Tuck Those Ribbons Under Your Helmet [Closed]

[economicalrhinoplasty]

Eva waits on the log for a very long time, until the chill from the shoe tree leaves her shivering slightly, her teeth clicking irregularly as a replacement for her normal twitching and jerking. She's become a very patient person, she thinks - she measured her life in three-day cycles for so long that she thinks she no longer views time like a normal human being, but rather in some extended and flimsy nature, like a rubber band with all the elasticity stretched out of it.

Given that she has no watch on her - Stacy's unique perspective on time, even more distorted and deformed than Eva's, has long since made watches useless - she can't properly estimate how much time she spends sitting there waiting, but she expects it must be hours, since she feels tired and bored and tiny icicles are starting to form around her eyelashes and bangs.

Somehow it seems strangely appropriate to sit around waiting for the Doctor. He doesn't seem to follow anyone else's schedule. She wonders how many people before have sat on this log, waiting for something, maybe for the Doctor or for deliverance or for God. Or maybe she's singularly unique, the sole passenger in this log's history, and this is the one moment in time where this log not only exists but is sittable, and has been seen by sentient eyes.

She's starting to think like him. All the silence in her own head is getting to her. Maybe she should get her Yeerk back. She misses conversation.

That's a terrible idea.

She gets up and twists her back some, eking little pops out of her spine. She wipes the ice from her eyes, careful not to harm her makeup, although it did get smeared somewhat during the dumbwaiter trip and library attack. It's the principle of the matter.

Tossing her hair up into a clip again, she walks in the direction the Doctor took off towards, her feet adjusting to the sockless interior of her new shoes. "Doc?"

Comments

[makeherblue]

Ah, Eva isn’t quite reacting like his typical humans. It’s only another reminder that she’s anything but typical.

“That’s what I meant. Earth. One of them, anyway.” The Doctor looks somewhat uncomfortable. “I’d imagine so, yes. Unless he’s somehow snuck in the TARDIS while we were lost.”

It’s possible, but not likely. He wouldn’t be able to tell anyway without doing a lifeform scan. The Doctor reached out to poke a few controls and then decided to reach in and rip out the wiring. His hands came up with a bunch of wires that looked like they’d seen better days, the Doctor blowing on them and giving them a good frown.

“Either way, we’ll have to land and look about making repairs before we start thinking about any more jumps.”

[economicalrhinoplasty]

"Right, no need to have this thing blow up on us before we get home. We've already nearly been eaten and been soaked to the bone." She smiles a bit to let the Doctor know that for the most part, she doesn't have any hard feelings. She knows how much she cares for this deathtrap of a box.

She straightens out her Banjos! outfit, on the off chance that they've landed somewhere public. She's probably only famous on her Earth, but it's worth looking as meagerly presentable as one can while wearing the contents of the Doctor's wardrobe. She can only hope that any photo evidence that she wore this that is taken will be burned.

Funny, how she can go from fighting for her life against a library and calling the shots in a war to worrying about her t-shirt.

"You might want to let me out first, because you'll scare the locals. With your you-ness."

[makeherblue]

“My you-ness?” The Doctor echoes, the point sailing happily over his head. Really, he’s had loads of experience making excellent first impressions, Eva! That said, if Eva wants to go out first, then by all means. “Okay. I think. You do have a very nice shirt, at any rate,” he adds. "You look like the perfect ambassador."

Somehow he’ll get her back to Stacy and Marco. The details of how are still something of a work in progress, but if there is anything he can say he's very good at it, it's juggling works in progress. The Doctor fumbles and fiddles with the TARDIS, ducking and bobbing as he checks the readings and generally giving an impression of a giant tweed-wearing groundhog popping up. Something he sees makes him frown.

"We'll have to make something of a traditional landing," he tells Eva. At least it's not the crashing variety? "The old girl won't be able to materialize like normal until I've had a proper look and acquired some better supplies."

[economicalrhinoplasty]

"Yes, I'm the perfect ambassador to Dr. Seuss's Whoville," she says, rolling her eyes. "Let's just hope no one recognizes me. I'm famous in my world, you know. It's painfully inconvenient."

And naturally, she feels the invasion of privacy that comes from media attention much more keenly than most would.

"Please tell me that you mean something more like a hot air balloon coming to rest and not a jet plane nosediving into the Pacific." She looks at the knobs, but this sort is all foreign to her. She thinks about how she still can't figure out a desktop computer but can pilot a Blade Ship, thinks of how in his element the Doctor looks right now. "I'll hold onto my hat anyway."

And with that she goes to visit the half-jettisoned wardrobe, rooting through until she returns with a baseball cap. It'll help cover the beast the trip has made of her hair. "And for that, I'll need a hat."

[makeherblue]

"There you are," the Doctor says, not quite sure what Whoville has to do with this and wondering what would happen if they did happen to land on Eva’s Earth. Complicated things, he’d assume, what with Eva being one of those complicated humans. She has that slight sharpness to her voice that causes him to glance up with a puzzled frown.

The fact Eva has the presence of mind to get a hat while she’s at it makes him fall a little in love with her. It’s almost a good enough excuse to pretend he didn’t hear her question. Not so much a hot air balloon! Even a jet nose diving into the Pacific might be softer! Glancing up from the controls, he knows he can’t lie to her. Granted, she’s come this far.

“It’s not quite like a jet nosediving into the Pacific. Think bellyflop,” he says, which really is true. At this point the Doctor is something of a connoisseur in crash landings and he can say that this was more of the bellyflop variety. Gave off that sort of vibe, really. “I’d hold onto something.”

The TARDIS gives a spinning lurch as it bellyflops through Earth’s atmosphere. The Doctor takes his own advice and clings to the control console with his arms and legs.

[economicalrhinoplasty]

She straightens her hat. No backwards caps for her.

"Oh, fantastic." Eva knows it's a thin line to walk between being irritated at this whole ordeal and becoming one of those troublesome people who whines about everything, so she's doing her best to stay competent, but he makes it so difficult for her when he says things like "oh it's just a bellyflop". It's as if the Doctor's transformed into a lifetime's worth of Famous Last Words these days.

She scrambles over to the control console, figuring that bony as he is the Doctor's at least softer than the wall, and braces herself. Hopefully her stylish hat will protect her from splattering her brains everywhere, although, she thinks, maybe it would be horribly suiting for her to die from a brain injury. A few seconds until impact. She whispers a prayer that she makes it back to her kid.

[makeherblue]

It probably help that the Doctor has had a very, very long list of memorable last words better than those.

The Doctor glances over as Eva joins him. There’s just enough time for him to throw a few levers, steam spitting out of a crack in the TARDIS’s control console with the sound of a whistling tea kettle (possibly enough time to throw in a prayer), before the ground rushes up impossibly large in the viewscreen. The TARDIS smacks into the ground, seems to skid and then flips end over end until it comes to a rest upside down. As it spins out of control, the Doctor tries to cushion Eva as best he can – easier said then done as the room lurches out from under their feet and does a very good hamster-ball impression.

When he’s able to make sense of which up is up and which one’s all very relative, he’s been thrown to the ceiling, the control console far overhead and dangling bits and pieces of wiring that he thinks might be important. A cloud of smoke hangs there, the Doctor coughing and swiveling around, trying to find out where Eva’s gotten tossed to.

“Eva?”

[economicalrhinoplasty]

She's just about sick of being tossed around, Doctor. She gets up and pretends to blithely dust her shoulders, but the truth is that one of his feet introduced itself too intimately to her ribcage, and she smashed one of her hands under her own knee. Delightful. At least she managed to cradle her head to prevent any damage there - god only knows the damage her brain doesn't need.

"A for effort, D for execution." She says, wiping away a bit of saliva that worked its way out of her mouth during the tumble. "Where are we?"

She's hoping it's a golf course, honestly. Somewhere clearly civilized, but not where a million people will swarm them in curiosity - from the feel of that landing, she doesn't think the TARDIS just materialized the way she's been told it usually does. A golf course would do her nicely.

[makeherblue]

The Doctor’s face falls for a split second – personally, he would have rewarded himself at the very least a high B – before he recovers, fumbling for words. “I’ve had worse crash-landings,” he mutters, but turns back to the console.

Bits and pieces of it are hanging off at haphazard angles. He has to hook his leg under part of it to keep his footing, the floor tilting at angle. It’s also giving off a suspiciously bobbing sensation. The Doctor makes a grab at the monitor and pulls it to him, consulting the screen flickering on in spurts. Ah. He’d thought so. It certainly explained the soft landing! (It’s not a golf course – the old girl didn’t much care for golf courses). The Doctor peers over his shoulder at Eva.

“A pond. Some sort of park, but the TARDIS can’t say which one.” He hit the monitor’s side. It fuzzes with static. “Poor girl. Anyway! Let’s take a look around, shall we?”

He disentangled himself from the console. Unlike Eva, he’s rather hoping they have some gawkers after being stuck so long in one place. Besides, they could better place which/when this Earth was by visiting the resident Earthlings. Hopefully Eva won’t be an alien here, the Doctor thinks privately, sneaking a glance at the human.

[economicalrhinoplasty]

"A pond. It doesn't have ducks in it, does it? Because that would be fitting if, after the waterfall and the killer library, we might run across some foul-tempered waterfowl as well." All this excitement has brought out the cranky side of herself but not necessarily the witty one. She mentally kicking herself for not coming up with something better. After a moment, "let's hope we don't get towed. I don't want to pay impondment fees."

She resists the urge to groan at herself. Rather than blinking at the console, she tries to open the door without asking the Doctor's permission or opinion - she never did much love computers. Water from the pond floods in across the floor, but she lifts up her pants by the cuff of her legs to keep them from getting wet too as she steps out and, blinking in the light of day, looks around.

"I see people!" she calls back in. "But they don't see us. Yet."

[makeherblue]

"Impondment fees!" The Doctor mutters under his breath, having that pinched look saying he's a little sulky he hadn't thought of that one first. (It's that good.) "Don't be silly!"

Still envious he hadn't thought of something so brilliant - not that he has a monopoly on brilliance, it’s just he’s usually the one to come up with stuff like that! - the Doctor wades through the water sloshing in after Eva, sunlight spilling into their faces along with air that doesn't smell like it's gone through one too many rounds of Stacy's scrubbers. It doesn't take long for him to join his friend popping his head out.

"Oh, they will," the Doctor says smugly. "Hard to miss the TARDIS."

He reaches in as a muddy-colored fish flops into the TARDIS, tossing him back out as he balances dangerously on the edge of the time machine and waves at the people standing on the bank.

“Hello! We could use a boat or boat-ish thing if you have one!”

[economicalrhinoplasty]

"I'm always silly. It's why I'm not sad." Duh, Doctor. Surely he's realized this about her by now. She shades her eyes with her hand as she stares out at the gaggle of people staring at them funny. She could swim, of course, and she's still very damn anyway, but someone granting them a boat would be an encouraging gesture of good will.

She squints out at their faces. A few fingers are pointed, but they're less at her than at her outfit or, of course, the materializing blue box. Not that the Doctor looks much less outlandish than she does.

But it's a relief. She has her anonymity still, just a beat-up badly-dressed mystery woman in a spaceship instead of the face of the devil. It means lies and explanations, but it beats people being afraid of her anyday. It casts a light upon her mood.

"Hello! We come in peace!" She turns to the Doctor and flashes a grin. "Years on an alien spaceship and I never really got to say that. I feel as if I've just accomplished a rite of passage."

[makeherblue]

The Doctor peers at the back of Eva’s head. She’s not as silly as she thinks – or, rather, he doesn’t believe that she isn’t terribly sad even now, bone-deep and written in all the lines and scars in her face. You know what they say, takes one to know one. The Doctor, to his credit, doesn’t push the issue and instead focuses on the present, breaking into a big smile as Eva indulges.

“Congratulations!” The Doctor pounds Eva on the back. “Never gets old! Shame you had to wait this long.”

The Doctor pops up next to his human friend, a tall skinny stranger with a water-logged bowtie hanging at an angle around his neck. The TARDIS gives a lurch as it bobs. He grabs hold onto the side, deciding now might be a good time to insist that they probably caught to close the doors before more water gets in. As it is, he’s not entirely sure how sea-worthy the old girl happens to be these days. She could sink if they’re not careful.

“Ah, look. They’re finally sending a boat,” he squints. “No, a dinghy. Like I said, a boat-like thing!”

The Doctor clambers up onto the very edge of the TARDIS, all ungainly limbs, and moves like a spider over her as he reaches in to help Eva out and close the doors at the same time.

[economicalrhinoplasty]

Eva would presume that a policebox that can hold an entire library, and a swimming pool, and oh yes, the ocean, can probably handle a small pond. But then again, far be it for her to dictate the mechanics of this contraption that defies physics, understanding and basic expectations.

"Oh, it's a kayak!"

Eva's love for boats extends to kayaks, too. She spent an anniversary with Peter kayaking the San Francisco Bay. It's a far-off memory, one that's too indistinct to make longing swell up in her, and instead just casts a happy glow.

She clambers into the boat - it tips and water spills into her and the Doctor's laps, but they're already wet anyway. She waves awkwardly at the people again, who're all craning their necks forward to see.

"Will the TARDIS be okay without us?" she whispers in his ear.

[makeherblue]

“What’s that now? Oh, her? Yes, yes, of course,” the Doctor waves Eva’s question away. “She’ll be fine.”

It’s not the first time she started taking on water and, he thinks, it’ll probably happen again anyway in the near future. The TARDIS is a tough girl – she’ll be okay. The Doctor spends the kayak-trip rubbernecking at the pond, their rescuers, chatting them up and by the time they make it to shore, he’s acquired an invitation to the local knitting club and a soggy newspaper. Shoving the newspaper under his arm, the Doctor steps out of the kayak with a splash and turns to look back at the TARDIS. She’s no longer in sight, having sunk to the bottom only minutes ago. Hopefully she won’t be towed. If there’s a UNIT on this version of Earth, there’s a real chance that could happen.

“I’ll get that sorted,” the Doctor says quickly. “Now! Let’s find out where we are.”

He huddles off to the side with his soggy newspaper, a few onlookers still gaping at him and Eva. Snapping open the newspaper – hard to do when it’s wet, but he tries anyway – the Doctor scans the headlines and dates, flicking through the running ink.