6: A Friend's Eye is a Good Looking-Glass

Summary: The Sontarans are still in Space. The Time Lords are planning. The Third Zone is about to be very unhappy. Guess who has to clean up the mess?

Characters: Second Doctor, 2nd Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon, unspecified Time Lords. Cameo by Ben and Polly

"There's been...a slight change in Their plans." The Doctor said at last. The coldness had finally left the room, but Jamie felt the ice still within him. So too did the Doctor, who couldn't keep the shake out of his voice. "The Third Zone found out a bit ahead of their projected schedule. There will be a conference. We're expected."

"Och."

The Doctor refused to respond to the telepathic summons until he was completely under control. Jamie didn't think that meant the "wash my face first" sort of control. It was more along the lines of "If I wash up and change clothes maybe I'll feel less prone to doing something all of Gallifrey will regret later" sort of control.

"Just worry about the scrubbin' part." Jamie told him. "I'll find ye something decent to wear...well, decent enough for thot crowd o' trick horses."

"No kilts, Jamie." The Doctor warned him out of long practice.

"Ye look fine in a kilt!"

"No kilts today." The little man amended. Instead of shouting his indignation, he was absent; his mind wasn't in their familiar game of snip and snap and snarl. He ripped his tie off, which was also his collar button.

"Hmn..." Jamie put his hands on his hips, surveyed the Doctor's room, and pondered as the sounds of a water-shower went on. Unlike most Gallifreyans, the Doctor didn't mind getting wet at all—welcomed it even. Humming on a rather awful modern tune that involved too many high notes, the Piper rummaged about, gave up, thought hard with a slow-dawning glint of what might be mischief in his blue eyes.

It was a moment's work to talk to the computer and get what he wanted. The daft machine was a daft machine after all, and wouldn't argue.

The old and overlarge frock coat was easy to fix; it just needed a good cleaning. No amount of cleaning would stop it from looking like a battered old thing, because that was what it was. The Doctor loved it like an old friend and had stopped wearing it around the Time Lords recently. Jamie didn't approve.

The shirt was a different story. The dull beige and grey the Doctor had been wearing of late didn't suit him at all. It demeaned him in a way, washing out the remaining colors in his eyes until they were as dull as the rest of the Time Lords. Jamie tossed the selection into the bin and defiantly paged up a light blue shirt, the kind with short, wide sleeves that he used to wear back in the old days. It was as loose as his coat, and gave him the freedom of movement he needed. The tie had changed too—Jamie found an older one hiding in the back, a larger one a deep blue with small lighter blue dots. The red silk handkerchief with the yellow sunbursts was a surprise: he'd thought it long lost.

Time to get rid of those dull, washed-out braces. Jamie simply hunted until he found the old red ones with yellow symbols. The clips were still in good shape...

When he was finished, he smirked at his work. Perfect. Just perfect. Tonight the Time Lords were going to have their hands full. And they deserved it.

He thought of Ben and Polly. If they were here, they would approve. So would Victoria, of course, once she understood what was happening...and Zoe would be helping him in this mischief with a chirrupy grin on her tiny face.

But Ben and Polly would especially appreciate this...they had been the first ones to help him understand the Doctor as a wanderer and fugitive...and it had all started with clothes.

"He'll be all right, Jamie. Don't fret so."

"I cannae help it." Jamie confessed. He had gotten over the strangeness of the cool hand inside his...a hand that never seemed to warm no matter how long he held it. He stared down at the sleeping face. Still and quiet with his snapping eyes shut and his black hair askew over the pillow, he looked smaller than ever, a Changeling under the blankets. The slow rise and fall of his chest was the only show of life.

"Yer blamin' yerself, Mate." Ben's usual smug banter was gone as he came up behind the Piper. A large mug of tea rested in his hands, steaming off the boil. Jamie couldn't bring himself to silence stretched long and thin as the three stared down at the fourth from various positions in the Medical Bay.

Ben finally broke it with a nearly soundless chuckle of amusement.

"What is it?" Jamie flared, hissing under his breath.

"The Doctor." Ben nodded with his chin. "Looks harmless like 'at, doesn't he?"

They stared at the little man, insensible to the world.

Polly's lips quivered. "Oh, yes." She managed. "Quite harmless." Her lips quivered harder. "Quite harmless indeed."

It came over them all at the same time, the incongruity of "harmless" tied to a tiny little man that had just single-handedly saved them all. They stuffed their guffaws into their sleeves, not wanting to risk waking him up from a desperately needed healing.

"He'll be fine, mate." Ben said in his rough way. He pushed his mug into the Piper's hand. "A cup of good black tea, that's what yew need."

"I dinna drink tea."

"There's yer problem." Ben put his hands under Jamie's arms and pulled him to his feet with that shocking strength he had. "Let's leave 'm to his rest. Just you watch. He'll be up and about and running like a looney about the Console Room in no time."

"We've seen this before, Jamie." Polly said kindly. "This isn't the first time he's been knocked spinning...this isn't even his first body!"

"His what!" Jamie was frog-eyed.

"Let's take it outside, gents and Duchess." Ben said practically. "'E needs his beauty sleep." And with that Ben strolled out, leaving a very annoyed Polly. Jamie swallowed his grin-he knew Polly was used to being the one who thought of these things first.

The young Cockney led them to the sitting-room off to the side of the sleeping berths and stretched his small frame before the artificial fire. Not to miss her chance, Polly took her cue to take control and she did it by clarifying her strange comment.

"When his body gets worn out, he...gets a new one." Polly tried to explain. "We saw it happen, Ben and I. We were fighting the Cybermen, and he started getting weaker and weaker...almost transparent at the end. Then all of a sudden, he...it's hard to..." She shuddered at the memory. "He went to the TARDIS and it looked as though he wouldn't let us in, but I think now it was the TARDIS, trying to keep us from the beginning of the effects."

"I doon understand ye!" Jamie protested. "He gets a new body? Like growin' a tree? Or takes someone's body? Or trades it like one o' the Good Neighbors?"

"Listen, Jamie," Ben's usual humor was missing. He was grave. "We came in to find the Doctor on the floor in a heap, and the TARDIS was going all 6's and 7's!"

"Eh?"

" #%*%& crazy." Ben translated.

"Ben!" Polly exclaimed.

"Well, it's true. The TARDIS was actin' like a demon-possessed! The controls were movin' by themselves! The lights were going on and off. The floor and the walls were hummin' like bees in a hive! Some of the rooms changed and never went back to the way they were, though we didn't know it at the time...The part that rises and falls was just...like a blender in an empty bowl, a bouncin' about!" He caught Jamie's expression and mimed the motion with his hands.

"The sound was just...like nothing I've ever heard!" Polly picked up the story. "If the TARDIS was a human, I'd say it was...screaming."

"Cor, that's a way o' puttin' it." Ben agreed. "Screamin' like a wild cat...or a woman in labor!"

"And then it all stopped, mostly." Polly sighed. "Our ears were ringing for ages after...and the Doctor...he was lying in a puddle of his clothes like...like a doll a child had flung into the corner and forgotten..." She stopped and gulped hard; the memory still affected her. Ben reached over and rubbed her shoulder soothingly, his easygoing face creased with the same memory. "I remember thinking...he looked shrunken down, and his old watch-cloak was all...burned looking and holed as if giant moths had eaten it up...we turned him over and then...that was when we saw his face had changed...his face had changed and his body and even some of his clothes with it. He was really shrunken down...into a much smaller, younger man."

"I know it's hard to take." Ben sighed. "I didn't believe it was the Doctor for the longest time. The Duchess...she copped to it long before I did. She's smarter than I am when it comes to the Doctor."

"Oh, shush, Ben." Polly scolded.

"He...just changed?" Jamie was still trying to accept this.

They nodded.

"What did he look like before?"

"I'll show you." Polly rose and left the room, leaving Jamie alone with his swirling skull and Ben.

Ben was awkwardly silent, wanting to soothe Jamie but not knowing how to do it unless it was rough Cockney healing.

Polly returned with a large photograph in a frame. "Here. I took this not long before we went to Mondas..." She put it in the Piper's hands.

"It disnae look like..!" The Piper protested at the sight of a taller, broader and ultimately frail-looking Patrician with beautiful white hair curled like smooth water down the sides of his face. It was as unlike the carelessly raked mop of black hair Jamie knew to be the Doctor's—he had often (and privately) thought of the little man's hair as a peasant's besom of twigs worn black and frayed from too much sweeping about a sooty hearth.

And the hands...if The Doctor's hair was an embarrassment of fashion that would be rejected by the Wild Man of the Moors, his hands were small and strong and beautiful. They were so perfectly proportioned they barely seemed like the hands of a living man's, always clean as a baby's after a bath no matter what he was doing with them, and his nails were trimmed neat. If there was any vanity to the little man it was his hands, but Jamie had guessed it was because he expressed himself with them more than he really did his words.

But this old gentleman had long, elegant and pale hands, slender crane's claws suited for violin or a ridiculously wealthy laird's fine scribing; they were wrapped in worn out fingerless gloves that oddly enough, matched the sable fur cap on his head (both articles had seen better days).

A beautiful blue waistcoat of cobweb-fine cloth wrapped around his lean middle, girdling a snow-white shirt pleated like a Church Bishop's Christmas Best. A shimmering red-gold watch gleamed below his ribs, its crystal unscratched and clear as water. The cravat about the thin throat was soft and dear to the price, hemmed with a glowing pearl stickpin on a bar of the same red gold as the watch. The mouth was thin and stern, the jaw stubborn and sharp, the apples of his cheeks pronounced with age. Wisdom had sunk deep into his large, round eyes and swept gossamer brows upon a proud skull.

The shoes were hard-looking half-boots of polished Moroccan leather-the sort that Jamie's feet would never bear in a hundred years. The trousers shocked him: In the midst of all the severity and elegance, emphasized with the seeming poverty of cap and gloves, this Doctor was wearing a cheerful tartan print the color of blue borage honey.

Ben and Polly waited, smiling, for their youngest Companion to go through the expected protests.

"Wait..." Jamie breathed. "I see him. I can see him in there!"

"You can?" Ben and Polly crowded in to look at the photograph, but it was still the same as ever. They glanced at each other over the boy's shoulders, and then at the boy. "Where?"

"The eyes." Jamie pointed gingerly, not wanting to put his fingertip on the precious glass. "Look at 'em."

"They're nothing like they are now, mate." Ben protested with a bemused smile. "They're big and brown and round. His eyes now are small and narrow and green."

"Nah, that's nae what I mean. Look at 'em." Jamie was smiling now. He was sure of it. "There's a merry divil hiding behind those eyes. Ye can see it." He moved his fingertip down to the stern, thin mouth. "Those are laughter-lines scored deep in the flesh. He kin frown with the best, but that's a face that would prefer tae laugh."

Ben and Polly looked at each other, then back hard at the photograph.

"I never thought of it," Polly said slowly. "But I suppose you're right. He did have a sense of humor...it didn't always come out when you expected it to."

"That's the truth an' half! He looked so stern all the time...like a nun with a ruler...and he was stern most of the time," Ben rubbed his hair wild. "Dodo called him kindly yet scarey. I guess we never thought past the appearances."

"A man with that much life in his eyes must know how to laugh." Jamie said firmly. "And ye can see the life fair boilin' out o' him." He chuckled softly. "And the colors in him are the same."

"Colors? What d'yew mean, mate?"

"Look, the colors." Jamie pointed to the beautiful blue waistcoat. "That's the same shade o'blue when he wears his blue shirts." He explained. "And he's wearin' the same black coat...the cravat has almost the same pattern as his dark blue bow-tie..."

"I never noticed!" Polly exclaimed. "Oh, it's the very coat! And the tie...I feel a prize fool, don't I?"

"Yer not a fool. It was right there, hidin' in plain sight, Duchess." Ben was laughing. "Cor blimey!"

"And he's wearin' Hunter's Tartan." Jamie finished in satisfaction.

"I don't understand, Jamie." Polly confessed.

"Hunter's Tartan. That's what a man wears when...when ye're lookin' for something but don't want to be seen much yerself..." He wasn't sure if he was explaining this correctly. He thought a bit. "Camo...flage?" He tried the French word slowly.

"Oh, but Jamie, do you think he knows about Tartan prints?"

"I guess it's a better question to ask if he doesn't, Duchess." Ben pointed out. "He did do an awful lot of running around Earth for a long, long time."

"That's true. Marco Polo...Saladin...Scotland wouldn't be too much of a stretch in comparison..."

The three were quiet, looking over the image with new eyes. The old man was standing proudly, posing with a grumpy moue at having his image captured, but he didn't really look like he hated it. There was a faint, almost childish smile of hesitant vanity ghosting about his face about all the fuss Polly was making of him. His thumbs hooked neatly inside the tuck of his frock coat, squaring back his arrow-level shoulders.

"Maybe he made a lot of jokes and we were too stupid to know," Ben mused. "He was a clever old geezer."

"More clever than he is now?"

"Gor, no! His clever was scary! Different kind of clever." Ben was smiling reminiscently. "The Doctor back then would never have acted a jape or dressed up silly...I mean, he could act silly, but you never forgot he was acting."

"At least not that we know." Polly said softly. Her large, expressive eyes had grown dark with a thought. "He was always so careful..." Her voice dropped even further.

"Careful for what?" Jamie was curious. Polly had that look on her face that said she was thinking...and when she did, even the Doctor jumped to her conclusions.

"He's hiding!" Polly's voice was barely a whisper, but a thread of solid iron gave her convictions. "Look, we all wear clothes not to just protect ourselves from the elements, but to make a statement. What we are is in our clothing."

The men looked at her, baffled.

"Think about it," she urged them. "Can any of you think of anyone more clever, more resourceful, more...anything than the Doctor?" They shook their heads no. "Of course not. But if you were looking for the most clever, resourceful person in the Galaxy, would you be looking for an old gentleman who looks like he should be teaching dusty old maths at some tired old boy's school wrapped in ivy with...with fat swans floating about the lilypads in idyllic old bliss?" She waved the image. "Someone who met Marco Polo, Saladin...Genghis Khan...Napoleon...Voltaire...Da Vinci...all the greatest minds of Earth and we don't know who he's met off it!"

"Got a point, Duchess." Ben rubbed his jaw. "Met and survived 'em. Some of those fellows, I wouldn't have lasted a minute in their shadow!"

"He's never given us an explanation as to why he's wandering about, willy-nilly, in a TARDIS, just gives us some sort of vague answer about how there's so much to see or do. And yet he jumps into trouble as soon as it finds him."

"Aye, even when he was a brittle old man, he was still tough as an old turkey!" Ben chuckled. "He said once that he mellowed a bit around humans...kin ye imagine what he must have been like before we met him? Must've been a hard nut!"

"Yes, I know. You could see it in him..." Polly was smiling at a memory. "So, let's think about it. He's bouncing about time and space all by himself, with very little explanation for his actions. Does he answer to some higher authority? I very much doubt it. If he was he would have complained about them in some way—or we would have run into them."

"Maybe he's just doing what he wants?" Ben offered. "I can't imagine anyone ever telling the Doctor what to do."

"No, but it must have happened, if you think logically that's the only explanation."

"Now yer usin' the bad words, Duchess."

"Stop it, you." Polly tapped Ben on the forehead. "It is logical. Even though it can't steer itself, the TARDIS is immensely powerful, and in the wrong hands it would be a horrible weapon! And yet one person is in charge of it? Just one? It's inconceivable that it would be used the way the Doctor's using it...to just...bounce about like a tourist or idle sightseeker.

"He's not abusing it, but he is using it to get around from one place to another, and whenever we run into trouble...well...the Doctor simply can't resist meddling. It's as if he's incapable."

"Yer talkin' about that speech he gave on the Moonbase," Ben said sagely.

"And as soon as it's over, what do we do but jump back into the TARDIS. We never stay long enough for anyone to ask questions...or force answers."

"Gwon, Duchess." Ben's normally cherubic face had darkened. "Yer sayin' the Doctor's on the run, like half me old mates on the TEAZER?"

"Well, I don't know how half your old mates behave, but if they're following his pattern of behavior it makes sense."

"Yeah, but what would the Doctor be runnin' from? We're talkin' about the Doctor, Polly. Not someone who broke some laws or did orful things and is hidin' from em."

"He never mentions his own people, Ben, and look at how many times he's played the underdog and helped people who are suffering under unjust laws. He's broken plenty of laws! He's put his own neck on the line to get people he's never known and just met...out of the bonds of tyranny. Doesn't that sound like a sympathetic reaction to you?"

That stopped them in their tracks. Jamie could feel his heart pounding inside his rib-cage.

"Bloody Gipsy Nell, you're right." Ben said in wonder. "Blimey! We're travelin' with someone on the lam!" The young man's eyes were wide with shock. "He doesn't want to steer the TARDIS, does he? Maybe he's the reason why it won't steer right to begin with? Or maybe it's broken and he daren't fix it! If he knows where he's going, so would the people lookin' for him!" He smacked his fist into his palm. "That's wot half me old mates in the Merchant's'd do. They'd jump ship wi'out warning and maybe yew saw im again in a few years, maybe yew never did!"

"It all fits." Polly blinked. "The only thing that steers right on this TARDIS is the Doctor's sense of right and wrong."

Slightly dazed from the overload of too much insight, the three wandered down to the kitchen and made more tea.

A lot of it.

Jamie decided he liked Ben's tea, but wouldn't tell him so to his face. Polly put together a pyramid of sandwiches using the fresh ingredients the Doctor kept for their use. The Bovril's Paste made a hot broth that made Jamie nostalgic for slaughtering time in Scotland, but knew enough of Polly not to say so. Anyway, she didn't think making broth constituted as cooking because it was too simple (so said someone who never had to eat without killing or growing or cleaning something first).

"We know at least some of his carryin' about is an act," Ben said at last. He sipped from his mug and toyed with a triangle of bread. "He acts up the most around people who've never met him before."

"Yes, but it doesn't always work the way he wants it to work," Polly hummed. "Half the time, someone's figured out how smart he is, and they want to use that for their own purposes."

"Or they believe the act and want to kill him."

"It's a disguise and a good one." Polly passed a dish of sliced apples to a grateful Jamie. "If you ask me, he really would like to be an explorer, or a tourist of the Galaxies. That...that childlike wonder he has when he's in a new place...that's not at all faked. It's real."

"Ey, and that's the biggest thing that marks him as different." Ben said knowledgeably. "Most people would get tired of that, but not him. It's fresh and new every time."

"I wonder how old he really is." Polly scrunched up her face in thought. "He must be much older than we are."Jamie didn't think he would have the courage to ask. He struggled to return his attention to what Ben was saying.

"-that gift he has for winding up in trouble...ugh. He just moves from one spot to another."

"Maybe he's just trying to have what good memories he can?" Jamie asked in a small voice.The older humans looked at each other and then at the third. Jamie's head was down and he hunched over his food with a rare lack of interest.

"I mean..." The Piper said in that same, small voice, "If he is a fugitive...there's things he probably doesn't want to remember. Or he can't remember because...it wouldn't do him any good, would it? That means living with your eyes facing forward, and having what fun you can get...because you don't really know how long it will last."

Polly and Ben traded a long look of understanding. If the Doctor was a fugitive, Jamie would of course reach out to him with all his heart. He was a fugitive too—an exile unable to go back to his home. He had not been on the TARDIS long, but when he wasn't too busy to think about it, the boy was wrenched with the pain of his loss.

The sight assured Polly. She and Ben loved the Doctor and they loved the good parts about the adventures they had, but they missed home terribly and would return as soon as the Doctor put them in the closest passable time-zone. That didn't change the fact that they worried about the Doctor being by himself—he clearly needed not to be alone; other people brought out the very best in him and tamed his worst impulses.

Ben gave her a tiny wink. She knew he was thinking the same thing. Since the beginning, Jamie had almost instinctively gravitated to the Doctor. Perhaps it was because it was the Doctor who saved his people from total massacre; or the fact that the boy sensed the closeness between the other two humans and felt like an outsider intruding. The Doctor had responded to the boy's need for companionship with an unthinking affection; unlike the Doctor he used to be, this Doctor was unaware of things like maintaining personal space. He didn't have boundaries for someone who needed touch, and Jamie was thirsty for contact.

If anything could reassure Polly that the Doctor was an alien, it was the way he made snap decisions about people that always proved right later. No human unless they had ESP could have his track record of reading people—and few humans would be able to retain that childlike, innocent belief in the good living in all people. Despite seeing humans and aliens at their worst, that funny little man never grew jaded at their foibles and mistakes.

Jamie, battered from the horrors of Cullodon, needed to be around that goodness. He was drawn to it like a cat to a crackling fireplace. In the Doctor's aura he was granted the grace of tolerance and patience, and he wasn't treated as though he were foolish or sub-human. The strange little man was very tactile, the way the younger uncle was at a picnic; older and wiser and a mentor in that manner...but also young enough to remember what it was like to be a boy. Jamie needed to enjoy his youth now, before it left him forever.A soft footstep made Jamie's ears prick up. He turned in his seat, face opening with hope.

"Ah, hello." The Doctor said drowsily. His hair looked like a haystack, his clothes were rumpled, and bruises still colored his face. But he was on his feet. He stopped in the doorway and yawned behind his hand. "Sorry..." He mumbled. "I don't think I'm quite awake just yet..."

Polly flung herself into his arms and squeezed him tight. "There you are, we were starting to get worried!" She leaned into his shoulder, felt his throat vibrate in a chuckle as he returned her embrace, patting her on the back with his hand. A sudden sting of tears misted her eyelashes and she blinked, sniffing with her burning nose.It had been a close call, for all their bravado to Jamie. She closed her eyes as she felt Ben's happy crow, hugging the Doctor and herself tighter within each other, and then there was Jamie on the other side, the lads chattering and jibing.Polly had to let a few tears slip, otherwise her control would shatter. The risk the Doctor had gone through just for their sakes had been no more than he always did...and someday, she knew, it would be what killed him.

"Oh, dear, Polly. I'm sorry it was as bad as all that," the Doctor was saying.

"I'll be all right, Doctor." She sniffed and looked into that careworn face. "I just have to...get all of this out now. Don't want it to s...stick around..." She kissed his cheek and held him tight. Again, she felt the hum of his chuckle against her cheek and he rocked her gently as he would have a child. In the brief months they'd known this particular incarnation, she had been given more paternal affection than her own father would ever dreamed. Her father wouldn't have put his life on the line for the sake of strangers, and she wasn't certain he would have cared so much for his own family and neighbors. Her father demanded filial loyalty on a daily basis...but the Doctor was the only one who would ever have hers.

"Ye had us worried there, old fellow." Ben grinned from ear to ear. "Especially the nipper here."

"Ey!" Jamie's sunny smile split into a scowl. "I am not a nipper! Whatever that is!"

"Oh, you two..." The Doctor shuffled his way into the kitchen. "Bung over, Jamie. Is that tea?"

"Jamie! You're looking well!"

Jamie felt a ridiculous grin split painfully across his face. Victoria's warm eyes glowed on the other side of the screen as she laughed at him. For a moment Time had rolled backwards and they were two young children again, not grown adults.

And in Victoria's case, very much grown. Always older than her years, she was now older than Jamie by a good hand; but to the Highlander's gaze she was still the same gloriously beautiful and sophisticated girl from the future he'd first known and protected.

Beautiful, graceful, an educated lass like a laird's daughter or fostering, she had always been perfect in his eyes. Perfect as the moon and just as attainable, it never stopped his feelings for her.

"How are ye, Victoria? Still reading up on the graphology or whatever it is?"

"Now, Jamie," Victoria scolded. The lines in her face deepened cheerfully. "Graphology isn't the best name, but it does work and it will have to do until something better comes along." She tipped her head to one side thoughtfully. "I like brain-writing, but while that's even better it's woefully unscientific!"

"Och, not everything has to be scientific." Jamie scolded lightly. He backstrided a chair and flopped his arms across the top, jamming his chin on them like a child all the better to watch the woman. He wanted to soak in her every detail. "Especially sin' ye never told us why ye wanted tae make a study o'it." He complained.

"Oh, you'll think me silly."

"I've never thought ye silly once in my entire life!" Jamie protested quite loudly. "A bit hardheaded, perhaps, and slithy..."

"Jamie!" Victoria put her hands on her hips and stepped back from the screen, which gave Jamie a view of the Eye of Orion through the glass window of a lush-looking library full of books and two simple computer screens. "You'll never stop teasing me, will you?"

"Give me a reason." Jamie said merrily. "Sae have ye got anywhere in yer study?"

"It's been marvelous. Forien agreed to take me through the entire length of the cirriculum. It's fascinating stuff, really. Handwriting is an excellent window into the writer's mind. If only I'd paid more attention to it when I was younger..."

Jamie let her prattle on, memorizing her words for later—she was bound to quiz him to make sure he was listening. In the back of his head he mourned the situation. Something was always keeping them apart.

"I said," Victoria repeated herself with considerably more volume, "How is he?"

"Eh? Oh. Ye mean the Doctair?" Jamie stammered, slapped into reality.

Victoria gave him a level look. "Of course, Jamie. I already know how Zoe is doing—I do pity Dulkis-Is there anyone else to whom I should be referring?"

"Er, well. He's good. We're all good. Everything's just good." Oops.

"I see." Her eyes had narrowed. "So why is everyone so good you look guilty?"

Jamie thought about lying, but only for a second. Victoria could smell tricks like an old granny. "Och, we're resting up a bit. That diplomatic mission went a bit awry."

"I've yet to meet a diplomatic mission that didn't." She sighed. "But he is all right..?"

"Aye. He's in the bath right noo. Ye want me tae call him?"

'Oh, no, no no no." Victoria said quickly. "We can always talk later. At any rate, I hope it's not a problem that I'm going to be here a while. It will take at least a few months to finish the core program..."

"Of course not..."

He was just switching off the screen as the Doctor emerged.

"Idiot machine," The Doctor said to the hapless environmental controls as he stalked out in the ankle-length robe Jamie often heard him call "an atrocious monstrosity of thirsty fabric," rubbing his silver hair dry with a towel painted in Arcalian colors. The water had turned his head a dull pewter, and had the odd effect of lightening the glints within his green eyes. "They won't adjust to anything but Gallifreyan standard!"

"Ah, don't worry aboot it." Jamie told him. "Ye just missed Victoria."

"Oh? How's she doing?"

"In love with graphology. At least now I know why she wanted to train in it."

"Please enlighten me, would you?" The Doctor found his usual chair and flopped inside it, still scrubbing away.

"She's noticed the handwriting of people in her school changed after they joined, but she didn't think anything of it except proof they were getting more...mentally advance. If she has more training in reading it, she thinks, she can get a better judge on the mental state of the writer."

"Well that is one way of putting it." The Doctor was still quite ruffled that the Great Intelligence had come so close to invading Earth without his knowing about it. "Getting subliminated by that thing would...both advance and homogenize their mental states to the point it would reflect in their handwriting..."

"So now she wants to study it, in case something else would happen in the future."

"She never makes the same mistake twice," The Doctor mused. "Interesting point, and right..." He suddenly turned his head to one side and began banging water out of his ear. "Anything affecting the brain will come out in the handwriting. Or whatever expressive form the person uses for tool-making."

"I think she's still worried it will come back."

"Hmn. I would give it some time, Jamie. Not only was it defeated, the Brigadier gave it a good scolding. It's picked up enough humanity that it actually felt the sting of mockery." The little man smiled slightly, shaking his head. "What I would have given to have seen that." He mused. "Can you imagine him telling it to go back to Hell?"

"Yer not the only one. The man was born with a claymore in his hand, wasna he?"

"There aren't many true soldiers out there, Jamie. He's honestly, the only one I know because he holds his own life as a small, insignificant thing against the weight of the world's. You'll never see him place himself above another's."

"Makes me wonder how he's lived so long."

"Um." The Doctor pursed his mouth to one side. "It's a well-known paradox. Most people die in combat because when they face death, they pause and inventory their loved ones. It's just a moment of hesitation, but it's usually enough. He doesn't have that hesitation because he's never unprepared to die."

"Huh. Well, he's one-quarter Gordon. That explains that."

"I have no idea what you mean."

"Everyone else's clan cries are meant tae be stirring up the enemy. Theirs is just, "A Gordon! A Gordon!" Jamie shuddered. "They fight like vampire panthers, all o' em."

"Can we get through one week without mentioning vampires?" The Doctor pleaded.

"Oops. Sorry, Doctair."

"You should be." The Doctor grumbled half-heartedly. "Are you going to Change before we go?"

"Aye. I put your suit in the back. I'm gunna try tae fix the problem with this kilt if ye dinna mind."

"What's wrong with your kilt?"

"It's the weights." Jamie fussed at the plaid draped over his lap. "I left it here at our last stop, and they cleaned it, Doctor!" He held up the cloth sadly. "They took the weights out o' the hem, and...Cleaned it wi' their infernal imitation soaps and water! Everybody knows ye can only clean a good plaid with fresh snow! Anything else will harm the threads!"

"Snow's a bit rare on Gallifrey, Jamie. Unless you live like a hermit in the slope-caverns of Mt. Lung...or happen to be caught in the Death Zone." The Doctor scowled.

"It's a travesty, it is." Jamie sulked. "A good plaid battered about like that. I knew the kine that made this pattern!"

"Why am I not surprised..." The Doctor picked up the yards of cloth and ran it through his fingers. "It won't take long to put weights back in." He soothed absently. Many things were pressing his mind and Jamie doubted the little man would continue to demonstrate patience for much longer.

Then he looked behind him. And saw the clothes Jamie had picked out.

There was a long, taut silence in which Jamie found great interest in the empty contents of his sporran.

"Jamie?"

"Aye?"

"Is there a particular reason for your selection?"

Jamie thought about it. "Mayhap."

The Doctor lifted up one eyebrow and sent the other crashing down, creating a stern glower indeed and somehow made it all the more impressive that he was still wet. "And that reason would be..?"

Jamie had stopped being afraid of the Doctor long ago. He didn't swallow, but he did face the green glare head-on with a glare of his own. "That 'tis time ye got out o' mourning, Doctor." He said at last.

"I have not been in mourning." Was the tight retort.

"Grieving, then!" Jamie snapped. "Ever since ye took me out o' Scotland ye've been wearin' colors for a funeral!" He knifed the air with his fingers. "Nae brightness to ye, nae glow! It's not what ye look like on the inside, Doctair," he persisted. "Ye do yerself no honor by wearing what they want ye to wear."

And, just a thought ahead of the other man, Jamie stood, his eyes open and honest. "I know how ye are, ye daft we chappie. Ye've spent most of yer life makin' yer enemies think the less o' ye. Well...this ye need tae do for ye'sel." He put as much urgency as he could in his voice. "There's too many of them here." He pressed. "Remind them who ye are...what ye are. Be yerself." He finished, clasping that short, broad shoulder.

You don't know what you're asking, came the thought.

I don't need to know everything. I'm just seeing that...whatever game you're playing...it's pulling a price out of you. Don't pay it. Tonight we have to be all pomp and circumstance. Be yourself for a night. He squeezed the hard bone under the cloth. At the least, they won't expect it.

What will I do when you leave?

Jamie felt his heart stop.

He couldn't move. He couldn't speak. The Doctor's words still echoed in the hollow dome of his brain-pan. He couldn't tell him he would never leave. Hadn't he left once before? Because the Time Lords were clever and cold and cruel. And Jamie was human; the Doctor would live through a hundred of Jamie's lives.

You'll live. Because I'll never forgive you if you follow me across that River before your Time.

...fair...enough.

The Doctor's head bowed down, hiding much of his face. He looked so very old in the dull light designed for Gallifreyan eyes. Old and weary. It was not the first time the Piper wondered what the CIA had made him do before he was allowed to pick him up again...and it wouldn't be the last.

"We've got a dinner tonight, and a show." The Piper smiled just a bit. "Ask some and they'll say the one is the other."

"They'll talk about you again!" The little man's voice burned with anger. "I won't have it, Jamie! It isn't worth it to me! Whatever I do tonight, they'll look at you when they talk of it!"

"Chan fhiach cuirm gun a còmhradh." A feast is no use without good talk.

Hah.

Jamie waited alone and sweating as the Doctor hid in his rooms. He asked himself if he'd overplayed his hand, but he had to reassure himself that he hadn't.

Finally, at long last, the Doctor came out wearing the suit.

"Well?" He asked with his eyebrows halfway to the sky.

"Ye look perfect, Doctor." Jamie made the sign with his fingers. "Ye look...yerself again. Is math an sgathan suil caraide." A Friend's Eye is a Good Looking-Glass.

The Doctor was just beginning to smile. "Come what may, we shall see what happens."