rude_not_ginger | RP for perfectblue

For her part, Illyria was quite content to remain human, though the disturbing dreams could stop any time now as far as she was concerned.

Well, perhaps not quite content. Still, she felt no anger toward the Doctor. She'd come by the TARDIS to tell him so, in fact.

"Hello, Doctor," she announced her presence quietly, walking into the console room, which looked only slightly less strange to her than when she'd woken up here.

The Doctor's head remained on the console. The 'hello' didn't sound right. Not much about her sounded right.

Illyria as a human. Two things he adored together. A bit like bananas and hamburgers, fantastic separately, but he couldn't imagine them together.

He grumbled a bit in reply. It sounded a bit like 'hello'.

"Is something wrong?"

She asked with more curiosity than concern; though with more of the latter than she would have as a goddess.

"I came to inquire about the status of my memories. I take it you have not yet found the object that holds them?"

"If I had," he muttered, grumpily, "You'd have it back by now."

He sighed, and leaned back, looking up at her, "How was the outside world, Illyria? Finding it more pleasing as a human?"

She'd thought as much; it was truly only an inquiry for the sake of inquiry. She did not think he would have kept her waiting.

"More pleasing than what?" she asked, with a slightly confused little smile. "I find it pleasant enough, I suppose. Everyone has been kind, and as helpful as they may be. I do not mind it terribly."

He motioned for her to approach, and took her wrist, checking her pulse. With a doctorlike precision, he checked the glands behind her ears, and her eyes.

"You're healthy, at least. When I became a human I was accursed with the flu for the first month."

She smiled a little more genuinely at his concern.

"How unpleasant. I hope I can avoid that, if at all possible."

A pause, in which she registers the other thing he's said.

"... you were human?"

He pulled away, and looked down at the console.

It was like conversing with a stranger, he decided. It was hard to share personal and intimate moments like that with a stranger.

"For a time," he said.

She felt faintly stung at his pulling away. Everyone else had been careful with her, a little awkward at times, but they'd all seemed to become used to her after a short while. She did not think her memory loss was so very unnerving to those she was close to.

But perhaps she had assumed wrong. Or perhaps his pulling away had nothing to do with her, at all.

"Did you lose your memory, also?"

"Yes," he replied, honestly, "Had one invented for me. S'the way it's supposed to be. Life already prepared, spot in history rooted out. Things...well, they never go exactly as one plans."

He flipped a few switches on the console.

"Who did you meet today?" Topic change ftw.

"That must have made things easier," Illyria said, thoughtfully. "For you, I mean. You knew who you were supposed to be, even if it was not who you truly were."

She blinked a little the abrupt topic change, but allowed it. For the moment. Even in this form, Illyria was still more curiosity than tact.

"No one new, today, though I have been reacquainting myself with my ... he says he was my follower, Glaucon, and another called Wesley who says he was once my guide. Did you know either of them?"

"Yes," the Doctor replied, "Yes, I met them both."

He sighed, and scratched the back of his head, "You left me. We were traveling together for a long time, and you left me to stay with Glaucon. He was a good friend to you, I think. Or something like that."

Illyria nodded, a tiny, almost shy smile gracing her lips for a moment.

"He is apparently the last of my followers. He seems to have been quite devoted to me. It is somewhat strange, to be someone who had followers."

Her smile faded a bit, as she considered the rest of it.

"I suppose that is why I had to leave. I had some sort of responsibility to him. I mean, I assume. You and I were friends as well, were we not?"

The Doctor's eyes stayed focused on the TARDIS panel. Friends. There was a pounding in his brain of how not Illyria she was, and it made the whole situation seem that much more...strange in his head.

"Yes," he agreed, "Yes, I suppose we were."

He wouldn't look at her, and she didn't know why. It bothered her, and she didn't know why. Hadn't things been less awkward than this just after she woke up memoryless? Perhaps they hadn't, and she'd only been too disoriented to tell. Perhaps she was interrupting something, this time.

"Have I come at a bad time? You seem distracted."

There was a hesitance to her tone that sounded odd even to her; she didn't think she was the type to hesitate. But she didn't want to be where she wasn't wanted.

He was letting too much out. He put on a large, very false grin and waved her concern away.

"Naaaah, just gotta find that fob watch, keeping you our resident amnesiac isn't going to help either of us, is it?"

She was so not Illyria, it made him miss Illyria more. Which was frustrating, because being without her so long made it easier to get used to being without her.

"I'm not bothered by it, now. Not as much anyway." A tiny shrug, at that.

"From what I hear I was... difficult to associate with. I suppose it goes with the territory of being what I was, but it seems to me that I might've gotten very lonely."

"Well. I like you," the Doctor said, simply. "People who say that aren't important. I wouldn't worry about it."

"Those who say it seem to like me well enough in spite of it, unless they are only being polite to this version of me."

Illyria frowned a little, more in thought than displeasure.

"Did you enjoy being human, when you were?"

The Doctor took a breath, then looked away from her again.

He thought about Joan, about all the things that John Smith felt for her, felt for the boys at school. Everything seemed so simple and right back then. God, country and all that. And he had love.

"It...was different."

"Obviously it would be," she replied, sounding a little like the old Illyria.

"Were you very different? There are things that... now and then, I get the impression that there are little things that I do that are very much like my usual self, and I wonder how much of me I still am, without all the history I'm missing."

He turned and looked at her again. Very seriously and almost coldly he said: "You're not like you were at all."

It was hard, seeing her be almost Illyria, but not quite.

He looked away again. "I...I'm sorry, that was...unnecessarily cold."

She didn't flinch, this time, but she did blink, stunned by the sharp little pang of hurt that she felt. It seemed absurd for her to be stung by it, and yet she was, for reasons she couldn't quite reason through.

"It's fine," she assured him, a little less than convincingly. "I can hardly be offended by the truth, and the truth is that you were friends with a different Illyria."

She regarded him almost warily.

"Perhaps I ought to go. This seems... difficult, and I am certain you will locate the object in question in due time."

"We'll change you back soon," he promised, "But...you're not..."

He turned again, then took a step towards her. Warily, he raised a hand to cup her very human cheek.

He remembered what it was like being human. He wanted Illyria to be able to remember that he didn't despise her when she was.

A tiny surprised intake of breath at the touch was her only initial response, though she didn't move away, only looked at him with wide brown eyes that were entirely different but just as curious as they'd been when blue.

She didn't fully understand the sudden alternation between coldness and kindness, though she thought, perhaps... there was something there, something she wondered if she'd merely imagined. An attraction, perhaps, between the two of them. That would explain a great deal of the awkwardness, and she felt strange enough around him to believe there had been something, perhaps unspoken.

Perhaps. There was too much uncertainty, and she felt too much as though she were prying into something better left alone. So she stepped back, with a tiny smile and a little nod.

"I understand."

It wasn't entirely true, but it would serve in place of anything else she might've said.

RP for perfectblue

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