But Time Takes Time, You Know [Musebox]

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

It's hard to research things that haven't happened yet, Howard discovers. Rather than hitting the library, like he would have on Stacy, he has to spend a lot of time thinking, sitting around talking to Barbara about every detail he remembers of his family history. Every year that passes by, the memories get a little more obscure, a little less refined, and he starts to panic, thinking that he won't have enough information to track down his family at all soon.

Over endless cups of tea, Barbara asks questions ("do you remember your mother's maiden name? do you know where your father's parents were from before they came to California? do you remember what their professions were?") to try and drag out the useful information, but it ends up being a stray memory of a Christmas dinner that puts the pieces in place.

"My grandma has to be in San Francisco. They had a one year wedding anniversary ornament on the Christmas tree of the Golden Gate Bridge, and I'm pretty sure they got married in 1969."

What they were doing in San Francisco is beyond his knowledge, but it's the closest they have to a shot. He doesn't know what hospitals his parents were born in, or where his paternal grandparents might be now, or even what year his parents are going to meet. It takes a lot of agonizing before he decides to spend all that money he's been saving in a can under the sink on plane tickets for him and Barbara to go there, but when he invites her she agrees that it's important to him, and besides, how often does one get to vacation in America?

So they both have suitcases packed and a promise to be back in ten days, waiting for Ian in the kitchen to come drive them to the airport. Howard's nervous, naturally, because he's not sure how he'll introduce himself to total strangers as their grandkid from the future. But he's come to relax a bit - a bit - over the last few years, and as such he just chews his lip and bounces his leg a bit rather than panics. He even got six hours of sleep last night. It's truly a miracle.

Comments

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Wow, try not to set the bar too high, Barbara." He sighs and angles at her remaining chicken. "Are you going to finish that?"

He doesn't really quite know what he wanted to hear from Barbara, but, he thinks, at the very least those are accomplishments he can believe, rather than flattery. It's a shame they only stack up to the bare minimum of normal behavior.

"Maybe I will try and sleep a little more. I brought some books, you know, for when we're over the ocean for nine hundred hours." Being stuck in a world before high definition TV and wireless internet has made Howard a bit more keen to actually delve into literature. He actually finishes books now. Sometimes.

[first_in_time]

"You can have it," she replied. She wasn't hungry, and even if she was, the meals were plenty big enough for her. Were Ian here, he'd be finishing her meals instead of Howard, so he may as well have eaten it.

"Alright, well, I'm here if you need anything else I can provide," she told him before letting him go to get his rest."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He finishes off her chicken and then lies very still, not asking to take the seat blanket Barbara's used. For a while, it's just an exercise in not moving for an extended period of time, but after about half an hour he does drift off. He looks almost calm, except for the occasional twitch in his fingers.

The flight is mostly uneventful, though there is some mild turbulence. A baby cries somewhere near the back of the plane. They pass into night on the plane - due to the direction, it's actually into the previous morning. After a few hours a stewardess comes around with a little pocketbook and stops by Barbara's seat.

"Coffee and pudding, ma'am?"

[first_in_time]

"Please," Barbara smiled, putting down the magazine she'd managed to fish out without disturbing Howard too much. "Can I please have two? He'll be awake soon and upset if he misses out."

The stewardess made a note in her book and left to ask someone else.

"Howard," Barbara said quietly, gently squeezing his shoulder. "Howard, some food is on its way, I thought you might be hungry."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He still always startles when he wakes up, but realizes very quickly that it's Barbara. He rubs at his eyes. "We're already at the second meal? It's dark out?"

He blinks and yawns. "How long was I asleep?"

[first_in_time]

"Only a few hours. According to the captain, it's the very early hours of the morning because of the shift in time zones."

The blanket which was on Barbara's lap is now covering Howard, because heaven forbid he should get cold in comfortable and controlled cabin temperature.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"We have to transfer in New York. I always wanted to go to New York City." Even just going through the airport is fulfilling a personal goal in some way. Maybe he'll even see the lights, although he doesn't know how bright they are in 1970.

He glances at the blanket in a bit of surprise. Since he's stopped living with them, he forgot Barbara used to do that for him. And he realizes he's missed it. He hands it back over. "Thanks. What kind of food are they bringing back?"

[first_in_time]

"Coffee and pudding," Barbara replied happily. "I visited New York once, but it was only briefly. I only saw the top of the Empire State Building, but it would be interesting to see more than that. I've heard so much about it."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Awesome. I love coffee." He looks out the window but they must be over water, because there are no lights outside.

"Yeah, someday. I told you I never left California before Stacy, right? I figured I'd live and die in the same thirty miles of the state before I wound up on Stacy, and suddenly I'm traveling the universe. Did you ever go anywhere before the Doctor?"

[first_in_time]

"That's why I thought to wake you," Barbara replied with a small smile playing over her lips.

"I hadn't ever traveled much farther than the countryside to visit family before the Doctor, so it was quite a shock to suddenly be 10 000 years in the past, then on the other side of the universe."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"You been even more places than me," he says. Sometimes it surprises him to remember that, how well-traveled she is. He sometimes thinks she's naive and sheltered, in spite of everything, but she was in the same space war he was. "What's the best place you been to?"

[first_in_time]

"Um," Barbara had to think on that. She leaned her head back and looked up at the ceiling, despite the answer not being written on it. "Probably the villa in Rome. It was very pretty, although unfortunately secluded. Rome itself wasn't nearly as wonderful."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Did you go with Ian?" He follows her gaze up to the blank spot on the ceiling. "I think my favorite place was the Inn on Stacy, with Zou, but before that...Disneyland was pretty nice. Maybe we can travel down there and go on our trip, if the whole Bassem family tree thing flops. It'll be weird to see it without Space Mountain."

[first_in_time]

"We did go together, yes, along with the Doctor and Vicki. Although the Doctor took Vicki to Rome a day before we left." And then they were kidnapped to be sold as slaves. Best trip

"I would love to visit Disneyland with you, but let's find your grandparents first." Maybe if the 'family stuff' worked out, they could all visit in a few years when John would be old enough to appreciate it, too.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Yeah, I know. Priorities." He's only suggesting alternatives because he expects that this won't go well. He has no idea how this is going to go down, especially when he won't be much younger than his grandparents are now.

"Maybe someday I'll write a best-selling novel and we can go around the world. I'm working on stories now, you know. Legit whole stories instead of just short ones."

[first_in_time]

"What are they about?" she asked, keen and interested.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"The future. The Doctor said I couldn't invent anything, not that I couldn't make-believe anything." He grins, then shakes his head. "Not really, though. I'm writing a mystery story about a mining town, and people start disappearing, and this girl has to figure it out after her best friend gets taken."

[first_in_time]

"I don't suppose I could read a sample when we get home?" Barbara asked, still smiling. "It sounds quite engaging."

My sketch-a-day is of this scene, will show you when I get home.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Sure, I brought my journal with me for whenever you need to rest and I need to entertain myself." He goes through a journal every few months, sometimes in less time than that, at this point. It's his favorite method of release. "I mean, I'm only a few chapters in, but I know where it's going now and..."

He continues to talk for nearly an hour about his plans for the story. It's the most animated he's been in a while. He only stops when they're interrupted by the overhead telling them to prepare for landing.

[first_in_time]

And Barbara listened to every word as thought they were incredibly exciting, because they were! Even Howard's drabbles about drowning and freezing to death were well written and engaging to read despite the morbidity of it.

When the captain cut into his retelling, she did up her belt just as was requested.

"How do you think it will end?" she asked, resisting the urge to look out the window. Howard was so excited to be talking about his story after all.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I can't tell you. It has to be a surprise. It's a mystery story, after all." He sticks his tongue out and teases, buckling himself up. "Anyway. I just have to motivate myself to finish."

He looks out the window, watching the lights get larger.

[first_in_time]

"You don't know what it is yet, do you?" she smirked and turned toward the window, too. She made sure that she wasn't blocking from Howard's view, either.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I totally know what it is. Rocks fall, everyone dies. Obviously." He smirks back. It's hard to tell if he's kidding or not. "Welcome to America, Barbara. Home of the sock monkey and the jumbo-size diet coke."

[first_in_time]

"Oh, you're one of those authors who kills of their characters because they can't think of anything logical!" Barbara feigned recognition with a silly grin. "I had no idea."

She turned back to the window, wondering if a 'diet coke' was related to coke-a-cola, and just what was a sock monkey? Hopefully she'd find out.

"Can you see where you lived from here?" asked Barbara, half-joking.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"No, I kill characters because I get bored of them. And that way I'll never have to write a sequel."

He peers. "No, all I see is a landing strip. Totally anticlimactic." He braces himself as the plane touches down, the landing gear making the seats jolt beneath them. "We have about an hour to catch the next one, too. I'm going to need to stretch."