sixthiterationlogs | the first face this face ever met (in a village)

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the first face this face ever met (in a village)

WHO: Amy Pond
WHERE: Outside the Fountain / The Woods
WHEN: January 4th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Potential, incredibly likely yelling
STATUS: Open

(I)

In her last moments, she's not entirely sure what to expect. Will it hurt? Will she regret it? Will something happen that makes her take back her insistence that the Doctor blink for her? What if she doesn't end up in the same place as Rory, what if something goes wrong and she's stuck away from him and the Doctor forever? Then she doesn't have any time to think because when she opens her eyes, it turns out that the angel's sent her to the bottom of the bloody Hudson river. Thrashing her way up, Amy inhales air as deeply as she can, scrambling and hauling herself out of an icy fountain to find that not only has she been sent to the wrong place, but all her clothes are gone and they've gone and strapped something bulky on her back. Glancing at her surroundings to make sure no one's about to come out of the treeline with anything sharp, Amy takes her time shifting through the bag, peering at the long johns with a wrinkle of her nose.

"No thank you," she says, jamming them at the very bottom of her bag, shivering wildly as her hair starts to ice at the ends with the continued exposure to the cold, but that's in her periphery for her attention. She bundles up in her coat while scanning the area, wiping tears from her cheeks when she realizes that she's been crying since she got out of that stupid looking fountain. "Rory?" she tries, an echoing croak in a quiet space. Trust a weeping angel to muck everything up. Bundling herself a little tighter, Amy shoves everything back in her bag, glancing down to see a shade of green she doesn't even think she owns anything in, anymore, and hauls the bag over a shoulder as she sets out to find out where it is she's landed.

Apparently, judging from the buildings and the lack of anything like technology, there's a creeping fear that she's gone too far back. What did New York look like in the 1800's? The 1700's? Why isn't the Doctor here when she needs her? Why doesn't she know this sort of thing? Stubbornly readying herself, she starts in the direction of one of the paths, heart pounding wildly, as if she's going to turn around and there'll be an angel there, ready to take her life because it turns out she can't trust them after all and it's all just some elaborate, cruel trick. It's ten minutes before she sees someone, but when she does, she won't pretend that she doesn't flail and charge towards them.

"Hey!" she shouts, at the top of her lungs so that people in the neighbouring hemisphere would be just as likely to hear Amy as the person she's shouting at. "Stop right there and you tell me where Rory Williams is, or I swear to you, I will..." she presses her lips together and stares down at her boots, which are really tightly laced, so there goes taking that off and punting it at them. "I'll probably just shout some more, but I can be very cross. Because," she says, eyes blazing with determination, "I just lost my husband at least three times today and I am tired of tracking him down through time and space and I'm not leaving until I've got some answers!"

(II.)

The woods remind her of the forest on the ship, all those years ago when they were fleeing the angels. Those stupid weeping angels have been there for some of the worst parts of Amy's life, but she'd really thought that by making the choice to go back in time to find Rory had been the right one. The only trouble is that finding Rory is turning out to be more of a production than she'd expected.

She's been wandering around for hours now, with a quick stop in a few homes where someone had mentioned seeing someone that fit Rory's description, but with no idea where he might be. Once her hair had dried and she'd warmed up past the point of 'shivering her knickers off', Amy had gone for the woods. Maybe Rory's out here, trying to find a way out (trying to find a way to her). Maybe she'll find him and it'll have been barely a few seconds since he'd been stolen by the angel. Not likely, but whatever, sometimes miracles happen. After all, she helped reboot the universe with the Doctor in it, why shouldn't she be able to find Rory in a small little forest?

Out here, the snow is beautiful and untouched, but at the same time, that level of pristine nature also sends a chill down her spine. Hearing footsteps behind her, she tries to find something to defend herself, thinking that maybe she should have started with that, given that she ends up with a branch that looks more like a feather duster than a weapon, but it's something.

"I hope you're here to help," she warns as she turns, wielding out the branch, "or I'll...tickle you until it's really uncomfortable," she warns, and hopes that she can make that seem somehow frightening.

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Amy gives her a look that sort of reads like 'and?' because that's not exactly very detailed. Then again, when you've been to all corners of the universe (and outside of it, that one time), four hundred and fifty years in the future starts to sort of feel like the smallest bit of a hop and a skip. "Okay," is all she says, her mind still roaming over where Rory might go if he were here and what signs he might have left her.

"What planet?" she asks, even though her attention is split, now, searching trees and the environment. "System? Language? Are you an alien then?" she asks, in the curious way you might ask if someone speaks French.

"Um," says Nerys, because this is quite honestly the first time in the months she's been here that anyone has thought to ask if she isn't human. She's not entirely certain how to answer, how people here will react if they find out she's not only not from around 'here', but particularly so.

She blinks a few times, goes with cagey, the sort of not-quite-full answers that Cardassians love. "I'm from the planet Bajor, in the Alpha Quadrant--the galaxy called the, uh," shit, what were the weird names the humans gave it, "Milky Way or the Silver River. We speak Bajoran. You're from Earth, I'm assuming?"

The way Amy was asking her questions almost seemed to Nerys like the woman she'd found had had this type of conversation before. Conversational, the tone.

"Yeah, I was on Earth before here," Amy agrees, trying to muster up the energy to smile, but it's not even close to there. She feels so tired and she probably shouldn't have brought this up, but it's good to make conversation. Besides, if she's going to figure out where she is, it's good to rule out some things, and if there's alien planets involved, maybe there's also some higher tech at work. "I had a friend, a best friend, he's an alien," she shares, "but looks the same as you and me. Well, not the same," she says, gesturing towards her chin. "Big, big one of these," she says, choking out a fond sob as she realises she's never going to get to mock the Doctor's face again.

Hers might have been the first face his saw, but his is still one of the dearest to her, only third to Rory and her daughter. "He had a time machine. He took me and Rory across the universe, time and space," she shares. "Aliens are sort of the kind of thing you get used to. Aliens, monsters, and your legs in the best shape of your life from all the running."

Nerys can tell that Amy is trying, and it almost breaks her heart when the younger woman chokes up when talking about her friend. Though, after the last comment, one track of her mind is trying to figure out which kind of hominid has a large chin. It's fortunate, perhaps, that Amy has run into one of the people here who's used to this kind of a story (sort of--time machines aren't exactly thick on the ground in Nerys' universe, for very good reason).

"A big jaw, your friend? And good to meet someone else who's been off Earth," she says, and smiles, gently, feeling the need to advise Amy before she tells many other people about her life. "A lot of people here haven't, or well, off whatever world they're from. They're not really used to non-humans and space travel--we don't do much time travel where I'm from, but it's a possibility. You must have seen so much."

"The three of us, when we travelled, we were a sight," she shares, swallowing back the grief that comes with speaking in the past tense about this. "My husband had a nose you could see from a mile away, the Doctor had that chin of his, and I had my legs." River had the hair, she remembered fondly, thinking about their trip back to 1969. "When I was a kid, I was sort of skeptical about the whole thing, but I wanted to believe in it."

"Took twelve years, unfortunately, for that to actually happen," comes the next words, bitter as they are. It's not like she's still holding onto that as much, not after having over twelve years of travels with the Doctor, but she still thinks of those five psychiatrists and all the biting. "The universe is so vast and amazing and incredible," she shares, her eyes roving over the place in front of her, like she's looking for the same. "But I'd just given that up, before I came here. I chose the slow life."

"Legs," says Nerys, somewhat skeptically, but gently, glancing back at said body parts on Amy, to try and see what exactly she means, but obviously Amy's wearing long pants so they're not really visible. "So...you found out about time travel when you were a child, but wasn't actually certain that it was possible?" she asks. "Until you grew up and went traveling with your...Doctor friend and your husband?"

It's kind of a weird story, but Nerys doesn't mind. Around here, anything is plausible. "And yeah, the universe is pretty incredible. I miss space," she admits, if somewhat pragmatically yet. "I'm...look, you seem to get this kind of thing. Please don't tell anyone, but I'm not a human. I just don't want anyone getting weird about it."

"Long story, involves a period of my life where I really like shorts and skirts," she admits, but also because those shorts and skirts were often worn in preparation for a place they absolutely didn't get to go to, thanks to the Doctor's poor steering. Honestly, she still doesn't know why he wouldn't just let River give him a lesson or two. "There was a police box that crashed in my backyard when I was seven," she says, shrugging her shoulders. "Twelve years later, the same alien man comes back, thinking it's been two minutes. I believed in him, even if no one else did. My raggedy Doctor," she shares, through blurry eyes that she forces away with a rapid press of her fingers to her eyes.

"Sorry," she manages, "I'm really not this emotional normally," she protests, through a watery, weak tone. "You're an alien?" she asks, smiling through the sadness. "What are you doing here, then?"

"Well, you may get to wear those around here, eventually. When it's not the death of winter." Nerys isn't quite sure if that's the right human saying, but that's fine, she's sure Amy will get the point. "It was really warm here, in the summertime, so you just have to stay bundled up until then. What exactly is a police box, was your friend a police officer?" There've always been rumors that the Federation has temporal cops, but Nerys herself has never had the misfortune of running into one. Maybe Amy's friend is a rogue policeman...

She pauses the train of thought as Amy sniffles, hearing her voice crack a touch on the 'Sorry', and stops (even the cold wind is cutting through the wool of her sweater). "Hey," she says, and puts a hand out, extending it back towards Amy. "It's okay, you've had a rough day, all right?"

The question--what are you doing here--is a good one. It's also one she doesn't know how to answer.

"No, it's sort of that it looks like one. It's supposed to change wherever you go, so it blends in, but it's broken and I don't know if it's impossible to fix or impossible to convince the Doctor to fix it," she admits, because stubborn is apparently one of the main traits you need if you're going to go flying away, seeing as you're flying with King Stubborn, some days.

"I just want to find Rory," she confesses at the sympathy, shaking her head to try and lose all the emotion that's welling up in her. "Everything I did, it's all fine and I can bear it, but only if it's for Rory."

"Oh," Nerys says, still not entirely sure what exactly a police box is, but she's fine with not having the best idea. Besides, if the time machine isn't actually one, does it really matter?

As for the rest, shockingly Nerys is not very good at the whole platitudes thing--so it's a bit of a shock for her that her first impulse is to tell Amy that wherever Rory is, he's probably safe. She manages to quash it, because she doesn't actually know that, for starters, and the dangers of where they are right now may not actually be the best topic of conversation at this exact moment. Amy can likely handle it, but she's clearly had one hell of a day.

"We'll look for him," she says. "And look, if he's not here yet--he very well could end up here soon. People really do just come out of nowhere."

This is also probably not very comforting.

"I mean, out of a fountain isn't the strangest thing I've ever seen, but it is up there," Amy confesses, trying to be positive and optimistic and all that other bullcrap that she never really manages, because that's more the Doctor's thing while Amy has a habit of being relentlessly pragmatic and cynical about the world. She breathes in and then out, but by the time that breath's done with, she's already charging forward, bull in a china shop. "C'mon then, let's get a move on, you said there's other places around here?"

"Houses and warm places?" Places that people would probably be in, but Amy's landed in way too many weird places and found that it's not really the buildings that are always interesting.

"We get a bunch of people, it's not impossible," says Nerys, because she's not exactly all light and sweetness herself. Sometimes she wonders if she would have been if it weren't for the Occupation, but she suspects not. "There's a whole village. It's strange--all very old Earth stuff, but while stuff was out of use and dusty, it wasn't falling to pieces. And we all got those backpacks with clothes in."

She's not going to go into the other revelations yet, Amy seems like she's more than clever enough to put the 'being watched' pieces together. "Easy, don't burn all your energy running around. We're almost there."

"The backpacks don't fit." She's grown up around someone who poked and prodded at things that didn't make sense to the point that now, she's doing it herself. She hauls hers off her back to show off the zippers and stitching. The zippers alone look way more synthetic and manufactured than this place, which just makes her think of the med-bay masquerading as a mermaid. Technology and vintage appearances haven't really boded well in her past. "This doesn't make sense," she says, even escaping the idea of the fountain. "No one else has made contact? No program or computer or tech? No one from outside?"

She shivers a little as she rubs her hands over her arms. "Cheers," is all she says. "Don't suppose you've also got a big bottle of red lying around wherever you're taking me?"

"They don't. It's a later period than the houses and furnishings." For Nerys, the backpacks are old anyway, and quaint, inasmuch as she's able to follow this kind of thing. Despite her restricted upbringing, Earth fashion's tended to disseminate throughout the quadrant, and there was a brief period several years ago where retro was chic.

"There...have been some things found, that seem to indicate observation," she says, as diplomatically as possible. "But no one knows who it is, or how they have the kind of power they do. As for the alcohol...not much, there might be something left from the feast still."

Someone's likely got a bottle of hard liquor somewhere, and Nerys is sure she can make an argument that it's restorative or some shit like that.

"Last place I was in that had things like this, it was because of some alien that was sort of lying low there, bringing electricity," she says, thinking of Mercy and their dealings there and the Doctor's incessant stupidity when it had been all too clear how much time he'd spent alone and stupid. "Are they manipulating time? The area around us?" She's not even sure what you'd do if you figured it out.

"No one's come to rescue anyone? Not at all?" she asks as her nerves start to eat away at her, some cynical part of her brain parroting that the Doctor's not coming for her, not anymore. Wendy Darling's gone and grown up and he needs a new companion.

"They could be aliens," Nerys admits with a thoughtful tilt to her chin. She's thinking of the Prophets, herself, and of the Q, not for the first time either. But the Prophets are usually less deliberate than this, less concerned with detail; and the Q are, from her understanding, somewhat more sadistic as well as easily bored. They've been here a while, after all, and the things happening to them seem to come as a slow burn. No finger-snapping. "They seem to have some control over the weather and animals, and things do just suddenly turn up out of nowhere. But time...I'd need a tricorder to tell you that. Nothing quantifiable."

She frowns a little bit at the tone of Amy's last questions, grateful that they're not far from the inn now. "And there hasn't been any big rescue operation, no," she says, trying to bring the young woman along, out of the cold, before they have the 'yes, we're very stuck' conversation in full. "I suspect wherever we are is off the beaten track."

She wonders if a tricorder is anything like a sonic screwdriver and if all these aliens have just got different fancy names for the same thing that they all use, but she deliberately doesn't ask that because it doesn't sound like there's any examples for them to use, either. "Why just the weather and the animals?" Amy wonders, because if you're going to be some kind of all-seeing, all-powerful alien playing around with people like ants, why stop at the cows?

Not that she's encouraging that, but she can't help but think it. "Different planet, right? This can't be Earth."

"Well," says Nerys, and thank the Prophets that they're coming up the path to the inn, because she's freezing and she's not sure how much longer she can deflect from a very long and patchy (necessarily so--it's not like she knows what's going on) conversation regarding the things that the 'Watchers' have done. "Some of it's maybe plausible deniability. Make you think that maybe the idea of someone watching you is nonsense, that it's all explainable without any omniscience."

Pushing open the door, heavy and cold, she adds, "And others here have said the stars are right, for Earth, and a lot of the plants are Earth plants. Not that I'd know, but they're trustworthy people. Scientists, people into nature."

Amy practically bolts inside the minute she even sees the prospect of warmth, breathing out relief for the fire even if it's like a stinging sort of warmth that all of a sudden smacks her in the face, making everything hurt as soon as the relief fades away. "Earth plants and Earth stars just mean someone's really good at the Earth, though, doesn't it?" Amy points out, thinking of Appalapachia and all the Earth relics it bore just to keep people safe. "I've seen a whole forest on a spaceship, before," she says, gesturing to the area outside the door.

"Why can't this be something like that? Has anyone looked at the trees to see if they're a machine?" she asks, wondering if Nerys is going to think the cold's gone to her brain.

Nerys shuts the door behind them and tries not to eye the cloak she lent Amy earlier. Despite herself, the warmth brings on an involuntary shiver. "Easy there," she says, pummeled a little by the questions. "The plants are real, or as close as anyone can tell, and there's a botanist here so he would probably have noticed. But yes, it could just be someone being good at making an Earth copy."

The thought that it could be holo technology has crossed her mind occasionally, but they wouldn't exactly be able to eat holo plants and stay nourished.

"Can you feel all your fingers and toes?" she asks, trying to stay focused. Checks for frostbite are commonsense. "Is anything numb?"

"My head feels a bit tingly," Amy admits, shedding the cloak in order to get use of both her arms to reach up and feel it, trying to figure out if she's got frostbite. This is just another thing she should have spent more time listening to Rory about, but she's got a bad habit of just letting his voice lull over her while she ignores him.

"I'm not sure whether to want this to be a spaceship or the past," she admits, frowning. "You're sure there's no big blue box around here? Would look like a police box."

"That's probably just your circulation picking back up, coming back from being constricted, that all slows down when you're out in the cold," Nerys says cautiously, because she's not Julian, dear Prophets she's so not Julian. She tosses the cloak over the back of an empty chair, then gently touches Amy's shoulder, guiding her to a table and chairs near the hearth.

"Here, let's sit you down," she says, worried the young woman might pass out or something and then really, really need a medic. "Definitely haven't seen a big blue box."

Amy lets the words flow over her, trying to let them be a solace or maybe just a reminder of Rory chastising her before for not dressing appropriately for the cold, but it's not her fault the Doctor kept on telling them they were going to warmer climates and then dropping them places where she froze. "Thanks," she mumbles as she settles down, leaning towards the fire without even realizing her body is doing that, hating that she's so stupidly cold.

"Suppose you can't get rescued every time," is what she says, but that's not true. She's been here for minutes, maybe only even a few hours at most. It could take the Doctor longer to find her, she just has to be patient. Right? Someone will come for her, they always do.

"Give it some time," Nerys says, though she herself has given it a shitload of time already, months on months of time. Maybe Amy's Doctor friend has some sort of tech that's beyond what Bajor and the Federation can scrounge up, and they'll all be out of here eventually. But for Nerys, hope doesn't come from wishing, it comes from remembering you're alive, and that living is the best fucking revenge, so she's probably not very good at reassurances.

"Do you want some mint tea?" she asks. "Or chamomile? We don't really have anything with caffeine, unfortunately, but something to warm you up inside too."

"Mint tea's fine," Amy says, at the first thing that's offered to her. It's not like she thinks she can be very picky, because this place definitely doesn't look like you can just pop off to the shops and pick up whatever it is you're missing. Looks like she'll have to learn to make do, but lucky for Amy, she's got plenty of experience in that and she's too stubborn to let a little village get the best of her.

"Honestly, anything is fine," she promises, ready for the heat of a mug more than anything in it.

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