Author's Note: Oh, boy. Sorry, this was a long wait. But now that there's no weekly dosage of Who, maybe I'll be less distracted.

Chapter 6

oOoOoOoOoOo

Jack would have been embarrassed to admit that when the jacketed stranger flashed into the room, he was too surprised to react. But as it was, all he could manage was to stare quite blankly at the man on the bed, wearing a near identical expression to the one on Rose's face.

The other two people in the room were far more on top of things. They instantly ran forward; Martha was immediately at the man's side, apparently checking for vitals and doing other medical first aid. Mickey was apparently sensible enough not to disrupt her, but he did ask, cautiously; "Doctor?"

Martha laid a hand on the man's neck, spurring him to roll onto his back. "Well," he slurred, "that was different."

His voice was British, and young. Very young. He hadn't opened his eyes yet, but now that his face was revealed, Jack noticed just how soft and sweet it looked. What the Hell had just happened?

"Are you okay?" asked Martha. It wasn't the first question Jack would have had, but the Hippocratic Oath was rather deeply ingrained in human medics.

"Hmm? Oh, yes. I think so. Fairly sure. Do I have legs? I'd check myself, but I'm rather afraid that my head will explode if I open my eyes."

"Er, yes," said Martha. "You definitely have legs."

"Oh. Good."

Everyone in the room who wasn't currently lying on the bed shared a glance.

Mickey was the first to speak again. "Doctor, is that you?"

The man on the bed didn't respond immediately. He was too busy checking over his body with a questioning hand, making sure it was all there. Jack knew the answer to the question, but Rose beat him to it.

"That's not the Doctor! I don't know who he is, but he's definitely not the Doctor."

"Says who?" retorted the man on the bed.

"Says- common sense!" spat Rose. "I've seen the Doctor, and you ain't him. He's bigger and looks older and…," she scrambled for something else, "he wears better clothes."

"Oi, what's wrong with my clothes? They're perfectly fine. Better than fine. They're cool."

Rose opened her mouth to complain again, but Jack hesitated. He read people for a living, and if this scenario was a picture, it had a very interesting caption. Mickey and Martha were not acting confused, but quick and professional. There was only the slightest hint of doubt on their faces. Either they knew something Jack didn't, or they thought they did, which was almost as intriguing.

Rose was still going strong, however. She turned to her old boyfriend. "Come on, Mickey! You know that the Doctor doesn't look like this."

The man hesitated, biting his lip. "It's more complicated than that…"

He gave a coded look to his wife, one that Jack decoded immediately. It was one that said that information needed to be shared, but not too much, and how do I do it? Privately the Captain thought he was being smart to passing this onto someone else; Mickey had the tact of a sledgehammer. Whether or not he thought it was smart for them to be keeping secrets at all was yet to be seen.

"It's to do with the Doctor's species," Martha explained, but there was a long pause before she said anything else. She rummaged through the side-table, and extracted what looked like a very basic medical kit. She held up her hand for silence as she checked the man on the bed; first she pressed a thermometer into his mouth. He yelped in surprise at the sudden intrusion, gagging, his eyes popping open in surprise. "There. You didn't explode," Martha said, teasing.

"Why'd you go and do that for?" he whined.

"Shut up, you big baby. I was checking your temperature. It seems normal, by the way." Next she took out what Jack recognised from history class as a stethoscope, used for monitoring heart-beat. "You know the drill."

The man smiled, and his grin had some history behind it. Jack watched, fascinated, as he unbuttoned his shirt and let the doctor press the cold metal to his chest. The ex-time-agent's head was already reeling, processing information, but it kicked into top gear when he watched Martha pressed the instrument not only onto the left side of the chest, but also the right, and then listen for a long, long period of time. "Your pulses are fine too, by the way."

Captain Jack knew the Doctor was not human. That much was obvious. Even if someone was too thick to notice the difference in temperature or the reactions to a different set of senses, when the driver of your ship kept deriding all those "stupid apes", you picked up quick that he wasn't from the same evolutionary tree as Homo sapiens. That didn't bother him. Jack had worked and slept with aliens for his entire adult life. He just figured the guy was one of the ninety-seven known species nearly identical to his own. At first, when he still half-expected to be abandoned or attacked by the guy, Jack had made it first priority to work out which one he was, specifically. When it had dawned on him that he wasn't going to work It out, and that even if he did, the information wouldn't help much, Jack had refilled it into a bit of a game. Something he could do for entertainment, but wasn't high priority.

But now….well, this was interesting. Two hearts. Doctor or not, there were only a handful of species with that particular physiological quirk. And that was just the beginning.

"What about the Doctor's species?" he asked, slowly.

About three people opened their mouths to reply, but it was Rose who spoke first. "Yeah, what about the Time Lords?"

"We're special," said the man on the bed. He still looked a little dazed.

"They change. They don't always keep the same body. When they're hurt, they do something called regeneration. Become a new person. Involves lots of bright orange light." Martha shot an amused glance at the man on the bed, who just shrugged.

Rose looked skeptical, and maybe a little hurt. "Is that true, Mickey?"

"Sure is, babe. One day you came to me, dragging along this total stranger, said he was the Doctor. Collapsed in my arms, wished me a merry Christmas. He was still wearing that ol' leather jacket of his."

"Shut up."

Everyone turned to look at Jack.

He felt as if he had been watching the conversation from the distance, but now he knew he had to speak up. "Shut up. You're talking about the future. Paradoxes." He stared long and hard at the man on the bed; the man who they said was a Time Lord. A Time-Lord. And one part of Jack's brain was screaming at him not believe them, and unfortunately, that was the rational part of it.

Because Time Lords were myths. Legends. Fairy tales so unbelievable, dark, and twisted that even fairies told them to frighten their kids. But that's all they were, fairy tales, right? At least, that's what Jack had believed until he'd entered the Time Agency. There had been rumours. Like all rumours, they had varied to the point where you could get fifteen different versions, and it was doubtful that any of them would be the full truth, but it made you wonder. People said that the Time Lords were real, and controlled the agency with invisible strings. Others said they were real, but no more than puppets controlled by the agency. A popular theory was they had once existed, but their pride drove them to ruins, like a modern Atlantis. Others still said that the whole concept was engineered to make people for fearful of tampering with the Vortex.

Maybe he shouldn't believe it, but it made an eerie amount of sense. Like a billion pieces that suddenly came together into a coherent picture. The technology that the Doctor had was more advanced than that of any other time travellers'. The way he sometimes seemed to listen to the Time Vortex. The blasé way he spoke about other species. You wouldn't think of it, no more than you'd assume that everyone you met was Bigfoot or a Star-Turtle, but all that evidence did point towards Time Lord.

On the most part, Jack hadn't really thought about the Time Lords. No bother worrying about them unless one showed up in the flesh, right?

Well, that time had come and gone.

Every cowardly instinct in Jack's body was saying to run. But he couldn't. You couldn't escape a Time Lord, everyone knew that. The best you could do was make sure you didn't mess up, because everyone knew what happened if you did…

"Are you really the Doctor?" he asked, sounding confident but on the inside quailing. He had to know for sure, but he did not like the idea of ordering a Time Lord around.

"Yes, Jack, it's really me. Blimey, I'd forgotten what a bother regenerating was. You lot always get so confused…" He wobbled to his feet, and shot a disarming smile at everyone when he failed to fall to the ground. "Oh, good, everything seems to be working."

The Smith-Jones seemed to take over then. Martha made sure that her patient really wasn't going to collapse on a moment's notice. Mickey announced that he was going to make tea, since that had helped a lot last time. The Doctor had protested, saying "I haven't just regenerated, tannin molecules won't do me a bit of good," but then he'd heard that they has Earl Grey and he'd become positively excited by the prospect of a good cuppa, provided that there were Jammy Dodgers. The other two humans had hung back, only following them to the kitchen after they realised that even the cats had left the room.

Jack glanced at Rose as they walked. The girl was biting her lip, but she wasn't half as worried as the captain. "You knew the Doctor was a Time Lord?"

"Yeah, 'course. He told me way back, not long after I met him." She obviously misread the expression on his face, because she back-tracked. "I'm sorry I never told you, Jack, but he's really sensitive about it, and I thought I should let him tell you himself…." She trailed off, looking glumly at the ground. "But you know about the Time Lords, yeah? You've heard about them?"

"Yeah." Talk about understatement.

"Is it true? The body changing thing?" Jack nodded. "Oh…..I wonder why he didn't tell me."

It was amazing. Rose was acting like a love-stuck kid who'd just learned her crush had been keeping something from her, completely oblivious to the fact that her crush was a being of god-like proportions. "I'm sure he had his reasons," he said noncommittally. Jack felt that if half the myths about regeneration were true, they were very good reasons indeed.

Their hushed conversation broke up when they entered the kitchen.

"….trying to communicate through the cats?" Mickey was saying.

"Yep," the Doctor said, smug.

"Well, it didn't do a very good job of it. What was a bow-tie supposed to tell us?"

"Well, I do wear one."

"Yeah, but we didn't know that. Last time we saw you wore a tie and pinstripes."

The young man looked momentarily embarrassed. "Er, yes, well. Not really my fault. I tried telling your cat that, and while he was very helpful, he's not the most clever kitten in the box. Not that box of Schrodinger's, of course, but there was only one cat in there anyway." He bent down and scratched Marbles affectionately on the head. "Besides, it would have been ridiculous carrying around pinstripes."

Martha rolled her eyes at Jack. He forced a smile to his face.

"Ah! There you two are. Thought you'd wandered off again. Would you like some tea? Mickey's just poured me some."

Rose agreed, but out of habit Jack asked; "Have anything stronger?"

"How about coffee?" asked Mickey.

"Stronger."

"It's nearly five in the morning, mate. No way."

Jack sighed, and agreed to the coffee. He'd had it a few times, mostly on board the TARDIS, and found the Old Earth drink to be bitter and energizing, but unsatisfying to someone used to caffeine pills. But after such a long night of work, he could do with a jolt of energy, however small. Besides, if he was really around a Time Lord, he would need to be as sober as possible.

Everyone stood around the kitchen, awkward. Everything felt tense, wound up. Rose was hanging close to him, never letting her eyes leave the Doctor, as if expecting him to suddenly change any moment. The other two were more comfortable, but only just. Martha was acting inviting and friendly, but it seemed just like that, an act. Maybe she really had been close friends with another Doctor, but it was clear that she wasn't completely sure where she stood with this new one, and it bothered her, even though she knew it shouldn't. Mickey, surprisingly, was the most calm, acting like this was a combination of a get together with his mates, and a bit of unexpected work.

As for the Doctor….well, he felt like a cross between hyperactive little kid and an out-of-date old man, neither of whom quite know how to act around adults. He took a deep swig of his tea, only to spit it back out into his cup when he discovered it to be too hot.

"Ah, ah, burning, burning!" He stuck out his tongue and glared at the mug. "Right then, we'll skip the tea then. Let's get going."

The humans all exchanged glances. "Go where?" asked Martha.

"To the TARDIS." He said it like it should be obvious.

"Right. Why?"

"Well, you do want to find the other me, don't you?"

Ah, yes. The other him. All leather and big ears and snarky comments. In honesty, Jack missed him, and wished he was here. At any other time, he would have been eager to get going; to make sure he was fine. But right now, he was thinking only one thing;

Two Time Lords. At the same time.

Shit.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Almost every time Amy entered the TARDIS after running for her life, she found herself thinking that she'd never been so thankful to be in the ship, and this time was no exception. The Doctor clearly didn't share this opinion.

"Ugh….this theme. Its 'orrible."

Amy shut the doors behind them with a slam. "What're you talking about?"

"This!" He gestured at the shimmering, shining console room. "It looks like a glitter truck crashed into an antiques shop."

She crossed her arms, and was about to respond with an angry retort, when the man stumbled, nearly falling to the glass floor. He caught himself just in time, managing to pull himself to his feet. Alarmed, Amy rushed to him, but hesitated in coming to hold him up. "Poison," he muttered as explanation.

Right. How could she forget? Amy could see the burning graze where the Doctor had been hit. He managed to make it to the console before falling, nearly draping himself against it.

She could dimly hear noise from outside of the ship; the echo of feet pounding against the ground as guards charged everywhere. Evidently the Doctor did too, since he continued to reach for the controls, and began to pull them into the dematerialisation sequence.

"Oh, no you don't," Amy protests, jumping to his side. "They can't find us, can they? And even if they do, they can't get in, right?"

The Doctor looked like he was going to argue, but then relented, his expression softening. Amy had been on the TARDIS for a while, and she knew the ship was her safe haven, the one place in the universe where nothing could catch them. In comparison, she did not like the chances of the Doctor crashing the ship and killing them all. He could barely steer the thing normally, let alone when he was dropping to the ground half-dead.

Just as she thought it, he dropped to the ground, half-dead.

She dropped to the ground. He was still conscious. His eyes gazed muzzily at her as Amy vaguely recalled some first aid training that someone had given. She helped pull him to his feet, draped his good arm around her shoulders and took his weight. Awkwardly, she started for the stairs. He was heavy. Way heavier than her Doctor.

He did what he could; his feet moved, and he was trying to stay as light as possible, but it was a feat reminiscent of an elephant trying to be a ballerina. "I thought you said the poison couldn't kill you!"

"It can't," retorted the Doctor. "But it can get real close."

Amy cursed.

They quickly came to the stairs, and though it involved much huffing, puffing and nearly falling, the pair managed them remarkably well, considering the circumstances. Clumsily they wandered into the hall. Amy's heart beat faster; she did not relish the idea of wandering the corridors looking for the med-bay when half the time she couldn't even find her bedroom. But a door to her left- a door, which yesterday had led to a rather eclectic art gallery- swung open, revealing the sterile white insides of a medical centre. She pulled her burden in with relief; she was now nearly carrying him completely. She laid him as softly as he could on the nearest bed, and he managed a watery smile in response. She wondered if the Doctor had rearranged the layout mentally. Probably not, he looked too exhausted; the blue box must have done it herself.

"Okay, Doctor, what should I do?" There was no answer but a groan. The alien's eyes were closed, his face pale. He was unconscious, or very close to it.

Amy looked around in a panic. Many rooms on the ship were foreign to her, filled with a chaotic jumble of technology from a million different eras, but this one was even more mysterious to her. This wasn't the Doctor's usual disorganisation; she could tell there was some sort of order to it all, but it all belonged to the impenetrable world of health care. There were beeping machines, vials of strange coloured liquid, vials of strange beeping liquid, which Amy regarded a little bit nervously. She called out the Doctor's name again, but there wasn't even a groan in response.

The panic started, like a little flutter. What now? She wasn't a medical professional, not by a long shot! She wished someone else was here, a proper doctor, or a nurse. Definitely a nurse, he'd know what to do, he always did….

She started charging around the medical bay, ripping open closets, glancing inside drawers. She saw bandages and needles and creams, but she needed something else. She forced herself to try and relax. Focus. Medicine, she though, cure.

She felt a strange swirling of curiosity, one that wasn't her own. She realised with a shock that she'd been an idiot. The TARDIS was alive, the Doctor had said, and she'd been tempted to believe it, so what if the ship was also conscious, what if it could hear her?

Help, she thought again. She focused on the image of the man in front of her, and then reimagined him as her Doctor, the Raggedy Man, just in case the TARDIS wouldn't understand, and thought about cures and medicine, and just little bit of fear that he wouldn't make it…

Through her tightly closed eyes, she saw lights flashing. Opening them, she realised everything in the medical bay had dimmed, except for a spot-light on an open cabinet. She rushed forward; the closet was lined with beakers, and she would have felt flustered and confused, except one was vibrating slightly. She didn't know how this worked, how any of it worked, but she didn't need to.

She thought 'thank you' with all of her might. She wasn't sure if there was any response; except maybe, maybe, a flicker of tenderness.

She pulled the Doctor's heavy body up; he stirred a few times, like he was fighting sleep. She wasn't completely sure how you gave this medicine to someone who was unconcious. Should she get a needle and inject it? Rub it on their skin?

A half memory, one she could barely remember, flickered through her brain; someone vaguely familiar was teaching her first aid….you tilt the person's head up, so they don't drown….how you slip a little bit of the drink into their mouth, massage its passage down…she didn't know who had taught her that, but she thanked him, too.

So she took the liquid, and dribbled it through the man's lips, slowly. At first her hands shook. Then she massaged it down. She didn't know when to stop; what was too little, what was an overdose? She settled for when he started to look less pale, for when he stopped shivering.

So the girl sat back, and waited.

oOoOoOoOo

Rory found himself back at the door to the console room in even quicker this time; he may have been imagining it, put it almost felt as though the corridors has been shifting, guiding him the right way. He faltered a few moments before hesitantly pushing his way into the room.

The Doctor was at the bottom of the stairs, completely oblivious to the man above. He was far more subdued than before, walking slowly around the console, making adjustments to the devices with slow deliberation. The lighting had changed to a mellow dark green, and the room was cast into heavy shadow. Something about the scene caused goose-bumps to rise on the human's skin. There was something so lonely about what he was seeing. The figure below wasn't the comical child he acted like around others, but seemed to thrum with a barely restrained power, the same energy Rory had felt surging through his mind but an hour before.

He coughed, awkwardly.

Below, the Doctor spun around, his face looking momentarily surprised before breaking into a huge smile. "Rory! You're back!"

"Er. Yeah."

He walked slowly down the steps, not completely sure what to say or do. He hadn't been sure how the Doctor would react to his reappearance, but he hadn't quite expected to be welcomed with hugs and smiles.

But then…it wasn't quite that, was it? Rory could sense the tension in the alien's body, just painted over. It was a very good cover-up, but the paint was cracking. There was the smallest hesitation in the Doctor's greeting, the most fleeting of worried glances. He wasn't sure if the feeling was intended for him or Amy. He decided it didn't matter; all he knew was how he felt. "Look….I'm sorry about earlier. But I want to help Amy. We need to save her."

"Well, of course we do," the Doctor says in a voice that somehow conveys an eye roll vocally. He jumps back, and starts twirling around the console, spinning and pulling things seemingly at random. All his seriousness seems to have drained away. He grinned at Rory through the glass pillar. "Knew you'd be back."

The human didn't reply, but thought, I sure didn't.

Slowly the glass centre began to move; slowly at first, than faster, pumping up and down. For a strange moment Rory fancied that he can feel it churning time itself. The ground shuddered beneath their feet, and he they had to fight to keep balanced. "Where are we going? Er, when, I mean?"

"Victorian London!"

"Victoria…." He trails off, confused. It was a little less advanced than he was expected. "What's there?"

"Lots of buildings, the Thames, Queen Victoria too, if she's not being eaten by werewolves. But it's not what, Rory, it's who. Reptile people are dead useful in a crisis. Well, not dead, but you catch my drift. Just popping in to call on a couple of favours."

Already Rory felt lost and baffled. "I'm sorry- reptile people?"

"Alright, reptile person," he amended. "Just getting the coordinates down, I need to avoid running into myself. You know how it is."

No I don't, Rory thought. He also thought that he could never understand what this guy's talking about, even with all his memory intact. Still, he felt somewhat useless clutching the railing, doing nothing but not trying to fall over. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

He didn't expect there to be anything, but the Doctor surprised him. "Yes, go get changed. You should find your Roman Centurion outfit in the closet, go put that on."

"You mean the metal breast-plate and sword? Why?"

"Because humans are squishy and need protecting?" the Doctor said, with a teasing tone. "No. It's all about the clothes Rory- it's all about….."He trailed of, staring at him. "….the clothes."

He stepped forward, the joy dropping from him again. He stared at Rory critically, and he had to fight down an instinct to step back from his analysing gaze. "I'm an idiot, Rory," he said quietly. "Don't you see? It's all about the clothes."

"Uh…."

"Look. Look at what you're wearing." Confused, Rory did as he was told. He was dressed in nothing special. Jeans, blue t-shirt, runners, all stained by dirt and mud from the fall. He saw nothing extraordinary about them, and was about to say as much, but the Doctor spoke first. "Now, remember when you fell?"

The memory came instantly; not his own missing memory of the incident, but the one he has stolen from the Doctor. It seemed to swallow him immediately; but unlike last time, Rory still felt rooted to his own sense of self. Through the Doctor's eyes he saw the battle-field. He could smell not only the overpowering scent of gun-power and blood, but pick out individual elements in the air. Strangest, and most disorientating of all, he could feel the different threads of time swirling around him.

"What were you wearing?" the Doctor asked, and in the memory, Rory saw himself set out across the battlefield. He was difficult to see through the smoke but…jeans, yes. But- was he wearing a red-shirt? No, it was a red padded jacket-vest….but beneath that was a shirt. Not the blue one he was wearing presently, but one of a dark brown colour….And Rory recalled the bomb landing nearby, completely hiding him for a few moments in smoke. The memory faded into the other one he'd taken from the Doctor. The one in the bedroom, of himbeing laid down to rest. The clothes he'd been wearing were the same ones he was wearing now- but they were different from before he'd fallen. Shocked, Rory was jolted from the memory. "I changed clothes. When I fell, I changed clothes!"

"Exactly."

"How didn't we notice it?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Like I said. Idiot. I didn't even notice it, not at first- what tipped me off was your ring."

"My ring? I don't have a ring."

"Exactly," he repeated. The Doctor glanced down at Rory's hand. "Usually you have a wedding ring. You don't take it off. And then it was gone, meaning that something was very, very wrong."

Rory looked down to confirm that his fingers really were bare. "But…what does that mean? Maybe I changed, or something? Maybe for a disguise?" It sounded unlikely even as he said it. You didn't change when a bomb hadn't landed just feet away.

"Maybe." But the Doctor looked doubtful. He had already jumped back to the console; he pulled down one of the orange screens hanging there. Rory had mostly been ignoring them, as they were always filled with nonsense he could barely comprehend- spinning, intricate swirls which looked like the random creations of a child with a mathematical compass than anything sensible. Now the Doctor worked feverishly, and the screen changed, producing English words. It said "SCAN".

"Rory, come stand over here," the Doctor said, slightly frantically, gesturing for a spot a few feet away from the screen. Nervous, Rory obliged. The Doctor commanded the thing to begin scanning, and an image of the human body appeared on the monitor. He didn't feel anything at all. But clearly something was happening, as the image on the screen changed, showing a three dimensional version of him.

Name: Rory Williams
Species: Homo sapien sapien
Age: 17
Sex: Male

The Doctor let out a triumphant "ha!" but Rory found himself looking at the information for several long moments, not quite sure what was wrong. All the information was correct. That was his name, that was his species, his sex, his age….

His age. He was 17, last time he remembered. But that was what he remembered. But if he'd had time to get married and travel space and time, shouldn't he be older? Why hadn't he aged according to all the time he had forgotten?

As if he could hear his thoughts, the Doctor said; "You're not missing any memories. You never had them in the first place."

"But you said I travelled with you! And there were all those pictures! Are they wrong too?"

"No, no, no. Both of them are correct. You see, you haven't had those memories yet." He grinned at him, and it was a wild, ecstatic grin of someone who felt like they'd just found the most amazing thing ever. "Don't you see, no one's been messing with your head! Someone's been messing with time!"

"Oh. Good." Rory couldn't see how that was any better. Then something occurred to him. "Wait…if I'm here, where's the older me?"

The smile on the Doctor's face faltered. "Ah. Yes. Well. I'd assume that he's where you were. In other words, you've switched placed."

Somewhere, thousands of light and human years away, a different Rory Williams woke up, and was very, very confused.