(Untitled)

[youwiththeears]

It's the Gallifreyan influence on the Valiant that makes the cells so small and bland. White walls, rounded edges, circular windows in the doors, and no apparent locks or latches. Of course, they weren't cells on the blueprints. They were store rooms. But the locks are there, and with the addition of an awkward chair as a cot and a prisoner,

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[kinda_cheeky]

The Doctor is as much a prisoner of his own frustration as he is of the invisible leash the Master has inexplicably attached to him. He'd lingered in his pain, frustration, and just a bit of hopelessness for a while after his argument with the Master on the observation deck. Then his mind had inevitably wandered back to thoughts of Jack, of getting inside the Captain's head and finding the trace remainder of another's presence. The imagery was there too, of course. The weeks of torture, of death and life and death again, and then that brief respite from it all in a tiny white cell far too small to hold two people. The Doctor had seen that almost-parallel of himself inside Jack's head, witnessed the memory of the scuffle, and had wanted to ask more about it, until in a likewise fashion he and the Captain had been interrupted as well

[youwiththeears]

The should-be-Doctor is almost all the way through his second mile of the morning, and his mad pacing has slowed to a tired amble. It gives him time to talk to himself. He's not crazy, but there's no one else, and nothing makes sense, but when he gets it out of his jumbled mind and into the air, sometimes it does.

"-didn't work. But he hasn't come back."

All the bruises from the guards' quelling of him and Jack have faded to rich shades of yellow, almost healed away, but he's still so thin, and dark circles under his eyes speak of exhaustion.

[kinda_cheeky]

Ah, so there's life inside there after all, the Doctor finds. He takes advantage of being unnoticed, for the moment, and leans against the door, peering inside at ... well, the sort-of himself. It's odd, to see his last regeneration - was he that skinny then, did the ears really look that big? - walking around inside a room, talking to himself. Odder still is the fact that, from what understanding he's gotten from Jack, this individual does not remember being the Doctor of ... whatever universe he's from. (And this Doctor, for the record, is not particularly comforted by the idea of a world without a Doctor in it! It's not just his ego speaking, really.)

Finally, working up the nerve, he taps fingertips against the glass - not the four-beat rhythm the Master favors, but something more of a, say ... shave-and-a-haircut nature. "Hello in there?"

[youwiththeears]

He whirls to face the window, half-expecting the Master back, or a sarcastic guard, someone to talk to, but no, it's himself. The younger one. Jack's Doctor, for all the good he was doing for the fact.

"You." He stops, bites his lip, and comes over to the door. "Can you open it?"