicated," TOP says, laughing. "But when this body's run its course, I regenerate into a new one-a different one, with a bit of a different personality. I'm still me, though. Same memories, same experiences, and I've still got the same TARDIS." He pats the floor fondly.
"And that's what was happening to you the first time we met?"
He nods, runs a hand through his hair. "I've always wanted to be a ginger, but this teal-y turquoise is good, too."
"Why not just dye your hair red? I do mine all the time."
"Oh, come on," TOP says indignantly. "That's not the same thing at all."
Jiyong snorts. "If you say so." He pauses. "So you're-you really aren't human. You're an alien."
"Why do you say that?"
"I don't know how familiar you are with the human race," Jiyong says drily, "but we definitely don't live for nearly a millennium, and we definitely don't reincarnate."
"Regenerate," TOP corrects, ignoring the roll of Jiyong's eyes. "Yes, well, I might be an alien to you, but to me, you're the alien. See? It's all relative."
"And are there any others? Other Time Lords, like you?"
TOP goes still for a very long time. Jiyong's about to open his mouth and change the topic when TOP reaches out and pats Jiyong's knee. "There used to be. Not anymore, though. There was a war, see, and a lot of good people died. Now it's just me."
"I'm so sorry," Jiyong says, because what else do you say to something like that? He reaches up cautiously and rubs smooth circles into TOP's shoulder. A beat of comfortable silence, and then: "What about this?" Jiyong asks, knocking on the floor of the TARDIS that they're sitting on. "It doesn't look like a time machine."
The corners of TOP's mouth turn up. "Seen many of those, have you?"
"You know what I mean," he presses. "Form matches function. Big and blue doesn't exactly scream manipulation of the space-time continuum. Plus, it says 'police box' in big lettering on the outside."
"So?"
"Why would you put a time machine in a police box?"
TOP looks down. "Bit of a design flaw," he mutters, so soft Jiyong can barely hear him.
Jiyong squints at the back of his head. "Come again?"
"It's an idiosyncrasy, alright? I happen to find it endearing," TOP huffs. "The outer shields are supposed to camouflage the TARDIS in any environment we land in, but she got stuck on 1960s British Police Box somewhere down the line and, well-can't seem to unstick herself."
"Have you ever tried fixing the problem yourself?" Jiyong suggests, voice bland.
"Hey, who's the Time Lord, here? Are you going to keep asking questions, or are you going to watch this fucking moon rise?" TOP counters crossly, which tells Jiyong he probably has tried, multiple times, to no avail.
"Can't I do both?"
But even as he asks the question, the last bit of Callisto finally crests the vast curve of Jupiter and she sparkles out in all her glory, craters thrown into stark relief. Jiyong exhales a breath he didn't know he was holding, eyes wide, and leans forward as far as he can go without falling out. "This is surreal."
"She's beautiful," TOP says gruffly, with a nascent kind of wonder that does not seem at all diminished, even after nine hundred years.
Jiyong glances at him and smiles, chest constricting strangely. "Yeah," he says. "Beautiful."
The cardinal rule that TOP relays to him (an ultimatum of sorts, really) when the TARDIS first takes them somewhere with higher life forms is that they were only observers, and should never interfere with the affairs of the people and places that they visit. It sounds like the biggest load of bullshit Jiyong's ever heard, especially after TOP follows it up by promptly storming into 33rd century SS South Korea and scaring a crying young girl out of her wallet.
"That seemed unnecessary," Jiyong remarks, peering over TOP's shoulder. "Your eyebrows can be really intimidating for young children, you know?"
TOP glares at him darkly. "You seem to have turned out alright."
"Oh, thanks."
He turns back to the wallet. "Her name is Sooyeon, she's eleven, and she lives in Gwangju. Naebang Road, Complex 3, Apartment 54D." He waves his sonic screwdriver around. "That's fifty levels down and at the other end of the ship. Find her. Find out why she was crying."
"Because you kept bumping into her," Jiyong points out.
"No-"
"I know, I know, I saw her too. She was sitting on the bench and crying. But children cry all the time-"
"Yes," TOP says, grabbing Jiyong's shoulders, "yes, they do-but she wasn't doing it for the attention."
"Are you suddenly the child-whisperer? Because it might've worked with me, but-"
TOP lets out an exasperated sigh. "Come on, work with me here.
Jiyong rolls his eyes and gestures for him to continue.
"You've been around kids before. They cry because they want to be heard."
"Right," Jiyong says, drawing the vowel out, trying to fit his thoughts together. "They want their parents, or food, or sleep."
"Exactly. Now, look around. Don't just see; observe, perceive, extrapolate." He sounds like he's trying to drill it in himself as much as he is in Jiyong. "Dongdaemun is pretty crowded today."
"It's a shopping district," Jiyong offers. "It was crowded in the 21st century, too."
"Our girl Sooyeon was in a corner, crying quietly. And yet-"
"Nobody paid attention," Jiyong finishes. "People saw her, but nobody asked her what was wrong. Why not?" He frowns, eyes scanning the hustle and bustle of people passing by. It dawns on both of them at the same time, TOP's eyes snapping up to meet his. "Because they already knew why she was crying."
"Hole-in-one." TOP hands Jiyong the wallet. "We don't, though. You have to find her and ask her what the hell is going on. Meet me back here in half an hour."
"What are you going to do?"
"What I always do," he says, brushing his shoulders off. "Stay out of trouble."
Jiyong thinks about the crash landing in Apjugeon, the time TOP was nearly trampled to death by elephants in the Andromeda system, and the incident with the fishhook, among other things. He raises his eyebrows.
"Badly," TOP appends, voice sheepish. He scratches the back of his head. "You know there's something sinister going on in this ship, Jiyong. I aim to find out what it is, and see if we can help fix it."
Jiyong's eyebrows go even higher. "What happened to your non-interference clause? Or does that just get thrown out the window when you see children crying?"
"Bingo," TOP says, smiling, and pushes him toward the elevators.
This is what they find: an entire country living in a gargantuan spaceship that has no engine, that by all rights shouldn't even be able to fly, light years from home and governed under an uneasy police state. There are strange holes and cracks in the lower levels where spiny, clawing tentacles with wickedly tipped barbs burrow their way out from below and stab at anything that moves, cordoned off so no one can see them. And this-after Jiyong's nearly been skewered three times, rather-is when he and Sooyeon are caught by what he assumes is the 33rd century's answer to the Secret Service and dragged up to the main control room of an impossible ship with no engines, where TOP stands next to President Park, her face white as a sheet, and listens to her right-hand man say his piece.
"The sun was expanding, like the scientists always said it would, and the world was burning," he says, and Jiyong can hear a barely-there tremor edging into his voice. "So many others had built their ships and gone, but we were still there, and our children cried out for help."
"What happened?" TOP asks intently, eyebrows drawn in, a steely focus in his gaze.
"And then it came, like a miracle," he says. "An ancient star whale, the last of its kind, flew into Earth's atmosphere before the last of our land could burn up. We trapped it, built our ship around it, and rode it away from our planet."
Jiyong looks at the metal braces around the huge brain of the beast, electrical circuitry pumping gigavolts of current straight into its pain receptors to drive it ever forward, and feels like he might be sick. He is completely out of his element, here-there is nothing he can contribute, and the bleak expression on TOP's face magnifies that sense a thousand times over.
President Park looks like she's about to fold in on herself, her nails leaving crescent-shaped marks in the skin of her arms.
"You're torturing it," TOP says finally, his voice so flat and harsh that even the director flinches. "You took this beautiful, majestic creature and enslaved it, and you wonder why it shoots those pincers up into every part of the ship it can reach."
"This is why," the director of the Secret Service continues, head bowed, "every five years, those of voting age will go into the booths and hear the truth. They can either choose to forget or protest. If at least ten percent of the population chooses to protest, we have been instructed to cut the star whale loose." He pauses. "This has never happened."
One of the suits comes in through a side door, a single-file line of kids following behind him. Sooyeon's face lights up when she sees her little brother among the other children. "Hyunsik, are you okay?" They drift off to a corner of the room, speaking in soft voices.
President Park draws herself up, determination scrawled deep in the lines of her face. "By whose authority have you kept this from me?"
"The highest authority of the state, ma'am."
"I am the highest authority," she declares, voice ringing. "And I order you to set the poor animal free."
The director leads them to the back of the room. There is a voting booth marked just for her, and the buttons say FORGET and-ABDICATE. A video loop of the president herself pops up on the screen, imploring her to make the right decision for the good of the country.
"This isn't the first time this has happened before, is it?" President Park asks, running a hand over her eyes. The director doesn't have to answer. "Every time, I've voted to forget. How else could I not remember?"
"It's an impossible choice," TOP says. He strides back to the control panel, face still and blank.
Jiyong swallows and joins him, thoughts whirling. "What are you going to do?"
"What I have to do," he says hoarsely. He won't look at Jiyong. "I'm going to run an electric pulse through the brain of the star whale and render it a living vegetable. It'll still be able to fly and be controlled-it just won't feel the pain anymore."
"You're going to kill it," Jiyong accuses, chest aching with a tangible sort of pain that he is only just beginning to understand. "How could you-"
"What would you have me do?" he snaps. "If I cut it loose, this country, all its people-they die. The ship disintegrates in deep space. No hope for survival. If I leave the whale in this state-it's been living in pain for so long, Jiyong." A muscle in his jaw jumps. "So, yes, I'm going to kill it. And then I'm going to take you home and figure out something else to do because I won't deserve to be a Time Lord anymore. Not after this."
Jiyong shuffles away and gazes around the room desperately as TOP starts flipping switches and rewiring circuits. Observe, perceive, extrapolate. There must be something he can do, something they can do besides killing a star whale, the last of its kind-
His eyes snap to Sooyeon and Hyunsik. They've drifted over to one of the pores in the wall, lethal-looking spiky tendrils of the whale's brain reaching out, and Jiyong takes a step forward, lifts a hand up to warn them-but they aren't being attacked. The sharp tip of the tentacle taps Sooyeon's shoulder, and bends down to let Hyunsik pet it.
On the other side of the room, Jiyong sees the president standing next to her Secret Service, face crumpled with devastation, watching the video of herself over and over again. The director presses his hand against the small of her back and points at the two buttons-and his words playback in Jiyong's head: the last of its kind, it was a miracle, our children were crying.
The last of its kind.
"TOP," he shouts, the name catching in his throat. "Stop what you're doing-stop," but he's already cranked the last dial up and charge is building in the metal cage-
Jiyong careens toward the president's voting booth. "Madam President," he says, grabbing her hand. "Let me borrow this for just a moment-"
He slams her hand down over the bright red ABDICATE button before anyone else can react, and the entire world goes to pieces.
Or, at least, that's what it seems like for the first few seconds, as the whale stretches out beneath their feet and the whole ship shudders. "What the fuck did you do?" TOP is yelling over the roar of noise.
"Saved you," Jiyong breathes, as the control room rights itself and the lights come on again.
The director drags himself off the floor and peers at the monitors. "We've increased speed!"
"Of course you have." Jiyong sends TOP a meaningful look, wills him to get it. "You stopped torturing the pilot, didn't you?"
"I don't understand," President Park says, staring down at her hand. "It's still here-why is it still here?"
"When it came all those years ago," Jiyong says, "it wasn't just a miracle, a stroke of luck. It came because it heard your cry for help. It saw your children, burning on a planet about to be consumed by a supernova. You said-" he swallows, meets TOP's eyes head on, "you said it was the very last of the star whales: alone, with no future to look forward to. If you were that old, and that kind, and the very last-how could you just stand by and watch children cry?"
"Jiyong," TOP says later, when they're perched at the highest point of the ship and watching the pinwheel of stars glide by. "You know you could've killed everyone on board."
"And you could've killed a star whale," he returns without missing a beat, head arched back. "But you didn't."
"No," TOP exhales. "I didn't."
"All that pain," Jiyong says. "And sorrow, and loneliness-and all it did was make it kind."
"But you couldn't have known how it would react-"
"Sure I did, you idiot." Jiyong punches him in the arm and TOP lets out a muffled yelp. "I've got a pretty good model myself."
> > > PART 2 > > >
Pairing: gtop
Rating: pg13
Genre: au, romance
Warnings: swearing, discussion of mental illness
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: legit, full-fledged doctor who au after an anon on tumblr asked me for a scrap of it over the summer, though it's turned out to be more of an alternate reality than anything. top is the doctor. gd is his (on-again, off-again) companion. 12,290 words.
A man in a box falls out of the sky when Jiyong is eleven.
It is a Sunday, sometime in early spring. Jiyong has just walked out of SM Entertainment headquarters for what he does not yet know is the last time. His mother is late, which is strange because she is never late-and the next two blocks that he walks to the closest subway stop are deserted, which is strange because they're part of an extensive shopping district, and therefore never deserted.
Jiyong settles down on the stoop of a closed café outside the station, watches the stream of traffic dwindle until no more cars trickle by. The typical sounds of the city are replaced with an eerie sort of silence, an uneasy calm before the storm that has the little hairs on his nape rising, his entire body singing with inexplicable tension.
The streetlights wink out one by one.
It's already been a strange night, so Jiyong is not particularly surprised when he hears the series of strange wheezing noises, and then a resounding crash from behind the building that sends his heart leapfrogging into his throat. Curiosity killed the cat, he thinks, in Dami's high voice, but his feet take him around the corner anyway. Prudence never got anyone anywhere.
He squints into the darkness. Something very big and very blue is lying on its side in the alley. As he tiptoes closer, the top pops open and steam starts pouring out, thick and heavy.
Jiyong freezes. He hears someone cursing inside the box, and then a grappling hook-a grappling hook-comes sailing out the opening and catches on a tangle of plumbing attached to the far wall.
The next thing he knows, there are two arms levering out of the box, and a tuft of bright turquoise hair that seems almost fluorescent pops over the edge. "Jesus," the man huffs. He tips out and collapses in a heap on the ground.
Don't talk to strange men you don't know on sidewalks, the Dami in his head says pointedly. "Are you okay, ajusshi?" Jiyong tries, blinking his apprehension away. The man seems harmless enough. His clothing's rumpled and he's dripping water everywhere, like he's just stepped out of a torrential downpour.
"Ajusshi?" He looks up, still panting a little, and squints at Jiyong. "Where am I?"
"Apgujeon," Jiyong says. "Seoul. South Korea."
"Shit," he breathes, voice going deep with concern. "I guess there's a first time for everything."
The box makes an ambiguous coughing noise and three blurs of white fly out of it. The man catches two; the last one lands straight in Jiyong's hands, shimmering silver and humming gently.
"Oh, no-come on. Why do you do these things to me?" The man glances at Jiyong and waves him over. "Come here and hold that right there for a minute, will you?" he calls, gesturing at a smooth expanse of wooden paneling.
Jiyong runs forward, a sort of acute urgency pressing at the back of his mind. He puts his hands where the man is pointing and watches the blue wood subsume the white material until it's completely gone.
The man feeds the two other pieces into the box in the same manner, forehead furrowed in concentration. "There. Good as new." He smiles at Jiyong. "You're a natural. Are you sure you haven't done this before?"
Jiyong shakes his head mutely.
The man reaches back into the box, pulls out a mirror out of thin air and holds it up. "Blue hair, huh? That's new." He tilts his head to the side and seems to give it some more thought. "More interesting than ginger, I suppose."
Jiyong frowns at the growing puddle at the man's feet. "Why are you all wet?"
"Fell into the swimming pool when the TARDIS crashed," he replies, easy as pie, as if it's every day that someone asks.
"You have a swimming pool," Jiyong says flatly, "in there. Am I supposed to believe that?"
The man's eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles. "You can come see for yourself if you like." He's about to say something else when his knees buckle and the air whooshes out of his lungs in a swirl of golden light, like fairy dust.
Jiyong gawks at him for a minute before coming back to his senses. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Fine, fine-just, just cooking, still. New body, new rules."
Jiyong has no idea what he's talking about. He shakes his head. "What's a tardy?"
"TARDIS," the man corrects gently. "It's a time machine." There's a soft expression on his face, something true and honest in the deep lilt of his voice that makes Jiyong want to believe him.
"A real time machine," Jiyong breathes. "A real time machine?"
The man's apparently finished checking himself out, because he tosses the mirror inside the box and hobbles to his feet again. Jiyong can hear the echo of the mirror banging against things on the way down (down where?), which shouldn't be possible, but-"Who's asking?"
"I'm-" don't tell him, he's a stranger, "I'm Kwon Jiyong."
"Dragon, huh," the man says in English.
"Yeah," Jiyong says, twisting his fingers together. "What's your name?"
He screws his face up in concentration, like he's trying to decide what to tell Jiyong. "People call me a lot of things. You can call me TOP."
"Top of what?"
"Just TOP," he says, grinning. "Like the kind that spins. Look, you don't happen to have anything to eat, do you? I'm starving."
"If you can break into the café," Jiyong says, jerking his head toward the mouth of the alley. He leads TOP to the locked entrance and watches as TOP pulls what appears to be a buzzing pen out of his pocket and aims it at the lock. Jiyong's mouth drops open when something clicks and the door swings wide open on its hinges. "How did you do that?"
"It'd take too long to explain," he hedges, and rubs his stomach for good measure. "Food first, talk later."
"Right," Jiyong says, rolling his eyes. "I think they keep nonperishables behind the counter."
TOP ends up with a spread of various snacks and proceeds to systematically devour all of them.
"Chocopie?"
"Thanks."
"Shrimp chips?"
"Do you think they'd go well with the Pocky?"
"Um-"
"Is that mochi? Pass it here."
TOP squashes a handful of shrimp chips into a mochi and Chocopie sandwich and stuffs it in his mouth. "Eurgh." He wrinkles his nose and keeps chewing. "You know, that wasn't so bad."
"You're so weird," Jiyong says, laughing.
"A good kind of weird, I hope."
"Maybe." Definitely.
"Still hungry," TOP grumbles. He inhales the last custard tart on the table and tosses an empty chip-bag behind him. "Isn't there anything else?"
Jiyong thinks for a moment. He slings his backpack off his shoulders and unzips it, pulls a paper bag out. "How about this?" The apple shines dully in the low light. "Sorry, it's all I have left from lunch today."
"Ah, thank you," TOP says, taking it from his hands. "You drew a face on it."
"Not much to do when you're a trainee," Jiyong explains. He shrugs, shuffling his feet. "Not when you aren't a very good one, anyway."
TOP eyes him shrewdly, then tilts his chair back and exhales some gold-air out of his mouth again. "A bit of advice. If you don't like where you are, you should go somewhere else."
"Sure, TOP-ajusshi."
"Just TOP is fine." He flicks a wet strand of hair out of his eyes and takes a bite of the apple. "You should come with me. I do have a time machine." He sees the look on Jiyong's face and chuckles. "No, no, that would be kidnapping, wouldn't it? Frowned upon."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jiyong says, "but I'd like to come. With you. If that blue box is really a time machine."
"Of course it's real," TOP says. "Would I lie to you?"
"I don't know," says Jiyong. "If you took me with you-where would we go?"
"Any time, any place," he says, spreading his hands out and grinning.
"I could see anything I wanted?"
"All the stars and galaxies." He looks like he wants to continue but the faint wheezing noise from outside cuts him off. An expression of pure panic crosses his face and he dashes out of the café.
Jiyong shrugs his backpack back on and follows him outside. The box is going translucent in the low light.
"Oh, for God's sake-not again."
"What's wrong?"
"New body, new control room, new sonic screwdriver, new everything-" TOP's babbling nonsense and Jiyong furrows his brow, stares up at him. "The TARDIS is trying to leave without me. Cranky girl, this one. I have to hop in and fix some things, alright? Wait for me."
"What? Aren't you going to take me with you?"
"It won't take that long to fix whatever's going on-give me five minutes, tops, and then I'll come for you."
Jiyong scoots backward, mouth twisting. "People always say that."
TOP crouches down and grabs Jiyong's shoulder. "Look at me. I will return. I promise. Five minutes, just five minutes-would I lie to you?"
"No," Jiyong says, the sudden, acute certainty of the fact buoying him up-and he feels, somehow, lighter than air. "No, you wouldn't."
He grabs the grappling hook and tosses the rope over the side, hoists himself up onto the edge. "See you soon, Kwon Jiyong." He jumps in. A moment later, the TARDIS flashes out of existence.
"Yeah," Jiyong says, to empty space. He sits down to wait, arms hugging his knees. "See you soon."
The man in the box doesn't return.
Jiyong rattles through two doctors, four psychiatrists, and one other mental health specialist before the summer's out. In the fall, he listens the Wu-Tang Clan at Taeji's house for the first time. In the fall, he signs on as a trainee with YG, meets Teddy and Jinu and Dongwook-hyung, wraps himself in layers of song and dance and rap because music is the only other thing that feels like it could be home.
He doesn't look back.
(Only he does, all the time. It's something that percolates in the dark spaces of his mind and seems to seep into every aspect of his life, whether he likes it or not:
He goes to sleep and dreams about it, the time traveler and his big blue box coming back to whisk Jiyong away. He debuts in 2006 and sings about it. He travels to forget about it, drown it out, goes to Paris to visit Daul and London to see Daniel and New York and Hawaii and Queenstown for work.
It's not the same. It could never be the same. A promise of galaxies is not something so easily erased.)
Jiyong's first solo album drops the month after he turns twenty-one.
It is a Sunday-one of those clear, autumn dusks when the weather hasn't quite decided yet whether to err on the side of summer or winter, and so resolves itself in a kind of crisp balminess. Inkigayo is later today, and it will be the first time he performs on a music show without Youngbae, who is in Japan, or Seungri, who is in America, or Daesung, who is still recuperating in the hospital after the accident.
It happens in his dressing room after the tech rehearsal, right after the noonas put the final flourishes on his makeup and file out the door. A half-forgotten wheezing sound starts up in the corner of the room and Jiyong watches the familiar blue box materialize next to the vanity. His stomach lurches with a stupid kind of hope, fingers digging into his thighs.
The same wet muddle of turquoise hair pokes out the door like it's only been a moment since he'd left-like it's actually only been five minutes. TOP (and of course it's him, Jiyong would recognize him anywhere, even after all this time) looks around and frowns.
"This isn't right," he says. "I said Apgujeon, girl-where have you taken me?"
"You," Jiyong manages, crossing the room in three long steps. "It's really you."
TOP raps on the door twice and sends him a puzzled look. "Who are you? What's going on?"
That cresting feeling of hope mutates into anger and Jiyong seizes a fistful of wet shirt, shakes him. "It's Jiyong, you absolute idiot."
He can see just when the reality of the situation hits TOP like a brick to the head. "No, that can't be-how long-"
"Ten years," Jiyong says. "It's been ten years."
TOP brings his hand up and brushes it against the bright blond strands of Jiyong's hair. "No."
"Ten years," he repeats, swallowing.
"I'm so sorry."
"Yes, I'm sure you are." He wraps a hand around TOP's wrist. "Who are you?" he asks. "Tell me the truth. You aren't-you aren't human, are you? But you aren't just something I made up in my head?"
"No," TOP says. "I'm a time traveler. You knew that already."
The laugh that drops out of the mouth is slightly hysterical. "They said I was crazy, you know. That I made you up. Attention seeking, because I didn't have anything else, and overly imaginative to a fault. One of them said I was manic-depressive. And maybe-probably-I am all of those things, I don't care-but I didn't hallucinate you. You were real."
"I am real." His hand slides around to cup the back of Jiyong's neck. "You can feel me, can't you? I'm right here."
Jiyong tries to hold onto the anger but the harder he tries to grasp at it, the faster it slips away. All that's left is a sort of lightheaded, bone-deep weariness.
TOP glances down and sees the big block letters on his hoodie. "What's GD?"
"Me," Jiyong says. "G-Dragon."
A flicker of warm amusement passes over TOP's face. "I like Jiyong better, I think. It's-more personal, you know?"
"Not my job to be personal," Jiyong says drily.
TOP holds him at arms length and studies him for a long minute. Then: "Are you still coming with me?"
Which is, of course, the million-dollar question. "Why me?" he asks, voice sharp.
"I've been alone for quite long enough," TOP says carefully. "New body, new rules."
"You need a friend?"
"A companion, yes. And the TARDIS came back to you. She found you. You've had your hands on one of her warp nacelles, after all. She doesn't forget something like that."
Jiyong's eyes narrow. "And what makes you think I want to leave? You made me wait for ten years. How do I know you're telling the truth-that you aren't some madman-"
TOP tightens his grip on Jiyong's shoulder. "You were the boy who saw a strange man with blue hair crash his spaceship into a café, and you didn't run away. Why not?"
"I wasn't scared."
TOP lets go gradually, then digs around in his pocket and pulls a half-eaten apple out, shoves it in Jiyong's open hand. "You've waited long enough."
Jiyong turns it over. The wobbly smile is still drawn in the skin with permanent marker. The flesh hasn't even started browning yet.
"I promised you the entire universe," he continues, voice quiet and low. "I intend to keep that promise, even if it takes me another ten years."
Jiyong bites his lip and meets TOP's steady gaze. "Let's hope not," he finally murmurs, and doesn’t quite manage to hide his smile when TOP grins toothily at him. "First, though-we need to get you out of these wet clothes."
"Is that a proposition?" TOP asks, raising an eyebrow. Jiyong flushes.
"Don't be ridiculous. Do you want to catch a cold?"
"I'm a Time Lord," he replies testily. "We don't catch colds."
"Better safe than sorry," Jiyong insists, and pushes him into the walk-in closet. "I'm not sure any of my stuff will fit you, but-"
TOP waves a hand. "The TARDIS will take care of that."
"Okay, then," he says, gesturing at the variety of choices at their disposal. "Go wild."
TOP runs his hands down a rack of clothing and sends Jiyong and nonplussed expression. "Don't you have anything normal?"
Jiyong rubs over his face. "Just choose something and we'll see how it looks."
"Do you work in fashion? Is this haute couture?" TOP unhooks the white bolero and holds it up to the light. "How do you even wear this?"
"Never mind," he says flatly. "You can keep your filthy wet shirt on and we can leave."
TOP digs deeper into the sea of clothing. "Don't you have anything practical? Like-I don't know, a trench coat? A blazer that doesn't look like it could put my eye out? Is this a blood pressure monitor?" He tosses the red armband and a metallic vest over his head.
Jiyong picks the vest up off the ground and hangs it back on the rack. "What about this?" he asks, reaching through to the back and unearthing a red camel coat that looks like a sad leftover from one of their older promotions.
"It could work," TOP says, scrutinizing the fabric. "Hold that thought."
It takes another ten minutes for him to choose a shirt. In that time, Jiyong decides that TOP's an even pickier bastard than he is, which is saying something. The closet's a riot of messy color by now, clothes and hangers strewn all over the place. Jiyong selects a random pair of dark sheer jeans and combat boots and drops them into TOP's arms. "You're wearing these."
"But-"
"No buts," he says, voice stern. TOP gazes at him forlornly and Jiyong shakes his head, swallowing a laugh. "You are such a child. Strip."
"Right here?" TOP says, quirking an eyebrow again. The soggy button-down comes off before Jiyong can say anything in response. He sees a flash of smooth, pale skin-and then TOP's shrugging the striped shirt on, hands smoothing the fabric down.
He's wearing boxers with little bears on them underneath his damp dress pants. "Really?" Jiyong says, the corners of his mouth curling up of their own volition.
"Don't hate," he says mulishly, and tugs the jeans on before sliding the boots over his socks.
"Need me to lace those up for you?" Jiyong says drolly.
TOP rolls his eyes and does the ties himself. He stands up, stomps around.
"Fit okay?"
"Fine." He takes the jacket out of Jiyong's hands and puts it on last, gives a little twirl. "How do I look?"
"Dry." Really, really good, actually, he thinks, but the words die unspoken in the back of his mouth.
It's odd-he's never been embarrassed about broadcasting similar appreciation before, but it seems different with TOP, foreign and bizarre in the way it fills his chest. He sighs as TOP leaves the wreckage of the closet behind him, follows him back out into the dressing room.
"Listen," Jiyong says, clearing his throat. "Hey! Wherever-whenever we end up going, you'll be able to have me back in an hour, won't you?"
"You could be back in less than a second, if that's what you wanted." TOP must see the dubious look on his face because he pats Jiyong's shoulder reassuringly. "Yes. Don't worry. What's in an hour?"
"Nothing important," Jiyong lies, which is when the dressing room door swings wide open and Youngbae walks in.
"Hey, Jieun told me you'd be in here," he's saying. "Are you ready for-" He trails off uncertainly when he sees TOP and the TARDIS.
"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be in Japan," Jiyong murmurs.
"Thank you for that warm welcome," Youngbae says, and then gapes some more in TOP's direction. "That isn't-it can't be."
"This is TOP," Jiyong says reluctantly.
"What? TOP?"
"It's nice to meet you," TOP says, the very picture of politesse.
"Jiyong, he was your imaginary friend," Youngbae stutters, shutting the door firmly behind him. "How can he be here? He was never real-"
"He is very real, as you can see," Jiyong says, unable to stop the mild irritation from bleeding into his voice. "He has a time machine, and I'm going with him. I'll be back soon."
"You can't just leave," Youngbae says. "I came to see you perform-"
"Perform?" TOP asks, clearly interested.
"I'm kind of-" Jiyong lets out a frustrated sigh. "I'm a rapper. It's not important."
"How can you say that?" Youngbae asks. "Of course it's important." He turns to TOP and gesticulates wildly. "He's written about you in his music before, you know?"
TOP glances at him, eyebrows rising. "Is that true?"
Youngbae yanks the hem of Jiyong's hoodie up and points at the Heartbreaker logo emblazoned on his shirt. "What do you think this is?"
"That's enough," Jiyong says quickly, turning away from the stricken look on TOP's face. "Look, man-just let me go, alright? I've been waiting for this for so long-"
Youngbae cards a hand through his hair and exhales. "You've been waiting for this album for years," he mutters, loosening his grip on Jiyong's clothes. "And what about the songs you're writing for 2NE1? For us? You have responsibilities."
"I'm not leaving forever," Jiyong snaps, stepping away. "It's a time machine, Youngbae. I'll be back before you can count to three. Promise."
Jiyong shoves TOP into the TARDIS and shuts the door behind him before Youngbae can protest any further. He turns to face the room-and sags against the smooth wood at his back, momentarily stunned by the full splendor of what he's seeing.
Youngbae knocks hard on the door and yells something through it, but Jiyong can't even hear what he's saying over the loud rush of blood in his ears.
TOP grins and spreads his arms. "What do you think?"
Jiyong inches forward, entranced. It's the sheer immensity of the thing that hits him so hard it becomes a little difficult to breathe. The room is fantastically large, like something straight out of a science fiction novel, filled with spinning dials and heavy levers and a hundred other things he can't find the words for-and for the first time, Jiyong can really believe everything that's happened. "It's-amazing," he says, almost choking on the last word. He swivels his head around, tries to take it all in. "There really is a swimming pool somewhere in here, isn't there?"
"Things have shifted around a bit, admittedly. She's still settling in, see, like me-but, yeah, yes, somewhere in there," TOP says. He eyes Jiyong with a certain degree of trepidation. "So, do you still want to come?"
"Will I have to repeat myself all the time if I do?" he asks, very wry. TOP just regards him quietly, waiting.
When Jiyong straightens up it feels like he's shedding all the baggage that's been hounding him for years: the anxiety, the weariness, every old hurt sliding right off-not forgotten, per se, but contained now, surmountable. He takes the steps up to the control panel two at a time and touches one of the bright switches, listens to the whirring and clicking of the TARDIS's innards at work.
"Of course I'm coming," Jiyong says. "You wouldn't be able to get rid of me if you tried."
A brief expression of staggering sadness flickers over TOP's face, but he wipes it away the next second with a soft intake of breath and a wide smile, reaches up to crank a lever. The TARDIS shudders and lurches to the left, and Jiyong laughs, hanging on to the railing for dear life. "Where to first?"
The first day passes in a literal deluge of new sensory information (the dissonant melody of the TARDIS's engines, the sick, lumbering roil as they ride elephantine creatures across a vast terrain of blue sand in the Andromeda system, the sweet, sticky smell of juice dripping from the taupe-colored fish-fruit that TOP catches just outside of Anagonia's immediate atmosphere)-and so do the second, and the third, and the fourth, until every moment seems to bleed out into one long, static eternity. In space, he learns, there is no absolute time.
"Is this how you always feel?" Jiyong asks. They're squashed in together at the door of the ship, legs dangling out into the inky black, watching one of Jupiter's moons rise. "Like you're sealed off in this vacuum, standing completely still?" He leans back on his arms. "How old are you, anyway?"
"Guess," TOP says, lips curling with amusement.
Jiyong blows his bangs up with a huff. "You look like you're in your twenties, but something tells me that isn't right, is it?"
"Nine-hundred twenty-seven," he replies, grinning at the incredulous glance Jiyong sends him. "So you kind of got it right. The twenty part, anyway."
He whistles. "Nine centuries old and still a child," Jiyong observes, and ducks when TOP swats at him lazily. "What the hell, so do you-do Time Lords not age?"
"We regenerate," he explains.
Jiyong stares at him blankly.
"It's a little complicated," TOP says, laughing. "But when this body's run its course, I regenerate into a new one-a different one, with a bit of a different personality. I'm still me, though. Same memories, same experiences, and I've still got the same TARDIS." He pats the floor fondly.
"And that's what was happening to you the first time we met?"
He nods, runs a hand through his hair. "I've always wanted to be a ginger, but this teal-y turquoise is good, too."
"Why not just dye your hair red? I do mine all the time."
"Oh, come on," TOP says indignantly. "That's not the same thing at all."
Jiyong snorts. "If you say so." He pauses. "So you're-you really aren't human. You're an alien."
"Why do you say that?"
"I don't know how familiar you are with the human race," Jiyong says drily, "but we definitely don't live for nearly a millennium, and we definitely don't reincarnate."
"Regenerate," TOP corrects, ignoring the roll of Jiyong's eyes. "Yes, well, I might be an alien to you, but to me, you're the alien. See? It's all relative."
"And are there any others? Other Time Lords, like you?"
TOP goes still for a very long time. Jiyong's about to open his mouth and change the topic when TOP reaches out and pats Jiyong's knee. "There used to be. Not anymore, though. There was a war, see, and a lot of good people died. Now it's just me."
"I'm so sorry," Jiyong says, because what else do you say to something like that? He reaches up cautiously and rubs smooth circles into TOP's shoulder. A beat of comfortable silence, and then: "What about this?" Jiyong asks, knocking on the floor of the TARDIS that they're sitting on. "It doesn't look like a time machine."
The corners of TOP's mouth turn up. "Seen many of those, have you?"
"You know what I mean," he presses. "Form matches function. Big and blue doesn't exactly scream manipulation of the space-time continuum. Plus, it says 'police box' in big lettering on the outside."
"So?"
"Why would you put a time machine in a police box?"
TOP looks down. "Bit of a design flaw," he mutters, so soft Jiyong can barely hear him.
Jiyong squints at the back of his head. "Come again?"
"It's an idiosyncrasy, alright? I happen to find it endearing," TOP huffs. "The outer shields are supposed to camouflage the TARDIS in any environment we land in, but she got stuck on 1960s British Police Box somewhere down the line and, well-can't seem to unstick herself."
"Have you ever tried fixing the problem yourself?" Jiyong suggests, voice bland.
"Hey, who's the Time Lord, here? Are you going to keep asking questions, or are you going to watch this fucking moon rise?" TOP counters crossly, which tells Jiyong he probably has tried, multiple times, to no avail.
"Can't I do both?"
But even as he asks the question, the last bit of Callisto finally crests the vast curve of Jupiter and she sparkles out in all her glory, craters thrown into stark relief. Jiyong exhales a breath he didn't know he was holding, eyes wide, and leans forward as far as he can go without falling out. "This is surreal."
"She's beautiful," TOP says gruffly, with a nascent kind of wonder that does not seem at all diminished, even after nine hundred years.
Jiyong glances at him and smiles, chest constricting strangely. "Yeah," he says. "Beautiful."
The cardinal rule that TOP relays to him (an ultimatum of sorts, really) when the TARDIS first takes them somewhere with higher life forms is that they were only observers, and should never interfere with the affairs of the people and places that they visit. It sounds like the biggest load of bullshit Jiyong's ever heard, especially after TOP follows it up by promptly storming into 33rd century SS South Korea and scaring a crying young girl out of her wallet.
"That seemed unnecessary," Jiyong remarks, peering over TOP's shoulder. "Your eyebrows can be really intimidating for young children, you know?"
TOP glares at him darkly. "You seem to have turned out alright."
"Oh, thanks."
He turns back to the wallet. "Her name is Sooyeon, she's eleven, and she lives in Gwangju. Naebang Road, Complex 3, Apartment 54D." He waves his sonic screwdriver around. "That's fifty levels down and at the other end of the ship. Find her. Find out why she was crying."
"Because you kept bumping into her," Jiyong points out.
"No-"
"I know, I know, I saw her too. She was sitting on the bench and crying. But children cry all the time-"
"Yes," TOP says, grabbing Jiyong's shoulders, "yes, they do-but she wasn't doing it for the attention."
"Are you suddenly the child-whisperer? Because it might've worked with me, but-"
TOP lets out an exasperated sigh. "Come on, work with me here.
Jiyong rolls his eyes and gestures for him to continue.
"You've been around kids before. They cry because they want to be heard."
"Right," Jiyong says, drawing the vowel out, trying to fit his thoughts together. "They want their parents, or food, or sleep."
"Exactly. Now, look around. Don't just see; observe, perceive, extrapolate." He sounds like he's trying to drill it in himself as much as he is in Jiyong. "Dongdaemun is pretty crowded today."
"It's a shopping district," Jiyong offers. "It was crowded in the 21st century, too."
"Our girl Sooyeon was in a corner, crying quietly. And yet-"
"Nobody paid attention," Jiyong finishes. "People saw her, but nobody asked her what was wrong. Why not?" He frowns, eyes scanning the hustle and bustle of people passing by. It dawns on both of them at the same time, TOP's eyes snapping up to meet his. "Because they already knew why she was crying."
"Hole-in-one." TOP hands Jiyong the wallet. "We don't, though. You have to find her and ask her what the hell is going on. Meet me back here in half an hour."
"What are you going to do?"
"What I always do," he says, brushing his shoulders off. "Stay out of trouble."
Jiyong thinks about the crash landing in Apjugeon, the time TOP was nearly trampled to death by elephants in the Andromeda system, and the incident with the fishhook, among other things. He raises his eyebrows.
"Badly," TOP appends, voice sheepish. He scratches the back of his head. "You know there's something sinister going on in this ship, Jiyong. I aim to find out what it is, and see if we can help fix it."
Jiyong's eyebrows go even higher. "What happened to your non-interference clause? Or does that just get thrown out the window when you see children crying?"
"Bingo," TOP says, smiling, and pushes him toward the elevators.
This is what they find: an entire country living in a gargantuan spaceship that has no engine, that by all rights shouldn't even be able to fly, light years from home and governed under an uneasy police state. There are strange holes and cracks in the lower levels where spiny, clawing tentacles with wickedly tipped barbs burrow their way out from below and stab at anything that moves, cordoned off so no one can see them. And this-after Jiyong's nearly been skewered three times, rather-is when he and Sooyeon are caught by what he assumes is the 33rd century's answer to the Secret Service and dragged up to the main control room of an impossible ship with no engines, where TOP stands next to President Park, her face white as a sheet, and listens to her right-hand man say his piece.
"The sun was expanding, like the scientists always said it would, and the world was burning," he says, and Jiyong can hear a barely-there tremor edging into his voice. "So many others had built their ships and gone, but we were still there, and our children cried out for help."
"What happened?" TOP asks intently, eyebrows drawn in, a steely focus in his gaze.
"And then it came, like a miracle," he says. "An ancient star whale, the last of its kind, flew into Earth's atmosphere before the last of our land could burn up. We trapped it, built our ship around it, and rode it away from our planet."
Jiyong looks at the metal braces around the huge brain of the beast, electrical circuitry pumping gigavolts of current straight into its pain receptors to drive it ever forward, and feels like he might be sick. He is completely out of his element, here-there is nothing he can contribute, and the bleak expression on TOP's face magnifies that sense a thousand times over.
President Park looks like she's about to fold in on herself, her nails leaving crescent-shaped marks in the skin of her arms.
"You're torturing it," TOP says finally, his voice so flat and harsh that even the director flinches. "You took this beautiful, majestic creature and enslaved it, and you wonder why it shoots those pincers up into every part of the ship it can reach."
"This is why," the director of the Secret Service continues, head bowed, "every five years, those of voting age will go into the booths and hear the truth. They can either choose to forget or protest. If at least ten percent of the population chooses to protest, we have been instructed to cut the star whale loose." He pauses. "This has never happened."
One of the suits comes in through a side door, a single-file line of kids following behind him. Sooyeon's face lights up when she sees her little brother among the other children. "Hyunsik, are you okay?" They drift off to a corner of the room, speaking in soft voices.
President Park draws herself up, determination scrawled deep in the lines of her face. "By whose authority have you kept this from me?"
"The highest authority of the state, ma'am."
"I am the highest authority," she declares, voice ringing. "And I order you to set the poor animal free."
The director leads them to the back of the room. There is a voting booth marked just for her, and the buttons say FORGET and-ABDICATE. A video loop of the president herself pops up on the screen, imploring her to make the right decision for the good of the country.
"This isn't the first time this has happened before, is it?" President Park asks, running a hand over her eyes. The director doesn't have to answer. "Every time, I've voted to forget. How else could I not remember?"
"It's an impossible choice," TOP says. He strides back to the control panel, face still and blank.
Jiyong swallows and joins him, thoughts whirling. "What are you going to do?"
"What I have to do," he says hoarsely. He won't look at Jiyong. "I'm going to run an electric pulse through the brain of the star whale and render it a living vegetable. It'll still be able to fly and be controlled-it just won't feel the pain anymore."
"You're going to kill it," Jiyong accuses, chest aching with a tangible sort of pain that he is only just beginning to understand. "How could you-"
"What would you have me do?" he snaps. "If I cut it loose, this country, all its people-they die. The ship disintegrates in deep space. No hope for survival. If I leave the whale in this state-it's been living in pain for so long, Jiyong." A muscle in his jaw jumps. "So, yes, I'm going to kill it. And then I'm going to take you home and figure out something else to do because I won't deserve to be a Time Lord anymore. Not after this."
Jiyong shuffles away and gazes around the room desperately as TOP starts flipping switches and rewiring circuits. Observe, perceive, extrapolate. There must be something he can do, something they can do besides killing a star whale, the last of its kind-
His eyes snap to Sooyeon and Hyunsik. They've drifted over to one of the pores in the wall, lethal-looking spiky tendrils of the whale's brain reaching out, and Jiyong takes a step forward, lifts a hand up to warn them-but they aren't being attacked. The sharp tip of the tentacle taps Sooyeon's shoulder, and bends down to let Hyunsik pet it.
On the other side of the room, Jiyong sees the president standing next to her Secret Service, face crumpled with devastation, watching the video of herself over and over again. The director presses his hand against the small of her back and points at the two buttons-and his words playback in Jiyong's head: the last of its kind, it was a miracle, our children were crying.
The last of its kind.
"TOP," he shouts, the name catching in his throat. "Stop what you're doing-stop," but he's already cranked the last dial up and charge is building in the metal cage-
Jiyong careens toward the president's voting booth. "Madam President," he says, grabbing her hand. "Let me borrow this for just a moment-"
He slams her hand down over the bright red ABDICATE button before anyone else can react, and the entire world goes to pieces.
Or, at least, that's what it seems like for the first few seconds, as the whale stretches out beneath their feet and the whole ship shudders. "What the fuck did you do?" TOP is yelling over the roar of noise.
"Saved you," Jiyong breathes, as the control room rights itself and the lights come on again.
The director drags himself off the floor and peers at the monitors. "We've increased speed!"
"Of course you have." Jiyong sends TOP a meaningful look, wills him to get it. "You stopped torturing the pilot, didn't you?"
"I don't understand," President Park says, staring down at her hand. "It's still here-why is it still here?"
"When it came all those years ago," Jiyong says, "it wasn't just a miracle, a stroke of luck. It came because it heard your cry for help. It saw your children, burning on a planet about to be consumed by a supernova. You said-" he swallows, meets TOP's eyes head on, "you said it was the very last of the star whales: alone, with no future to look forward to. If you were that old, and that kind, and the very last-how could you just stand by and watch children cry?"
"Jiyong," TOP says later, when they're perched at the highest point of the ship and watching the pinwheel of stars glide by. "You know you could've killed everyone on board."
"And you could've killed a star whale," he returns without missing a beat, head arched back. "But you didn't."
"No," TOP exhales. "I didn't."
"All that pain," Jiyong says. "And sorrow, and loneliness-and all it did was make it kind."
"But you couldn't have known how it would react-"
"Sure I did, you idiot." Jiyong punches him in the arm and TOP lets out a muffled yelp. "I've got a pretty good model myself."
> > > PART 2 > > >