[Audio]

[championoftime]

[Public]

[The Doctor is pointedly going to ignore the sex sounding things going on.]

Dallas Winston, by the by, has departed the Barge. [And likely went back to being a ghost, according to what he heard last. He's been gone for a while, he just hasn't wanted to talk about it. He never likes talking about people leaving.] He was a good lad.

Mark Hoffman mentioned... a lack of good stories to be told. I'd like to hear a few if you have them. They needn't be about an occupation. Just good stories. Or good experiences, if you're willing to share.

Comments

[Private]

[timesbureaucrat]

[Narvin wants to protest the statement about Dallas being a good lad, but even he's not *quite* so tactless as to speak ill of the dead. Sometimes. So he tries to think of a good experience instead, something from before the Barge. He has to think far back to find one that isn't tainted with vindictiveness or failure.]

The night I finished at the Academy my whole cohort went to Low Town to...cavort. [Enjoy the image of Narvin attempting to cavort.] We hadn't much cared for each other while in classes, the competition for the best grades had been fierce, but since we were all leaving, all going our separate ways, adults now, proper Time Lords, it seemed right to come together one last time. For that night we were almost like friends.

I remember going right up to the edge of the dome and pressing my my hands against it, and marvelling at how unexpectedly warm it was.

[There was more to that excursion as well to make it memorable. Trying black market Dalek juice and getting into a fight with a Shobogan, among other things. Getting all the remains of his youthful misbehaving out in one night so he could spend the next thousand years properly dignified and solemn like a good Time Lord. But there was only so much he was going to tell the Doctor. (At least while sober.)]

Audio:

[tis_disapproval]

I doubt my tales are what you seek...

[creatingalegacy]

...I've got one.

[There's a long, silent pause.]

I know it happened during everything that fucked me up. I don't need to hear it from anyone because I don't care.

...I was building a trap I'd designed. This was way back, just after John had taught me the basics. He wanted to see how I applied them.

It was called the "Addict's Chair," the thing I was making. A two-person trap, with one chair saved for a drug addict. It involved two different poisons, and antidotes for each being mixed mechanically--whatever, it's not like anybody cares about the details. We never got a chance to use it, anyway.

I was constructing the inner workings of the distributor machine, and I was getting frustrated because no matter what I did, I couldn't get one piece to socket into the other. I was on the verge of crying. I didn't want to disappoint him. Just when I was about to break down, he came up right behind me, placed his hands over mine, and turned the right one so, so slightly. The pieces fit into place. I'd just been holding one of them at the wrong angle. Only four fuckin' degrees off, can you believe that?

He must have known what I was thinking from my body language or something. He said I had natural talent, and if I stopped worrying about letting him down, it would emerge. His hands on mine, and those words--I just felt so...

I felt loved.

I know it's small, and probably insignificant to people who didn't lead the kind of life I did before I joined him, but it was so important to me. Still is, in some ways.

Text

[strangehistorian]

It seems I know few stories of late that have happy endings.

[lastmanstanding]

[Hoffman has been reading over some of these stories man.]

Not a huge turnout.

[changemydear]

He has? [There's a pause here. The Doctor really doesn't know what to say about this.] A pity.

[ichoosefight]

Oh, Dally... [ :C She will miss him. ]

What kind of stories were you looking for, specifically?

[19centconstable]

I wrote an adventure novel...

[Private]

[peektuttut]

[Tim doesn't really want to talk about this, given his own disappearing inmate, but the Doctor's had to deal with it more often. So he's rousing himself long enough to check on him.]

You okay?