The cricket bat mostly hits the armchair, since John was already on the floor anyways, armchair on top of him. She still manages to catch him in the shoulder, though, which hurts something awful.

Melody makes an inarticulate noise of protest, whirls around, and hits Jack, who she had probably been aiming for in the first place. The cricket bat connects with his head with a good, solid thwack. He slides to the floor, not exactly unconscious, but certainly stunned.

Then there's another shift of forgetfulness, and then John is upright again, and Melody is trying to sonic him free of the restraints.

"Oi! What was that?" he yells at her, although with the pain in his ribs it comes out more as a croak. "Seriously, worst rescue ever."

"Shut up. That was your fault, you know. You told me to come in swinging, and I did." The restraint holding one of his arms clicks free, and he grabs the sonic from her and starts undoing the rest of his restraints himself. By the last one comes free of its moorings Jack's starting to stir.

Tucking the cricket bat under her arm, Melody grabs John's hand. They start running.


John sonics the door closed and fries the security cameras. They're in some sort of closeted bar, and like the house it's heavy and dark, with wood paneling and heavy furniture. The only light things in the room are the bottles of various types of alcohol lined up on shelves behind the bar, and a dominantly cream colored poster, framed hanging on the wall opposite the door. The woman dancing on it is painted onto the poster in red lines and blue lines, like veins drawn open into the air.

John turns away from the violent sensuality of the room to look at Melody. She's leaning against the wall next to the door, head titled back to rest against the wood paneling, eyes closed. The cricket bat is leaning beside her, propped up against the wall. Her face is sharp and pale amongst the red of her hair, which is falling out of its braid. Her freckles stand out in sharp relief. On her left wrist is a vortex manipulator, and there are three black slashes on her forearm above the manipulator, two of which are crossed out. Dangling from a string around her neck is a black permanent marker, uncapped.

"Melody," John says. She opens her eyes, looks at him. There are dark circles under her eyes. He forces himself to ignore how tired she so very obviously is. This isn't his Melody. His Melody is back on the TARDIS, safe. Well, relatively safe, as safe as you can be in the middle of a psychopath's garden. This Melody is from the future, and if he is to keep her safe now he must ignore how tired she is later. "Tell me what's going on."

Her mouth twists. He can't know it, but the word costs her much. "Spoilers."

"Don't you dare give me that." In two long strides he covers the distance between them, grabs her by the wrist with the manipulator. He twists her arm up, baring the lines on her skin. He'll think how in the world Melody knows about that word, the one that she used, later. "What are these marks? Why do you have a vortex manipulator?"

She tugs her arm free of his grasp with a vicious yank. "You told me not to tell you."

He swears, turns away. He runs his hands through his hair, ignoring the ache in his ribs as he lifts his arms.

"I'm sorry John," she says. At that he swings around and slams the side of his fist into the wall above her head. Melody flinches.

"Tell me something," he shouts. "Melody, don't do this to me. Please. Not you."

"Don't yell at me," she says, small and quiet. There's a pause, in which she stares up at him and him down at her. She says, "I can tell you that there are these . . . creatures. We're not really sure what to call them. And you forget them as soon as you turn away from them. They're not—they're not nice. They've done things."

"What kinds of things?"

"I can't tell you that." She shows him the marks on her forearm. "These longer, perpendicular slashes are for the one's we've seen, so that we can know how many there are."

"And the smaller slashes running through them?" He reaches out to trace them, his fingers ghosting over her skin.

"For whether they've been taken care of or not."

"Taken care of?" His hand slides cool from her arm.

She looks him right in the eyes, answers the question he is really asking. "Yes."

"Melody—"

"No, John. You don't know what they've done. What they will do to you personally, in your future, so don't you dare judge me."

"Murder is never an option."

"It is when you have no other option! Jeez, John, if you don't trust me by this point at least trust yourse—" The manipulator beeps. Melody's eyes widen. She yanks the permanent marker from around her neck and shoves it into his hand just before she disappears

John leaps back. He looks down at the marker in his hand, then back at where Melody had been. "Well isn't this wizard."


John runs. He doesn't remember why. He's in the middle of room filled with weapons. He stops running, confused. He's clutching the permanent marker in his right hand too tightly, he isn't sure where the cricket bat has gone off to, and there's a black score on his arm, right at the crease between the hand and the wrist.

One, running across his skin like a death knell at early morning.

His breath hitches in his throat, and on instinct he turns around, isn't sure why.

He's on the other side of the room, grabbing a knife down from the wall amongst a dozen other knives. His heart is thrumming in his throat, a rapid tattoo drum-beat of excitement, adrenaline, and fear. In that cool, dim place in his mind where the Time Lord side of him takes the time to notice such things, he marks that the knife is of Tankthum origin, a people who tamed the lightning storms on their home planet. Anything they made would act as a conductor to electricity, trapping the lightning without harming the user.

Electricity, he thinks, and whirls, knife in hand.

He's turning, running, slashing, leaping away as an arch of electricity cracks past his head. And it's hard, because in that split second between remembering and forgetting he has to remember to remember. But he's just human enough to have the gut instinct of danger slicing through his bones.

He turns, and he turns again, he's standing in the middle of the room and the permanent marker is on the ground by his foot. He picks it up, turns around. He looks at the body and makes a hyphen through the death knell on his skin.

The knife trembles in his hand, and there's blood on the blade, black and thin.

Necessary, necessary, he thinks, and turns around to forget.

If only everything was that easy.


"There you are." John looks up to find Jack lounging against one of the doors leading into the room, smirking, with his arms crossed. John is leaning against the table in the middle of the room, bent over double, gasping for air. The knife is on the ground in front of him. It's a different room. He's not sure how he ended up here, or even where he is. He feels sick.

"I've been looking everywhere for you," Jack continues. "Of course, it's not that hard. Just follow the trail of bodies."

"I don't know what you're talking about." But John looks down at the knife covered in thin, black blood and feels even sicker than before.

"Of course you wouldn't," Jack says, amused. His gaze shifts to something just behind John. "Get him."

Then he is forgetting, remembering, and forgetting, forgetting, forgetting as he turns his head, as he struggles, as their hands dig into his arms. "No!" he shouts, but he can't break free, he can't, he ca—

And for the second time that day Melody Williams breaks through space and matter and time. Her momentum from the vortex plows her into John, ripping him free. He has just enough time to see the startled expression on Jack's face before Melody presses a button on her manipulator and then they're plunging through the vortex—


Traveling through the vortex without any proper casing around you, such as a TARDIS, is similar to getting pulled through a taffy puller with your eyes squeezed shut. Except it's not really similar to a taffy puller at all, that's a rubbish explanation, forget the taffy puller.


Four Thousand Year Later

—and then they're collapsing onto the ground. By the familiar pitch of the time rotor he recognizes the fact that they're in the TARDIS, but he doesn't bother doing much beyond recognizing the fact of where they are. He just lies there, concentrating on breathing.

"Three times in one day is far too many," Melody mutters into his sternum. He cracks an eye open to look at her; she is on top of him, and her hair spills into his field of vision. Melody Williams, he thinks as she picks herself off of him, has such nice hair. He's still feeling a bit ill, though, so might as well close his eyes again and concentrate on breathing, because when his eyes are open his whole field of vision swims in and out of focus like a bad video reel. Yes, much better to concentrate on breathing, and not swimming.

"Melody!" a voice exclaims somewhere off to the left, and its familiar when it shouldn't be. John sits up so fast that he has to slump back against the railing to stop the world from lurching.

He'd always know that voice, anywhere.

Always, even when he shouldn't.

There's the sound of feet clattering down glass steps, and Melody, next to him, is cupping his face between her cool hands. Such nice hands. "John? They didn't hurt you?"

John opens his eyes at the undisguised panic in her voice. Two faces slosh into view, both peering into his face with undisguised worry. He focuses on Melody, says "Just a little," and then closes his eyes again, because it's really too much effort to keep them open.

Ah. There we go. That old familiar bzzrt of the sonic. A bit higher pitched than John's own, but still just as dear.

"He's alright," the voice says, "he'll be fine. Well, as fine as he ever is. But he seems to be suffering from post-hypnotic suggestion sickness—"

"'Post-hypnotic suggestion sickness?'" she parrots, voice arch.

"I didn't want to say from forgetfulness. He's suffering from too much forgetfulness. About two hours of it, in fact. Melody, tell me, what exactly would make him forget?"

"Ah . . . spoilers?"

"Would you quit saying that?"

"Sorry."

"No you're not." The voice sighs. "Look, I have an essence of ginger root distilled down into a pill form in the second shelf on the left in the third medicine cabinet in the sick bay. Would you . . . ?"

"You're just trying to get rid of me."

"Right in one."

John opens his eyes in panic. She can't leave me alone with—and then all other thoughts cease entirely as she leans in to press a kiss into his cheek. "I'll be right back, okay?" she says, as if to a child; calm, comforting, voice pitched low to soothe. All John can really process is the way her lips felt against his skin.

He thinks, Rose, and he closes his eyes again as Melody leaves. Because it really wasn't fair that Melody should get to kiss his cheek, and Rose couldn't. Not one bit at all.


"Spoilers," he sighs. "I can't believe that woman managed to haunt me here, even in a completely different universe. How does she do it?" And when that doesn't elicit a response: "John."

John opens his eyes, looks at him and says nothing at all. The Doctor sighs again, and makes himself comfortable next to John. He leans his head back against the railing, wrists propped on his raised knees, hands dangling.

"I did what I thought was right," he says finally.

"Yeah, well, it wasn't, was it?"

"No. It wasn't."

John goes back to ignoring him. The Doctor fidgets next to him. Sighs. Scratches his cheek.

It's very hard to ignore someone when they keep on reminding you that they are there.

"A bow tie? Really?"

"Oi! Bow ties are cool. And what about you, with your jeans and your—your accent? What is that, Scottish?"

"Yes. Got a problem with that?"

"Oh, you are so Scottish! Why couldn't I have been Scottish? I would have been a great Scotsman."

"You're just not wizard enough, I suppose."

"You are impossible."

"That's the Scottish bits."

Another brief pause.

"I can't believe I regenerated into a baby. Do you get carded everywhere you go?"

"Hey! I like this face! It's a nice face, thank you very much! And I do not get carded. I am a mature and responsible adult, and they are able to tell that I am such when I walk up to the door."

"Uh-huh."

"All I'm saying: so Scottish."


The Doctor watches him when he knows he isn't looking. John clutches the permanent marker in his hand as if it were a lifeline, his knuckles white curling around, and the black mark on the crease of his wrist is a gaping black wound. His clothes are stained with black blood, and his face is grey with exhaustion.

The Doctor watches him when he isn't looking, and wonders uneasily what in the world his counterpart has been doing, to get him to such a state as this.

Because John is not alright at all; he sags against the console and listens to the time rotor turning. It is the most discordant symphony. It is the only sound in their little world; after that initial burst of bickering they had lapsed into this stilted silence. The Doctor isn't sure what, exactly, to ask, and John doesn't really feel like saying anything at all. They're both relieved when Melody comes back in, complaining that she couldn't find any pills.

The Doctor gives her and John some space; they huddle near the door and speak in hushed whispers. He watches Melody, too. He sees the way she looks at John, and the way John doesn't look at her. What exactly is Melody Williams to his counterpart, and why does it not bother him as much as it should? What about Rose?

Melody has not been very forthcoming on the details.


And you want to know the scariest bit of all?

The Doctor trusts her implicitly. He knows next to nothing about her, but he trusts her. And that hasn't happened, not since her, and he doesn't like it, not one bit.

But there's something about Melody that just makes him want to help her out of the dust and onto her feet again.

She sort of reminds him of Amy.


"I'm fine. Melody, seriously, would you quit fussing? I'm fine."

"You don't look fine." She adjusts the lapels of his jacket so they hang straight. "You look like death."

"Thanks. Glad for the vote of confidence."

"Any time, dear."

John gives her a funny look. "You've never called me that before."

"No. I wouldn't have."

"Melody."

"John." She can't look at him. She picks at imaginary pieces of lint on his coat, and she can't look him in the eye. Around him the TARDIS hums, and she is old and brilliant and familiar. Oh God. His TARDIS. Such a sexy old thing.

"Here," he says, and hands Melody the marker. "It was very useful."

She hands it back to him. "Keep it. I have others." That's the worst news John's heard all day. Others mean that Melody needs to have a stock of markers; others mean that whenever Melody is in her future, she'll need to have those black lines marring her skin.

And her giving him the marker only means that John will need them too.

"Alright," he says, pocketing the marker instead. "Thanks."

"Oh John. Don't thank me." She smiles at him, a wry twist of her mouth, and he doesn't ever want to see that look in her eyes again: slightly broken, slightly damp around the edges. He prays that he wasn't the one who put it there.

"Are we in our universe still?" He nods behind them to indicate the presence of the original copy. She focuses on the Doctor for a moment, and another smile creases her face, and it is soft and fond and shy.

"Yes."

"Then Melody," he moves in closer to her, putting his hands on her shoulders, shifting so that she's forced to look up at him, "why is he here?"

She hesitates before she tells him, and by the way she pauses between phrases he knows she's editing. "There are . . . cracks in the other universe, and they unwrite time. They were eating up his universe, and they would have spread here, too, to all universes. So to stop them . . ."

"I stepped in and unwrote myself," John says.

"Yes. He did. But my memories weren't affected by the cracks, because they don't exist here. So I remembered him, and he came here." She shrugs. "And it's funny, because I know how to get him back home, too. Because of his memories in the future."

"And where am I? Melody, why am I not here with you?"

"Bad Wolf Bay." This comes from behind them; they turn to face the Doctor, who's standing next to the console. He locks gazes with John. "Bad Wolf Bay," he repeats.

"Ah," John says.

And that's when Jack catches up to them.


The thing about vortex manipulators is that they can be followed, if you're stubborn enough.


He comes in, and he has the knife John dropped four thousand years ago in his hands and a vortex manipulator on his wrist and the very first thing he reaches out for is Melody, except John gets in the way first.

For the first time since his arrival John allows the psychic connection with the Doctor to snap into place. For one bright, shining moment he is him and I is me and right, are you sure, of course don't be stupid, I'd do it myself with my own sonic if my hands weren't a bit busy—

And then the Doctor sonics them back.

The last thing John hears is Melody screaming his name.