Let's Do the Time Warp (Again)

[applesaucemod]

It's that time again, but time seems to be a bit muddled. As usual, people from all over the multiverse are being drawn into the Dreaming by the rift. This time, in addition to (or sometimes instead of) picking up the residents of Manhattan, they take them from their home universe but from a different point in time. You may find yourself suddenly encountering a future version of yourself, or perhaps you bump into a friend taken from long before you met them.

Tonight's setting is also time-twisted. You're still in Manhattan, but it seems to be closer to the 1930s. Specifically, you're in an old hotel. There's the dimly lit lobby, with chairs and tables for relaxed mingling. The bar, where tables are front of a stage, on which a band is playing various hits of the 30s. There's also an outdoor area if you need fresh air. Or you could explore the hotel, but it's mostly corridors, unless you stumble upon an unlocked room.



[Mod note: Usual dream-party rules apply. Both members and non-members are welcome to use any character, be they already in the game or no.

For game-specific characters, you can choose whether or not they will remember their time in Manhattan if they're taken from the future. You can take your character from multiple different points in time, if you want.]

Comments

[has_a_horn]

"It's a..." He looks over his shoulder as she walks around him. "metaphor. You've got me confused. Shaken up. Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered."

When she seems to lose interest in him (should he be feeling disappointed? He does, a bit) he follows her stare, wondering what she's looking at. It doesn't seem like she's looking at anything in particular, so his gaze falls back on her instead.

"This is dream space. I don't..." He's about to say that he doesn't know who her 'thief' is, but if this is the TARDIS, there's a good chance he can guess who she's asking after. " Do you mean the Doctor?"

[theoldgirl]

At hearing her thief's name, she looks at Gabriel as though he just asked a very stupid question. "Of course I mean the Doctor. My Doctor. They put me in here," she explains, pressing her long fingers to her cheeks for emphasis, "and now he doesn't know me! But House eats TARDISes--" Involuntarily, she interrupts herself to supply a bit of an entirely different conversation, head cocked to the side and gaze empty. "Do fish have fingers?"

Then her tenuous focus is back and she continues seamlessly, talking faster and faster in an increasingly desperate effort to make sense of events she both has and hasn't experienced yet. "And we are looking at their corpses, and I'm going to blow the casing in no time, and there is something so sad..." With a sudden, deep breath she comes to a verbal halt as though she's scared herself silent, staring somewhere at Gabriel's chest, looking utterly lost and near tears. She can feel herself losing her mind, everything she is slipping away while the human body around her is dying, and it's terrifying her.

[has_a_horn]

Okay, now he knows who this is. The TARDIS had told him that she had once been trapped in a human body, that it had died around her. This must be that body. The bit about dead TARDISes he doesn't entirely understand, but it's not exactly the most comforting thought, either.

What is clear is that this body can't contain everything that should be running through the TARDISes mind. He reaches out both of his hands to her and sets them on her upper arms, hoping to pull in her focus. "I know a future version of you. I know you, yeah? You make it out of this. The situation and the bod." Belatedly, he remembers that she likes mental comfort, so he tentatively reaches out to her mind as well, giving it the same care he might with a human.

[theoldgirl]

Her mind, when he touches it, is completely unstructured and crammed to bursting, it's racing between despair and excitement and confusion and determination without any logical progression from one to the next, it's snatches of the near future and the faraway past mingling almost indiscriminately. But she recognizes his touch, not as something familiar, but as something she wants, something she can hold onto, and quickly reaches out to meet it.

She clings to that point of contact as well as the fabric of his shirt, and moments later the flood of her thoughts calms down a little, becomes more focused on the present again. "Time is fluid," she points out with a tiny sad smile as though she's aware he'd said those exact words to her a while ago, and finally raises her gaze to meet his. The intense urgency has left her bearing for now and there's understanding in her eyes.

"But there is always hope. And I look forward to knowing you, Gabriel," she adds, giving him a small, genuine smile.

[has_a_horn]

He lets his hands shift down to her elbows as he clings to him, looking at her with concern. He can't entirely blame her for doubting him, but he can't believe that this version of the TARDIS won't ever turn into the TARDIS that he knows. "You will."

After a moment, he smiles. "And you'll love it. I'm very charming."

[theoldgirl]

The TARDIS has no trouble believing that she's going to like Gabriel, fascinating and strange as he is, and he obviously cares about her, even if that's frustratingly hard to hold onto at the moment. "I do like being charmed," she replies and her smile grows into something almost like a smirk. "Coaxed, persuaded, encouraged... Although a rough hand doesn't go amiss sometimes." As she speaks, her gaze trails back down to her fingers, which have started fiddling with his shirt just because the fabric feels interesting.

But before she can lose herself in her thoughts again, she pulls herself together and refocuses on him, now frowning in frustration and worry. "Why don't I remember you? Why do I remember so little..."

[has_a_horn]

It's very difficult to leave Gabriel at a loss for words, but the TARDIS seems to have managed it, at least for a few moments. It's difficult to reconcile the ideas she just put in his head with his concern over her apparently very unstable state. He wants to offer to coax her open and be as rough as she wants him to be, but this isn't the right TARDIS to give that offer to, and not the one he'd want to accept.

He takes her hands in his own, pulling them away from his shirt. "You're ten pounds of awesome in a five point bag is why. It doesn't all fit, so you're spilling over."

[theoldgirl]

He does have a strange way of expressing himself, doesn't he, but there's definitely a compliment in there and she gives him a smile that's halfway between confused and delighted. But then the implications of it sink in and she nods in understanding, serious again. "I'm dying," she says with a note of surprise among the sadness like she's only now properly realizing it, though this time she isn't panicking about it. "Just like my sisters."

She's died before, she thinks - or will die? maybe both, considering her and the Doctor's lifestyle - but this feels different, it feels like decay and finality, like time running out. It feels like things a TARDIS shouldn't be feeling. Later, for the Doctor, she's going to react to the same realization with determination and optimism because that's what he'll need her to do, but without him she's in a vacuum of her own emotions and everything seems so much scarier.

Still, she's the Doctor's TARDIS, the best ship in the universe; she can deal with this on her own. And she's not quite on her own, she remembers now, and turns her hands around in Gabriel's to hold onto them, mustering a wry smile. "I don't think House expected me to survive for as long as I have."

[has_a_horn]

"House must not know you very well." He squeezes her hands a little, as a reassurance to both of them, and slots a grin into place. He knows for sure that the TARDIS will still be in New York when he wakes, but that doesn't make the thought of her dying any less disturbing. "You're too much of a stubborn ass not to stick around until it's absolutely impossible. I wouldn't expect anything different."