Chapter Four
"That's it, Doctor! Come back to us, come on!" Martha urged, rubbing vigorously at the Time Lord's long fingers. They were still too cold, even for him, and despite that he was still burning up, though at least he wasn't half-comatose any longer. He had even started to focus his pupils. Slowly, so very slowly, his dark eyes began to burn more brightly as he came to something resembling full consciousness. But they were out of focus, or rather, not focused on any of the people who were standing around him. Rather, his glassy gaze seemed to lead in another direction completely...
Everything else faded away for him quite quickly then, until there was only the small white figure, off in the distance. Everything was white, it seemed. The strange locale could have been the Field Of Watching, save for one inconvenient little fact. That Field had been on Gallifrey, and Gallifrey was gone, burned forever from the memory of a good portion of the cosmos. "Leave off!" He rasped, feeling cheated by the presence of the figure, who had turned toward him now and was nearing the place where he lay. Dimly he could feel a jagged laughter rising in his throat, and so he loosed it, damning himself to another round of coughing. He didn't care. He, the Doctor, didn't care. It seemed a strange thing to say to oneself, in the illuminating, retrospective light of all that he'd done, and yet, with each footstep the Watcher took, it drew closer, and he felt his fear-sense grip him like a black hole, sucking out his guts. Quite literally, in his case. "Listen here, you! Don't...don't care if you ARE me, just go 'way! Filthy door-to-door salesman, s'what you are! Well, I don't want what you're selling! So there! So...there. So..." Sitting up abruptly, he choked on the last word and had to close his eyes against the pain in his gut, as something warm and thick and solid came up into his throat and left his mouth, scraping itself on his very good teeth on the way out. Soft and wet and weakly throbbing, down it plopped into his hand like a gobbet of thick mucous. But it wasn't mucous. A sickly sweet awareness of its nature burned through him like flames gorging on dry brush, but only when he opened his eyes again did he see why. Tears were running down his cheeks, more tears than he'd shed in centuries, perhaps more than he ever had in the entirety of his too-long lifespan, for he already knew what it was that now nestled limply in his bloodstained fingers. The newly-made universe...it had taken the form of an unborn child, and not completely by chance. He had spurred that choice along, in his desperation. It was his fault. And now she was dead. His choice had been wrong, and the Watcher had taken her.
"I'm a fool..." He said simply as he got to his feet, one hand digging painfully into his midsection. "And now another living thing is dead because of it." He turned to Martha, then to Chris and Francine, and his face was strange to them, full of exhaustion-fed sickness, streaked by an anguish so very rooted and old that it froze them all in place. "Another week, and it, she, would have been viable. Can you see her, Martha?" His tone was dangerously even, his face drawn and grey as he looked again at his hand, at the clotted mass of dead cells that had once been an embryo. "I can't have been paying much attention when she was conceived. I should have, should have been more aware, more careful, more...something. Guh!" He stumbled forward and fell against a wall, bending almost double only when the knife-ache in his side threatened to drive him to the floor. The red, half-dissolved shape was still in his palm...he blinked, leaning more heavily against the wall's solid structure for a moment before he gathered himself up and turned his back to them. Then, murmuring a soft apology, he lifted the bloody knot of dead tissue to his lips, and after a fit of gagging, ate. The soft, spongy flesh slid down his throat without a sound.
No one said a word when he straightened and met their gazes. "Before any of you demonize me, consider two of your Three Laws of Matter." He said with a bitter little smile, swaying in place. "Two objects cannot occupy the same space, nor can an object be in two places at once. She was doomed from the beginning, already...already gone before she..." The Time Lord's voice cracked like a schoolboy's, but he didn't look away. "Remember your training, Martha, and consider it triage." His tone was a fraction softer now, if only because he felt the tiny weight of their terrified eyes. "I'm sorry that any of you had to see such a thing, but I would have gone into shock if I hadn't. There was no other way to restore my depleted resources in time to prevent my death." His fingers fell to the buttons on his coat and began to undo them, then moved to his vest, then the undershirt, until his chest was bared beneath the rows. Numbly, he tossed each article of clothing to the floor, including his shoes, until he'd stripped down to blood-streaked trousers and bare feet. His taut, slender abdominals were in full view of all-he made no effort to cover himself. "Off to take the air. Back in a bit!" Just before he reached the door he called to her over his shoulder, saying only, "Oh, and Martha, call Jack. Just...tell him to bring his team down so they can play hide the alien DNA...I can't have just anyone marching out of here with a jar o'dirt...especially when it's mine. The TARDIS will conceal anything damning till they arrive." His raw, ragged laugh echoed through the empty greatroom and then he was gone, out the doors and away from it all. Later, when Jack came to find him, he was standing outside, still shirtless, the wind blowing ice at his back.
"Doctor...we're finished with the clean-up. Martha and everyone else are inside, helping my people. So, it's just you, me and a night on the town, if you're up to it," the Time Agent said, laying a tentative hand on the Time Lord's bare shoulder. The alien was damn beautiful nearly naked, sitting motionless on a park bench near a stone planter box full of bright yellow pansies. His skin was too cold, as though he hadn't moved in hours. Jack's breath caught in his throat as he came around to press fingers to points in a search for the reassuring double-time of twin heartbeats. As he'd hoped, the dual thump was there, scarcely evident as always, but there. He let out a sigh of relief. After all that horror, Earth's self-styled Champion had fallen asleep just like that, an exhausted alien Popsicle next to a box of struggling pansies. Funny how those hadn't been there on the way in... In any case, the paperwork would have to be deferred...lovely, he thought as he wrapped an arm around the alien's waist and hauled his friend off toward the parking lot. Not exactly the way he'd imagined their first time alone, but that didn't exactly matter, now. Nothing else did, except that the Doctor was alive. Now Jack just had to figure out how much liquor it would take to get him drunk...
NEXT CHAPTER COMING SOON. PLEASE REVIEW, FOR AS AN AVID (IF NOT EXACTLY RABID) DAVIDTENNANTMUNCHAUSEN'SBYPROXYINSERTMONSTERHERE, I HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN WRITE THIS STUFF FOR MY FELLOW LONG-SUFFERING BRETHREN. CARRY ON, THEN! AND BY ALL MEANS, MAKE REQUESTS! I LOVEEEEES ME SOME PROMPTS! FLAMERS WILL BE HUGGED, SO BE WARNED. And, let it be said that on the day I wrote this, I was not aware of the fact that my ex-boyfriend's darling little brother had passed from a fall off a warehouse. Interesting to think that I may have been driven to write this chapter during that time...