07 [visual / location: martha's surgery] I'm such a dubious soul

[rereremembered]

Fitz finished washing his hands and glanced up at the bathroom mirror to find the Doctor behind him, leaning against the door jamb and smiling. For a few moments all Fitz could do was gawp as he studied the familiar features - the tousled chestnut hair, the bright blue eyes, the cravat and the velvet coat. Even after six months apart he knew with

Comments

[ visual ]

[bonescientist]

"Peculiar?" The unusual query caught Brennan's curiosity. The scientist tilted her head inquisitively, a tiny frown marring her brow. "What do you mean by peculiar, exactly?"

[ visual ]

[rereremembered]

"Exactly? People showing up who aren't there." And Fitz was still looking down the hall, willing the Doctor to round the corner. "Sounds barmy but that's what happened, and I don't want to take my chances in this place."

[ visual ]

[bonescientist]

Brennan took a moment to mull that over.

"You saw someone in the mirror who isn't in Taxon? Someone from your home, I assume?" she clarified thoughtfully. "Are you certain? Visual disturbances or hallucinations can occur if one suffers from sleep deprivation, organic disorders of the brain or drug and alcohol related illnesses."

She paused again. "Of course, there's always a possibility that it's alien interference, here."

[ visual ]

[rereremembered]

"Been sleeping all right, no drugs, not drinking any more than usual." Nope, not touching organic disorders at all. "I just hope it's not like last time we were seeing ghosts."

No, those had been insubstantial and appeared everywhere. The Doctor had seemed far more real.

[text]

[tin_hearts]

Glad to know I'm not the only one they're playing tricks on.

[text]

[rereremembered]

don't know if glad is the right word. what sort of tricks?

[text]

[tin_hearts]

Walking by shopfronts, catching glimpses of yourself that isn't your own mirror image but something else. I can't even take swims in Sanctuary without seeing things. I'm glad, because this means I'm not losing my mind.

[text]

[rereremembered]

There is that, even if it's all sorts of unsettling. I just saw an old friend in a mirror, haven't see stuff anywhere else yet but I guess I'll be keeping an eye out.

[Voice]

[imperial_long]

Yes, I have actually noticed this as well. It seems to be any reflective surface, actually. Another little mind game, I suppose.

[Voice]

[rereremembered]

...oh well that's just brilliant. Like we don't have enough things mucking with our sanity.

[Voice]

[imperial_long]

[Long's voice sounds somewhere between resigned and amused]

I have been subscribing to a personal theory that we are entertainment now for some time-- what better way for us to entertain our masters than by occasional lapses into madness?

[Voice]

[rereremembered]

Yeah. Hilarious. [ Fitz had watched his mum go mad and waste away in a sanitarium, and spent much of his life thinking he'd suffer the same fate. somehow he failed to see the humour in it. ]

You'd think a race with the technology to do all this shit would have a better way to get their jollies.

[allthatlife]

A few minutes later, a second - or was it a third? - figure appeared in the mirror. Martha stood in the doorway behind Fitz, dressed in her pyjamas and frowning slightly. (She wasn't frowning because she didn't believe him, but because this was yet another troubling development that they didn't need.)

"You too?"

Her own version of the Doctor had warm brown eyes and a pinstriped suit and an infectious grin. She'd caught sight of him in the glass of her bedroom window and realising that it had just been a reflection - a trick - had been a bitter disappointment.

[rereremembered]

Fitz shot her a glance, glad to see she was actually there, and nodded. "He was right there, plain as day. I was absolutely sure it was him."

No point clarifying who he meant, just as he was sure who she was referring to.

[allthatlife]

"I've never seen him with long hair," she remarked, walking into the room and resting her hand on his arm in a gesture of solidarity as much as comfort. "It was short and spiky when I knew him. He suits it, though. And that suit."

She paused, running her free hand through her hair in a gesture that was very similar to one that the Doctor made when he was thinking.

"I saw him in my bedroom window. Just for a second, but it seemed so ... so real."

[a_pretty_fire]

"The mirror is lying," Drusilla informed him, without opening her eyes. It had been a long time - centuries - since she'd gazed into a mirror and found herself looking back. Sometimes, if she looked too closely, she spotted things that were better off hidden and forgotten. "It doesn't know who you are."

Neither did he. He was pretty and he made her laugh, but, in the end, he was only a human. He was wearing blinkers that had been fitted since birth and kept the universe in check. Wasn't it dull?

[visual]

[rereremembered]

"It knows what I want to see, though." Sometimes, it just wasn't worth playing the game with Drusilla. Or maybe by not fighting her he was playing along.

Probably both, or neither. Everything at once.

"That counts for something, right?"

[Visual]

[a_pretty_fire]

It was the game that interested Drusilla. She liked the way that he played along when he tried not to play. She liked the way he tried to pretend that she didn't frighten him.

"You've walked through the stars," she said, by way of an answer, "You want your soul back."

[Visual]

[rereremembered]

Layers and layers of denial, it was the only way he knew how to cope most of the time.

"Yeah," he sighed. "Well no, not soul, more like life. Home. Friends. Knocking about, that sort of thing."