2.
"Doctor?" the Scholar said. He stood up, suddenly angry and florid. "Doctor? You're the Doctor!" he pointed a finger at him. "You're that unmentionably miserable rouge who abandoned me!"
The Doctor straightened his back and put up his chin. "And you used to masquerade as a Monk."
"You…you…!" He pointed a finger at him, going even redder in the face. "Do you know what I went through? Do you have any idea the deprivations I went through in that primitive monastery…and then you had the audacity to leave me in that horrible ice-age…"
The Doctor fingered his coat lapel as if it were suddenly very interesting. "Oh yes. I do recall that now. Your dimensional stabilising circuit. How did you fix that, anyway? And then it was, let me think…the directional unit? My, my. That must have made your journeys quite remarkable."
The Scholar glowered. "I shan't give you any more to gloat about. In fact, you owe me!"
The Doctor picked a bit of lint off his coat. "Do I?"
"I demand you take me where I need to go, you deserve to give me that much." His eyes suddenly went wide and he pointed at him accusingly. "You're behind my TARDIS being missing, aren't you?"
"Nothing of the sort. Why would I do that?"
"Tell me what you did with it!"
The Doctor looked affronted. "I did nothing. To be truthful I didn't even know you were here."
"You lie."
"Not generally, no."
"Take me back!"
"Absolutely not!"
"I demand it!" The Scholar reached into his robes and produced a small weapon.
The Doctor stopped and considered it cautiously. "What is that?"
"You know what it is."
The Doctor frowned at him sternly. "And why exactly are you carrying a weapon like that? It's not only dangerous, it's entirely in the wrong era… it isn't even from the right planet."
"And you always go out only armed with local technology?" He ran a hand along the side of it and a line of light followed his fingers. It hummed, and his voice went low and dangerous. "I want you to take this ship back. All I'll do is adjust things a little, so Isaac and I aren't heretics, and so I can find out who took my TARDIS."
"Rubbish!"
He pointed the weapon at the Doctor. "You'll do what I ask."
He drew himself up. "I won't be threatened!"
"This isn't a threat." He suddenly swung around, Jamie and Victoria instinctively grabbed onto one another, backing to the wall as he lifted it in his hand. "This is a promise."
The Doctor started forward and the Scholar feinted at the trigger. He stopped. "Which one goes down first, Doctor? You aren't stranding me again."
"You wouldn't."
"Last chance. Set the coordinates."
"Absolutely not."
He touched the trigger.
Victoria screamed and tried to catch Jamie as he fell.
"No!" the Doctor cried as his young friend collapsed to the floor. He was at Jamie's side in a flash, helping Victoria lower him, turning him and anxiously checking for a pulse. He looked up again and his eyes were terribly dark. "What were you thinking!" he spat. "He's only got one heart…!"
"Does she?" the Scholar said without any change in his expression. He turned the weapon to where Victoria now knelt on Jamie's other side, her hand cushioning his head. She looked up at him, her eyes round with fear.
The Doctor gave him a look like thunder. The Scholar hesitated, but only for a fraction.
"I really don't want to do this," he said in a conversational tone. The strange gun in his hand didn't waver from Victoria. "But I suppose I can manage to get used to a new TARDIS if that's what it comes to. It's such a shame, what a person must stoop to in surviving these primitive eras."
Jamie gave a small whimpering moan. Victoria and the Doctor both tightened their hold on him, though whether to comfort or protect it was hard to say.
"Now. I believe you were about to set those coordinates for me."
The Doctor looked down at Jamie, rather than meeting the Scholar's eyes. His shoulders lowered in resignation. "It seems you have me at a bit of a disadvantage. Put away your weapon, I'll set the coordinates."
"No, I think I'll keep it right here. But I'm sure that won't interfere too much. Come to think of interference, I seem to remember you were a rather skilled interferer yourself."
The Doctor carefully moved towards the console. "I was only trying to restore the natural balance of history."
"And I was only trying to improve it."
"With an atomic bazooka? Against Vikings?"
"I'm not adverse to pressing an advantage where it's warranted. Like here, for instance. It's quite simple: you have a TARDIS and I need one, you have humans with you that you apparently care about and I have a weapon that can, regretfully and only if necessary, kill them. Ta!"
The Doctor reached for a lever.
"Ah-ah-ah!" chided the Scholar cheerfully. He turned the gun back towards Victoria. "Don't even think it. You know, we may have to go about this a little differently. I can see you're still plotting how to outmaneuver me, and I don't care to be outmaneuvered a third time. Come away from that console, Doctor."
He waved him back towards the others and considered a moment. "Leave the boy."
"But…" Victoria began.
"You and the good Doctor will come with me."
"But…Jamie…" she kept her hands where they were, one cushioning Jamie's head, the other in his hair.
The Scholar considered her wide-eyed distress over leaving her wounded friend and hesitated. "Oh…oh very well!"
Grateful for at least a little of that nearly universal effect pretty girls in distress could bring, the Doctor moved quickly to punch a switch on the wall, which obediently exuded a bed. He took Jamie's shoulders. "Take his feet if you can, Victoria. Very good, now careful…"
They carried him between them over to the bed. "The infirmary would be a better choice," the Doctor pointed out reasonably as they settled him there.
"They stay here!" the Scholar said impatiently. "You show me where your tools and supplies are."
"I could just direct you…"
"No, you'll come with me. I don't trust you near that console just now."
"Oh, well, I don't like guests wandering anyway, they have the most annoying tendency to get lost," the Doctor said, leading the way to the hall.
"Does this lock?" the Scholar was looking at the door.
The Doctor looked annoyed. "I suppose. I can't say I've needed to find out."
"No matter. Girl…"
"My name's Victoria," she said with a slight quaver.
"Victoria then. Ah, yes, I can tell you're a sensible young child. You don't want your friend, yourself or heaven forbid, the Doctor here to be shrugging off this mortal coil just yet do you? Of course not. You'll stay right here and tend to the boy. Interfere and….." he trailed off significantly with a melodramatic face.
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "You know you aren't really cut out for this villainy, are you? Why do you persist in it?"
The Scholar looked offended. "You should have seen me in Merchants of Venice, why I had two rounds of ovations." He nudged the Doctor with his weapon, making the other Time Lord step back into the hall. "And this is far more important to me than any pound of flesh."
"But you could just ask nicely," the Doctor suggested, carefully holding his hands up.
"Would you take me when I want if I did?"
"Well, no…"
The weapon swung back around to point into the room where Victoria sat at the end of the bed. Her eyes went wide and still.
"All right, all right. You've made your point!" the Doctor said. "Watch where you point that. Take care of Jamie, Victoria…don't do anything I wouldn't do. This way to the tool room…let's get this over with."
--
"Victoria…" Jamie whispered, after a few moments. His eyes were still closed.
"Jamie?" her voice trembled with relief that he was speaking.
"Hush, now," Jamie whispered. "It might be best if we stay quiet."
"Are you…?"
"My head feels that stuffed w' wool, an' I'm weak as a lamb, but I'm here. Where's that man?"
"He's over with the Doctor. He says he'll…he says the Doctor must do what he wants or he'll hurt you and I."
"Aye, poor Doctor. Usin' his great heart again' him."
Victoria waited but Jamie was quiet again. She shook him slightly. "Jamie?"
"Hush," Jamie repeated softly. His eyes flickered open just long enough to meet her worried gaze. "I'll be all right, but I'll pretend I'm not, see?" he whispered. "He'll not kill a wounded man, I think, for all his blusterin'." He closed them again.
"Newton," he said.
"What about him?"
"He was…what did he do? Shot an apple of o' his son's head, wasn't it?"
"That was William Tell. You're probably thinking of the apple that fell on him. It's a story he used when talking about his studies on gravity."
"So he invented gravity?"
"It didn't need inventing," she smiled.
"But he did somethin' about it?" Jamie persisted.
She took his hand, studying his fingers as she thought about it. "He wrote about it, and plenty of other things, mostly about motion and light and mathematics, I think. My father had some books about him."
"You read them?"
"I should have," she said, remembering her father's library with some regret.
Jamie looked up at her. "Sorry, lass," he said softly. "Didna mean to upset…"
She shook her head. "No, that's all right…"
They both paused. Jamie shut his eyes and lay back. "He's comin'."
Likewise hearing the returning steps, Victoria leaned over him as if very concerned.
The Scholar came back through the doorway, waving the Doctor past him to the console. "That's far enough, Doctor! Wait." He considered the young people. "Is he waking, then?"
"No, he's only spoken briefly, something like a delirium," Victoria said as Jamie lay still beneath her hand.
The Scholar cocked his head at them suspiciously. "Wish I had one decent rope," he muttered. "I've gotten too used to this era, there's never a lack of rope. Eh, you don't happen to have any?" He considered her face and shook his head. "Well, we'll make due, won't we? You'll both still behave yourselves either way."
"What did he mean, you used to be a monk?" Victoria asked, stroking Jamie's limp hand. She wanted to turn the conversation away from ropes.
"A man of the cloth! Oh yes." the Scholar said puffing out his chest a little. He went over to supervise whatever it was the Doctor was now doing with some wires and a metal box, then looked back at her, apparently satisfied.
"Meditations upon the afterlife being my specialty," he continued with a smile then frowned as he seemed to remember something. "Yes, yes I was. No one questions a wandering friar either, you know. Well, I take that back; they certainly do here. That rather inconvenient Reformation made me choose another occupation for the time being."
"So you weren't a real monk."
"Is your Doctor there a real doctor?"
"Maybe," she said uncertainly. "But one thing I do know is he can be trusted… and he doesn't go about stealing other people's property or threatening their friends!"
He chuckled at this. "Ah, the pretty lady has a bit of a temper! Tanta stultitia mortalium est. * Now, now. You mustn't hold it against me. If you were in my position you might do the same."
She smoothed Jamie's hair. "I don't think I would."
--
*What fools these mortals be.
