TEN
The Doctor opened his eyes slowly, letting them focus and realising he was lying face down on the grating of the TARDIS floor.
He groaned and put his hands under him, lifting himself up off the floor. He sat up but then fell backwards, suddenly feeling very weak. He felt the wall at his back and relaxed against it, trying to get his breath back, feeling winded.
"Oh hello! You alright?" said a cheerful voice. He rolled his head against the wall, looking up at the small face.
David had been carrying a box of parts past him in his arms, but had stopped to look at him.
"What happened?" he whispered, feeling unable to even stretch his arm up. "Something's wrong."
"Yeah," David said uneasily.
He hesitated, biting his lip, then turned and set the box down behind him. He sat on it, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together, pinning the Doctor with a serious gaze in his wide, brown eyes.
"Who are you?" the Doctor managed.
"I'm surprised you haven't worked it out," he said. "I'm you. And she arranged for you to rescue me," he added, nodding to the TARDIS around them. "Which you have, by the way, so thanks very much," he added kindly.
Suddenly, the Doctor realised the small boy's rather broad Manchester accent had vanished, as if it had never been. But he clung to sanity vaguely.
"Don't believe you," he breathed.
"Really?" David said sadly, then got to his feet, letting his hands slide into his pockets. "So tell me this, Doctor – ooh," he said suddenly, stopping to look at the ceiling as he thought about that. "That's weird. Talking to you, calling you 'Doctor'." He looked back down at him, his eyes running over him carefully. "I never realised I was so tall in real life. Still, I expect that's cos I'm rather small at the moment."
"Prove it," the Doctor hissed.
"Oh yes, right," he said, shaking himself. "Well then, tell me something about yourself, Doctor," he said seriously. "When was the last time you saw Martha Jones?"
"She left me… her phone," he wheezed, feeling what little strength he had start to ebb.
"And before that?" he asked. "Tell me about… ooh, something painful enough to stick with you forever. Oh! I know! Look, I'm sorry to have to do this, but. Rose. Where's Rose, Doctor?" he asked pointedly.
"Who?" he asked, struggling to breathe.
"Rose Tyler. You do remember Rose Tyler? She was pretty important in your life at one stage."
"No idea who you're –"
"No, you haven't," David said sadly. "Because you weren't me then. I was me then, but you weren't," he said. "You weren't me until… Oh, where do I start?" he asked.
"Don't believe you," the Doctor grunted.
"Then how could I remember this?" he asked, turning and walking right up to him. He crouched down and put a hand out, on the Doctor's shoulder gently. He looked at him sadly, apologetically. "My friend, my enemy, the Master," he said quietly.
The Doctor eyed him warily.
"Right there, in my arms, dying. And there was nothing I could do. I just sat there, unable to help him, unable to stop him. And now he's gone, and I'm truly alone. All last vestiges of hope I had of finding another Time Lord, or just any other Gallifreyan, pretty much died that day." He paused. "I just can't bring myself to believe any more. I suppose that's what 'getting old' really means."
The Doctor's mouth worked but nothing came out.
"And then Martha Jones. Clever, funny, friendly Martha Jones," he said sadly, still watching the immobile Time Lord with large, soft eyes. "She had things to do. Important things. And if there's one thing that she's taught me, it's that some important things, no matter how inconvenient, can make everything all right in the end."
"What did you do?" he whispered urgently.
"I've simply triggered the distillation and re-integration programme you – I – set up before all this malarkey started," he said, putting his hands on his knees and standing up. "Only… Well, when I said we'd just got in under the wire, I meant it."
He turned back and looked at the centre console, lifting an arm and pointing at the monitor, still displaying the countdown.
"See that?" he asked clearly, looking back at the Doctor. "Six minutes. Unless the distillation and re-integration happens before then, I'm looking at missing out on my last few regenerations."
He sniffed to himself, letting his arm drop as he walked away slightly. He turned back to look at him.
"I am sorry. I had no idea what that countdown was for, after all."
"What have you done?" he managed, his voice weak now.
"Recently?" he stressed. "Well it all kinda kicked off after Martha went home. I dashed off, head full of ideas and hearts full of upset, and got stuck on Jorath Telarny B," he said conversationally, lifting his hand and pulling at his little ear in a gesture that made the Doctor's blood run cold. "Got caught trying to sneak into the library – you know they have the best collection of pre-war sonic technology in there. The place was closed for renovation, but I just couldn't let it go. See? Martha would have stopped me, and I wouldn't be in this mess," he said sadly. "Anyway, penalty for that is Compression – you know, when they jam your prison sentence into your head in one afternoon, but you still believe it's taken the length of your sentence in real-time. I got… er… thirty-two years," he said awkwardly.
He looked over at the Doctor, slumped against the wall, simply watching him, physically unable to do anything else. He sighed.
"Of course, they weren't to know what would happen to me. They thought I was human, never bothered to check. When I physically regressed instead, they kinda panicked. They didn't know what to do. They'd never met a Time Lord before."
"Shame," the Doctor managed.
David smiled somewhat sadly.
"And you and me are probably the only ones – one – who will ever know how much." He walked to the main console, leaning up slightly to look at something. "Not long now. Are you… are you alright?" he asked, walking back over. "I didn't know it would do it like this, I'm really sorry."
"Do what?"
"Jump me back into you," he said simply. "I'm not actually sure how it's going to happen, but… Just have to wait and see, eh," he said uneasily. "Anyway, they took me from Jorath Telarny B and dumped me on Earth, thinking I was a resident. There I was, memory wiped and basically regressed into a three year old, and someone took me to an orphanage. I was shunted around from place to place, probably cos no-one could stand the weirdness of a Gallifreyan child acting like a human – not that they knew what I was, of course. All those X-rays saying I had too many organs? They pretty much got chucked in the bin. Good old NHS, eh?"
He paused unhappily.
"And that's how I've been stuck for just about five years now. She took her time coming to get me," he said, looking a little displeased for the first time. "Still, probably a good thing, or I'd have been too young."
"How…?" He coughed suddenly, unable to suck in enough air, it seemed.
"How are you here? Well… Something to do with a certain tear in space-time," he said uneasily. "Cardiff isn't the only place with a rift."
"Piccadilly," the Doctor managed, wheezing painfully.
"That's Manchester Piccadilly," he nodded. "Yeah. To be honest, I really had no clue what's been going on till you found me and I started remembering," he said. "You're a… Well, the TARDIS made you, a copy, from the DNA and quantum prints she had of me. She was desperate, you see."
He walked round the far side of the console, nodding to himself, then walked back round.
"She settled over the rift and set down her interference patterns, to stop you finding the rift at all. Well, until you didn't need to, that is. Couldn't have you getting your agendas confused. Anyway, she made it back into the vortex, scanned and printed off a hard copy of me – that's you, by the way – and then left you to it. She knew if she presented you with a little interference pattern mystery you wouldn't be able to resist looking into it. Cause and effect, Time Lord curiosity and plain old good luck did the rest."
He paused, watching the older man, but he was still shaking his head weakly.
"I'd know," he managed.
"Really? Tell me Doctor, do you remember waking up, but not having fallen asleep? Waking up with a headache, perhaps? One that disappeared rather easily?" he asked gently.
The older man stopped and looked at him, the look on his face slowly sagging into one of shock. The boy nodded sadly.
"Yeah. That was about forty-two hours ago, right?" He sighed. "The flaw in the plan was that she's not the newly-grown thing she once was – forty-two hours was all she could give you to exist, quantum back-up wise. And the lack of memories… well, let's just say she doesn't quite have the empty RAM she once had."
"Signal," he managed weakly, closing his eyes for a moment.
"Exactly!" the boy grinned. "Now you're getting it! I was quantum-tagged when they jammed me in that machine and regressed thirty-two years out of me, body and mind," he said, shivering slightly at the memory. "So she used it. That and the ol' Rassilon Imprimatur," he said with satisfaction. "As long as you found me and got curious enough to run me past the old girl here, everything would be hunky-dory."
"Now?" he asked, coughing again slightly.
"And now," he said sadly, walking over again, hands in his pockets, "I have to stand here and watch you cease to be. Can't be two of us, you see? Problem is, I'd better be you again before you slip-slide off this mortal coil, or I'll be a goner too. But hey, in about…" He looked at his watch quickly, thinking. Then he looked up again. "At the rate the re-integration jobbie is going, hopefully in about two minutes you'll be me anyway, and therefore not dead. You see?"
"Hurts," the Doctor whispered, and David's face fell instantly.
"Oh. I didn't know running out of quantum info would hurt you like this. I had no idea how it would work, actually. I'm sorry." He heaved an anguished sigh. "If it's any consolation, I'm going to remember how horrible this moment is for both of us for the rest of my lives."
"David," the Doctor gasped. He knelt down, putting his little hand to his upper arm.
"Yes."
"Helena," he whispered.
"Oh, don't worry," he said, oddly proudly. It made him smile slightly, despite the obvious pain of the man crumpled against the wall. "Doctor," he said quietly. He looked at the older face, the larger, longer version of his own, with identical large brown eyes staring back at him.
"Yes."
"Thanks for everything, mate. And, just for the record?" He paused, wondering how to phrase it, perhaps. "I know. About Martha. I know she doesn't. I know no-one else cares. But I know how you wanted it to be."
The Doctor smiled suddenly, relaxing. His shoulders sagged slowly, his smile widened into a friendly grin for the barest of moments. Then it began to fade, his face relaxing gradually. His chest fluttered up and then collapsed in, pushing out the last of his breath in a long, slow expulsion.
His eyes rolled up and closed. And he slid sideways to the floor gracefully.
The monitor in the centre console let out a long, flat monotone of a beep.
David sighed unhappily, leaning over him and placing his hand in the middle of his chest, waiting.
"Gone," he said quietly. He huffed irritably, lifting his hand away and scrubbing it through his hair. "Missed. I was just a shade too late after all."
He felt pain shoot through his body, fire coursing through every vein.
"Oh… bollocks," he grunted. "Ooh… I hate it when I die."