fandom_clinic | FTEC, Wednesday, January 3

//We're all together
Yes, all together
and together we'll be happy
and we'll have a lot of fun...//

Aziraphale didn't want to disturb her, and so he crept in softly and closed the door, then stood against the wall and gazed intently at Wilson's face, hoping to see some kind of change, some glimmer of consciousness.

Pippi starts to tell Wilson a story about a rooster that laid an egg on the roof of Villa Villekulla.

It was very believable. And exciting.

There were pirates.

As stood nearby and listened, Aziraphale couldn't help but think that whatever dark place Wilson was locked into within his mind, surely he had to know that it was Pippi speaking to him. And perhaps that might help, in some way.

He looked across the room and gave the young woman a gentle smile.

Pippi looks at Wilson for a while and then starts to tell him about Pip, and the time they went spelunking (http://cyclopeanmerc.livejournal.com/13725.html?thread=217757#t217757) and how, when something tried to pull her down into an underground spring, Pip pulled a knife and jumped into the water presumably to make it let go.

Which he did, though not with his knife, but that was pretty stupid, because anything that could give her difficulty isn't something he should be pulling a knife on. Or anything less then maybe a browning assault rifle, considering she "bench presses trucks" as he likes to say and he does nothing of the sort.

But he doesn't generally think of things like that, he leaps to her defense. Which is amazing to her considering there weren't many people in the world who would think she ever needed defending before she came here.

"... I love that about him."

Another smile crept across Aziraphale's face as he listened to Pippi's words. That was exactly what he loved about Wilson, and so he understood what she was trying to say.

Wilson made him feel as though he was a person, as though what he wanted and needed and thought mattered as much as what he was. Maybe mattered more.

He nodded to himself, moving to sit on the floor next to Pippi's chair, where he could look up and still see the young doctor's face.

Pippi looked down at Aziraphale when he sat next to her.

"Oh! I didn't hear you come in!"

"I tried not to disturb you," he murmured, smiling up at her, if a little sadly. "I'm sorry if I interrupted. It's good for people to talk to him, and it's been hard for me to think of things to say. Things that won't...that I'm not afraid will just upset him, anyway."

"I brought music." Pippi said holding out some CDs she and Chad picked out at Empire (http://community.livejournal.com/fandomtownies/1315622.html?thread=59364390#t59364390).

Aziraphale reached up and took the radio he'd brought in off the bedside table. By the time he held it out to Pippi, it was capable of playing CDs as well.

"James loves music. I brought him a radio, but our own things are still packed, and I couldn't think what he should listen to...I thought perhaps hearing about what was happening when the nightly reports came on would help him."

Pippi rolled her eyes. "The radio is still reporting that absolutely everybody is getting frisky with absolutely everybody else." she said with the hint of a grin forming. "I thought you didn't want to upset him."

Pippi put in the CD from E Muzeki (http://www.emuzeki.com/soundclips.html).

Aziraphale had to roll his eyes as well, considering the strange reports the radio occasionally gave about his supposed activities.

"Usually James finds that all terribly amusing. It's only when they talk about someone being hurt or in trouble that he gets upset."

But Pippi did have a point. Possibly something less potentially worrisome would be a much better choice. And after the first strains of music from the CD, he decided that Wilson would be pleased with his young friend's choice.

"Although I suppose this will give him fewer things to have to track people down and ask about," he admitted, with a hint of a smile as well.

Pippi giggled a bit at that.

"So how are you doing?"

"Not well," he admitted, shaking his head. "I'm not doing well at all, Pippi. I've been fighting with people, and saying unkind things, and not being a very nice person at all. And I've been afraid that James won't wake, and I'll be alone again."

"I don't think you have much to worry about on either of those last two counts." Pippi said putting an arm around him and resting a cheek on the top of his head.

"Thank you, my dear," Aziraphale replied very softly, resting his hand over hers. He knew he had friends, and he those friends cared about him, but he had the memory of thousands of years of being mostly alone to combat.

"When I was little, we coulda moved to Villa Villekulla, but Papa raised me on The Hawk and we kept moving around."

"That must have been a challenging way to grow up," he observed. "It must have very difficult for you keep friends for very long."

"It was impossible. Which, I later discovered, was the point."

"That isn't right." Aziraphale frowned, wondering why anyone would want to force a child not to have friends. "The fact that I never had but the one friend before coming here was my own fault, but no one should try to stop a person from having friends. You can't...you need people who care about you because they want to, not because they have to."

"That is very true, and I had my Papa, and Fredolf, and Mr. Neilson... But... We didn't age back then. And Papa didn't want me to have to watch my friends get old and gray while I stayed the same."

Oh, Aziraphale did understand that fear. It was part of why he'd kept people at an arm's length for so long.

"But it's worth the time you spend with them, before that happens," he murmured, thinking of the early days with Wilson, before Above had offered their end of the Arrangement. And of Kiki, and she'd been years older the last time he saw her, than she'd been when they'd left Fandom.

"The Doctor and...we talked about something like that too. And it's awful to see so much change happen, while you stay...just the same as you are. But it's worth it."

"I thought so too. But that was hard, and I had the ability to give it up. So I could stay with them. And I did. But... I'm here now. And they're still in Sweden. Or rather they're in a Sweden that the causeway might decide to never let me go back to. But I'm not alone."

"Sometimes, even though home is a beautiful place, and it's filled with people who you know love you, the world is a better place for you to be in. It's messier, and sometimes it's strange and lonely, but it's just...better."

Aziraphale squeezed Pippi's hand gently, thinking once again how very grown up so many of his young friends were, despite their physical youth.

Pippi wasn't entirely sure what to say to that. She thought rather that trouble occurred when one forgot that one's home was part of the world.

Of course, this view could just be the result of growing up on a ship.

So she didn't say anything, and squeezed his hand in return.

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