Author's Note: Alright, sorry for the delay. I thought the last one would have been the penultimate chapter but it got too long and I realized I needed some more time. This chapter is mostly explanations; I'm working on the last chapter to be a bit more of a cute ending.
So THIS is the penultimate chapter.
Sorry for the waiting time and changes.
Please enjoy it nonetheless.

Jack climbed the ladder to his office.
The Doctor sat at Jack's desk, staring into space. He didn't even care to look up as Jack entered.

"Don't worry, the girls are getting along great," answered Jack the question the Doctor hadn't asked.
And wouldn't ask...
Jack stepped closer and stared into the Doctor's glassy eyes.
They were darker than usual. Not the beautiful hazel brown with a dash of golden sparkles, no – they were empty.

Jack moved a hand in front of one of the Doctor's eyes.
He didn't blink.

"Hello?" asked Jack, getting nervous by now, "Anyone in there? Doctor?"
He didn't budge.
Jack came closer, grasping both of his hands.
"Doctor?"
All of a sudden the Doctor shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the nothingness only he could see.

Jack caressed his cheeks, wiping away the silently running tears.
The Doctor cried quietly... no. It didn't look like crying. He was neither hyperventilating nor sobbing, no sounds escaped from his lips.
His heartbeats were more than average.
If it wasn't for his leaking eyes Jack wouldn't even have noticed anything strange.

"No, Jack," said the Doctor all of a sudden, causing Jack to give a jerk.
"What? Doctor?"
"I don't need a doctor," mumbled the Doctor quietly as he popped his head to one side, the dark void inside of his eyes slowly trickling to the lowest point.
Beneath the dark and disappearing shadow a pair of piercing blue eyes appeared.

Jack backed away.
"Doctor?"

The Doctor stared at him absent-minded, as if he'd never seen anything his size and height before.
And then he blinked.

The Doctor raised his head a bit, his eyes focussing on Jack.

"Doctor?" repeated Jack carefully, slowly approaching him.
The Doctor turned his head this way and that way before reaching up to his neck, scratching it thoughtfully.

"Doctor?"
"Yes, Jack, apparently the Doctor is IN," replied the Doctor and arose from his seat, looking around irritated, "at least in here," he cast another puzzled glance at his surroundings,
"Wherever that is."

"My office, Doctor," explained Jack, eyeing up the Doctor suspiciously.
"Mh. Can't remember ever being here. Why did you bring me here in the first place?" asked the Doctor.
"You brought yourself," replied Jack, "I didn't even know you were here."
"Fancy that," smiled the Doctor, "Neither did I."
He sagged back into the chair, his hands clutching at his stomach.

Jack pulled a wry face.
"At least that's over now," said the Doctor who had pulled up his shirt to take a look at the scars across his stomach.

"And the... child?" asked Jack carefully.
The Doctor stared at him, as if concentrating on remembering something important.
"The child?" repeated the Doctor, still thinking, "What child?"

"Doctor you... is this some kind of birth related amnesia?" Jack went on.
"What... what are you even...?"

"Please, keep calm," said Jack, getting nervous again as the Doctor arose, still clutching at the healing wounds on his stomach. It was the blank stare that made him uneasy.
He'd never seen the Doctor so devastated and God... he'd seen so much in the past months!
He forced the Doctor to sit down again and backed away:
"Please, just wait, I'll call you a doctor..."

"No need for that," said a voice behind him.
Jack turned around to face what he'd once known as the Doctor's face.
Which at the moment belonged to his previous reincarnation.

He looked back and forth between the Doctor's regenerations.
"You're not even a proper doctor," snapped the Doctor.
"Just like you," snapped his previous reincarnation.
"Yeah, but I don't run around cutting people open with a little help from my monstrous green friend!" yelled the Doctor.
"No need for that kind of language," his previous regeneration shook his head, "And Dr. Malohkeh is a very talented Silurian."
"Oh, is that the case? Well, then I won't definitely mind, as long as he doesn't try to sew a tail to my body..." the Doctor began nastily but broke off as a tremor spread through his body.
Once again he collapsed onto the chair.

"You need rest," said the Doctor's previous regeneration levelly, placing a hand on the Doctor's shoulder in a calming way.
"How come you are an expert on this?" snapped the Doctor.
Jack knew this tone of voice.

It was the threatening calmness before an approaching storm.
"You think you know what it's like to bear a child?" hissed the Doctor.
Right, thought Jack, backing away a bit, and there we go...
"How dare you come in here and patronize me like a damn father? Didn't I just gave birth to one that you could chaperon? And do you know... do you even think you know...Do you even think you can understand how I'm feeling right now?!"

The Doctor's outraged voice managed to echo, even in Jack's small office.
The Doctor's previous regeneration breathed in deeply, giving his future self a penetrating stare.
"Actually, I do," he said, his tone of voice as cold as ice.
They stared into one another's eyes.

"You seem to forget that we share the same past," his regeneration went on after a while.
The Doctor snorted audibly,
"But you don't know what it was like to have a child at my age," he went on sourly.
"You've got a point there," agreed his previous regeneration, adding bitterly "But soon I will."

Jack took a deep breath, feeling two pairs of the Doctor's eyes on him.
But their attention was just what he wanted right now.

"So, the child..." he began, to release the built-up tension.
"What about it?" snapped both Doctors simultaneously only to give each other accusing glares as soon as they had both spoken.
"What is this child...? I mean... what's the purpose of it?"
"What is the purpose of any child?" snorted the Doctor, "What are they for, anyway?"
"A rhetorical question, implying a disturbing past," concluded the previous Doctor, "Jack, you know me in this future form. Am I always like this?"

Jack stared into the blue glistening eyes of the Doctor's previous regeneration.
He couldn't believe what he'd just seen.
The Doctor's former regeneration may have abducted his future regeneration to perform operations on him, to force him into bearing a child and now... they were arguing about their behaviour.
Jack had to bring to mind that both those Doctors were forms of the same man.
Who was, apparently, even madder than he had expected.

"Oh and let me guess, you're still trying that 'I'm the villain people need' cliché, aren't you? I thought I had grown out of it by now," nagged the Doctor, "And by the way, I must have been you. I must have talked to my future self, which is me by now. I must have been here before. Well, actually I'm here, we both are and I was because you're here and... How come I'm not having any kind of déjà vu?"

"You have forgotten," replied the previous Doctor before looking at Jack. "We all have. And we all will forget it again. Dr. Malohkeh has developed a drug that will help us all to forget what has happened."

"And you think I'll just be stupid enough to take it?" asked the Doctor accusingly, "How could I trust you?"
"I know that you'll trust me," said the previous Doctor, "Because you used to be me and you knew that your future self would do it. It has to happen."
"It's a time-loop," mumbled the Doctor before scratching his chin while thinking.

Eventually he shook his head.
"No, no, no, it just doesn't work like this. You can't just come here, put a child inside of me, take it away from me and disappear without saying anything, because you know that I've done the same. A time-loop just doesn't work like this, and by the way, that would mean that I'm constantly crossing my own Timeline, which is also, I have to remind you, forbidden."

"You tell me," snapped the previous Doctor.
"I just did."
"Keep telling that to yourself."
"I just did!" yelled the Doctor.
"Doctor, please!" said Jack, trying to calm them.

The Doctor breathed in deeply and cocked and eyebrow at his past regeneration.
"I'm going to ask you one question, only one thing. I won't ask you where you're going to take the baby, how you managed to create it, where your Silurian friend got his knowledge of Time Lord anatomy from or even if you're going to repeat the procedure any time soon. Just one thing I want to ask you:
Why? Just: why?"

"There was a big disturbance," said the Doctor's former self, "a gap in the fabric of reality, threatening to demolish the space-time-continuum. And I... I didn't know what else to do."

"The Doctor at his wit's end?" harrumphed the Doctor, "Doesn't sound like me at all."
"The universe started to collapse... there were signs that only in a few months..." the Doctor's previous regeneration began before hesitating.
"You see... time was starting to rewrite itself. But not in the way of changing history. It started untying and eliminating itself. Just one little imbalance in the universe and poof!..."
The Doctor nodded; and he was still obviously lost in thought as he added, "And up goes the donkey."

Both Jack and the previous Doctor stared at him as if he was out of his mind.

"Anyway," the Doctor's previous regeneration went on, "We didn't have much time to reverse it. And we didn't know how much damage it had already done. So we... I..." he turned to face the Doctor, staring at him with begging blue eyes:
"Like I said I didn't know what else to do. The earth was in danger, well, not only the earth, most of the planets, at least the way we know them. And the disruption was starting to spread. The disequilibrium..."

"What kind of imbalance are we talking about?" interrupted Jack, "Did anything go wrong? Like someone pulled the wrong lever on the great big machine called 'Universe'?"
"Shut up Jack," snapped both of the Doctors before sharing an puzzled stare.
"Not the right times for jokes, I'm afraid..." sighed the Doctor after the embarrassed silence had dispersed.
"It wasn't meant to be a joke," growled Jack.

"Though he's got a point there, you know," the Doctor went on accusingly, "Usually when I appear I try to tie up the loose ends, summarize it all..."
The Doctor's previous regeneration hesitated; he avoided the Doctor's furious stare.
"Answer me!" yelled the Doctor, causing even Jack to jolt, "What was it?"

"A thing," said the previous Doctor.
"The universe doesn't disrupt itself that easily," growled the Doctor, "What kind of a thing?!"
"A living being," was the reluctant reply.
"I think we're on here to something," mumbled the Doctor before approaching his past self, "What kind of living being?"

The Doctor's previous regeneration sighed, his flashing blue eyes darting a quick glance at the Doctor in front of him.

"A Time Lord," he said eventually, probably a bit too dramatic.