The Doctor, remembering the minor difficulty his future self had experienced with landing the TARDIS in the broom closet, was pleased when he found himself in a store room. However, when he stepped outside, pulling the door to the TARDIS tightly shut behind him, he could feel something sharp grating on his senses.
He was too late.
"No," he stated firmly. He pulled the sonic screwdriver from his pocket and aimed it at the door, activating it. Precisely eight seconds later, he bounded out into the corridor—
—and found himself at gunpoint. He sighed and held up his hands, anticipating the command, glad that he'd pocketed the sonic screwdriver already. "This really isn't what it looks like."
The man—Corporal McLaughlin, according to his tag—eyed him warily but did not lower the gun. "Who are you? How did you get in here? What are you doing here?" he demanded.
Name, rank, serial number…. The Doctor grinned. "I'm Doctor John Smith," he explained. "Sorry, got a little turned around down here, found myself in a store room of all places. I believe Rear Admiral Albert Calavicci is expecting me." Name-dropping usually worked, providing you used the right one, in the right context, and said it to the right person. Actually a bit iffy, that, if he thought about it a bit more, but he could talk his way out of most anything in this regeneration.
"What is your business here?"
Picky, the Doctor thought. He should have just charged on like he owned the place. He wouldn't be wasting so much time. "I'm here to examine your current leapee," he explained slowly. "Dr. Verbena Beeks decided she needed a second opinion, so I was called in."
"We were never alerted that they cleared anybody," the corporal informed him suspiciously.
"Well, mistakes are made, and do you mind pointing that somewhere else?" the Doctor asked, nodding to the gun. "My arms are getting tired."
"If you were expected, why were you not escorted down to level ten?" The gun did not waver.
"I don't know, maybe because they were busy? I believe I heard mention of some alarms going off earlier." The Doctor began to cautiously lower his arms but reconsidered when he heard the gun's safety click off. Being shot would complicate things. Tremendously. Either from the medical side, where they tried operating to get the bullet out, or the physiological side, where he ended up dying and regenerating, which would render the entire visit completely pointless. "Escort me if you like. Radio ahead, even. But I don't think remaining here in a standoff will do either of us much good."
Fortunately, the corporal saw the logic in this, and when he was informed that those employed on level ten were aware of a Dr. Smith, he even seemed apologetic. More importantly, he put his gun away, which was just as well, because the Doctor would have taken it out of his hand and thrown it down the hallway if he'd had to stare at it for one more minute. Not a technique he recommended, but despite having spliced the parallels, time was still of the essence, as they say, and he wasn't in the mood for games.
And there was the worrying possibility that he was already too late, that the process had advanced to such a stage that he couldn't mend it, despite what he'd said to Sam.
The elevator doors opened, and the Doctor bounded into a familiar hallway. He was right by the Waiting Room. Excellent. Ignoring his guard, he started towards it. He needed to see precisely how bad the damage was. He couldn't—
"Doctor, may I have a word?"
He stopped. "Dr. Beeks," he acknowledged politely, seeing the corporal eying him in the background.
"We'll be fine, Corporal McLaughlin, thank you," Verbena said cordially to the Doctor's shadow. She was, evidently, a well-respected civilian, judging by the corporal's crisp nod. She led the Doctor away from the Waiting Room and another corporal who was standing guard nearby, ignoring his protests—a technique he had applied too many times himself to be too spiteful of—and graciously keeping a small sense of conversation going until she had him cornered in her office.
"I need to see him," the Doctor said immediately. "Why did you stop me?"
"Dr. Smith is not well." Verbena was, he noted, still differentiating them by calling him the Doctor and his future self Dr. Smith. He supposed it was due to the natural human tendency to compartmentalize and classify and sort to establish some sense of order.
"I know that. That's why I'm here. And the longer we wait, the worse he's going to get." The Doctor was trying very hard not to be rude, but he was going to shelve that attempt very quickly if it proved ineffective.
"I wanted to ask you what effect leaping had on you."
"It gives me a bit of a headache, but give me a few seconds and I recover," the Doctor answered quickly. "Now, really, I've got to—"
"Dr. Smith's pain—"
"Is because he is splintering, Verbena. I explained it before. You were there. You heard. I wasn't kidding. Listen to me. The wounds aren't physical, not yet. But—"
"He refused to let me touch him," Verbena cut in sharply. "You must realize the severity of this situation. Your counterpart is not well. He refuses to see anyone, a request with which I simply must comply because my initial assessment agrees with the conclusion that his condition is—"
"Did he say why you shouldn't touch him?"
"He believed that I would cut myself."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Oh, so you think I've cracked, and I'm going on like Lady Macbeth in the Scottish play, seeing things that aren't there?" He saw the shock on Verbena's face and his anger subsided. He shouldn't have lost his temper. It was just…the mental grating was painful. But that was no excuse. Verbena was concerned. She was trying to help. She was trying to understand. She was doing what she considered appropriate: alerting him to the situation. Letting him know just how far things had gone, how much it had deteriorated.
She couldn't know that he already knew that. That he could feel it, every shard that was out of place. She couldn't know that, in trying to help, she was just slowing him down.
She deserved an explanation. And an apology. "I'm sorry." He hoped she could hear his sincerity in his tone. "But hear me out. Please. When he said that you might cut yourself, he didn't mean so that you would physically bleed. He meant that you might damage your timeline. Did he say anything about that? About timelines?" Verbena gave a slight nod. "But it didn't make any sense," the Doctor reasoned, "so you chose to ignore it. Perfect."
Verbena, no doubt because she was trained as well as she was, didn't react to his sarcasm. Or, well, to his thinly veiled anger. He frowned, taking a full second to gather himself and keep from ranting on about the fallacies of the human race to someone who did not deserve to bear the brunt of his anger.
Actually, it was a bit worrisome that he was so sensitive. The Doctor took another second of reflection and, to his horror, realized that he was no longer separating the few neurons his future self had left behind from his own. He hastily extracted them from his thought processes and pointedly refrained from thinking about what, precisely, he would face in the future to make him so…like that.
"You can't know the damage that would be done if you—or anyone else—cut yourself on that," he continued. "You don't know where your timeline would end up. Or even how long it would run, depending on where it was sliced, and if the cut was complete. If he shatters, and some of those splinters fly, there is no telling how many timelines he'll wound. Anyone who is close to him—and, unfortunately, at the shattering point, me, because I've got a bit of him in here with me—when he shatters, if he shatters, is susceptible."
Verbena's concern had increased tenfold now, and although she kept her expression carefully schooled, the Doctor thought that he saw a bit of horrified curiosity join it. But then he'd had more than a couple of centuries practice; he ought to be good at reading people now. "When you say shatter," she began hesitantly, "do you really mean—?"
"Unfortunately, yes. But not physically, not at the end. When he shatters, he'll be replaced. By…whoever the future me is then."
Verbena was quiet for a moment. "Do you mean to help him?"
"I'd like to, yes. If I may?" The Doctor pointed to the door.
"Forgive me for keeping you. I didn't…. I didn't know."
"You couldn't." The Doctor gave her a soft smile. "Thank you. For being concerned. For trying to help. You're brilliant, Dr. Verbena Beeks. You, and everyone else I've met at Project Quantum Leap." Without waiting another second, the Doctor headed towards the Waiting Room.
The Doctor sat very still, trying to keep all the pieces together. He'd pushed the ones that had shifted in his mad scramble towards the centre of the table back into place. Keeping them there took more concentration than he wanted to admit. He was lucky, frankly, that the shards hadn't sliced through the illusion. He had no desire to have anyone see him in this state.
He heard the door to the Waiting Room open but didn't bother opening his eyes. He knew who it was. "Too late," he whispered when he heard the footsteps stop.
"It still might work."
"I don't think so."
"Let me have a look at you."
The Doctor didn't bother protesting, hearing his other self already fiddling with the settings on the sonic screwdriver. The device whined, and a few seconds later he felt Sam's physical aura melt away. He felt bare, exposed.
"Oh." The voice was very small.
"Would they be able to see it yet?" the Doctor asked, unwilling to look for himself.
There was a brief silence. Then, "No. Not yet."
"I was never able to check the readings," the Doctor admitted. "Leaving was too risky."
"You weren't as stable as you told me you were. I would have checked myself if I'd known. If I'd looked."
"You wouldn't have known what you needed to look for without my saying, and I didn't want to risk telling you. Neither did you. Not at the potential cost."
"The timeline's stable now."
"But I'm not."
There was silence for a few moments. "Tell me," the voice said, stronger now, harsher, scathing, "when did I begin to give up so easily?"
The Doctor opened weary eyes. "I'm not giving up. I'm accepting what I cannot change."
"Well, I'm not." A grin spread across the other Doctor's face. "Because I think, if I'm very clever—as you know I am—I can still help you. Keep you from splintering completely. Seeing as it's not really something I'd want to go through."
"You might want to check the readings first, if you're thinking what I think you're thinking. Because I thought of that. Briefly. Let me guess; involves temporal reverberation along the intermediate chronon strands?"
The other Doctor frowned at him. "You could at least let me try."
"If the potential cost outweighs the benefit, it's not worth it!" the Doctor snapped. "You know that. I'd rather shatter than ruin any more lives."
The other Doctor was quiet for a while, his face grave. "I'm going to lose someone else, aren't I?"
The Doctor didn't answer.
"Oh, no, not just someone else, is it? More than one, then. And you're too afraid to let anyone else near you. Even me."
"I've decided it's not worth the cost."
"Tell me, these brilliant people I'm going to travel with—will I know? Will I know what I'm going to do to them?"
"You never wanted to look," the Doctor answered. He looked himself straight in the eye. "And you still won't. Except for one, when the end comes before the beginning."
"But if you learned the end before the beginning, why not change it?" the other Doctor challenged.
"I…couldn't."
"And do you know why? Because everyone who travels with you has the choice. The chance to refuse. And some do. Like Donna. Brilliant, but terrified of what she saw. Terrified of me then, and rightly so, from the looks of you now. So now you're not even giving them the choice, are you? The chance? But tell me, did any of them ever regret travelling with you, given what happened in the end? Rose didn't. Even at the end, when she knew, in that last second, before it closed— She knew it was over, even if she wouldn't give up. But I didn't see any regret in her eyes, not over the choice to travel with me." The Doctor's voice was tight.
"You'll make the same choices I did," the Doctor told him in a heavy voice. "Maybe I'll reconsider once I regenerate." Providing, of course, his death allowed for regeneration. He was still terrified it wouldn't.
"Perhaps you will," the other Doctor agreed. "But right now, I'd rather not let an opportunity to help slip by. There's still a chance we can mend this, you know. Graft a bit over the wounds and let it heal. It's one change."
"And sometimes, in spite of all odds, one small change does matter, doesn't it?" the Doctor rejoined good-naturedly, but his heart wasn't in it, and his voice sounded false. "It is a compound change, after all. Not a simple one."
"I'm not giving up that easily."
"Neither did I, before I was looking with fractured vision," the Doctor retorted bitterly.
"Stop it." The other Doctor's voice was hard, matching his own. "If you carry on like this, you'll make some decisions you'll regret."
"That's the thing. I already have. And I'm not sure if I've done it all yet."
"Nonononono!" The other Doctor moved forward as if to shake him but stopped abruptly, no doubt upon remembering the danger. "Don't go there! Don't you dare go there!"
It was a sign of how far the splintering had progressed, the Doctor knew. He sighed, grimacing as a shard jostled out of place. Perhaps his other self had come up with something that he hadn't. Unlikely, but he'd take the chance.
It was the only shot he had now.
And he really didn't want to die.
And splintering…. Well, it felt like dying. And for all intents and purposes, to this particular self, it was.
"The inhibitor is in section C-43, subsection 4-D, worked into the mainframe of the tertiary peripheral memory drive, cloaked under a perception filter. Go in through the second-last panel on the north side. You can get the readings from there. Just…look at everything carefully."
"Thank you." His other self grinned and started off down the ramp.
"If you don't think…." The Doctor stopped. His counterpart was looking at him expectantly, so he forced himself to continue, saying, "If you don't think it will work, based on what you see…. Just go back. When I shatter, there will be enough force to kickstart the leaping process. You and Sam should still be safe."
Grimly, the other Doctor nodded.
And then he left, heading to the Control Room, leaving the Doctor to wait in the Waiting Room.
He hated waiting.