Chapter Text
"Has anyone seen my recorder?" the Doctor's voice called out yet again. He was underneath the TARDIS console and there was a yelp as he hit his head trying to get up. "This is VERY important!"
Zoe skidded into the room and glanced about. Finally the elfin astrophysicist saw where the Doctor was sprawled and she hovered over him until he noticed the legs of her shimmering silver jumpsuit. "Ah! There you are!" he snapped. "Well, it certainly took someone long enough to get here."
"You only shouted a moment ago," Zoe protested,
"I did not! I've been shouting for about twenty minutes or more." He was still searching in apparent futility beneath the panels. "Zoe, you haven't hidden my recorder again, have you? You and Jamie both do it... and don't pretend that you don't. You two are incorrigible about my music. I'll have you know the Anasazi people loved my flute-playing. Why, they even made excellent fan art of me."
He crawled out from beneath the mechanism on his hands and knees in order to give her a more accusing look. Offended, Zoe put defiant hands on her hips. "Why would we hide your recorder? That would be extremely childish. We would never do such a thing."
"Yes. It is extremely childish. And Zoe, you're fibbing. This is not helping my dilemma."
Frowning, the Doctor planted himself on the floor, his arms crossed in belligerence. His legs, clad in baggy checked trousers, were splayed out before him and he looked baffled, dejected and yes, childish himself.
She finally clicked her tongue and sighed.
"All right, we've hidden your recorder one or two times..." He started to sputter indignantly, but she continued, "Or three or four times, but not THIS time! I swear it!"
"Ah! Confessions at last! Just tell me where you hid it, Zoe, that's all I'm kindly asking. I shan't be too cross." The little man's small mouth twisted into a sulky pout. "Because this time it is a VERY serious matter and quite confounding for a number of other reasons." He began to knead his hands together in that nervous way of his, betraying the fact he was indeed very upset, perhaps not only for the loss of the recorder; in fact, she thought he even looked haunted. She tried to brush off her own sudden unease.
"I'm telling the truth, Doctor! Neither Jamie nor I touched your recorder. You had even left it right here in plain sight the last we saw it." She shrugged. "And despite it being very tempting to make off with it again...we didn't! " She frowned down at him, indicating underneath the TARDIS console. "And why would you think it'd gotten all the way down there?"
The Doctor looked deflated, slumping over in frustration. "I don't know," he admitted sadly, "I seem to remember last seeing it from this angle. How peculiar."
"What's all the racket about?" came Jamie's voice. "Is it over that silly recorder again? I didna do it this time! SHE did!" The kilted young man pointed at Zoe, throwing her a conniving look. Their pixie-ish companion, however, waved her hands at him in a frantic cease-and-desist gesture, indicating this was not a game this time. Because his Doctor's welfare was paramount, Jamie instantly sobered and became more attentive.
"It is NOT a silly recorder! I made it meself and it helps me think," the Doctor grumped as he finally staggered to his feet. "If only it was here to help me think of what I did with it..."
The young Scot sauntered over. The Doctor dusted off the seat of his shabby, over-sized frock coat and was about to reprimand his companion for his blasé attitude to his recorder-less crisis when he finally glanced up at Jamie's face. And then he abruptly froze. It was as if he were suddenly seeing Jamie from some great distance and after a long, long, harrowing separation. Could it have been days? Or had it been years? Centuries even? His face went ashen and his voice, when it finally emerged after a tense moment, was very strange.
"Jamie." It was barely a whisper. "Oh my dear, dear Jamie."
"Aye?" the young man said. "Doctor? Ye're lookin' a wee bit worried."
Zoe thought the Doctor looked more than just worried: he looked on the verge of panic. She thought he might suddenly rush to Jamie and throw his arms around him and cry. He stopped short of doing this, however, and only continued to stare wide-eyed at the young man, his hands making and unmaking fists in his oversized sleeves. Then he spun abruptly to glare at diminutive Zoe, giving her the same look of wild disbelief, as if astonished by her presence as well.
"Doctor." Zoe's voice was very careful. "What's the matter? You look like you've seen a ghost."
The small, bedraggled man took a deep breath and murmured, "I am seeing ghosts. Right now I'm seeing you two..." He put his hands over his eyes, his voice growing angry. "No. This is not right." He rubbed at his face with sudden fury. "I'm here. HERE. Focus."
Jamie and Zoe looked at one another, concern and confusion interchangeable. Then Jamie stepped forward to gently grasp the little man's black sleeve. "Doctor, are ye feelin' all right?"
The Doctor put up both his hands then, backing away from Jamie, asking, "Where was I just a moment ago, Zoe, when you came into the room? "
"Why, you know where you were! Under the TARDIS console looking for your recorder. Doctor, what--"
"But did you see where I was before that?" When he saw their silent bewilderment, he barked, "Again, this is crucial! Something has happened that I don't remember and I can still FEEL it."
"Doctor," Zoe began again cautiously. "I don't understand."
"Zoe, there was a temporal anomaly here just a moment ago. I can still sense it--I have that special ability, as unrefined as it is. I know something was shifted from one place to another and from one time to another. And the TARDIS didn't cause this singularity. It was from some outside source..." The Doctor turned from them and began to pace, his brows lowered and stormy in concentration.
Jamie was looking baffled, as to be expected. Zoe confided, "He bumped his head on the console getting up."
Jamie looked relieved (physical injuries he could understand, not temporal whositwhatsits) and stepped forward again, ready to offer his assistance to the concussed. "Maybe ye should sit down and we can get some ice for yer head, Doctor."
The small man waved his arms around in frantic denial. "No, no, no, Jamie. My head is perfectly fine and all I need to do is REMEMBER. What was it that the anomaly removed from the room?" He tapped his chin. "The recorder, of course. But why would anyone want my recorder?"
Zoe mumbled, "Maybe for the same reasons we hide it."
The Doctor shot her an annoyed look. "Zoe, do try to be more constructive and less flippant. But why would they take it to another TIME?"
It was Jamie's turn. "They REALLY dinna want to hear ye play the blasted thing anymore." Zoe nodded at him in complete agreement.
"Oh, do wipe those supercilious looks off your faces and try to be more helpful! Don't you understand what's happened? It's--"
The Doctor stiffened then, his mouth looking like a small tilted slash in his face. He brought his fingers up to it as realization set in.
"Yes, the recorder had been moved to another time. An then ME along with it."
Zoe approached now. "Doctor? " She was starting to understand. "What I think you're trying to say is that you think something PULLED you from this room, from the actual TARDIS itself, and then took you somewhere else in time. Then afterwards, you were put back here again."
Jamie rolled his eyes. "Well, that's completely daft. Ye've been here all along, Doctor."
"Have YOU been here the whole time with me, Jamie? ...Zoe?... No. So you wouldn't have seen me vanish."
"Eh?" Jamie was completely lost.
Zoe was doing her best to try to attack this puzzle with logic. "Doctor, you say you sensed an anomaly. Can you remember anything at all? If you really believe something DID occur, that is." Anything was possible traveling with him; she had learned this in a relatively short time as his companion.
"Oh, it occurred, all right. I can still feel the crackling residue of vortical energy. It feels like an itch on the back of my neck." He swatted at the back of his neck now as if bitten by a vortical insect and muttered, "Firstly, I remember not having my recorder. I remember reaching for it... " His eyes took on a faraway, unfocused look. "And then another hand getting to it first..."
Both of his companions waited, listening to their friend's hypnotic recollection.
"And I remember wanting it back-- only it could never come back from where it was placed... " He covered his eyes again. "Oh, why is it so hard trying to see through the time barriers? It's like wading in a dream state! I need to concentrate."
He felt Jamie's encouraging hand on his shoulder then, always a comfort. His companion's easy touch always seemed to help ease his mental turmoil and he reached up to cover Jamie's hand with his own. Yet when he looked up into the young Scot's concerned face, he heard a distant and eerily familiar voice in his head tell him of a horrible future he could not prevent. "Your last words before you became me," it said, "were to call out for Jamie."
He was stricken. "Oh Jamie," he sighed.
And then he fainted.
Zoe cried out in alarm as Jamie swiftly caught his friend. "Zoe!" he pleaded. "Do somethin'! I dinnae know what's wrong with him!" She saw he was beginning to panic. "Is he sick?"
"Bring him to his room," she cried.
With one simple move, Jamie hoisted the small man over his shoulder like a soldier carrying a wounded comrade off a battlefield. They made their way through the TARDIS corridors until they came to the Doctor's sleeping quarters. He rarely used them as he barely seemed to need sleep; his alien physicality still fascinated Zoe and bewildered Jamie. The room was somewhat plain, looking a bit like a cabin in an ancient earth sailing ship. There was a cozy, unmade bed and a trunk at the foot of it, no doubt full of trinkets and toys. An empty hat-rack stood off to the side and there was an earthy wooden set of drawers in the corner, probably full of more of the eccentric, shabby clothing the Doctor seemed to prefer. They poured the unconscious little man into his bed and Jamie abruptly sat beside the prostrate form in a proprietary way, taking one of his hands in both of his and looking distressed. "Do ye think he was tellin' the truth about being yanked away somewhere else? Going to another time and all that when we weren't here with him?"
"I think he believes that," Zoe said, tapping her chin with thoughtful urgency. "Perhaps if we leave him to rest, he'll be able to regain enough memory to piece together on his own what's happened. As for fainting, I think he's... well, he's overwhelmed."
"We shouldna leave him alone!" insisted Jamie, not even looking up from the sleeping saturnine face. "Somethin' might be verra wrong."
"Yes, you're right. But we shouldn't allow ourselves to become overly fretful. He may just be in desperate need of rest. Let's wait and watch."
"Aye, aye. I'll stay here then." Jamie was sliding his hand over top the Doctor's in a reassuring caress. Zoe made a note of this, as well as the hazel eyes fastened despondently on his friend's unconscious countenance. There was no way she would be able to persuade him to leave his beloved's side.
"We'll both stay, if you like."
"Oh, aye." He was barely acknowledging her presence now except to hear reassurances that his Doctor would be all right. She sighed. It was hopeless: these two were proverbially joined at the hip.
She sat down at the end of the bed and noticed the Doctor's eyes moving beneath his lids, knew that he was deep within a dream. Hopefully, it would be a beneficial dream.
And they waited.
"Hmm, hmm. So you're the next one, eh?" Like a white-feathered hawk, the First Doctor circled the Second, studying him with the intensity of that bird of prey. "It would appear I've grown small and ridiculous! Hmph."
"There's no need to be rude," Second said, annoyed. The two versions of the Time Lord known as the Doctor squared off as each scrutinized the other.