A/N: The Doctor's head is a really fun place to go... :D

Chapter 14 - Everyone's a Whimmer

Jack was sat in the Doctor's room five hours later, staring at the sleeping Time Lord.

It had been amazing how quickly he'd deteriorated. One moment he'd been animated and clearly a bit annoyed, the next he'd lost energy, fallen unconscious, and an hour after that he had stopped breathing altogether. Now he was breathing again, and sleeping.

Jack hadn't moved for four hours. He still had a bit of blood on his shirt from where he'd punched the alien but he didn't care. He had to stay. Before the Doctor had crashed again Jack had arranged a helicopter to take Donna to Glasgow, and though she hadn't wanted to leave, she'd eventually relented and gone. So Jack had taken it upon himself to stay in her place to sit with him.

They'd realised this somehow, someway and somewhen, he'd been poisoned again. Though he'd been given the antivenin and he was a lot better than he had been and he would get better, it still spelt bad news. Because with that alien held in that room, there was no way it could have readministered it. There was another one somewhere. That meant they weren't going to give up, they were just going to keep trying to kill him.

So they'd upped security on his room. They now had a tide of guards outside it with loaded guns, plus patrols every ten minutes. The entire hospital had also been thoroughly searched. The General was currently testing every person who had been in the hospital in the allotted time frame both physically and mentally in case they had a shapeshifter on their hands, but so far there had been no anomalies.

Now Jack was sitting there, Martha was getting some sleep, Donna was in Glasgow and the Doctor was asleep. And it wasn't even 4pm yet.

In the few hours that had passed, the Doctor was taken off for scans, brought back, removed from intubation, had blood extracted, and then a nurse came in to give the Time Lord a wash, shave and a change of bandages. She removed the bandages completely from his head and took out the stitches. The cast on his foot was made smaller, the bandages on his fingers removed and the cast on his arm also reduced. The bruises and cuts of the crash were gone now. He was healing.

The nurse left, and Jack finally moved forward, clutching a brown paper bag. He took a seat, and rummaged through the bag he was holding. It contained all of the Doctor's belongings that were taken from him at the London hospital, only just arrived by helicopter. Sonic screwdriver, psychic paper, a ball of string, a pen, a notepad, a whistle, a ratchet, a ping-pong ball, a polythene bag, a torch, his glasses, and a white paper bag half-filled with questionably old jelly babies. Carefully Jack picked out the sonic screwdriver and placed it in the Doctor's hand, for no particular reason. It just seemed right. The Doctor's hand responded, automatically gripping like a baby's hand clutching at an adult finger. His thumb even seemed to find the switch, by some sort of instinct.

Jack couldn't help looking up at the Time Lord's now unbandaged head, pushing back his hair to reveal the exposed mark of his brain surgery. He'd healed so well that all that was left was a red semicircular scar, which was covered by hair that had grown unusually fast, seemingly in a conscious effort to catch up with the rest. If that was a Time Lord body thing, it was very impressive. Jack wondered for a brief moment if he'd actually scar, or if that was another Time Lord thing that he wouldn't. He'd have to ask the Doctor when he could speak English again.

Suddenly the sonic screwdriver activated, and Jack looked quickly to see the Doctor holding the sonic aloft, buzzing in the air. The sound of the machines around them suddenly quietened, and the Doctor breathed out in what Jack could only assume to be a sigh of relief.

"Doctor?" he asked, looking back at the Time Lord's face. The Doctor's eyes snapped open and fixed on him. He gave a brief smile.

"You found it," the Doctor realised in a murmur, holding his sonic up to his face. "No offense but those machines are really annoying."

Jack just looked at him blankly. The Doctor sighed and instead decided to check himself. Two legs, two arms, two hands, not bald… Oh, wait.

He reached up and got his hand on his head, his fingers running through his copious amounts of hair. He immediately found the scar denoting his brain surgery, and quickly realised the staples had been removed. He mused for a moment, running his finger over the incision. He had no idea whether that would scar. He hoped not. At least his head appeared to be healing, but the pain was still very much there.

"Morphine," the Doctor said immediately, looking around the bed. He found it, and pressed the button a few times before looking up at Jack. "What happened?"

It was painfully apparent that Jack had no idea what he was talking about as he stared at him, confused.

"What happened?" he repeated, but there was no way of miming it. After a very long moment, Jack seemed to finally get what he was saying and made a series of mimes involving crossing his fingers, injecting something into his arm and garroting his throat.

"Poison," the Doctor reasoned, partially from his mime but also partially from the way he felt.

Jack continued to make the same mimes, until the Doctor held up his hand to stop him. "I've got it," he insisted, nodding.

Jack nodded in return, and held up a brown paper bag, handing it to him. The Doctor looked inside, and immediately beamed.

"You've got my things!" he enthused, checking everything was there. "Hold on… where's the yo-yo?"

Nothing but silence came back to him and he looked up at Jack, who was frowning. He said something.

"What?" the Doctor asked.

Jack said something back.

"I can't understand you," the Doctor emphasised, making a questioning gesture.

Jack brought out his manipulator, displaying an analog clock for some reason. He pointed at it.

"No," the Doctor stressed, shaking his head. "Oh, forget it," he moaned, his thoughts instantly turning to Donna's abilities of communication. "Where's Donna?" he asked. Jack frowned at him again. "Donna," the Doctor repeated. "Don-na."

"Martha," Jack said, pointing at the door.

"Donna!" the Doctor emphasised. He was sure he was saying it right in English.

Jack pointed to himself, then at the door. "Martha."

The Doctor sighed, and eventually nodded before Jack left at a jog. He looked around the room for a moment, and eventually focussed on the wheelchair beside the bed. He needed to stop lying around and start doing something about the Kryx, as UNIT clearly weren't doing anything. So he raised the sonic to release the wheelchair's brakes, and leant over to pull it to the bed. He locked the brakes once more, released the side rail of his bed. He pushed himself around one-handed so his legs were hanging over the side of the bed, and braced himself.

Deep breath…

He pushed himself up one-handed, and all but fell into the chair. After a few more deep breaths he managed to straighten himself up and transfer all the drugs wired to him to the chair.

Now for the difficult part. He tried both using the sonic to turn the wheels and tried pushing the wheels manually, but with only one arm and a non-motorised wheelchair he was just going to end up going around in circles.

After some thought, he eventually decided to pull himself along using his good leg and use his good arm to push on convenient surfaces. It took some doing, but he eventually managed to pull himself to the door, and got through the doorway only to meet a platoon of armed UNIT guards, who all turned to stare at him.

"Oh, hello," he said, surprised.

The UNIT guards said something and made to move, but before they got there Martha and Jack appeared at the end of the corridor, running towards him.

Martha shouted something, and the guards stood away. She reached him, looking a little more than annoyed, saying something with a very irate tone, holding up her hand.

Stop.

"Martha, I don't need this," the Doctor said, pointing at the UNIT guards.

She shook her head, pointing at him, then miming sleep.

You sleep.

She grabbed the wheelchair and tried to turn him around, but the Doctor quickly grabbed the wheel to stop it turning. "No, I want my Tardis."

She mimed again, clearly not trying to work out what he was saying.

Sleep.

"I'm not sleeping!" the Doctor insisted. "This is ridiculous, I need to find the Tardis."

Martha mimed again, but this time he ignored her.

"If I've been poisoned again that means they're still after me and they'll kill all of your soldiers."

Sleep.

"You're not even listening to me!" the Doctor shouted, frustrated.

Sleep.

"Tardis. I need my Tardis," the Doctor said, imitating a vworping sounded pathetic even to his own ears, laughable in fact. But this wasn't a laughing situation. She was beginning to get quite angry.

Sleep.

"I need my Tardis!" the Doctor yelled. "You must be able to track the ship, they must have a teleport point on Earth!"

She held up her hand again.

Stop.

"Why should I?" the Doctor shouted, thoroughly annoyed now at the fact she wasn't even trying to understand him.

Suddenly she dropped to his height, clearly calming herself down as her voice dropped to soft tones. She said something, conveyed with emotion.

"I can't understand you," he said, finally dropping his voice, but he was still irritated. As she mimed sleeping again, he couldn't help but throw his arm up in exasperation. "Oh, what's the point," he moaned. "You're not even trying to understand me."

She reached up to his face, cupping his cheek. He quickly pushed her hand away. "Get off."

Martha looked a little crestfallen at his callous response, but he didn't care. No one was listening to him anyway.

Jack rested a hand on Martha's shoulder. "Let him do what he wants," he said.

"He's too ill!" Martha stressed.

"Martha, he's clearly extremely agitated about something and staying in that room isn't gonna help."

She paused, sighed, and stood up.

"Wi-jhu'leii-o'eon'hall bula ei!?" the Doctor shouted, his hand entangled in his hair.

Jack dropped to him. "Doctor, calm down. What do you want?"

The Doctor made a gesture like a light flashing on and off, accompanied with a vworping noise. For the first time, Jack and Martha actually listened to him.

"Tardis," Jack assumed, looking at Martha. "Have we got any idea where she is?"

She shook her head.

"There must be something," Jack insisted.

Martha sighed. "Look, we could ask the General if Unit have made any progress but I don't think it'll help."

"Let's just do something," Jack insisted. "Just take him to the General, let him figure out there's nothing we can do and he'll calm down."

"Okay," Martha concluded, nodding at him and the Doctor. "Go and tell the nurses I'm taking him to the General."

Jack nodded, patted the Doctor's shoulder and left. Martha took hold of the handles of the wheelchair, and the Doctor quickly held the wheel again.

Martha nearly shouted at him, but forced herself to calm down, reminding herself that doctors, especially this doctor, made very bad patients. He wasn't in anyway similar to any patient she'd had before. Quite a lot of them were traumatised and it took a lot of effort to get them to go out of their room. With the Doctor it was a struggle to get him to stay in.

Had she really expected it any other way?

She pointed to the corridor to indicate that they weren't going back into the room. He relented his grip, and she began to push him.

They reached the General's office, but he wasn't there. Martha pushed him in anyway, deciding to wait for the General to emerge. The Doctor was already up before she'd stopped the chair, stumbling to the desk and dropping down into the leather seat.

"Doctor…" Martha began, but there was no point continuing. He was already rummaging through the desk with his sonic in hand, obviously looking for any clues to the whereabouts of his TARDIS.

The door opened, and General Spitz entered. He stopped immediately, frowned at the Doctor, and then raised an eyebrow to Martha. "Can I help?" he asked, confused as the Doctor completely ignored him, paper flying everywhere.

"Sorry," Martha apologised. "He does this. We were wondering if there was any update on his Tardis? He's a bit worried about her, I think."

The Doctor went for the drawers next, pulling them out and rifling through.

"No," the General said eventually. "And I would appreciate it if he stopped decimating my desk."

"He'll get bored soon," Martha assured Spitz.

The General stepped forward to the Time Lord. "Doctor, this is complete insubordination…"

"His middle name," Martha muttered under her breath.

With a buzz of sonic blue the top drawer of the desk opened, and the Doctor groped around until suddenly he stopped, and looked at Spitz with wide eyes.

Martha watched as Spitz stared back, confused. Without moving his eyes from Spitz the Doctor reached into the drawer and pulled out a small black box. Calmly, he pressed the tip of his sonic screwdriver to the base of the box, and turned it on.

Suddenly there was a quick flash and a strange high-pitched whine, startling Martha. For a moment she wondered what had caused it, until she realised the General was gone. She was about to call out for him, but her voice almost immediately died in her throat.

Stood exactly where he'd been was the now quite familiar thin reptilian being, with shining, scaly brown skin and a thin, featureless mouth. Its eyes were a shining black, like large glossy beads bulging out of its face. Even as it blinked it eyelids closed from the side, accompanied with a quiet hiss and a flicker of its thin tongue under sharp, unforgiving fangs. Its arms were elongated and slender with sharp claws on the end of what she could only deemed to be its hands - arms that were doubled in thickness by a tentacle on each side that had both been forced down one bulging shirt sleeve.

If it had been a lighter moment, Martha would have laughed at the way the general's uniform hung loosely on the thin alien frame. But it wasn't funny. Not in the slightest. The alien looked at her with the shining, devilish eyes, and all Martha could do was stand there, staring. She had only ever seen the other alien unconscious or as a captive, and distinctly without much threat. But this one was free. Free, armed, and utterly terrifying.

In the brief, stunned silence that followed, Martha forced herself to stop gaping and start considering her options. The door was ajar. If she started running now, she could probably make it out before the alien could stop her. But that would leave the Doctor at its mercy. But he could handle himself.

… Not in his state.

She couldn't just leave him, even though he probably wanted her to.

The alien twitched, and she finally forced herself to move, going straight to the Doctor and grabbing his good arm, pulling him desperately towards the door.

"Krashk'korzak…" the alien hissed, and went straight for its gun.

"Get down!" the Doctor shouted in mid-step, grabbing Martha and wrenching her down to the ground just as the first shot was fired over their heads.

Martha started shouting, obviously trying to call to the outside for help. The Doctor quickly grabbed her shoulder, pulling her to face him.

"Run!" he shouted, gesturing as best he could at the door. "I'll distract him!"

Martha nodded, the meaning very, very clear. She got up, but before the Doctor could attract the Kryx's attention the alien launched forward in the blink of an eye and plunged his fangs straight into her neck.

"No!" the Doctor shouted. If his immune system had that much trouble coping with the poison, Rassilon only knew how devastating it would be to humans. But he couldn't do anything. The Kryx was lean and weedy-looking, but complex muscles in the Kryx resulted in a savage, hidden strength. There was no way he could wrestle the Kryx off of Martha, and definitely not in his current state.

So instead he dived forward to the Kryx and drew his gun out of his holster, immediately backing to the other side of the room.

"Hey, look what I've got!" the Doctor shouted, waving the gun. Finally the Kryx turned, dropping Martha who collapsed to the floor, unconscious or dead. The Doctor couldn't tell which.

"Vashkooor…" the Kryx hissed.

Next plan? his brain asked him seriously.

He could admit to himself that, as per usual, had no idea where he was going with this. But no. He may have lost his voice, his co-ordination, use of his left leg and right arm, a bit of his hair and his yo-yo, but he hadn't lost his knack. His knack for improvisation. That was his thing. Relying on whims and instincts, madcap plans with impossible in the description, that was him. He was the Doctor. And he was a whimmer.

So, on a complete whim, he raised the gun and emptied the barrel. Five bullets and a shell dropped to the floor in a series of clicks.

"Whoops!" he exclaimed, looking sheepish. "Looks like we're both unarmed."

The Kryx bore his fangs and raised his claws in response, getting ready to strike.

"... Except those," the Doctor realised dully, and on his next whim, promptly threw the gun straight at the window of the office. But without much coordination in him, the gun flew off in completely the wrong direction and hit a filing cabinet with a clang. It dropped redundantly to the floor.

… Oh.

The Kryx darted forward, and before the Doctor knew it he was sent flying across the room, and promptly went through the very window he'd been trying to throw the gun through, headfirst in an explosion of glass. The alarms began before he hit the floor, the force of the throw propelling him in a roll to hit the other wall, crying out as the pain immediately soared to new, terrible levels. He nearly passed out, but forced himself to stay conscious through some sort of miraculous willpower.

Move, Doctor, move!

The Kryx appeared in his view long before he could gather his thoughts up enough to move. He grabbed the Doctor by the neck, his claws slicing through his skin again as the alien dragged him back into the room over the broken glass. The Doctor tried to flail, or wriggle, or do anything that would make it difficult for the alien, but his efforts were beyond useless.

As soon as the Kryx had him back in the room he was on top of him, the alien's hands wrapped around his neck. The Time Lord summoned every bead of power left in his wrecked body to grab the arms and force them away, but the alien was far stronger than him. All he could do was lie there, eyes bulging, trying desperately to get some air in.

It was pathetic, the way the Time Lord squirmed. How could a being so feared by the universe be so utterly helpless?

No matter. The Chief wanted the Time Lord dead, and with Klax-lox failing to deliver on the task, Visch-nar was all too happy to oblige. This meant promotion. Perhaps even adoption by the Chief. Stupid half-breed Klax-lox would be disinherited for his failure, and Visch-nar would be in line for Chiefdom.

All the females he wanted. Riches beyond his imagining. Command of an empire. All his. Just for killing one alien.

"Victory for the Kryx!" Visch-nar shouted triumphantly, and squeezed so hard that something in the Time Lord's neck audibly broke.

The pain didn't even matter, as it could never contest with the avalanche currently going on in the Doctor's head.

But the Kryx knew him. He knew about Time Lord regeneration. He'd happily crush the Doctor's skull to prevent regeneration, and judging by how quickly he was using up his respiratory bypass system, that really wouldn't be long. The Doctor almost wished the Kryx knew about arteries so he'd just cut his throat and be done with it.

The building alarms were still going, drilling right into his brain so loudly the Doctor felt as if his entire brain was bouncing about in his skull. But alarms were meant to alarm people. Where were the alarmed people!?

Where's Jack!?

"Get off!" the Doctor tried to shout, but all that came out was a rasp. The Kryx pushed some more, clearly getting agitated that he wasn't dying and quickly as he'd like. After a moment the Kryx fumed and finally got off of him, leaving him completely free to move. But even a foot away from the door the Doctor couldn't move to escape. He couldn't move a limb or even a single finger, and the gasps of breath he was trying to take accompanied with chesty coughs just weren't enough. His neck was broken. He knew that. He felt that.

The Kryx reappeared in his blurry vision, towering over him. He knew he'd won. He raised a blurry black object - the gun, it had to be, now loaded - and raised it to the Doctor's head.

That's it. It's over.

The Kryx's finger moved to the trigger.

Before Visch-nar could pull the trigger there came the sound of running footsteps from down the corridor. He panicked, dived to the desk for his morphic translation box and activated it. Immediately he morphed back into General Spitz, and promptly shot himself in the leg.

He screamed in pain, dropping to the floor next to the dazed Time Lord. He'd have to kill it later.

Hordes of human soldiers ran in, lead by the Captain in the trenchcoat.

"Quick, after it!" Visch-nar shouted, pointing to the right, his speech translating through the box. "The alien ran that way!"

Half of the soldiers turned and ran to follow his command. The Captain remained, however, pointing the soldiers to the woman before diving down next to the Time Lord.

"What happened!?" the man asked quickly.

"They were being attacked by one of the aliens, it was suffocating the Doctor when I ran in, it panicked, shot me and ran!" Visch-nar gasped, holding his bloody leg.

"What about Martha!?"

"I don't know, she was like that when I got here!"

The human looked at the Time Lord, panicking. "He's awake… Doctor, can you hear me?"

"N-qe'afa'po… po'afa ce'Kryx..." the Time Lord rasped, staring at Visch-nar, clearly wracked with pain.

"You've hit your head, try to stay awake, the doctors will get here in a sec," the man said caringly, cupping the Time Lord's cheek. The affection was sickening Visch-nar. Pathetic, emotional humans.

"N-qe'af'po…" the Time Lord stressed, still staring right into Visch-nar's eyes.

"Just relax, you're gonna be fine," the human seemed to purr, kissing the Time Lord's forehead.

Yuck.

"N-qe'afa'po..." the Time Lord said again, almost in tears. "N-qe'afa'po…"

"It's okay," the human whispered, stroking the Time Lord's face. "It's okay."

"It was him, Jack," the Doctor said for the fifth time, barely able to form words. "He's a Kryx. It was him. It was him…"

Nobody understood.