Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1974, and the village was only beginning to make concessions to the modern age. Tucked high along England’s north coast, none of the settlement’s brick and thatch cottages were under a century old. The only road in was a dirt track, which, until the past few decades, had only seen carts, horses, feet, and sheep.

But things were changing — faster now. Tractors had supplanted the proud draft horses of the old days, trucks were replacing carts, and televisions (colour!) and telephones were stacked in a satisfied display at the front of the general store.

It was to this village, which is not important to this story, except as a beginning, that a darkened star fell.

It made its landing (crash) on New Year’s Eve, four minutes after midnight, blazing through the newborn year’s sky, cutting the atmosphere with a thin whistle that competed with the wind and the crash of waves against the nearby coast. A long borealis line of colour marked its path against the night.

Most of the villagers were afraid, thinking the world was coming to an end: More than one member of a group exiting a late church service dropped to their knees in prayer. A group of teens celebrating in the bush thought it was an atom bomb sent by the Russians and ran to their homes to duck and cover. One old man, a veteran and the village doctor (he should have retired decades past, but who would take his place?), had no fear left in him, but shed a tear at the beauty of the shimmering heavens and was supremely grateful that he had lived to see such a sight.

*

Three days later the world had not ended. The group of teens who had run in fear tried to save face by claiming that the falling star had been a bomb, but it had failed to explode due to a faulty detonator. Other theories abounded. In the small community any new event was always mulled over, chewed, and gossiped into a thousand fragments.

Some thought it was a good omen for the coming year, others still insisted it was a sign of impending doom. None of them took their theories seriously, and life went on with its steady rhythm of work and sleep. A search for the remains of the strange object was called off because of a severe snowstorm.

A week later, a government man came from London to explain that the phenomena had been caused by the deteriorating orbit of a Russian spy satellite. The group of teens was delighted with the explanation and told the man that they had known it was the Russians all along. The man sarcastically congratulated them.

The man, who was dressed completely in black and had a grey-touched goatee, staged a search to find the ‘satellite’ using an impressive looking tool that vaguely resembled a metal detector. He found nothing — Perhaps because of the deep snow, or perhaps because there was nothing to find. He left in a fuming bad temper.

A few days after the government man left, another, quite different, stranger came to the village.

The stranger appeared on the village outskirts looking like a mouse which had been toyed with by a particularly sadistic cat and left to rot. The schoolteacher who found him threw up once she realised she was looking at a living man and not a pile of ground meat. The stranger was brought to the old doctor, who fought valiantly to save him, but the injuries and burns were too intense. The stranger’s body roared with infection. Mutilated limbs were stretched tight with pus, so that the cracking black burned skin above ripped under the pressure. The stranger had no face; it had been burned off with the rest of his body.

Not since his war days had the doctor seen such devastation. At that time the body had belong to a friend, and it was perhaps that memory which caused the doctor to fight so hard to save the stranger. Perhaps it was the strange air which surrounded the dying man; duty, remorse, and… somehow… peace, which touched the doctor and made him feel that he was safe, that his village — his whole world now — and the universe beyond it, even to the furthest star, were safe, and all of his hard fought battles and losses of the past had been worth it. When the doctor touched the man’s scarred and rotting chest he felt two distinct heartbeats thudding in a steady, desperate bid for life.

The doctor, though he told no one, believed his patient to be an angel who had rode the falling star from the heavens to save the world from further war and destruction.

The group of teens were convinced he was a Russian survivor from the crashed satellite.

Whoever he was, the stranger died just under fourteen hours after being found.

Chapter Text

“Would you repeat that?” the Brigadier said to the phone.

“I said,” said the man on the other line, “that a man has been discovered in a hamlet north of Manchester who doesn’t die.”

“Yes, I caught that Yates, but last I checked cheating the Grim Reaper counts as good fortune, not an urgent line in during lunch.”

“No, you see sir, I saw pictures. The man looked like a hunk of meat sent through a grinder. Then the doctor turns around and the man is alive, with his skin intact, sitting up on his bed asking for a cup of tea. He was missing limbs before, sir, and they grew back.”

The Brigadier sighed down the phone. Malleable evidence, shaky eye-witness accounts, it sounded like a hoax, and of course it would be the ever gullible Mike Yates to fall for it and feel compelled to ring home to base ASAP, never mind the time. If it were an actual emergency it wouldn’t matter as much, if Yates was reporting on an actual assignment perhaps the Brigadier would only have been mildly irritated — but Yates wasn’t on assignment; he was at a relative’s wedding.

“A miracle I suppose,” said the Brigadier.

Yates continued on spilling his story, completely missing the not-so-subtle tone of sarcasm in the Brigadier’s response:

“That’s what the locals are calling it, though there is a small group of youth claiming that he’s the survivor from a downed Russian spy satellite and that he’s been genetically enhanced. Now that’s ridiculous, but…”

“Yates, what do you want me to do about this miracle man? Does he look like a threat to security?”

“No sir, but…”

“Yates…”

“He has two hearts sir,” Yates blurted.

That stopped the Brigadier in his tracks. He was a man very rarely stunned or lost for words, but the implications of that short, little sentence brought him up dead.

“There’s no sign of a police box,” Yates chipped in before he could form a response.

The Brigadier found he tongue again:

“Of course not!’ he said, raising his voice to show his annoyance and mask his perplexity, “Our scientific advisor, and his box, have spent the last two weeks in the lab obsessing over some jibber-jabber and ignoring any instructions I give to him. Now, Yates, I want you to find out who this mystery man is, and whether or not he is a security risk and then report back, preferable not during lunch.”

Yates coughed.

“Another thing, sir,” he said, his voice sounded a bit strained, like he was afraid of the response he might receive, “the man collapsed after his rejuvenation and hasn’t regained consciousness since. This village is a bit primitive and we obviously couldn’t send him to a hospital in the city. He’s on his way to headquarters now. I thought maybe Dr. Sullivan…”

“How soon?” asked the Brigadier dryly.

“They left a while ago. An hour?”

“Very good, Yates.”

The Brigadier hung up the phone and massaged his temples. This hadn’t been a good day to start with. He couldn’t see his desk for the paper work. Miss Grant was taking the week off, and no one else at headquarters seemed able to put together a decent cup of coffee. His head throbbed with a caffeine headache. He realised that he would have to alert Dr. Sullivan to his incoming charge.

And that was another headache. The surgeon had only transferred to headquarters a few days ago and last Alistair had seen the infirmary was in the middle of an organizational overturn. He gritted his teeth and started to compose a mental list of what he would have to do in the wake of Yates’ lunch-interrupting call when another interruption made him turn around.

“Who was that on the phone?”

The Doctor stood in his office doorway, and the Brigadier had not a clue how long he had been there. He was dressed in one of his elaborate cape and ruffles costumes with a look on his face that didn’t match with any normal human expression.

“Nothing to worry you,” said the Brigadier, “A message from Yates in the field. Weren’t you doing something to that box of yours? Staying out of everyone’s way?”

“I do realise that you are suffering from withdrawal symptoms from your caffeine addiction,” said the Doctor, “but that’s no reason to be rude. What was Yates reporting on?”

“That’s strictly need to know basis,” said the Brigadier. His mind whirled. If Yates’ mystery man was the same type of alien as the Doctor, unlikely as that was… of course this was just the sort of thing the Doctor was employed to help with, but the infernal scientific advisor had been acting especially unruly of late, and the Brigadier had a feeling that this was one of those situations he would ‘muck up’.

The Brigadier looked up. The Doctor was still standing in his doorway looking at him with those blue, mind-probing eyes. It made his headache worse. The Brigadier made a decision, not a particularly ethical one, but he had been having an appallingly bad day.

“Yates is in London,” said the Brigadier, “He’s been investigating some flying saucer reports. Complete nonsense, but some wreckage, most definitely a hoax, was recovered the other day. It’s nothing to concern yourself with, a prank by some misguided youth.”

“I should say it concerns me!” said the Doctor, “And it should concern you as well. I’m amazed anything gets done around here, Brigadier, with you always so quick to call the truth in as a hoax. You are more open minded than most members of your species, but at other times your stupidity appalls me.”

The Brigadier rose from his desk; "Now, see here — " but before he could say anything of note the Doctor began pacing, crowding him into a corner.

“I have spent the last fortnight struggling to pin point the landing of a space/time disruption. Make no mistake, Brigadier, this could be a very dangerous prank we are dealing with. Now, before you start sputtering orders that show your lack of bearing on the situation and overall idiocy I’m taking Bessie and going straight to London before your little ‘hoax’ gets out of hand.”

“Thank you,” said the Brigadier as the Doctor stormed away, red and black velvet cape swishing after him, “and be sure to retrieve Miss Grant while you’re out. Some one has to make the coffee!”

The Brigadier sank very slowly into his desk chair. Mountains of important, must not be delayed, paperwork rose before him; the never ending, papery payment for his rank. He wondered how long it would take the Doctor to realise he had been sent on a goose chase. He wondered if Yates’ miracle man was the disruption the Doctor was yammering on about and if he was, in fact, dangerous. Knowing his luck, none of the probable answers were satisfactory.

He sighed, stood up, and began a futile search for something with caffeine in it.

Chapter Text

The stranger who would not die arrived at UNIT headquarters an hour later, exactly on schedule. The Brigadier acknowledged the arrival and ignored it. He was busy finishing his paper work and his interrupted lunch in relative peace. A quick check of the lab showed that the Doctor had indeed left the premises; though the Brigadier knew it wouldn’t be long before he figured out he was following a fib.

After making a sizeable dent in the pile on his desk and grimacing down a cup of something chunky that might have been coffee made by one of the enlisted men, the Brigadier headed towards the infirmary to make his first inspection of Dr. Sullivan’s patient.

Doctor Harry Sullivan sat on the side of an empty hospital bed reading a magazine. He quickly snapped into a salute and kicked the publication under the bed when the Brigadier entered the room.

“How is he?” the Brigadier asked.

“No change, sir,” Harry Sullivan shouted, and the Brigadier was reminded what a green recruit he was.

“This isn’t the Navy, Dr. Sullivan, this is the United Nations. A certain degree of respect and duty is expected, but this not a drill hall. How is your patient?”

Dr. Sullivan instantly relaxed. The Brigadier took a liking to the man. His sideburns were ridiculous, whatever the current fashion might be (and downright bizarre considering he'd been an enlisted man up until very recently), but he had a sturdy step and a good, open face. He gave off the air of a man who knew his duty and took pleasure in doing it. Alistair respected that.

“Still in a coma,” said Dr. Sullivan, “He’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I’ve been comparing his stats to the information in you scientific advisor’s medical dossier on advice from Captain Yates, and I’m not going to ask where you found that chap either, but it all matches: two hearts, abnormal body temperature, one of the strangest metabolisms I’ve ever heard of. In the dossier you have your advisor listed as suffering from a rare medical aliment, but I think you are deluding yourself. In my professional opinion neither he, nor my current patient, are human.”

“Of course they aren’t human,” said the Brigadier.

Dr. Sullivan’s only response was a delayed: “Oh,” and a wide eyed look.

The Brigadier ignored it and shuffled over to the only occupied bed in the room.

“Is this him?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Sullivan, making a speedy recovery from the Brigadier’s revelation, “I haven’t hooked him up to anything because without greater knowledge of his physiology I might damage…”

The Brigadier ignored this and examined the alien patient. Yates said that he had been found north of Manchester and the body certainly suited the area: a distinctive nose, unfortunate ears, and very little hair. Very thin. Very dark. Lines of thin crow’s feet spread from the corners of his tightly closed eyes, but he was not an old man. He looked like a soldier, and the Brigadier, with his own soldier sense, instantly felt that he had been in a war.

The air for several feet around the patient was suffused with an unnatural chill, and when the Brigadier touched his wrist the skin felt like dry ice, and the slow, steady thump of the double pulse could not be mistaken.

The Brigadier pulled back and addressed Dr. Sullivan.

“He seems to be in the same condition our scientific advisor was in following his… change.”

“Doctor John Smith?” Dr. Sullivan said dubiously, quoting the name from the dossier Yates had given him.

“He prefers Doctor,” the Brigadier told him. “He made a return to consciousness after several hours and I have no doubt that this one will do likewise. Call me when the awakening occurs.”

Dr. Sullivan nodded curtly. The Brigadier started to exit the infirmary when he was interrupted by the sound of rustling sheets punctuated by the surgeon's voice:

“Sir, I hate to stop you going, but, well, that is to say, I think it’s occurring.”

“What?”

The Brigadier turned around, fixing his eyes on the bed, and the painfully thin hospital gown-garbed man tucked into it. Sure enough, the patient was twitching. The tension around his eyes lessened and they opened for the first time. The Brigadier saw that they were unfocused, and blue/grey of a limitless quality that he had seen on only two other individuals: one a friend and employee, the other an enemy.

The patient blinked away a portion of his disorientation and focused on the Brigadier with a piercing, questioning look.

“I know you,” he said thickly with a loud Northern accent to match his face. His eyes wandered to look at Dr. Sullivan, “and you... you’re dead. Everyone’s dead.”

His gaze trailed around the room taking in everything and nothing.

“I never believed in an afterlife,” he said, and laughed darkly as if this were somehow a joke.

Dr. Sullivan fidgeted.

“I’ve never met you,” he said. At the same time he gave his unnerving patient a once-over, trying to determine how stabile this new state of consciousness was. The man's eyes were far too dilated for the light, but who knew what was normal for an alien? Before Dr. Sullivan could form any sort of medical opion the man suddenly sat up, his eerie gaze fixing on Dr. Sullivan's face, before collapsing to his former position.

“You always were an idiot," the patient said softly, and more endearingly than the harsh words should have allowed, "but… No, you’re too young with all the paradoxes… and you never were as fit as you pretend… and what it did to Sarah, but you don't know her yet… because that was why you left, rather than admit how much it hurt… it was rainy that day, she cried, and I could have stopped it… but there were daleks by then killing, killing, killing, and if I couldn't stand how could I… because… I used to think…” he fixed both men in the room with a wild look, “You should stay away from me! I’ll kill you!”

Then he collapsed, senseless, onto his back. Harry looked quite shaken.

“Well,” said the Brigadier, “the other one acted strangely after waking up too, kept asking for his shoes apparently.”

“Maybe we should…” Dr. Sullivan started.

“Just leave him be, he’ll come to his senses eventually,” said the Brigadier, forgetting for a moment that, in the infirmary, he technically wasn't in charge. Apparently Dr. Sullivan didn't remember this either, or trusted the Brigadier's greater experience on the matter. In any case he let the usurpation pass, and took a different route to addressing his concerns:

“Perhaps," Dr. Sullivan said, as if talking to air, "your advisor, if they are of the same origin, could help speed the process?”

“My advisor is on his way to London at the moment, besides, as he has told me often enough, he doesn’t get on with his own people. I’ve decided not to tell him about this patient. We will bide our time, and, hopefully when he wakes up properly this fellow will give us some answers, and then leave.”

The Brigadier left the infirmary and headed back to his office and the endless paperwork. No doubt more forms would have found their way to his desk in his brief absence. He checked his watch, and saw the pale blue of evening through a window.

In the infirmary, Harry Sullivan nervously perched on the edge of a bed. He did not retrieve his magazine, but watched the unnaturally slow rise and fall of his patient’s chest. The room was cold. He grabbed a blanket off the bed, wrapped it around himself, and shivered.

Chapter Text

The door of Alistair Gordon Lethbrige-Steward’s UNIT headquarters office pushed open with a great deal of restrained force sending a breeze into the room which ruffled the stacks of paperwork dotting his desk and created two separate landslides of procedural forms. Though, considering the situation, it could have been worse: the door didn't slam against its hinges; or come off them.

“Brigadier!” like the push, the shout was also restrained and more powerful for it.

The Brigadier didn’t flinch or look up from his desk.

“Good evening, Doctor,” he said.

It had been a day and a half since he had sent the scientific advisor away. Frankly, he had been wondering why he was taking so long.

‘I tell you that there is a dangerous time anomaly present and you sent me off on a wild goose chase!”

“Did you bring back Miss Grant?” the Brigadier queried, massaging his temples.

“Yes, though you could have sent a cab for her and by-passed telling falsehoods and possibly hastening the impending dimensional collapse of this galaxy. You aren’t always the most intelligent man Brigadier, but you are a good deal more so than most individuals on this planet. It’s out of character for you to lie.”

“I had my reasons, and I will not disclose them at the moment. I did what I felt was right, and it is not your place to question orders. If you could get Miss Grant to put a pot on you can return to your work and I can return to mine.”

The Doctor leaned over his employer’s desk.

“It might interest you to know that the Master has been spotted.”

The Brigadier's hands dropped from rubbing his forehead to support him as he leaned forward in his chair.

“Where?”

“Up North. After realising you had sent me to follow a fairy tale I left London to chase the distortion I’ve been tracking to its original source. I received several eye witness accounts of a man named Mr. Mastra searching for a downed satellite in the region. Not a single one of his 'official' documents or stories check out.”

“Did you catch him?”

“No, Brigadier, he was gone weeks before I got there, but I did learn some other interesting information, about a man who doesn’t die, who was brought back here.”

The Brigadier fell back both into his chair and his nonchalant attitude.

“That is strictly classified information.”

"You are sequestering me from one of my own people."

"From what you've told me, Doctor, you aren't particularly fond of your own people."

The Doctor's eyes were practically spitting fire. Still, he managed a calm enough visage to counter his rapidly rising temper:

"We may not see eye to eye on all issues, Brigadier, but I am not below giving help to an injured countryman because of a petty squabble with his government. Besides which, he might have something I need, and he is most certainly the source of the anomaly I am tracking."

"Doctor…" The Brigadier warned, but the errant Scientific Adviser had already stormed out of the room. Alistair took a long deep breath and picked up his phone.

"Dr. Sullivan? Yes, this is the Brigadier. You've got a visitor coming down, I suggest…"

*

When the Doctor reached the infirmary he was greeted by a man with ridiculous sideburns and a rather embarrassed looking Sergeant John Benton. He ignored both of them and pressed his way towards the door, only to be pressed back by Benton.

"I'm sorry," the Sergeant said, "Orders…"

"Idiocy!" said the Doctor, "Do you know what is behind that door? I know you are perfectly capable of thinking with your head instead of your uniform and furthermore…"

The man with the ridiculous sideburns cleared his throat. The Doctor spun off his high horse to meet him.

"And who exactly are you?"

"The doctor," said the man, "well that is to say…" he looked the real Doctor up and down. The velvet frilled Time Lord had an expression on his face which would make most individuals want to run away, curl up somewhere, and suck on their thumb for the remainder of their life.

"I must say, steady on, chap," said the man with sideburns, "you'll burst an artery that way."

"You will let me through this door immediately," said the Doctor. His voice was kind and low, and not to be disobeyed.

"I rather can't. You see, I'm the physician, Dr. Harry Sullivan at your service, and my patient's in rather a state right now. Company might overtax him."

"Dr. Harry Sullivan," the Doctor repeated.

"Yes that's…"

The Doctor ignored him and returned his attentions to Benton.

"You're under orders to keep me out of this room."

"That's right sir, sorry."

"And how far do these orders stretch?"

It was as if the Doctor had turned a dial and switched Benton to a setting about five degrees more uncomfortable than the last. The Sergeant shifted from foot to foot.

"Not totally sure. Was not specified."

"But you wouldn't raise a weapon against me?"

Benton looked horrified.

"No sir, not even if I was ordered to."

"And if I told you that the patient inside this room is one of my people and may be gravely injured?"

"He has a doctor," Benton argued weakly.

The Doctor dismissed Dr. Sullivan in a glance.

"He has an imbecile. A perfectly fine man for treating soldiers I should expect, but he lacks the fine training to —"

"I say!" Dr. Sullivan interjected, "I do have —"

No one listened.

"The Brigadier would never let me live it down if I did," Benton said sheepishly.

The Doctor smiled kindly. His eyebrows arched slightly as if to say 'well, I thought you were braver than that', but, overall, it was a forgiving expression. Benton relaxed slightly. The Doctor was a reasonable man, alien, Benton probably thought he was going to apologise and walk away, probably to bother the Brigadier some more.

"And if it wasn't your fault?" the Doctor asked, his voice matching perfectly the look on his face.

"Wha —"

Before he could complete the sentence Benton was slumped gently across the floor, carefully lowered into position by the Doctor. A single pinch on a certain pressure point, a la Venusian Aikido had done the trick. The Doctor quickly repeated the act on a stunned looking Dr. Sullivan.

"Please accept my apologies," the Doctor said to the two limp forms, and then stepped over them to enter the infirmary.

Chapter Text

The miracle man was standing at the window when the Doctor entered the infirmary. His loose hospital gown did nothing to cover his narrow back. Every rib showed, pressing against lean muscle like the bars on a cage. The skin had flakey patches on it, like a bad case of eczema. The Doctor knew that both the thinness and the rash were symptoms of a ragged regeneration, occurring when the cycle was unable to repair all of the damage inflicted prior to death.

He cleared his throat.

The man at the window did not turn.

"I was wondering how you've been treated," the Doctor asked, locking the infirmary door as he did so. Best to make sure they weren't interrupted once Benton and Dr. Sullivan were discovered.

No response.

"The people of this world might be exceedingly dim at times, but they do try."

Silence.

"This room is a bit nippy…" the Doctor said, trying for a change of route. He picked up a sheet from one of the beds and softly draped it over the man's paper-clad shoulders. "Now, that's better isn't it? My name is the Doctor. I have a few questions I need you to answer."

"No."

The word came out quietly, the man's lip barely moving to accommodate it. He did not take his eyes off the window. He didn't seem to be looking at anything beyond it; he simply stared into space, at some fixed point far beyond reality.

"Is there a reason?" asked the Doctor.

But the man was tight-lipped again. The Doctor now knew for certain he was a Time Lord; he had mental barriers constructed around his mind which stung the Doctor's psyche by mere proximity. It was rude, aggressive, and difficult regenerations be damned!

"Who are you?" asked the Doctor, barely keeping a lip on his growing annoyance.

No response.

"You do realise that you had an improper landing? Created a space/time rift of some magnitude? Do you have an explanation for your actions?"

No response.

"You can't do whatever you like you know. You might have destroyed the dimensional stability of this entire galaxy with those antics, never mind what you did to yourself. I certainly hope you had a good reason."

No response, but the man began to tremble.

"What was your purpose?" asked the Doctor, "If you're with the C.I.A. or here to nag me into some sort of cohesion I won't do it."

"No," the man said again, quietly, and then with vehemence, "No! I didn't come to fetch you for some inane Time Lord mission, and I'm not part of the C.I.A.," he halted, as if he had said more than he meant, "I was, once… long time ago… I…"

The man turned, facing the Doctor for the first time. He looked — tired, which was to be expected following a difficult regeneration, but it went beyond that. He looked bleached of all colour, dulled to grey and grey.

"I'm cut off from my — our — people, home, just a wanderer me, all through the fourth dimension. I'm going, leaving, already left, and you should just forget me John Smith."

The stranger's teeth clenched and his arms crossed. The meaning was clear: no more. The Doctor peered at him, and tried to get past his mental walls. They were strange, too strong, as if time itself was lending a hand, which made the Doctor very nervous. He could see temporal disruption flickering all around the stranger like an evil halo. The use of his alias when he had not mentioned it did not escape the Doctor's notice. He wondered if, breaching more rules of etiquette, the stranger had reached into his mind to grab it, but that thought was at the bottom of a very deep pile of questions.

"An exile?" the Doctor asked slowly, "By choice or by force? The people of this planet have surprisingly low intelligence at times, but they aren't that bad. However, I must warn you that they have only barely evolved and fight back quite savagely if they feel their territory is being invaded."

That was a warning and a threat in case the stranger came with ideas of domination and subjection: this world is defended.

The stranger let out a short laugh at the between the lines message.

"Silly little apes," he said.

"Yes, you might say that, some sillier than others, but still strong."

"I'm not an exile," said the stranger.

"But you cannot return."

"You will."

With that line the deception was broken: the shields were still up, but the Doctor knew who he was talking to, and shuddered. Perhaps the Brigadier was right, he thought, though he couldn't have known.

"You shouldn't tell me," the Doctor said, "The future is best left to itself."

"Damn the future and fuck the timelines," spat the stranger, the Doctor's future, the words almost incoherent through his accent and choked back emotion, "It's all twisted now. Time's tied into knots. It can rewrite itself anyway it wants to. Backwards can be forwards. Night can be day. Technically, I don't exist, and that's probably a good thing considering what I've —"

He brought himself to a halt suddenly, his whole body swaying with the heaviness of his breathing and rage. His eyes were moist.

"It isn't nice to swear," the younger Doctor observed, his voice a steady contrast to his future self. The pair stared at each other for a long while, testing the mental connections.

"Do I still exist then?" asked the younger finally, using his old sage voice, "Or is this all some fantasy you've dreamed up?"

"In me, maybe," the older said, and was silent for a time, before coming back with spitting, viper fury, "But you were so good, so achingly, fantastically good with the whole martyr bit and saving the world. They never should have lifted your exile. But they will, and you'll go tip-toeing across the universe, saving it like some kind of hero."

"Is that such a bad thing?"

The battered Doctor gave his younger, nobler, more idealistic self a glaring look. Two pairs of steel blue eyes, not so different except for the years and horrors carried in one set, met. In this conversation words were playing only a small part, voicing thoughts and feelings that clanged firmly across the void between the identities and the individual. Despite being the same person, and hearing the blare of their own thoughts, each was an alien to the other. A stranger.

"If I killed you, would it be suicide or murder?" the older asked.

"I am sincerely sorry," said the younger, looking at him with eyes that pretended to understand, that struggled to hide their disgust, anger, and pity. His incarnation was good at hiding emotion, wonderful with disguises, but he would never fool himself. He shook his head slowly, and left the room. Benton and Dr. Sullivan had been removed from the hallway, and he knew that a lecture would probably descend upon him as soon as the Brigadier realised what he'd done. He hurried off to find Jo before the consequences found him; he needed to hear her soft rambling talk to reassure himself that he was in control, that he was the Doctor who always had the answers.

The older, left-behind Doctor watched the empty doorway, counted his fingers all the way to nine and stopped.

"Or a mercy killing?"

Chapter Text

It was night.

The Doctor, the older, Northern Doctor, sat on the edge of a bed in the infirmary staring at the single tablet of aspirin he held with a pair of tweezers. He rotated it slowly. It would be so easy…

Painful yes, but he had gone through worse and survived. This would be better because there would be insurance that he would not be breathing at the end. The only question was whether he should take the pill himself or slip it to his younger self.

The latter option had the perk of taking away all of the pain, making it so it would never happen. Perhaps that not-so-noble sacrifice would save Gallifrey? Because if the time lines were broken before… but the stitches of the time lines were already snarled and tangled to the point of ruin, and killing his early self might very well cause the universe to unravel. A selfish reason to destroy creation, though he was such a selfish bastard he still thought about trying it before deciding it was better to stick with the present. He’d already destroyed enough lives without playing Russian roulette with reality and the Blinovitch Limitation Effect.

Besides, he disliked his early self for some reason. He wanted him to suffer. See how pious the more-righteous-than-thou bastard would be then. See how his morals would run away when he was in cringing pain and a thousand Dalek ships surrounded him on every side. See how noble he could be.

The Doctor abandoned the tweezers and dropped the deadly tablet into the palm of one hand. His skin burned in protest. A red smear started to appear. Cramp shot down his arm, following the path of the tendons. If he held it long enough, he could kill himself through skin absorption, but he wanted instant relief.

He raised his hand to his mouth and swallowed.

The door to the infirmary creaked open, and Jo entered, carrying a bouquet of daisies. The Doctor didn’t raise his eyes to greet her. He wanted her to go away. Jo, good old Jo, married, a mother, a grandmother, dead. He had loved her like his own long lost daughter. He didn’t want her to watch him die. Not like this.

And the daisies. Oh Rasilon, NO.

“I brought these for you,” she said, sitting down next to him. She picked one from the bunch. “It’s the daisest daisy I ever saw. I thought it would cheer you up. The Doctor he told me…”

She went on and on in that beautiful, senseless Jo prattle he remembered so fondly, and missed. It had been centuries, and he still missed it. He realised that his younger self hadn’t told Jo who he was, only that he was depressed. A cramp folded up his gut. His hearts beat a bit faster, pumping the toxin out, into his blood stream, towards his brain. The end game. Check and mate.

It hurt.

The daisies hurt more, because reflected in their glowing petals he saw exactly what he was and what he had become. No more false hope. Only death. Peace.

He must have let out some sign of his pain, because Jo snuggled closer to him.

“Are you okay?”

He was too far gone to respond. His eyes were rolling back. Beautiful, sweet release was only a footstep away.

Jo noticed the open bottle of aspirin on bed table beside her.

“You didn’t.”

The Doctor sagged forward. She caught him.

“He told me it was wrong,” she whispered.

She ran out into the hall shouting “Doctor!” at the top of her lungs, and the Doctor she left behind keeled sideways onto the mattress, a trail of pink tinged salvia left a wet patch beside his mouth. His ancient blue eyes fogged.

And closed.

*

The Doctor was in the middle of getting told off by the Brigadier when Jo rushed into the office. Benton and Dr. Sullivan were also present, telling their part in the events.

"You've got to come!" Jo shouted, "Quick! He… he…" She leaned against the door jam panting, her eyes red.

"Steady on old girl," said Dr. Sullivan, "What's the matter?"

"Yes, what is the call for this interruption?" asked the Brigadier, "we were having an important meeting and — Doctor! Get back in your seat!"

The Doctor paid no heed to the order. He crouched in front of Jo, putting his hands on her shoulders. He spoke in his most fatherly tone, the one he reserved for Jo; she was like a daughter to him in so many ways.

"What happened?"

"I went to visit him like you told me," Jo said, her voice catching, "and I think…" she bit her lip, "I think…oh Doctor. It's terrible."

He was out of the room within the second with Dr. Sullivan, Benton, the Brigadier, and Jo trailing in his wake. The reached the infirmary to find the Doctor's older self sprawled half-off half-off his bed, his lips lined red. The younger Doctor took in the scene in an instant, down to the open bottle of aspirin on the bedside table. He immediately took charge:

"Dr. Sullivan, I need you to listen very carefully. This man has ingested a highly toxic substance. He will need to have his stomachs pumped if he's going to have any chance of —"

"It's no use," said Dr. Sullivan. He'd flipped the older Doctor into the recovery position only a few moments after entering the room and now had his head pressed again the man's chest. "He's dead."

Chapter Text

"He's dead."

"Won't he just change his face again?" the Brigadier queried with more than a hint of interest in his voice. The Doctor ground his teeth.

"Not this soon after regeneration, Brigadier. His resources are depleted. In any case, the substance he has taken has properties, which slow down the process under the best of circumstances. If he dies, he will stay dead."

"But he is dead," said Dr. Sullivan, testing the older Doctor's pulse again.

"No," said the younger Doctor, "Not quite. My people can survive cardiac arrest for short periods, but too much has been said already. I repeat, Dr. Sullivan, you must pump his stomachs; the first can be accessed in the normal fashion, I'll show you where to cut for the second and third. After which you should be able to restart his hearts without the toxin interfering. Do you understand?"

Dr. Sullivan stood still for a moment, and then slowly nodded. He jumped to action like the trained Navy surgeon he was, dropping to his knees and unreeling a length of clear coiled tubing from a supply cupboard. The Doctor gently grabbed Jo and pulled her into a hug, hiding her face from the proceedings. She cried softly into his cravat.

"I'm sorry Jo," he whispered to her, "Not very pleasant is it?"

She looked up at him, her eyes red rimmed, her cheeks shinning.

"Will he…?"

"Shhh… Whatever will be, will be."

"Because I was thinking, maybe he didn't know, maybe he just thought it would make him feel better… but if he did it on purpose. You don't think he…?"

The Doctor's face was hard set when she looked up again. Whatever emotion remained on it was impossible to read.

"Run along, Jo. It's past office hours. You should be home resting."

"But…"

"It's going to be a long night, and you'd only be in the way. I'd feel better."

She nodded, hugged him tight, and ran. He was left alone in a room full of people, wondering if he would soon be witness to his own death.

*

Dr. Sullivan restarted the older Doctor's hearts on five separate occasions over the course of the night, and administered multiple IVs dripping sedatives, steroids, and anti-anti-inflammatories created by the Doctor's younger self. Eventually the older Doctor stabilised, but it took over a week before he could be declared in the clear.

The first thing he saw upon waking up was his younger self’s accusing face.

“What exactly do we think we’re doing?” the younger Doctor asked.

The older Doctor groaned and closed his eyes. He tried to hide under his hospital covers, but found himself too weak to lift them.

“You aren’t going to hide. Do you know what you did to Jo? The poor girl was terrified.”

“Sorry,” the older Doctor mumbled through his respirator mask.

“You had better be!” the younger Doctor shouted, and then softened, the out of character harshness draining out of his voice and face, leaving confusion, and — though only he himself could recognise it — fear.

“I find it hard to believe that I will one day be reduced this,” he said, looking at his pale, cringing older self. There was no contempt in his voice, only something like, but not quite, pity.

Self-pity? He wondered.

“There was a war,” the older Doctor murmured, as if that explained everything.

“There are many wars,” said the younger.

“A big war, the biggest.”

“Don’t tell me,” said the younger, “Whatever will be will be, the future isn’t even a Time Lord’s to see, not when it’s close to the heart.” He paused, fighting with a moral issue and his time conscience, but there was one thing he needed to know:

“How long?”

Six fingers splayed open across the white sheet.

That was explanation enough.

The younger Doctor sat by his senior’s bedside for many hours. Neither of them talked. Outside it began to rain, and the steady thrum made a healing rhythm.

“Look,” said the younger Doctor suddenly; quoting an old friend, “beauty is all around you.”

The older Doctor looked around at the clean-swept infirmary, but saw no beauty, only death and ashes, until his eyes lighted on his bedside table. Jo had placed her daisy bouquet there in a homey blue vase. After the long days of the Doctor’s recovery most of the flowers were crisp and browning with missing petals, but the unsullied innocence of friendship remained. He removed his respirator, took a practice breath, coughed, but left it off.

“It was the daisiest daisy I ever saw,” the older Doctor whispered, “Why do flowers always come to tell me when I’m wrong?”

“Out of all evil must come some good,” said the younger Doctor.

“Those words will get you in a lot of trouble one day.”

The conversation lulled again for awhile. Outside the sky rumbled and churned, matched by the darkened minds of the two men, aliens, inside the barren little room. Medical monitors beeped and buzzed.

“Was it worth it?” the younger Doctor asked.

“I don’t know.” The older Doctor looked to the window and the rivulets of cold winter rain that fell against the glass, eating any droplets they encountered. He was glad for his life and the friendship he had shared, for daisies, and for thunderstorms, but he wasn’t sure if he deserved any of it. The man standing by his bed, the other him, he deserved it. He had never killed millions, manipulated his friends, led them to their deaths. He was still young, and full of righteous indignation. A rebel but a pure one.

“Do you still want to destroy yourself?” the rebel asked.

“I don’t know.”

The younger Doctor looked seriously at his older self.

“There is no shame in being afraid of death, but a terrible shame in being afraid of life. A very wise man told me that once.”

The older Doctor looked at his past. He didn’t remember the name of the wise man. It had been so long, hundreds, and hundreds of years.

That day had been the beginning of the war. The beginning of everything. He wondered if his younger self knew that. If it hadn’t been for that day he might have lived his life as a simple traveller, never being a hero. He might have followed the same path as his once friend the Master. He might not have been exiled for meddling.

Because the younger self wasn't innocent either. If he hadn't smashed that mercury link… or kidnapped Ian and Barbara… or abandoned… but the older Doctor had no strength left for anger. His attempted suicide had stolen it.

Was it worth it? In the end?

“I think you should leave,” the younger Doctor said calmly, without recourse for argument.

“I think so too.”

And he planned on it. As soon as he was strong enough to stand. He couldn't stay in this place a moment longer; though the familiar settings were balm to his tortured soul. He had spent only a few years in this place, unhappy years, he had thought at the time; in exile, trapped, but, in the centuries to follow, whenever he thought of home, it wasn’t Gallifrey that came to mind, or even the meandering corridors of his beloved ship, blackened now by gunpowder and death, but this place: UNIT, the Brigadier, Sarah-Jane, Benton, Jo, Liz, Harry, even Yates.

It was a beautiful comfort, and he dreaded it, because lately every beautiful thing he touched turned to ash.

“Do you have — ” his younger self began.

“Yes…” His poor scarred TARDIS was laying somewhere near the hamlet north of Manchester hidden under a multidimensional time rift. She would be hard to find, but not impossible, and it would take some doing to fix her, but she would fly again. That was another reason to live. “She saved me. Take good care of her. When you need it most, she’ll bring you home.”

“Sometimes it seems like I’ll never get back,” admitted the younger Doctor suddenly, his rich voice roughening until his aristocratic accent was nearly lost. He was taking off his mask for the first time in a long time; it was stilted, crunching, and raw: “My mind is cotton-wooled with what they did to it, and it seems to be degrading day by day. I’m growing the most peculiar affections for these humans, stupid they may be, but I need to fly again. It’s suffocating on this silly little back-wards world with all of its prejudice and preference towards blowing things up rather than trying to understand them.” The Doctor ended his speech on a tone that was angry and fond at the same time.

“Silly apes,” mumbled the older.

“Yes, wonderful, silly apes.” The younger’s old face creased firmly. Old anger. He kept it blunted for the most part, tucked under his lace and frills and velvet in a secret space between his hearts, but the stress of meeting his future had spilled it over. They were wonderful silly apes, and they were his friends, and… “They had no right,” he said.

“No,” agreed the older, “they didn’t.” A young couple ran laughing across his mental plane. Ghosts. A boy in a kilt and a girl in a ridiculous ruby cat suit. They made no sense in any way, and were beautiful, and happy, and stashed away in some unreachable place where one would die by musket ball sepsis and the other by the far more painful route of monotony, amputation of the soul, and old pain rushed over his new sores. No right then, but —

“You will understand one day,” the older Doctor said, “and maybe forgive them, before —"

He paused, his eyes searching the room, looking once again at that which was not there. The younger Doctor looked on, urging for an ending, but the older Doctor had clamped shut. His arms crept across his chest. Outside the storm fell to a gentle pattering against the glass. The air was filled with whispers of what might have been.

“— they don’t hate you like you think they do,” the older finally finished. The words stumbling off his tongue.

“Perhaps,” rumbled the younger, “one day.” And turned his head quickly so he wouldn't have to watch himself cry.

*

They didn’t speak again. The Doctor, the younger one who cloaked himself in ruffles and lace, advised the Brigadier not to impede the miracle man in his movements. That he would leave of his own free will. The Brigadier wasn't happy with these instructions and choice words were exchanged, but the advice was not ignored.

Maybe Alistair noticed the haunted look in his old friend's eyes, or the careful way he walked over the next few days, running his callused hands over doorframes and hugging Jo every chance he got. The Doctor seemed to be saying goodbye — except he wasn't leaving.

A few days later, as soon as he recovered the strength to do so, the miracle man left, leaving Dr. Sullivan woozy with the idea that a suicidal patient was out wandering the streets without supervision, and his commanding officer could only shrug at the situation and say “good luck that”.

*

A week later all was forgotten. The miracle man was gone, and unremembered except for the faintest haze in the mind of a man who was not named John Smith. But, in the hamlet, which only served this story as a beginning, a strange wind blew, followed by a groaning howl. The sound of heaven, said one old doctor, though a group of teenagers remained convinced it was the work of Soviet Spies.

Finis