For Mlle. Phoenixfox. I tried to keep all references to the actual playing of the game as vague as possible, due to my horrible lack of knowledge about ches. (I know all of the proper names and how the pieces move, but I'm crap at theory and strategy) It's short, but I hope it tickles your fancy. I've revised it a bit and I'm more please with this version. Still unbetta'd. As usual, all mistakes are my own. As requested:

"No life appears rewarding if you think about it too much."
- Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham.

The Doctor propped his boots up on the edge of the desk, nodding to the young FBI agent as he approached. He carried with him two rather worse-for-wear looking coffee mugs and passed one to the Timelord as he took his seat.

"Ta," he said as the man began gulping, rather than sipping, from his own mug. The Doctor decided he would let the steaming coffee cool a bit before obliging to join in the refreshment.

"I just have to turn in my case notes and after action report to Hotch," Spencer said. "Then I'll walk you out of the building."

"An escort really isn't necessary, Dr. Reid," he chuckled. Their security in this facility was laughable. No deadlocks, no memory scrubbers. They made U.N.I.T. headquarters look practically light years ahead in terms of security. But no one needed him to go blabbing about it.

"I'm sure you don't," Reid answered. "But its protocol. Besides, I wanted to talk to you about something privately on the way out."

"Of course." He smiled wryly, not really in the mood for requests at the moment. The BAU case he had just assisted with had him feeling rather introspective. It wasn't a feeling he was enamored of having. He thought of the Dreamlord, then. The manifestation of his subconscious hatred for himself. There's only one person in the universe who hates me as much as you do, he'd said. And it was then that he'd decided to do his best at forgetting. Hadn't really been a conscious decision, but more of a defense mechanism. You couldn't hate what you didn't remember – or so he'd hoped.

Suppressing a cringe he decided his coffee had cooled long enough.

"Blimey!" he exclaimed, letting the cringe go undisguised this time. Using a piece of wadded up paper from the bin, he tried desperately to scrub his tongue.

The happy sound of the technical analyst's laugh alerted him to the fact that he was being stared at.

"No, no. It's nothing," he stammered. "It's just that… he must've poured the coffee directly into the sugar… what?" he asked the room, noting that Garcia was practically on her knees in a fit of laughter.

"Pretty Boy has a sweet tooth," Morgan smirked as he passed by on his way out of the bullpen.

"Oh! …Oh, that was on purpose!" he said, turning back to face Spencer. The agent's ears were bright crimson. "It's really quite… lovely."

Ten minutes later he'd hugged Garcia and shaken hands with the rest of the team, now Spencer was leading them out of the lift and through the lobby to a brightly lit courtyard. The young man been quiet. And the Doctor, well… The Doctor was quiet for reasons of his own.

They approached a bench and Spencer began to take a seat, reaching into his satchel for something.

"I thought you were escorting me off premises?"

"I wanted to thank you for your help and ask you for a favor," Reid said, unfolding a travel chess set and motioning to the bench.

"No need for thanks, and if the favor is a lesson in the rules of the game, well, then… consider it a mutual pleasure." He smiled brightened and he began removing his coat to drape over the hard bench for a bit of cushion.

"I know you aren't a behavioral anthropologist 'on loan' from Oxford," Reid began. "And I know… why you had specific insight into our unsub's psychological state."

"Oh?" the Doctor asked softly, searching Spencer's eyes for any sign he was about to try to do something stupid. Liken him to the man they'd just hunted down and arrested. Imply that he had acted in any way other than the best interest of the billions upon billions of other souls still existing in the universe – souls that would otherwise have been dragged down into the horror of the Time War if he hadn't put a stop to it. Suggest there was any other way he could have solved the agonizing problems he had been faced with. Suggest that he had been wrong.

However unforgivable what he'd done was, The Doctor didn't need reminding of it… certainly not from a human.

But the man simply continued to set up the board, glancing up at the parking structure standing behind them every few seconds.

"You used to be in that same place in your own fractured psyche."

"Fractured! I'll have you know! …Oh. Oh!" he exclaimed, finally catching on. "Oh, I am so slow! You know me! Tell, me. Have I aged well?" he asked, switching gears from angry to giddy in less than a tick.

Spencer laughed. "I was warned about telling you too much. I, uh… I think that's a promise I should probably keep."

"Yes, quite right. You had probably better."

"But I do have a request," Spencer asked softly, leaning in as though he were about to divulge a secret.

"Ah, yes. Chess. The rules are quite simple. You're bright. You'll catch on in no time at all. Well, not no time. That would be ridiculous."

"Doctor, I know how to play chess!"

"Really? Then why are you asking me to teach you?"

"You're not being c sarcastic. You're being completely sincere, aren't you? I forgot how you could do that."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

By now they had each exchanged half a dozen moves and he could see a solution in two and a half. But he wasn't exactly sure if that was a legal move in this time yet. Always got a little confused about the order of events during this century. Well… multiple centuries, really. But that wasn't important. He shook his head and resolved to go easy on the agent, no matter what he said about knowing the rules. But as he looked at Spencer, he noticed the young man continuing to glance back at the parking structure roof.

"So…" he began again, cautiously. "You had some people that you used to play chess with, than?" he asked, letting his intuition guide him.

"I played, sometimes, over the phone with my girlfriend…" the man answered quietly, his voice cracking slightly like a child's.

"But you lost her…" He hoped he wasn't being cruel, being so blunt as he was. Sometimes they didn't appreciate directness, humans. But agent Reid only nodded and made another move on the board.

"And Gideon."

"Who was Gideon?"

"A friend…" Spencer paused and took another deep breath before capturing the Doctor's rook. "Really… he was family."

"And you lost him too." It wasn't a question, but a statement. He'd seen that look before. He'd worn that look before. "And you want me to take you to them?" That got Spencer's attention back, and the game was suddenly abandoned by both men. "Because… I can't bring them back," he said gently. "You have to know that, don't you? I can't bring people back."

"And I wouldn't ask you to do that." As he spoke, the Doctor could hear the TARDIS engines working from the rooftop behind him. So that's what the man had been staring at. The TARDIS. Not his TARDIS, but another one, that must've been parked at the top of the building, cloaked to sight. Glancing over his shoulder out of compulsion, he checked to make sure the old girl was still parked near the courtyard exit. Reassured by the sight of the bright blue structure in the distance, he turned back to the agent.

"How can I help?"

The door to the TARDIS swung open and the Doctor thought for the first time in a very long time about how he missed the warm, bright oranges and golds that used to glow out of the heart of her. Just now he was needing the encouragement from the brightness of it. He felt the her mentally sigh as he strolled in, shutting her doors behind him with a snap of his fingers.

"No, it's not your fault. I did the redecorating," he soothed, smoothing his hand over the console. She whirred, then, reminding him of his Wednesday appointment with Clara at the Maitland's.

Turning his back to the rotor, he leaned against the control panel and ran his fingers through his hair. "I met a new friend. But you knew that already, didn't you?" He scoffed, not unkindly, pulling on the lever that would disengage the brakes and send them back into the Time Vortex until he had entered new space-time coordinates into the ship's nav sat. "He's had a rough several years." She whirred a bit mournfully this time, and he patted her in response. "We all have. Had a rough several hundred years."

Taking his coat off and throwing it over the metal railing, he readjusted his bowtie and forced an air of enthusiasm into his voice. "Oh-kay! Remember this date – 28 September, 2011. We will go there. But I have a riddle to get back to solving, yeah? Lancashire, January, 1986! Let's see where you come from, Clara Oswald!" Whooping with excitement, he shoved the flight lever forward. "Geronimo."