It doesn't have to make sense, it's sci-fi

[timedaughter]

Who: Jenny (timedaughter) & River (retrorsum)
What: River attempts to come clean (maybe) while Jenny succeeds in being clever, whether or not any of it works out.
When: Continuing from this inbox thread.
Where: The stasis pods
Warning(s): n/a


[To any average person, the pile of wires and metal that Jenny tumbles onto the ground would look like nothing more than scrap. The fact that River can make such quick sense of the small start she's made of it is delightfully telling. It's not often than Jenny finds someone who can keep up with her.

She huffs good-naturedly.]

That's an understatement! I haven't even managed to tweak this bit [she points at a metal thingamabob that has a proper name, but not one Jenny knows or cares about; it's what it does that's important] to calibrate properly with bio-data rather than... well, it's meant to scan text, actually. It should work once I upload my DNA sequence, but I haven't been able to find a way to actually do that. Adding any data not already converted to text form is beyond the silly thing. [it's a receipt scanner, Jenny, of course that's all it can do] Which means converting a specific part of my DNA to GATC and scanning it all at once, then using the tracker. [she points to another bit, equally unimpressive] Which... yes, the parameters are way off, but it still needs to be calibrated.

Comments

[timedaughter]

[Jenny leads them onward, not yet suspecting what River suspects. She thinks that they're walking toward an entirely different Time Lord, someone related to herself and her father. It would make sense, considering how River had insisted they program the device. It's not only because Jenny has much less experience to seeing different iterations of the same person -- although the concept is not at all foreign to her -- but because...

She stops dead in front of a pod holding a very different version of the exact same Time Lord. She chokes on a breath, her hand tightening around River's.

...because it shouldn't be. This is dangerous, two of the same person from different points in time existing in the same point in time and potentially interacting. Something about it makes Jenny angry, even as she has completely different reasons to be upset about it.]

They shouldn't be able to do this...

[retrorsum]

( river keeps jenny close to her, letting the girl take whatever comfort she needs. this time river doesn't approach the pod, trying to steel her hearts away from the pain.

jenny's right, they shouldn't be able to do this but at the same time-- )

He's crossed his own time stream before. ( encountered himself. river knew that he'd not been able to remember those events in clarity, it prevented the timeline from becoming altered, but at the same time... it had happened.

but that doesn't make this any better. it makes river angry too, the fire bursting through her shakes her sadness away. but then again... if they've seen two of him-- )

We need to boost the signal.

( she takes the scanner from her, using the sonic to try and refine what they're getting. this time multiple signals ping up at once )

[timedaughter]

[Jenny shoots a brief, vaguely incredulous look at River, her words both comforting and not comforting at all. Dad really shouldn't be making a habit of that sort of thing, but then again, Jenny's all too familiar with the way things can, uh, get away from a person on occasion...

...Sometimes...

...Every other Tuesday.

Plus, she can think of a few ways right off the top of her head to deal with crossing her own timestream safely. Well, relatively safely. For some definition of "safe." And to be fair, she doesn't know the circumstances around any of her father's little timeline indiscretions, and she really does trust he probably knows a thing or two more about it than she does anyway.

Shaking it off, she concentrates on being rather seriously pissed off that it may be something they all have to deal with again, and not because one of them miscalculated with a vortex manipulator. This is just blatant, irresponsible interference by a third party.

She watches intently as River works, her hearts sinking when the screen lights up with half a dozen more dots.

She looks up and meets River's eyes with an uncharacteristic seriousness.]

[retrorsum]

( she knows what all of those pings mean. he's had thirteen different faces, twelve doctors and one soldier. her gaze dips down, looking down at the locations of the pings, trying to map them in her head. there are a few that are close by but how many times are they going to investigate?

river squeezes jenny's hand, trying to offer some comfort to the girl, even if it is weak )

I had it scan for your DNA. Outside of you the only person it would be picking up would be him. ( and apparently every version of him that they'd gotten their hands on. river knew that she'd come back later, perhaps working on the scanner more to isolate some more of his signs to a specific version, but she wasn't going to drag jenny into that now. the girl didn't need it.

slowly river hands the scanner back to her, letting go of her hand to reach into her jacket. from it she removes her diary, something that really shouldn't fit into her inner jacket pocket but somehow has.

wordlessly she starts opening the pages, stopping at one before turning it around to jenny, pulling out a line of photographs )

This is your father -- every face that he's ever had.

( his past, the one that jenny knows, and the ones that river married )

[timedaughter]

[Jenny is resilient. While this is not great news, there is already some comfort to be had in the fact that her father is here at all, and meeting her stepmother is not an insignificant thing to her. She has family here, awake or otherwise, and Jenny is an optimist at heart. As much reason as she has to be angry and upset, she also has reason to be relieved and joyful.

She will, as always, make the most of it and seize fate by the throat.

Jenny looks at the photographs with some reverence, examining each one carefully. She knows that this must be a precious keepsake to River. But as Jenny looks at them, memorizing their features, she's struck by how unfamiliar they seem.]

It's weird. In these photographs, I only recognize Dad as I know him-- [she points to the picture of her father in his tenth regeneration] --but not any of the others. But when I look at him in person...

[She looks up at the pod, at a version of her father she's never met but knows perfectly well.]

I know it's him. It's like there's no difference at all, even though my rational mind knows there's a physical change. It's more obvious in the photos, somehow.

[retrorsum]

You wouldn't notice.

( whilst river is normally incredibly secretive about her diary, and won't let jenny actually read it, she leaves the pictures out longer than she usually would, letting jenny familiarise herself with them, to learn something more about her father.

and herself. river had had to work incredibly hard in her later years to prevent her husband from being able to realise who she was -- that he knew her (when he was younger), that she was part-time lord. though it had ended up backfiring on her -- somehow she hadn't recognised him. deep down river had, something about him had been so familiar but she hadn't believed that he could have another face. that belief, and perhaps the limitations of her psionic abilities, made that failing )

It's an intuitive sense. Your telepathic abilities allow you to be able to recognise him no matter how he looks.

( which is why it doesn't work with a photograph )

[timedaughter]

[She nods, River once again confirming something she already knows, just putting it into words she didn't yet have. In so many regards, her instincts guide her in ways other people lack. She can't miss Gallifrey like her father does, having never known it, but with every new thing she learns about herself, the more keenly she feels that she's nearly unique in the universe. She's never lonely, but there's a sense of absence, of having lost something without ever having had it in the first place. Like nostalgia for a place she's never been and will never go.

But River fills that hole rather neatly, to Jenny's delight. She wonders if it's at all the same for her father, but suspects her father's grief for his home is a much different beast.]

Makes sense. So much sense.

Now what? I don't see there's any use in tracking down every one of his regenerations.

[She looks at the screen, shaking her head.]

It looks like they probably have one of each, at a minimum.

[retrorsum]

( there's one respect in which jenny and river are alike: neither of them has known, nor can really miss gallifrey. and that is where, to river, the comparison ends. though they're both unique in themselves, making them alone in the universe, river feels alone for so many other reasons. she's never had a home, never found something like that to connect to. whatever hole she didn't realise was there ended up being filled by the doctor. it's something that she recognises now, feeling his absence keenly when they're apart (more so now when he's so close and yet not here) but at least she knows that he's safe.

river nods at jenny's assessment, believing her right that there's likely each of his regenerations here. there isn't use in tracking them down but river knows that she will -- to make sure she knows where he is, that he is always, always safe, and on the occasional time for sentimentality. just to see him, to hope. to remember herself )

But we know that he's here. ( just not which version of him that they may meet if and when he woke up.

she folds the pictures away, closing her diary but not yet putting it away. she wants to do something for jenny, something that river hopes will help. so far she's told her more about herself, about what being gallifreyan and time lord is, but there's something else that river keenly knows )

I could tell you about him. It won't be much, not like having him here, but it doesn't seem like you got to know him before.

[timedaughter]

[Jenny graces River with a bright smile for the suggestion. She knows River will probably come back later and find every iteration of the Doctor. In truth, Jenny probably will too, in her own time, but they have very different reasons for doing so.

Jenny has been on her own more or less from the get-go, and requires little from her father aside from, eventually, an enthusiastic hello I'm not dead and a happy exchange of adventures. A way to keep in touch. Maybe defeating an evil creature together. Familial love at its most basic and uncomplicated. She believes that he'd be proud of her so far and has never relied on his presence for that kind of reassurance. Although she's grown, she still mostly trusts in the broadest aspects of life as children do, with unwavering faith in their innate simplicity.

She trusts River to keep her father safe, because River loves him. Any baggage either of them might have is inconsequential in the face of that obvious devotion.

So Jenny won't come by to make sure her father's safe, or for sentimentality. She'll come by because she's curious, and because she's beginning to get the sense that his evolving fashion choices are pretty interesting. She definitely wants a better look at that scarf.]

Sounds brilliant. Want to go somewhere else we could pull up a chair?

[retrorsum]

I know a good place.

( river would have taken them to the sort-of cafe that morrison had taken her, to eat and get a drink but this isn't a conversation that river wants to have in public. it isn't a secret, even if the finer details of her life are something that she'd rather keep private, but she can't help the almost secretive nature to herself, the urge to keep this conversation just between them.

old habits are hard to break. it's why, as river starts to lead them back towards the transport, that she decides to take jenny to the place that she'd been given. she doesn't particularly call it home, even her home on luna has taken effort for river to consider it that, but it's somewhere. it's private and mostly comfortable )

And perhaps you can tell me what happened to you after you left him.

( less the details of the adventure and more an effort to get to know the girl. for now river was all that jenny had and regardless of that this girl was someone in her life, someone that was (scarily) quickly feeling important. she needed to know her and later river would realise that she also had the need to make sure she was protected )

[timedaughter]

[Jenny is always happy to regale people with the tales of her adventures. She's an open book, this one.]

Love to! I can tell you all about how I met Noah too, even if that was a fairly recent development. Funny story, though. There was this toad person named Garundel-- insisted he was a salamander person, but he looked like a toad to me. A Urodelian. Anyway, I ran into him literally, as I was trying to avoid crashing into this moon--

[And she's off, well before they've even gotten to their destination. There's plenty enough to tell though, and plenty enough for River to talk about in return, and between them they can easily make a day of it. And then some.]