continuum_of_drs | Gallifrey Plot

Gallifrey Plot

Everything had been prepared.

Or, as prepared as it could be for an undertaking such as this, which wasn't very.

He knew he was going to have people wanting to go with him on this. And somehow, he didn't mind.

What he wasn't expecting, however, was a stowaway. Or, rather, he'd been expecting a stowaway of some kind. Just not here. Not now. Not now of all times...

There wasn't anything for it, though, but to look. The TARDIS knew exactly where said stowaway was, after all. The Doctor just had to get there.

He just hoped this one wasn't Australian....

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Savannah had heard music, music coming from the antique police box. At least, that's what she thought she heard, and had been known to hear things before.

But hey, the box was in the sanctuary, which meant that it was safe, right? Investigating a music box couldn't be that bad, she chuckled. Oh, maybe it plays other things. She peeked inside and...oooh, now, there's something else! She had to check it out, now!

A couple hours later, she's gotten herself lost in room upon room of hydroponic gardens, growing celery.

Savannah does not like celery.

He probably should not have left that music going.

He follows where the TARDIS directed him, through corridors and cloisters (and getting the feeling he's not alone in doing this), until he gets the distinct notion from the TARDIS that whoever he's looking for is in the hydroponic garden. He makes his way down the rails of celery plants, wondering what posessed his fifth self to grow those until he remembered oh, it wasn't, it was his ninth who planted them in a fit of sarcasm. Right.

He finds his quarry and stops, staring.

"Savannah?"

"Ulp". With the appearance of the Doctor, she realizes how the police box can be bigger on the inside. She's managed to learn a bit in his temporal physics class.

She's also learned, in her years of being a teenager, how to read expressions. This one was not very pleased and, realizing her metaphorical goose might be metaphorically cooked, she decides to follow a wise course of action and vamoose.

She dashes off between the raised planting boxes, looking for either a way out or a place to hide.

Of all people.

No, he wasn't pleased. But he wasn't angry, either.

But he knew it was just going to have to get worse, wasn't it? She was just going to have to run, wasn't she?

"Savannah, wait! You're only going to get--"

She disappears.

"...more lost," he finishes.

Nothing for it but to follow.

Eventually she gets to a dead end. "Dammit!"

So when he catches up with her, as he will, she's just sitting on the floor, having given up.

"Okay, so, sorry I broke into your house thing, can you please kindly show me out? 'S like a damn maze in here..."

Sigh.

"I'm not angry. Only this ... is really not the time for people to go wandering in, otherwise I'd be more than happy to give a tour. I really ought to be leaving." Because the longer he stays, the more chance there is of someone coming along and convincing him not to go. "I'll help you find the door."

Hesitantly, Unexpected Visitor #2 steps into the TARDIS. Even though he'd heard about the things from his wife, he was unprepared for the spacial difference between the interior and exterior. Gabe had to take another two or three looks outside for compare/contrast purposes before giving up on trying to wrap his mind around it.

Walking further in, past all the Victorian bric-a-brac and whatnot, he reaches out with invisible tendrils of energy, feeling for the unexpected, bad vibes, whatever.

"Savannah?"

He probably hasn't gotten very far in through the mismatched corridors and curiosities before he hears voices, one unmistakably his daughter's, the other belonging to the Doctor.

He appears to be attempting to explain something. Good luck, Doc.

"...accounts for the rather confusing state of the corridors and the rooms that have a tendency to shift--hullo, Gabriel."

It's the fellow with the floppy hair. Hm.

"...Hi, Dad." Savannah is munching on a spear of celery, mostly ignoring what the Doctor is saying, as she can't understand the majority of it.

"Hullo, Doctor." Polite smile for Eight, which disappears when he looks to his daughter.

"What're you doing here?"

"She wandered in... I'm afraid I probably shouldn't have left that music going."

It isn't helping, of course, that the TARDIS is doing its best to be terribly inviting. It's the perfect temperature and there's a lovely scent wafting through the air....

Savannah sniffs around. "ooh, are you baking cookies?"

"Enh. Savannah..." Separating a teenager's brain from it's stomach can be difficult, even on a good day.

"... we should get out of the Doctor's hair. I'm sure he has a great deal of work to do." Right? Yes? Work?

"Well, one of my other selves might be ... biscuits? Tea and biscuits?" He directs a stare at the wall. Yes, the wall.

Oh, no, not them...

He gets the subtelepathic reply that he needs someone with him. Someone other than a vampire and a Universal Constant whose solution to everything is sex. Or blowing things up. Or blowing things up and then sex....

I get the point.

"Ah... well, there is tea. I don't suppose you'd like a cup before you leave? Only you went to this trouble coming here."

It is only tea, right?

He hates it when his own ship is being inscrutable.

"Really? Oh, that'd be lovely! You have such a nice hou- er, ship? It is a ship, right?" That's about all she understands of the Doctor's conversation as they were walking back from the celery farm. Her stomach, however, does not want to talk about the ship, but about those biscuits, and rumbles.

"I... suppose it wouldn't be any harm to have a cup of tea and a biscuit or two." He gives Savannah a Look and then smiles. He's not one to stay angry long. Besides, that does smell like some nice, strong tea.

So, he'll follow along, stomach rumbling. Weird, he just ate an hour ago.

"Well, it's a little of both, really," the Doctor admits as they head back into the interior. "Ship, yes, but it is also my home." That expression on his face is a bit unreadable. Home. He's off to save what should be his home but sometimes isn't, really.

Deep breath, Doctor.

The TARDIS is trying to make him ignore the fact that the corridors are ever-so-subtly changing behind them. Naughty of her, really, taking advantage of his inconsistent memory like that.

"Aye, I understand. Home isn't always where you start out, is it?" Maybe he picked up a certain tone in the Doctor's voice.

"A familiar concept to me." Slightly bitter. Tea?

That's right, they'd both been displaced rather often, hadn't they?

He doesn't think about that. Instead, since they had, indeed, reached their destination, he looks inside the room in question.

Since the TARDISes had merged, there were a great many kitchens and pools and lavs and whatnot. Some were utilitarian, others nothing more than very well-stocked larders, still more something approaching professional food-preparation areas. Some had a distinctly domestic feel and others didn't.

This one simply reflected the preoccupation Eight had. Spacious, airy for an indoor room, and almost unrecognisable as a kitchen, it was as Gallifreyan as a food preparation area could get. Oh, well, some things were universal, such as cooking pots and various other utensils, and a giant stove that resembled something that burnt wood but whose heat-source was unfathomable.

But most kitchens did not possess graceful furniture, an odd fountain for a faucet, lights on spirals, walls made mostly of glass and metal, round sinks, or concealed doors.

Gabriel winces, stung by Savannah's tone. He had been the cause for her uprooting, and there was no changing it. He still cursed himself on a regular basis about that mess.

Luckily, the kitchen was a major distraction from the thoughts buzzing in his head.

"A... is this a kitchen?" Whatever it is, it's ... hard to describe. Star Trek meets Victorian England, perhaps. But it feels comfortable.

"Oooh, it's lovely!" Savannah has lots of experience with utilitarian kitchens (consider all the detention she's served), but hasn't been in such a fancy room dedicated to food preparation. But this is how Gallifreyans do things, apparently.

"It is, rather. It's a bit posh, though, don't you think?" this last he directs at the room at large.

The air feels smug for a moment. Don't ask how a room can be smug, it just is. But only for a moment.

The Doctor shakes his head and walks into the room itself, easily locating the tea and biscuits they'd been smelling. "Kitchens like these are seen in higher-class areas of the Capitol on Gallifrey." Tea-pouring happens. Ooo, it is proper English tea, as he's gone and found milk and little sugar cubes. "It's almost a pity no-one's about in them but the cooks, but at least the cooks enjoy them."

Gabriel is content. There is tea. And it is Proper. A little milk, and if he were a cat he'd be purring right now.

"If this is where the cooks work, I'd like to see the rest of the place." He finds a cushy place to sit, something squishy and velvet-coated. It's very comfortable, moreso than anything he's ever plopped himself on before.

"Oh, I wouldn't mind being a cook in a Gallifreyan household, with a kitchen like this! Where do I sign up?"
It's a joke, mostly.

Savannah has found the little biscuits that come with Proper Tea. "Fantastic, these. D'you make them yourself?"

The Doctor had found someplace nearby to sit, as well. "I hadn't made them myself, no."

The place is far too inviting. And he's not sure the tea is just tea.

A slight frown crosses his face, but it clears quickly. "As to a job cooking in one of these kitchens ... well, that's why I'm leaving. Not to go become a chef, no. To make sure places like these still exist. Gallifrey is in danger, you see." Oh, it was like pulling teeth to get him to say that and if there wasn't something nudging the words out, he never would have said it at all.

"Oh, aye? That's not... erm." Hadn't Rassilon mentioned his home planet had been destroyed?

"That's horrible." Oh yes, he's getting very sleepy. "I hope everything works out... for you..."

Well, there goes one. He's sawing logs like a true lumberjack.

Oh, isn't this the perfect place for a nap, though? She smiles at her sleeping dad, he's been so tired lately, and takes a big gulp of her tea. Fantastic stuff.

"Hmm, lovely. Is this...is this...d...decaf?" Apparently not. As soon as she sets down her teacup on her Saucer of Rassilon, she curls up and falls asleep.

"Oh, no.... No, nonononono, you didn't..." He sniffs the tea. "You did. You did--what am I going to do now...."

He isn't going to leave them in the kitchen, that's for certain. He starts by picking Savannah up, carrying her a little awkwardly. "Can't bring them home now, the more I delay, the more--" he pauses. "You wanted them to go with me. Well, if that were the case, you didn't have to drug them. You've been getting very underhanded, haven't you? Shades of my previous self."

A bedroom manifests not far away, though, and he manages to put Savannah in the huge, squashy bed. Back to the kitchen for Gabe.

"With the co-ordinates set oof...." Gabe might be thin, but Eight is not particularly large. "And here I am ready to leave--who else is in here that I'm going to--ooff--end up bringing with me?" Into the bed goes Gabe, as well.

Sigh.

"I'm going to leave. I'll explain everything to them later. I only hope they'll understand."

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Gallifrey Plot

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