Perchance

by Shivver

(The Actor, AU #2) Will's friend becomes terminally ill and there's nothing he can do about it.

Author's Note: This is set about two years after Neighbours and before Repercussions.

---

Sometimes Will felt like David's little silver sports car was as much his own. David let him use it freely, often frowning with annoyance when Will bothered him to ask for permission. He knew the vehicle so well, his hands found the various controls without looking and he knew exactly how far to push the seat up to accommodate his shorter legs. The car was simply comfortable, like an extension of himself, and he wondered if his friend had modified it, perhaps added a telepathic component, to make it connect with its driver.

Comfort was definitely an advantage during this trip, helping Will push his anxiety to the back of his mind as he kept his eyes on the road. Music also helped, keeping him entertained during these long hours, and luckily, it hadn't bothered David at all.

As he turned off on the slip road and eased the velocity down behind the steady stream of cars leaving the motorway, Will ran through the directions he'd memorised before they'd started on their journey, then glanced over at the man sleeping in the passenger's seat. "David," he murmured, trying to wake him gently though he knew it wouldn't work. "We're almost there." He waited a few moments for a response, then reached over to shake him awake. "David. Wake up. Wake up, mate."

The man groaned before opening his eyes. "What?" he croaked. "What's wrong?" Shifting a bit, he squinted irritably at the sunlight.

"Nothing's wrong. It's time to get up."

David tugged at his seatbelt as he pushed himself upright. "Already? I just fell asleep."

"That was -"

"- two hours and twenty-one minutes ago," David finished for him. "Took me a moment to orientate. Feels like two minutes." He rubbed his fists into his dark, sunken eyes. "It's getting worse. Another few weeks and -"

"No use thinking about that, mate," Will spoke over him as they came to a stop at a traffic light. He reached over and squeezed David's shoulder. "It'll work and it'll be all over."

"Aye." They fell silent as Will navigated through the roads choked with crowds of people flocking toward the main event, arriving more than an hour early hoping to find a good vantage point to catch a glimpse of movement lasting less than thirty seconds. Will turned off the high street into rows and rows of identical houses. Further out, he found a parking spot and, manoeuvring the car into the tight space, shut off the engine and turned to his friend. David had nodded off again.

Will shook his leg and he jerked awake. "It's time, mate."

"Aye." Concentrating hard, David shook himself alert, though his shoulders drooped and his eyes were rimmed with red. "You remember what you need to do?"

"It's all I've been thinking about since we stopped for lunch. Come on, let's go."

As David climbed out of the car, he stopped and turned to his Will. He seemed about to say something, then thought better of it. With a faint, exhausted smile for his friend, he turned, trudging away to lose himself down a side street. Mobile in hand, Will trotted off to take up his appointed position.

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

Five months earlier…

Toting his lunch in a pale blue plastic container, Will turned the corner into the company break room and paused to assess with whom he might spend his meal. As usual, the lines were drawn by department: Ben relived last night's football with the other developers, Amy discussed the recent space opera blockbuster with the graphic artists, and Markus regaled the designers with stories of his recent holiday down south. Mary sat alone in a corner, staring at the screen of her tablet as she typed away on its attached keyboard, the last bite of her sandwich lonely on her plate. As he decided which group to join, Mary closed her tablet and, stuffing the last bit of bread, meat, and cheese in her mouth, grabbed her things and slipped out.

With a mental shrug, Will walked over to the artists' table and claimed the one empty seat. He'd seen the film they were discussing the week before and it was far sight more interesting than talking football.

"Well, here's someone who'd know," proclaimed Laura, waving a fork at Will.

"Know what?" Will asked as he opened his pack lunch.

"She thought the pig-men in that scene in the spaceport on Ctolmad looked too fake and cheesy," Amy explained.

"Ah, you can't please an artist," Will mocked.

Laura scowled at him in pretended offense. "But you've seen real aliens. Don't you think that the pig-men were cheesy?"

Will used the excuse of taking the first mouthful of his lunch to consider his answer. He'd seen far more aliens than anyone could know, in the context of the television programme his friend David, himself an alien, had brought from his alternate universe. The show depicted aliens and civilisations from Will's universe, and though he had to admit that the Judoon that had appeared on screen could not be said to look realistic when compared the real ones he'd seen, it had taught him that the variety of life beyond planet Earth was far greater than he could imagine. "I think," he finally pronounced, "that without actually seeing all the different types of life out there, I can't really judge what might or might not be realistic."

Laura snorted at his equivocation. "Well, I still think it was bad enough that it ruined immersion." The conversation moved on, and Will enjoyed both his lunch and the discussion with his friends.

He was still eating when the artists got up to go, but though she gathered her rubbish, Amy didn't leave with the rest of them, saying she had something to talk to Will about. Once the rest of them had left, Amy scooted her chair closer.

"What do you think about Mary?" she murmured, glancing at their friend's long-vacated table.

Will frowned at the odd question. "Other than not eating lunch with you like she used to, I haven't noticed anything."

"That's what I mean." Amy bit her lip and leant closer in to Will. "Something's off with her. She's been so quiet, either working or typing away on her tablet. Not that she's ever skived off work before, but she hasn't even taken a break except for lunch. And she's been back three days and she's hardly said a word to me."

Will emptied the last crumbs of crisps from the packet into his hand and tossed them back. After swallowing, he shook his head. "I don't think you should worry. Everyone grieves in their own way."

"I suppose." Amy glanced off in the direction of the designers' desks.

"It's a tough time for her right now," Will added. "Wasn't he her best friend at uni?"

"Yup. Gareth. I met him once when he came up here for a visit. Graphic artist like me." Amy stared off at the door again, her expression grim, her concern for her friend plain on her face.

Will sniffed. In his opinion, Amy needed to let her friend work through her loss, at least for the moment. If Mary chose to withdraw from her friends and immerse herself in work, then that's what she needed to do. Amy should stay close in case Mary needed her, but should otherwise keep her distance for a bit. "Doubly hard, when someone dies so young," he commented, trying to keep the pedantic tone out of his voice.

Eyeing him with an embarrassed smile, Amy leaned on the table and propped her chin in her hand. "Yeah, I know. I just…I just think that throwing yourself into work like that, it's not good. She spent his last days with him, and then came right back to work like nothing happened. She's got to be devastated."

Reaching over to pat Amy's arm, Will smiled sadly. "I know it's hard, but you have to let her cope the way she wants. She'll come around, when she comes to terms with it. Just make sure you're there when she comes looking."

"I will. I hope she knows that."

"Of course she does." Will took her hand. "You're her best mate here. You'll be the first person she'll turn to."

Amy squeezed his hand back. "Thanks, Will. You're always a sweetheart."

"Oi!" he exclaimed, drawing back. "Don't say that out loud. Ben'll find out and I'll never hear the end of it."

"I'll find out what?" came a cry from other end of the room.

"See what you've done?" Will sighed. Amy patted his arm, laughing, then thanked him again before heading back to her desk.

When Will finished his lunch, he decided he might help Amy out a bit. After binning his rubbish, he made his way to the designers' office, where, as he expected, he found Mary with her nose to the grindstone, drawing up wireframes for their newest client's website. Hunched over her keyboard, she didn't notice Will's approach.

"Er, Mary?" he called, keeping his voice down though the other desks were vacant.

Mary glanced up. "Will," she replied. She regarded him pleasantly enough, though she was obviously distracted.

He wasn't quite sure how to start, and tried a vague, general approach. "Amy's been worried for you."

"Is she?"

Will frowned. That wasn't at all how he expected her to react to being informed of her best friend's concern. Perhaps directness was the way to go. "She knows you're going through a tough time right now, and she wanted to tell you that if you need anyone to talk to, she's there for you, any time."

"Oh." She smiled politely. "Thanks."

Will leant forward, bracing his hands on the edge of the desk as he pushed himself into Mary's listless gaze and searched her face. "You okay, love?"

That seemed to wake her up. Her eyes brightened and she focused on Will for the first time. The life returned to her voice. "I'm fine, Will, thank you. And yes, I know she's worried for me. You're a dear to come tell me."

Backing off, Will hooked his thumbs on the pockets of his trousers to adopt a more casual, non-threatening attitude. "I'm worried for both of you."

"I know." Mary picked up one of five clay figurines lined neatly across her desk. "I'd like you to have this."

Taking it from her, Will inspected the figure of a woman dancing, her arms gracefully extended above her head. It was roughly sculpted - Will could see fingerprints in some places - and unglazed, but it radiated grace and strength, and he marvelled at the artist's skill.

The smile on Mary's face as she watched Will admire the figure was proud and loving. "My friend, the one who… who passed. He made it. Isn't it lovely?"

Dismayed, Will thrust it back at Mary. "I can't take this."

"No, no, please. He would love you to have it." Mary picked up another one and turned it over in her hand. "I've a dozen of these at home. You see, he was a sculptor, and a bloody good one. I mean, he was my age, and he'd already got commissioned pieces up in Birmingham and Blackpool, and he was just about to start work on a public piece in Nottingham. He's going to be remembered. He mostly worked in bronze, but in the last month or so, he started making these. There's a couple hundred of them, and another twenty waiting to be fired." Frowning, she bit her lip as she stared at the figure. "It's almost like he knew he was going to die, so he didn't want to start anything big, and he just made as many of these as he could. Please, take it and remember him. I know you never met him, but it means everything to me."

Will gazed at the statuette again. He could feel the emotion the artist had imbued in the clay, and imagined that he'd been sculpting Mary herself. "I'd be honoured. Thank you." He grasped her shoulder. "Take care of yourself, love."

"I will. I promise."

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

Perched on the low brick wall just outside the front door of the office building, his nose buried in his phone, David looked like every other young professional in the business district, if dressed down a bit in his light coat and jeans. As an alien hiding among humans, he'd good reason to be nervous outside of his home, but two years of living on Earth amongst good friends had made him comfortable. He was reasonably certain that he concealed his obviously alien behaviours - such as reading a Gallifreyan treatise on the complexities of dimensional folding whilst waiting for his friends - rather well, and that he was merely regarded as eccentric.

Though his reading material was quite absorbing, he kept tabs on the people emerging from the building and heading off for their weekend. He didn't hold a job himself and didn't keep to a regular weekly schedule, but each person radiated relief and relaxation as they passed, and he couldn't help but smile along with them. By the time his friends appeared at the door, David sat a little straighter and the future, or at least the coming weekend, looked bright.

"There he is," Will stated to Amy and Markus as they walked up to David. "Told you he'd be down here. Always on time, he is. Probably waiting on us, to tell the truth."

"Not too long," David answered as he got to his feet, stuffing his mobile in his pocket. "Pleasant enough evening. I don't take time to relax like this often enough, I think."

"From what Will says, no, you don't," Amy scolded with a teasing grin as she fastened her coat against the mid-winter chill. "And you don't come out for Friday night pub often enough either. Glad you could make it tonight."

"Thanks for having me." He looked over the trio of friends. "Small group tonight."

"There's some still working, but they'll catch up," Markus said. "Ben can't make it, something about a family do. And Mary doesn't come on these anymore."

"She doesn't?" repeated David with a frown. "She used to love these, said the weekend couldn't start without Friday night pub."

Will shook his head. "She hasn't been the same since her friend died. It's been, what, a month now, and all she does is work and home. She doesn't even talk to anyone unless she's forced to."

David frowned. "Well, everyone grieves in their own way," he murmured.

"That's what I said a month ago, but this is bloody unhealthy, I say," Will replied. "You can't live your life for the dead. At some point, you've got to let go."

"Oi!" Amy hissed. They all looked toward the building to see Mary emerge from the front doors. Her shoulders curved and her gaze glued to the tips of her peep-toes, she stalked by the group without noticing them.

"Oi, Mary!" Markus called, his tone falsely bright. "Joining us for pub tonight?"

Stopping cold, she turned, scowling, and glared at each one of them in turn, her eyes dark and a bit bloodshot. Then, shaking her head as if she were trying to dislodge the memory of the interruption, she resumed her path, disappearing around the corner of the building.

Markus shrugged. "See? That's about all you can get out of her. More, actually. She usually doesn't stop."

Dragging a hand down over his jaw, David stared after her. "Curious," he whispered. "I'd never think that of her. She's always been so outgoing. I'm sure you've tried talking to her."

"Yes, I've tried," Amy murmured. "We all have. But I can really only take so many 'go aways'."

"I say it's not worth worrying about," Markus declared. "She'll come around or she won't. But what is worth worrying about is whether this is a porter night or a pale ale night. I'm thinking porter myself."

"When do you not think porter?" Amy asked. She turned on her heel, as much to goad to the party toward the pub as to block her own view of the corner her erstwhile best mate had disappeared around.

"When the tap's dry," grinned Markus.

As Markus joined Amy to chat about her beer preferences, Will caught David's eye with a questioning shrug. He moved in and murmured, "What do you think, mate?"

"I've no idea," David replied, chewing on the tip of his tongue as they fell behind their friends. "The change in behaviour is startling, but she's had a tough time of it, you said. Some people bounce back faster than others." He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "I'm no expert, especially in human psychology, but I'd say wait a bit more and watch. If she doesn't turn herself around in a month or so, maybe it's time for an intervention."

"I hope it doesn't come to that," groaned Will. "That kind of thing never turns out well."

"No. It doesn't, does it?" David murmured with a resigned shrug.

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

"Oi!" called Will as he stuck his head in the door of his friend's fledgling time travel capsule. "Hope you're decent 'cause I'm comin' in." Knowing full well that the door standing ajar was a blanket invitation to enter, he stepped over the threshold into the dimension that housed the interior of the craft.

"Aye, I'm often starkers when I work with heavy machinery, so you'd best keep your eyes shut if you don't want to be blinded," came David's voice from no particular direction.

The room appeared much as Will had always seen it, piled high with components and materials, boxed up or sitting loose in large mounds. The hexagonal central table, which David had told him would one day become the navigational console, currently hosted a large, translucent plastic tub containing what looked like large worms swimming in murky pink liquid. David himself could be hidden behind anything, but as talking didn't require line of sight, Will hoisted himself up to sit on a sturdy crate. "You just keep your pasty arse hidden away, mate."

"By your command," came the reply, obscured a bit by the clunks and whirrs that usually accompanied David's work. "You're home early. An hour, I reckon."

"Yeah. It's been a rough day." He sighed. "Today was it."

"What was 'it'?"

"You called it, mate. Intervention day."

David's head popped up from behind a workbench. A hand snaked up to sweep through his already spiky hair. "Oh, no. Mary?"

"Yeah. Ben said hi as he passed her and she bit his head off." He kicked his heels against the side of the crate, fidgeting out his worry for his friend. "I've never seen anyone lose it so bad like that. When she finally stopped for a breath, she broke into tears. Jodie from HR took her to hospital, and, well, she's still there."

David folded his arms on the surface of the workbench and propped his chin up. "Do they know what's wrong?"

Shrugging, Will shook his head. "Amy said they've had doctors see her all day, but they said they haven't run enough tests yet. She's calmed down, but she's back to lying in her bed with her nose in her laptop, ignoring everybody. Amy only got a couple of words out of her."

"I'm sorry, Will."

"Yeah, well, hopefully they'll figure it out right quick and she'll be back to normal. Though…" He drummed his fingers, not keen on voicing his last thought. "Markus had to go and say that abrupt personality changes are common with brain tumours."

David grimaced. "He would."

"Here's hoping he's wrong."

Jumping up from behind the bench, David scrubbed his grimy hands down his jeans. "We should go visit her. I can meet you after work tomorrow."

Will shrugged again. "Won't do much good. She barely notices anyone anymore." He peered up at his friend. "But you know, if it does turn out to be a tumour, could you help? Some of your jiggery-pokery?"

David clicked his tongue and sighed. "Wish I could, but I'm really not a doctor or biologist of any kind. My medical background consists entirely of having played one once on live television. An actual doctor," he clarified. "Not the Doctor. Though the medical doctor I played also fought aliens. I suppose it's a bit of a theme for me." He sniffed. "Jenny and I learnt some Gallifreyan medicine from the Doctor as part of our training, but little of it applies to humans. I'm afraid I'm not much help here."

"What about that medicine you gave me when we first met, something like that?"

"Nah. That restorative can cure a lot of things, but cancer's beyond it. And I've only a basic medpack, because, well, I really don't need it." He turned, gazing off in some direction toward the interior of the TARDIS. "Someday I'll build a true medical bay, but that's years away."

"Damn. I was hoping." Turning, Will eyed David for a moment, then shivered a bit, as if he wasn't sure he should say what he was thinking. "What if it's alien?

David frowned. "What makes you think it's alien?"

"I don't know," Will sighed. "It just seems wrong. You know, friend goes suddenly bonkers, doctors can't find a thing wrong with her -"

"And it's gotta be an alien cause because I'm here," David finished for him.

"I'm not saying it's something to do with you," Will assured him immediately, but he couldn't quite face him.

"It's completely understandable." David leant back against the workbench. "There's one alien standing right in front of you, and you're surrounded by all this." He swept a hand around, pointing at the extradimensional space, the crates full of alien technology, and the strange worms slithering through the liquid in the tub. "And I really do seem to attract all the weird, don't I? It's only natural to think the next unexplained phenomenon must be extraterrestrial as well. It'd be comforting, even, to find a simple, tangible cause, wouldn't it?"

"Mate…"

David's eyes darkened. "But it doesn't work that way. Sure, it could be caused by an alien influence, but that's unlikely. And we aren't all evil and malicious, you know."

"I know that!" Will snapped.

"Will." David scrubbed his hand down over his jaw, the tightening of his jaw betraying his concern. "Mary's my friend, too, you know. I'll do what I can for her, but I can't…" Shaking his head, he swallowed and shrugged. "I can't promise anything."

"I know. I just want to keep our minds open, you know?" He held David's gaze for a moment, then they both nodded.

"Yeah. Tomorrow then. I'll meet you at your building, after work."

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

Will was not pleased to be proven right about the efficacy of visiting their friend. Mary, gaunt and exhausted, glanced up when he and David entered her hospital room with Amy, who'd joined them on their visit, but her sunken eyes slid over them and she returned to furiously typing on the tablet on the trolley table in front of her. A man sitting in the guest chair near the bed watched her reaction, then cast a cold but welcoming smile at the newcomers.

"I'm sorry," Amy said to him, stepping forward. "We didn't mean to intrude."

"It's not like you can at all, now can you?" he replied, glancing at Mary, still oblivious. "She barely even eats. She'll get about half the meal down before she's back at it again. I think she forgets it's there. That's all she does. Type and sleep." Shrugging, he stood up and offered his hand to Amy. "I'm Kevin, Mary's brother."

"Nice to meet you," greeted Amy as she shook his hand. "I wish the circumstances were better. I'm Amy. This is Will and that's David. We work with Mary. Well, Will and I do. David's a friend."

"Thank you for coming. It's a comfort to me, even if she barely notices." He reached over to pat Mary's arm, and she swatted his hand away like it was a buzzing fly.

"She's been so focused and serious for a couple of months now," Will explained, "and she's been a bit snippy, but we'd no idea it'd gotten so bad."

"Since Gareth died?" Kevin asked, his smirk revealing that he already knew the answer to his question.

"That's the time, yes," Will confirmed.

Slapping his thigh, Kevin spun and paced away. "That's what I thought. I told the doctor, but he won't listen!" he hissed.

"Told him what?" asked Amy.

Kevn turned back, shaking his head. "Mary's caught this from Gareth. It's exactly the same thing." He nodded at the three identical gapes of horror on the friends' faces. "Mind you, I didn't see him myself, but Mary stayed in my flat during his last days and she told me all about it. Psychotic episodes and hallucinations, and all he did was sleep and make these little -" He gestured vaguely in front of himself, trying to explain what he was talking about.

"The statues!" Amy gasped. "Those little clay statues. She gave me two of them. She said Gareth made them."

"I've got one, too. She said he made hundreds of them," added Will.

Kevin nodded. "Right. He was obsessive about making them right to the end."

David piped up, "And she's typing obsessively. What's she writing?"

"I've only had a glance. It looks like a novel." He leant in to his sister. "Mary," he coaxed gently at first, then with more force. "Mary! Look at me!"

With an irritated tremor, she sneered at her brother. "What the bloody hell do you want, Kev? I'm busy."

"Your friends are here to see you," he admonished her, pointing at them.

She glared at them, though she seemed to barely recognise them at all. "They can sod off as well."

Kevin was unfazed. "Do you think we could take a look at what you're writing?"

Her hands clenched into fists. "Piss off, Kevin. I don't have the time. I've got to get this down."

"Just thirty seconds. You can take a breather for thirty seconds, can't you? Close your eyes for a bit." Without waiting for an answer, he slid the tablet out from under her balled hands and hopped away.

"You give that back!" she screamed, making a grab for him that caught thin air. "I'm going to kill you! I'm going to kill all of you!" Throwing off the blankets and sending the trolley careening off, she leapt out of bed and lunged at her brother, who hopped out of the way. As she swung and clawed, Will jumped forward to restrain her, grabbing her around the waist. As his arms closed around her, she began flailing at him, then her strength flagged and she fell limp. With David's help, he laid her back down on the bed.

"She's dead asleep," Will explained to the rest of the room, his furrowed brow betraying his confusion.

Though Amy had watched it all in horror, Kevin seemed unsurprised. "That's the way of it. She sees things that aren't there, and she falls asleep at the drop of a hat. It's all part and parcel. She'll be back up and typing in an hour." Inhaling deeply, he swallowed his concern for his sister and put on a mask of jaded boredom. Once Will was done making her comfortable, Kevin pulled the trolley back and placed the laptop on it so everyone could see it. The four of them peered at the screen.

'That does look like a novel," Will observed. "She's on page three hundred and fifty-six."

Amy reached for the touchscreen and began scrolling up. "It's remarkably coherent, considering…" She looked over at Mary, who slumbered on.

"Rather well-written as well, from just this bit," David remarked. "Wait, Amy, may I?" He pulled out his wire-frame glasses and slipped them on.

"Sure." Amy stepped back as David snaked a long arm between them to take over the navigation. Tapping the menu bar to whisk to the top of the document, he began scrolling quickly down with rapid flicks of his finger, pages and pages of text streaming by in a blur. After about ten seconds, he straightened.

"This is the novel she talked about two years ago, when we first met. Remember, Will?"

His lips pressed in a thin line, Will shook his head."Only that you two talked about it."

"It's about what would make a good person become a killer," David explained.

Amy clicked her fingers, pointing at him. "I remember. Something about convincing yourself that killing the person would be a good thing, like killing a serial killer."

David nodded. "That's the one."

Kevin stared at the tablet. "How could you tell that?"

Shrugging, David stepped back behind Will. "I just caught a few key words, really."

"I'd no idea she'd actually started it," Amy mused. She stepped forward and began paging through Mary's work. "She's always said she wanted to be a writer, but she's never actually written anything."

Will nodded. "Seems she's started now."

"Well." Kevin rubbed his hands together, clasping them at the end in a plea. "Can I ask you all to come speak to the doctor with me? Maybe together we can convince him this is the same as…" He cleared his throat. "The same as what happened to Gareth."

"Certainly," said Will. "Anything we can do to help."

"Thanks." Kevin glanced back at his slumbering sister. "I don't know how I'm going to break the news to Mum when she gets here tomorrow."

"The doctors'll figure it out," soothed Amy. "You'll see. She'll be fine."

Though he remained dubious, Kevin smiled. "Thanks."

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

Will dropped his beer on the end table and flopped onto the couch. "Kevin said it shouldn't be long now. Two weeks, three at the most, the doctor said."

"And they've found nothing to give even a sliver of hope?" David queried.

"They haven't figured out a bloody thing," Will growled. "It's all the usual signs of sleep deprivation, but they've induced sleep and she keeps getting worse. No pathogens in her blood or abnormalities in her brain, other than what's expected. It looks like she got it from Gareth, but they can't even figure out how."

Frowning, David peered at his friend, who sat biting on his thumbnail as he thought. Whilst it was perfectly reasonable that he was worried for Mary, David sensed that a good part of Will's frustration, which brimmed in every word he spoke, was with her physicians and not the situation.

"You think they're not doing enough, don't you?" he asked.

Will threw his hands up. "Who'm I to say?" he barked, his voice unusually shrill. "I'm not a doctor. I don't know any more than they do. They've got a couple of researchers working on her case and they've confirmed that it's going the same way as Gareth's did, but that's it. I mean, they've got her in a hospice. That means they've given up."

David's lips curved in a sly smile. "But you haven't."

Will looked up and met his eye. "No, I haven't. I've got an ace up my sleeve."

"Oh? What's that?"

"You."

"Me?" David sighed. He'd known it would come down to this, and had dreaded having to face the simple truth that there was nothing he could do to help his friend. "I told you, Will," he groaned. "I can't just wave my mobile around and cure her. And I don't know anything about actual medicine beyond what I can find on Wikipedia."

"You don't need to, mate. I'm not asking you to fix everything. I need you to help me piece together what's been going on." Sitting up, Will perched on the edge of his seat and steepled his fingers in front of himself. "I've done a bit of research and I think Gareth and Mary aren't the only two cases of whatever this is. I can't see anything new in the ones I've found that might help, but you have different tools and a unique perspective, so you might be able to find things I can't. Willing to take a look?"

A hesitant smile spread across David's face. He'd been so caught up with the idea of providing a cure for Mary that he hadn't considered other ways in which he might help. "Of course, anything, but I've got to say," David murmured, "don't expect miracles."

"I'm not." Will grabbed his beer and took a long drink, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I just want you to look over what I've found and see if I've missed anything, 'cause if anything's there, you're the one who'll find it."

"I'd be delighted to," answered David, nodding.

"Brill. Lemme grab my laptop."

Depositing the bottle back on the table, Will hopped to his feet and stepped toward the door, but stopped at David's remark, "I didn't know you were this close to Mary."

He turned to look at his friend. "'Cause I'm doing this? I'm not, really. She and I rarely even talk outside of work. But…" Will shook his head. "She's not even thirty-five, and she's gonna die without even knowing why."

"It's not fair, is it?"

Will slapped a hand over his eyes and rubbed tiredly at them. "Here I am talking about the fairness of life with the bloke that got dealt the worst hand ever."

"At one point, maybe, but I got a second chance, and this hand's not so bad."

"Yeah, well," and Will glanced down at his hands as he picked thoughtfully at a fingernail, "I thought some time and effort on my part was a tiny price to pay for a shot at getting Mary that second hand, even if the chances are next to nil."

David smiled. "Throw in my time as well, see if we can't figure this out together."

Flashing his friend a grateful grin, Will trotted out of the house, returning a few minutes later with his computer. He set it up on the coffee table and pulled his chair closer. "Mostly I was just looking into Gareth's case," he commented as he pulled up his files. "I thought that though he died from it, maybe his doctors had, I don't know, found things that eased his symptoms, or anything. I asked Mary's doctor for his medical records, and of course he said no."

"So you hacked into the hospital computers?" David asked.

Rolling his eyes, Will snorted. "This is not one of your television shows, mate. I'm a programmer. That doesn't mean I can hack into computers willy-nilly. But I can make a search engine sit up and beg." He grabbed his mouse and start clicking and typing whlist he talked. "I found a discussion of a case history, a bit too old to be Gareth's and not enough detail to be traceable, but that made me think of checking the medical journals and other professional communities. I had to drop a few quid to get access, but I found some things. Here."

With a few more clicks, he pulled up a document and starting summarising it for his friend. "These are my notes. Ah, yes, this first one's a woman in Köln, so definitely not Gareth." The two friends exchanged grins. "She had the same symptoms. Amateur photographer, and she'd quit her job so she could roam around taking pictures, sleeping wherever she could find a bit of shelter. That's how they found her. In her last few days, they kept her in isolation, and she left thousands of pictures of the furniture and walls of her room on the stack of memory cards she left behind."

David grimaced in horror.

"Her case was maybe a year ago? Not sure. I also found this man." Will trailed his finger down the screen as he read and paraphrased his notes. "This was a case study in a journal, written by a doctor in York. I didn't understand a lot of it, but mostly it said that he seemed to be dying from the effects of sleep deprivation though he slept a fair amount. It discussed the treatments they tried, none of which worked. There was no mention of any strange, obsessive behaviour, but it sounded similar enough."

David nodded. "Aye, I agree. York's not far. If we need to, we can hop over there to talk to the doctor and be back in time for dinner."

"Yeah, almost did that myself, when I found this."

"What else?"

"That's it." Will pushed his laptop away with a disgusted snort. "That's all I could find."

"Not even their names or when they started treatment?"

"Nope." The drumming of his fingers on the table next to his computer revealed his frustration at the dead end he'd reached. "They don't mention that kind of thing in journals and discussions. Patient confidentiality and all."

David bit his lip. "Then we need to get that info, so we can figure out how this fits together."

"Can you?" Will asked with a sly smile.

"I might." He dug in his pocket for his mobile. "All right, let's see what we can do. I'll need everything you've got."

"What are you doing?"

"Well," he drawled as he tapped on the screen, "I've got the TARDIS data banks." He bit his lip with a sigh. "She might be silent, but she's always recording. She should have data back to when I moved in here, and she might be able to match it up to what you've found."

Will spent the next hour reading his notes to his friend and looking up details he hadn't written down. At first, he felt like he was wasting both their times, searching through records that the doctors must have already combed through, but when the first discovery came though - the TARDIS pinpointing the woman in Köln - he whooped a quick cheer, then grinned at his friend, embarrassed.

"Oh, I do think it's worth celebrating," said David with his own proud grin. "Now we might actually get somewhere. Anna Meier. She was a nurse. I've got the date of death, but not much else relevant." He closed his eyes.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to trace her timeline, now that I have a lock on it, but I'm rubbish at this. I almost didn't graduate from the Doctor's Temporal Science Academy and Ten-Pin Alley because of it," he pronounced with a smirk. "My sense of space and causality is almost non-existent, so I can't get much more than dates of birth and death, but I might be able to spot some contemporality."

"Well, that's more than we had." Will typed the dates David gave him into his notes. "Died a little over a year ago. Matches what I found," he murmured to himself.

"Oh, that's interesting," said David.

Will frowned. "Why?"

David's eyes popped open. "No, not that. I thought I might check timelines related to Anna's, to see if anyone she knew died around the same time, and, well, her brother died three months later."

Will's jaw dropped. "Of the same thing?"

David shrugged. "No idea. That's what we need to find out, I'd say." He began tapping on his phone. "Let's see. Yes, there he is. Friedrich Kerwath."

"Friedrich Kerwath," repeated Will as he typed. "How do you spell that?" He murmured his thanks after David told him, then added, "I hope you can read German. I took French and I don't remember a word of it."

"I speak most of the major Earth languages. The Doctor insisted I learn them, as well as the most useful galactic languages." He wagged a finger at his friend. "And before you ask, no, I didn't study Klingon."

"Well, we won't be needing your translation," declared WIll with a triumphant grin, "because Mr. Friedrich Kerwath lived and died in Slough."

"Slough, eh? That brings it to this side of the channel." David tapped the information into his phone.

With a poke at his laptop screen, Will threw his hands up in frustration. "Died at home of natural causes, it says here. How does a thirty-nine-year-old man die of natural causes? I'd say that's suspicious enough to note."

"I agree," David murmured as he sat with closed eyes. "Bloody hell. He's a dead end for me. His timeline during the period he might have been ill only touches others tangentially. What did he do?"

"The obituary says 'self-employed'." Will fell silent as he worked his computer. After a couple of minutes, he slumped back in his seat. "I can't find much else about him on the web."

"Did he die alone?"

He shrugged. "He died at home, so I'd think so. If he had what Mary has, well, if we hadn't forced Mary to go to hospital, she'd probably be home now, oblivious to the world."

"Yeah." David sighed in frustration and ran a hand through his hair. "Well, this thread was useless. What else?"

"I don't know. Why is it so hard to find these cases? I mean, it's been around for over a year and it's obviously contagious." Sitting up, Will pounded the arm of the chair, then gestured rudely at the computer. "There should be plenty of examples, either of successful treatments or discussions of the disease in the medical literature."

"Wait," cried David. "You said contagious."

Will popped up in his chair. "Yeah?"

"Where did Gareth catch it from?"

"Who knows?" Will slumped back again. David's tone had given him hope that he'd thought of something, but that had been quickly dashed by yet another question with no answer. "He worked for a big advertising firm in London and also did commissions in various places, so he could have gotten it anywhere."

"But what about Anna?" asked David in a leading tone. "She was a nurse, so -"

Will pointed at his friend. "So she probably got it from one of her patients!" Straightening up again, he bent back over his laptop and started typing. "That could be any of hundreds of people -"

"But it narrows it down a little," finished David with a smile. "And if you think about it, most of the people a nurse cares for in a hospital survive. Much as I hate to say it, we're only looking for the ones who died."

"Oh!" exclaimed Will, pointing at his screen. "Except that she didn't work in a hospital. She was a hospice nurse."

"And if her hospice hosted a terminally-ill patient like Mary…"

"Then she caught it from them."

David wagged a finger at the laptop. "What hospice did she work for?"

"Let's see." After a minute of searching, Will found a name. "It was… I can't pronounce this."

"Let me see." David hopped around the table and sat down on the arm of Will's chair. He began tapping on his mobile.

"What are you doing?"

David held the phone to his ear, and Will could hear the ringer clearly. "Neither of us can get into their records, or should, really, so let's do the right thing and ask directly."

In a moment, a muffled female voice sounded from the mobile's speaker. David replied in fluent German, and hopped up to pace across the room. Will watched him for a few seconds, then turned back to his laptop to straighten out his notes whilst he waited. Though he didn't understand what David was saying, he could tell from his friend's tone of voice that he was trying to be reasonable and polite in his requests. The call transferred to another person, and then another, and finally, after a good twenty minutes, David thanked them (Will at least understood danke) and hung up.

"Well?"

"Patience, grasshopper," David crooned. "There isn't much to go on."

"But you must have found something,"

"Much of the same. They had a patient, an older man with the same symptoms as Mary. He wasn't Anna's patient," he explained as he slipped back into his seat, "not even in the same ward, but when they heard she was ill, they recognised that it was the same thing."

"Did they have any success treating it?" Will hoped against all odds.

"No. They did tell me what they tried that didn't work, but there wasn't much else."

Will punched the arm of his chair. "Damn. Well, let's get this down. What's his name?"

"I didn't get that either," David sighed. "I knew the only way they would talk to me is if I told them that I only wanted case specifics and nothing personal. All I got about him was gender and date of death."

Will echoed his friend's sigh, shoulders sagging. "All right. I suppose that's something. What is it?"

"21 October, 2010."

Will repeated it as he typed, then paused, staring at his screen. Brow furrowed, he paged through his notes, then glanced up at David. "Did you notice this?"

"What?" his friend asked, though the twinkle in his eye betrayed that he had an idea of what Will had spotted.

"That date. This man died three months before Anna did."

"Yes."

Will nodded as he worked through the dates in his notes. "And her brother died three months after she did."

David's tongue traced the upper lip of a tentative smile. "Go on."

"And if Mary dies when they think she will, it'll be three months after Gareth." Will's mouth dropped open as he stared at his laptop.

"What do you think?" asked David.

"We've only a few examples, but what a coincidence." Will shook his head. "But that's pretty normal, isn't it? Everyone with the same thing having it for the same time, more or less?"

"As far as I know, yes. But," and he wagged a finger at Will, "it's only spaced that evenly if you assume that they caught the disease the day the previous patient died. Normal contagion would have introduced a variance, as people catch it at various times during the patient's illness, or even after death. I'm not a doctor, but I've never heard of anything like that, something that's contagious only at death."

Will frowned. "Er…"

"And that's the odd thing. You pointed it out yourself. There are no other victims. We've got five confirmed cases, but no one exhibited symptoms at the same time as anyone else. It's like the disease wasn't contagious: it was simply passed on. And if that's the case, then the timing's spot on." David scooted around the table and pointed at Will's notes. "This German man died in October, Anna in January, Friedrich in April. Then with Gareth dying in January, he contracted it in October, leaving six months in the middle for two people we haven't identified yet. Want to bet that the man in York is one of them? I expect that with a date of death around the 21st of either July or October in York, I can find him in the TARDIS data banks in less than five minutes."

Wide-eyed, Will dragged a hand down over his mouth as he considered the implications. Finally, he murmured, "It's not contagious, but passed on. Mate, is this thing alien?"

"Might be. I don't know." Holding up his mobile, he twiddled it between his fingers. "Best I could do is this, see what it can find. But you'd have to wonder, what's the point? Infecting one person at a time so that they die every three months in various places around Europe? What are they trying to accomplish?"

"I don't know, mate, but I don't think we have a moment to lose." Will shut his laptop.

David nodded and jumped up, stuffing his phone in his pocket. "I agree. Not a moment."

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

Mary's hospice room, to which she'd been moved not many days after she'd first entered the hospital, was rather cheery for its purpose, with a large window shaded by translucent curtains that brightened the line of well-wishing flowers on the table across from the bed. The patient herself laid curled up, clutching her precious tablet to her chest, her face and frame gaunt and haunted. Her brother sat by in the armchair, elbow deep in his own work on his laptop. At Will's and David's entrance, he pushed his small table aside and hopped up to greet them.

"Back again so soon, Will?" he quipped, though his gratitude for his sister was clear. "Hoy, David. Long time no see."

"I've been meaning to drop by, but time has a way of flitting off, doesn't it?" He glanced awkwardly down at his hands. "Will told me about her prognosis. I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," Kevin replied. "At this point, I'll be glad to see her suffering end. But don't tell my mum I said that. She's still hoping."

"We all are." With a polite nod, David stepped back to observe the sleeping figure.

"How's your mum doing?" Will asked.

"Holding up." Kevin wrung his hands as he spoke. "I sent her back to Mary's flat to sleep. She's here all the time now, and she needs to keep up her own health. Least I can do is spell her when I'm up here on the weekends."

"We all try to get her to rest when we come by, but she won't listen to us."

"My mum's a stubborn woman," Kevin claimed with a smile, "especially when it comes to Mary. Just as stubborn protecting her as arguing with her."

Will grinned. "Same as with my mum and my sister Beth. Especially when Beth was a teenager. They could argue for -"

Will's story was cut off by a familiar sound, to Will at least: the trill of the sonic probe built into David's mobile. Kevin stared at the man with a frown and Will played along, whirling around to gawk at his friend. David fiddled with the phone, tapping frantically at the screen whilst in actuality keeping it steadily pointed at Mary. The sound finally cut out and spots of colour rose on his cheeks.

"Sorry, sorry," he pleaded, grimacing in embarrassment. "I hit the wrong button, and I can never figure out how to get this thing to shut up." Will had to admit that the man was definitely a convincing actor.

Kevin glanced at his sister. "It didn't wake her, so no harm done." In that brief moment, Will shot a questioning glance at David, who shook his head then started tugging at his ear as he frowned at the sleeping woman.

"Well, mate," coaxed Will, "maybe we should go out into the hall to make sure we don't disturb her."

"Not a bad idea," said David.

"I could really use a coffee," announced Kevin. "Can I get one for either of you?"

"No, thanks," replied David as Will requested, "If you don't mind. Two sugars."

"Sure. Back in a mo'." Kevin slipped out.

"Not a thing, mate?" Will whispered to confirm David's findings.

"Not as far as I can tell. Nothing out of the ordinary for contemporary Earth." He slid his mobile into the back pocket of his denims.

Will groaned in frustration, gazing at the sleeping woman. "Damn. I was hoping, whatever it is that's taken her over, it'd be a simple explanation."

"Me, too. I was sure…" David trailed off, staring at his friend. "Taken her over? What makes you say that?"

Will paused, frowning as he considered what he said. He hadn't noticed his own casual phrasing. "Well, it's like that, isn't it? Like all those films where something takes over someone and makes them do weird things."

David peered back at Mary, his tongue tracing his upper lip. "I was looking for an alien disease, or nanotech maybe, odd energy signatures, that kind of thing. I wonder…" He fished his inhibitor out from under his shirt and pulled it off over his head. Gathering its chain into his fist, he glanced at Mary. The next moment, his eyes glazed over and he swayed forward, the pendant falling from his limp fingers to the floor with a heavy clunk. Will jumped forward barely in time to catch him and return him to his feet.

"David! Are you all right?" The life had returned to his friend's eyes and he was standing on his own. "What happened?"

"Aye, I'm fine," David breathed. "I just, I just didn't expect that."

"Expect what?" Will asked as he dipped down to fetch the inhibitor and stuff it in his pocket.

David's eyes twitched toward the door. "Tell you in a bit. Kev's got to be on his way back. Come on." He seemed a bit shaky as they exited the room and walked to the ward lounge, and was quite grateful to sit down in one of the cushy armchairs, though he continued to stare off toward Mary's room. Kevin appeared not long after with the drinks.

"Want mine, mate?" Will offered to David.

"Nah, I'm fine." David's attention was still on Mary.

Will and Kevin chatted for a bit, until Kevin excused himself to return to his vigil, expecting his sister to awaken soon. As soon as he was gone, Will turned to David.

"So what happened?"

"What you said about being taken over, it gave me the idea to check her psychically. That really doesn't occur to me, you know. I don't even remember I can do that." He shrugged sheepishly. "So I tried, and you were right, sort of. There's something there."

"Alien?"

"Probably. I only got a glimpse." With both hands, he scrubbed at his face, rubbing his eyes then scraping his hair back. "Will, there's a psychic entity inside her. Pure thought, that's all it is. I've never experienced anything like it."

"You lost it for a moment."

"Aye, I did. Oh, how to describe?" As he groped for words, the hint of a smile curving the corners of his lips betrayed his fascination with the being. "That's all it is, just thought. It's not like connecting to someone who's thinking. It's total immersion. It's the difference between dragging your fingers along the surface of the pond and jumping in and dissolving in it."

Frowning, Will leant forward, elbows on his knees. "And that's what it's doing to Mary? Drowning her?"

"I don't know. I only barely glimpsed it. I need to jump back in and find out." Though his statement of intention was firm and serious, David's eyes sparkled with the anticipation of learning more about the entity.

"Are you going to be all right?"

"Should be. At least I'll know what to expect this time. And I'm sitting down." Clasping the arms of the chair, he grinned at his friend. "Here goes." He closed his eyes.

A few seconds later, David's eyes opened and he nodded. "All right. I understand now."

"That fast?" croaked Will.

"That fast. We didn't so much talk as download our thoughts into each other." Breathing deeply, David sighed before explaining. "As I said, it's a psychic entity, from a planet called…" He faltered. "Well, they don't communicate verbally. The planet concept is about equivalent to rough-ochre-wide-arid-comfort." He shrugged. "They don't have physical bodies, but live in symbiosis with the dominant species on the planet. They feed on the individual's mental energy, and in return, they enhance creative endeavours, both the arts and the sciences."

"Is that why Mary suddenly started writing?"

"Aye. And why Gareth couldn't stop making those little statues."

Though his friend still wasn't out of the woods, Will relaxed visibly. At least things were starting to make some sense. "But why's it here killing people?"

"It doesn't mean to. Its host came to Earth to explore but died suddenly, and all the entity could do was take a human host." David tapped himself on the temple. "Problem is, you're not compatible. It's only able to survive by consuming the mental energy from the host's dreams, but -"

"But that's killing the host because they aren't getting the benefits of their sleep," Will finished for him, clicking his fingers as he made the connection.

"Exactly."

"Why doesn't it just take a bit off one person and hop to the next? That's got to be better than killing them off."

David shook his head. "It can't. It melds with its host for life and trying to leave it is such an expenditure of effort and energy, it could die in the process. It only gets released when the host dies, and it has to grab a new host immediately or dissipate."

Will wagged a finger at his friend, glaring. "I know what you're thinking, mate. Don't you dare."

"Why not? It's willing to take the chance, and moving to me is easier because my psychic ability gives it a bridge. And maybe a Gallifreyan is just what it needs." David grinned, proud that he found a simple cure for his friend.

"And if you aren't compatible?"

David shrugged. "Then I'll have three months to find a better solution."

Scowling, Will glanced back toward Mary's room.

"Exactly," breathed David. "That's the question, really: who's more important, Mary or me? And you know the answer."

"No! No, I don't," Will shot back. "You two are equally important. She's just a bit more urgent right now." He leapt from his chair and paced off, then whirled back around. "Go on, then. Save her life, sacrifice your own. It's the only thing to do, but I don't have to like it."

David smiled. "It's already done."

"I was afraid you'd say that." He buried his face in his hands.

"I didn't see that there was any other path forward."

"There wasn't," Will murmured. With a heavy sigh, he shook off his frustration and sat down next to David. "Are you all right?"

"Yes. For now. It's not much different than normal. It's a part of me now, no different than a leg or arm. I know it's there and can sense it if I look, but otherwise, I feel the same." He puffed out a breath, a slight tremor in his shoulders belying his good humour. "This entity is thousands of years old. It's lived a hundred different lives, and outlived them all. I could learn a lot from it, maybe see what's in store for me a bit clearer. Maybe this is just what I needed."

Will slumped back in his chair, shaking his head at his friend. "I hope so, mate. I really hope so."

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

Two days later, Will's phone beeped as it sat on the desk next to him at work. The message was simple and short, Kevin letting him and his coworkers know that Mary was ready to receive visitors. Will shot off a quick text to David, then rounded up the gang to go see their recuperating friend.

Amy had taken a day of holiday to be with her best friend, and she was there chatting with Mary when the group arrived. Kevin sat next to their mother Abby, who beamed with happiness at her daughter's sudden health.

"Still lounging about here?" boomed Ben as he led the visitors into the room. He strode straight up to the bed and took Mary's hand. "I figured you'd be out running a marathon by now, just to get moving."

"No," Mary grinned, "I'm not quite stir-crazy yet. Just happy to be awake. Thanks for coming by," she crooned, squeezing his hand.

"You're really looking a lot better," replied Will. "I'm so glad it's all over."

"Well," began Kevin, "she's got a lot of strength to get back, and the doctors aren't sure she's out of the woods yet. They want to keep her here a few more days, to watch for a relapse and to try to figure out what happened. They're completely mystified."

"And that's what's really going to make me go crazy," groaned Mary, "but I can't argue." She glanced at her brother and mother. "Kev and Mum said you've all been coming to visit every day and I wanted to thank you. Not that I can remember a moment of it."

"Not us," corrected Will. "Maybe a couple of times a week for me. The one you really should thank is Amy. She came here almost every day after work." Amy flushed, bowing her head to hide it.

"I know," Mary murmured, smiling shyly at her best friend. "I really didn't deserve it."

"Oh, hush!" Amy admonished her. "Don't say things like that."

"Don't even think about it," Abby said, patting her daughter's arm. "Don't worry about anything that's happened. It's all over and doesn't matter a bit."

"How can I?" Mary laughed. "I don't remember a thing." She reached over and patted her tablet on bedside table. "There's five hundred thousand words of a rather fascinating novel on this thing and I've no idea where any of it came from. Everything's just a blur of strange dreams and…" She faltered, grimacing as she tried to remember. "Except…" She looked up, her confusion plain in her tired eyes. "You, David. I remember you."

"Me?" David was just as astonished as she was, or, Will suspected, he was feigning surprise with an expert flair.

"Definitely you. You came to me with…" She scowled at the memory just out of her grasp, then grunted in frustration. "I'm not sure who it was. But you told me not to worry, that I'd be all right. And I believed you."

David shook his head. "Just a dream, I'm sure. I only came here once or twice, with Will, and I never said anything like that."

Mary shrugged. "Fever dream, then? Or perhaps a pipe dream." She flashed him a playful smile.

"You're going to finish the novel, I hope?" David asked, oblivious to her flirtatious poke, and she winked at Will. "What I saw of it was excellent."

"I don't know." Absently smoothing her blanket over her legs, Mary stared at the tablet. "I know it was me that wrote what's there, but it wasn't me, you know?"

"It was all you, love," said Will. Stepping over, he picked up the tablet and handed it to Mary, who accepted it with shaking hands like it was made of fragile glass.

"No, it wasn't." She ran hesitant fingers over the cover of the device. "I can't explain it. It's like it was someone else and I don't know if I can match that. Have you seen it? It's brilliant, better than I could ever do." She slumped back against the headboard, pinching at the bridge of her nose. "I can only barely remember how the novel was going to end."

"Mar," Kevin breathed, leaning forward to catch his sister's attention, "what's there, that's all you. I watched you type it. And I've read your other stories, you know, the ones in those notebooks that you used to hide behind the books in the bookcase in Mum's house?" Mary's eyes widened, and spots rose on her cheeks. She grabbed at her blanket and pulled it to her chin. "Yes, those. I don't know if Mum knew about them, but I did."

"Of course I did," murmured Abby. "It was my house."

Kevin grinned at his mother and turned back to his sister. "They were fantastic. I used to sneak downstairs every weekend before you got up to see if there were more." He took both her hands and looked into her eyes, nodding. "I know you can finish this novel."

Mary stared at her brother, then smiled. "All right. I'll do it. I'll try, at least."

Mary's friends remained with her for over an hour, then Will departed with David, catching a ride home with him. As soon as they turned onto the high street, Will asked the question that had been foremost in his mind through the entire visit. "How's the thing been treating you, mate?"

David grinned. "It's absolutely amazing. The ideas, the inspiration! They never stop, just one after another, tumbling out. Last night, I wrote a whole treatise on the ripple effect of paradoxes on n-dimensional spaces, because I've got to get this all down whilst I can."

Will tried to reply with a "That's brilliant," but David kept gushing.

"I've made more progress on the TARDIS in two days than I have in the past two weeks. And you know," he declared, wagging a finger at Will as he watched the traffic, "I realised that though Donna really did revolutionise TARDIS growth and cut the time down to a reasonable amount, and I've worked off even more based on her calculations, she was working off the Doctor's education, which was rather shoddy, to be honest. There're quite a bit of improvements I could make that could tighten the time down even more without making too many concessions in construction and operation."

Pausing for a turn, he continued with a glance at his friend, his eyes gleaming with the subtle gold that he allowed only when he was excited. "And it's dredging up memories that I'd thought I'd lost. People and events I haven't thought about in years. I'm recording it all, because I won't be able to recall them when it's gone."

Will needed to ask one more question before he could stop worrying. "Then it's working for you?"

David fell silent for a moment, his darkened eyes trained the car in front of them. "No. It's not. I'm a better match for it, absolutely, and I think I'll last a bit longer, but it'll kill me in the end."

"Bloody hell."

"Yeah." David chewed on the tip of his tongue for a moment. "And the effects are a little different for me. I can feel them already. You know how Mary had been suddenly dropping off to sleep for little catnaps?"

"Yeah?"

"For me, if I'm not actively thinking, I'm out. Maybe it's because I don't normally sleep much, it's just naturally trying to get more. It's not so bad right now and just doing things like driving like this is enough to keep me awake, but I know it's going to get worse." He tapped his forehead. "I have to keep my mind active at all times, the more the better."

Will sighed. "Well, mate, do you think your new highly lubricated brain can find a way out of this?"

"Oh, yes. I think I already have, but I can't do it for another three months."

Peering sideways at his friend, Will steeled himself against the probable answer to his next question. "And if it doesn't work?"

"Then we'll see if I'm conscious enough to figure out plan B." David's tone was oddly cheerful. "But it shouldn't come to that. What I'm thinking should work."

"If there's anything I can do."

"Oh, it'll all depend on you, I promise. I won't be able to do this on my own."

"I'll do everything you need."

Glancing at his passenger, David smiled. "Thanks, my friend."

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

Slumped on the low wall, hidden behind a row of bushes, David fought to stay awake, shaking his head violently and even pinching himself every so often. The summer warmth only served to lull him into a comfortable doze, so he forced himself to shift often, into awkward or even painful positions to keep himself alert. He tried to occupy his mind with working through difficult engineering problems and remembering his loved ones from both of his lives, but this degenerated quickly into twisted dreams of his family and friends, those from his other, past life, swarming over the Doctor's TARDIS, pulling apart the circuits and machinery and leaving it in pieces. He began muttering to himself, reciting Hamlet from memory. He hadn't thought about the play in years and dredged through his brain trying to get it word-perfect.

He nearly leapt two feet into the air when the mobile buzzed in his hand. Juggling it as he fumbled to activate it, he clapped it to his ear. "Will?"

"That's me, mate. It's time."

"They're back?"

"Yup. All three of them."

"All right. I'm on it."

"Good luck."

"Thanks. Remember, try to keep out of sight, but distract her if you have to."

"I got this, mate. Go on."

"Aye."

David stuffed the phone in his pocket and hopped up to look around. As he expected, there was no one in sight; everyone in the area were still down on the high street. He jogged down the alleyway into the road, crossed over to the opposite pavement and ran down to the next street, and stopped at the sight of a police box nestled between two blue cargo containers. He bit back a wistful smile.

As he walked up to it, he unclasped the chain of his neural inhibitor and, removing the pendant from his neck, slipped it into his pocket. He placed a gentle hand on the front panel of the TARDIS, then leant against it and closed his eyes.

"I've missed you, old girl. It's good to see you again." A light chuckle puffed out of his nose. "No, I know you know who I am. You exist across all of time, even across paradoxes caused by our careless mistakes."

He took a deep breath. "I need your help. I have an entity in me, in my mind, and it wants to go home. Can you please take it back to its planet and find it a suitable host?" His eyes popped open. "Oh, don't give me that! I know you go wherever you feel like. I've always been sure that you let him think he knows what he's doing." A heavy pressure on his mind that David hadn't noticed had been darkening his world suddenly lifted, and for the first time in weeks, he straightened to his full height. "Thank you. I owe you one."

David stepped back, letting his hand linger on her panel. "Farewell. I'll see you again, I'm sure of it." Pulling out his inhibitor, he strung it around his neck, then tipped a two-finger salute to the lonely blue box before spinning away and striding back the way he came.

Concealing himself with a pair of shades and a cloth cap pulled down low over his brow, he lost himself among the people returning to their homes after the running of the Olympic torch, proud that he'd managed to pull together a plan to locate the TARDIS based on a story he'd performed over eight years earlier in his own timeline. The DVDs he'd brought from his home universe had been essential for success, as he doubted even the entity could have dredged the name "Dame Kelly Holmes Close" from his faint memories of the script. From there, it'd been easy to determine when the torch was scheduled to pass through the area. With Will as his lookout, he'd rendezvoused with the TARDIS whilst avoiding being seen by either the Doctor or Rose. With a self-satisfied grin, he stopped to perch on a low wall and pulled out his mobile to ring up his friend.

"How did it go?"

"Perfect," he replied as he scanned the passersby for faces he should avoid encountering. "The TARDIS took the entity and I expect she'll divert there as soon as they leave."

"And the Doctor?"

An unexpected lump in his throat clogged his voice and he swallowed against it. "Don't think he noticed me," he finally croaked. "I could feel him, but nothing out of the ordinary. As I expected, he was too distracted by the Olympics and the crowds and the Isolus, though I think maybe the TARDIS helped hide me."

"Good on you, mate. Meet you at the car, then. I expect you want a hotel and nice long sleep."

"Yes," he sighed. "A real sleep. Finally." Hopping up from the wall, he jammed his free hand in his pocket and resumed his stroll back to the car to meet his friend. "I've got to say, it was glorious being able to think like that, and it really helped the TARDIS make leaps and bounds, but I'm glad to have my mind back."

"I'm glad to have you back."

"Aye." David spotted Will at the other end of the block and waved. "Come on. Let's get back to normal life again." Dropping the mobile into his pocket, he broke into a jog and joined back up with his mate.