championoftime | [Video] (Dated to after everything is over)

[The Doctor is sitting against his TARDIS cross-legged. The journal is positioned in sort of an upshot as it's propped on his legs. His hat is off. Actually, he lost it in the hall, his umbrella too. No idea where they are. He might have the TARDIS make another. Right now, he's just sitting and holding a little plush animal. It looks like a baby toy, and resembles a bear with sabertooth fangs. It's actually a sehlat, but he doesn't know what in the cosmos it could be.

He still hurts, but he's been with the old girl long enough that most of the damage is sorted out.]

I thought... maybe, with my end, the worst of my actions would go with me. I didn't want to think they would carry on. [He turns the toy over to look at it's little nubby tail. For a moment, beady stuffed animal eyes and nose fill the screen, before he moves it away again.] I suppose we all have our nasty and unfortunate sides. Just as every one ought to have a good one.

For those of you I've not introduced myself to, I'm Dr. John Smith. [This time, he just leaves "the Doctor" off. He's obviously bothered at the moment, in a distant sort of way.] I can't guarantee you I'll do the right thing all the time. I'm far from perfect, but I'll make the attempt. [He sort of chuckles awkwardly to himself.] As if they need to be told that I'm not perfect. [He mutters this to the stuffed whatever, and he shakes his head and the bit of smile wanes.] I'd like to thank Billy for lending me a hand in the hallway. Quite noble of him. When I'm done here... I was wondering if there was someone that could point me in the direction of a little patch of sky where a weary old Time Lord might roam for the rest of his regeneration. It's an impossibility to return to my own universe without upsetting the balance and I'd like to have a distant shore that I could explore.

[He holds the stuffed animal up closer to his face.] I'm not quite sure what this is supposed to be. The TARDIS left it on the console. [He's more than a bit distracted and admittedly all over the place. Being thrown into walls by everything he ever feared about himself can do that to you.]

[Private to Rex and Tim]

I'm not leaving you. I simply need to know where I can go when it comes time for you to leave me.

[Private to the Infirmary]

I apologize for being absent for a bit. I did something very unintelligent. I'll make it up to you tomorrow when I'm better fit to move about.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Indeed. But most importantly Rex is my friend." A friend currently in possession of a TARDIS key, and who had remarkably refrained from taking advantage of it. "And he did. He said that Skaro shouldn't have been my responsibility. That was surprising."

He wasn't complaining about it at all. It had actually helped at the time. He wasn't entirely sure the mistletoe hadn't worked itself out of his system. He would be even more surprised when he learned that Narvin had resisted murdering his possessed self. The restraint would be commendable. "Has he said something to you?"

"How nice of him to admit it." Masking his disdain for the CIA in general and Narvin in particular would be a bigger lie than even Braxiatel could sell. He had never approved of what the CIA and the High Council had used the Doctor for, no matter how hypocritical that disapproval might have been.

"He's said a fair amount to me. We are, after all, colleagues. Short of yourself, he is the person here with whom I am the closest." Braxiatel paused. "What a sickening thought. I think I need my own cup of tea."

"Oh do have one. You did an excellent job and you need to wash that thought out of your mind." He winced (though the painkillers were vaguely kicking in) and scrunched back more into his loaned pillow that was so comfortable it might be difficult to squirm out of his possession.

"Between that, my older self brutalizing people, and Rassilon sounding as if he should be an operator for a tawdry phone line I don't know what to think this week." His brows climbed up high at the observation of Rassilon, because that was simply wrong.

Brax would have that pillow back or there would be collectors to pay. Not tax collectors. Those could be dealt with. Far more dangerous, an art collector.

He went over to the tea set to fetch himself his own glass. "I don't feel particularly inclined to ask any questions about the last myself," Braxiatel said. "Though I can say, with respect to your elder self, that I am very disappointed in your tendency towards the melodramatic."

Brax is a terrible man, wielding his art collectors. Until then, that pillow was getting a thorough wallow.

"He told me that he thought I would understand," he muttered. "And I almost did. That's what bothers me." He pursed his lips tightly over his tea.

"Understand what, precisely? The power of war? The superiority that comes from such power? The second-most famous of Nietzschean aphorisms? Be careful fighting monsters, lest you end up repeating 19th-century philosophy? A terrible omen indeed." He walked back over to the Doctor and stopped in front of him.

After a moment, he nodded vaguely. "Watch yourself. You're going to make me miss Benny again."

A quirk of his mouth and he shifted forward, off the pillow to rest his elbows on his knees. "It's never very good when more than one of me is in one spot. It's not pleasant meeting a future self." He had no idea of Brax's habits. "I want very badly to have my own second chance. That's what I came here for, essentially. My last final adventure free of being 'the Doctor' and all the difficulties it would carry.

"When I came, there was but two. But then the latter ones began to arrive, and it's a bit like having a group of squabbling brothers. You must feel as though you have your hands full."

The undercurrent of irony in the conversation actually made it easier for Braxiatel to push back his own sentiments and desires. Instead he breathed, and sat beside the Doctor, and drank his tea. "I do have my hands full. It's like multiple Christmases come early, repeated, and played on top of themselves."

"And they wonder why I hated coming home for the holidays." He rolled his eyes. "I've never been around this many of myself for this long. Usually we leave as soon as our business is squared." He finally drank more of his now half cooled tea.

"You don't have to deliver us from our issues, though. That's what Rose and Martha and Rex and Tim and all of those are for. I didn't see it myself until I tried to talk some sense into me and failed utterly. I appreciate the efforts, Braxiatel, but I would much rather you be given the opportunity to work out your own. ...Which is admittedly difficult when gods are attacking and psychic swords are being unleashed and family is causing problems and all the worst Time Lords are around...." He rolled his eyes.

"...I am glad to have you around." It helped with his itchy chess fingers.

"Oh, I'd never try to do anything so dramatic as deliver you from your issues. Those stables can be left to a more able Herakles." He really had to kick the habit of resorting to Greek when a Roman allusion would suffice. It was something of how his mind had come to be wired.

"But I believe I have some right to concern myself with your well-being generally. And you do seem to need a worrying amount of tea."

"You make good tea," he said accusingly, as if it were all Brax's fault. "Oh! You ought to try the Vulcan spice tea next time you come around. I received some for Christmas."

He didn't offer anything to the statement, because he would probably be pestering Braxiatel even when a warden should have responsibility over worrying over him.

"I don't believe there are Vulcans in our universe." This was less a fairly obvious statement and more the mild, understated, Irving Braxiatel way of expressing passionate interest in trying out tea from an entirely different universe.

Growing up wasn't about being more serious and grounded. It was about learning how to hide extreme giddiness at the thought of exciting new opportunities to sample the panoply of the multiverse.

"It's quite good." He assured him with more enthusiasm than Brax's stoic demeanour would allow, and settled back on the ~~soon to be strategically stolen if possible~~ pillow.

"For the record, I'm not angry with him. He wasn't responsible for the things that he did or said. I'm upset that his contemplations weren't too off the mark and it seems like the most unsettling thing someone can do is be right about you."

"That's not strictly true. The most unsettling thing somebody can do is make you think he or she is correct about you. There is a distinction. Even if they are correct, if you do not recognise it, it's empty. And if they are wrong and you accept it as correct . . ."

Braxiatel didn't shrug, because shrugging wasn't something one liked to do to give a dignified impression, but it was there in his tone. "Perhaps we could say the most unsettling thing an individual can do is to convince the judge within yourself."

"I do tend to be my own worst critic... Perhaps it'll keep me in check." He raised a blocky brow at Brax.

"This is a very comfortable pillow."

Braxiatel lifted a thin brow in return. "Yes. I'm quite happy with it and very glad it is in my possession."

[Video] (Dated to after everything is over)

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