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Entry tags:
TEST DRIVE MEME #5
1. not subtle revealings
[you wake up.
it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.
the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:
Dear Passenger(s),
As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.
At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!
See You Real Soon!
Sincerely,
Gal Friday
you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.
you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]
Welcome! I'm very glad to have you aboard!
[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.
after the drill is completed, you are seemingly free to go. or, well, your legs work, now. and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get.]
2. a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling
[the reflections are missing. all of them. in mirrors. in television screens. on the backs of spoons. nothing looks back at you.
then, figures do show up. not your own, like you'd expect. thin, wispy apparitions, people with pleading eyes and hands, reaching out to place their palms against the surface, from their own end. faces familiar and not, beckoning, mouthing words you just can't quite make out. help me, it might be. get me out, perhaps. just until you're close enough, until your skin warms the surface of whatever it is you're peering into. and then, those same hands wrap, all too real, burning-cold against your flesh, and pull, trying to drag you through the surface, making up for their lack of strength with desperation. any flesh unlucky enough to enter the reflection comes back bone-white and cold, all sensation dead, though it will fade within a few hours.
in retrospect, it looks a bit more like they were saying something different. something more like, better you than me. or maybe it's not even words at all. they look a bit more like they're laughing.]
3. complex mementos
[but, hey. sometimes changes are good! like, today, in Playback, there's a brand-new game available for all the children to play! it's an old-fashioned sort of claw machine, the type that's so large, a particularly dedicated kindergartner could wriggle their way inside. the prizes vary, and sit loose: bags of candy, stuffed toys, firearms, painfully early-00s electronics, actually that one just looks like a dead iguana, tiny ship-branded knickknacks... like all the other games in the arcade, the game starts up automatically upon being touched; lack of quarters shouldn't keep you from having fun! pro tip: they are loaded, and they will go off if you suck at claw games and let it fall.]
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Even without having all that much context, it would be possible to deduce that there's some bad blood there. Not as much as there used to be, by far, but even so.
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"I know he really didn't want you to kill anyone. What do you mean, 'for all the good it did you?'"
She only has Missy to draw from, but she knows he always had hope for her. "His timelines are weird, but I think he regenerated then." Clara's been in his time stream and it was jumbled, so there's always the chance she's wrong. She only remembers his shouting, really.
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"The Doctor?" she asks, turning back to Clara. "No, I don't believe so. He lived for quite a while after we parted ways. Certainly long enough to make himself a half-human clone." She doesn't know the details of all that, but she met that one and he remembered very well who she was and what he'd done to her. He even seemed a bit guilty about it.
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Clara's head tilts to the side because...he failed to mention that out there somewhere he has a clone of himself running around. She doesn't even know what else to say to that, staring at Lucy and waiting for more.
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"He's out there somewhere, one heart, human lifespan, still got the Doctor's face - and his hang-ups. Well, mostly. This one actually has sex, it seems like. Real uptight about it though."
That had been one of the topics the last time they met. Much to Lucy's amusement, and his embarrassment.
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"You seem to know an awful lot about him."
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Which Lucy actually likes and certainly isn't judging him for, but she might be trying to throw Clara off a bit. Since she knows a fair amount about Lucy now, and Lucy knows next to nothing about Clara. Rather than just try to interrogate her, it's more fun to try to knock her off-balance first.
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"He likes to be in control, that's not surprising. The kinky thing, I mean."
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She's still grinning as she leans forward a bit, as if sharing a secret. (Which she kind of is, though it's not her secret.) "Sometimes people who have to be in control all the time really like letting go of all that control in bed," she shares quietly.
Which is probably why Lucy, as someone who has been helpless a lot, really likes being the one to be in control in bed.
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"You never answered the question," she says not in a put-out way, just pointing it out.
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"Which one?" she asks, because she thinks she's answered all questions about as much as she's intending to.
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"How do you know so much about the Doctor in general?" Clara asks, head tilted to the side.
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"Well, lots of different ways. It's, uh... A bit complicated, if I'm being honest," she says. "But I've traveled with him a bit. The fluffy Victorian one, and the rainbow one."
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"He was a lot younger then." No Time War yet, either. "Do you consider him a friend or an enemy?"
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"Well, if those are my two options, I guess friend," she answers. He was a friend before he was an enemy. But it's complicated, obviously. "Although the spiky-haired one with the converses, I'd put in his own category, namely 'asshole'."
She knows that was complicated too. But they have too much beef there. "He's the one who had the clone though! The clone with the actual sex-life. He's slightly less of an asshole than the original, too. Some humanness did him good." Does the regular Doctor have a sex life? The Victorian one seemed kind of like he might. But not that Lucy's been privy to.
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"The two versions I was with were...really different. One wouldn't've minded partying naked, the other one probably never looked at himself without a shirt on."
Clara didn't know whether or not she'd like having this conversation, but as it turns out, having someone to talk to about the Doctor...isn't bad.
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She snorts a bit at the comparison between the two. The former is a bit more familiar for her. "The Victorian one kept losing his shirt," she answers with amusement. "What are they like besides that, though?"