The Twelfth Doctor doesn't like hugs (againsthugging) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-04-30 17:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, bo dennis, clara oswald, twelfth doctor |
Who: Clara, Duncan and Bo
What: Investigating Bo’s disappearance and memory loss.
When: Early April
Where: Clara’s diner and TARDIS
Warnings: Low
To say that Bo had some reservations about this was possibly an understatement. She didn’t know what was going to come out of this, but she hoped that’d get an answer or two and not simply more questions. She hadn’t yet remembered anything on her own, and she hadn’t gotten any clues from her dreams. Also just because she didn’t know if anything would come of it, Bo had found the tarot card that had started this, and brought it for Duncan to analyze.
Duncan, on the other hand, was excited to delve into this new mystery. A woman disappears, then reappears a few days later with no memory of where she’d been. It sounded somewhat like what Agatha Christie had gone through, but he certainly hoped it wouldn’t be the exact same situation. He didn’t quite like doing repeats. But thus far, things intrigued him. Now it was a matter of following where the results led him.
“We could’ve easily done this in my TARDIS, you know,” he said to Clara while waiting for the guest of honor. He’d somehow gotten there with time to spare as opposed to being late. Though that probably had more to do with Clara and the fact that he wanted to meet this mysterious dimensional traveler.
Bo arrived, getting out of her car and heading for the door of the diner. She was on time, but she was a little nervous about this as she walked inside.
“I hope I’m not late. I was trying to find something that may either help or add to the mystery.”
Clara rolled her eyes affectionately at her dad as he grumbled about how they easily could have met at his TARDIS.
“Yes, yes, I know. You want to show her off and get the whole ‘It’s bigger on the inside’,” Because really, it was clear that was the real reason he would want to meet there. It wasn’t like such a meeting needed to be at a specific TARDIS, both had the same capabilities. It was all a matter of pride and ego for him. “However, she knows mine and so it’s more neutral.”
Okay so Bo had never gone past the diner front into the control room, but it was still a bit of an easier transition to make. And speaking of Bo…
“Hey. No, you’re fine, right on time.” The fact her dad was time was a bigger shock. But something that was new that needed to be investigated? It wasn’t completely unexpected. Just mildly. “Anyway, Bo, this is my dad, Duncan, dad this is Bo.” He may be the Doctor, but at the end of the day, he was her dad first.
“Can you blame me for liking getting that reaction?” Duncan still remembered how he’d reacted when the Victorian version of Clara had first stepped in the TARDIS and had asserted that it was smaller on the outside. That was not a reaction he’d ever had before. But of course he relented on which TARDIS they met in because arguing on that with Clara was rather silly. Besides, their TARDISes could interface easily enough, he could get the results of scans and such easily.
“Hi, Duncan. Thanks for helping me out.” Bo said with a smile and held her hand out to shake his. Instead of shaking it, Duncan looked her over. It wasn’t in a creepy way, he was analyzing her.
“Interesting. Nothing seems out of place on the surface. Good news for you, better news for me. Means it’s a harder puzzle to solve. And one must look beyond the obvious.” He stated. Bo blinked a bit.
“Okay...that’s...good?” Bo didn’t exactly like being a puzzle, or having her own memory being a blank to her in places. But if Duncan had any answers for her, she’d definitely take them.
Victorian era her had been interesting. Sometimes she found herself slipping more into either Clara Oswin or Oswin but she seemed to have finally found a balance on that front. Usually. No matter. Instead she just shook her head in amusement given that Bo then showed up so there was no need to argue which TARDIS would have been better. Which was hers and Duncan knew it no matter what he wanted to claim.
And….he was himself. Which wasn’t so surprising. So Clara just shook her head some.
“Ignore him, he’s Scottish.” When in doubt. “Anyway, anything new happen since we set up the meeting before going to the back?”
Duncan might have argued that, but he tended to use the Scottish thing as a defense for himself as well. So he didn’t exactly have room to chide Clara about using it in such a way.
“Ah, well, that explains it.” Bo responded, eyeing Duncan for a moment before looking back at Clara and shaking her head. “Nope. My dreams haven’t quite progressed, so I can’t shed any light on the matter. I do have something that started the whole disappearing thing, so I don’t know if that can give you any clues or not.” Though Bo didn’t know if the tarot card would be dangerous to Clara and Duncan, so she’d ensure they didn’t try touching it. Just in case.
“Oh, excellent, yes that might certainly help.” Duncan said a bit excitedly. At least it could give some sort of information to them about where Bo went. Perhaps even how, but he’d try not to speculate too much until he saw the data of the scans.
If Duncan had tried to argue the Scottish description, Clara would probably have laughed in his face since it was such a normal thing he threw around, just like how she was supposed to be his Care-er so he didn’t need to care (not like that ever actually stopped him).
As Bo answered, Clara nodded some.
“All right, well let’s head to the back then and we can go from there.” Given it wasn’t like they could really examine anything in the diner portion of the TARDIS. “This way.” Given they were on official type business, she knew that no one would walk in unannounced. Undoubtedly the TARDIS would just ‘disappear’ and there would be nothing there for people who might try to snoop. As such, she instead led the two to the back and into her control room as everything they’d need was in there.
Bo followed after Clara. It was really the best that they were using Clara’s TARDIS. The control room was far less mind-blowing than the one in Duncan’s TARDIS. Even so, it might take a few moment to process the clearly non-Earth technology at play there.
Duncan, of course, was unphased by the change when he stepped into the control room. Well, except for the fact that it had been in this control room in the dreams when he’d erased his memories of Clara. That didn’t sit well with him, but being the Doctor, he kept it to himself. “Okay, so, what have you got?” He asked Bo, jumping right into it.
Bo heard the question, but she was busy staring at the console. “I know there’s a lot of strange crap here in Orange County, but I suddenly really feel like I stepped into a sci-fi movie.” And considering Bo’s dreams tended to border on both mythology and fantasy, the genre shift was something to process. However, she shook her head after a moment. “Yeah. I don’t recommend either of you touching it, it can burn you. But maybe something can be gleaned off of it.” Bo pulled a tarot card out of her pocket. It had ‘The Wanderer’ captioned on it with a man turned away. She held it up for both Clara and Duncan to see, flipping it over as necessary.
“So this is what started it all?” Duncan asked, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and giving it a scan. He looked at the readings and his bushy eyebrows drew together, and his face seemed to some mix of confusion and intrigue. The readings were definitely odd. The card seemed to have originated in another dimension.
“Yeah. I touched it and black smoke appeared and that’s the last thing I remember before I reappeared.” Bo explained.
There was that minor detail on how it was the same control room where the Doctor had lost his memory of her, but if there was one thing Clara had learned in life and the dreams, there would always be painful reminders wherever you went. You just had to move on and through them. Besides, for her it was her TARDIS, her control room where she and Ashildr would plot out adventures on their way back to Trap Street.
Though that was the question. What would happen if she touched something that should feasibly burn her? Probably not the time or place to try that though. No need to get her dad worried that she was reckless or acknowledge that yes, she was frozen in time. It worked as one of those things that was a possibility but without verification because who wanted to deal with that?
As her dad soniced the card, the data transferred to the screen of her console so that they could see if anything came up. Which… definitely interesting even if it didn’t make much sense. Though…
“It’s similar to the energy signature from the crater you found yourself in...”
Duncan leaned a bit closer to the screen. A million things were running through his head, the Time Lord part of him now working in overdrive to figure out this particular problem. “It’s very intriguing, and tends to make me wonder how this world hasn’t been sucked into a black hole with all the dimensional bleeding that seems to occur here.” That was a potential project that he poked at now and then, when his mind happened to stumble across it again. “Anyway, not precisely relevant to this. I’ve seen some similar things in my dreams. Cracks in the universe, dimensional bubbles, pocket universes. This data seems to suggest you crossed dimensions.”
That wasn’t completely news to Bo. She’d theorized she hadn’t actually been anywhere in this world, otherwise she was relatively certain Lara and Kenzi would’ve remembered her and found her.
Turning back to Bo, Duncan scanned her with the screwdriver. When that data popped up on the screen, his eyes went wide and his eyebrows practically joined his hairline.
“Is that a good surprised look or a bad surprised look?” Bo asked. “Am I carrying an alien inside of me that’s going to burst out of my chest at any second or something?” Leave it to Bo to default to pop culture references.
“I don’t know yet. You aren’t human, for starters.” Duncan commented. The physiology was different. “And there’s...something I don’t understand on here.” There was some data that correlated with the data taken from both the card and the creator, suggesting Bo herself had crossed dimensions. But there was something else that seemed to be part of Bo and yet not. Whatever it was seemed to be radiating energy? He looked at her chest but didn’t see anything.
Luckily for all involved, he didn’t actually try to touch Bo’s chest.
When Clara wasn’t looking at the data, she was paying attention to her dad’s expressions as that tended to let her know the direction a project was going. All things considered, she’d be interested in his side project about the dimension bleed over as well. It wasn’t like she had much else to do these days when she wasn’t doing her own side jobs or pretending to be a waitress to have conversations with strangers.
Nor did the news shock Bo. Which… not all that unheard of. After all, if that particular answer were already known from her dreams this wouldn’t be news. However, had it been an unknown from the dreams…. Well that would have been awkward. Just like it would have been had he tried to touch Bo’s chest where….
Yeah. Definitely weird data on the screen, none of which made sense to Clara. So she grabbed her Sonic Sunglasses to see if that would show an image of what her dad was looking for. But if it hadn’t shown up on the Sonic Screwdriver or screen, she wasn’t going to really expect it to do so with the sunglasses.
That was...not a helpful answer to her question. “Uh, okay, kinda not liking the denial of a potentially grotesque and dramatic death happening there.” Because really, that would just ruin everything. She was supposed to be getting married soon, not dying or something.
“I don’t think it’ll kill you. At least not in that way. The readings don’t suggest whatever it is is alive.” Duncan’s mind was trying to unravel this anomaly. He didn’t always like anomalies. “Alright, first question. What sort of non-human are you?” The data didn’t tell what her species was, probably because her species wasn’t already in the TARDIS’ databank.
“I’m fae. A succubus, specifically speaking.” This time, Bo didn’t need to prove she wasn’t human, the proof was already on the screen.
“Succubus? As in the same thing as the demon?” Duncan had run into ‘demons’ before. They were hardly pleasant to deal with, but they hadn’t looked like Bo either.
“Sort of, but not really. While I need food and such, what sustains my life is chi, or life energy, of others. Generally I take it during sex, and chi also heals me if I’m injured.” This seemed...somewhat odd and creepy to talk about with an old man looking at her like she was some scientific study, but she had faith that Clara would intervene if Duncan got too out of hand.
Duncan wasn’t known for helpful answers. Clara… probably should have told that to Bo before. He was brilliant, however he had no tact and wasn’t known for phrasing things that would seem helpful right away. Especially when there was concern about what was showing up on the scans. Not like they even knew what was showing up on the scans beyond the energy displacement that was similar to the tarot card and crater. Though she was rather intrigued by what Bo was telling them. With all the different alien species they had seen in the dreams, a Succubus wasn’t so far fetched, even if she did shoot a look at her dad when he just straight up asked if it was like a demon. Honestly.
“Huh.” Was basically the only reaction Clara had about what Bo needed to survive, though she supposed it wasn’t so shocking. It was just rather...intimate. And okay a bit awkward even though she knew her dad was in Doctor mode and not really paying attention to that. Bo was right though in that she’d put a stop to any awkward that might have come up. Still, best that she didn’t realise just how much older he was thanks to the Time Lord thing.
Luckily for Bo, she wouldn’t be phased by ‘extremely older man’ considering she dealt with fae in her dreams that were old. She’d never quite gotten an exact age out of Dyson, but she guessed he was at least 1,000 years old. Trick was older than that. So really, age didn’t make things weird. Except when it was someone who looked old trying to hit on her or something equally awkward.
“Regeneration?” Duncan looked back at the data, scanning through it again. “Interesting, but not relevant to the problem at hand. It’s clear you crossed dimensions. Did you suffer adverse effects from that? Aside from the memory loss, of course.”
“Initially, I was experiencing nausea, dizziness and it felt like my insides were trying to tear themselves apart.” Those had been the major symptoms, at any rate. Nothing outwardly physical, at least.
“Those symptoms would coincide with crossing a dimensional barrier without any shielding from doing so. There are always consequences to such things happening.” He’d experienced the time when his TARDIS had ended up in that pocket universe. The place had stripped the essence of the TARDIS out of herself and implanted her in a human body.
Dreams were weird like that, time suddenly didn’t mean what it used to mean. Especially with Time Lords and time travelling and who even knew when it came to Bo’s dreams. Clara didn’t have that particular intel, so she would just go from what she had information on.
Regeneration was an interesting term though she supposed it made sense. Each thing was different and could mean different things. So for now it was just listening to the information, taking mental notes and the like. Though it seemed on par with what she had experienced.
Which meant that so far, there wasn’t all that much information given. Though the dimensional energy could hopefully be traced, or at least give some answers after more investigation into it, even if the strange energy signature would still be a mystery.
“Clearly,” Bo responded. She’d experienced crossing dimensions before in her dreams when she’d gone to save Kenzi from Baba Yaga’s realm. “So, is there anything to be done about the whole memory loss thing? Because I really don’t like not knowing where I was and what I did.” Or what was done to her, but she left that unsaid. She just plain needed to know.
“There are ways to unlock memories, yes. Clara told me about it. Before doing any of that, I need to look inside your head.” Duncan said. Yeah, that probably came off badly, but he didn’t literally mean crack open Bo’s skull or anything like that.
“Look inside my head?” She asked, a little disturbed by that thought.
“Yes. It’s completely painless to you. It’s something I can do as a Time Lord. Perhaps I can see what’s blocking your memories and we could do something about it.” Duncan explained. At least he wasn’t talking about erasing memories. But even so, Bo gave him a skeptical look, then looked at Clara for her opinion on the matter.
It probably was a sign of how used she was to the Doctor and the things that he tended to do that she didn’t think anything about the comment about looking inside of Bo’s head. It was only after she noticed the look that Clara realized that it was probably a disconcerting thing to just hear without context.
“Don’t worry, it’s safe. Time Lord thing.” Which was… usually the only way to explain things when it came to the Doctor. And given the whole succubus thing, it wasn’t like Bo was unused to the changes that could happen because of the dreams.
It was definitely weird, and considering Bo had had her mind played with by fae before, she wasn’t new to the concept. She needed assurance that it was safe, and when Clara gave it, she nodded a bit and looked back at Duncan. “Alright, go ahead.” She really hoped that this would give some answers.
“This won’t hurt. Promise.” Duncan said, with a little smile as he stepped closer to Bo. Reaching out, he pressed his fingertips against both sides of her head and closed his eyes. He then began to look through her mind. Normally, this sort of thing would go smoothly and yield results. However, in this instance, Duncan quickly ran into some barrier and he was painfully repelled out of Bo’s mind. He let out a cry as a slight burning sensation ran through his head. He pulled his hands away from Bo and pressed them to his own head as he stumbled back a few steps.
Bo also stumbled backwards a bit, though she didn’t experience pain, only disorientation from the connection and then the sudden loss. “Are you alright?” She asked as she shook her head. Bo felt...weird, but she couldn’t really describe it.
That… that was new.
“Dad!”
Because at the end of the day, Duncan was still her dad and so she ran over to him to make sure he was okay. She knew that he would brush her off, but she didn’t care. What was obvious though was that there was more to what had happened to Bo than any of them seemed to realize.
Duncan grumbled a bit, shaking his head as he straightened after a few moments. As expected, he did brush Clara off. His eyes narrowed a bit as he looked at Bo. It probably looked like he was glaring, but he was studying, trying to figure out what exactly had just repelled him out of her mind.
“Someone went to a lot of trouble to keep the memories of what you experienced a secret. There’s some sort of barrier in your mind. I am uncertain what it is or how to get past it. At least not without frying one of our minds in the process.” He explained.
“The hell?” Bo asked, confused, and possibly a little angry, over why someone would go to these lengths. “So okay, I crossed dimensions, someone called the Wanderer brought me there, made everyone here forget I even existed, and there’s some barrier around my memories of wherever I was. That makes very little sense to me.” And it didn’t do anything to assuage her fear that an alien was going to burst out of her chest at some point in the near future.
“You are an anomaly. Clearly they either don’t like you, or they have some master plan at work.” Either situation didn’t have anything good about it.
The level at which someone went to keep Bo from knowing was beyond disturbing. And she undoubtedly had no say in the matter. At least once the Doctor had forgotten her, it had been a choice between the two of them, see who would lose their memories but they went into it knowing. And the fact that he didn’t even know how to get past it right now?
“Looks like we’re going to need to do some research on our end to see if we can’t figure something out. And see if anything comes from your dreams…” Because at the moment, that was probably the most likely way to get answers, as if the dreams were ever helpful.
“Sorry we can’t be of more help right now.”
“Well, I am the unaligned succubus, half the fae in my dreams are trying to kill me anyway, so I shouldn’t be surprised someone wanted me out of the way.” Bo rubbed her forehead a bit. It was frustrating to not get answers, but at least she knew there was something blocking the memories now. That would give them something to work with. “It’s alright, at least we know a little more than we did. I just need to be patient and wait for my dreams to provide answers.” And for the first time, Bo was wishing her dreams would come in quick succession.
“Indeed, we know more than we did. We can investigate further, see what we come up with.” Duncan really didn’t like that barrier that was in Bo’s head. Which reminded him of Donna Noble. After all, he’d done something similar to her, making her forget the time she’d spent with him. Yes, he’d done it to save her life, but even so, it was hard to think of her, of how close they’d gotten. “If we figure anything out, we’ll be in touch.”
“Thanks, and if I get any revelations from my dreams, I’ll let you know.” Hopefully something would reveal itself soon. And before her wedding. She’d rather not be in the middle of nowhere in India and get a revelation or something that required Duncan or Clara to come immediately.