[ACTION LOG: TEN'S DREAM].

[allons_y_alonso]

WHAT:  An alien dreamscape.
WHO:  Anyone is welcome!
WHEN:  Portions of each night Thursday-Sunday.

On Gallifrey, halfway up a peak in the Mountains of Solace, its crown wreathed in snow and its foundations hidden by long burgundy grass, was the house of Lungbarrow.  Like all the residences of the Time Lords, it was a wonder, but right now it lay empty, or nearly so, inhabited only by guilty visions of ghosts.  Just past its front steps, gasping into the lawn and fiddling with the fastenings of his old and hated Academy uniform, sprawled a tall, lanky Gallifreyan with untidy brown hair, caught somewhere in hysteria, between laughter and sobbing.

"Horrible, beautiful planet," he murmured, clutching the grass by its roots with one hand, expecting it all to dissolve into the next moment.  "You can't be here.  And even if you were, I couldn't be here."  He had woken in his old room -- so old it was almost forgotten -- and found himself already dressed for what he knew would be his first day at the Academy.  The rest of the house had been less nostalgic, however, and he had escaped, as quick as he could, onto the south slope of the mountain, his favorite place to stare out and watch the dawn.  Here, at least, he felt safe -- inside he could see the faces of those he had left here, or hear the gavel strike as judgment was rendered against him, or worse -- the terrible, world-altering throb of the Untempered Schism, as terrifying as it was transcendant.

Gallifrey.  Gallifrey, and a second chance, even if it was plagued with reminders of centuries of failure -- maybe this time, he could do it right.  There was an answer to that question, he thought, and he stared down the mountainside and waited for it to appear.

Comments

[allons_y_alonso]

"Nice try! But no. Not any more than the Queen of England is Liz Windsor. Lungbarrow is the House and the house, but there are all sorts of lesser families and cross-cousins and what have you mixed in. To be honest, I've forgotten exactly how they all fit together."

He was patently not being honest -- except about the first part. That was not his name.

"As for the house, it goes deeply into the side of the mountain. So bigger on the inside, yes. But maybe not the way you mean."

To the trained eye, the Doctor was plainly still being evasive, glossing over something awkward or uncomfortable.

[chronosexual]

"darn. I thought I'd stumbled onto one of the greater mysteries of the universe. The name of The Doctor." Jack smiled at The Doctor, easily noting the tactics of clever subject-dodging.

"So then, all of that means that this must be your home planet.." Jack looked around with a new sense of appreciation for the scenery. "Unless this is all just a wacky dream I'm having. Still, never seen actually red grass before. Even in my dreams. But then, if I'm dreaming, that definitely explains the uniform."

[allons_y_alonso]

"Yes," the Doctor said after a moment. "And yes, actually. Both. This is a dream, and this is Gallifrey, just exactly as I remember it, from when I was just a wee little schoolboy. I wore this uniform back when I was still in single digits, Jack."

[chronosexual]

"And it still looks good even into triple digits." Jack noted, pinching at the sleeve of his uniform.

He then turned his attention to the scenery once more, taking in its stunning beauty at his leisure and even bending down to pluck a few blades of the grass to examine. "It's beautiful. Much more beautiful than I'd imagined. Would I be too forward if I asked for a tour?"

[allons_y_alonso]

"It's not that I wouldn't love to," the Doctor replied after a moment, and looks wistfully at his uniform. "Especially while I'm such a sterling representative of Time Lord culture. But Lungbarrow is... occupied, just now, Jack."

[chronosexual]

Jack's eyebrows lifted at this revelation. "Occupied?" he asked, taking a look back to the direction that The Doctor had hurried from. "The thing you were running from?"

[allons_y_alonso]

"Not just one thing, Jack," the Doctor admits for a moment, and while the rest of him might look young, coltish and gangling, his eyes show his age. "My past. Everything I left behind or buried, everything... everything that died. This is my dream, unfortunately, and some part of my head decided that all of it belonged in one place." He gestures behind him, pointing his thumb loosely as the shadowed edifice of Lungbarrow.

"There."

[chronosexual]

"Ah, I see." It was something that Jack could identify with, for certain, the need to just keep pressing forward, to keep putting distance between himself and whatever the source of the pain was, only in Jack's case, he more often sought refuge in the arms of another rather than in the comfort of his spaceship and the thrill of adventure. Jack didn't have to know the whole story to see the deep sorrow in The Doctor's eyes. The weight of the conversation, however, could not keep a small smile from rising to Jack's lips. He pat The Doctor on the shoulder and tugged him away from the manor. "Well if it's all contained in one place, then it should be easy to avoid, right? I'm sure there's plenty more to see."

[allons_y_alonso]

"Absolutely!" The moment that it become clear he can put his back to Lungbarrow and continue steadfastly ignoring its ghosts, the Doctor's characteristic daffy cheer returns full force. "Quite a lot of terribly pretentious architecture, of course, but apart from that..." He sighs, deeply, and glances back at the house again. When he looks back to Jack, there's a measure of peace in his gaze that was not there before.

"It's a wonderful world, Jack," he says simply. "Let me show it to you."

[chronosexual]

Jack could say in no uncertain terms that he liked this Doctor a lot better than the worrisome one that had been there just moments before. This one was a lot more fun for him to play with, and there was a little something almost romantic in the way that The Doctor offered to show him his world. He half expected a magic carpet.

Making an overly dramatic sweep of his arm outward, Jack bent into a bow and smiled up at The Doctor affectionately. "It would be my honour. After you, good Doctor."