applesaucedream | Curiouser and curiouser [open to multiple]

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Curiouser and curiouser [open to multiple]

The TARDIS doesn't sleep, and she certainly doesn't dream, except under very rare and usually adverse circumstances. But with the Doctor safely tucked away in one of her bedrooms, catching up on his sleep and comforting her by his presence alone, she does allow herself to relax enough to do something akin to dozing. Many of her systems power down to stand-by, she becomes less aware of her surroundings, and for a while she thinks nothing in particular.

To her surprise, she suddenly feels something tugging at her awareness, a telepathic current that, upon more conscious inspection, doesn't appear to be coming from anywhere. Curiosity piqued, she allows the current to draw her focus away, though not before making sure it can't affect her mind against her will. What is it going to show her?

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"Most people like 'demi-God'. That works." He shrugs his shoulders up. "I've been called a lot of things." He raises an eyebrow at her. "Including 'time traveler'." Sure....he hasn't been able to time travel since he got here, but she doesn't need to know that.

Oh more gods, though he actually feels powerful enough to back that up, at least to simpler creatures than her. He doesn't exactly feel like the White Guardian or anything, but he could be holding back.

She nods when he says he's a time traveler, interested but still a bit peeved. "I did note the rather historically accurate surroundings." It would be nice to befriend a fellow time-sensitive, but she can't quite decide if he's too obnoxious to bother. Rising both her eyebrows in a somewhat incredulous expression, she continues, "I've been called a goddess. 'Most people' are easily impressed, and lack the capacity for making accurate judgments concerning such things." So if it's humans calling him a demi-God, she just can't be that impressed, sorry.

Well, he doesn't usually have non-humans around to impress. Give him a chance, here. "And I noticed the rather historically accurate frippery." He smiles, gesturing to the dress. "Is there a time you prefer? Anywhere, anywhen, as long as it's still Earth." Look, he's trying to be accommodating! Also, showing off, but mostly accommodating.

"Only Earth?" She asks with the hint of a smirk, but she's curious now and willing to be impressed if anything he does warrants it. "I don't have preferences as such, but... Rome, 80 AD. On the topic of being worshiped by impressionable humans." She may have had a small following of people thinking her a shrine of the gods there.

"Eighty AD. Alright." Way to go right for biblical times. Not like he has weird feelings attached to that at all.

He lifts a hand, snaps his fingers, and changes their surroundings. Now, they're sitting on the marble steps of a large building, facing the main Forum as crowds of Romans go about their day. Gabe's clothing has transformed with the journey. He's now in a fairly plain toga, light brown with the back edges fraying a little where it's brushed against the ground. He looks comfortable in it, like it's something he intimately knows rather than something he's only seen second-hand.

"I could set us up on Saturn, or Mars, or the ass-end of the galaxy, but nothing's really as interesting as Earth." Of course, for him and his universe, aliens and the rest don't really exist and there really isn't anything else to go see.

The TARDIS takes a look around, nods approvingly at the level of detail and accuracy, and adjusts her own dress into a long blue tunic covered with a white stola. At his comment she gives him another slightly incredulous look. "You must not have been to the right places, if you think so." But she isn't going to start arguing taste, and goes back to observing the people milling about in the Forum. "I take it this is a memory?"

"Yes and no." It's a little bit memory, a little bit him only painting in the parts that he wants to see. This time of year in 80 AD, there would have been fires eating away at most of the city, and he remembers that, definitely, but there's no way he's dredging that up for the sake of accuracy.

He grins at her and points across to where a woman in a gold bikini is now posing for a sketch artist at the edge of the plaza. "It's a dream."

Ah, so much for complete accuracy. But it's not like she has moral or societal standards with which to be offended at the things he decorates his own dreams with, so she'll hardly judge him.

"I see. I myself don't dream, but I was resting when I sensed the telepathic current and decided to follow it. Do you perhaps know what might be causing it?"

"As far as I can tell, it's a side-effect of the rift." He shrugs. "It's the blind leading the stupid out there. Haven't met anyone in the city that could have done it. All they're doing is tracking what's coming through."

He stretches his legs out and leans back, propping his elbows on the steps behind them. "I've been the door open for visitors on the dream-waves. That could have been some of what you felt, but it's definitely not the whole shebang."

She listens thoughtfully, glad for some confirmation of the rift's involvement that doesn't come from an unreliable human, and offers her own thoughts. "Rifts of this nature do indeed often cause telepathic disturbances or changes. They aren't uncommon in my universe. Only this doesn't seem to have the rift's... unpleasant qualities, so I wasn't certain of a connection."

Then she turns her gaze to him and asks more curiously, "Why are you assisting the 'visitors' with their dreaming?" She'd quite like to know if he's trying to get something out of it.

"I wouldn't call it assisting. You dropped in on me, babe." He tips his head to the side, considering whether or not to say more. "I'm as trapped as everyone else that's fallen through that crack in the ass of space-time. Why not use dreaming as my own personal travel agency?" A pleased smirk develops on his face. "Uninvited guests included."

He gets jittery stuck in one place. It's not quite the same, just reaching out in his dreams, but it helps a little bit to see something that's not Manhattan. That, and he's lonely, but he's not likely to mention that. Ever.

Honestly she doesn't approve of being referred to as babe, unless you're the Doctor or maybe Jack Harkness, but she's too busy sympathizing with the dejection of being stranded to really mind. And there's something in the air, like a sense of gladness at her presence? It's too vague to identify, but it brings a small smile to her face anyway.

"It's a poor substitute for real travel, but I think I see what you mean." It's certainly a more agreeable purpose than spying on people, and she herself has been enjoying the telepathic exploration, moving on a plane of reality she feels more at home in than the corporeal and linear.

On a whim, she takes the liberty to change the dreamscape, replacing it with the memory of an alien beach at sunset. They're now lounging on a bench, observing humans mingle with decidedly non-human beings and swimming in the purple ocean. The silhouette of a giant moon takes up most of the sky, and a second, smaller moon is following the sun behind the horizon.

He chuckles at the change, happily allowing her influence. He gazes up at the giant moon then lets his gaze travel down to the alien people playing in the waves. He pulls a foot up onto the bench (still covered in his loose toga) and leans forward, watching the scene.

"A memory?" He assumes that it is, and that's really interesting to him. How many other worlds has she been too, he wonders. A whole universe full of Earth-like worlds? That'd be incredible. He grins over at her, a finger pointed in her direction. "You are definitely giving me galaxy tours. I don't care how many sexual favors I have to trade."

Her own smile widens at the obvious enjoyment she's managed to cause him, feeling a little proud of impressing him but mostly just glad at the unexpected opportunity to show someone the universe despite being stuck in New York. It's hardly the same, of course - he can't get into any adventures here, for one, and she still doesn't get to feel the flow of the time vortex or see the Web of Time - but it seems it might be an acceptable substitute.

"I give 'tours' for free," she chuckles, "I am a ship, after all, that is my purpose." Okay, so she dislikes being misused as an intergalactic taxi service, but that's only because she gets no proper appreciation for it in return. "If you have really never been outside Earth's solar system, there are several millennia worth of memories I could show you here."

Edited 2013-03-22 10:43 (UTC)

"Several millennia." He's going to have to take a moment to think on the idea of a few millennia worth of inhabited planets. Earth may be his home, and wonderful, and full of awful and amazing people and things, but he does yearn for something new every once in a while.

He huffs out a laugh, tamping down his excitement. This is only a dream-universe, after all. Whatever she can remember will be more a slide show than a genuine experience. "I've been outside the solar system, but there's nothing there in my universe. Just...space and more space and the occasional squiggly little single cell organism. Humanity is unique."

His explanation gives her pause in turn and she looks slightly troubled. An entire universe with nothing but humanity to inhabit it? She can't even fathom that, it's too sad.

"That sounds so... desolate. There must at least be spatial phenomena; nebulae, star systems, planets? The unique radiations of galaxies being born, the exciting gravitational pull of twin stars?" So he might not even know what those feel like, but she's getting a bit carried away being aghast at the idea of an almost utterly empty universe.

He nods to her question. "Sure, but spatial phenomena aren't exactly my idea of exciting." He lifts his hand, seems to reconsider for a moment, and then snaps his fingers anyway. They're still sitting on the same bench, but now they have a bird's eye view of the universe. Visually, it's beautiful. Nebulae cloud, formed by swirling clusters of stars and planets. Earth, at the center of the field of vision, is so small and insignificant that it isn't even visible.

Emotionally, though, Earth is a shining beacon on a dark sea. It's the only thing that Gabriel has any feeling for in the entire universe. He gestures one hand in the direction of the tiny planet. "That's it."

There are, of course, other dimensions. Time. Heaven, hell, purgatory, but he's not going to get into those explanations. He may like the TARDIS, but he doesn't like her enough to spill all his secrets.

Interesting, this definitely gives her a better idea of the scope of perception he has, not that she ever thought it was small. But this is not dissimilar to her own, though it's lacking the temporal dimension.

She regards the image of the universe fondly, noting that it's largely the same as her own, in terms of composition, natural forces, positions of constellations and such. Gabriel's emotional focus on Earth is impossible to miss and quite compelling, telling her it must be his home, and she turns her gaze on him. "I take it you originate from Earth? Do you know why the rest of your universe is empty?"

"Do you know why yours is so full?" He raises an eyebrow at her, his smile just a little smug. "It was like that when I got there." What kind of information does she think he has? Sure, he could explain the whole god created the universe spiel, but he doesn't think she'd be into it and he doesn't really want to give her any more information than she needs. From what he can tell, she's fairly powerful on her own. He doesn't want to give her anything that could be ammunition down the line.

Ah, he's back to being a little obnoxious, isn't he, but she affably matches his raised eyebrow and smug undertone. "Given that I have traveled very close to both the beginning and end of my universe, and many places in between, I do in fact know how most forms of life came to be."

She doesn't realize he's just feeling protective of his secrets, and is really enjoying discussing their respective universes, so she gives him a somewhat challenging look. "You're a time traveler, surely you could find out what it was like before you 'got there'. It could hardly have come into existence fully formed with humans already crawling the Earth. Are you not curious?"

The smugness doesn't leave his voice. "I don't need to be." Whether that means he knows what Earth was like before, or that he has other things to do beyond look back in time, he doesn't say. The truth is that he doesn't want to go back that far and re-experience the pre-Earth universe with an audience.

His grin widens and he deftly switches the focus away from himself. "I showed you mine." He gestures to the swirling galaxies in front of them. "Why not show me yours?"

Well fine, he can have it his way, she's not going to pry. He must have his reasons for not being forthcoming about the topic. So she turns her attention back to the image and changes it, deciding to give a view of her universe on this date. The basic layout remains the same, but there are noticeably more planets, and it's clearly teeming with life. Even on this scale that's visible - there are spaceships of all shapes and sizes traveling between planets (though most of them appear frozen or move at a snail's pace, since she is showing the universe in real time), there are space stations and artificial planets, and there are even a few visitors in Earth's solar system despite humanity not having developed proper space travel yet.

"That's home." She can't help sounding a little wistful. Not that this universe is so different, but she can't see any of it.

"No wonder you spent millennia traveling. It's Buck Rogers on psychedelics." He laughs, picking out the little space stations and ships orbiting planets so far away from Earth that there's no way their inhabitants could be human. He doubts, in such a universe as this one, that there are such things as gods and angels. Why would you even need them, when there's this much diversity?

He doesn't notice any particular planet that seems highlighted, no place that is an emotional anchor like Earth is to him. He tips his head towards her, questioning. "Where in all this do sexy time machines come from?"

The question confuses her for the fraction of a second, but admittedly that adjective has been applied to her before and she realizes he isn't asking after some undefined group of time machines, but her. At that her bearing and emotions harden, turn almost cold, though she doesn't move her gaze away from the image around them.

"My planet of origin was destroyed. But it had ceased to be of much emotional importance to me and my pilot long before then." Not that that makes the loss of it any less painful, nor the horrors of the War wrapped up in its memory any less haunting.

Oh, whoops. He probably should have known better than to dig into her origins right after he'd avoided his own. Gabriel has similar horrors in his past, and he recognizes the stiffness that accompanies the simple delivery of painful information. He waves his hand, and they're back where they started, at the little cafe in Venice. He doesn't want to offer her apologies and he knows she doesn't want a shoulder to cry on.

"Drink?" he offers, manifesting a passion fruit martini and sliding it towards her. "It's not real, but that doesn't make it any less delicious."

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