open to all~

[thedreamer]

Who: The Doctor & anyone!
What: Open prompts featuring some stubborn idiocy at its finest!
When: April through early May
Where: Lakeside to start, then Milton

Content Warnings: N/A but will update if needed!

Comments

[lieutenantsteward]

It has been. I like seeing new places. New - opportunities.

[He glances out towards the lake.]

So much that others might take for granted. But there is beauty in it, even in this place. I intend on seeing it.

[thedreamer]

As you should. There's beauty even in a single blade of grass, or — considering where we find ourselves at the moment — the dreadfully cold snow offers its own majesty, doesn't it?

[ The Doctor, at least, tends to find the good in all things even when circumstances are at their worst. Or, most especially when they are. ]

We're not so different in that way, though, enjoying new places. I'm an explorer myself, actually, when not stuck here. This place is just somewhere else I've never been.

[lieutenantsteward]

[Once they reach the lake, he walks the edges of it, occasionally kneeling down to inspect a small rock or find anything underneath it.]

Where have you traveled?

[thedreamer]

Better question — where haven't I?

[ He smirks a bit because there's not necessarily an answer to that either. Too broad. But he's quick to add — ]

I travel across time and space, in fact, in a ship of my own, though one far different from yours. She's a beautiful blue box, bigger and grander on the inside than you could imagine. So the answer to the question is, quite broadly, just yes.

[lieutenantsteward]

[He pauses from where he's knelt down by the edge of the lake and looks up to the Doctor with a long, calculated look. He takes all of that in, all of the strangeness and fascination with it. Everything. And he sighs.]

And even you are as trapped as we are here? Your big, blue box did not come with you?

Where were you, just before you came here?

[thedreamer]

No need to rub it in, I'm quite aware. [ It's meant in jest, his tone exaggerated for effect. While none of them surely enjoy being trapped, it has even more of a claustrophobic effect on him. ]

She's out there safe somewhere, though, she'll find me here. All of us.

[ Or perhaps it's a lie he prefers to tell himself. ]

And just before this, I was parked up above the clouds over London, stationary for a little while.

[ That was part of a longer story, though. ]

[lieutenantsteward]

[He winces a little - the tone softening the remark only slightly. He doesn't like upsetting anyone, especially a stranger like this who he is very much enjoying the company of.]

Above the clouds -

[It seems remarkable, far too much, but there's an additional question that seems to be missing.]

When? Which London?

[thedreamer]

[ He's not actually bothered beyond just his frustration at this situation on the whole, and he doesn't take Jopson to mean anything at all but to tease about it. ]

London, 1842 to be precise. I was there with friends, they were very kind to me.

[ There's quite a bit more to the story, but it's all a bit much to tell someone he's only just met. That only a short while before this, he'd been visiting Manhattan with his very best friends, and they'd been forcibly sucked back in time by menacing stone angels, to a place even the Doctor couldn't go. So he'd abandoned his calling for a little while, stopped helping anyone, and parked himself up in the clouds away from everyone. Until...well, now. ]

[lieutenantsteward]

[He stops, kicking a small rock onto the ice.]

I was there.

[It's a strange feeling and he automatically looks back to the Doctor, searching his face for something - any sort of hint of what he might have been doing there. An odd coincidence, to be certain, but to think they might have been just there. And then they're here - it makes his head hurt.]

Were you all - in the clouds?

[thedreamer]

Just me in my box. You wouldn't have seen it, no one could have. I had it cloaked and hidden away. My friends were down below with all the humans milling about, living their lives completely unaware of me. I was nothing and no one and nowhere then.

[ He says humans more distinctly being that he isn't one, though he's always loved humans. It's why he stays so close to Earth so much of the time. ]

But you were there and I was more than likely somewhere just above you for a little while. Time is wibbly wobbly, of course, particularly for someone like me who travels backwards and forwards and sideways in it, but...we might have been there at the same moment, now we're here. Funny little thing isn't it?

[ Of course, nothing entirely funny about their circumstances now, but it is interesting to him. ]

We're meant to be getting bait, sorry! You get me talking, I won't stop. But while we're looking, tell me what you would have been up to in London in 1842.

[lieutenantsteward]

[He notes the casual use of human there, as if he isn't one, though he'd be the first on that Jopson knows to be able to travel in such a way. It makes sense that he would be something - else. Something different. He doesn't ask, thinking such things might reveal themselves in time.]

I don't mind the talking.

[He continues around the edge of the lake, occasionally leaning down to pick through the small sprouts of cattails or rocks.]

In '42, I would have - no. [He laughs a little sheepishly.] I wasn't in London. I was in Antarctica then. We wouldn't return until '43.

[It seems like decades ago. Centuries. Another life.]

[thedreamer]

Well, I'll have to pop by for a visit before you set off on your big expedition.

[ It sounds strange with timelines, but time is his business so he'll sort it out. Assuming they make it out of here, which they will. Though then that has implications for Jopson's survival which is path he dare not tread at the moment. ]

What other bait do we need? Small trap — what are you hoping to catch?

[ He's not overly fond of hunting or trapping, but understands the necessity of it. They do have to eat, and he has to admit his body is far weaker now than it's ever been. ]

[lieutenantsteward]

[Jopson's never had someone say that to him. That they would like to visit. To see him. Perhaps it's a little bit of a dream to think they'll ever get out, but he can indulge a little.]

I'd like that.

[He returns to the task at hand, frowning as he surveys the land.]

Rabbits. Birds. Anything. Growing up, that's how I fed myself and my mother and brother. Out here, it's more difficult.

[thedreamer]

[ He does mean it sincerely, too. He'd make it a point to visit him somehow.

To the topic at hand — the Doctor doesn't judge anyone hunting for food to survive, it's only for himself more specifically that he tries to lean more into edible plants and other vegetation. Though admittedly, it's not something he's had to think about much. A luxury that traveling on his ship had afforded him. ]

Everything is a bit here, isn't it? More difficult. I never had to think of food much. My physiology made it so I didn't feel hunger the way other species do, but here in this place, well, everything's changed.

[ He's like everyone else and it's frustrating to say the least. That part of it, anyway. ]

Rabbits! Oh, I'm slow sometimes, I really am. My carrot — well, not the most appetizing certainly, but worth a try. And anything else you've foraged. More vegetation we can find the better. Easier said than done here.

[lieutenantsteward]

[He holds out a hand to him, palm out, laughing.]

No, you keep that carrot. I think it's more likely to drive them away than it is to bring them forward.

[But they haven't had much luck in anything else, so Thomas takes a moment to rethink their plan.]

Rabbits will go into any sort of - hole if we make it inviting enough. But a little greenery will attract them well enough.

What - what was that you meant about your - physiology?