A/N: This short chapter is dedicated to my faithful reviewer, Trainee Hero.
"Right, Donna, you keep back." The Doctor motioned towards the station with his hand. "Best stay out of plain sight, really. Won't cause as much trouble."
"Oi! You said I'd be safe," Donna pointed out. A thought struck her, and she voiced it before she realized the words were out of her mouth. "Or were you just saying that, like last time? To keep me quiet?" She tried very hard to keep the pain out of her voice, and she thought she'd managed it, but one could never tell with the Doctor.
The Doctor considered the question for a moment but didn't answer, instead saying, "By the wall, near those boxes. That should do the trick. And—" He winced. "Marty ought to be back in a moment. Good to know the interference is working, though what he's going on about with my other self, I can't really say, but it must be something, because…." The Doctor trailed off, which rather surprised Donna, seeing as he'd been going at a hundred miles an hour. The Doctor's mouth formed a small 'o', but as far as she could tell, no sound had escaped his lips. Surprising, considering he wasn't often at a loss for words.
"What now?" Jeff asked. He still sounded testy. A good night's sleep would curb some of that, Donna figured; shame he wouldn't be getting it tonight.
"Now," the Doctor replied, recovering instantly, "you can ready yourself, because I think things are going to be heating up in a few moments here. And— Marty, excellent!" The Doctor broke off his conversation with Jeff almost eagerly. "Agitation's working, I expect? Of course it is. I can tell. Shouldn't be long now."
Hearing one half—fine, two thirds—of a conversation was bloody annoying, Donna thought—particularly when you were the only one left out of it. Jeff had dived in instantly, demanding answers of this Marty. Well, she supposed he was—according to the two lunatics with her—still Jeff's partner. She figured if she could believe in aliens, she could probably believe in ghosts. The Doctor's proof hadn't exactly been the most convincing of things, but it would do. And she could take his word for it; goodness knew she'd done it before, what with all the nonsense he spewed out at her all day, jabbering on as he did. Never did make sense until it was too late to be of any use.
"Won't you notice?" Donna finally asked, well aware that she was interrupting the conversation and not caring one bit. "I mean, the other you. Wouldn't you notice Marty popping in and out and wonder? Especially when it starts to hurt?"
The Doctor blew out his cheeks. "I expect I did," he conceded. "But, me, I'm clever. Probably knew something was up."
"Wait." Donna stared at him, and in spite of the situation, she felt a grin spreading on her own face. "You don't know? You don't know what you thought? You don't remember?" The grin broke through. "Ha! The great Time Lord doesn't have a bloody clue what's—"
"Donna!" The Doctor's voice was sharp, and she abruptly realized that Jeff was staring at them. If Marty was about, he was probably staring, too. When the Doctor spoke again, his voice was quiet. And that almost unnerved her even more. Calm, informative. Too relaxed. Not cold, not dangerous, but suspiciously nonchalant. "No, Donna. I don't remember." There was a pause, and even she knew not to break in with something. Sure enough, the Doctor continued, saying, "I don't dare try. We're in enough of a mess as it is, really. Best to let things happen naturally. If I forgot, there was a reason for it. And I'll respect that. Knew what I was doing when I did it. I told you before, about remembering and forgetting. And this was one time I had to forget."
He'd blithered on about paradox prevention, she recalled. "But…." She wasn't sure if she could voice her questions. She wasn't sure if she should. "But if you knew, when we got here, if you thought about it, didn't it occur to you that…that this might…."
The Doctor raised his eyebrows at her. "That this sequence of events we've been going through might correlate specifically to a hole in my memory that I really cannot relate to any other time in my life and cannot, in all truth, exactly specify where that hole fits in, because, being a hole, I knew to bury it, and being me, I knew not to bury it chronologically? Seeing as that'd cause a bit of a bother, what with there being some reason I shouldn't remember and shouldn't know about this, which meant I'd just fitted the rest of the memories together so that it wouldn't seem that I was really missing anything and raise my suspicions? Suppose it did. But not right away. Not the wisest thing, pursuing those holes, not when you've a good reason for forgetting. And I expect I did." He turned from her to Jeff, adding, "And, no, it's not like repression, not really, so don't even bother asking."
Jeff closed his mouth for a moment. When he opened it again, he came out with something that Donna couldn't really fault him for. "What the hell are you playing at?" he demanded. "All right, I can take it so far. Lies and stories, fine. I don't want to tell a complete stranger the entire truth about my life, either. But you two take the cake. You and that brother of yours behind bars. You go on talking about alien traces and time travel and all other nonsense under the sun. You—" Jeff broke off, turning to his left. "Don't go on about it, Marty! He probably pieced it together from the beginning. He planned this. He lured us here." Turning back to the Doctor, he continued, "I might be in the middle of a trap, and fine, I'll have a time getting out of it, I'm sure, but you can at least tell it to me straight."
"Is the entire situation usually explained to you when you're caught somewhere?" the Doctor asked, sounding genuinely curious and more than faintly amused. "Because whoever has you doesn't think you'll escape?"
Jeff looked a bit taken aback. "Well…."
"Funny thing, that. Happens to me, too, on occasion. And I've nearly always come out of it." The Doctor grinned wildly, and Donna knew from the look on his face that Jeff wasn't going to get much of an answer to his questions. "Shame about your speculations; you're going off in entirely the wrong direction. Truth is what I've told you, but you humans, you just refuse to believe what's staring you in the face." The grin threatened to crack his face, and he wheeled on his heels, turning to look straight at her, ignoring the disbelief on Jeff's face. "Anyway, I think things are happening a bit faster than I'd anticipated, which is almost to be expected, and I'd rather have everything sorted before whatever happens happens, so I—" He froze.
"Doctor!" Donna tried slapping him to bring him out of it, but it didn't work. "Oh, no, you don't, you have a lot more—"
And he reeled backwards, hand to his cheek. "That smarts, you know," he told her, hand returning to his side. He was making faces instead, stretching his skin and moving his jaw about. "Won't say it didn't help, though, with bringing me to my senses. But, blimey, you've an arm on you." He said it with something akin to admiration, yet she had a feeling he was mocking her, that there was something he wasn't saying. She could see it in that twinkle in his eyes. He was comparing her to someone from his past.
"If it helps, you can bloody well be sure that there'll be a repeat performance," Donna shot back at him.
He was shaking his head before she'd finished. "It…won't help. Well, not really. Some things only work once, you know. Well. Work is such a strong word. I was actually having a bit of a time protecting my mental defences so that my knowledge can't be used for further destruction, not to mention the…. Well, sparring's not the right word, but I was concentrating on keeping the Mylith away from the more sensitive parts of my mind. I've things in there I don't even know about, so I'm not about to let them in, especially not when they just want to feed on—"
"I get it, Doctor," Donna cut in. "No slapping. Just don't consider that a guarantee that I won't try it, because the way you're going on, you might just be getting another one."
The Doctor seemed to acknowledge this. At least, that's what she took the slight incline of the head to mean. That, or his neck was stiff from before. It was a bit hard to tell. "Anyway," he barrelled on, "as I was saying, I think it's best we prepare for anything. Marty, back to my other self. Keep going between us. Shouldn't be long now. Donna, by the wall, out of sight. I'm not sure what's going to happen, and I'm not going to take my chances. Jeff, you're in no danger if anyone sees you, so you can stay where you are.
"Well," he amended, "I say no danger; I mean no danger in terms of temporal disturbances and shockwaves along historical timelines. You could very well be in danger if a Zalvja-influenced Gilbert Becker proves stronger than you. Or even just an equal match. Or perhaps if our good friend Inspector Large comes and sees you, since I do still recall him, and he is quite a suspicious bloke. I expect he'd like to know what you're doing, and chances are he'd be questioning you about me, seeing as he'd think I'd escaped, and once he had me down—if he could get me down, though I suppose I could let him for the sake of getting closer to my other self and inducing the feeding frenzy—then he'd like to know what you're doing with his prisoner. And, indeed, on the streets of London at this hour. I don't expect you'd be able to come up with a very good explanation, since if you think I'm crazy, as you so clearly do, then you'd have a devil of a time coming up with a better lie as an explanation on such short notice."
Jeff scowled, but it looked to Donna that the thought had already occurred to him. "I'm not staying out here all night," he informed the Doctor simply. "You said this was happening now, and, fool that I was, I believed you. I'd still like proof beyond your acting and ludicrous explanations, though I expect I'm not likely to get it."
Jeff may have had more to say, but the Doctor started in as soon as he had a chance. "I am sorry for this. I really am. I don't like dragging everyone into the middle of things like this. It just happens. Take Donna; drawn into the TARDIS on her wedding day, convinced I was trying to abduct her, and—" The Doctor broke off hastily. "Well, that's not important. Point is, you found yourself caught in the middle of it, but by the time you realized that, you were too tangled up to free yourself. And you've become important now; a part of events. I need you. Don't fancy trying to work it all out without your help, not now. Denying's all well and good, at least in the right situation, at least for a certain time, but it's not going to change the facts."
"And the fact is that Marty and I have to help you destroy alien traces?" Jeff's voice was heavy with scepticism.
Donna waited, but the Doctor didn't reply. It didn't entirely surprise her to find that he'd frozen again; he'd have never let that much silence pass by unless he was concentrating on something specifically, not when he was asked a question and seemed to be in the middle of explaining his answer, anyway. After a few moments of silence—well, not really silence, seeing as Jeff was muttering away, which meant that Marty had come back again—Donna figured that this was probably the peak of the feeding frenzy the Doctor had kept going on about. Recalling his instructions, she turned on the timey-wimey detector.
She wasn't sure what she was expecting to happen, but as far as she could tell, it hadn't worked. "Bit pointless," she grumbled. So a thingamajig on the side whirled. Big deal. And it made a dinging noise every once in a while. All that did was tell her that it was on. And that there was 'stuff,' she supposed. Whatever that stuff was. The machine itself was relatively quiet otherwise; she couldn't pick up on any electronic hum. Frequency, though, the Doctor had said. It could be a frequency she couldn't hear. Though, she did think she could catch something every once in a while. Maybe he had it emitting two frequencies? Was that possible?
A rasping gasp brought her back to reality. The Doctor had snapped out of it. Not the peak of the feeding, then. Well, then he'd bloody well better tell her what to look for, because she didn't have a clue. "You finished?" she asked as the Doctor drew in another gagging breath, looking for all the world like he was hyperventilating.
He recovered instantly, and she had a sneaking suspicion he'd been faking it. Granted, he was paler than before; not all of the colour had returned to his face this time. That was a bit worrisome. At least, she was fairly sure it wasn't normal—hadn't she been around him long enough to figure that out yet?—and, chances were, even he needed blood pumping to his brain. He didn't have two hearts for nothing.
"I…think so."
That was new.
He was distracted.
Okay, so that wasn't new. But the type of distraction was. Sure, it was easy to get him off on a tangent, considering his short attention span, but she always had a feeling that he controlled that. That he knew every word that left his mouth, and that by the time that had happened, he knew his next move, the next thing the person or whatever he was talking to was going to say, and he'd planned his response for that, too. Because he did plan. She knew he did. His mind was always working; he had to be planning, even if it was just unconsciously. Yeah, he improvised—all the time, as far as she could tell. But by the time he'd made a move, he had an idea, even if it was vague, of what he was going to do next. Or he'd take into account what could happen and plan accordingly. Oh, she knew there were tons of possibilities, but she'd also seen the Doctor make snap decisions, and she knew there was no denying his brilliance.
But now?
Something was off.
What had the Doctor said earlier? About the mind latching on to normalcy as a life preserver or something? Maybe that was just what she'd taken away from it, but it didn't mean she could apply the principle. Shelf the outward concern, then. Tried and true tactics. Something that would cut through.
But before she could open her mouth to snap out a retort, the Doctor weaved on the spot. That was alarming. He stumbled forward, almost falling into her, but he backpedalled quickly. One hand clutched his head and the other reached out towards the wall to steady himself. Now he really did look ill.
"What's the matter with him?" Jeff hissed to her.
She tore her gaze from the Doctor and stared at him instead. One deep breath, just enough to muster her reply. "How the bloody hell should I know?" she snapped at him. "This ain't exactly normal for us, either! And you're not helping, are you? You probably think he's having fits or something. What's it going to take for you to believe that he's in two places at once and that something's taking advantage of that? A blooming brass band marching down the alley, announcing it to you?"
"Donna," the Doctor said, voice sounding almost weak, "d'you remember what I told you when we were under Vesuvius? About how I see the universe?"
Of course she did. What is, what was, what could be, what must not. That had scared her, if she was perfectly honest with herself. She'd made a mental note not to broach the subject any time soon. "Yeah?" A guarded answer; she ought to be safe with that. "What about it?"
"I can't ignore it. I know what I'm doing, what I've done, and I remember…. Donna, I remember, and it's—" The Doctor broke off, crying out in pain.
Jeff caught the Doctor before he staggered into the very boxes behind which he'd told Donna to hide. "Vesuvius?" Jeff mouthed, giving Donna a strange look.
She shrugged, not paying Jeff much mind. "What is it, Doctor?"
"Donna, you have to…. You've…you need to…."
"What? Do I need to get you something? What do you need? Water? Aspirin? A chair?" The Doctor was shaking his head, trying to spit the words out. He looked really pathetic sagging against Jeff like that, and she had to hope that part of it was an act, like the so-called private investigator seemed convinced it was. "Oh, I dunno," she said, clutching at straws. "How about a nice cup of tea? Maybe a blanket? Have you gotten chilled or something? Do these things attack the immune system like that?"
For a moment, the Doctor looked at her in disbelief, and then he shook his head. "Turn it off," he told her, sounding desperate. "If you leave it on, it'll mean that…that…. But then…. No, no, you've got to turn it off! Donna, turn it off!"
Oh. Right. The timey-wimey detector. Donna studied the machine for a moment, shrugged, and flipped the switch and pressed the button in reverse order. That seemed to do the trick, and the machine powered down. "There," she said, satisfied, looking back up. "Now do you want to tell me why that was so important?"
But the Doctor had already frozen again.
