The Eleventh Doctor || Doctor Who (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
makeherblue) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
trans_92011-01-15 01:09 am
makeherblue) wrote in trans_92011-01-15 01:09 am
Entry tags:
Reflection [Open]
It doesn’t make sense. Or, rather, to be entirely truthful, it makes just enough to bother him and that basically amounts to the same thing.
The Doctor paces in front of the blast shield in the Observation Deck. Right now, he thinks he needs a good pace, something to help him think. No sign of Amy or Rory yet, which is surprising, in its own way. Amy has a habit of managing things all on her own, whether it’s saving him from that stint with the Time Vortex and the Entity or the whole of reality. Rory couldn’t be in better hands. If she is on the ship, he would have expected her to come dragging Rory after her by now. So no, it’s not really like Amy there. As for Rory…actually, the Doctor can see him getting lost here; between forgetting to check for gills, the plant-suits and meeting a load of aliens in a huge living ship, a human like Rory might feel slightly overwhelmed. Probably a bit distracting, yeah…
The howling nothing is still out there, the Doctor turning to look past the shield at it. It’s pretty, in the making-you-feel-slightly-nauseous kind of way.
Or maybe that’s just him.
Vaguely disturbing to look at or not, the Doctor glances out at the void outside of Stacy. It’s hardly the first time worlds, plural, have been destroyed or just generally threatened or in a peril-like sort of state. It's actually quite common. But there are signs or it’s meant to happen (history) except he knows as a fact that this isn’t one of those times. Amy and Rory's Earth has a very specific date of death and "death by Ohm" isn't right. This isn’t just a rogue black hole swallowing a dynasty’s system of planets or a quasar misbehaving. It’s…different. The Doctor turns away from the window, holding up the omnicomm in one hand. By now he’s stopped calling it a Thingie, even if it’s a much better name in his opinion. Useful thing, this omnicomm. Helps to keep in touch. He’s been trying to hack into it and get a direct line to Stacy but so far, no luck. Deadlocked, he supposes. Or maybe the new new sonic is still adjusting. Working out the bugs.
The sonic buzzes green in the Observation Deck as the Doctor continues to pace without looking before the blast shield. Occasionally he stops to twiddle around with the omnicomm, long fingers blurring, before he reads another setting on the sonic and then the cycle starts over. Every now and then he might make a full circle of the room, by some miracle not tripping over the fleshy seats, and might try listening to the walls or poking at where they meet the floor. Or what stands for a floor in a techno-organic ship.
[The Doctor is either poking around or looking serious business at the view, whatever works for you]
The Doctor paces in front of the blast shield in the Observation Deck. Right now, he thinks he needs a good pace, something to help him think. No sign of Amy or Rory yet, which is surprising, in its own way. Amy has a habit of managing things all on her own, whether it’s saving him from that stint with the Time Vortex and the Entity or the whole of reality. Rory couldn’t be in better hands. If she is on the ship, he would have expected her to come dragging Rory after her by now. So no, it’s not really like Amy there. As for Rory…actually, the Doctor can see him getting lost here; between forgetting to check for gills, the plant-suits and meeting a load of aliens in a huge living ship, a human like Rory might feel slightly overwhelmed. Probably a bit distracting, yeah…
The howling nothing is still out there, the Doctor turning to look past the shield at it. It’s pretty, in the making-you-feel-slightly-nauseous kind of way.
Or maybe that’s just him.
Vaguely disturbing to look at or not, the Doctor glances out at the void outside of Stacy. It’s hardly the first time worlds, plural, have been destroyed or just generally threatened or in a peril-like sort of state. It's actually quite common. But there are signs or it’s meant to happen (history) except he knows as a fact that this isn’t one of those times. Amy and Rory's Earth has a very specific date of death and "death by Ohm" isn't right. This isn’t just a rogue black hole swallowing a dynasty’s system of planets or a quasar misbehaving. It’s…different. The Doctor turns away from the window, holding up the omnicomm in one hand. By now he’s stopped calling it a Thingie, even if it’s a much better name in his opinion. Useful thing, this omnicomm. Helps to keep in touch. He’s been trying to hack into it and get a direct line to Stacy but so far, no luck. Deadlocked, he supposes. Or maybe the new new sonic is still adjusting. Working out the bugs.
The sonic buzzes green in the Observation Deck as the Doctor continues to pace without looking before the blast shield. Occasionally he stops to twiddle around with the omnicomm, long fingers blurring, before he reads another setting on the sonic and then the cycle starts over. Every now and then he might make a full circle of the room, by some miracle not tripping over the fleshy seats, and might try listening to the walls or poking at where they meet the floor. Or what stands for a floor in a techno-organic ship.
[The Doctor is either poking around or looking serious business at the view, whatever works for you]
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The human here gave Rory a run for his money on the sensibility front. The Doctor was currently giving him one of those looks that was almost challenging him to prove him wrong and also, if he wasn't going to use the spot for listening, then he should move so the Doctor could go back to what he was doing. He'd been possibly almost maybe on the verge of hearing something -- a vibration, a shiver, something helpful -- until he'd been interrupted.
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Well, if you were listening for something in the next room. The idea that someone might actually want to listen to the walls themselves was not something that had occurred to Merlin.
"Who are you, anyway?" Merlin said. This was the second time he'd met the man, and Merlin was still completely baffled.
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He suddenly stuck out his hand to the human, not tearing his head away from his listening spot, "The Doctor. Sorry, I thought we'd shook hands already and...yes, well, I'm not trying to just eavesdrop. Not that you can't learn anything with a harmless bit of eavesdropping. Another perfectly useful skill, I'll have you know."
The Doctor didn't give his friend a chance to talk, suddenly blurting:
"There it is! Come here and have a listen. Tell me you didn't hear that."
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He wondered if this was like all those times when he said 'Maybe this isn't a good idea, Arthur', and then Arthur ignored him and did it anyway. "I didn't hear anything," Merlin said. Well, the fact that his ears weren't currently stuck to the wall might have had something to do with it. "What are you even listening for?"
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Strange name, Merlin. And something about that face certainly looked familiar. Probably met an ancestor of his. Or a descendent. Hard to tell when he kept popping around as he did. The Doctor motioned for Merlin to stop being so stubborn and join him on the wall, waving his hand at him. There was a brief second when his eyes strayed from the wall and he stared for a second too long to be casual at Merlin, as if checking to see if he was either another renegade Time Lord, possibly a future him (oh, that would be awkwardly exciting, although mostly awkward), or this wasn’t the Merlin he was thinking about. It wasn’t that far of a stretch when he’d been told Stacy could jump between universes, parallel and everything in between. Anyway, he was more interested in making sure Merlin heard the same thing he had just then –- there it was again! The Doctor beckoned him madly over.
He, in the meanwhile, kept his ear firmly plastered to the wall, fingers splayed on the living tissue. The Doctor's face twisted in concentration. Was it Stacy? It wasn't engine vibrations or a converter making that thump thump thump when someone forgot to change out the bolts. Even if it wasn't Stacy specifically, it was still an interesting sound to him.
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But right now, he was more worried about the way he'd said 'the Merlin'. As if apparently there was no doubt that there could only ever be one Merlin and the Doctor already knew exactly who this Merlin was, as well as everything about him. And Merlin had the sinking suspicion that this 'the Merlin'...was him.
And if the Doctor knew about Merlin...what if he knew about his magic as well?!
"No, I'm not that Merlin. Definitely not," Merlin said quickly. "My mother just...really liked the name. So what is it that you're hearing, exactly?"
Suddenly Merlin was a lot more eager to wonder over and possibly stick his ear next to potentially dangerous and squishy meat walls if it meant possibly distracting someone from the fact that he was a sorcerer.
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He shot Merlin a look that said he would be terribly disappointed if he hadn’t. Human hearing wasn’t that bad, was it? Hadn’t had any massive strings of evolutions for fun since he’d last seen them, had they? Merlin looked like a fairly normal human to him, so either he wasn’t listening hard enough or he was so busy asking all the wrong questions that he’d missed it. Again...which made it several missed chances he could have heard The Interesting Sound. The Doctor ran a hand over the wall, feeling a groove here, the give of Stacy’s flesh there, waiting several minutes.
Still nothing. The Doctor’s face scrunched up as he listened hard as he could.
“Wait,” he struck preemptively, before Merlin could ask the question that was no doubt coming.
He held up a hand, waving away the inevitable “are you sure you’re not hearing things?” humans had a habit of falling back on. The Doctor’s face lit up as finally he heard that odd sound again, pulling his head back away from the wall. He broke into a grin. See, that one was clear as day, if day was a flesh wall with surprisingly decent acoustic properties and a grumpy attitude. The Doctor suddenly pulled his entire body away with a kind of shimmying slither, dusting his hands off. All right, so maybe it wasn’t as slime-less as he’d told Merlin, the Doctor cheerfully wiping away a thin film off his cheek and hair. It’d wash right out and if it didn’t, it’d dry and then flake off, if it was anything like the pod slime. The Doctor spun away from the wall, leaving Merlin to keep their listening spot warm as he took a few steps away, pacing. Thinking.
Trying to think.
He counted on his fingers. Counted again. No, the timing wasn’t right either, the intervals all wrong. What was that sound? The Doctor stood half-turned away from Merlin, trying to run through his calculations and for the moment, he seemed to have forgotten his companion was there.
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Or maybe it wasn't him? Maybe there really was some...other Merlin out there, in the future or the past or whenever that just also happened to be a sorcerer. Except he was the one that became famous and that everyone kept talking about. Yes, that was exactly it.
Or at least Merlin would pretend that was the case to anyone who brought the subject up, and deny all other possible interpretations.
"I haven't got my ear stuck to a wall, so how could I hear anything?" Merlin said, finding himself hoping they would talk more about strange noises in meat walls and less about him.
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"It wasn't as if you didn't have plenty of chances. Now, interesting sound, wrong intervals, I already mentioned they're not right for bolts, so..."
Or he meant to mention. Didn't exactly get around to it. Could've, if he wasn't already past the "it's not the bolts" part. The Doctor stalked away from the wall and pacing in thought past the flesh bouncy couches. They practically begged to be bounced on, the Doctor casting a tempted look at them and there was a silent promise that yes, he'd most certainly have a bounce on them soon. Definitely soon. Just a quick bounce. The Doctor came pacing right back to Merlin, snapping his fingers as something suddenly dawned on him.
"What about before you came in? Notice any flickering lights? Unusual surge? Maybe a hum that sounds more like a groan: the one you make when you bang your knee on something."
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...did he just bounce on one of the chairs? But they're made out of meat! That's disgusting!
But no, Merlin wasn't going to remark on strange bouncing habits. That's one of the things you learned as a servant: don't talk about the noble's strange habits. Especially if they involved bouncing. Much safer to just pretend it never happened and answer the questions.
"No, they weren't flickering at all! And they say it isn't magic," (well, really Merlin sensed that is isn't magic) "but they're all closed up so they can't be getting any air in there - how come the fire doesn't go out?"
Unfortunately, coming from a world where 'lights' meant 'flame', and 'flames' meant 'flickering', Merlin didn't actually realise that steady stream of light on Stacy wasn't the abnormal part.
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"Magic? Could be, depends on your definition of magic and your point of view," the Doctor spread his hands, still talking with them. Well, just shy of flailing with them. Bouncy chair aside, he didn't seem to want to sit still. "What fire? You saw a fire?"
The Doctor sat up straight. It was considerably more difficult getting up then it was bouncing down, the fat shifting under him and the seat determined to make sure he was comfortable whether he wanted it or not. The Doctor spent a few seconds trying to sit up straight(ish).
Whew, this was harder than it looked!
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"No, I couldn't see the fires - they're all hidden. But I don't think they can get out? Well, not unless someone break the coverings, I guess."
And all that bouncing was beginning to make Merlin a little dizzy...
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He had the gall to even sound smugly pleased.
Still, it didn't appear everything on this ship was grown from the same source. Those lights could have been planted on later, if they weren't something straight from Stacy. The Doctor trailed off, seeming to go back to thinking, even if a lot of it was simply enjoying a very well made chair. It was very comfortable. Like fireside comfortable, but better.
"You're a nervous one, aren't you?" the Doctor chimed up without warning. He had that look like he almost wanted to try a test nap on the chair, but his eyes were fixed on Merlin, alert and still taking too long to blink.
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Then Merlin startled, blindsided at the sudden change in subject. "Nervous? No I'm not nervous. Why would I be nervous?" he said, babbling.
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"I don't know. It's distracting."
The Doctor watched Merlin. That was a fairly good babble there. Not that Merlin would win any medals for it (the Doctor had seen better babblers) but still.
"That noise. Was that you? Seemed like it didn't start until recently. It's not a bad noise," the Doctor added kindly.
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"I'm not making any noises!" Merlin protested, still feeling a little rattled. "Why would I be wondering around...making noises?!"
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