"There may be a way back from this. Don't know. Let's find out, eh?"
Home, The Long Way Around
It was like a bad dream.
The pressure for the government to clean up the mess they'd made was intense. The cameras, the interviews, the expose's, the trials, the sentences, the fines, the imprisonment.
But he missed all that.
It took years, mind you, well over a decade but a Humanitarian Recohesive Committee was established and symbolically the first place they began was at the old monastery.
Some of the Flesh was rotted and the Committee had to regretfully issue a report that not everyone could be saved. However stringent testing was beginning to clearly delineate between what could be salvaged and what could not.
The Committee was lambasted in the press for using the word "salvage" and immediately issued new guidelines which clearly listed the proper language to be used when referring to the Flesh.
But he missed all that as well.
The thicker and heavier the Flesh piles were, the more difficult it was to perform the necessary molecular analysis to separate one individual from another. But as time wore on the length of the process was cut by years, then months, then days and then hours.
He was in a lesser trafficked area. It was lucky he was found at all truth be told as his location in the crypt passageway was not on the maps. A secondary crew was there by then, just cleanup. But they found him, him and Cleaves. But not Jennifer. Her transformation had been too outside the realm, her molecular structure too twisted and thinned to be saved. Considering the stories it was silently whispered that that was for the best. They were of course the hardest to reconstruct. they were Vapo-Flesh and as such had dissipated and dispersed almost beyond recohesion. Almost.
He knew time had passed, a few years if his internal clock was to be trusted and it always was.
He woke up screaming. But they told him that was normal. A normal side effect of this perfectly normal process. He felt far from normal. But he did feel a bit more like himself. It was standard practice to treat the newly reconstructed with kid gloves and so they set him up in an expansive and ornate suite/ he was provided with credits from the remuneration fund all in the hopes of staving off yet another lawsuit. He'd never been very good with money and had no idea what to do with it so he just thanks them and returned to his room.
The silence was bad but it was worse at night. So, so much worse. Memories of being him and not him, existing and not existing, caught, trapped between life and death unable to achieve either. He had no appetite so he didn't eat. He lost weight. His hair thinned. His face grew gaunt. It seemed as though he was just being prepared for the nightmares to take him again and again each night until finally he was weak enough to drag away. Dragged away to what? What then? Would that be the end once his hearts stopped? Would he regenerate or simply...not?
They, the Committee decided he wasn't adjusting well. It was policy to arrange a meeting between Original and the Previously Flesh or Flesh-Survivors in an effort to mend any wounds, and as they said, promote healing.
Was there not someone he could call?
Someone who could collect him?
Of course, there was no way for him to get in touch with his Original. The Doctor could be anywhere at this point. Anywhere at all.
Eager to be rid of him, they asked him what they could do to assist, if anything.
His answer was odd but they were in no place to refuse a Flesh-Survivor. plus, it could be sandblasted over once the message was received. And so a mountaineering crew, specially trained, journeyed to Pakistan and there on the face of the Nameless Tower were carved two words in Gallifreyan.
Sweetie, help.
She arrived in less than a week. She was there and she was his and behind a closed door he broke down in her arms and wept. He'd been offered psychologists and psychiatrists. It was universally acknowledged that being Flesh, existing in the state he had for so long, so very, very long was traumatizing to say the least. Some of the survivors didn't survive long at all and suicides were common. He thanked them for their offers but repeatedly stated he was fine.
He wasn't. And before her he could finally or at least partially admit it.
It was a great deal to put on to her and he felt guilty. She wasn't young. She understood more than he but when was that not the case? But she was still so fragile and breakable. And oh gods how he had broken her in the past and likely the future, this way and that.
When he was just a puddle of congealing biomatter on a cold stone floor he had dreamt if you could call it dreaming. And all his dreams had been about returning to them, safe, happy, excited and free on the TARDIS.
Would they accept him? His last interaction with Amy had gone so well, that embrace. Ah that embrace and her whispered words to him.
But, how to share a TARDIS with himself?
But that could be sorted later. On the fly. Literally.
He explained all this to her and she understood as he knew she would. He was eager to get going, he was eager to live.
"But I'm sorry." She said. "I am so, so sorry." And then she told him of yet another one of his failures. More people he had failed to save and this time there were the dearest to him.
"They're gone?" he asked and she nodded in reply.
The tears came again. He was so emotional in this new form. He felt as though he were made of a dozen tiny cracks, a leaky vase poorly pieced back together, more ornament than useful object now.
She filled him in, a crash course on everything and he did indeed feel as though he were crashing. Plummeting towards the earth through layers and layers of a history he had yet to live, would never live. And when she came to the end, the terrible end he felt as if there were no tears left.
"I couldn't...?"
"There was no way. You did what you always do. You kept moving. Because you could not stop."
He searched her face and words for bitterness and found none at all.
"You're my wife."
"I am." She said with a smile.
"And their daughter."
"Yeah, that too."
He sat with this for a time and wondered what the moment had been like when that had all been revealed and what was the cost?
How long has it been?"
"Hard to say. What will you do? New body?"
"New soul." He said quickly.
"You could travel with me. You won't but you could. You could travel with him."
"Two of us? We'd kill each other!"
He could tell she didn't know which two he meant and that seemed to satisfy both of them.
"You could literally go anywhere. Just think about it."
And he did. He thought for a good long while and she stayed with him and tended to him and teased him to make him smile. After awhile he did smile, every now and then at least. He still felt like him, two hearts, same brain but just a tad less frenetic as though some of that madness had been lost in the cloning. He had yet to decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Finally, he decided and he made a request of her. Just one. He needed to get back to the TARDIS.
First, he needed to be stabilized. Yes, they had done it on Earth, it was part of the rescue process but it was made for humans and not Time Lords. For that he needed to get back to his ship...or not his ship anymore.
"Once that's done, where will you go?"
"It's his TARDIS. It's not mine anymore. It's his life. His future. Perhaps it's time I found another one."
"The Doctor without a TARDIS? What is that, that's not you?"
"Maybe it is me, who knows. Maybe it's time for retirement or at the very least I'll have a TARDIS, it'll just take some time."
"But where will you go?" She insisted.
A fair question and it deserved a fair answer.
He had given his heart away so many times to so many different people over so many years. But in this life, this regeneration, this body he had only felt at home in one place. One location with two people at his side.
"The one place they always tell you you can't return to. Home. I'm going home."
She acquiesced immediately, tracking down the other Doctor, the non-ganger version of him.
Their goodbye was brief, but then again when was it ever not?
"His path and my path diverged awhile back. I'm a different man now. He can do things I can't. I can do things he can't. Like this." He pulled her in his arms and kissed her, in the way he'd always wanted to, brave, unafraid. He held her as a husband holds a wife and whispered all those things in her ear, every Gallifreyan pledge of faithfulness, fidelity and love evermore, a love that is only forged and re-strengthened in the fire of regeneration, never doused, never dulled.
"Forgive him what he can't quite manage to give you and remember me for all that I wanted to. And know that we are both yours, always, always yours."
She came away from him a bit dazed, eyes damp.
"I love you, Doctor."
"I know. And I you."
And that was all. She hurried that Doctor, Proper Doctor out and inside the TARDIS promising him a dangerous, exciting adventure of some sort and he blithely followed. Once they were gone, he slipped in. The ship hummed a welcome for him. She understood. But then she was another who understood everything. She stabilized him and he was, at last, fully whatever he was to be.
That was the first part of the plan accomplished. The second part would require a bit of rummaging. He was never sure where he had put things and he wound up searching room after room, cupboard after cupboard. Eventually it was retrieved and he was careful not to activate it until he got where he was going. His TARDIS, his old girl surprised him when a new sonic popped out of the console. She knew he was leaving and she would not see him off unprepared.
"Thank you, dear. And this is just between us of course."
She dimmed her lights in agreement.
"So, one last trip, eh?"
He input the coordinates and closed his eyes as the ship hummed and rumbled to life. Those engines...he didn't know when he might hear those engines again.
He landed promptly, precisely where he'd asked to be taken, for once. But then again, it was always up to her, so maybe, no matter what, this is where he was meant to be. That gave him a modicum of comfort.
He input the return coordinates and stroked the console. She would be taken right back to where they'd just left, without him.
"It'll be alright, I never check the mileage. Goodbye, darling, take care of yourself and of him. I do hope someday we'll meet again."
And then he stepped out. He landed in Tapt Dam Norway and chuckled at the joke. The universe did like to play her little tricks.
He stuck a finger in the air to gauge the winds and that everything was right. Earth. 1949.
The TARDIS phased out of sight and from there he started walking.
He spent a few years in Europe. Not to delay. This was not his normal expression of hubris. This was to see if he could do it. If he could really, properly do it, just once for them. Not because he was being punished. Not because the TARDIS was out of commission. But because he wanted to. He needed that time to get his head together. There were still nightmares. Horrible nightmares, a few that caused him to scream so loud they even got him kicked out of a boarding house or three before he got a proper flat of his own. He was a bit too early for UNIT and a bit too late for LONGBOW but he worked on and off with their remnants and seedlings. It passed the time and the time did pass.
Finally he felt ok. Or reasonably ok. Or perhaps the ache of being without them just became too much. He didn't know, he didn't care.
He booked passage on a ship. He could have taken a plane but something about being cooped up like that in a place that definitely wasn't bigger on the inside gave him the shivers. Plus there turned out to be a right great mystery on the passenger liner having to do with carnivorous water!
And then, he was in New York and he was walking. He wanted to walk, didn't know why. Maybe it afforded him more time to think and worry. They'd already been here for 12 years.
For humans that was a long time. perhaps long enough to forget him or realize they didn't need him after all.
His hearts clenched tight at the thought.
He wasn't certain he'd found the right house though he'd asked around. The little boy who opened the door threw him off. Genetics often tossed something odd into the batch and the child who opened the door looked nothing like either of them. But that wasn't what threw him off. His wife, and yes, he still enjoyed saying that and thinking it, had told him Amy couldn't have children.
"Yes?" The little boy prompted. He looked to be around six.
"Um...yes, yes. I was wondering, is you mummy home?"
"Mommy says I'm not supposed to talk to strangers."
"Very good advice. I'm likely at the wrong location. I was looking for a Mr. and Mrs. Pond."
"You're at the wrong house." The boy said nodding earnestly. "My name is Anthony Williams."
"Ah! Anthony Williams! You just told me your name, you know?"
The boy looked shocked and confused as to how he had been bested.
"Anthony Brian Williams what have I told you about just flinging the door open for strangers?" Came a voice from deeper inside the house. A voice so decidedly Scottish that it made his hearts ache.
"There's a man in a funny tie with two triangles who's asking for people named Pond. But they don't live here because this is our house."
There was an almost immediate clatter of something dropping to the floor in another room.
He heard the rush of feet and he almost felt like running himself.
But it was too late, because there she was.
Amelia Pond. Like a name from a fairytale. Indeed like a fairy tale herself. She would be 46 now. She was standing before him, solid, solid flesh, so real. So much like she appeared in those scant dreams that weren't nightmares. There were a few more of those lines about her eyes and was her hair just a touch less red? No, no it wasn't that was just the light. And what did it matter? What did appearance matter. She was still herself. Still Amy. Still his Amy if fortune still favored a foolish Time Lord. Stupid man, he was. Just thick and stupid. How he'd been so afraid to see them age and now he was so bloody happy. Aging meant here and now and alive. And there was nothing better than alive.
She looked at him. Just looked at him and time had never, not ever, not once ever moved so slow as this.
"I thought...you said...you couldn't..."
He didn't want to get her hopes up. He wanted this settled straightaway. If there was to be rejection he wanted it now.
"I'm not him, Amy. Well, I am him but...I'm the Ganger-Doctor. Or I was. They collected me, spiffed me up and now...I'm just me. Still trying to figure out who that is exactly-"
"Shut up." She said quickly and sniffled.
He nodded and planted his feet waiting for whatever might happen next.
And then she launched herself into his arms.
She took in a ragged breath and held it, clutching at the tweed of his jacket.
"I never thought I'd see you again."
"Is it alright...that I'm not him?" he whispered in her ear as he embraced her fiercely.
"Don't be stupid. You are him. I told you that, years ago. You're him. You're my Raggedy Man."
The fact that he burst into tears at that moment took her off guard, he could tell because he felt her stiffen and pull back just slightly. Not to pull away but to look at his face. For the first time she was truly seeing his features close up. He'd tried to take care of himself, make certain he looked his best for this meeting but apparently he'd failed.
"Oh Doctor...look at you." She said as she ran her fingers across the planes of his face. "What has the universe done to you? You look so tired. Come inside with me."
She took his hand and he let her lead him indoors tears still brimming and streaming down his face. The poor little boy seemed terribly confused and with the practice of a woman accustomed to corralling a child she brought him inside as well..
"Anthony, go out and play in the yard, alright? And mind the garden. That's my good boy."
"Mommy who is this man?"
"This is Mommy and Daddy's best friend. This is family."
"Hello." The little boy said.
"Hello, Anthony."
"I'm sorry you're sad."
"That's ok. I'm better now."
This seemed to please Anthony and picking up a ball he ran out the backdoor to the awaiting yard.
Amy sat him down in the kitchen and dampened a towel under the tap before taking to wiping his face. She patted the skin there gently, everything about her was gentle.
"When did you get here? How did you get here?"
"A few years ago-"
"A few years ago? Why didn't you come to see us?" She asked with a frown.
"I didn't want to look a complete fright when we met again."
"Good job." She said with teasing fondness.
"As for how I got here, I nicked me TARDIS. Found a harmless little temporal hole as far away from New York as possible and a significant amount of years from when you arrived. I sent the TARDIS back to him and I...I started building a life for myself."
"You mean-"
But she was cut off by the sound of a key rattling in the door just before it creaked open.
"Amy, I couldn't remember, did we need milk? Well, either way I bought a bottle. Prices are going up. Would you believe it's-"
He was sitting with his back to the door as he heard uneven footsteps coming around the corner and then he heard the tell tale sound of a bag of groceries falling to the floor. neither of his friends could seem to hold onto things today.
"D-Doctor?" Came a completely disbelieving voice.
He sniffled, stood and faced his mate.
"Centurion, permission to hug?" He asked, his voice not coming out as strongly as he would have liked.
Rory covered the distance between them a bit awkwardly but within the strength of his embrace the Doctor found he didn't care.
"What happened to your leg?" He asked.
"How the hell are you here?" Rory said at the same time.
"Nazi bullet."
"TARDIS and then...walking."
Rory pulled back and took a deep breath.
"It is very, very good to see you mate."
He felt the tears threaten again and fought them back.
Rory was here now, stalwart Rory, dependable, funny, wonderful Rory. And yes, there were the occasional streaks of gray running through his hair and he'd seemed to develop the need for glasses but he was above all Rory. Rory Pond. Alive and well and alive.
"All right, everyone go wash up for dinner. That includes you, Doctor."
Amy's tone left little room for argument and he liked it. There was something in him that, Rassilon help him, craved a bit of structure. He slowly and made his way to their loo .Turning on the water he leaned over the sink, splashing himself in the face. He raised back up and caught a glimpse of his reflection. When had been the last time he'd looked? It felt like ages. There were lines around his eyes now and around his mouth. There were also circles, dark circle that broadcasted all the sleepless night he'd suffered through. He felt vulnerable suddenly and could hear them whispering about him in the kitchen. He purposefully didn't listen to what they were saying afraid it might hurt too much.
He re-entered the kitchen and seated himself quietly at the table.
"You didn't go to any trouble did you?" He asked as Amy helped his plate and Rory passed it to him.
"What did I tell you on Christmas? We always set a place for you. Now, when was the last time you had a good meal?" Amy asked and his eyes drifted to her.
He had expected an anachronism. He wasn't sure how, but Pond without her short skirts and outrageous nail polish colors would seem strange. But it didn't. All the same words, the same tones were coming from her mouth but she was dressed as anyone would expect a woman from the 50's to be dressed. With Rory it was much the same. They had assimilated and that made him both happy and sad. He didn't answer about the meal.
"Anthony is going to stay at his mates house tonight. A little camp out for the two of them, he's thrilled. So, it's just the three of us. You can speak freely." Rory said with a smile.
"You have a son." He said incredulously.
"We do and he's wonderful. We adopted because I couldn't...Doctor, I'm not sure how much Melody told you."
And so he started to tell them his tale and in-between bites he related his life from the moment the TARDIS had flown away.
Every so often as he ate Amy reached across to brush a hair away from his face. Each and every time he pressed into the caress.
"You could have gone anywhere, to anytime or any planet to any of your friends and you came back here to us?"
He faltered for a moment.
"I just wanted to come home."
They talked, the three of them, for hours, through dinner and dishes and after after dessert, through a change into pajamas which they orchestrated so smoothly by just handing him an extra set of Rory's that he scarcely knew how it happened.
He laughed with them. He couldn't recall the last time he had really, really laughed.
"Do you trust us, Doctor?" Rory asked.
"With my life."
"Good, then trust me when I say it's time for you to go to bed."
And he did feel tired, suddenly overwhelmingly so. He kicked himself for not securing a hotel room first.
"I'm fine, really." He started to protest. Perhaps he could still find a room in the city. Would he have to change clothes again or could he procure a room in pyjamas? Maybe they'd let him come back and visit a bit more tomorrow. This had all been so, so pleasant.
"You're not fine, you're tired, and nervous and sad and you need rest. Now, come on with you." She said extending her hand. He took it and again let her tug him away as Rory followed.
They walked down a hall at the end of which she opened a door. It was a bedroom, clean neat and with the covers turned down. The idea of curling up inside it for just a moment, maybe an hour or so practically made him salivate.
"So, here's the thing. You're staying with us." Amy began.
"Not for a visit, not for a bit. For as long as you want to and if that's forever, then so much the better. " Rory concluded.
It was too much to hope for, too much to even imagine and it was all he wanted.
"But I can't simply-"
"You can and you will. Details can be ironed out as we go along, eh?" Amy said holding the blankets up, waiting for him to climb in, which like an obedient child eventually did. When exactly had she turned so mum-like? As she started to tuck him in out of pure instinct it seemed, he felt very small, but not in a bad way, small and protected.
"There now, we'll figure things out later. For the time being, just rest, Doctor." Rory said softly.
"You wanted to come home and home is where you are." Amy added.
Sleep was claiming him, fast and insistent and though he dared not hope it seemed to have a more relaxed tinge to it than normal. Could this be a night where no bad dreams lurked? There was still so much to do, so much to tell. All the things about UNIT and Longbow, the TARDIS coral he finally found after hours of searching his ship and brought along with him. And how he' found a way to increase the growth rate beyond even what Donna had imagined. How because he made certain to activate it in this time it wouldn't cause any temporal damage. How much he had missed them and how despite it all he knew that at this moment he was more fortunate that his counterpart, wherever he might be. He'd always wanted something like this. And he'd been insanely jealous of the meta-crisis. And now, here he was.
"But, whose room is this?" He asked nearly fully asleep already.
"Yours." Rory said just as they gently closed the bedroom door.. "Every since we moved in, it's always been yours just because we hoped that maybe... Goodnight, Doctor, sleep well and welcome home."
It wasn't over of course, he still needed to heal. Nightmares only get forever-banished that easily in storybooks.
But still, tonight, and for him perhaps for the first time ever, there were no bad dreams.
I usually write the Doctor and Ponds as my OT3 but I decided to go a different route this time and keep it strictly platonic. The flavor of TPO3 was much more...parental and I wanted to explore that. They were looking after him, trying to keep him busy, trying to keep him in line. Their relationship had changed a bit and there were certain things they were moving beyond. After all, this was the precursor to them deciding that traveling felt like running.
I thought we were given so many possibilities when it came to TAP and TRF and the idea of the Ganger Doctor not being irretrievably lost after all, so I decided to run with it! You guys are lucky, for a split second I thought about making this just one of the Ganger Doctor's dreams, just a wistful fantasy while he still existed as a puddle on the floor. But even I didn't want an ending that sad this time. So no worries, this is all real. He's truly home. :)