Laughter and the Hopeless Comfort
Angel was laughing. At something the Doctor had said (which was genuinely funny and not just so-weird-you-have-to-laugh). If Angel wasn't busy enjoying this increasingly-unfamiliar sensation of laughing, he might have marveled at it.
They were sitting at Angel's favorite booth at the Dragon's Crown (evil demons with evil plans were just not out in droves on that cold night), enjoying drinks and actual conversation. Somehow, they had gotten on the topic of accidental hallucinogenic drug trips, and it turned out that the Doctor had a great story to tell and was good at telling it.
"So I finally manage to explain to the polar bear in the top hat that I accidentally ingested this very illegal drug and could he please help me find my way back to my blue box," the Doctor was explaining, waving his hands wildly like he was still on this trip, "when he opened his mouth to speak and he roared. Angel, he roared and I could smell his breath and I very suddenly realized that I was not hallucinating this polar bear."
Still chuckling, Angel leaned forward as he murmured, "Oh shit."
"Even worse, Angel, he was wearing a top hat, but then I remembered that I'd given him mine!"
Angel laughed again, wiping at a tear at the corner of his eye. "Of course. Why wouldn't you? So what'd you do?"
"Try to get my hat back of course," the Doctor said, like this was an obvious course of action. "It didn't suit him. Of course, he'd grown fond of it. Who wouldn't? And after some of me going one way and him the other, I make a Christmas gift of it and decide to book it out of there. So I wave to him," the Doctor waved in demonstration, "and turn around as he's rearing onto his hind legs and," the Doctor paused, chuckling, "Angel, I ran face first into the TARDIS." He smacked his hand against his nose. "It was behind me the whole time!"
"God," Angel laughed again, resting his cheek in his palm, "you have the dumbest luck of anyone I've ever met. Your accidental trip beats mine by a longshot."
The Doctor finished the pink liquid in the bottom of his glass. "Go on," he said, waving his hand encouragingly. "I'm sure you were stupid enough."
Angel shook his head. "It's a long, sobering story. I'll tell you about the time I accidentally got the boys high, though."
The Doctor adjusted his position, leaning forward attentively like a child at storytime.
"Do you know the Cantu?" Angel mostly meant it rhetorically, but the Doctor frowned and shook his head, so Angel explained, "They're nomadic demons, but a fairly neutral variety. Some evil, some good, you know. Anyway, they grow this mushroom and process it so you can smoke it. I have no idea how, they won't tell anyone. They pass it around like a peace pipe, but they only offer it if everyone at the table is satisfied at the end of the deal. Working with them is always easy and quick and everyone leaves happy." Angel leaned back again and he sobered a bit. "When I took the boys, I'd read over the tradition, but I'd never actually made any deals with them. I wish the book had mentioned that it was a hallucinogenic drug before I let the boys try it..."
The Doctor twisted the stem of his empty glass between his fingers. "That is a bit of an interesting choice of activities for kids to do."
"I was teaching them how to deal with demons they're not trying to kill," Angel replied. "Cultural sensitivity is key, and I'd read that refusing would have been an insult. I mean, not for the boys; they were just observing at that point. But I thought, 'why not?'"
The Doctor grinned, "I love that one," he said, "Why not? can be such a beautiful question."
Angel smiled, too. "Yeah..." he agreed. "Yeah, it can. I was terrified Judith would find out, though..."
"Always the mothers..." the Doctor lamented. "I can see why you were afraid of her."
"I still am," Angel admitted.
"I think I'm close behind you." The Doctor paused and added, "Actually, I'll probably be directly behind you if it comes down to a confrontation."
"I'd never let it get that far," Angel said. "Too dangerous."
"Okay," the Doctor said as if he were humoring Angel, "just giving you fair warning."
Angel nodded with a small smile. Silence fell for a bit, but the silences had been growing more comfortable between them. After a while, Angel said, "This is the first booth Judith and I sat in together." Actually, since it was Angel's favorite booth, most things he'd done at the Dragon's Crown happened at that booth.
"Is it?" The Doctor looked delighted. He sat up a bit and turned to get a view of the booth they were sitting in. It was, predictably, a booth, but the Doctor turned around again and adjusted his position like he'd just been informed that he was sitting on the throne of England. "I can see why. It's cozy...has a nice view," he said, waving a hand at the view of the bar.
Angel nodded. "She was waiting for Will," Angel replied. "Good view of the door here, too."
"I like it," the Doctor said, nodding in agreement with himself. "Maybe I'll try sitting with a view of the door more often."
"It's generally good to know your escape route," Angel said, nodding.
"Sure. But," the Doctor said, and leaned forward conspiratorially, "if you sit with your back to the door all of your enemies sneak up on you."
Angel frowned in confusion. "Don't you want to see them coming?"
The Doctor leaned even farther forward, tapping his fingers along the table in excitement. "A bit, but letting them sneak up on you makes them comfortable." He grinned like he'd just invented electricity.
"You know what also works really well?" Angel said. "Attacking them and making them uncomfortable."
The Doctor paused in his tapping, one finger still slightly lifted. His face became unreadable for a moment. It might have been anger that Angel saw, or sadness, but the only thing he definitely recognized was a hint of the same focused calculation that the Doctor had had when he was working on finding the TARDIS location. "Maybe," he said, blinking the look away and giving Angel a joking smile.
Angel didn't like not being able to read the Doctor as well as he could read...well, anyone else, really. It was off-putting. An exception in Angel's rather exceptional (and carefully-honed) abilities. And a bit of a puzzle, psychologically. Angel liked psychological puzzles, but not for wholesome academic reasons.
"But?" Angel prompted.
"But," the Doctor said. "But, shouldn't they get a chance to change their minds?"
Angel actually had to think about this. Eventually, he said, "Most of the things I deal with are evil. So...no."
"Of course," the Doctor said. He leaned back, satisfied, but then a second later he leaned forward again. "How do you know?" he asked. There was a challenge in his expression, like they were engaged in a game of riddles, or possibly the Doctor was daring him to explain himself. Both looked equally likely.
"Well, they're..." Angel was about to say that they were demons, but since not all demons were inherently evil, it didn't seem like the best argument.
"I mean, they..." No, they didn't always act evil before he killed them, either. That wouldn't work.
Angel shrugged. "They all have..." But that wasn't true, either, was it? He'd killed things that had that Evil Look but weren't actually. Wasn't it his idea that the good ones wear lapel pins?
Finally, Angel settled for the one he knew was completely true. "I recognize most of the species around here. I know what they are, and for the most part, they're not good."
"Like vampires," the Doctor supplied unhelpfully, "they're always evil."
Angel leaned forward and looked the Doctor straight in the eye. "Right."
"Should I be scared?" the Doctor asked.
"You should be...cautious," Angel replied carefully.
The Doctor considered this seriously for a moment, and then he relaxed into a casual slump, the one elbow resting on the table. "I'm doomed," he declared cheerfully.
Angel shifted in his seat and scrutinized the Doctor. He wasn't used to people taking the idea that he might actually be dangerous (what a surprise) so...cavalierly. After a moment of the Doctor being annoyingly oblivious to Angel's expression, Angel said, "That's it?"
The Doctor blinked his attention back to Angel. "What?" he asked.
Angel sat up a little straighter, still trying to figure the Doctor out and failing miserably. "Usually people have questions or..." He paused. "Actually, they want me to tell them that I wasn't serious and of course I'd never ever hurt them."
The Doctor also sat up, possibly just to mirror Angel. "But you were serious," he said simply, "and I believe you that you'd try to hurt me. So there go the questions. The only problem is that I'm supposed to be cautious and that," the Doctor tugged on his jacket and then spread his hands slowly away from himself, "is just not how I roll."
Angel considered the Doctor for a moment. "I don't think the problem is people not believing me," he said. "Still, tends to change the relationship a bit."
"It probably would," the Doctor said, "except...you didn't tell me anything I didn't already know."
Angel nodded. "No... I guess not," he agreed, leaning back. After all, Angel had already tried to kill the Doctor once.
The Doctor leaned back as well, watching some movement at the bar until the moment passed. "Similarly," he said absently, "people tend to ask me questions about myself, but I never think they want the truth."
Angel looked up and caught the Doctor's eye. "I do."
The Doctor looked back at Angel, giving him a very long moment of his full attention. The next moment he picked up his empty glass and stood, tipping the glass at the bar to indicate that he was going back for a second pink, fruity, children's drink. Stepping toward Angel, he paused. "Be cautious," he said, quietly, briefly resting his hand on Angel's shoulder.
And then he waved at Marty, calling out a new request for some strange food.
Angel stared after the Doctor for a long while. While he knew, in some ways he'd seen the power the Doctor possessed, it had never seemed like something that would ever point in his direction. On some level, it was hidden so well that Angel tended to forget. He looked completely harmless. He acted beyond wholesome. He sometimes couldn't walk in a straight line.
But then, nothing so innocent-looking ever was, and as such a long and ardent student of body language, Angel usually picked up on the undertones of darkness in people. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't see it in the Doctor; or not this version of him, anyway. The first one he'd met, yes. Absolutely. But this friendly, wide-eyed puppy?
Yes, Angel probably should be cautious.
He stood up and walked over to the bar to order another drink himself, nodding once to Marty to let him know he wanted the usual. He slid into the barstool next to the Doctor (who was chatting animatedly to someone on his other side), and Angel noticed the wide, ornately-gilded mirror behind the bar across from him. He didn't usually like to choose this as a place to sit; it let creatures unfamiliar to him know a little too quickly exactly what he was.
Marty appeared in front of Angel with his favorite brand of scotch and refilled his drink. Angel gave him a grateful nod.
Angel's thoughts meandered over the conversation the Doctor had left him with, considering for the first time how truly alien he was. He had grown up with different instincts, different cultural norms, different instructions on how to behave that had brought him through destroying his own planet to sitting across from Angel at a bar with his back to the door so that his enemies could sneak up on him. What sort of background was that?
Angel looked over at the Doctor, who was now chatting with Marty, and when he paused to allow Marty to laugh, Angel asked, "Doctor, what do Time Lords believe about the afterlife?"
The Doctor started to continue his story, but paused, like doing an auditory double take. He turned to look at Angel with a raised eyebrow."Are you planning on killing me?" the Doctor asked with a half-joking, half-worried smile. "I thought we were getting along."
"No," Angel chuckled. "I mean, we are. I actually want to know." He swiveled on his stool at the bar of the Dragon's Crown to face the Doctor, dragging his glass of scotch along the wooden top. Marty moved away to tend to other customers.
"Well that's certainly a relief," the Doctor said, smiling and chewing on the end of a toothpick. He pulled it out and looked at it. "Marty could get those little swords at least, don't you think?"
"This isn't exactly the clientele for it," Angel replied. "So?"
"Hmm?" The Doctor went back to chewing on his toothpick. For someone who talked so much, Angel found that he suddenly got quiet when anything personal came up. Although, what he was hiding was not exactly clear. Unlike Angel, the Doctor didn't seem to be avoiding people or making friends. But what had he said before? That he didn't think people wanted the truth?
Still, it made him oddly difficult to be friends with. At least by Angel's definition.
Angel stared down the Doctor's feigned ignorance. Silence, Angel had found, tended to work best on the Doctor.
"You know, that's a very complicated question," the Doctor finally said, pulling the toothpick from his mouth and poking it at the air at Angel, like a finger.
"I don't need a simple answer," Angel replied. "You're good at talking. I'm good at listening. Go ahead."
The Doctor leaned his elbows back on the bar, one leg sliding to the side of the stool so he could swing it. "What's this about?" he asked, with half a laugh in his voice, like he was waiting for Angel to tell the punchline.
Angel shifted ever so slightly on his stool. "You're very different," he said slowly. "I was wondering about Time Lord…" Angel waved his free hand vaguely, searching for the right word. "Religion. Morality. What you were taught. Usually the afterlife has a lot to do with that, culturally." Part of it, Angel realized, was that he also really wanted to know where the Doctor believed he'd sent his people after he'd destroyed his planet.
The Doctor continued to watch Angel for a minute. The smile faded from his face. Eventually he looked away, giving his jacket a little tug and spinning a full circle on the barstool he was sitting on until he ended up facing the bar, too.
"There are stories..." he said quietly, "that we learn as children about the afterlife." The Doctor pulled his glass a bit closer so he could poke at the cherry in it with his toothpick. "When we grow up it becomes clear that they aren't true. There are theories once you grow up. We don't really know, and so it is theory." The Doctor spread his hands along the bar and looked over at Angel. "See?"
"It's all just theory until you've been there," Angel replied. He took a sip of his drink. "So you don't have any sort of religion? Faith?"
"I have a great deal of faith," the Doctor told his glass, "and Time." He took a sip and set the glass down again. He considered it for a long moment and then glanced over at Angel, scrutinizing him for just as long. He suddenly seemed to come to a decision. "Time..." he said again, pushing his glass out of the way, "and reality and everything is like a tree." He set his three middle fingers on the bar and slowly pushed them forward. "It begins with a seed, which is the Heart of Time. It contains the template for every dimension and it grows into a trunk that is pure and strong and good. As it flows forward," the Doctor paused to grin widely, "things happen. Decisions, thoughts, accidents, happenstance, birthdays, wars, inventions, Saturdays."
The Doctor paused, seemingly lost in the possibility of a single Saturday. He tapped his three fingers against the bar and started again, "All of the good things continue forward as a part of the trunk because they are the same, but the bad things, the cruel things, the hurtful things, and the poorly calculated things - they splinter off and create their own timeline or dimension or branch, if you will." He pushed his fingers forward again, but this time his index finger separated from the others on its own divergent path. When it got too far away from the other fingers he lifted it off of the bar and then repeated the process with his ring finger, spreading it away from the trunk.
"They're not gone, those other timelines, they're still connected to the trunk. It's the same Time that flows through them. They're just separate. Just a little." The Doctor shrugged, "They're not even that different, but then it happens again: new branches and new decisions and responses." His little finger briefly joined his ring finger only to branch off on its own. "Each little cruelty branches you off further from the bigger whole. Like branches and then twigs and then sprouts, but bigger of course. A googolplex of dimensions each branching off and intertwining..."
The Doctor's hand wandered away from the illustration in search of his glass. "When the universe ends, it's like the branch snaps off. It falls and eventually rejoins the Heart of Time. It returns to that original, true template." He pulled his glass back in front of him.
"Like reincarnation," Angel said.
"If it helps," the Doctor allowed, waving his hand and grimacing slightly in a way that indicated that he didn't really think it was like that at all.
He dropped his hand back to the bar and was silent for a moment, like Angel's interruption had made him forget the whole conversation. "We try," the Doctor said softly into the silence between them, looking up to meet Angel's eyes, "to live our lives as close to the Heart of Time as possible. And Time Lords..." the Doctor stopped abruptly, and Angel recognized the pause in the Doctor's talk as the Time War. It was like a verbal limp, where his usually fast running words would inevitably give out for a moment. The Doctor looked away quickly, back down at his very pink mocktail.
When he looked up again his warm smile was back in its place. He turned around in his stool, giving the action a perfect air of nonchalance.
"But you asked about death, didn't you?" the Doctor said cheerfully. "Traditionally, when a Time Lord dies, their minds are stored in the Matrix, which holds the entirety of the Time Lord consciousness. But that was destroyed with Gallifrey, so I suppose that just leaves me out in the cold, doesn't it?" He shrugged and took a sip of his drink. "They never considered me very wise anyway, so I guess no one has to bicker now about not including me."
Angel was silent for an extra moment. He took a sip of his drink, and then said, staring at the glass, "So you're going to Hell, then, too."
The Doctor took another sip from his drink as well. Looking over at Angel, he opened his mouth once, like he was about to speak, but instead just looked away again. He fished the toothpick out of his glass and stuck it in his mouth, chewing it in some odd impersonation of a cowboy.
After another long moment of silence while both men stared into their dwindling drinks, Angel finally said in a tone almost too soft for the Doctor to hear, "I wonder if it'll help having a friend there?"
The Doctor looked over at Angel again. A small smile crept onto the corner of his mouth. "We could open a bar," he suggested.
The corner of Angel's mouth twitched, too, and he gave in. "Yeah," he said without looking up. "But I don't think they'll let us."
"I'll take it up with the management if we run into trouble," the Doctor said confidently. "I've had run-ins with the Devil before and I'd like to think I came out on top."
"It's not just the Devil that runs it," Angel said, his expression darkening as he played with his glass on the counter. "It's...all of them. Satan, Hades, yourself...every belief system there is about hell: it's all true and it's all the same place. Each religion just picks the stuff they like best and teach that."
The Doctor winced. "I don't like that last one," he commented with a sniff. "But I still think we could swing a bar."
Angel shrugged. "I guess I'm down to try," he replied.
"That's all I ask," the Doctor said with a shake of his head, like he'd been trying to get Angel to do something incredibly simple.
Silence fell, and Angel's thoughts sank back into his time in Hell, which he generally tried not to think about at all. A moment later, he found himself speaking again without really being sure why, except that this was the sort of thing he thought the Doctor might be willing to talk about more than most other people.
"Do you know what the worst part about Hell is?" Angel paused briefly, but continued before the Doctor could reply. "You know what you're missing." Angel looked up at the Doctor, his expression stoic even if he didn't feel it. "They allow you to know exactly what heaven must be like, just so you know how much you're missing not being there. How much and...who."
The Doctor's expression became unreadable again. It wasn't a lack of emotions or the obviously exaggerated glee, but more of a jumble of things that Angel couldn't sort out the source of. The sadness in his eyes made a certain type of sense, but the relief around the edges clashed. Both seemed equally honest. Neither seemed like a good reason to ask, "Are you alone, then?" and certainly not in a voice that was so very calm that Angel almost missed the small tint of fear, like a single drop of water sliding off of a piece of ice.
"In Hell?" Angel took a deep breath. "Utterly. Except you never forget what it was like not being alone." Angel finished the rest of his drink. "I've heard that heaven is just the opposite: they're allowed to know exactly what hell is like so they remember how happy and together they are in heaven." Angel paused. "I'm not sure what they do about people in heaven who knew and loved people in hell, though. I've never gotten the chance to ask."
Silence again; the kind that made Angel suddenly more aware of the noises around them. Marty was shaking a drink in a tumbler down the bar and the couple who had been sitting near the back for most of the night were laughing as they made their way out the door.
"Umbrellas," the Doctor said abruptly.
Angel started slightly. "What?"
The Doctor stood up. "For the bar," he said. "We're going to have tiny umbrellas. I'll put them in all of the drinks."
Angel stared at the Doctor for a moment, and then nodded. He understood, even if he wouldn't have come to the same conclusion. "The bar should be wood," he said. "And the stools cushioned with leather."
"Mmm," the Doctor nodded his approval, "and an asymmetric pseudo-Martian design for the back."
"And a tavern wench."
The Doctor snorted and then tried to follow it up with a disapproving glare. It didn't work. "I guess I'll need someone to help serve drinks."
"I'm pretty sure some of the ones I knew as a human are there," Angel said. "Brie was really good. We could hire her."
The Doctor clapped his hands together once, walking around to the other side of Angel. "Good, I'll leave you in charge of hiring...unless I find someone I like. Also, if you meet anyone calling herself 'the Rani' she's not invited in."
Angel nodded softly and mused, "Maybe we need a bouncer, too..."
The Doctor leaned over the bar, apparently trying to catch a glance at the shelves that had been hidden from him. Marty shot a look at him and the Doctor slid sheepishly back down. "The Master might be there," he said, and then quickly amended, "My Master. Not your stupid one. He might bounce on weekends if we asked nicely."
Angel glanced at the Doctor.
"And if you ever tell him that I described him as 'my Master' I'm going to literally make sure that you were never born."
Angel hesitated and then allowed himself a small grin. He stood up. "If we're bringing in people we know, Spike's our weekday bouncer. It'll keep him outside."
The Doctor laughed, "Alright, Spike at the door, Master on weekends when he's not being particularly annoying, and King Herod at the bar." He added when Angel gave him another look, "The guy could mix drinks like you wouldn't believe."
"And you and me?" Angel asked.
"I'm a host," the Doctor said, tugging his bowtie into place again. "And you...can sit in the back and look threatening. It adds character."
Angel considered that for a moment, realized that that's probably what he'd do anyway, and nodded. "Sounds good," he said, agreeing to the entire ridiculous plan, but with the glaring thought that it was a hopeless comfort he was agreeing to. Perhaps that's what they should call it. The Hopeless Comfort. Angel placed a few bills on the counter and told the Doctor such.
"I like that," the Doctor agreed, holding the door for Angel as they made their way out into the night. "I like knowing that I'll always be in good company."
Angel gave him a little smile. He realized that he had completely ruined the jovial atmosphere of the night, but he felt like he'd gained something with the Doctor that was better than shared laughter. "Thanks," he said as they made their way down the ancient cobblestone streets. "For answering my question."
The Doctor's smile was small, but it reached his eyes. "You're welcome," he said.
They both nodded and continued down the street, enjoying the silence that had grown comfortable over the last week. And somehow, Angel took comfort from that.
