open | every life is a pile of good things and bad things;

[thedreamer]

Who: The Doctor & you
What: Catch-all for the month!
When: Through August / early September
Where: Lakeside & Milton + all points in between

Content Warnings: Potential warnings for tea time (memory sharing, loss of inhibitions, etc. depending!) Will update accordingly if needed.



[ ooc: no preference with brackets or prose, happy to write either! ]

Comments

[notarat]

Mostly.

[ It's the truth, though a little more vague than Billy could be here. It's not really thinking of it that does the trick, after all, but explaining his actual method of conjuring flame involves getting a little vulnerable.

And though he does trust the Doctor to some degree, he's still a guarded man. It still feels like something that's a little bit too much to share with most people. ]

It took a long time to get to that point though. If don't hone these powers, they could start working against us much more easily than they could work for us. [ In his experience, anyway - and he seems genuinely worried about the idea, judging by the way his eyebrows draw together into a frown.

You get pretty worried about your power when it constantly randomly set stuff on fire for a few weeks, okay. Not a fun time! ]

[thedreamer]

And you don't exactly have a here's how you use this power school here. None of us do. Though admittedly the ability to create a fire runs a greater risk of going awry than healing, or being impervious to the cold.

[ Perhaps not the most reassuring, which he clues into once he's said it, so he pivots a little. ]

Does it hurt you at all when it happens, or...drain you, tire you out?

[ Unconsciously and more out of instinct, he rubs at his ankle a bit, the one that now aches. ]

[notarat]

[ Billy shakes his head. His lips part slightly, like he's about to elaborate on that answer, considering he knows a whole lot about the drawbacks of his own ability..

.. but it's at that exact moment that something strikes him. It's the way the other rubs his ankle. It could just be a complete coincidence, but Billy's brains - smarter than most people give them credit for - sure are making a connection here. A connection that surprises him, widening his eyes slightly as he's sitting there. ]

Is that what it does to you?

[ God, of course it would, wouldn't it. Like this place would give anyone the ability to heal without taking something in return for it. It is never that kind and helpful. ]

Did healing my ankle injure yours?

[thedreamer]

[ Ugh, yes, the unavoidable truth that he hates admitting to. He's not used to being injured in a way that slows him down for a length of time. Even beyond this world, he's not infallible, he can be hurt and killed, but injuries tend to heal quickly. He can — and has — fallen from great heights only to jump back up, dust off, and carry on like such a thing was just an inconvenience and nothing more.

So he's quick to wave it off because he wants it to be as insignificant as it should be. ]

Is injure the word we're using?

[ That's exactly the correct word. That's precisely what it's done. Is he going to be normal about this, though? Not a chance. Anything to avoid directly answering the question, even if said answer is obvious. ]

[notarat]

[ Billy's tone turns kind of dry as he asks: ]

What other word would you prefer to use?

[ Because he's pretty sure he's right about that one. He wouldn't be pulling out that dry tone to deadpan at the Doctor unless he seriously thought he was right about this one!

Besides, that question definitely feels like the Doctor is trying to be slippery about this. And considering who Billy is married to, he's very much used to people trying to be slippery - and to keep them from being successful in their attempt. Sorry, but you're not getting away with this so easily, apparently.. ]

[thedreamer]

[ A simple, you're right from the Doctor would suffice here. He could stop being stubborn and stupid about it and say that helping and healing someone else hurts him and drains him. But this ability — as strange and unnatural as it is to have it at all — affords him the chance to truly help here. Admitting that he needs to be cautious in how he uses it if someone were to be badly injured doesn't compute with his brain.

For the Doctor, at least, he's already thought back and ahead; when the Darkwalker took hold of their minds and they turned on each other, when people were hurt or killed. He's desperately hopeful that such a situation never comes to pass again, but if it did, he would heal everyone he could. But how long could he go for? Would he be forced to make impossible choices? He wants this to be the gift this is, the chance to keep people from dying. But. ]

It's simply — caused a slight inconvenience. A bit of a cramp, really, just something to work out with stretching. You're sorted, and I will be.

[ See? Logic. Simple. It's fine! ]

[notarat]

[ The other's answer confirms that Billy was very much right in what he was thinking a moment ago, thank you very much. And as much as he likes being proven right, it doesn't feel entirely great in this moment. Like there's some sort of bad aftertaste to this whole thing.

Billy doesn't even fully understand why. He should be glad. He got healed, and he didn't have to do anything for it. His injury is gone, and someone else is stuck with the trouble. He should leave them to that, if the Doctor insists on doing this much.

But he's so unused to charity that he doesn't know what to do with it when it's staring him in the face like this. It's easy to screw over people whom you feel have screwed you over too.

It's harder when it's someone doing something nice, Billy only now finds. ]

I don't understand you. [ He says - plainly, but there's something about his tone that makes him sound like he's thinking. ] How could you care so little about yourself?

[thedreamer]

I care! I do, I just — care on a spectrum, I suppose. I'm here, I've always been here, I'll continue being here and that's all well and good, but you being here is the sort of being here that I care most about ensuring. Well, you and everyone else.

[ Truthfully, it's not something he's thought about much before. So Billy saying it at all gives him pause, but — he is reckless, he's hasty and generally unconcerned with stopping and thinking before he acts. He enjoys being alive, of course, and he wants to be alive as long as he can, but he'd accepted long ago that keeping everyone around him safe first and foremost is his priority. His own well-being falls somewhere on the end of that spectrum.

He lets out a little sigh, trying to summarize his own rambling. ]

I want you to be okay.

cw: semi-indirect mentions of cannibalism

[notarat]

[ It's still baffling. Or-- rather, the entire explanation feels like it's only making things even more baffling. ]

I have seen people devour each other just to survive.

[ Maybe not 'seen' as much as heard about it happening to him, but-- same deal. It's his explanation for how baffling it is. ]

I thought that was the way people are. That someone like you can't exist.

cw: cont. (to be safe)

[thedreamer]

[ While the notion of humans (or any species) eating one another isn't a new concept to him, he's at least encountered that sort of behavior less than others. Which is to say, he's seen so much violence and death and destruction, often for petty reasons, or reasons that would be so easy to overcome if everyone could just stop and think and listen.

But war and death and hurting one another, it goes on and on. He does what he can to stop it, to intervene; and more than he'd ever want, sometimes that blood is on his own hands, but he has to try, to do what he can, whenever he can.

Sometimes it's only small moments like this one, like helping someone who was hurt. ]

Oh, don't give me too much credit. I only exist with any of these sorts of thoughts at all because of others, so many others — so good and kind and brave. And I learned from them, I'm always learning from them.

[ Billy speaks of those who devour others, and even still, the Doctor thinks of the darkness within himself. What good was he in that long and dreadful war? It's always with him, always tucked away, never gone. Today, Billy hurt his ankle and the Doctor could be a Doctor, and that means something to him. ]

I've seen it, so much good — it's here, too, it's all around.

[notarat]

.. you and I see very different worlds.

[ It's a fact he can't really file away all that neatly. The only solution in Billy's mind is to see the other as needlessly naive - dangerously naive, even, when it comes to how it might contribute to the Doctor's own safety. Billy just can't see the way he views the world as anything other than objective.

Which means that someone who doesn't see danger and ill intentions everywhere, the way someone as guarded and worried as Billy does, must be wrong from his point of view.

But--

He looks down at his ankle.

That's the part that he can't combine with that, all the same. ]

Though I.. [ A pause. It's uneasy, like he isn't used to saying this, or admitting this. ] I suppose you showed me something like it today.

[ What else could he call the other helping him so selflessly? Even at the cost of his own body, his own pain? ]

[thedreamer]

[ Perhaps because he's seen so much of the opposite of goodness, he clings so hard to believing in the persistence of it, the glimmer of hope wherever it may be found. And he'll do everything he can to be the one to help, not to harm.

He'd spent so long trapped in his own misery and darkness, he's turned in the opposite direction now. ]

The universe is vast and complicated, and so are all the people and creatures in it. I don't...not see the bad and the terrible, I only just — well, I want to make it better. If I do it long enough, with a little help, maybe everyone could see what you saw. Not only see it, but be it.