"It tastes gross! Tastes gross!"

Wilf was surprised that the Doctor's complaints of a bad taste was the first thing Harry responded to. He refilled the Doctor's glass and handed it back to him. He noticed Harry's eyes scrutinizing the Doctor carefully as he drank, scanning over his body and glancing at the lump of black blood on the floor.

Last he checked, coughing up blood was meant to be pretty serious, but neither the Doctor nor Harry seemed particularly worried. Harry waited for the Doctor to finish his water before telling him to move to the room's center examination table. The Doctor didn't argue, but instead got carefully to his feet and obeyed.

He hopped up on the table and removed his jacket and tie, then sat in silence. Harry looked stern as he reached forward and began to unbutton the Doctor's shirt, both of them avoiding making eye contact with the other.

Wilfred was unable to hold back a gasp when the Doctor's shirt opened. His entire chest was a rainbow of colours—purples, blues, greens, and yellows. The colours spread all the way down his ribs, ending just before his belly.

Harry stepped back and looked over the colourful canvas for a moment. "Where else?"

The Doctor scratched his head as though he were embarrassed. "Elbows and knees. My hips a bit, in the front here."

"You jumped from a ship, fell God knows how far, crashed through a glass ceiling, landed on a solid stone floor, and you didn't use nanobots to treat yourself? At the very least you could have used some accelerators or plasma particles to stop the internal bleeding," he snatched up the white cloth he used before to pick up the ugly lump of blood. "There is no excuse for this, Doctor. Explain."

"I got a little busy."

"You don't get to make this my fault!" Harry's voice had risen quickly and without warning, his eyes flashing with sudden rage. He realized it immediately and brought it back down to a calm volume, clearing his throat before speaking again. "I wasn't in critical condition. You could have sedated me and taken care of yourself. You could have done it after you treated me. It only takes minutes, and you have had days."

The Doctor looked up at Harry, then back at the floor sheepishly. "I was fine. I scanned myself and I wasn't dying or anything, so I decided to just let it heal on its own."

"Wait just a minute, I don't understand," Wilf interrupted, pointing at the lump in Harry's hand. "If you've just got a bunch of harmless bruising, where did that come from?"

"On a human being, a fall like that would have turned the internal organs to a splatter of pulp," Harry explained, crossing his arms and glaring at the Doctor's bruises. "Our species can survive it, but the Doctor still took some rather dramatic damage. That little mass you see there is likely the leftovers that were clotting up the damage to his stomach, esophagus, or lungs—maybe all three. The spin in the altered gravity field must have jostled everything loose. Which means you're likely bleeding again, Doctor."

"If you could make it better, why wouldn't you?" Wilf asked now, confused and concerned, unable to tear his eyes away from the terrible discoloration. "Surely, it's got to hurt? If Donna were here, Doctor—"

"Donna's not here, Wilfred."

The Doctor did not look sheepish anymore. He was not embarrassed or worried. His eyes had grown dark at the mention of Donna and he was buttoning his shirt closed again.

"It's my body. What I choose to do with it is none of your business, either of you." The Doctor hopped back off the table and grabbed his tie. "Evidently, I have some things to attend to. I'm sure you two can carry on without me."

When the Doctor turned toward the door, Harry put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. "Doctor . . ."

Wilf watched as a strange moment passed, in which the two men simply gazed at each other. He noticed for the first time that the Doctor was actually a couple inches taller and that Harry pulled his shoulders back and lifted his chin when they faced each other. He wondered if the two were communicating with their minds or if they were simply communicating with their eyes, but there was definitely some level of understanding.

After a moment that seemed to last a lifetime, the Doctor sighed in an annoyed way and lifted his hand. When the Doctor's fingertips touched his head, Harry's eyes did not move away and he leaned slightly into the touch.

The connection lasted mere seconds, but it was enough to bring a ghost of a smile to the Doctor's face. He pulled his hand back and arranged his tie around his neck as if nothing had happened, tying the knot as he stepped towards the door.

"You both know the rules," he said loudly before stepping through the door.

Wilf watched the Doctor through the glass, walking toward the lab's exit. He spent a few seconds trying to work out what might have just happened, but quickly gave it up as a lost cause. He knew how easily people could communicate without words or how meaningful a simple look could be when they had known each for a couple of decades, or even less. He couldn't imagine the kind of connection two people would have it they had known each other for hundreds of years, and came to the conclusion that there was no point in trying to understand it.

"You shouldn't have mentioned Donna," Harry said. "Especially not to scold him. It's too much guilt for him."

"I couldn't say nothing!" Wilf protested.

"I know. But the Doctor is . . . well, he's sensitive," Harry picked up the cloth containing the lump of blood and dropped it into one of the plastic containers he had pulled out earlier. "He's in mourning."

Wilf watched with a certain level of suspicion as Harry sealed up the blood and placed it carefully in steel box next to a machine covered with dozens of tubes. "Mourning for what?" He decided that it was alright for him to keep the blood. If he could do anything with it, the Doctor certainly would have been clever enough to know that and wouldn't have left it behind in the first place.

"Women. It's always women with him," Harry sighed and hobbled over to clean up the blood splatters on the floor, bending awkwardly with his leg cast. "There was some woman named Rose that he lost, then he lost Donna, and then he lost a future too."

"What does that mean?"

Harry straightened out again, turning the soiled cloth over in his hands and observing the blood patches thoughtfully. "If you're sitting in a car with your eyes closed, can you still feel when the car changes direction?"

"Er . . . well, yes. But—"

"Time changed," Harry said the words heavily, as though it was something difficult to admit. "It changed direction, and now we're in a future that we weren't meant to have. I nearly got pulled in with the other Time Lords—maybe I wasn't supposed escape it? Maybe I wasn't supposed to tell the Doctor about the failsafe? Maybe you were supposed to die, or I was supposed to die . . . who knows what did it. There was no mistaking the feeling though. We both knew immediately that we had cheated fate."

"But, but . . ." Wilf remembered the conversation with the Doctor in the cafe, when he had seen the Doctor's tears and heard the dread in his voice. "The Doctor said he was going to die. Surely he would be happy to have cheated that?"

Harry shrugged. "You would think, but it's always more complicated than that. He knew something about his future, some other woman. He didn't die, or regenerate, or carry on alone, and so whatever he knew about that future likely won't happen now. Sometimes rewriting time is the very worst thing you can do to yourself," He looked up at the ceiling and sighed again. "Think of it as the kind of loss a person would experience if they found out they couldn't have children . . . something you knew you would love, and now you'll never have it."

"How do you know that?" Wilfred asked, his brows furrowing together as he considered Harry's words. "Has he told you about that future?"

Harry's eyes met his—old and calm eyes. "No."

"And you're not guessing," Wilf continued. "You stole that knowledge."

"A window lets you see through it both ways," Harry confirmed. "I opened my mind to him, to help him feel better and convince him to take care of himself. But when he looked inside, I looked into him. I wanted to know what happened to Donna."

"You should have just asked, Harold!"

"You know as well as I do that he would never tell," Harry muttered quietly and began rubbing his own forehead with his fingers. "And you wouldn't have enough information. I promise, Wilf, I'm only trying to help. Please don't tell him."

"I really ought to, you know."

"I know."

"And you really must stop doing that!"

"I will."

He considered it carefully a minute, searching Harry's face for sincerity or deception. "I won't tell him, but just this once! I catch you at it again and you won't even have time to blink before I explain to the Doctor exactly everything I know."

"Thank you," Harry smiled a little. "Really, Wilf, thank you."

"Ah, ah, hold on," Wilf held up a finger. "On one condition."

The smile quickly turned into a frown. "What condition?"

"I want to see your planet," He felt his heart beating a little faster. He knew it was a long shot, but he had to at least try. "Let me see into your head and show me. I want to know what it looks like."

"It probably won't feel nice," Harry warned. "And you'll likely get a headache."

"That's alright," Wilf answered eagerly. "I'd like to see it."

Harry tilted his head to the side, his eyes squinting slightly at him in a way that made him feel as though he were standing naked in front of the classroom. Then, quite suddenly, he felt a rush of heat and a flood of colour filled his eyes.

Harry had been standing several feet away from him, but somehow he projected the image clearly in his mind. He stood in what looked like a clearing in some woods, but the trees had leaves of silver that danced with fiery light. The sky was solid orange without a cloud to be seen, and just peeking over the tree tops he could see the white cap of a mountain. He could even feel a crisp breeze on his skin that promised snow.

Just as he was bending down to observe the deep red grass, he heard it. A faint laugh, somewhere in the trees.

"Hello?" He looked out to where the sound came from and saw a flicker of movement.

There, in the shade, stood an extremely pale woman. Her skin was as white as pearl, and shimmered slightly when she moved. She was remarkably tall—near seven feet—in a plain and modest red robe. Her eyes and hair were a pale silver, while her lips were black as night.

She gazed at him intently with a crooked smile on her face. Then she spoke with a hollow, whisper of a voice : "You will regret this day."

The forest suddenly swirled with a blur of colour into nothingness, and he found himself standing back in the lab. Harry was now leaning against the room's center table, with his hands planted firmly on its surface to steady himself.

"Sorry. I didn't do that right," Harry said quietly, his eyes unnaturally wide. "Did it scare you?"

"No, no," Wilf assured him, pulling up the chair they had sat the Doctor in before and grabbing Harry's elbow to guide him into it. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Harry took the offered chair and nodded his head. "I'm just a bit dizzy. I think I need to eat something."

"Alright, no problem. I can handle that," he grabbed the mug of ancient tea from the countertop and pushed it into Harry's hands. "Drink that quick, and we'll get you down to the kitchen."