If you're a squeamish person, just warning you now, you may "ewww" repeatedly in this chapter, especially if you faint upon the notion of dissecting a sardine =D

^^^THIS IS IMPORTANT^^^

Okay so, I was half-asleep when I posted the last chapter and I said that this was straight after 'Doomsday'

Well it's not, it's actually after Last of the Time Lords and Time Crash

But he's all sad-i-cal (yes that's a word) because the Master died and Rose is gone and so he's being emo

Enjoy!

Beating Hearts
by LilyRose XD

Beating slowly
A background sound
Crossing through time
A life unwound...

Disclaimer: (Does anyone actually read these) I don't own Doctor Who...and I don't own Albert Einstein and his awesomeness. RIP Albert Einstein. Rest In Pie. (Or maybe you'd rather rest in Pi...I'm not sure.)


II

Hearts

There was a hospital in the window.

The Doctor gazed at the ward through the sheet of 'glass', forehead resting on its cool surface, palms turning white with the pressure of which he pressed them against the window.

He could see no beds at all, no pale patients lying dazed awaiting their fate, no scurrying nurses with clipboards, and no white-coated doctors. But there were cots. Rows upon rows of cots, each one containing, no doubt, a newborn baby. Most were sleeping peacefully but a few were screaming and crying and kicking their tiny little feet and waving their clenched fists about above their heads. The door opened and a nurse hurried into the room, she scooped up one of the sleeping babies and dashed out again.

The Doctor frowned and moved on to the next Time Window beside the first one.

He'd expected them to show him pre-Revolutionary France again. He'd thought that maybe, judging by the repaired Time Windows, that the droids had come back and were trying to steal her brain again. But maybe not. The hospital scene was definitely not the 18th century, more like the 1970's or 80's.

The next Time Window wasn't France either.

It was like a park, or a garden or a reserve. There were a few trees dotted around but apart from that, it was empty except for the long grass that was definitely in need of a cut. There were several young children playing with a soccer ball on the grass, their school bags dumped forgotten under one of the trees.

Through the window, the Doctor could hear their laughter and arguments about who would be on which team when the rest of the school kids got there. Behind the park there were concrete buildings riddled with graffiti. A mother appeared on one of the balconies high up on the building. She shouted something down at the kids and they stopped to listen. When she'd stopped shouting their shoulders slumped and they glumly made their way over to their bags and trudged off out of the Doctor's view, doubtless to do their dreaded homework.

The last Time Window in that room showed a school. Small wooden desks sat neatly in rows and at each desk was a young child, scribbling down the writing that had been put upon the whiteboard at the front of the room. A stern looking teacher sat at her desk just in front of the whiteboard and glared at the kids as if that would make them write faster. Then she got up with a considerable amount of effort and explained the writing, gesturing at it every few seconds for good measure.

The Doctor realised that the clock droids or whoever was controlling the ship must be stalking one of these kids, watching them grow up, newly-born at the hospital, at their apartment, at their school, everywhere they went, waiting for the right moment before they'd seize them to use them to run their ship.

Thinking about the ship made the Doctor turn around. It seemed quieter, than it had last time. There was still machinery whirring, he could hear it, but it was missing something, something that he couldn't quite place. He frowned at the technology around him, as if that would help.

He turned back to the school Time Window, only to find the kids scribbling again and the teacher sitting sternly at her desk again, and then she got up again and explained the exact same writing as before.

The Doctor watched her rant for a few minutes and then suddenly she was back in her seat again and the kids were scribbling again and then she got up and ranted again. Then she was back in her seat. She didn't sit down after the rant, but she suddenly disappeared from her spot beside the whiteboard and was back in her seat.

He watched it a few more times before finally understanding. The Time Window was replaying the scene again and again because that was the only time frame it was situated in. The droids must have set it to go from a certain time to another certain time and after that it would just repeat. And keep repeating forever until it was broken.

The Doctor moved on to the next room, he could grieve again for Rose later, he figured, after he'd found out what was happening here and stopped it.
Of course, it's never that easy.

********

He moved through the ship, examining it as he went. Still wondering how the crew had fixed this ship from rubbish. The next room he came into made him remember something that Rose had told him when they were here last time.
"We found a camera with an eye in it, and there was a heart wired into machinery."

The Doctor stared up at the eye in the camera lens that was just above his head, watching as it focused on him and blinked a few times. The whole camera suddenly shot towards him, forcing him to recoil sharply to avoid being hit. It titled slowly on its side and regarded him like that, inquisitive brown eye still blinking every so often and staring at him.

The Doctor whipped out the sonic screwdriver and buzzed it at the eye. It stopped blinking and simply closed its lens and retracted back to the wall. He reached up and grabbed it, ripping the whole camera away from the wall. He sonic screwdrivered it open and popped the eye out of the camera. He held up the eye in front of his own two and turned it this way and that, trying to see if there was anything significant about it, but apparently not. It was just a normal brown human eye.

He changed the setting on the sonic screwdriver and buzzed it at the eye for a minute or so. The sonic screwdriver dinged and then a name wrote itself in Gallifreyian symbols in the air. It had traced whose eye it was. The name meant nothing to the Doctor, he'd never heard of it before. It must have just been one of the crew's eyes, not an eye from a famous person in history. So he pocketed the eye and moved on.

He came across the heart next. There was a circular hole and looking through it, the Doctor could see various wires and pipes that dangled down into the space where the heart must have been but now was just empty space. The ends of the wires showed obvious signs that they had been ripped away from it, and looking down slightly, the Doctor could see a brown and shrivelled-up lump that seemed to be decaying.

Then there were several rooms working seemingly without human parts, with several monitors that just displayed static. He had come across no more Time Windows and so didn't know anything more about who the droids were stalking and for what reason.

The next room had a brain. It was resting in a clear brain-shaped container that was supported by a long metal pole that was bolted to the floor and came up to the Doctor's shoulder. Several wires and pipes ran into it and the brain was pulsing slightly.

The Doctor, sickened by the sight, ripped away the pipes and wires, causing some to shoot sparks and flail wildly, ignoring the silence that settled upon the ship as he pulled out this valuable source to its working. He pulled off the top half of the container and flung it across the room, reaching into his pocket for his sonic screwdriver again.

He gently prodded the brain with his index finger, before buzzing it with the sonic screwdriver. Once again, after a minute or so, a name wrote it in Gallifreyian in the air before him. But this time, the Doctor who it was.

They'd taken his brain. They'd stalked him through time and ripped his brain out to get their ship working. If they can't have Madame de Pompadour's brain then they'll get someone else's. One of the smartest humans in history, reduced to this, keeping their time-meddling ship working when he should be imagining theories and solving extremely complicated mathematics and science problems. Poor Albert Einstein. It was a disgrace to him.

The Doctor petted the brain absentmindedly. The shock and disgust he felt about this circled through his mind as he did so.

Suddenly, snapped from his daze, he lifted Albert Einstein's brain from its container, pulling out the remaining wires as he did so.

He reached into his bigger-on-the-inside pocket and rummaged around before finding a spare cloth. He wrapped up the brain in this before tucking it under his arm. He'd take it back to the TARDIS and return it to Einstein's body. The Doctor would dig up his grave and give the man's excellent brain back to him. It seemed important to do this.

The Doctor moved on. He searched through several more rooms before coming across a room that seemed to be in the very heart of the ship.

He stepped into the circular room, frowning at its lack of machinery. Apart from several pipes and wires that ran from the edges of the room along the ceiling to the middle where they dropped down and hung just above the surface of a tall cylindrical dais. There was nothing on the dais except for another of those clear containers, though this one was empty it was like the one that had enclosed Einstein's brain. Though this one was not shaped like a brain, but like a heart.

This was what they were going to do. The droids or whoever had fixed up the ship were going to follow someone's life, and then when they thought that they were 'complete,' were going to rip out their heart to get their ship back to full capacity. The other heart they had obviously wasn't good enough; they needed someone else's heart, no doubt someone famous in history that was known for their compassion and care. But then he remembered. Not someone from history, well not human history at least, but from their present.

The droids were going to stalk someone from the 21st century and rip out their heart, just for the sake of their ship.


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...I think you get the point...