[Locked to Rose//Time Lord Security.]

[allons_y_alonso]

I suppose we ought to talk. Never really finished getting you caught up with all the news, did I?

Comments

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

[She blinks. Oh. Well. Now she feels a little bit silly.] ...Oh. So she's...sort of like a clone, then? Have you been making a habit of cloning yourself, Doctor? Cos I'm not sure how many more of you the universe can take.

[allons_y_alonso]

Yes, we're just about at capacity. It was worse a few months ago, though, when we still had the next one here.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

The next one?

[allons_y_alonso]

My next version.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

Your next...clone? [Yeah no, she's pretty sure she knows what he actually means. Call her crazy, though, but she's still not happy about the idea of that face changing, even if she has one at home still.]

[allons_y_alonso]

My next regeneration. 11.0, I suppose you'd say.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

[Right...well...he's a time traveler, that could be from any time, right? She's being silly worrying about it.] You've...had eleven?

[allons_y_alonso]

I've just had ten. He's had eleven.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

So you've...changed like that...ten times? [She offers a small smile after a moment.] Get bored every hundred years?

[allons_y_alonso]

Every hundred years? Nah. First couple centuries were pretty boring. I didn't leave Gallifrey until I was well into my two hundreds, and still on my first iteration. Actually, I've gotten right reckless in my middle age, keep spending them faster and faster. Still, there's two more left after Bowtie.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

H-how do you mean left?

[allons_y_alonso]

Time Lords get to regenerate twelve times. Thirteen chances at life, and that's it. More than enough, really. Twelve more than most people get. And in between them, if nothing kills us, we age very slowly. Four centuries a pop even under high stress, no problem. So don't worry about me. I could still have millennia left.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

[She purses her lips tightly. How long have your last few lasted?

[allons_y_alonso]

Last time was only a few years. Unlucky, that. All the others have been decades at least. Past that... it's a little hard to keep track, you know, bouncing about the way we do.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

[Decades. So that's...twenty or thirty years, three times over, sixty to ninety more years? Maybe that's not so bad...]

Right...no more burning through them, then.

[allons_y_alonso]

That's never exactly been the plan!

Besides, this island's likely to give us all a nice long vacation, whether we like it or not. Plenty of time left for me.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

I thought the plan would be 'get off the island as quickly as possible'?

[allons_y_alonso]

You've got me there. It's just that, with one exception, that plan's been sort of a.... miserable failure's the words I'm looking for, I think.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

You sound out of practice, Doctor, it's always a miserable until it works. [She offers a small grin.] What one exception?

[allons_y_alonso]

For one day in December, the TARDIS worked perfectly. Twenty-four hours of bouncing around the universe again!


...The next morning, we were parked right back in my flat.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

Christmas? Which universe were you in?

[allons_y_alonso]

Good guess! No, it wasn't Christmas, but the island seemed to be handing out seasonal miracles for most of the month. All of them only lasted one day.

As for which universe... I'm not sure. I couldn't find anyone I knew, anywhere except on the island. Figured we were going back, after what we saw then.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

Oh, right, that's when you popped out to the future? But if you weren't in your universe, then...at least that must mean there's a vortex to connect to that the TARDIS can process here, yeah? Otherwise she wouldn't move...or I s'pose she wouldn't have any power at all unless they had something else hooked up to keep her lit? [Hoho, if she didn't pay attention when she traveled with him, she certainly did when UNIT studied it to make their own time machine.] So there must just be...something keeping her away from it? A barrier or something...I don't know, could they keep her out of synch with it, like the planets were in the Medusa Cascade?

[allons_y_alonso]

Tried resynchronizing. Tried... well, everything I knew, really. Five of us flying it, and we still couldn't suss it out.

Still. Awfully smooth ride, that was.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's something hidden in plain sight, then. Or...something we'll be able to get from them. It's always something, y'just stop numbering the plans eventually, right?

[allons_y_alonso]

Stopped numbering a long time ago, yeah.

Never going to stop trying, though.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

Until it works, anyway. [She chews her lip thoughtfully] If we're in a universe, not between them somehow, that means time is still going back home, doesn't it?

[allons_y_alonso]

Probably. Almost certainly. There were dimensions that worked by different rules, but as far as I can tell, they've all been cut off since the Time War.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

And we can't be in one of those now? [Okay then...] If time is going, then that means the Doctor--the other you--he's at home and will know I've gone missing. So you'll be working on the outside and the inside to find a way to get us all back.

[allons_y_alonso]

Molto bene! That's the spirit.

[lone-defender.livejournal.com]

[Fff. So that's not a Donna term!] Course it is. Never met a prison that could keep us in.