"What do you mean, you can't get a lock on Sam?" Al demanded of Ziggy. He had left the Doctor to discuss theories with the Doctor—that was going to give him one hell of a headache, no question about it; he doubted he'd have any reprieve before the end of this leap—and was now in the Control Room with Donna and Gooshie.
"There is insufficient data, Admiral."
"We know he's in 1983!"
"That does not suffice, Admiral."
"But you've found him before when we didn't even know the year!"
"I am well aware of that, Admiral."
"Something's interfering, Al," Donna put in. "We've been trying to override it, but unless we can figure out what it is…." She trailed off, biting her lip. Shaking her head in an attempt to dispel her worry, she continued, "Ziggy…Ziggy calculated that it would be three point four years before she had a chance of pinpointing Sam's location, let alone overriding whatever blocks have been thrown up to get a lock on him."
"Years?" Al repeated. "Ziggy, it's England. Devon. Merivale. 1983. That's what we were told!"
"She's been searching, Admiral," Gooshie said without looking up from the computer screen over which he was bent. "We've even tried widening the search to the entire country within three years either way, but Sam's not there. Your leapee is mistaken."
"And when we're searching all of Earth's history that we can, just in case Sam's leapt into a relative again," Donna added, "it is going to take time." She was putting on a brave face, as far as Al could tell. "We know he's out there because there's someone in the Waiting Room. We just need to find him. And we will."
It took that long for Al to realize that Donna and Gooshie hadn't made any comments as to the fact that the Doctor was the leapee. "Didn't I tell you who was in the Waiting Room?" Al asked cautiously. He was sure he had; he'd said it when he'd told Gooshie that he was letting the Doctor out of the Waiting Room. Besides, they would've been able to record the conversation he'd had with the Doctor, and they only needed to hear it once to realize—
"We didn't quite catch it, actually," Donna replied. "Intercom's on the blink, but I won't let Ziggy divert any power to fixing it just now. I want her to focus on finding Sam."
"We only caught parts of what you said," Gooshie explained, finally looking up at Al. "I can replay it for you if you like, Admiral."
In the back of his mind, Al went over a conversation he'd had with the Doctor only three months or so earlier. He'd installed an inhibitor of sorts to make sure that Ziggy couldn't make a record of him again in the time he spent at the Project. Probably hadn't intended it to last, but evidently it was. That, or they really did need to replace someone on the maintenance staff.
"Don't bother," Al answered, waving it off. "Ziggy, were you aware of that fault?"
"Of course, Admiral."
"And why did you not inform anyone of it?"
The stubborn parallel-hybrid computer took her sweet time answering that one. "It was a rather insistent request of an old friend of Dr. Beckett's, Admiral," came the reply at last. "When presented with such information, I could not refuse it."
"Ziggy!" Al snapped. "Exactly where do your loyalties lie?"
"I intend the best for Dr. Beckett, Admiral, and the others at Project Quantum Leap."
"Quite right," chirped a voice from the back. Al swung around to see the Doctor leaning against wall by the doorway. He heard Donna stifle a gasp, knowing she was probably thinking of her last encounter with the Doctor and the choice that she had regretted making ever since, though she'd thought she'd had reason enough at the time. He didn't need to look at Gooshie to know that the man was staring at the Doctor in his typical bug-eyed manner.
"Y'see," the Doctor continued, "Ziggy knew to leave well enough alone with me, and I didn't even have to mention all of the consequences of traces to her that I did to you lot. She hardly objected to my little installation last time, once I explained myself. Bit testy prior to that, but she came around." He walked to the centre of the room and looked up at the computer. "But from your choice of words, I'd have to say you know a bit more than you did last time, despite my tinkering."
"Exactly how did you get in here?" Donna demanded, looking more than a little nervous.
The Doctor smiled gently at her. "Donna Eleese, don't be afraid of me." He frowned. "Blimey, sounds a bit biblical, doesn't it?" He shook his head, waving a hand as he did so, as if to clear away the past. "Look, I don't blame you for what you did, and I only hope you'll forgive me for what I did in return, but I didn't think you'd give me a chance to explain myself properly, and I didn't have time to waste. I've had quite enough of military organizations for this lifetime, but somehow I keep coming back to them, don't I?" The last bit seemed to be addressed more to himself than to anyone else.
"Admiral," Gooshie asked suddenly, "if he's here, why hasn't Ziggy gone into lockdown?"
"No need to," the Doctor replied, cutting Al off before he could begin his reply. "She knows I'm not intruding. Well, technically I am intruding, but she knows I don't mean any harm. Never do, really. Unless I've warned someone that I'd have to stop them if they didn't stop whatever they were doing. But then sometimes…sometimes I need someone to stop…." He broke off. "Point is, I'm here to help. Ziggy knows that, and she knows that I can help, and she's willing to let me." He straightened up a bit, no longer in a casual stance. "If you are," he added, looking down at them. He waited a moment, giving them time to react. When they failed to do so in whatever time he had allotted them, he grinned and asked, "So, Ziggy, what seems to be the problem?"
"We can't get a lock on Sam," Donna replied, overcoming her shock and regaining her professionalism. "He doesn't appear to be where the leapee remembers coming from."
"The leapee?" the Doctor repeated. He looked over at Al, who glowered at him. "Oh. Oh. Quite right. Well. Can't have that, can we?" He turned his gaze to Gooshie. "Try scanning for residual interspatial patterns of temporal flux, and then you might have a shot at correlating that to your readings of Sam. Well, where you expected them to be, at least. Might turn something up."
Gooshie, who was too polite to tell the Doctor that he had ceased making sense, hesitantly asked, "I'm sorry, Dr. Smith, what was it you thought we should do?"
The Doctor blinked at him, momentarily forgetting that he'd been Dr. John Smith to them last time. He'd told them the truth, that he really was simply called the Doctor and that he was a time traveller and an alien at that, but they were content to believe that Al had been pulling a practical joke on them. Some scientists could accept who and what he was and leave it at that. Others could not, latching on to whatever they considered a logical explanation. And the rest he tried to avoid, because that lot knew what he was and was out for blood—all too often, his. And he didn't have that many lives, even if he did have more than a cat.
"Right, this is 1999," the Doctor said slowly. "Sorry. How is it that you locate Sam again?" Before anyone could reply, he started again, holding up his hands to stop them from speaking. "No, no, don't tell me. Brainwaves, right? You scan for his brainwaves. Hence the neurological hologram. Right." He frowned. "Shouldn't have needed to ask that. Must be getting old. Anyway, let me have a look."
Al nodded to Gooshie, who stepped back from one of Ziggy's screens. He watched carefully as the Doctor began typing away, having slipped his glasses on without their noticing. "It's simple, really, if you know what you're doing," the Doctor said, punching keys like a madman. "Well, the equivalent is. Which is what I'm doing now, because it's compatible with your current technology and is going to be discovered in about two months anyway, and while I'm usually very careful about what I introduce and what I don't, I think I'm fairly safe in this case, seeing as…oh. Unless they…nah. But if they—" The Doctor broke off with a frown.
"Do I want to ask?" Gooshie murmured to Al.
Al shook his head, but the Doctor had already started talking again. "Hope you've got good blocks, Ziggy, or I've just gone and introduced another life-changing breakthrough to you lot. Well, perhaps it's not in the same class as fire, but still. You'd be surprised the uses you lot find for it in, oh, a scant hundred years or so? I shouldn't like to think that I gave it to you again, and this time simply because I was thinking it would be discovered in a few months time when in reality all that was discovered is what I've just done." He sighed and shook his head, but his eyes never left the computer screen. "Still, I'm fairly sure that if I try to erase something again, you'll want my head on a platter." He looked away from the screen then, grinning at Al. "Can't make any promises, though. I like to keep my promises if I can."
Something beeped, and the Doctor turned his attention back to the screen. "Ah, there we go!" he crowed. "Minuscule trace, but it's there." He hit a few more keys, frowning slightly. "Bit odd. Doesn't last long at all. Sam must've gotten into the TARDIS fairly quickly after he leaped. Which would be why you can't locate him. It's beyond your software. Sorry, Ziggy," he added, "but it's the truth."
"My observations of your behaviour have led me to accept your conclusions," Ziggy said. Al was rather surprised that she would admit defeat, but then she continued, in the same smooth voice, "But if you insist on trying to slip past my security systems again, Doctor, I will repel you. Forcibly."
The Doctor had the good grace to look a bit sheepish, but in answer to the question on his face, Al decided to elaborate. "Her bark's not worse than her bite. And she's channelling a fair bit of electrical energy."
"Right," the Doctor said with a nod. "Will keep that in mind, then." He stopped for a moment, then added, "Mind if I have a bit of a chat with your leapee?"
Al stared at him for a moment, rather startled that the Doctor would even ask—he'd barged in before and done things without their permission; why would this be any different?—but nodded his consent anyway. When he was gone, the questions began.
"Why is he back, Al?" The soft-spoken question came from Donna.
Al didn't have the heart to answer it truthfully—that the Doctor thought Sam was in danger—but he knew it was insulting to Donna to not tell her the entire truth. She was brave, and far stronger than he would have thought she could be, back when they'd first met. So he gave her the best answer he could. "The alarm, for one. He came to shut off the alarm. And to check up on one of the other alarms." Al sighed. "Donna, I'm sorry, but the Doctor's worried about Sam. He hasn't told me so much in so many words, but I know he's worried."
"Do you know why?"
Al hated to be the one to do this, but he could at least put a spin on it. "Not really, no. But I expect it may be because of our leapee."
"Who is it?" Donna pressed, looking like she didn't want to hear the answer.
"It's him," Al replied. "At an earlier time. Like...like when Sam leaped into Bingo."
"But how could he know that, Admiral?" Gooshie asked, looking more than faintly concerned at the prospect. "You don't remember when Sam leaped into you. It shocked you more than anyone."
"I told him that he wouldn't remember, but he was still concerned."
Donna looked a bit relieved at this. "Then Sam's not in as much danger as he thinks, if the Doctor's concern is because he doesn't remember."
"Hopefully," Al agreed. "But he still gave Tina a turn. Perhaps you ought to go check on her? She mentioned a cup of coffee, but I expect she wanted to lie down."
"Of course," Donna nodded to him. "And, thanks, Al. For telling me." She gave him a gentle smile before leaving the room.
That made Al feel worse. As far as he could tell, the Doctor's concern wasn't solely that he didn't remember. It disturbed him, sure, but he also claimed that he couldn't remember that anything was wrong—which is why he'd come to the Project in the first place, instead of going straight to Sam. And that brought him to a question that Al didn't think he'd find a satisfactory answer to: was the Doctor from the altered future, meaning that Sam's leap was successful, meaning that they'd fixed whatever went wrong, and because their integration system really did work, he knew only what Sam did, or was he from the current future, where something had gone wrong in the past, and the reason the Doctor didn't know anything was off was because Sam was in the process of fixing it and changing things?
Of course, it could simply come down to the Doctor's skewed sense of normality. Frankly, Al didn't have to know him very well to know that what he considered 'normal' was not what anyone else on the entire planet would consider 'normal'. Which meant it was quite possible that nothing was off in the Doctor's eyes.
Though, he had to admit, that did go against what Al remembered of the man. He did seem to recognize that what was normal for him wasn't what was normal for everyone else. Besides, the earlier one had agreed with the later one, which made it less likely that the Doctor was from the altered future. Then again, if he was from the currently unaltered future, something still had to have gone wrong. But, no, that wasn't it; the Doctor agreed that something had gone wrong. He just didn't know what it was.
And neither did they, which didn't help matters.
Until they could actually find Sam, they weren't going to get any answers.
Which brought him back to square one.
It was past time to bring out the whiskey. At the very least, it would take the edge off of what was very quickly becoming a splitting headache. If he played his cards right, he wouldn't even regret it in the morning.
Verbena had been, admittedly, a bit worried when Al had decided to let their leapee out of the Waiting Room. Unfortunately for her, Tina hadn't looked up to giving her any actual details. Judging by the woman's grumblings, she suspected Al of something, but she'd looked far too weary for Verbena to want to press her for any substantial information. Furthermore, by the time she'd managed to extract herself from her conversation with Sammy Jo, Al had retired to his office, and she doubted that he would actually tell her anything of value even if she did corner him.
She'd seen Donna go by to check on Tina, and she'd noticed Gooshie in the Control Room, poring over one of Ziggy's screens. Letting herself wander, she found herself back by the Waiting Room. When she passed the corporal stationed near the door, however, she was informed that their leapee had a visitor. She must have looked doubtful, because he swore up and down that he'd triple-checked the man's papers, and everything was in order.
That, of course, only inflamed her curiosity.
She'd tried having Ziggy give her an audio-visual of the Waiting Room but was informed that this was not possible. Ziggy, stubborn as she was, refused to tell Verbena any specific details. Even when she'd pressed, saying Ziggy hadn't had any problem earlier, the only reply she had gotten was that the situation had changed. Deciding that anything she learned could potentially help them locate Sam, seeing as despite the presence of a leapee, the Project's founder was still missing, she decided to visit with the two in the Waiting Room.
She only heard one word before the conversation ceased abruptly at her entry: Sam. She was regarded with wary eyes, from both the visitor—who looked a bit on the scruffy side, compared to the rest of the officials they'd had through at one time or another—and the leapee, but then the leapee's expression became a neutral that even she had trouble deciphering and the visitor's dissolved into a grin.
"Hello there," he said, coming over to shake her hand. "I don't recall meeting you before. I'm the Doctor. Doctor John Smith."
She was surprised that he was British—precisely how had they found out the Project?—but then she realized that he must still have American citizenship, and a good deal more than that in terms of documentation, or he wouldn't be this deep into the Project unsupervised. "Dr. Verbena Beeks," she said in return. She was tempted to ask what he was doing here, but she wasn't sure who Sam had leaped into, either. She looked at the leapee expectantly.
"Oh, I'm…not important," the leapee said. She felt a frown pull at her mouth and quickly smoothed it out. No wonder they couldn't find Sam; they'd been saddled with another leapee who wasn't talking. Not that that had ever stopped them from findingSam before, just finding out why he had leaped there. But in the end, the problem remained on the same level.
"Well, perhaps I am," the leapee added. "Important, that is. But we're working on that." He jerked his head towards Dr. Smith.
Verbena looked between the two of them. "May ask precisely how much each of you knows about our facility?"
"Well, I'm learning very quickly that either you lot are further ahead of yourselves than I'd thought or we're in one tight spot of trouble," Dr. Smith answered. "Especially since I've been obliged to fill him in—but don't worry," he added, seeing the look on her face. "I've got Al's approval."
"Admiral Calavicci," Verbena began, "is not at liberty to—"
"No, no, it's fine," Dr. Smith interrupted. "Really. I've been here before." He glanced at the leapee and then back at her. "More than once."
"Be that as it may," Verbena said, wondering why she'd never heard of the man before, from either her colleagues or the world of academia, "it would not give you leave to discuss the workings of our facility with an uncooperative leapee."
"Oi!" the leapee said indignantly. "I'll have you know I'm being very cooperative. Told them everything they needed to know."
Verbena offered him a gentle smile. "I know this must be confusing for you. You've experienced some memory loss if you don't even remember the date, but I can guarantee that anything you say will be kept strictly confidential. You don't need to hide your name from me."
The leapee exchanged a glance with Dr. Smith, and Verbena realized even before they turned back to her that they were one and the same. "I'm the Doctor," the leapee said. "That's the only name I've got now. Though I've been called a fair bit besides it."
What interested her most wasn't why he had said 'the Doctor' instead of 'Dr. John Smith' as the other one had but the fact that neither of them seemed even slightly perturbed by the entire scenario, going so far as to discuss it with each other.
As if they were used to this.
Or at least as if it had happened before.
Verbena shook her head; she was reading the signs wrong, that was all. "I'll call you Doctor and Dr. Smith, then, shall I?" she asked, looking at the two of them. She could feel it now; it was going to be another one of those headache leaps. Like when Sam had leaped into himself. Or when he'd leaped into Al. Or when he'd leaped back into Jimmy. Or when he'd run into Alia again. Or…or the time they'd nearly lost him, with him leaping into Sam Biederman in time to receive electroshock therapy, though then she, and the rest of the staff, had had enough of a time trying to keep a cool head and find a way to rescue Sam without blowing all of Ziggy's circuits to bother with a little thing like a headache.
"That'll be fine," the Doctor replied. "And as for the date, I do know it, but it isn't helping matters much, and that's really why I'm here again." He nodded to Dr. Smith. "Something's gone wrong."
"If you are both aware of the Project," Verbena said, accepting that they were, "then you will understand that Dr. Beckett will be fixing whatever has gone wrong."
"No, no. No. No, that's not what I mean," Dr. Smith put in. "Thing is, there's nothing for Sam to fix. So why he leapt into me is, well, beyond either of us. But we're working on it. And then I'll nip over and check up on him, see if I can find out anything else."
Nip over and—? "I beg your pardon?"
"Well, I can't say I fancy going over it again," Dr. Smith said, "even if you did miss it last time. But I can assure you, Verbena—may I call you Verbena?—that I'll do my utmost to keep Sam safe. And I'm trying to. I just need to figure out what went wrong."
"We'll take care of it," Verbena assured them. "That's what we're here for."
"Sorry, but you lot don't have the technology for it," Dr. Smith told her. "Which makes it my job."
"Oh, and you have access to technology beyond ours?" Verbena asked lightly. It was best to humour him for now. These two clearly knew more than they were letting on. She had to wonder who had informed Dr. Smith that he was the leapee, particularly since that was strictly against all sorts of regulations. For that matter, she wondered how Dr. Smith had gotten here so quickly. And why she hadn't heard of him before. That really made her wonder just who he was; she did have a fairly high security clearance, after all, and for him to be at the Project, he must be a specialist of sorts in a similar area, meaning that there was no reason she shouldn't have heard of him. "I'd like to see that."
"Yes, well, the only one of you lot to have seen it is Sam, and it's probably best to keep it that way," Dr. Smith said. He looked over at the leapee. "I'm going to run a few tests."
"Remember to double check it," the Doctor cautioned. "With yours and mine. One might pick up on something the other misses. Shouldn't, but if things are changing on us, it's entirely possible that exposure time will amount to something."
"Of course," Dr. Smith said, nodding. "Wouldn't forget a thing like that." He grinned at Verbena. "Very glad to have met you, but I've got to run now. Worlds to save and all. Might run into you when I come back."
Verbena hardly had time to open her mouth before Dr. Smith bounded down the ramp, the door to the Waiting Room opening obligingly for him. She turned a baffled gaze to the Doctor, who had shifted to lay down on the table. "You really shouldn't need to worry so much," he said without turning to look at her. "I've a very good reputation. Well. Providing you don't talk to my enemies. But if you talk to anyone else, and I can promise you they'd be singing my praises. Well, not really, but I've helped a number of people out of a number of tight spots, even if they don't know it." He turned to look at her then, and for a moment his expression was so like Sam's that she could pretend it was actually him in front of her.
Despite herself, she found that she trusted him. He hadn't given her any reason to, not really, but she did. And she didn't regret it, because somehow…somehow she knew he wouldn't deliberately try to betray her trust.
"I won't let anything happen to Sam," he promised. "He'll be safe. I'm sure he's brilliant. Well, I think he is. Or I will. Though I'm forming that opinion now, really, based on what I know of him. Still. While he may not exactly be an ordinary brilliant human, it doesn't sound like he's lost sight of what's important in life. I like that. Sometimes, if you do too much, you lose sight of what's important. I almost have, once or twice. But I've recovered, and even with all those years behind me, I can still be amazed by the universe out there. And it's brilliant. Every tiny piece of it. Even the terrifying bits." He looked up at the ceiling again, but she suspected he was seeing something else.
It was a moment before he continued, and she found she didn't mind the silence. "There are so many different worlds out there, Dr. Verbena Beeks. And each one has its own place in history. Some are forming their history now, some are lost in the dust in the stars, and some are yet to come, but it's all astonishing. If you can look at the worlds around you with a child's wonder, so that you can look at something and really see it, then you've a wondrous gift. And from what I know of Sam, I'd say he's got a bit of that."
Verbena wasn't sure what to make of the Doctor, particularly since she'd feel more justified in her trust if she could place a reason behind it. "I'd have to agree with that," she finally said. "But you never answered my question. What do you and Dr. Smith know about the Project?"
"Well, he knows more than I do," the Doctor said, sitting up to look at her. "He's been here before. I haven't. But he's told me what he knows about the background story, and that's not much. Just what Sam told him, I gather. He—"
"Wait, Sam told him?" Verbena interrupted. "But Sam's…." She stopped. "Oh, you mean before the Project—?" But the Doctor was shaking his head.
"No," he said, further emphasizing his point. "No, it sounds like I'll run into Sam on one of his leaps. I don't know any more than that; I'm not about to tell myself something like that. But, because it came from Sam, I'm trusting that my information is correct. I know how Sam leaps—risky, but impressive, and I could go on about it, and I'm tempted, but for time's sake, I won't—and how you contact him. Essentially, I know the how, the what, the where, the who, and I've a pretty good idea as to the why and the when. At least in general. Specifically for the leap Sam's on now, I don't know much more than you. I know what and where and when and how and who, but not why. And that's what I'm worried about. That's why I'm trying to find out what's going on. Well, him, I mean. The other me. Doctor Smith," he said, clicking his teeth as he said 'doctor'. He looked at her for a moment. "I must say, you're taking this rather well."
"Sam's leaped into a number of people," Verbena informed him. He raised his eyebrows, asking for more information, and against her better judgement, she gave it. "This isn't the first time I've seen a visitor in the Waiting Room speaking with an older counterpart," she added.
The Doctor nodded. "Ah. Explains a bit." He was silent for a moment. Then, "What's bothering you?"
Verbena blinked in surprise. "Why, nothing." He just looked at her, and she relented. "Nothing out of the ordinary; I'm worried about Sam, and…." She shook her head. "No matter; none of your concern."
"Maybe not," the Doctor said, "but maybe it is. I meant it when I said I've seen a lot, Verbena. I'm a traveller. And my travelling has taught me a fair bit."
"Perhaps it has," Verbena agreed, "but you certainly haven't published any of your work."
The Doctor grinned at her. "Me? Nah. Not my thing."
"But surely if you're a doctor—"
"I…am sort of…on an extended sabbatical. Very extended."
"So what exactly are you a doctor of?"
"Oh, this and that. I like to dabble in a bit of everything." The Doctor waved the question off. "More importantly, if I'm back here, then I can find a way to help Sam. I like to keep my promises."
"I'd like to believe that," Verbena said truthfully, "but I'm afraid that if Sam leaped into you, then he is doing something that you cannot."
"Or fixing up a wrong decision," the Doctor added, voicing her thoughts. "But somehow, I can't help but feel that it's more than that."
Verbena wanted to argue, but she had a feeling the Doctor was right.
Sam was still staring down at the console in dismay, not really seeing it, just desperately trying to reason away the facts that had presented themselves in his thoughts. Never going home. Dying, sometime, on a leap. Or maybe just disappearing, caught in between somehow. Maybe scattered into atoms. But never leaping home, never again seeing anyone else he had grown to dearly love, his only contact with the present being Al. Al, his dear friend, the one he'd denied helping when he'd had the chance, hurting him terribly.
He'd done it twice. Once, it was intentional; he'd chosen not to tell Al's wife, Beth, that her husband was still alive and that he would return from the war—that he was just being held as a POW in 'Nam, that he'd come back—even if he had agreed to try to convince her not to marry lawyer Dirk Simon. But the second time, when he'd been to Vietnam himself, he'd indulged in his own selfish desires, saving his brother, and even though Al had known that Sam could change history, change it so that he'd escaped and made it back home safe and sound years earlier…. He hadn't. He'd shown wisdom that Sam, blinded by his own desires, had refused to accept. The same wisdom that had had Sam refusing to tell Beth the truth.
The same wisdom that he knew he could not impart on the politicians. They'd be blind to it, just like Al had been. Just like he had been, more than once.
He needed to distract himself. He started pacing round and round the console, trying to forget, trying to focus on anything, anything, but the horrible truth.
But it just kept coming back, haunting his thoughts, taunting him.
He stopped abruptly when he heard the sound of a key in a lock. Martha? No, she'd retired, gone off to bed, and this…this was coming from outside.
He faced the doors steadily, ready for whatever was about to invade the wondrous privacy of this astounding place.
But, no, his mind reasoned. Invade wasn't right, not if the intruder had a key.
The door creaked open, and a man poked his head inside. Scruffy brown hair sticking every which way came first, with the long, skinny body to which it was attached clad in a brown suit….
Sam blinked, looking down at himself. The same suit he himself was now wearing. He looked back up at the intruder who offered him a weak smile.
"You're coping well," the man said softly. "Martha's gone off to bed, then?"
Sam opened his mouth, but he couldn't find his voice.
"I expect she did," the man continued. "Sorry for the intrusion, Sam, but things are a little different this time. I expect you'd agree with that assessment?"
The man knew who he was. And Sam had a strange, twisting feeling in his gut that he knew precisely who the man was, too. A time traveller. He didn't pretend to understand all the nuances of time, but he knew and understood enough to fashion Project Quantum Leap.
And he knew this was wrong. Some part of him, some tiny part, cried out in protest at the man's very presence. It just wouldn't supply a reason why.
"You're looking a bit peaky there," the man said, looking at him. "Expect that's me, sorry. But I'm really sure that this wasn't supposed to happen, and I needed to find out what had changed, because I don't remember. I hate running into things blind, and I expect the last thing you need is to find yourself facing some of my enemies who would rather just kill you before they so much as bothered to assess that you're you and most definitely not me. Not that I expect they'd particularly care, being that sort. Might be a bit miffed that they didn't have me themselves. Actually, they'd probably be more than a little bit interested in you after all, meaning they'd hunt down the source and find the Project."
Sam sucked in a breath, understanding that implication readily enough, and the man grimaced. "I know, but I wouldn't be far behind them. Might even be ahead of them, depending. But that's what all those alarms were for, really. Of course, I expected that to happen last time, but not to that degree, so I only put in a few warning bells, nothing more. The Anipalaxians wouldn't have wanted to seriously harm anything. Well, not usually. That pair might've, but they've been dealt with, and…." He trailed off, peering more closely at Sam.
Sam found his voice. "Doctor?" he asked, thinking all the evidence he'd seen pointed to that conclusion.
"Oh, Sam Beckett, I am so sorry," the man said. "You really don't remember. I thought you would, once you got into the TARDIS again." And before Sam could comprehend the simple meaning of the word again, the man continued, "Yes. Yes, I am the Doctor. And you're in way over your head this time."
Sam had a sinking feeling; for the moment, it chose to settle in the pit of his stomach. He'd leaped into this man, and yet there he was, standing in front of him. It wasn't possible. Not unless something had gone horribly wrong.
Considering that, aside from the fact that the retrieval system didn't work, the Project appeared to work fine, just as it should, lack of fine tuning aside, he should really be surprised that something hadn't gone wrong earlier.
"But!" The Doctor grinned at him. "That's why I'm here. To check up on you. To see why you ended up here, now, where there isn't supposed to be any real threat or any wrong that you need to put right." The ship seemed to groan, a sound Sam associated with houses settling. "It's all right, old girl," the Doctor said, patting the console fondly. "I won't make a mess of things this time. I'm being very careful. And this is temporary. Just a check up. Now, let's see if you're getting any different readings…." He began hitting various buttons and flipping switches on the console, causing the screen he was peering at to flicker. "C'mon, c'mon," he muttered, tinkering with something else now, hands working by themselves, never taking his eyes off the screen. Something beeped, and the flickering stopped, the screen settling on a text of slowly revolving circles.
The Doctor didn't move, but the blood drained from his face.
"What is it?" Sam asked. He couldn't make heads or tails of what had just gone on, regardless of who he had leaped into. Snatches of personality were one thing, but knowledge was quite another. Well, usually. Small things sometimes stayed, like his knowing the name of the gate Martha had been telling him about. Or knowing a few rules or tidbits of information, such as how the leapee's favourite subject was astronomy. Or, in other cases, some advice that he could share with people, advice that otherwise he wouldn't have found himself giving, particularly on that topic….
"Rassilon," the Doctor breathed.
"Sorry?" Sam asked. "What was that?"
The Doctor shook his head. "No, it's…." He stared at the screen. "That's impossible."
"What is?" Sam pressed.
The Doctor stood up abruptly. He cast one long look at the screen before dashing out of the TARDIS, calling over his shoulder, "Just need to double check something!"
Sam was about to follow him, but he suddenly thought better of it. Instead, he waited. Not ten minutes later, the Doctor was back. "Well?" he prompted.
"It's not supposed to be possible, not anymore," the Doctor muttered, ignoring Sam at the moment and occupying himself at the console instead. "Then again, never really tried it, but I didn't think…oh."
"Doctor? What is it?" Sam quizzed, hoping to finally get some answers out of the man.
"You know that expression, a stitch in time saves nine?" the Doctor asked in reply, rocking back on his heels as he turned slowly to face Sam again.
Sam nodded, wondering where the conversation could possibly be going.
"I've had to take it literally once or twice," the Doctor continued, watching Sam carefully for his reaction. "Well, more than that, actually," he amended. "End up doing it quite frequently." He frowned. "About as frequently as I find myself trying to patch up the big holes, actually."
"But that expression doesn't have anything to do with the fabric of the space-time continuum," Sam blurted. "It just means that you shouldn't put off solving a problem, since time will make solving it more difficult. Doing something now will stop it from becoming a bigger problem later. You have to fix something before it gets worse and it's harder to fix."
The Doctor just watched him, waiting.
"You have to fix…." Sam trailed off, realizing what the Doctor was getting at.
"You fix things yourself," the Doctor acknowledged. "Quite the handyman, you are." He stopped for a moment. "Sometimes I think you lot are rubbing off on me, with all your imagined science fiction. Anyway, the point is, things don't always go according to plan when we nip them in the bud like that. No matter how good our intentions are."
Sam squirmed a bit under the Doctor's gaze. He didn't know how much the man knew about him, or how he knew him at all, and Sam had just been thinking about the time he'd saved Tom…and gotten someone else killed instead. All for his selfishness, thinking that if Maggie had written up a story about the mission, they'd know how Tom had died, and he'd be able to…. But she'd never filed that story, and for a while, he had wished bitterly that he could forget the next time he leaped, that the Swiss-cheese effect he experienced would leave a hole in place of that particular memory. Later, he'd accepted the pain. It helped him to remember the costs of his actions.
And why being able to control his leaps would be more of a curse than a blessing.
"So sometimes," the Doctor continued, "a well-intentioned stitch doesn't have quite the right effect." The Doctor sighed. "The consequences can vary. Sometimes a weak spot will appear elsewhere. Sometimes you end up drawing together two very different parts of history, and that mess can take a while to sort out. Of course," he added, looking a bit thoughtful, "if you were clever, you could try to put a stitch in the wrong place to use those consequences." The earlier frown returned, deepening. "Why didn't I think of that before?" he muttered. "Probably because…." He shook his head and returned to the matter at hand. "Look, the consequences can be disastrous, but they don't have to be. Sometimes, you can fix them up easily, too."
"But if you don't fix the original problem, wouldn't that just make things worse?" Sam finally ventured.
The Doctor's expression darkened and he smiled a grim smile. "Precisely. Oh, not immediately. And it's a very long run before the effects accumulate enough to be noticeable, but it happens. Only then, other things will come to fix it."
"What other things?" Sam didn't like the tone of the Doctor's voice in the slightest.
"Things I would rather not deal with if I can avoid it." He fell silent. Finally, he said, "But it's different this time." Perhaps anticipating Sam's question of 'how', the Doctor explained, "We've fallen into a pocket. Pockets aren't like loops; time's not cycling, and things aren't repeating. Well, fine, some pockets, if they're small enough, appear to be like that. But they aren't, truly. Not really. Well, I suppose that's due to the different classifications, and the chronon revolution pockets—" He broke off. "That doesn't matter. We're not in one of those."
"Are we in a different universe?" Sam asked, suddenly fearful that that was the reason Al hadn't been able to find him.
The Doctor shook his head. "No. Same universe, all right. We didn't fall through any holes, any rips. More like, well, a crack, a crack that doesn't go all the way through. Same universe, but time…passes overhead, so to speak."
"What are you saying?" Sam asked, not sure if he wanted to trust his gut feeling, even if it, and his other instincts, hadn't led him down the wrong path before.
"We're just on a different level of the same universe."
"Meaning?"
The Doctor looked like he didn't want to answer. "It's the same timeline, but it's split into two parts. They're running parallel to each other. They're not exactly the same, but it appears that way. I suppose, essentially, they are the same, but…." The Doctor trailed off, casting around for an appropriate analogy. "It's like…it's like a strand of your DNA when it undergoes replication," he finally said. "It gets separated into two parts, and the missing half is filled in accordingly, matching opposites, leaving you with two identical strands. Complementary events. Parallels. It happens all the time, really. That's how parallel worlds get started. There'd be plenty more out there if I didn't fix things up before they fully diverged."
"Then how can you tell that this is different?"
The Doctor raised his eyebrows at him. "I'm a Time Lord, Sam. I can feel it. I just didn't want to believe what everything was telling me."
"But…surely it can't matter that much, if it's identical?" Sam asked, though even as he said it, he knew he was wrong. Like the Doctor, he had been trying to ignore his gut.
"That's the thing," the Doctor said. "It's not identical." Before Sam could open his mouth, the Doctor continued, "Sometimes, with DNA, you get single base pair mutations. Substitutions, additions, deletions, what have you. And something's changed. You can't always tell; sometimes it doesn't matter at all, when it comes down to it. But sometimes…."
"Sometimes the mutations are lethal." Sam felt cold. "So this timeline…it'll…."
"Terminate, yes," the Doctor finished. "And everyone with it." He considered for a moment. "Everyone in this part of the original timeline, that is."
"So I leaped here to…." Sam couldn't complete his thought. "Not to fix something, but to…to…die." So he would never have to find a solution to his problem, never have to worry about the damage that would be done if they discovered a way to fully control the Project….
The Doctor looked surprised. "What? No! No, of course not. What makes you say that?" He looked at Sam curiously. Sam couldn't meet his gaze. "Sam, you're going to be fine. Martha's going to be fine. Everyone's going to be fine. I am not going to have an entire parallel die, not on my watch."
"But if this parallel is due to terminate," Sam said, "how can you fix it? It's not like you can just cut it off completely to diverge into a separate world. It's not viable; it won't last."
"I'm going to splice the original strands back together. Cut it off before it reaches the change, feed it into the original timeline again." The Doctor turned back to the console, his attention on the screen once more.
"But if it's that easy," Sam queried, suspicious again, "why all the concern? Why the insistence that this wasn't possible?"
He didn't receive an answer.
A/N: So, I hope everyone has a good Easter (even if you don't celebrate it). Just to note, I am sticking by the characterizations I established in Patchwork, and I'm sorry if the characters slip out of character every once in a while, but I am trying to work on it, and therefore accept suggestions, preferably detailed ones, though I reserve the right to ignore them if I'm desperate. Also, a quick apology to Questfan for, ahem, ignoring your request. Next time, I hope. But I did try to compromise, as I'm sure you'd agree….