[ well, that's definitely a voice he's gotten used to, considering how much time they'd spent together on braccia, at least before things had gotten as crazy as it did at the very end, where keeping track of much of anyone had become too complicated to even try.
(he wouldn't say it, but he's relieved to hear from him, indicating that he's doing plenty fine.) ]
Shit, I'd been worried to hell we'd lost it. [ plenty sarcastic but it's not necessarily mean-spirited either. ] Everything else in one piece?
[ The sarcasm willfully goes right over his head, because it is a relief that he'd managed to bring it over from Braccia. Along with his iridescent bowtie and stripey trousers, which he'd worn at the Lionetta Distraction Party; and a good thing too, otherwise he might have left them behind at the lower headquarters. ]
Yes, yes, everything else is right as rain, as they say. And smashing job, you and Peter. That gives us a 100% success rate so far.
[ he's not even mad that the doctor doesn't catch his tone, already used to his more carefree attitude whenever they exchange words. it at least saves him from having to talk about himself, not necessarily caring to go into how shit he feels physically. ]
Did what I needed to do. We all need the orbs, right? [ for whatever reason or another.
he pauses for a moment, thinking about the way he listened to the orb speak out in his head during his confrontation with cheri. ] You think what we did is really gonna make a difference?
[ Yes, a blessed thing sometimes, to forgo the video for audio — he'd done it once, with Clara, in order to spare her the pain of having to see him in his (thankfully) temporary monstrous form. ]
I don't know. [ It's the truth. And the shift in his tone of voice, from the excitable, whimsical Doctor, has gone a bit more serious; thoughtful. ] Suppose we're going to have to keep collecting them in order to find out. I've thought a lot about it, about these orbs. This station collecting them; the promises they've made to us.
This one glowed red. Not quite sure what that means.
[ he wouldn't know, and before this last mission, he hadn't really thought to ask so many details about what it meant to obtain the orbs, mostly cause he hadn't realized the life and energy that would be pulsing in it, how it's proven to be a lot more complicated than just snatching up a sphere.
quiet for a moment, he thinks of himself on that top floor, talking with cheri, with the voice that had suddenly rung in his head. ]
When I was up there, it ... I could hear it. [ he hasn't talked about it with anyone else, more focused on his healing, but now he can't help but recall the feeling of hearing that echoing sounds in his mind. ] The orb carrying these ... voices. Right after it stopped Cheri from using that magic poison stuff on me. [ a beat, and then: ] And it felt ... strong. Maybe too strong. Maybe the price of all of this is too big.
You could hear it? What did it say? What was it telling you?
[ Well, that's new. The Doctor had been curious about the orbs, quite personally, but he hasn't had a chance to share a private moment with one, didn't get more than a glimpse along with the rest of the orbers before it had swiftly been passed to the man behind the closed door of the North wing.
(And that door is one the Doctor has been trying to no avail to get past, too.) ]
The last one was a bright gold, and it'd been given freely to us by the one who wielded its power. Nice girl, I wish we could have done more to help her, really. [ By the end of it, the story had become a tragedy and the Doctor can only hope that she'd found some peace before she embraced the end. ] We didn't have to take it from her.
Yeah, honestly, Cheri put up a hell of a fight. She wasn't giving it up. [ which is extremely telling with the injury he's bearing now that seems to be lasting longer than any healing tech on this station could heal fast enough. ]
But it spoke to her actually. I could just ... hear it for some reason. Maybe because I was close enough for it, I don't know, but — it was something about how killing us wouldn't add to the chaos. That the deal was made and they wanted to be whole.
[ they because it wasn't just a singular voice either. ]
As long as we got this deal, we're essentially in their protection. For now. Which only makes me more skeptical about where this thing's gonna end up by the end.
They wanted to be whole? [ The Doctor repeats this, turning the words around on his tongue. Curious; very, very curious. Hmm.
Thoughtfully, he repeats: ] They.
[ Not only can these orbs speak, but they're plenty aware that they come as a ... set, then. A they. Perhaps a species of their own making, intelligent, with their own agenda? Or, perhaps just as likely, a device used by another race not unlike his experience with the Shakri cubes. But to what end? ]
Well, that's very interesting, isn't it? Given a chance to study these orbs, we might learn more than just hearing a couple of voices. But you're quite right, this does seem to raise a few more questions than answers. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
It's like they were all talking at once. Communicating like a hive mind.
[ which says a lot about what these orbs could be, that not only are they alive, but that there's unified intention here, and if they're so eager to come together as one, something big is going to happen when they do. ]
Not like we get much of a chance to study them though, right? Guessing the first one was locked up tight as quickly as possible just like this one. [ he'd only barely gotten to see it when cheri was using it and it's not like parker was in any position for studying it. ] Don't blame 'em. Orb of that kind of power could turn any one of us into Cheri. But keeps you thinking.
Ah — yes. That room with the unopenable door. The Doctor and I have tried just about everything to get that thing open, but! There's always a way through. It's just a door.
We'll figure it out.
[ He lets out a breath. ]
Suppose you're not wrong though. [ Hm. ] About the effects those orbs can have on us, if they're starting to speak now. [ Or if they've always had that ability but haven't decided to use it until now, which is the more likely scenario. ] Do you think you might be tempted by one?
Every door's got a key. Or a button to get it open.
[ kovacs hasn't necessarily been scrambling to get past it, but there's no doubt more to why it isn't being opened for them than what's been let on.
but maybe it's for a good thing if the orbs are being kept somewhere behind it. ]
I could tell you no. No, I don't want of the things Cheri did — all that power and immortality. But I've seen corruption twist the best of us. And if we're all here because we made a deal to get something we want, no matter how good-willed it might be, that just means the most susceptible people to being corrupted by that thing are right here on this station.
I suppose the orbs and the ones we made the deals with, they all know that. They're all up there with that knowledge, waiting for one of us to break first, eh?
[ To see chaos reign if it comes down to a sole winner to take home their grand prize, like all of this is some grand scheme, some big game, and they're all players for it.
And yet for all of his confidence and devil-may-care attitude, even he isn't sure he could resist such a thing. Could he? If it meant reversing a mistake he holds himself solely responsible for, to save the lives of the people that he loves with every fibre of his hearts, what wouldn't he do? He had once treaded a fine line between healer and warrior. Is it selfish? Is it cowardly? Is it monstrous? Perhaps so, but the Doctor had never claimed to be anything but what he is.
Still. This isn't the conversation for that, and so he shifts his tone to something a little lighter, more conspiratorial.
In slightly hushed tones: ] Between you and me, I don't think it'll work. None of this. No one has control over the things that we've regretted, especially, and this is important, especially when they're fixed points. I'm willing to bet half of this station's regrets are all things that couldn't be undone in any other way and that's why we're all here. So how could it be so easy for one glowing bit of light to change it all, eh?
[ the doctor has a point with the likely high demand from the regrets coming from the people on this station. even with his own personal regret, it's too much to just whisk away and resolve, and yet it's the one he put on the table, likely to see if there even really is a means to change anything of the way things have happened.
but even with the way technology has advanced in his world, along with the sort of magic tricks he's seen some of the orbers capable of, kovacs has a hard time buying into it all being so easily resolved by something that claims to have the power to do so. ]
You don't believe any of it. So then why are you here?
[ it's almost a rhetorical question. because he doesn't really believe in it much either, and yet here he is, just as curious, just as willing to gamble just to find out the truth of it. ]
[ They really are cut from the same cloth in this regard. ]
Curious sort, that's me, I want to know what they've got that might change someone's regret. And if it's something that could destroy the universe once all of these orbs have been collected, well, someone's got to be around to stop it, eh?
[ It's said lightly, very matter-of-factly. It's what the Doctor does, the task he's taken on for himself and those who travel with him. ]
[ curious. it's a trait that kovacs knows well enough, the necessity to die into a mystery, to leave no stone unturned, to find out everything to make it all make sense. it's why he took on bancroft's case to solve his murder, why he's still asking questions, still looking for answers.
and it all applies here too, to better understanding these orbs, this place, for all that it continues to make little sense. ]
Well, you do all that time travel, right? If it'd make sense to anyone, wouldn't that be you? Going back and changing the way something happens?
Yes. Mostly. [ Beat. ] Well — sometimes. For the events along a timeline that aren't a fixed point, yes, perhaps it's possible. But some things, things like a good deal of our regrets, I imagine, it isn't so easy. Some events happen like a never-ending ripple that gets larger with the time that passes, and it's those events that can't be unraveled so easily.
[ Not without a significant price. Sometimes not without a universe being altered and destroyed or forced into some reckoning.
He thinks of his own regret and how much of the timeline he could ruin if he were to take it upon himself to change what had happened. But that's why he was recruited, wasn't it? It's why he'd accepted the contract too. A desperate, foolish, lonely man who finally found his one chance to undo something that he simply couldn't do on his own. A way to cheat the system. ]
It's why I'm just not sure this station and the orbs can do what they've claimed, not without its consequences.
[ even without his knowledge of time travel and whether or not it's even possible (though, on account of the things he's come to see are possible here, he's come to trust that the doctor nor clara would be lying about the whole thing), he can grasp the idea of its complication, of how even a time traveler might be skeptical about a proclamation that the regrets of some several dozen people could be changed in an instant. ]
And how you even determine what a fixed point is? Shouldn't everything theoretically be a fixed point?
Ah. Yes. That's where it gets a little sticky, you see. There are rules, a whole lot of rules, and some of them don't always apply. [He waves a hand like he could grasp a thought out of the air, making the whole concept make sense. But — ] Sometimes you just throw out the whole rulebook. But the common thread in every fixed point is the severity with which it affects the rest of the timeline, you see, and not just your timeline — though that can happen — but the entire universe's timeline. Sometimes the universe itself is at stake. That's when you know — that's when there's a big circle with a cross over it, a 'Do Not Enter' sort of bit.
[ So, in a nutshell — it's all really timey-wimey. The Doctor has experience in feeling most of these fixed points out. And the reason he knows his own regret is a fixed point is because ... well. Undoing it on his own, undoing it like he still sometimes dreams he could do, would render the rest of the universe too fragile.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cracking into this brand new inbox with this moron — un: the.doctor ;
[ Just a regular Tuesday-or-whenever for the Doctor, really. ]
Hope you're quite all right.
Good news, though: I got to keep my shawl!
no subject
(he wouldn't say it, but he's relieved to hear from him, indicating that he's doing plenty fine.) ]
Shit, I'd been worried to hell we'd lost it. [ plenty sarcastic but it's not necessarily mean-spirited either. ] Everything else in one piece?
no subject
[ The sarcasm willfully goes right over his head, because it is a relief that he'd managed to bring it over from Braccia. Along with his iridescent bowtie and stripey trousers, which he'd worn at the Lionetta Distraction Party; and a good thing too, otherwise he might have left them behind at the lower headquarters. ]
Yes, yes, everything else is right as rain, as they say. And smashing job, you and Peter. That gives us a 100% success rate so far.
no subject
Did what I needed to do. We all need the orbs, right? [ for whatever reason or another.
he pauses for a moment, thinking about the way he listened to the orb speak out in his head during his confrontation with cheri. ] You think what we did is really gonna make a difference?
no subject
I don't know. [ It's the truth. And the shift in his tone of voice, from the excitable, whimsical Doctor, has gone a bit more serious; thoughtful. ] Suppose we're going to have to keep collecting them in order to find out. I've thought a lot about it, about these orbs. This station collecting them; the promises they've made to us.
This one glowed red. Not quite sure what that means.
no subject
[ he wouldn't know, and before this last mission, he hadn't really thought to ask so many details about what it meant to obtain the orbs, mostly cause he hadn't realized the life and energy that would be pulsing in it, how it's proven to be a lot more complicated than just snatching up a sphere.
quiet for a moment, he thinks of himself on that top floor, talking with cheri, with the voice that had suddenly rung in his head. ]
When I was up there, it ... I could hear it. [ he hasn't talked about it with anyone else, more focused on his healing, but now he can't help but recall the feeling of hearing that echoing sounds in his mind. ] The orb carrying these ... voices. Right after it stopped Cheri from using that magic poison stuff on me. [ a beat, and then: ] And it felt ... strong. Maybe too strong. Maybe the price of all of this is too big.
no subject
[ Well, that's new. The Doctor had been curious about the orbs, quite personally, but he hasn't had a chance to share a private moment with one, didn't get more than a glimpse along with the rest of the orbers before it had swiftly been passed to the man behind the closed door of the North wing.
(And that door is one the Doctor has been trying to no avail to get past, too.) ]
The last one was a bright gold, and it'd been given freely to us by the one who wielded its power. Nice girl, I wish we could have done more to help her, really. [ By the end of it, the story had become a tragedy and the Doctor can only hope that she'd found some peace before she embraced the end. ] We didn't have to take it from her.
no subject
But it spoke to her actually. I could just ... hear it for some reason. Maybe because I was close enough for it, I don't know, but — it was something about how killing us wouldn't add to the chaos. That the deal was made and they wanted to be whole.
[ they because it wasn't just a singular voice either. ]
As long as we got this deal, we're essentially in their protection. For now. Which only makes me more skeptical about where this thing's gonna end up by the end.
no subject
Thoughtfully, he repeats: ] They.
[ Not only can these orbs speak, but they're plenty aware that they come as a ... set, then. A they. Perhaps a species of their own making, intelligent, with their own agenda? Or, perhaps just as likely, a device used by another race not unlike his experience with the Shakri cubes. But to what end? ]
Well, that's very interesting, isn't it? Given a chance to study these orbs, we might learn more than just hearing a couple of voices. But you're quite right, this does seem to raise a few more questions than answers. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
[ He brightens a little. ]
Which makes this something worth investigating.
no subject
[ which says a lot about what these orbs could be, that not only are they alive, but that there's unified intention here, and if they're so eager to come together as one, something big is going to happen when they do. ]
Not like we get much of a chance to study them though, right? Guessing the first one was locked up tight as quickly as possible just like this one. [ he'd only barely gotten to see it when cheri was using it and it's not like parker was in any position for studying it. ] Don't blame 'em. Orb of that kind of power could turn any one of us into Cheri. But keeps you thinking.
no subject
We'll figure it out.
[ He lets out a breath. ]
Suppose you're not wrong though. [ Hm. ] About the effects those orbs can have on us, if they're starting to speak now. [ Or if they've always had that ability but haven't decided to use it until now, which is the more likely scenario. ] Do you think you might be tempted by one?
no subject
[ kovacs hasn't necessarily been scrambling to get past it, but there's no doubt more to why it isn't being opened for them than what's been let on.
but maybe it's for a good thing if the orbs are being kept somewhere behind it. ]
I could tell you no. No, I don't want of the things Cheri did — all that power and immortality. But I've seen corruption twist the best of us. And if we're all here because we made a deal to get something we want, no matter how good-willed it might be, that just means the most susceptible people to being corrupted by that thing are right here on this station.
no subject
[ To see chaos reign if it comes down to a sole winner to take home their grand prize, like all of this is some grand scheme, some big game, and they're all players for it.
And yet for all of his confidence and devil-may-care attitude, even he isn't sure he could resist such a thing. Could he? If it meant reversing a mistake he holds himself solely responsible for, to save the lives of the people that he loves with every fibre of his hearts, what wouldn't he do? He had once treaded a fine line between healer and warrior. Is it selfish? Is it cowardly? Is it monstrous? Perhaps so, but the Doctor had never claimed to be anything but what he is.
Still. This isn't the conversation for that, and so he shifts his tone to something a little lighter, more conspiratorial.
In slightly hushed tones: ] Between you and me, I don't think it'll work. None of this. No one has control over the things that we've regretted, especially, and this is important, especially when they're fixed points. I'm willing to bet half of this station's regrets are all things that couldn't be undone in any other way and that's why we're all here. So how could it be so easy for one glowing bit of light to change it all, eh?
no subject
but even with the way technology has advanced in his world, along with the sort of magic tricks he's seen some of the orbers capable of, kovacs has a hard time buying into it all being so easily resolved by something that claims to have the power to do so. ]
You don't believe any of it. So then why are you here?
[ it's almost a rhetorical question. because he doesn't really believe in it much either, and yet here he is, just as curious, just as willing to gamble just to find out the truth of it. ]
no subject
[ They really are cut from the same cloth in this regard. ]
Curious sort, that's me, I want to know what they've got that might change someone's regret. And if it's something that could destroy the universe once all of these orbs have been collected, well, someone's got to be around to stop it, eh?
[ It's said lightly, very matter-of-factly. It's what the Doctor does, the task he's taken on for himself and those who travel with him. ]
no subject
and it all applies here too, to better understanding these orbs, this place, for all that it continues to make little sense. ]
Well, you do all that time travel, right? If it'd make sense to anyone, wouldn't that be you? Going back and changing the way something happens?
no subject
[ Not without a significant price. Sometimes not without a universe being altered and destroyed or forced into some reckoning.
He thinks of his own regret and how much of the timeline he could ruin if he were to take it upon himself to change what had happened. But that's why he was recruited, wasn't it? It's why he'd accepted the contract too. A desperate, foolish, lonely man who finally found his one chance to undo something that he simply couldn't do on his own. A way to cheat the system. ]
It's why I'm just not sure this station and the orbs can do what they've claimed, not without its consequences.
no subject
And how you even determine what a fixed point is? Shouldn't everything theoretically be a fixed point?
no subject
[ So, in a nutshell — it's all really timey-wimey. The Doctor has experience in feeling most of these fixed points out. And the reason he knows his own regret is a fixed point is because ... well. Undoing it on his own, undoing it like he still sometimes dreams he could do, would render the rest of the universe too fragile.
He'd endanger everything, and everyone. ]