theoldgirl: (in the background)
theoldgirl ([personal profile] theoldgirl) wrote in [community profile] bigapplesauce2013-03-10 01:10 am

And I tell myself, I keep repeating, that your ways are bringing you to me [closed]

A week passes for the TARDIS in both the blink of an eye and excruciating slowness. It's so minuscule within her understanding of time and compared to her age, but spending it separated from the Doctor, trying all day to find him on foot in her tiny humanoid form and trying to get used to the constant unease and limitations being in this universe causes her makes it seem to go on forever. She doesn't like being forced into such a subjective perception of linear time, and she particularly doesn't like how it reminds her of the other occasions she was crippled and stranded somewhere. It is difficult not to fall into the same state of despondent disconnection, of resigned misery interspersed with outbursts of desperation that she had cultivated then.

Ianto does his best to help, of course. He spends as much time with her as he can, either helping her search, showing her how to conduct herself in the city (obviously she knows about cars and money and subway trains, but she's never had reason to apply that knowledge), or making sure she keeps her body fed and rested. It's such a small concern compared to everything else that's weighing on her, but she does have to admit, left to her own will she'd have worn it out entirely by now searching for the Doctor without interruption. When it sleeps, she busies herself with healing the damage the journey through the rift caused her and recalibrating her sensors to this universe, but she soon reaches a point where she simply needs the Doctor's assistance.

It isn't even a search really, it's more of a pursuit. She knows where he is, approximately, but he moves a lot faster than her, so that by the time she's reached and searching an area he has already moved on. She'd even caught up with him once, but then he got on a train and her small form was unable to squeeze through the slow-moving mass of people in time to follow him. If she could just see where he is going next, this all wouldn't be so difficult. However, with her confined to a linear existence like this, he keeps being just out of her reach. The frustration and loneliness are almost too much to bear.

But today, shortly after breakfast with Ianto, she senses the Doctor actually moving towards her, towards her true form hidden in the park. With a mixture of desperate hope and trepidation at the possibility of losing him again, she hurries back to her self, straining to pinpoint his location more precisely and trying to decide which route through the park to check first. She can't miss him this time, not again.
alwaysalright: (pic#5789265)

[personal profile] alwaysalright 2013-03-11 01:24 am (UTC)(link)
The Doctor is striding across a field, his attention on a handheld device that seems to be more or less held together by duct tape. He's trying to determine if he can pick up any sort of signals coming from the other side of the rift, trying to find a link that he could follow to get back through somehow.

This is another in a long line of projects he's had since he got here. It took him several days before he even remembered to sleep. He may be confined to one little island for now, but there's three million people here, and plenty mysteries to go around. Some of them are related to trying to get back, but most of them are just distractions. He's been to more or less every part of the island by now.

And keeping busy keeps his mind off missing the TARDIS, and Donna, and traveling in general. If he stopped long enough to think about it, or consider the possibility that he won't get back... Well, it'd be too painful to bear. Perhaps that he went so long without sleep too, so that it would come quickly.

There were a few times where he thought he felt something, but then he was distracted or interrupted, or the feeling disappeared, and he moved on. And his moving has now led him to the park.