a/n: Thank you to all of you for sticking with this story, particularly to those of you who have left reviews that I haven't answered. Even though I haven't responded very often to them, I do appreciate them. Very much.

For those of you who are curious, there should be about two more chapters followed by a short epilogue.

Chapter Forty-Eight—London, late in the evening, 6 October, 2007, and early morning, 7 October, 2007

"So we're really goin' to go through with this?" asked Mickey.

"Got a better idea?" the Doctor asked as he circled the console.

"Yeah. Why don't we just talk to him? It worked with that other you."

"That was different. He knew he was the Doctor, and I could telepathically connect with him to not only let him know what was going on, but also to convey the urgency of the situation." He spun a dial and moved to the next control panel. "What are we supposed to do, say, 'Hello, you don't know us and have absolutely no reason to trust us, but you aren't who you think you are, you're actually a 900-year-old Time Lord who has managed to get himself turned human by your time machine. And by the way we need to inject you with a substance you've never heard of to cure you of a toxin that you don't remember getting poisoned with and is not currently making you sick, and then we're going to upend your entire life by turning you back into a Time Lord. Oh, and we're gonna do it by opening a watch.'" He looked up at Mickey over the console. "Oh yeah, that'll go over well."

"But I still think—"

"All right, all right. Call that Plan B," he said, mostly to get Mickey to shut up.

He yanked down the lever to start the materialization process. The console room was filled with the sound of the TARDIS leaving the Time Vortex and forcing itself into normal space. It ended with its usual thud.

"Ha!" he crowed, grinning madly. "That was almost smooth! The second dose of the antidote really did the trick. One final dose and the TARDIS'll be completely back to normal!"

Then he glanced at the monitor. His grin faded.

"Oh," he said. "That's not good."

"What's not good?" asked Mickey.

"Well, it appears we might be a little late. I don't know how late, but it's clearly night outside and when we left it was midmorning."

Another glance at the monitor and he broke out into a grin again. Rose was emerging from the stairwell at a run.

He rushed across the console room and flung open the doors. He had only taken a step or two out of the TARDIS before he had Rose Tyler in his arms.

He hugged her tightly, lifting her up until her feet swung in the air, reveling in the feel of her arms around him.

"Oh, I missed you!" she said, her face buried in his neck.

"Me too," he told her, meaning so much more than that.

"I was worried I'd never see you again."

Filled with trepidation, he gently set her down on the ground. "How long has it been for you?" he asked.

"Three months."

He winced. "Oops?"

"So much for ten seconds," she said. She lightly swatted his arm.

Mickey emerged from the TARDIS, and Rose gave him a big hug as well. The Doctor consoled himself that the hug she'd given him was bigger than the one she was currently giving her ex-boyfriend.

She backed away and scrutinized Mickey.

"Look at you, looking so posh," she said.

Mickey glanced down at himself. "Oh, yeah. Haven't changed since Dallas."

"Dallas?" Rose asked.

"Yeah. The second time."

She raised her eyebrows. "Sounds like you had a good time," she said, sounding slightly jealous.

"That's not exactly how I'd put it," Mickey responded. "Oh! Doctor?" He nodded in the direction of Bucknall House.

The Doctor turned. His younger self had just emerged from the stairwell and was slowly crossing the courtyard, a look of shock on his face.

"Plan B?" Mickey asked cheekily.

"Plan B," the Doctor grudgingly agreed.

"Doctor, I think there's something you need to know…" Rose began in a low voice.

His younger self walked past them and began to circle the TARDIS, completely ignoring them.

"Incredible," he said. "Absolutely incredible."

The Doctor gave Rose a puzzled look.

Later, she mouthed.

"It's all true, isn't it?" the younger Doctor breathed, still staring at the TARDIS.

"Yep, it's all true," she told him.

He met her eyes and took her hands in his. "Rose, I am so sorry for not believing you."

She gave him a soft smile. "Found it pretty unbelievable myself at first." She tilted her head towards the TARDIS's open door. "Do you want to see inside, Doctor?"

"May I?"

"It's your ship," she told him, and motioned for him to enter.

The Doctor opened his mouth to protest, after all it was technically his ship, and his younger self's TARDIS was about a quarter mile away, but one look from Rose made him shut it.

The Doctor and Mickey followed Rose and his younger self into the TARDIS. The younger Doctor was staring around himself in open-mouthed amazement.

"This is…" he began.

"Bigger on the inside?" the Doctor suggested, sidling up to Rose.

"Well, I was gonna say dimensionally transcendental," he responded absently, staring at the vaulted ceiling, "but I s'pose that works too."

"Rose," the Doctor said, sotto voce. "How long has he known?"

"'Bout five hours," she replied under her breath without looking at him. "Give or take."

"How—"

"Later!" she hissed, and this time the look she shot him was more of a glare.

He shut up again.

The younger Doctor stared at the controls for a moment, then ran a finger along the edge of the console. He stared up at the time rotor. "Unbelievable. It's exactly like my drawings." He slowly began to grin. "Fantastic! Absolutely fantastic!" He walked back to Rose. "But don't call me Doctor, Rose. Call me John."

"I thought you didn't want me to call you John."

"'S better than Doctor. Whoever the Doctor is…whoever this magnificent ship belongs to… it's not me. I'm not him. Maybe I was once, but I'm not now."

Rose took John's hand and smiled up at him. "You're more the Doctor than you know."

John turned to the Doctor and Mickey, for the first time truly acknowledging their existence.

"So," he said, "Who are you two?"

Rose shot the Doctor The Look, not just any old look but the look that said he'd better play along with whatever she said or she'd sic Jackie on him. She shot an identical look at Mickey.

"John, this is Mickey Smith," she said.

"We met at the garage," Mickey told him. Still holding Rose's hand in his left one, John automatically shook Mickey's outstretched hand with his right.

"Did we?" John's eyes narrowed. "Oh, yeah. You're the one who told me you didn't know Rose. Thought your name was Ricky."

"It's Mickey!" Mickey snapped, snatching back his hand.

"And this is… Jack Harkness," Rose interjected. Mickey and the Doctor stared at each other and then as one turned and stared at her. She gave them The Look again. "He's a Time Agent from the 51st century."

"Former Time Agent," the Doctor corrected. He turned to John. As they shook, he gave his former self a cheeky smile and a wink. "Captain Jack Harkness, at your service," he said in a broad American accent. Rose stared at him, wide-eyed, and gave him a tiny head shake. He coughed.

"Sorry," he said in his normal accent. "Sometimes I forget what time zone I'm in."

"Probably why he's a former Time Agent," John said to Rose, not quite under his breath. She bit her lips, trying not to laugh.

Mickey snorted. The Doctor shot him a look.

"Jack and Mickey travel with us," Rose interjected.

"Really," John said flatly, clearly not impressed with either of them. He looked around the room again. "Where am I?"

"You're in the control room," the Doctor offered.

John gave him a look that stated flat out that he thought the Doctor was especially thick.

"I know that," he said slowly. "But if this ship is from my future, where am I?"

"Oh," the Doctor answered as the penny dropped. Maybe his former human self was right about him being thick. (Oh, that wasn't a pleasant thought.) "You're… he's… in the engine room. Fixing… stuff. And he's gonna stay there as long as you're here. Not good for both of you to be in the same room. Paradoxes, you know. Time Lords like… you… can prevent paradoxes if necessary, but this time it isn't necessary, so he decided to stay there and send, well, me, to handle this."

John turned back to Rose. "Is that what I am? A Time Lord? That's not a bit pretentious, is it?" he asked dryly.

The Doctor gave a resigned shrug. After all, he wasn't wrong.

"So, did you… and the Doctor… figure out what was wrong, Jack?" Rose asked him.

"Yep!" the Doctor said. "Seems that both the Doctor here and his TARDIS were exposed to a toxin that is fatal to time sensitive species." He addressed John. "By turning you human, she saved your life."

"You called the ship 'she'. I'm getting the impression that there's more to it than just the convention of calling sailing ships 'she'." He turned to Rose. "You did too. You even said something about her being lonely."

Rose nodded. "That's 'cause she's alive."

"That explains a lot," John said to Rose. "I went back to the alley tonight, and…she…flashed her light at me. I thought it had to be some sort of weird coincidence…"

"She recognized you," the Doctor said quietly.

John took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. "Blimey, this is a lot to take in."

"Culture shock," the Doctor told him. "Happens to the best of us."

Still holding his hand, Rose leaned against John and rested her head on his shoulder. At the sight, the Doctor felt a twisted blend of gratification and jealousy. He was gratified that she felt so much affection for even a human form of him, and he was jealous because… well, he didn't really want to examine where the jealousy was coming from.

"So, what's next?" John asked.

"Next?" the Doctor asked blankly.

John rolled his eyes. "What happens to me next? If I've been exposed to some sort of, what'd you call it, 'time toxin', isn't it gonna make me sick?"

"Not as long as you're human. But we need to treat you with the antidote before you turn back or we're back to square one."

John looked uncertainly at Rose. "Time machines that are alive, okay, I can believe that. After all, I'm seeing it right in front of me. And as for being an alien, well, I can't really argue about that either considering I don't remember anything about myself, although I have to say the 900-year-old bit is a little hard to wrap my head around. But this business of turning human and back… I mean, how does that even work? Is that something Time Lords do, turn themselves into other species?"

"Not usually," the Doctor answered. "What do you mean, you don't remember anything about yourself?"

He looked questioningly at Rose, who gave him a meaningful look that he couldn't decipher. Blimey, there were a lot of looks floating around, most of which he didn't understand. He was really off his game today.

"Jack, John came to in an alley not far from here on New Year's Day, without any memories," said Rose.

"I don't remember anything before then, not who I was, not my family, not where I was from… not even my name," John added.

"I don't understand. The TARDIS should have…" the Doctor said, scratching his head thoughtfully. Somewhere in the back of his mind something nagged at him, but whatever it was refused to come to the surface.

"Should have what?" John asked.

"Never mind." The Doctor gave him a bright grin. "Not important."

The look Rose shot him then he completely understood.

A little while later, John sat on the examination table in the Med Bay, Rose next to him holding his hand. He'd suggested he examine John before administering the final dose of the antidote. The business of John's amnesia troubled him, since with the chameleon arch the TARDIS should have provided a background for him and false memories to match. The fact that she hadn't made him wonder what else she hadn't done.

Mickey had wandered off somewhere, saying something about food or a change of clothes or something, but the Doctor really hadn't paid attention, instead focusing on his previous self. Despite trying to appear blasé, the Doctor could tell he was unnerved by the entire situation, if for no other reason John was clutching Rose's hand like it was a lifeline.

John raised an eyebrow. "And you've got medical training?" he asked skeptically.

"A bit."

"A bit," John repeated, deadpan. "What does that mean?"

"I've had the standard field training for Time Agents," the Doctor told him. He flashed him a grin that was supposed to be reassuring but he suspected was anything but. "All types of first aid, of course, as well as general health evaluations, immunization jabs, IVs, that sort of thing. Minor surgeries if necessary. Can't do major surgery, can't replace a liver or something." He frowned, pulling on his ear thoughtfully. "Well, I could in a pinch. Well, I say a pinch… I did remove an appendix once in the middle of…" His voice trailed off when he saw the look on John's face. He recognized that look. After all, he'd given that look to countless others. With that face, even.

He cleared his throat.

"I'll just get set up for the exam, shall I?" he said with a jerk of his head towards the opposite side of the room.

"So he really travels with us?" John asked in a low voice as he crossed the room. "Why on Earth would I have him do that?"

The Doctor watched them out of the corner of his eye. Rose was looking at him, her mouth twitching with mirth. She knew he could hear them.

"Because he's been useful. Occasionally."

The Doctor rolled his eyes.

John let out a snort of derision. "Useful? Somehow I find that hard to believe." He paused for a moment. "So… this Jack, were you and him…"

"No," she said. She sounded like she was reassuring him rather than just passing on information. "No, we weren't."

"Y'sure? Because I've seen how he looks at you, and I'd understand if you were. I mean, he is a bit… pretty."

"Is he?" she asked lightly. "Maybe. But me and him, no, we weren't together. Friends? Yeah. But not together."

There was another pause, then John asked, "Are you sure about all this?"

"About the exam?" Rose asked. "If Jack says you need it, then you need it."

"You trust him that much?"

"With my life. Literally. First thing he did when I met him is save my life."

They continued to talk, voices lower than before, and even though he was straining to hear them, he no longer could make out their conversation. He surreptitiously glanced over at them. They sat pressed up against each other, heads close together, hands linked, fingers entwined.

Even from where he stood, he could see that John was still holding her hand tightly, as if for dear life. He'd relied on Rose for her strength and stability before he regenerated, and it was clear that John did as well. When had that changed, he wondered. And when had she stopped looking at him with such… adoration? And why hadn't he noticed?

Reinette, he thought. No, he immediately decided, it was wrong to blame her for his problems with Rose. Things had begun to change between them long before that anyway. They'd actually been a bit wrong-footed ever since he'd regenerated. They'd only recently begun to get back on track. Then they'd met Sarah Jane.

It was his fault, he realized with a pang. Seeing Sarah Jane had triggered fears of getting too close, caring too much.

They hadn't been growing apart. He'd been pulling away from her.

Glancing back at Rose and John again, he felt another twinge of jealousy. No, not jealousy. Loss. What he wouldn't give to get that closeness back.

Shoving the thought out of his mind, with a snap the Doctor loaded the jet injector with the last ampule of the antidote and placed it on a small trolley filled with medical equipment. Then he crossed back to the examining table, taking the trolley with him.

"I'm only going to do a standard exam," he told John when he joined them. "A lot of this stuff won't be familiar to you, and some are calibrated for non-human physiologies. We won't need most of it unless there's a problem."

"Wait a minute. Let me see if I remember them," Rose said. She pointed at things as she named them. "Um, stethoscope, general scanner, non…" Her voice trailed off.

"Non-invasive blood analyzer," the Doctor supplied.

"Yeah, non-invasive blood analyzer…" She frowned.

"CT scanner, handheld EKG/EEG machine, jet injector," John finished.

The Doctor stared at him. "How did you know that?"

"Dunno. 'S always weird when I know things like that," he said. "Happens a lot though. Mostly with languages, but sometimes other things, like that stuff."

"Also what the console room looked like, or that weird martial art you know," Rose added. "Can't remember the name of it."

"Doesn't really have a name," John told her. "It's similar to Aikido, but has a few differences, few extra moves…"

As they spoke, the Doctor's eyebrows rose higher and higher. He guessed they were currently hovering somewhere near his hairline. There was no way John should know those things. Particularly Venusian Aikido.

Frowning, the Doctor ran the general scanner over John, then the EEG scanner. Other than slightly elevated activity in his hippocampus, he was completely normal. And completely human.

"And?" Rose asked as he put the scanner down.

"Fine. Absolutely fine," he told them. He picked up the jet injector.

"Will this give me my memories back?" John asked.

"Probably not. I'm sorry."

John looked at Rose again, clearly seeking reassurance. She nodded.

"All right, let's do this." He pulled off his leather jacket and rolled up his sleeve. He winced at the jab, then gave Rose a crooked grin. "Not as bad as your mum's slap." Then he sighed, tapping his temple. "Still nothin'."

"It might take a minute or two before it takes effect," the Doctor warned.

"Now what?" Rose asked.

"Now the Doctor and I will do a little hop with our TARDIS to the alley and treat his TARDIS with the antidote. Rose, will you two be all right here for a little bit?"

As he left the room, he heard her murmur words of encouragement to his younger self.

He hadn't made it very far down the hall when the Doctor began to feel a chill in the back of his mind. The effects of the antitoxin administered to John flowed through his body like streams of icy water trickling down his skin, from the top of his head along his neck and his torso, then past his arms and legs to his fingers and toes. He stopped in his tracks as the cold turned inward, penetrating through skin and muscle, sinew and bone, to his blood stream and nervous system.

Then, as the antidote took effect, burning electrical impulses raced like wildfire along nerves throughout his body, ascending from fingertips and toes to his spinal cord and upward through brain stem, cerebellum and cerebrum, the antitoxin repairing all the damaged synapses in its path.

New memories began to flood into his mind.

He'd been right. After being turned down by Rose when he'd asked her to travel with him, still dangerously unstable from the Time War, he'd begun playing with fixed points, desperately hoping that he could make a change to one without damaging the time/space continuum.

First he went to Dallas. He'd actually only been there to examine the timelines springing from the assassination, but when the opportunity to save the girl's life presented itself, he'd leapt at it.

When that had worked—when he'd made a change without blowing a hole in the Universe—he decided to try again to save Charley's family. This time, armed with the knowledge of where they weren't from his memories of being there with Charley, he'd made quick work of finding the Robertsons, but only after being roped into a photo with the Daniels family, whom he'd also prevented from boarding the ship.

After his successes with one person and then with several, he'd begun planning to try and save something bigger, perhaps even a small town, with a goal of conquering larger and larger targets until he'd built up enough experience to be able to save an entire planet.

A specific one destroyed in the Time War.

His arrival at Krakatoa had purely been a coincidence. Distracted by what he thought to be a bit of space junk that was jumping time tracks, he'd given chase, ending up on Sebesi, a small island in the Sunda Strait a short distance from the volcano. He'd realized his space junk was a Dalek Time Bomb shortly before it went off, but he'd been delayed—by the fallen tree, by the tsunami, and simply by the distance back to the TARDIS—long enough that he'd already been suffering from the effects of the temporotoxicum poisoning when he'd returned to the ship and had forgotten to treat himself. By some miracle, he'd still managed to program in the coordinates for the Powell Estate, but something had gone wrong. Something within the console blew and the controls had caught fire. And from his view of the holographic playback of the console room, the Doctor knew that in the rush to repair the TARDIS, his younger self had bumped the chrono-temporal relay switch, resetting the arrival time to New Year's Eve, 2006.

Then… nothing.

No, not nothing, he realized, as he began to remember waking up in the alley, unable to remember anything about himself and feeling like he'd been pummeled by a champion prize fighter.

The restoration of this memory felt different than the others had. He'd regained those after he'd felt the repair of the corresponding synapses. But this… this felt more like a key had unlocked a hidden door in his mind.

This must be one of the ones his Eighth self had seen as a shadow in his mind.

He gasped as newly unlocked memories flooded his mind; as if a dam containing them had burst, he felt like he was drowning in them. Under their onslaught, he staggered to the wall, using it to hold him upright when his knees threatened to give out.

He'd traveled north, ending up in Manchester, searching for any clue to his identity. When that failed, he'd returned to London, eventually taking a job as a mechanic in a garage on the Powell Estate, all the while haunted by his dreams: of space and monsters and alien landscapes, of a blue box that flew amongst the stars. And of a beautiful blonde girl with big eyes and a huge smile.

The memories came faster and faster, overwhelming him.

Seeing the girl from his dreams in the garage.

Protecting her from that piece of work Jimmy Stone.

Holding her as she slept on the sofa in his flat.

Dancing with her at the wedding reception.

Running through the streets of London in the rain at 2 am.

And the soft press of her lips against his, the warmth of her skin against his.

Hearts pounding, unable to breathe, he slid to the floor as vision upon vision bombarded him: of holding her, touching her, tasting her, hearing her cries of ecstasy as he buried himself within her.

Sharing a flat.

Sharing a bed.

Sharing a life.

Then, from that very morning…

Asking her to stay with him when the Doctor came back.

Telling her that he loved her.

Hearing her say it back.

Gradually the memories slowed as they caught up to the present moment.

The Doctor closed his eyes, sitting on the floor of the corridor, taking in everything he'd seen.

Finally, he reached up and scrubbed the tears from his face.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He had lost so much. Far, far more than he'd realized.

He stood. Tugging his jacket into place, he slowly made his way into the control room, lost in thought. Once there, he walked to the monitor and changed the view to display the Med Bay. John still sat on the examination table, Rose next to him, clearly deep in conversation. Then John cupped her face in his hand and drew her face to his.

It was odd. That was him in there with Rose, yet he still felt like a voyeur.

"Doctor? Doctor?"

He looked up. Mickey was standing near the console. He'd changed into his standard uniform of jeans and a T-shirt.

He snapped off the monitor.

"Doctor, are you all right?" Mickey asked.

"Oh, I'm always all right."

"Liar."

The Doctor looked up and raised an eyebrow at him. Eyes narrowed, the younger man stared back at him in silence, waiting for him to break. He didn't.

"Now what?" Mickey eventually asked.

"Now," he said with a grin, putting on a face of enthusiasm he didn't feel, "we make a little hop to his TARDIS, give her the last dose of antidote, have him open the watch, and Bob's your uncle, we're done with this little adventure. He can go his way and we can go ours."

"Little adventure!" Mickey exclaimed. "We almost got killed in a volcanic explosion!"

"Oh, that was nothing! You should have seen when I had to prevent the planet from being sucked into a black hole! Compared to that, this was a walk in the park!"

"If you say so," he said disbelievingly. "Listen, I was going to go back to my flat for the night. You know, sleep in my own bed for a change, yeah?"

The Doctor nodded. "Good idea. It has been kind of a full few days."

"You're not gonna run out on me without sayin' goodbye… I mean, without letting Rose say goodbye, are you?"

"No," he replied. "We'll be here."

"Good. That's good," Mickey said. "Are you sure you're all right?" The Doctor gave him a look, and Mickey threw up his hands. "All right, all right, just checkin'. So I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

"Yep."

Mickey crossed the room, but before he made it to the door, the Doctor stopped him.

"Mickey, I just want to say… thank you. You were brilliant."

An indecipherable expression crossed Mickey's face. "Thanks, boss. See you tomorrow."

After Mickey left, the Doctor returned to the monitor for a moment. Then with a jerk on the controls, he threw the ship into the Vortex.

Minutes later, he administered the last dose of antidote to the younger TARDIS. He stood up, wincing in pain. He rubbed his chest absently.

The Doctor pried the fob watch from its place wedged in the grating by the door. He looked at it thoughtfully, running a finger over the Gallifreyan writing on the cover.

After a moment he tossed in the air. He neatly caught it and left the TARDIS.