Sam looked up when he heard the door open, expecting to see Martha back to remind him of something; she'd only left a few moments before. Instead, it was the Doctor.
Despite the grin he offered Sam, he looked ill. When Sam expressed his concern, however, the Doctor waved it off. "Me? Nah. I'm fine. Right as rain."
"Doctor—"
"Where's Martha gone off to, then?" the Doctor asked, interrupting Sam.
"She went to the library to see if she could find anything to help. She said she knew her way around it quite well."
"Really? Impressive." The Doctor looked thoughtful. "Which library is that, then?"
Sam started. "Which library?"
"Well, you don't expect me to only have one," the Doctor replied, looking surprised by the very thought. "I do love a good book." He paused. "Though, if she says she knows her way around it well, I'm tempted to believe it's one of the smaller ones, because I've a few libraries on hand that even I lose books in. Granted, that may be due to my filing system. And the fact that I sometimes don't leave books in the library. Sometimes I sort a few of my favourites under author, in one of my trunks. Like C for Christie, Agatha. Splendid woman. She's astounding, you know. Absolutely brilliant, that Agatha. Amazingly astute. And observant. And resilient. And not too bad at solving a good mystery herself, though I expect she prefers to pen them. She fooled me once, you know. And, oh, it was a good once." He grinned at the memory.
Curious as Sam was, he coughed slightly to bring the Doctor's attention back to the present.
"But, yes," the Doctor continued, recovering, "point at hand. I think I know which library Martha's in. Last time I saw it, it wasn't that far away from the wardrobe room, and I expect Martha would have turned it up in her explorations. Besides, I don't think it's been moved lately." He paused again. "Have you told her yet?"
"Yes," Sam admitted, "but not about you."
"Good, good." The Doctor started fiddling with the screen on the console, causing the entire screen to become covered with circles. He stared at it, frowning slightly.
"Doctor," Sam started again, "perhaps you ought to go to the other parallel anyhow. If this is going to terminate, and we can't stop it, you shouldn't be here."
"Oh, we'll stop it. Don't you worry. Besides, I'm not about to leave."
"You aren't well, no matter what you say. You can't run yourself ragged here, trying to fix something that's gone wrong. It's bound to be something I can do, or I wouldn't be here."
"Yeah, about that," the Doctor began hesitantly, turning to look at Sam. "I'm not that convinced that you are supposed to be here. That this is where you were intended to leap, I mean. I don't really think you were supposed to land here any more than Martha and I were. Which makes it my problem, not yours. So I'm not leaving."
"But—"
"I'm sorry, I really am, and I promise I'll make sure you leap out of here in one piece. I don't know how much I can do from here, but I'll make sure that it's enough."
"You ca—"
"If I travel in the Vortex, I'm going to shatter. As long as I'm splintering, I'm stuck right here, right now. So I might as well do what I can." He looked determined, but Sam could see weariness in his face as well.
"Can you stop the splintering?" Sam asked, worried by what the final toll would be if the Doctor looked this ill in the initial stages.
The Doctor sighed. "If I can repair all this business with the parallels," he answered, waving a hand around at him, "it should stop the splintering in its tracks."
"Should?"
"Theoretically," the Doctor admitted. "Don't exactly have experience with splintering myself, until now. Heard it's a nasty process. I take care to avoid it."
"So once you stop it, you'll be back to normal?"
The Doctor was quiet for a while. When he finally replied, he only said, "No."
Sam looked at him, horrified. "Then what—? How can you—? Isn't there anything—?"
"Sam, listen to me!" The Doctor's voice was soft, but it still had a sharp edge to it—one that was something of desperation, Sam thought. "I don't know if I'm going to get through this, but if we can splice the parallels together, there's a chance that I will. If I can guide events along a similar path, leaving everything but this unchanged, then I'll be able to compensate. There are things that I can do, and if I'm right, they should suffice. But I won't be able to do that if we don't splice the parallels together before too many more cracks appear. It'll be difficult for me to think straight then, and I won't be able to do what I need to in order to splice them together, and if I can't do that, I won't buy myself the time I need to make sure the splintering doesn't go any further than it has. And if it's too late by the time we finish our mending—" He broke off, and his face became expressionless. "Well, I've known it was coming. Knowing just isn't making it any easier."
The Doctor took a deep breath, closing his eyes. When he opened them, he said, "I've been tracing the parallels back to their dividing point. I needed to know what caused the division to know how to fix it." He sighed. "Seems fitting that I was the one who caused it, doesn't it? Me, always interfering. Meddler, that's me. And all I was trying to do was help. Usually I'm a bit more careful than that, but I thought I'd still managed to divert the timeline from that path, what with all the follow up I've been doing. I just didn't think to look years later. I mean, the chances that that recording would've been commandeered years after being archived…. Still. Done now."
"What recording?" Sam asked, suddenly wondering just how entwined the Doctor had become in his life in their last encounter. Surely he couldn't mean….
"One of you," the Doctor answered. "I expect you remember what I'm talking about, judging by the look on your face. Not that I approve of Dr. Hardy's methods, or of Major Meadows's reasons, but I only took it from them because I didn't want you to leave too many traces. Well, take is a bit strong of a word. I simply persuaded them to release it to me. But, don't you worry, Al's got it now, safe and sound, so there aren't any traces of you lying about in your past telling anyone who cares to listen about your time travel experiment." He frowned. "No undoing that, but it should mean that all I have to do is go back and give them a little nudge in the right direction when they go about reverse engineering that handlink of yours."
Sam just stared at him, shocked. He knew, deep down, who the Doctor meant by 'them'. He couldn't help but be horrified to think that the Doctor would take a willing part in starting that, knowing how it would end up. "You're saying that you—?"
"I'm sorry. I thought if they didn't have all your information, it would be easier when they finally caught up to you. I couldn't change how things were supposed to play out—balance and all—but I'd thought that I could make the final transition smoother, so to speak." He shrugged apologetically. "One of the rare times that I was wrong." He pulled a face then, adding, "Though, I have to say, I don't need to spend much time in this pocket in the parallel to realize that it wouldn't be that different without someone leaping around wronging rights. You humans have a nasty habit of gravitating towards death and destruction and despair all on your own." He paused, considering. "But to be fair, you're also remarkable at recovering. And sometimes it spurs you lot on to great things."
"But you said I was an anomaly on this parallel. How can I be an anomaly if the Project still exists here?"
The Doctor looked at him for a long moment. "Balance. Me, I try to do good, and I've my fair share of enemies. But even if I'm gone, someone else will step up to fight them. Sometimes at the cost of their own lives." He was silent for a few seconds before continuing, "This parallel, Sam— It's not about the project Alia became involved in. Originally, yes, they were able to devise their experiment by combining the information from the recording and the handlink and a few other clues you probably don't even realize you've left. Add a dash of evil genius, and you've got something that most anyone would look at and think is terrible. That's what happened on this parallel. But me, I came along and moved the recording out of their reach. They didn't find it."
"So they couldn't use it to create their project?" Sam deduced, shaking his head. "That can't be right. I did meet Alia, more than once; you can't tell me I've been leaping on this parallel instead of my own."
"Hear me out," the Doctor stated. "Let me explain this. Properly. You were leaping on your own parallel, and they knew it. Thing is, they didn't know there were two parallels. They were blinded to the very possibility. They were desperate to find you, Sam Beckett. And, eventually, they did. Only Alia had a conscience, didn't she? So things didn't go exactly according to plan, that first time through. You survived."
He stopped, studying Sam for a few heartbeats before continuing, "You did exist on this parallel once. You weren't always an anomaly. You see, it comes down to resource allocation. In this parallel, Project Quantum Leap spent time and money searching history for that recording. And as good as Ziggy is, well, she wasn't quite good enough. In your parallel, the resources that would have been put towards the search for the recording were diverted, and when it came down to it, at that critical point, sufficient research had been done to snap Alia's connection with her project and link her into yours, and later get her out of harm's way to start again. But in this parallel, when the two of you tried to leap together…." The Doctor trailed off. "At Project Quantum Leap, they didn't dare send someone else off leaping to look for you without making sure the retrieval system worked. But they had Al searching for weeks, practically living in the Imaging Chamber, desperate to find you. And then the funding was cut, and they couldn't raise enough to continue their efforts." His voice darkened as he continued, "But when Alia was lost, they sent Zoey out."
"But things aren't that different on this parallel than they are on mine."
"We're in a pocket here," the Doctor reminded him. "A continuous enantiomeric pocket. Mirrors the other parallel in some ways but doesn't really belong on this one. Which is why the pocket was created in the first place, really. Like an intron region that'll loop to be spliced out during RNA processing," the Doctor added, harking back to their earlier comparison. "This portion hasn't been affected by Zoey's unbalanced leaping, not like the rest of this parallel, where the changes are beginning to accumulate. The rest, well, as I've said—it's going to terminate."
"But you haven't said how I could have met Alia on my parallel when they couldn't form their own time travel experiment without my recording." Sam thought for a moment. "Unless you mean to say we jumped parallels, from this one to that one?"
The Doctor looked impressed. "Brilliant thought," he praised, looking pleased, "but sadly not the truth. You see, I never said that they couldn't develop their experiment without the recording."
"You implied it. Otherwise, why would you have to help them conceive the idea from the handlink?"
"No, no. You're still thinking that the parallels were created around the other project. That's not true. In each parallel, both projects existed at some point in time. The difference is whether or not the recording was available when the other experiment was devised. In your parallel, they still formed their project. Only…." He hesitated, closing his eyes. "They didn't know about you, not even Lothos. Oh, they knew that there had to be someone out there, but for all they knew, it was still their project—which perhaps spurred them onto their ultimate success, seeing as it could have been a sign of their accomplishment. I mean, you lot didn't stick to one type of handlink, did you? No, it evolved." The Doctor opened his eyes. "Thing is, what needs to be done has already been done. From your perspective. Which is why I didn't spot it before."
"What?"
"Initially, you see, the other project, it…. Well, it followed a few more unconventional paths when designing and recruiting. Not that they ever really followed all the rules and regulations you did. Just…they were a bit more desperate the first time around. And the desperation made them more aggressive. And, for them, it allowed them to...cultivate the results they wanted. I don't think you'd appreciate the details."
The Doctor paused, his expression darkening. "As for the handlink, I didn't mean that I'd help them figure it out, exactly. Just…nudge them in the right direction. The right direction. That is, away from the direction they were headed in, originally. I mean, sure, they'd still figure it out, but if they find the basics of what they need to know quickly enough, they are more liable to overlook other seemingly inconsequential factors. Little things, nothing major." He blew out a breath. "But enough to…tweak things in your favour. Later, I mean. And a quick visit with Alia would be in order, just to show her that she does have the strength to stand up to them—strength you can renew her faith in, so she can trust you. Bit tricky, but I expect I could get her alone." After a brief pause, he said, "You see, things…changed. You don't remember what originally happened, in your own parallel. You remember what should happen. After the splicing."
"But if what I remember is a product of the splicing, doesn't that mean it's already been done?"
"From your perspective, not from mine. Meaning, of course, that I have to do it."
"But it also means you succeeded," Sam pointed out, "or it wouldn't be what I recall."
"Before you leap into a situation to change something, everyone remembers the original history. From a point further into the past, that original history is only projected. From my perspective, what you remember is simply projected—something I would have done, had something else not changed. Now that I'm splintering, your memories are nothing more than a guideline for me. So what you recall isn't going to stand if I can't splice these parallels together. And because I'm splintering, I can't go back, meaning I can't splice them, which is why we're still on two separate parallels now."
The Doctor blew out a breath before offering Sam a weak smile. "There is a way to forcibly splice them together, and believe me, I've explored that option, but even if I break few dozen rules allowing me—and the other me—to do that, it probably wouldn't hold, given my deteriorating state. I mean, piece of cake otherwise, by comparison, but I'm a bit too far along now, I think, given, well…." He stopped. "Still. Wouldn't hurt if I could talk to myself. You ought to go and see Al. Tell him to get the other me working on it. Might take a bit longer, using your tools, but between the two of us, we should be able to rig it up. And, really, they'll be wondering where you are. And they might have found something out. Isn't it best to let them have their say?"
Realizing he wouldn't win an argument with the Doctor, Sam left the TARDIS, preoccupied with trying to digest what the Doctor had told him and coming up with a solution to the problems they faced. There had to be something else, something the Doctor had missed. He'd leaped in here, after all, and no matter what the Doctor said, he was convinced that there was a reason for it.
A/N: For those of you who would like that run by them again, here it is:
The Project's parallel: reflects the effects of the splicing—in other words, what we know from the series; the Doctor did not go into much other detail about it
The other parallel, where the Doctor and Sam are now: when Sam and Alia met up and eventually leaped together, their respective Projects lost track of them. Project Quantum Leap was shut down due to lack of funding, but Zoey started leaping, taking over where Alia left off. Because she's been doing it for a sight longer than the Doctor had initially thought, the parallels no longer reflect each other as much as they might have. But, being caught in the pocket, things outside look much the same to Sam and the Doctor, because the pocket mirrors the other parallel.
If anyone is still confused, drop me a note and I'll see if I can explain it any better. In the meantime, thanks to those who have reviewed.