Chapter FOUR
‘What did you mean?’ Amy asked after they’d lugged the now
unconscious Doctor up the stairs to deposit rather unceremoniously across the
jump seats. ‘What did you mean, you’re the Doctor?’
‘I am the Doctor,’ he said simply.
‘You’re the Doctor?’
‘That’s me. Hello!’
‘But you can’t be,’ she said, tucking the blue blanket
around their softly snoring patient. ‘I mean there can’t be two of you. Can
there? That would mean he’s crossing his own timeline again, yeah?’
‘Again?’ That was worrisome to say the least.
‘It’s becoming something of an addiction.’ Rory told him,
examining both a blackened eye and a swollen nose in a mirror on the main
console. ‘He promised he was going to give it up after the trouble it got the
universe into last time.’
‘Oh, I’m reckless and I have a bad haircut? Another. Bad.
Haircut. Uhm. But in this case no. He isn’t interacting with his own past
because I’m not his past. Well, not exactly. Well, not anymore. Come to think
of it, never. Long story. Had to have been there,’ he said, gravitating back
toward the navigational displays to examine the new controls more closely. The
Tardis had never looked so magnificent. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on
her. She was positively sexy.
Amy stepped in front of him; her arms crossed over her
chest. He blinked. Spirited, this one. And not the least bit afraid of him. At
least not yet. He liked that.
‘Explain.’
‘Let him explain.’ He jerked a thumb toward the Time Lord
draped across the battered seats. ‘I mean, when he wakes up. Later. Let him
explain later.’
Amy and Rory both laughed at his words and he looked back
and forth between them.
‘Oh? Oh. No, I suppose he won’t, will he? I wouldn’t if I
were him. Well, what then? You expect me to explain?’
‘You seem to be the man with all the answers, Doctor,’ Amy
replied, leaning just a bit too close to be polite.
‘All right then,’ he told her, leaning back against the
console, ‘but you might want to call for a pizza because I may be awhile. And
I’m starved. Anyone else fancy a deep-dish coriander chilli chicken? No? Could
I at least have a cuppa? Whatever that is on the hob, it smells gorgeous.’
‘Doctor,’ Amy prompted.
‘Right. Sorry. Where to start? With the Dalek shooting
me--him--during their invasion I suppose.’
Amy rolled her eyes. ‘Again, with the Daleks.’
‘What? They’re right nasty little blighters. You’d think
Earth was a prime bit of intergalactic real estate the number of times they’ve
been there. Or will be there. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice them. Crafty
little pepper pots. No? Not ringing any bells? No? Medusa Cascade? Earth
whizzing through space? Planets in the sky? What part of the twentieth century
are you from? Are you from the twentieth century? Twenty first? Twenty…’
Amy cleared her throat noisily.
‘Ehm. Right. Sure. My --his-- residual regenerative energy
had been diverted into this,’ he wiggled the fingers of his right hand,
‘ever-so-handy biological receptacle. Captain Jack’s Doctor Detector. Grisly,
huh? But it’s a good thing he found it, eh? Even with that slight weakness in
the dorsal tubercle which, I suppose, I ought to be grateful for because if it
hadn’t been weak, it might never have been cut off and in that case, I wouldn’t
be standing here telling you my tale, now would I? Mind you, I also wouldn’t
have a year of my life that was erased from the timeline, but I still remember.
Do you have any idea what it’s like to wake up to dog kibble every morning? Oh,
and Rory? Ice,’ he said, tapping his own nose in demonstration. ‘I’d hurry if I
were you.
‘Aaaaanyway, stop me if you’ve already heard this part,
won’t you? Donna--good ole Donna Noble!--He‘s told you about Donna, right? No?
No. You are kidding me. He hasn’t told you about Donna. Swell guy. What? She
was brilliant! She touched the case my severed hand was in and wham!’
Amy and Rory both jumped back as he punctuated the word with
a high hick to right field.
‘Instantaneous biological meta crisis! There I was, and here
I am. Born in battle, full of blood, anger and revenge. But I got better.
Mostly. All right, jury’s still out. Time Lord with one heart, one life, but
every bit him up until the point I became, well, me.’
Now they were staring at him. He wondered if he’d forgotten
something and began silently ticking points off on his fingers. Nope. That was
everything.
‘Can I have that cuppa now?’ he asked meekly, turning to see
if the tea was still hot.
‘Your severed hand?’ Rory looked incredulous. Apparently,
the need for ice had been forgotten.
‘Yep. It grew back,’ he told them as he lifted the teapot
lid and inhaled the rich aroma, disappointed that there was no cup available.
‘Gotta love that Regeneration energy. Well, strictly speaking his hand was
severed and grew back. Battling the Sycorax Christmas morning… spaceship over
London? A third of the people on the planet under blood control?’ He waited for
any kind of acknowledgement that they knew what he was talking about. He
scratched his check. ‘Dear me. Tough crowd.’
‘You’re right. We should have waited for the Doctor to
explain,’ Rory said at last. ‘No. Never mind. It still wouldn’t have made any
sense.’
‘Wait. So, you have one heart?’ Amy reached tentatively
toward him and placed her hand on his chest. He could feel his heart beating
steadily beneath her fingers. Her eyes grew wide. They were very pretty eyes,
he thought.
‘You’re partly human,’ she observed.
‘Disgusting, isn‘t it?’ The truth of the matter still made
him shudder.
‘Oy!’ Amy snapped at him.
‘Oy!’ he snapped back, then grinned. Fantastic! No wonder
the Doctor had scooped up this one. He’d have done the same in a heartbeat. Two
hearts beat. Rory didn‘t seem too bad either. Two for one and attached to each
other. That simplified things.
‘All right,’ Amy said slowly, following him around the
console as he checked the nooks and crannies beneath for a teacup. ‘Say I‘m
following you so far. Following what you‘re saying, I mean, not following you.’
‘You are following me.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Do I?’
She pursed her lips at him. He grinned and went back to
searching.
‘No, but it sounds enough like him to believe it even if I
don’t completely understand it. But how did you get here? And why has he never
told us about you? I mean, you‘re like clone-brothers or something. He always
says he‘s alone. The Last of the Time Lords.’
‘Oh, I don‘t think he expected to ever see me again.’ He had
almost told us. Rose and me. That explanation he really did intend to leave to
the Doctor. Come to think of it, he was owed that much himself.
‘Why,’ Rory asked slowly, trailing after them. ‘Where are
we?’
‘Earth,’ he said, sadly coming to the conclusion that there
were no teacups on hand. Why brew a pot of tea and not have teacups?
‘Earth is good,’ Rory began.
‘Serves the local population well enough, I suppose. But
it’s not the one you left. At least I expect not. Mind you, if you don‘t
remember anything about the Daleks or the Sycorax maybe he picked you up
someplace I don‘t know about. Seems like he’d have noticed if he’d slid
sideways through a crack in Time and Space, but fish fingers and custard can do
that to a bloke,” he said, bringing himself up short. Fish fingers and… what?
‘Wait, how do you know that?’ Amy asked him.
He shrugged. ‘He was thinking about fish fingers and
custard, now I’m thinking about fish fingers and cu-- seriously? At the same
time? Tell me he doesn’t... Uhm. Where was I? Oh yes. I... stayed behind, in
this parallel world. Retro-closure of the Rift at Darlig Ulv Stranden in Norway
meant no one in and no one out, and trust me, we checked. Torchwood and UNIT
both monitor all the hotspots. Well, they used to. Budget cuts and all that.
Frankly, he was right. Your being here is impossible.’
‘Take it up with the Tardis,’ Amy told him.
‘The Tardis?’ But he was not nearly surprised. He had long
known that the ship had a mind of her own. He looked up into the glimmering
assembly of globes that made up the Time Rotor, sensing again what he‘d sensed
inside the Doctor‘s troubled mind. Searching. Longing. Hunger. He was missing something. Something right in
front of him.
He looked down at the face he would never see in the mirror.
Such a young face for an old man. And this one ever so much older than he was.
Amy moved closer as if, just then, she wasn‘t entirely sure she trusted this
stranger in their midst. In their Tardis. Quite right, too. It was powerfully
clear she did not like seeing the Doctor this way and from their brief contact
he knew it had happened more than once. It seemed fate continued to place him
in pivotal moments in Time. Amy’s reaction was more basic than that, though.
She simply didn’t want to see her friend hurt. Her friend. Her best friend. He
touched her arm gently and looked deeply into her brown eyes. He knew what it
was like, to have a friend like that.
‘He’ll be fine. Really. Five minutes and a cuppa and he’ll
be right as rain. Well,’ he drawled, seeing that she was not about to take him
at his word, ‘maybe ten minutes and a banana. Even so, something messed with
the neuropathways. Some sophisticated, telepathic, neuro-disrupting,
trans-dimensional, timey-wimey stuff.’
He swung the Doctor’s handsome moleskin jacket off the back
of one of the jump seats, rifling the pockets for clues. Lint, more lint,
crumbs, something sticky that smelled like jam. And a wrinkled orange. He
tossed it up then snatched it out of the air.
‘Where have you been?’
‘We were at home,’ Rory told him.
Amy concurred. “We haven’t seen him in a while. A long
while, really.’
‘--right.’ He sniffed loudly. ‘Psychic pollen doesn‘t work
that way. You’d all be having hallucinations and, I can assure you, I’m not an
hallucination. No evidence that the Trickster‘s been at work. Encounter any
brain devouring parasites in your travels? No? They can hibernate for years,
then they get restless and bored and start poking around. Get right into your
ears while you‘re sleeping, cosy up in there where it‘s warm and dark, disrupt
auditory processing before attaching to your --. Oh. Sorry. Too much
information?’
Both Amy and Rory looked more than a little alarmed, hands
straying involuntarily to their ears. They made the cutest bookends, he
thought, clad in jeans and red plaid shirts. And cowboy boots. Proper, American
cowboy boots, no doubt from a proper America. Not like this world, where the
Land of the Free and Home of the Brave was sandwiched between the United States
of Mexico and Imperial Canada.
‘Wait a minute,’ Rory said, ‘we haven’t been in the Tardis
is ages, but wouldn’t any brain devouring parasites that were roaming around in
here have infected us too?’
‘Depends,’ he replied, deftly peeling the orange and handing
the rind to Rory. He balanced it on the handrail when he was finished, then
went back to searching pockets.
A chess piece, bus tokens, a dry cleaning claim ticket from
1952, a wooden yo-yo, a Rubix Cube with only the blue face done, a hefty
metre-long torch, a stick of chalk, a recipe for curried fish heads, a rubber
ball, and a half eaten package of Coco Dodgers which he helped himself to
seeing as he was still feeling rather famished. In an inner pocket he found a
familiar leather wallet and flipped it open as he munched, wondering if there
were more biscuits to be found. The psychic paper was covered in gibberish.
Gallifreyan gibberish involving complex mathematical calculations that defied
even his logic. The symbols changed as he watched, as if the equation was still
in the process of being worked out. He set it aside to study the curious, new
sonic screwdriver, wondering if it had a red setting. Or dampers.
‘On what’
‘Psychic interface? Oh! Get outta here! No way!’ He tested
applications on the device with great pleasure. An automatic garage door
opener. ‘Oh, that’s dead clever, that is. Never know when you’ll need to--Oh.
What? Did I miss the question?’
‘Depends on what?’ Rory prompted, hands waving, orange peel
dropping around them. ‘Infected brains? Parasites?’
‘Oh. Right. Sorry.’ Amy, in particular, seemed to be amused
by him and was no longer hovering over her Doctor like a mother hen. He smiled
at her, enjoying the slow smile that edged over her lips and wrinkled her nose.
‘Depends on what it was hungry for.’
‘Are you saying we aren’t complicated or, I don’t know,
tasty enough?’
‘Not at all. You lot can be plenty complicated. No opinion
on tasty, mind you.’ He flipped the screwdriver end for end, aimed it, snapped
it open. Closed it. Seeing that they were watching his every move he slid it
and the psychic paper into an inside pocket, patted it gently, and placed the
green jacket back where he’d found it. The other pockets would have to wait.
‘Oh, you are so the Doctor,’ Amy mused.
‘Yes, I am,’ he said with a little toss of his head. How
fabulous not to have to explain himself. Or wear a badge.
‘Wait. What are we supposed to call you? We can’t call you
both Doctor. That was way too confusing the last time. What is it with you and
no proper name?’
He blinked. ‘Wait. What? Last time--what--?’
‘I mean, is it all like, I don’t know, titles? The Doctor,’
she pronounced each syllable with a sassy little tilt of her head. ‘The
Corsair—'
‘Oh, he was a great bloke, uhm, usually. A bloke, I mean.’
‘--the Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker?’
‘Him not so much…’
But Amy had moved on as quickly as he often did and was
ignoring his interjections. Which, he mused, was just as well because he didn‘t
really want to explain why the Candlestick Maker called himself that. She
looked grave.
‘You’re sure he’ll be all right? I mean, did it--whatever it
was--, I don’t know, suck out anything important. Okay, so that didn’t come out
right at all.’
‘His memories are all there, if that‘s what you mean.
Unfortunately. Could do with forgetting some of that,’ he sighed. ‘No, it’s all
in there. No doubt with a little bit of my special blend of neurosis as well.
It was like…like an overloaded circuit that he cut off to avoid lethal
feedback, but it was on a continuous loop giving him quite a headache, which I
now appear to have as well. Closed the gateway but couldn‘t escape the loop.
Too much in a hurry I suppose.’
‘Sort of like you and your shoes?’
He’d completely forgotten. He untied the laces, balancing on
one foot at a time to tug the trainers on. A moment later he yanked the left
one off and turned it over. An enamel cat pin dropped into his hand and he
blinked in surprise, rubbing the ginger tabby’s face with his thumb.
Curious. He thought he had put all of those safely away long
ago. Well, he mused, casting a glance toward the Doctor, maybe he had. He
affixed the brooch to Amy’s collar, tugged on his other shoe, then jogged up
the nearest steps to the upper deck to test the fit. From that vantage point he
could take in the whole of the primary control room. Molto Bene!
‘Oy, Running Bear,’ Amy addressed him on his third
investigative lap and just before he had finally given into the temptation to
wander down one of the corridors. ‘Sleeping Beauty is waking up.’
He checked his watch. Tapped it to make sure it was still
running. ‘Right on time.’
Sure enough, the Doctor was stirring. The Time Lord rolled
up into a sitting position with a groan, hands fluttering at the hovering
crowd.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m just going to need something for a
headache. Two headaches.’
‘You aren’t fine. But you will be. Eat.’ He put chunks of
the rather desiccated orange into the Time Lord’s hands. ‘More. Come on.
Vitamin C, powerful antioxidant. Good for the hearts.’
The Doctor’s face twisted with evident disgust. ‘I’d rather
have a banana—'
‘--yes, we have no bananas and I‘m fresh out of celery. Eat
the orange and be thankful it isn‘t a pear.’
After a moment of thoughtful chewing the Doctor looked at
Rory: ‘There’s something splattered on your shirt. You really ought to speak to
your laundress.’
‘Yeah, thanks for that. Next time you‘re having convulsions
I‘ll pretend I‘m not a nurse.’
‘Doctor?’
‘Yes, Amelia?’
‘If you haven’t noticed we have a visitor.’
‘Yes, Amelia. I know. I‘m just being rude.’ The Doctor
swallowed the last bit of orange, before attempting to stand. Rory stabilised
from one direction, Amy from the other, until the Time Lord was done rocking
side to side and back again. What followed was a methodical neatening of
hopelessly dishevelled attire, starting with the rolling down and buttoning of
sleeves, the adjustment of braces, the retying of a red bowtie with quite a
flourish, and lastly, the donning of the green moleskin jacket.
It never got any easier, meeting himself.
‘Hello,’ the Doctor said at last, squirming slightly,
fidgeting with the new sonic screwdriver.
‘Hello.’
‘How have you been?’
‘Oh, you know. Drink a pint. Watch the telly. Crash a
zeppelin and come home for afternoon tea. Sun rises, sets. Time passes. In
order.’
‘Riiight. Sounds terrible--terribly exciting.’
‘What did you expect would happen?’ Not that he really
wanted to know the answer.
‘That you’d live happily ever after?’ the Doctor replied
weakly with a shrug before poking Amy playfully in the arm. ‘That’s one of my
favourite lines, you know. “And they lived happily ever after to the end of
their days.” Which is really, rather depressing if you think about it, isn’t
it? Oh, never mind that. I didn’t really expect anything. I just thought—'
‘You thought?’ he snapped back, with a short, mirthless
laugh. ‘You thought? You didn’t think at all. You just did what you always do.
What I always do. You moved on. My legacy to myself. Move on. Don‘t look back.
Never look back! Did it ever occur to you that you had no right to leave me
here?’
The Doctor looked him square in the eye. ‘Not for a moment.’
‘Oh, that’s just wizard!’ he hissed.
He hadn’t intended to have this conversation in public, let
alone in front of virtual strangers. Hadn’t thought he’d ever actually say the
words he had rehearsed silently so many times over the years. But it was too
late. Somehow, he always seemed to bring out the worst in himself.
‘Did you really think that with over 900 years of memories
in my head I’d just settle down and live a single lifetime in
this--this--gingerbread house? With Torchwood picking my brain, and UNIT
saluting me, and everyone expecting I could defend the Earth from ancient
vampiric evil and grumpy Yeti with black market space junk I find on eBay, an
augmented iPad XTP and a sonic screwdriver I cobbled together from more space
junk and have to keep hidden in my sock drawer so Tony Tyler doesn‘t short out
the electrical grid and shut down the whole south of England again?!’
‘You had Yeti?’ the Doctor asked, eyes wide.
‘I--what?’ he asked, surprised at the response.
‘Yeti? Really? I haven‘t seen Yeti in years! Amy! Rory!
Yeti!’
‘Oy! Distracted much Time Boy?’
‘Oh dear. You’re still angry.’
‘No, I’m not! Well, maybe. Well… sometimes,’ he admitted
weakly.
He drew a long, calming breath, considering the merit of a
hasty exodus before he said anything else stupid. Forget international
incidents. Arguing with the Doctor--with himself-- was an incident of
intergalactic magnitude. And when they were finished yelling at one another he
would not be the one flying away. Again.
Amy and Rory stared at both of them. Amy with her long,
lovely fingers pressed to her lips, as if she was holding back her words and
Rory with his mouth slightly open as if he, too, wanted to say something but
didn’t dare. The Doctor was studying the bits of orange peel strewn across the
floor now, that outrageous mop of brown hair flung forward over half-lidded
eyes.
‘Thanks for pulling me out of the cupboard and… the rest,’
the Time Lord said in soft, measured tones. ‘I see you found your shoes.’
‘Yep.’
‘And pinned the cat on Amy.’
‘Yep.’
Silence.
‘You,’ the Doctor waggled a finger at him and took a step
closer, bobbing up and down, back and forth, examining him, ‘look different.
Hair. Beard. Greyer. Wrinkles/? Are those wrinkles around your eyes? Look at
that. I have wrinkles!’
‘No, you daft plum. I have wrinkles. You regenerated.’
The Doctor straightened a crumpled bow tie.
‘Yes, I did. But you already knew that. I could tell when we
were in the cupboard with half our lives scattered around us and our minds
doing the Vortex Limbo. You weren’t at all surprised to see I had changed. How
exactly is that possible?’
He shrugged. It wasn’t something he could explain. Not
entirely. Not with words. ‘You tell me. Bad dreams. It must have been
difficult.’
‘It’s always difficult. But we live.’
Amy snorted. Rory whistled.
‘That’ll do, Ponds.’
‘We both knew.’ Rose and I. There, he’d said it. Or, thought
it, and was sure the message had been received. But the Doctor was playing
mental hopscotch.
‘Wait. Bad dreams. You had bad dreams about me? No, don’t
answer that. Wait. No. Interesting,’ the Time Lord said, scratching a cheek.
‘Very interesting. By the way, sorry about the suit.’
‘Aww, not the blue one…’
‘No, the brown one. I kept the tie. It’s around here
somewhere holding open a door, I think. A little singed mind you. The Tardis
was exploding, after all. And crashing. Did I mention you left me crashing?”
‘I didn‘t leave you anywhere. You left me, remember?’
Amy cleared her throat loudly.
‘Boys! Play nice. Listen to the two of you! Like yelling at
your reflection in a fun house mirror. Boys, boys, boys. Got myself three now.
One more and we can go on the road with a Beatles tribute band.’
‘I’m playing drums,’ all three men chimed in, and might have
argued the point had Amy not interrupted.
‘What I want to know, is why you changed your face. Didn’t
you like the last one well enough? Because I’m telling you, Doctor, that is not
half bad right there.’
He felt himself blush as she raked him up and down with her
gaze. He looked apologetically at Rory.
The Doctor sniffed. ‘It isn’t like I have time to look
through a catalogue. I’m usually dying at the moment.’
‘Usually?’ Rory asked, clearly confused.
The sound of the proverbial pin dropping filled the silence.
He and the Doctor looked at each other, sharing that unforgettable moment on
Gallifrey when the Time Lords, in all their smug arrogance, had done their
worst, leaving him bereft of his beloved young Companions, exiling him and
forcing a Regeneration on him all at the same time.
‘It’s complicated,’ they said in unison.
He had parted company with many a travelling companion in
his long years. Watched them walk away. Watched them die. But the cruelty of
that moment, when the Time Lords had, in their haughty wisdom, returned sweet
Zoe and brave heart Jamie to their respective timelines, still haunted him when
he allowed the memories entrance. It used to be easier, he mused. Easier to let
those memories sleep. But the Time Lords had not wanted him to forget. Why else
exact such a sentence for what they deemed meddling? He would remember every
moment, every tale told, every note played. They would remember nothing. In his
dreams they would run. Together. In their dreams? Who could tell.
He blinked when the Doctor snapped fingers not two inches
from his face.
‘Hello again.’
He cleared his throat, embarrassed at having been caught out
thus, lost in memories he should have come to peace with hundreds of years ago.
Damn human frailties reinterpreting his emotions at every turn.
‘So, why are we here?’ the Doctor asked slowly, eyeing him
closely, as if the answer were written on his face. ‘Not just because I was
having a neural implosion. Though I suppose that‘s reason enough and perhaps I
should be thankful you did show up or else I‘d still be locked in a dark
cupboard with cases of things and other things, and all those shoes…’
‘Don’t ask me.’ He tapped the phone. ‘It isn’t like I rang
you up. According to Amy the Tardis brought you.’
‘Did she? Did she really? Thanks Dear,’ the Doctor told the
ship with great affection, then spun around to Amy and Rory. ‘Wait. When did
you two come on board? I was in the year 8792 having victory tea with Big Al
and Brother Nic after the defeat of the Big White Wahooey and his Jack Boot
Marching Band. Well, I say tea, but it was more like an herbal slurry with
leaves in it and it made me rather sleepy and have cravings for rare Charlie
Chaplin films. You weren’t there. I’d have noticed. Why are you here? And why
are we here and…’
That obvious thing. That thing staring him right in the face
suddenly became crystal clear. To both of them. There he went again with a head
so full of stuff he couldn’t see the obvious. He smacked his forehead with the
heel of his hand just as the Doctor leapt to the console.
‘Where is she getting her power?’ they both said, hands
spinning dials, nearly bowling one another over to assess the power readings.
‘That’s impossible!’
‘Oy. Are you two going to be doing that all day?’
‘Doing what?’ they asked Amy, then looked at each other.
‘But it’s a fair question—' the Doctor began.
‘--as is where is the Tardis—' he added.
‘--getting her power. I know, I know. But look at her. She’s
running at full capacity which means…’
‘…she’s drawn power from somewhere nearby,’ he finished.
‘Or somewhen. Which could be very not good at all.’
‘But’ he said slowly, the other thing suddenly dawning on
him, ‘might explain the cannonball.’
The Doctor’s head poked around the Time Rotor column in
interest. ‘The what? A cannonball? What sort of cannonball?’
‘Frankly,’ Rory’s words were directed at Amy, but were loud
enough for all of them to hear, ‘them finishing each other’s sentences is going
to be far more annoying than them talking at the same time don’t you think?’
‘Rory. Do stop interrupting our guest,’ the Doctor said.
‘It‘s terribly rude.’
‘Just before you got here--well, just before I found that
you were here--how long have you been here anyway?--what appeared to be a Civil
War cannonball containing traces of Zeiton 7 landed in Pete Tyler’s garden.’
‘Oooh!’ The Doctor said, hands rubbing together with evident
anticipation. ‘That‘s a neat trick, assuming it was fired in the 17th Century.
Well, let‘s have it.’
He turned out his empty pockets.
‘Sorry. Wrong kind of pockets.’
