You may have noticed, I don't really like calling the Doctor by numbers. It sounds impersonal, even though we know why we do it. It's hard to distinguish them otherwise, but I tried my best. I hope it isn't too confusing. - Kam ;)

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The commotion was heard before the two men reached the console room. Jack turned as the Doctor bolted in, followed by Turlough, and pulled up short. "Yes. Well." He made to close his jacket together in characteristic fashion only to find he wasn't wearing one. He held out his arms, taking in the shirt which was a touch too short in the sleeves.

"Mind you, I'm not ashamed of my body, nor yours as such, but I figured….you know." Jack's Doctor gestured at the ill-fitting shirt and pants. "Your jumper was ruined."

The blond haired man nodded. "Of course. Thank you." He looked up, and his gaze was more clear and intelligent than Jack had ever seen it. He realized he was looking at the Doctor as he was supposed to be. Turlough's Doctor. No wonder he was so taken, and so protective of him. This Doctor quickly examined the man standing beside the console. "I take it you're me," he said, and there was a tone of respect in his voice that Jack wasn't expecting.

Jack's Doctor tucked his hands into his pockets and leaned forward. "In the flesh."

"So I see." Turlough was at his Doctor's shoulder, staring. The Doctor's eyebrows were raised as he took in the new inner working of the TARDIS. "You've maximized the chameleon circuit's output, I see."

"I've made a few modifications."

"Probably made her more temperamental."

The Doctor scratched behind his ear. "Well, there is that, yeah."

The other Doctor nodded, then collapsed.

Turlough caught him, preventing him from braining himself on the grated floor. Jack rushed to his side while noting that his Doctor looked concerned, but didn't move from his spot. "Okay, then?" he asked from his station.

The blond man looked confused, one hand waving about, then he steadied himself. "Work to be done. Are the others here?"

"Some are, yeah. You have a plan?"

"Link them. Everyone needs to hear this."

"Right." Jack's Doctor started twisting knobs and flipping switches, jumping from panel to panel before settling himself in front of the view screen. His former incarnation rose shakily and propped himself against the console.

The screen divided itself into five squares, and five very distinct faces appeared. Jack was pleased to see the previous incarnation, the one he'd originally met, though it was a bit strange. He didn't appear to recognize Jack. It hadn't happened yet, then, not in that timeline. One face was older with moppish hair like one of the Three Stooges. One was very old, with white hair combed back from his head. One had a floppy hat. And the last one, very young.

His Doctor nudged him. "That one there. That's my future self that I saw!"

Jack shook his head, coming to terms with these different faces of the same man on the screen.

"We are patched in to two others of us," the white-haired man said. "They are struggling to hold on."

"We don't have much time," Turlough's Doctor said. "Are their TARDISes functional?"

"I believe so, yes." The white-haired man had a craggy voice, with very deliberate speech. Jack wondered if this was the original Doctor, and marveled.

"What do you propose?" the man with the floppy hat asked, his own voice more theatrical, as though addressing an audience.

Jack's Doctor turned to the blond man, and waited.

The Doctor clutched the console, trying to collect the vestiges of his dreams. "We must connect the TARDISes together…at the heart. We must join the cores."

Jack watched as his former Doctor blinked once, then tugged at his leather jacket. The other men seemed, not quite dumfounded, but more contemplative, if not a little surprised. "It's never been done," hat-man said.

"Of course it's never been done!" the old man snapped.

"That doesn't mean it isn't possible," Moe said.

"Oh, shut up and let the man speak!" the youngest version snapped.

The Doctor pushed from the console and stood beside his counterpart. They were of a height, and Jack could almost sense an odd similarity between the two men, something he couldn't gather in the other faces. "You need to open up the heart of the TARDIS," the Doctor said. "We need to set up an energy stream, and join them through…a fixed point." He swallowed. "This focal will, in the meantime, draw the various time streams together for realignment."

"And how do we realign these streams?" leather jacket asked.

The blond was rubbing his fingers together nervously. "Well, we use advanced mathematical computations - from a trusted Alzarian."

"Adric?" Hat asked. "Adric is dead!"

"Yes, well…that depends on the time stream," the Doctor admitted. "You see, I'll be traveling through them."

"In order to do that boy, you'll have to travel through multiple streams at one time!" the old man exclaimed.

"Yes, I am aware," the blond Doctor responded patiently.

"It's risky," Hat said.

"Since when have we been afraid of a little risk?" Moe asked.

"Shush," leather jacket said, and fixed the Doctor with a stare. "Can you do this?

Jack's Doctor answered the question before the blond man could. "He can, and he will, and we will help him. Understood?" His pointed glare took in every man on the screen. "What of the others? Do they agree?"

The youngest Doctor on the screen, with hair even floppier than Jack's Doctor, nodded. "They agree. But hurry. Destabilization is setting in and if we loose them this is a moot point."

"Right." Jack's Doctor turned and looked at the blond man. "You said a fixed point. What is the fixed point?"

The other Doctor was looking worn. His blue gaze met brown eyes. "You know," he said softly. "And you'll have to be the one to tell him."

Jack watched as his Doctor straightened, holding the other man's eyes for several moments before the wizened expression met his own.

"It's me," Jack said. "I'm the fixed point, because I can't die."

"What?" Turlough asked, making Jack startle. He'd forgotten the man was there.

"Long story," he said over his shoulder, and regarded the two Doctors, his own and the one he'd come to admire. "There's no asking. Just tell me what I need to do."

"Are you sure about this?" his Doctor asked.

"Tell me," Jack insisted.

His Doctor nodded. "Okay."

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The TARDIS door opened to complete chaos.

Jack was hardly able to recognize the room. He winced, seeing prisms of…time…floating around in the air. He ducked as soldiers marched past, only for them to flip and reveal flowered fields and a lover's kiss, presumably a memory from one of the soldiers. That soldier's timeline was spiraling above him, around him, and through him as it met his own timeline, as he watched the soldiers storm past. A tug on his arm grabbed his attention and he forced his way through to the small side room where the table lay, half buried in rubble. His Doctor quickly shoved the bits of wall away, clearing a space.

"We need to connect me - him - back to this equipment. He needs to be as he was before. And you," the Doctor spun and grabbed his shoulders, "you are his anchor. You have to go in with him. You're the fixed point that he will repeatedly return to, do you understand?"

"So I just, what? Stand here?"

"No. You'll be fighting to maintain your own sanity."

Oh. That was nice.

"These machines are functional, barely," the blond Doctor said. "We should have just enough power if we act quickly." He swept his hand over the table and hopped on, then lay back, crossing his hands over his chest. "Now."

His Doctor placed the probes on his head then partially unbuttoned his shirt, placing the remaining probes upon his chest. He found the box on the floor and shook it, then pressed the button.

The probes latched, and the Doctor winced.

"You're up," Jack's Doctor said.

Jack nodded and sat on the floor beside the table. One probe remained. The Doctor regarded Jack for a moment, then placed it over his heart, where it immediately latched. Jack gasped loudly, unprepared for the electrical shock he felt. "All right?" the Doctor asked him.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Jack answered. "Hurry."

"I'm turning on the machine."

"How will we know if it worked?"

His Doctor smiled a sad smile. "You'll know." He vanished around the corner. Jack focused on the light of the police box.

And all hell broke loose.

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The entire universe, everything in existence, was stabbing him through the heart. He wasn't sure he cared enough about the Doctor or the cosmos to endure this pain. He gritted his teeth, determined not to cry out, but it was wrenched from him in a pained wail. "Doctor!"

There was no answer.

He sobbed, cried out again, sobbed more. There was no way to reach out for anything, he was just existing, stationary, pinned underneath the most enormous weight imaginable. "DOCTOR! GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

He couldn't do this. He couldn't endure this. And through his tears he saw a man walking toward him, lugging a silver rope over his shoulder. He squealed in panic as the Doctor brandished a large hammer and nailed the rope to his body. The weight doubled, if it were at all possible. "DOCTOR, PLEASE!"

"You can not die," the Doctor said calmly.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?"

"You are the anchor."

"YOU'RE KILLING ME!"

"You can not die," the Doctor said, sadly, and walked off with his shoulders slumped. He returned moments later with another silver rope.

"No, no no no no, please don't," Jack begged, and screamed as this rope was also nailed to his form. "STOP!"

"You can not die. . ."

Jack found it within him to raise his head, spittle spraying everywhere as he hissed, "You want to BET?" But the Doctor disappeared, then re-appeared with another rope.

"Oh, god, no. . ." Jack sobbed, and screeched at the top of his lungs as it was nailed to him. Four more were brought to him, nailed to him, until he couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, was smothered underneath a weight that just continued to grow, continued to crush every bone in this body, liquefying his internal organs.

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The Doctor was spinning on the head of a pin. He stopped, and sat, his chin on his hand, his legs crossed at the knees, and thought.

Around him fragments of space-time tilted and whirled like snowflakes. On occasion he caught a glimpse of something vaguely familiar, but for the most part he was looking at the unknown. It was a new sensation for him. He sat there, outside time, outside space, perfectly at peace, watching the prisms fall as they would. He cocked his head, seeing two collide, time references combining to form a new history, one which spiraled off into the distance only to collide with another. He realized these prisms were in different lines, like Christmas lights on a strand. And the strands were loose, whipping about wildly, smashing together. Knocking the lights together into shards. He frowned as he looked down and saw a man far below, a man sobbing and crying out, as another man tried to snatch the ends of the time streams. He fastened one to the crying man, then reached for another one. The man collecting the streams looked disturbingly like himself, or as he imagined himself to look. He cocked his head and wondered which time frame this one belonged to. Then he settled himself down, to continue to watch the prisms before him.

"…..doctor," Jack managed to choke into a whisper.

The Doctor knelt down, and smiled. "You're doing just fine."

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When he next opened his eyes, he was floating.

Strings radiated from his body in all directions. The Doctor was still luring them in, but he no longer felt them. He watched this man working so hard, so hard! Sweat beading on his forehead, his body lilting in exhaustion. He paused for only a moment, noticing there were millions, no, billions of billions more to go.

Doctor. It's going to take too long. We don't have time for this!

It was a stupid thought. Of course they had time. This was time. And it was funny how his brain still registered time, even though he was looking at it.

It is odd, isn't it? Jack looked up and saw the Doctor staring down at him from a great height, yet he could see his features clearly. His mouth didn't move as he spoke. He looked thoughtful, watching his other self work. Words surfaced in his mind. What we need, is a higher vantage point.

What are you doing? Why aren't you helping him?

But I am.

Jack watched as the Doctor tugged at another string, draped it over his shoulder, and pulled it back, pinning it to Jack. The stationary point. The man who couldn't die, and therefore was the single fixed point in known time.

What does this mean?

It means your burden has become much, much larger than you can possibly imagine. You are no longer a time agent. For now, you are time itself.

That's impossible! I can't be time! Time isn't a thing!

The Doctor above him sat down and considered this, slowly uncrossing his legs, then crossing them back in the opposite way. In the distance, the Doctor was going for another string.

He'd lost count.

The universe was nothing but lines streaming from his inert body. Vivid, living lines, all painstakingly connected by the Doctor, one at a time. Before, Jack had thought he registered time in the usual fashion. It turned out he was wrong. He had no clue how long the Doctor had been working, how long he'd been outside the continuum.

Then the Doctor stopped, and looked around him. Jack raised his head from his prone position. "What? What is it?"

His eyebrows rose in amazement. "It's done."

Jack barked out a laugh. He looked at the seemingly infinite number of time strings radiating from his body. "Now what?"

The Doctor walked to him, flicking one of the time strings, watching it vibrate as the events shifted within. "Now comes the hard part. We've harnessed these strings. You're holding them. But they must be weaved back together to form the time grid."

"There's a time grid?"

"In a manner of speaking."

A memory surfaced. The two of them, looking for the capitol. "You said before that you hate grids."

The Doctor was scratching his head. "This is when I need Adric. I have get him."

"Where?"

"Oh, he's in one of these." The Doctor sighed and gestured.

"This isn't going to go quickly, is it?"

The Doctor looked up to his carbon copy, perched high above. His other self nodded, and pointed to one of the strings.

Jack didn't like the way the Doctor's face suddenly paled. "No, it's okay," the Doctor said. "I know exactly where to find him."