We shall not cease from exploration

[freeslider]

Who: Wade and The Fifth Doctor
What: A-hiking we will go
When: Before Jumanji plot
Where: The Enchanted Woods and beyond?
Rating:PG

Wade stretched and took in a lungful of the morning air, feeling something in her chest unclench just a bit now that the castle was at her back for the moment. She wasn't going to kid herself that anywhere was out of it's reach, but it was nice to stop and take a good look around for once - something she'd maybe been scared to do before now. And this time because she wasn't alone.

She turned around to glance back down the patch from where they'd come, boots scraping on the brick path under her feet.

"Hey Doc! It looks like there might be a clearing up ahead!" she called out.

Comments

[freeslider]

She tries not to take offense at the statement, given that she pretty much had nothing to do with the creation or inception of the device that made it possible. She was just a hanger-on from the get go.

"1997," she said crossing her arms in a way that might have been a tiny bit defensive, "and maybe it shouldn't be, but it's true. I've been sliding more than two years now. I know what I've seen. Also it's not really the Professor that invented it. That was my friend Quinn. He's kind of a brainiac."

[toobravehearted]

1997. Definitely not possible for the Earth and the time period that he knows, but he did also know that parallel universes existed and he wasn't naive to them. He didn't disbelieve Wade, it was just a discrepancy to what he knew.

And this was a large discrepancy. He made a tilt of his head at Wade with an expression of controlled patience to go along with it for her defensiveness.

"I'm not saying that I don't believe you," he began, "just that it shouldn't be possible. Your friend Quinn must be gifted indeed. Where I come from, travel between parallel universes is very difficult, requires precise mathematical calculations and technology well far in advance of 1997 for Earth. I've travelled between parallel universes too. But only a few times."

"It's also very dangerous." With that he was referencing something she had said earlier, about almost being killed. Putting the two and two together as best he could, it was logic that the sliding as Wade called it could be related.

[freeslider]

It might not have been the way the Doctor was imagining, although there had been times when the wormholes did malfunction or put them in dangerous situations. They'd almost lost Quinn in the astral once because of such an event. But on the whole, the danger came from places other than the vortex, minus a little inadvertent limb flailing.

And she could tell he was mostly coming from a place of concern, which made her soften a little.

"It can be, yeah. And that's something all four of us have paid for over the years. My Quinn isn't even the only one. Several of his doubles have invented it. There's at least two other civilizations that knew the secret too. I wish I could explain to you how it was possible. Maybe if I could we could find a way to get out of here. But I don't."

Something else occurred to her, however. A distant ray of hope in his earlier words.

"You said you've done it, though? Could you do it again?"

[toobravehearted]

Concerned yes, it isn't misplaced. He doesn't think that Wade isn't capable, she wears sensible shoes for a start, but like with all his friends, he doesn't like the idea of them being in danger or at risk.

Making a shake of his head, mulling that thought over, he also thinks on her question, the difficulties and danger of punching holes in the fabric of realities to begin with, the calculations needed and the odds against finding another CVE into N-Space and not stumbling upon one by accident. And the argument he and Adric had had when the boy asked to return home and the Doctor had said no. "I know how to do it and it is phenomenally dangerous but... Possible. Although not from here. My TARDIS can only travel in space currently, and not through time."

Another shake of his head, putting thoughts of Adric aside, he steps back through the foliage to lead the exploration.

"So you have met doubles of your group. Have you met yourself?"

[freeslider]

"But I thought sliding...I mean...traveling in parallel dimensions...isn't time travel," she said, parroting back what she'd heard Arturo and Quinn tell her on numerous occasions, even when the world they'd landed in had made it seem like they had.

She brushed past him as she spoke, taken by a feeling of restlessness brought on by the conversation and the halt in their walking. She doesn't go much further than the fallen log a few feet ahead of the Time Lord, pausing to balance atop it.

"Yeah. Two times. The first time was actually the second world we ever went to. America was actually part of the Soviet Empire there, and I was one of the leaders of the underground American resistance. The second time..." she faltered for a moment, her not-so-secret pride in her earlier double falling flat as she had remembered wondering if this other Wade was a part of who she was too, "it was this Earth where everyone was under this huge amount of pressure to be successful. She...murdered her husband. Because of business."

[toobravehearted]

Coming to a stop again as Wade brushed past, a smile curled his mouth as he watched her back.

"That's exactly right," he said. "Traversing dimensions themselves is not strictly travelling in time. But how do you propose I should find a CVE - a weak point between dimensions if you will - or take you to 1997?"

Watching her feet carefully, he stood with one foot on the log, bracing it while he listened to Wade explain around her pride for one doppelgänger and hesitance for the other. He hummed and nodded when she became silent.

"One of the times I travelled to a parallel world two of my oldest friends wouldn't listen to reason and tried to kill me." He delivers the information matter-of-factly, but he's making a point to try to help her not feel so bad.

"I know that circumstances must have been dire indeed. But they were not the people I know and ultimately, I knew they were not capable of that. Any more than you are. I was able to appeal to the side of them that I did know, in the end."

[freeslider]

She knows she shouldn't take it personally. After all, she'd meant numerous versions of her friends that had turned out to be less than stellar human beings, or had made terrible choices. In the right environment, it could probably happen to everyone.

"You can't always. We're the ones that had to prove she did it, in the end. My friend...Quinn..." she frowned for a moment, feeling that inevitable pang of sadness at the thought of him and what she could not remember, "...he was the one she was married to in the world, and they were trying to blackmail him into staying. We didn't have a lot of choice."

She had regretted it, but in the end they could never turn a blind eye to that kind of injustice.

Sighing, Wade ran a hand through her hair. "Sorry. I'm sure if you could leave you would have a long time ago."