Chapter Eleven: Human Nature Part Two

Disclaimer: I do not own Psych or Doctor Who.

John stared moodily at his dinner.

"John, I'm starting to get concerned," Shawn told him seriously. "I mean, I've already stolen half of your dinner and barely touched mine and yet you haven't said anything. You haven't even commented on the fact that I'm having pineapple for dinner even though you've done that every night for the past two months! Are you sick or something?"

John sighed heavily but didn't respond.

Shawn took his fork and prodded John on the elbow, really wishing social conventions would let Gus be there with him to deal with this. "John?"

John started. "I'm sorry, did you say something?"

Shawn took a deep breath before saying some of his least favorite words. "Are you alright?"

John forced a smile. "Oh yes, absolutely fine! Why wouldn't I be?"

If this had been earlier in their acquaintance, Shawn might have actually believed him. "John."

Another sigh. "It's nothing, really."

"Well if it's nothing then why don't you tell me about it?" Shawn asked sensibly.

"It's Joan. Matron Redfern," John corrected himself.

"What about her?" Shawn asked carefully.

"I ran into her right after lunch and she was so…I don't know. Different," John said, frustrated. He ran a finger through his hair. "Earlier today we were getting along so well! I was even going to ask her to the dance before I had that…accident. She even asked me to call her Joan! And then when I saw her again she was so professional and kept addressing me as 'Mr. Smith.' I just don't know what I did wrong."

He looked so miserable that Shawn almost regretted the fact that he had single-handedly ruined John's chances with the nurse. And what's more, Joan was a widow right before millions of young men would die in World War I so the odds of her finding someone besides John weren't high. If things were different, they might have been able to be really happy together. As it was, Shawn felt it was crueler to let them have another month in which they could fall in love before John disappeared into a part of the Doctor's mind.

The Doctor hadn't seemed to think that John would be a real person and not just a character but by now Shawn could see that he had been oh so very wrong about that. But still. Still when this month was over the Doctor would need to come back. It was his life, too, and expecting Shawn and Gus to spend the rest of their lives here wasn't fair. If John got himself killed one day then it would kill the Doctor, too, and that wasn't fair either. Then again, neither was giving John only three months total in which to live but it was a little late to change their minds about the Chameleon Arch. Shawn only hoped that the people that were hunting them didn't find them so all of this wouldn't be for nothing. The only thing Shawn could do to try and help was to give him less to leave behind and to hurt less people when John 'died.'

"Maybe you didn't do anything wrong," Shawn suggested. "Maybe she found out that we're only going to be here for a year before we head off to London."

"Plans can change!" John said almost fiercely. "Or she could come with us! And she knew how long we'd be staying when we first started. I just don't understand…"

Shawn snapped his fingers. "I know what would cheer you up! Let's head down to the pub after dinner."

"You know, there's something weird about you two," John said, staggering a little as they left the pub.

"What do you mean, sir?" Gus asked nervously.

"You, especially. You're all deferential when it comes to me or the others but around Shawn…it's almost like you're friends or something," John marveled, shaking his head.

"I don't know what you-" Gus started to say.

"Hey Gus, what did I do with that psyc-with those credentials of ours? Did I leave them back at the pub?" Shawn interrupted.

"Here," Gus said, taking the psychic paper out of his pocket and passing it back to Shawn. "I grabbed it after you left it on the counter when you were convincing that redhead you were a member of parliament."

"See, that's what I mean, right there!" John exclaimed. He paused. "And you really shouldn't go around impersonating members of parliament. I don't think it's legal."

"It's only illegal if you get caught," Shawn said blithely.

"What kind of an attitude is that to take?" John demanded.

"Yeah, I really don't think certain people would have approved of you using the psychic paper to pick up women," Gus told him pointedly. "I mean, it's 1913! You could be ruining their lives!"

"Not if I'm responsible," Shawn countered. "And don't give me that look! I can be responsible! Who do you think got the owner to let the women into the bar anyway?"

"Now you're not even trying to pretend you have a proper master-servant relationship," John complained. "And what's this about you compromising ladies?"

Shawn shrugged. "What can I say? I don't like formalities. And I have not been, Gus is just exaggerating. Hey, what's that?"

"Don't try to change the subject," John ordered.

"No, really, look up in the sky," Shawn said, pointing up at a green light in the sky.

"There...a meteorite. It's just rocks falling to the ground, that's all," John told them. "Now stop trying to distract me!"

"I think it came down in the woods," Gus spoke up.

"No, no, no, they always look close, when actually they're miles off. Nothing left but a cinder," John said dismissively. "Now, about this impropriety-"

"We should go check it out," Shawn decided.

"I would really advise against that," John told them.

"You can go back to the school if you want but Gus and I are going to go look for it and make sure it really is a meteor," Shawn said firmly.

"Of course it's a meteor; what else would it be?" John demanded.

"Oh, I don't know, a flying saucer?" Shawn suggested.

John looked baffled. "A what? Why would a saucer be flying?"

"The term 'flying saucer' was first used in 1947, Shawn," Gus told him. "Kenneth Arnold, remember?"

Shawn groaned. "Oh, right. This place is almost making me feel guilty for the way I treated Frank. Almost but not quite."

"He probably wasn't Juliet's type," Gus was quick to assure him.

"That had very little to do with it," Shawn insisted. "Nothing, I mean. It had nothing to do with it."

"I'm with Freud on this one," Gus informed him.

"Does anyone care to explain to me what a flying saucer is?" John demanded.

"It's how people commonly refer to alien spaceships," Shawn explained. "Creatures from another world."

"Then why do they call them 'flying saucers'?" John asked.

Shawn shrugged. "I…guess Kenneth Arnold thought it looked like one?"

"And…you really think one of these creatures might have landed in the woods?" John asked skeptically.

"Yes and Gus and I are going to check it out while you go back to the school," Shawn repeated.

Gus snorted. "I am not going anywhere near those woods, Shawn."

"Oh, come on, buddy! I need you!" Shawn pleaded.

"And I know better than to go investigate strange sightings in the middle of the night in a forest with no cell phone coverage," Gus countered. "Especially while black."

"I can't go alone!" Shawn protested. "That would be even stupider than doing what you don't want to do!"

"Then don't do it," Gus suggested.

"But I have to!" Shawn exclaimed. "It might be something important and if I don't go I might end up missing something and regretting it."

Gus nodded John's way. "Then take him."

"I really don't think any of us should be going," John declared loudly. "And I think that we should discuss this impropriety instead."

"I can't take him! What if it's the people who have been hunting us? We'd lead him right to them!" Shawn exclaimed.

"Well you have the watch so that would be leading them to what they're after anyway," Gus pointed out.

John's brow wrinkled. "What does my watch have to do with any of this? This doesn't make any sense!"

"Yeah, but what am I supposed to do? Give it to him? He might open it," Shawn argued.

"Give it to me," Gus urged him.

"Why would I do that?" Shawn asked blankly. "You're coming with me."

"No, I am not," Gus insisted. "We can't just leave him alone if it really is the people hunting us. I should go with him and keep him safe."

Shawn laughed. "You really think he's going to let you anywhere near him right now? It's 1913, Gus."

"Well maybe we should open the watch," Gus suggested. "I mean, if it is them."

"But that's the problem, we don't know if it's them and I don't want to bring back the Doctor if it turns out that it was just a meteor after all or some other alien coming here by complete coincidence," Shawn replied.

John started. "The Doctor? You mean…my Doctor? The one from my dreams? What's that got to do with it?"

"But what if it's a complete coincidence and the aliens are malevolent or the TARDIS took us here so that we'd deal with these aliens?" Gus asked.

"But why would the TARDIS take us here now when we're supposed to be hiding instead of later when we could deal with it without this kind of complication?" Shawn asked reasonably.

Gus shrugged. "Maybe she doesn't approve of this hiding? Or, as you would say, 'who are we to question her'?"

"Point…" Shawn admitted.

John had had enough of being ignored. He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled loudly causing both Shawn and Gus to immediately turn to him.

"Stop ignoring me," he ordered. "Now tell me, what in the world are you two talking about?"

"We didn't mean to ignore you," Gus apologized. "It's just that sometimes we get a little too caught up in what we're talking about."

"Be honest, John: do you really think that you're going to believe us?" Shawn challenged.

John thought it over. "Probably not," he admitted.

"See?" Shawn asked triumphantly.

"Tell me anyway," John instructed. "That way if it turns out you're right later or even partially right then I'll know what's going on later."

"That's fair," Gus agreed, nodding. "You know those dreams you've been having? They're real."

"So so very real," Shawn agreed. "You're not really John Smith, you're the Doctor. I'm not really your brother but your friend, Shawn Spencer. Burton Guster is not really our servant but my best friend and we've been travelling with you for months now. Gus and I are from 2007. "

"I can't be an alien," John said, shaking his head. He felt for his heartbeat. "Joan checked. She even checked and I only have one heart."

"You turned yourself into a human," Gus explained. "We were being hunted by beings that were going to feed on your Time Lord essence so you became human two months ago and hid your essence in that watch. It had a perception filter on it so you wouldn't open it before the three months were up and they were dead so Shawn held onto it."

"This…this is ridiculous," John said faintly.

Shawn nodded. "Probably. You didn't want to kill the hunters if you didn't have to so you did this and the TARDIS – the blue box we use to travel – picked here for us to hide. We're worried that that 'meteor' was actually the hunters having found us so we're going to have to check it out."

"Shawn," Gus said warningly.

"One moment," Shawn said before pulling Gus off to the side and having a – mostly – silent argument with him.

Gus sighed once it was over. "It doesn't really matter if you believe us but we'd prefer it if you didn't go telling everybody while we go and investigate this ship."

To their surprise, John shook his head. "No, I don't think so. See, if you're wrong then I'd be in no danger but if you're not…I can't let you risk getting yourselves killed to protect me."

"But what will you be able to do?" Shawn asked him. "I mean, no offense but you're actually more vulnerable than we are since you've never done this before. Unless you open the watch, of course, but we've been kind of trying to avoid having it come to that."

"If it comes to that then you'd need me by your side," John said calmly. Too calmly.

Gus peered closely at him. "Are you okay?"

"Am I okay?" John repeated. "You've just told me that I am, in fact, really the Doctor and everything I think I know about myself up until two months ago is all a fabrication. You've told me that I have, at most, a month to live before I die. Either my brother has completely lost his mind or it's all true and you're my executioners. Why on Earth should I be okay?"

"You won't die, exactly," Shawn argued. "You'll just…gain another heart and regain all of your memories. It's like having amnesia, really."

"This body won't die, maybe, and all of my memories will remain but I will still die," John said stubbornly. "I won't even be a member of the same species! How could he…did he even think of me as a person when he condemned me to three months of life?"

Shawn didn't want to say it. "No. I'm sorry, but he didn't. He was wrong, but he didn't."

"Of course he's wrong! Of course I'm a person!" John burst out. "This…you're wrong. You have to be wrong but if you're not…This will kill me. You will kill me. Becoming the Doctor would kill me as surely as if I were shot because everything I am is so very much the opposite of him. I'm quiet and I blend in. He could never be that."

"We are so sorry," Gus told him sincerely. "We know that this isn't fair but…there really are no buts, are there? It is what it is."

"So it is," John echoed hollowly. "I don't believe you, you know, but I have to prove it to myself. Let us go then, and investigate, and see what's what."

"I think this is it," Shawn said, slightly out of breath as they ran into a seemingly deserted clearing.

"And yet it's empty. What a surprise," John said, the slightest bit of relief in his voice. "No falling star, no 'flying saucer', nothing. Let's just get back to the school now."

"Leave already?" Gus couldn't believe it. "I did not just run all the way here from the pub to turn and leave without at least checking for something cloaked."

"Cloaked?" John repeated uncertainly.

Gus nodded. "Yes, cloaked. It means that something might be here only it would be invisible to the naked eye."

"If it's invisible then how do you intend to find it?" John challenged.

Gus bent down and scooped up a few rocks. "Trial and error," he said before tossing them every which way. One of the rocks hit its target and a pretty big area glowed briefly green.

"I think we found it," Shawn said unnecessarily. "Odds on this being the people who were hunting us?"

"This seems like too big of a coincidence," Gus told him. "We really should get out of here."

"Don't be silly," Shawn disagreed. "Then we'd give them the chance to track us down and attack. We have the advantage here!"

"In what universe does us basically bringing them the watch count as us having the advantage?" Gus demanded. "Because I hate to be the one to break it to you, Shawn, but we are not in that universe."

"Maybe we can find a way to blow up the ship, I don't know," Shawn said dismissively. "I'm sure we'll figure something out; we always do."

"And when we go up against aliens we always have the Doctor," Gus pointed out.

"My God…" John whispered, staring at the spot which had previously lit up in horror. "It's true. It's all true. Or at least…part of it's true. Give me the watch."

"What?" Shawn exclaimed. "Why?"

John rolled his eyes. "Why do you think?"

"We can't just give it to them!" Gus protested. "They'd live forever and go on terrorizing countless worlds."

"That wasn't what I was planning on doing with it," John said, a little affronted.

"Then…you want to open it," Shawn said with sudden realization.

John nodded. "Perhaps 'want' is too strong a word."

"I thought you said that it would be like killing you," Gus said slowly.

"It will be," John confirmed. "But on the other hand…if you're right about these…these aliens then what do you think they'll do to me? Likely kill me because I'm in the way or to make sure I can't reclaim 'my' essence. And who knows what they'll do to the school and the village once they get their way? How can I be sure they'd go away and not have a destructive victory party?"

Silently, Shawn handed him the watch.

Just as wordlessly, John opened it with shaking hands and was instantly bathed in golden light.

When he could be seen again, there was something slightly different but indefinable that was different about him and they knew it was the Doctor.

"Well," he said. "I'm pretty sure that you're right about these being the people after us. Good thinking to go after them now and not waiting until they start killing people."

"So…that's it?" Gus demanded. "After all that we're just going to kill them after all?"

"Of course not," the Doctor said, surprised. "I see no reason to do that. But we're definitely going to have to get rid of their ship, I see that now. We can drop them off on some deserted planet to live out their last month in peace afterwards. Say, Shawn, you don't have an odor."

"Thank you," Shawn said, pleased. "It's not easy to manage that in 1913 England."

"No, I mean that you literally do not have an odor," the Doctor amended. "Why is that?"

"Well…I do have this," Shawn admitted, pulling out a small device. "It is really difficult to smell nice here and I found this awhile back in the TARDIS so I figured I could make use of it. Was I not supposed to?"

"Oh, far from it," the Doctor said, grinning. "Simple olfactory misdirection…I can use this. I can definitely use this. They won't be able to smell the Time Lord essence on me so if you two are willing to play your part…"

"You're going to pretend that you're still in the watch and you're planning on turning yourself over to these hunters because you don't want to be you again and you definitely don't want them to kill us?" Gus asked.

The Doctor nodded. "That about sums it up. I'm going to need to stumble around a lot and 'accidentally' press all sorts of buttons to do it to make the ship explode so be ready to run on my signal."

"What signal?" Shawn asked.

"I think the word 'run' should cover it," the Doctor replied. "Normally, I'd do this alone but they're going to be able to sense the energy even if they can't smell it. Since they don't know about the watch, your testimony is going to be necessary to convince them."

"We had better get a vacation after this," Gus groused.

The Doctor nodded. "I think we could all use a vacation after this. I might even go somewhere restful as long as it isn't too restful."

"Hear hear!" Shawn cheered.

Gus groaned. "Let's just get this over with…"

"But I don't understand. Who are you?" Baines was asking, huddled on the floor of the spacecraft.

Shawn groaned. "Damnit, Baines, can't you stay out of trouble for five minutes?"

Baines glanced over in surprise. "Professor? What are you doing here?"

Shawn rolled his eyes. "Right, because that's what's weird about all of this."

"Shawn, focus!" Gus ordered. "Remember what we came here to do. Or rather, who we came here to stop."

"Look," the Doctor said, managing to sound quite panicked. "I don't care what you say. I don't care what you think I am! I do not want to be this Time Noble thingy and I most certainly don't want to be hunted!"

"You can't change that," Gus argued. "It's who you are."

"Maybe it was once," the Doctor allowed. "But it certainly isn't anymore and if these people want this confounded watch then I say let them have it."

"The watch?" a strange, distorted voice asked, intrigued.

"But that's what's storing your Time Lord essence!" Shawn burst out. "They can't have that!"

"But they don't want me at all," the Doctor argued. "They want this. I don't want this. Why can't they just take it and leave me alone?"

"Because then they'll destroy the universe!" Gus cried out.

"I'm sure they won't do that," the Doctor said confidently. He glanced over at where he imagined they were. "You won't do that, will you?"

"Of course not," the alien voice claimed.

"Stop him!" Shawn shouted, jumping towards the Doctor who quite skillfully managed to press a series of buttons as he fell over.

"Get off of me!" the Doctor shouted, standing up. "This is my life and I will not have it stolen by some alien!" Shawn was still holding onto his leg so he stumbled again and pressed several other buttons. Finally, he managed to work himself free and tossed the watch at the hunters.

"This is the part where you leave," Gus whispered helpfully to Baines.

Baines shot him a condescending look. "Why should I listen to you? You're only a servant."

"Because you don't want to die or have one of those things take you over and if you stay here there is a very good chance that one of those things will happen," Gus said matter-of-factly. "But hey, do what you want."

Baines decided that he did, in fact, want to escape that ship body and mind intact and crawled towards the exit.

"It's empty!" the alien voice cried out, outraged.

The Doctor cocked his head. "Is it? I could have sworn that I put it in there…maybe it was my other watch?"

"I think you opened it earlier," Shawn reminded him.

The Doctor snapped his fingers. "Oh, that's right! How silly of me to forget. I think I might have been distracted by the hydroconometre. It seems to be indicating you've got energy feedback all the way through the retrostabilisers feeding back into the primary heat converter. That's not good. That's definitely not good. Helpful bit of advice for when you're hunting Time Lords: don't let them press a whole bunch of buttons, no matter how helpless they seem. Course it's not like you'll get much of a chance to actually use that advice. Here's one that might be a bit more pertinent: run."

"Was that the signal?" Shawn wondered aloud.

"Oh, come on!" Gus said, grabbing his sleeve and pulling him along, the Doctor close on their heels.

They dived for the grass just as the spaceship exploded behind them.

Baines was watching from a few feet away, sitting on a crate of beer. "I say, it's like the universe is trying to tell me something about sneaking out of school for underage drinking…"

"What's that?" Shawn asked.

"Make somebody else get it next time," Baines said promptly. "Maybe Latimer. Of course, then he'd insist on getting a beer, too, but that seems like a small price to pay to avoid something else like this."

"He is incorrigible," Gus said, shaking his head.

"It looks like they made it out as well," the Doctor said. "Course now that their ship is gone they're quite helpless to steal anybody's body and my essence is safe inside of me so they're practically harmless. It shouldn't be hard to drop them off somewhere out of the way. The only problem is what we're going to do about the rest of the term. I thought I told you not to let me enter into any long-term commitments!"

"That wasn't us! It was the TARDIS' idea and Shawn doesn't believe in arguing with her!" Gus said defensively.

Shawn merely smirked. "And you said that convincing the Headmaster that we were undercover from Scotland Yard was a bad idea…"

It really wasn't difficult to get away from the school. All they had to do was tell the Headmaster that their investigation was concluded and they were free to go, though the Headmaster was scrambling to find people to replace them. Well, replace Shawn and the Doctor at any rate. He didn't seem to feel that Gus needed to be replaced and so the servants wouldn't be pleased with their increased workload.

The Family, as apparently they were called, were dropped off on some tropical planet that could sustain them but had no sentient beings on it for a few hundred years to die in peace.

All in all, it had worked out reasonably well. Not perfectly, but decently.

"So how was it?" Shawn asked him as they were sitting on a beach at some fancy resort. "Being human I mean?"

"It was…strange," the Doctor admitted. "I mean, I got up every morning to teach and had such a strict schedule I had to follow every day for two months and I think I actually enjoyed it. I didn't get bored or anything. Humans have such a longer attention span than I do that it's not even funny."

"Well, we sort of have to," Gus reasoned. "We can't all hop from place to place on a whim, after all."

"I've got to ask, Shawn…did you have anything to do with Joan pulling away from me?" the Doctor asked. "It didn't occur to me when I was human but now I know that I asked you to keep me from any commitments and a relationship is a big commitment, especially back then."

"I may have, you know, slightly told her that you were married to Rose," Shawn admitted sheepishly. "Just a little."

"John Smith was not that kind of a man!" the Doctor said indignantly.

"If it makes you feel any better, you thought she was dead because she ran off with some guy and we didn't have the heart to tell you," Shawn offered.

"Rose is not that kind of woman!" the Doctor cried, not appeased in the slightest.

"I'm sure she wasn't," Shawn said soothingly. "But I needed an excuse and I doubted she'd believe me that you were a time-travelling alien that was only going to be around for another month or so at best."

"I suppose you're right…You know, I was also surprised by John Smith himself. Myself," the Doctor continued.

"Why? What were you expecting?" Shawn asked.

The Doctor frowned. "I don't know, exactly. I had designed him to be just a character to blend into the background and hide and I had expected the only things I'd learn would be about physical differences but somewhere along the line…somewhere along the line, he really came alive."

"Well what do you expect?" Gus asked rhetorically. "You may have changed species, you may have had no memory, you may have filled your head with a nice fake background but you were still you. Of course you were going to take that caricature of a person and breathe life into it."

"I guess," the Doctor said vaguely. "I just didn't expect that the end would be so difficult. I guess I didn't really think of what that would be like for him. For me. Knowing what was about to happen. In a way, he's right, I guess. John Smith might be in here," he tapped his head, "but he's no longer how he was. In a way, he is dead."

"You thought that it wouldn't matter because he wouldn't be real and when we opened the watch it would flip a switch and end the charade," Shawn declared. "But it wasn't like that at all. Still, in the end you knew exactly what was going to happen and you did it anyway. You didn't run from it."

"No," the Doctor agreed, sounding surprised. "This time, I didn't run. I didn't make a half-bad human, did I?"

"No, no you didn't," Gus agreed with a smile. "But Doctor, I'm telling you right now: if we ever do this again then we're doing it back at Psych, your dislike for domestics be damned."

The Doctor coughed. "You know, I think that the Chameleon Arch experienced a critical malfunction just before we got here. It may never work again…"

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