Who: The Doctor (tenth) and Ianto Jones What: Meeting to go take a look at this barrier and discussing timelines. Where: Starting at the clock tower. When: The 29th. Afternoon Rating: PG? Status:In Progress.
To say that Storybrooke was a strange place was an easy statement for The Doctor, and that was saying quite a bit when you really understood the lexicon of experience he had under his belt. It was a place where, near as he could tell, all the rules were bent and broken, where reality held barring no further than what one knew, and even then it was suspect. It was a place where the lines between what he felt, what he knew, and what he believed, were getting fuzzy. It was a place where, for better or worse, past and future were intersecting and, while it was a great comfort to see some familiar faces, it also raised a lot of complications when it came to dealing with the causality of, what River Song had so infamously coined, Spoilers.
Rose was not from his timeline, he was ahead of her, and the same could be said for Jack. He knew their truths. He knew their futures. He knew the heartbreaks and complications they would face. He knew the answers to their questions and, beyond that, he knew when he'd given them. If it hadn't been for Mars, and the harrowing catastrophe that had occurred when he'd tried to play by his own rules, The Doctor might have told them. As it stood, he couldn't, which meant a lot of evasive dodging and a rather underhanded manner of treating them that put him at great odds with himself.
It was why, by in large, The Doctor had reverted to a world of mild seclusion, outside his PDA. He'd disassembled a wide variety of the electronics in the apartment he shared with Rose (which was weird without everything else) and left them with only the essentials, which did include the television -- but not the remote. It was him staying busy, not because The Doctor really believed it would solve the questions present, but because it was what they were used to. He didn't have the slightest idea what was going on here but, as long as he looked busy, they generally didn't pry too much.
It had been a welcome relief however, to find out that Ianto Jones did not appear to be in the same delicate state as the others. While the two were barely acquainted, with The Doctor knowing little more than he worked with Jack at Torchwood, he had decided it was a relationship well suited for cultivation. He would need allies after all, and likely more than he had. The Doctor reasoned, if he was going to be working with more and more people, it would probably be best if at least some of them were people he could discuss things openly with, without the fear of stepping in some temporal sinkhole that irreparably damaged the future of someone he cared for greatly. He couldn't afford to be that selfish and irresponsible, not again.
It was why he was currently standing on the corner of the town square, his hands thrust into the pockets of his long brown coat, with his eyes a wash of spiraling emotions. Everything about this place told him it was wrong. It made his hairs stand on end. It made him tense and edgy, and The Doctor did not like it. It was time to put himself into forward motion, time to find some answers and, with a bit of luck -- or magic -- figure out a way to set this all right. He was, after all, The Doctor, what else was he going to do?
Priority one? Meet Ianto and recollect some measure of sanity at not having to orchestrate a conversation with his own flippant responses or any kind of scolding. He didn't like how hard he'd been on Rose, and he seriously hoped a day without having to be so callous and stoic would help him let go of some of that. Step two? Step two was visit this barrier he'd heard many of the locals talk about and see if the improvised equipment he had built would be able to get some kind of reading from it.
Step three? Well, The Doctor hadn't quite gotten that far yet.