taxonomites | [Location: Café] Happy Birthday (open)

Tara sat at a café in Wilde, not far from Tamper and Trick, warming her hands with a chai latte. There was a bit of a chill in the air, but the sun was peeking through the clouds, and with a jacket, being out was nice enough.

She thought about the sun. With the influx of new visitors recently, she'd been thinking more about how Taxon worked, about how this strange half-life could be settled into. How easy it as for her to slip into work at Tamper and Trick, which wasn't quite the Magic Box, dates with Willow, who was a few months away from being her Willow, and living in Castle Summers, which was familiar to her friends, but not to her. How easy it became to ignore the Extras, to weather a glitch, to take it for granted.

She thought about people who'd gone and come back. The Doctor. Stefan. The Master. She wondered if she'd been before, and just forgotten. If Xander might come back, slate wiped clean. It didn't fit, exactly, with the zoo theory, but it didn't fit with the little glimpses they'd had of the 'real Taxon' either. Then again, if it was a glitch as she'd suspected, their captors had just turned Piper into a monster, so none of her working theories were right just yet.

She thought about the people she missed. Hercules. Rose. Sam. Giles. Ethan. Tara had to believe that the were home. Safe. Happy. She wanted to believe that so very badly.

It was her birthday. The first one she shouldn't have been alive to have. And that knowledge made it a little bittersweet.

She sipped her latte, and took a few moments. Then she'd head to the shop. Happy birthday to her.

[Open to new friends as well as old. Come say hi.]

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She smiled to see him in good spirits and (apparently) good condition. "I'm alright, Doctor. How have you been?"

"Alright" is, perhaps, a little generous considering the Wendigo incident and her conversation with the Master, but it's true enough right at this moment.

"Oh, you know," he said casually. "Keeping busy." And definitely not starting to get frustrated with how he couldn't just leave whenever he felt like it.

"Had a friend turn up as well. Lovely girl, name of Amy Pond? She made me go house shopping with her. Never done that before."

"Oh, I met Amy! I showed her how to use the hatches. I'm glad you're the version of the Doctor she knows, that has to make it easier." She'd not known Fritz well, but well enough to see having the wrong Doctor was a little unsettling for him.

"Did you find a good house?"

"Did you? Well that's good; she could use a few friends other than just me here." Especially with Rory not being here with them. The Doctor wasn't going to pretend that Amy wouldn't be bothered by that. All they'd been through to get married, and now they'd been separated yet again. Yeah, he'd have to keep an eye on Amy about that.

"Oh yeah, we found a place we both liked in the end. Not bad, if you like houses that are the same size on the inside." He grinned. "What about you? Keeping busy?"

"Oh - yeah, I suppose so. I have a friend who I'm trying to help with a problem, but otherwise it's mostly business as usual." As much as anything ever was 'usual' in Taxon. She's a bit subdued, today, but things could be worse.

"A problem? What kind of problem? Anything you could do with another set of hands with?" he asked, leaning forward to rest his chin on his hands. "Two heads are better than one, I always say."

"A friend of mine got glitched. Has anyone told you about glitches yet, or have you seen?" She's not sure how much Taxon-lore the Doctor knows at this point.

"Yes, I've heard a bit about them already," he answered. "How's your friend? All right?"

"She's upset, but she isn't hurt. I think she blames herself, though, for putting other people in danger. It wasn't her fault, though." Tara knows how hard it can be to internalize that - other people telling you not to blame yourself seldom helped.

"No, I don't think it would have been," he agreed, though he didn't really know what the glitch had been exactly; there seemed to have been a few of them recently.

"But at least she's got people like you to help her, hmm?" he said with a smile. "That counts for a lot, you know."

"I hope so. She's a good friend, and it can be... it's hard, sometimes, to feel like things aren't your fault, even if you know it in your head." Tara had quite a bit of experience, on that front.

"How about you? Are things going okay? I'm sure it's good to have Amy around."

The Doctor just smiled, having a bit of experience with things like that himself, and moved onto the other topic instead of answering. "Oh yeah, Amy's great to have around. It's a pity Rory isn't here too, but it's probably for the best. Besides, he probably won't have noticed we're gone, because we probably haven't gone."

She nods. "What do you think? About how they do that?" She'd a couple theories, some better than others, but he friends clearly hadn't noticed she'd gone, at the time.

"Oh, all kinds of things," he said easily, settling back in his chair more comfortably. The scars still ached on occasion, but they were easy enough to ignore now. No one beyond himself, the Master, Martha, and Jenny need know they were even there.

"Wait, sorry," he said, dismissing the thought and blinking at Tara. "Were you wanting to know what in particular I thought about it or just in general?"

"I meant about how they take people out of their times and places without anyone noticing they're gone," she clarified.

"Right! Yeah, definitely been thinking about that," he assured her. You could almost hear the sound of the point flying over his head, really.

She smiled a little and shook her head. "I guess it doesn't really matter. It's just something I've thought about."

"And what have you been thinking about it?" he asked curiously.

She shrugged. "Well. Either they wipe our memories and put us right back where we started from, or they've a way of making perfect copies of us. Though whether we're the copies here or the leave the copies there isn't clear." She thumbed her silver bracelet, absently.

[Location: Café] Happy Birthday (open)

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