for whack_a_muse: RP for <lj site="livejournal.com" user="fightsi

[rude_not_ginger]

He wasn't certain if he was dreaming. He might've been. It would've made a lot of sense if he was. After all, he knew where the cliffs of Oblivion were, but he'd never been there.

Still, the hard diamond ground beneath him felt solid. The wine glass in his hand felt real. He leaned against the nearest rock and watched the triple sunset. The sky shot a brilliant blue, then red, then yellow. It was dark for a moment, then the fourth sun rose up, illuminating the crystal landscape.

He knew the world, but he'd never been there. And yet there he was.

And he wasn't alone.

"Wine?" he offered.

Comments

[fightsinfront.livejournal.com]

"No thank you," came the short, but soft reply. "I tend to avoid it in these situations."

These situations were, of course, the ones in which she was suddenly on another planet. Athena didn't much like being off Earth, since it was the base of what little power she had left. As humans spread across the universe, the ones that took their history and mythology with them helped her find a foothold elsewhere, but she preferred her home.

And there was also the question of whether or not she was dreaming. "Doctor, right? You look different than the last time I saw you. Nice planet you've got here."

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"It's not mine." Though some part of him thinks it might be, in the future. There's so much he thinks he sees about what might be that he's not certain what's going on in what is.

He pats the spot on the cliff next to him. His legs dangle off the impossibly high cliff.

"Athena, correct? Also Athene, Attic, and Ἀθηνᾶ. Goddess of intellect, war, and heroic endeavor."

He sighed and looked up to the woman. She was beautiful, probably, but unassuming. No impossible beauty, no glowing goddess. She looked real. War was real, maybe she reflected that.

"I thought you'd have come here in my last incarnation."

[fightsinfront.livejournal.com]

"Also a lot of things," she replied, sitting down next to him. "Depends on who you're asking, when, and where." She looked at him sidelong. "But real names, well. Those never change, do they?"

Athena smiled a small smile. "I've never been here before. But I also don't keep track of your incarnations. Besides, aren't you the Time Lord? Maybe in my future I come here in your past."

He looked tired and small, which seemed wrong on a man like him. "You've brought me here, you know. Do you know why?"

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

He brought her here. He wanted to laugh at the very idea. He felt so insignificant, now. Jack gone. Martha gone. Rose gone. Donna gone. He couldn't save any of them, couldn't hold a single one between his fingers. The fingers that often pressed the buttons that saved the universe. These fingers couldn't hold silly, simple humans to him.

And still. Still, if he wanted to see her (and he did) it wouldn't be for that.

"You're the Goddess of War." he said. "All Wars?"

[fightsinfront.livejournal.com]

Athena shrugged. "I don't know. Probably. All wars that affect human beings. That's all I know for sure."

She paused for a moment as a gust of wind whistled through the crystalline structures nearby. "You mean your war, right? The 'last great Time War'?"

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"As if there was a first," he said with a sigh. "There was only one Time War. The first and the last and the greatest all rolled into one. A century of pain."

He looked back to the goddess. "Humanity was skipped over. Only some of the outest most colonies felt it."

Part of him was begging her to know. Begging her to know what the universe was like. She had to know. She....she had to, right?

[fightsinfront.livejournal.com]

"You're not that old, Doctor. There was a first. And a second. And a lot of little wars of time, and a few big wars of time. Not all of them involved the Time Lords. Especially, or so I hear, before there even were Time Lords." She was reminding him, gently, that she and her kind existed in a separate realm from his. A realm where her grandfather was God of Time. She had a different perspective, even if she hadn't seen it all herself.

"And of course humanity was affected. Don't be silly. Even if only because of your renewed interest in the planet. Or the need of directly effected species to poach off weaker planets."

She pulled a belt form her knife and plunged it into the ground between them. "Do you want me to tell you about the nature of war, Doctor?"

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

The Doctor raised an eyebrow and looked down at the hilt of the knife, not far from his leg. A basic tool or a killing instrument, it was both at once. It wasn't a gun, which could only harm. A knife could also heal.

"I always thought you'd carry a spear," he mumbled, taking another sip of his wine.

Though, really, to hear about the nature of war from the goddess of it herself? How could the Doctor even imagine refusing?

"Please."