They were three strangers, in a bar. In a bar where they clearly didn't belong. The human looked casually at the red-headed bartender. "Give me Scotch," he said, "no ice." The Luxan grunted at her. "Luxan ale," he said without giving her a second glance, scanning the room in suspicion. The third smiled at her in a big, ear-to-ear smile. "D'you know these — these - these small cranberries, from the Forest of Ganka, they make a wonderful juice out of them with a bit of lizard tails and... and... what was it — ah! Marmalade, yes, they put the marmalade in, it's great, especially when it comes with these small pickles — d'you have pickles here? You have to, you can't run a proper pub without them, and then you take one sip of the cranberry juice and one bite of the pickle and you get this wonderful after-taste…"
The man would have kept on talking indefinitely, but the bartender took the first opportunity and turned back to fix drinks for the other two when he stopped for breath. She had no idea what cranberries were, and had no intention of asking. He might start talking again.
But he didn't, because at that exact moment the doors opened and a woman walked in, clad all in black, her skin and hair white as snow. The Luxan and the human tensed immediately. Their companion could smell the tension in the air, but kept quiet about it, and just kept on smiling absent mindedly. The woman walked straight towards them.
"Do you have it?" she hissed.
"Yeah, about that," the human started, "we were wondering, maybe we could have some sort of credit settlement?"
The woman didn't answer — just pulled out her gun. The Luxan and the human followed her example immediately, only to be broken off by their — friend, for lack of a better word.
"No no no no no! I said, no guns!"
Chiana rolled her eyes and looked at him, exasperated. "If he's going to start asking for credit he'd be lucky to not have a felkin bite his nivons off him within a second! I'm being realistic!"
"No, I meant you two!" The Doctor turned to John Crichton and Ka D'Argo. "I am not going to go through with this if you start waving your guns around!"
"Look, I don't think you understand how dangerous — "
"Oh, I understand alright," the Doctor cut through John's words, refusing to let him finish the sentence. "No guns, or I'm staying on Moya."
"He did say so earlier, Commander," Pilot interfered from behind Jool, clearly relieved to stop doubling as a bar, "and I must point out both Moya and myself think the Doctor has quite a good point about it."
"Of course you do," John sighed. "Just don't blame me when they shoot us all dead."
X
In a way, John Crichton is lucky. When most people hear voices, they start fearing they're going insane. When John Crichton hears voices, however, he knows he's being messed with.
Another thing to help him realise he's messed about with was his absolute knowledge that the corridor the voices came from was empty. Everyone else on the ship was eating dinner at the moment. Well, for a given value of the phrase, anyway. Chiana and D'Argo were mainly staring at each other, and Jool was talking in a high and somewhat shrill voice about nothing in particular, just trying to stop the silence. And then John had had enough and told them he was going to see Pilot. The upside was that they all realised they got on his nerves and didn't blame him. The downside was that they all started blaming each other. When John left, Chiana and D'Argo were shouting at each other, and both were shouting at Jool. He was pretty sure the fight was still going on. So he had every intention of walking down random corridors and avoid every other living being, he even ignored whatever it was that Pilot was trying to tell him.
And now Harvey was up to another game. Well, not today.
He walked straight into the corridor where the voice came from — a rather high pitched and surprised call of "Oi! What's going on with you?" in a British accent — and saw a man standing next to a big blue box, puzzled.
Well, he knew he didn't actually see the man. Because, obviously, the man wasn't there. This was Harvey, doing — whatever it is he thinks he's doing, anyway. Making John's life more of a living hell than it already was, was John's best guess.
"What do you want?" he asked the Apparition.
"Oh, hello!" the Apparition looked surprised. "I'm the Doctor, I'm sorry, I had to — "
"You can stop this game, I know what you're doing, I just don't understand why — why — why! Are you putting me through this nonsense, yet again. Leave me alone!"
The Apparition raised an eyebrow. "Are you alright?"
"Alright? Of course I'm not alright," John burst out in mirthless laughter. "The love of my life is gone from me forever, D'Argo and Pip get on my nerves, the Princess can't shut up, and you can't leave me alone for even one second! I am tired, I am sick and tired with your games and whatever it is you think you're going to achieve, Harvey, you can just forget it, right now, and leave me alone!"
"He's quite real, John," Harvey now manifested himself next to the Apparition, leaning on the blue box. "I'm afraid this time it has nothing to do with me. I'm as puzzled as you, I assure you," he added.
This just dragged another burst of laughter from John. "See? See? This is exactly what I'm talking about! All these stupid little mind game of yours, all these stupid little tricks, 'oh I assure you John'," he mimicked the regular voice of his imaginary friend, "'he's quite real', leave me alone!"
The Apparition raised an eyebrow, then sniffed aloud and turned to look at the place Harvey was leaning on the blue box, and then back at John. He was opening his mouth, just about to say some new lie in order to get John sucked into his game, when D'Argo showed up.
"John? Is everything - ?"
"Just Harvey's tricks," John sighed. But D'Argo was looking at Harvey — no, at the blue box. "What's a police public call box?" he asked.
John was slightly taken aback. "It's real?" he looked from the blue box to D'Argo to the Apparition — and to Harvey, a smug look on his face.
"I tried to tell you, John," the neural chip in his mind chastised him.
And, echoing his best imaginary enemy, Pilot's annoyed voice came out of Moya's intercom. "Moya has detected an unknown vessel materialising inside, Commander — as I have been trying to tell you for the past several minutes."
"Who the hell are you?" he then turned to the Not Apparition, who in turn, smiled from ear to ear, in a smile that was something between alarming and down right creepy.
"Hello! I'm the Doctor!"
X
"Oh, it's you again. Yes, he said you'd be here."
John Crichton looked at the man outside of the box and blinked. What the frell…? It then dawned on him. Of course. "Go away, Harvey, I don't have time for your games now."
The man in the suit Harvey pretended to be just sighed. "Oh, not again," he said.
"Look, I'm sorry I don't have the time to entertain you, but we're about to have our asses kicked any minute now and Aeryn needs me in Talyn's control room and — "
"Are you sure she's not just handling it fine with Crais, John?" Harvey showed up as himself. Curiously, his man-in-a-suit avatar didn't disappear. "Incidentally, this man is real. We've reached a new low, John, if you cannot tell the difference between imagination and reality anymore."
"I said, go away!" Crichton snapped at both men who weren't actually there. Harvey smiled smugly, while the new version just sighed again, exasperated.
"Look," it said, "in order to make it quicker, can you just call someone here to confirm I'm real? And not point a gun at me once that's been done?"
"Alright," Crichton rolled his eyes. "I'll play your game. Aeryn," he called her over through Talyn's communicator, "do you mind coming here for just a moment?"
"We have a bit of an emergency now, if you don't mind, Crichton," Crais's angry voice came through.
"Wasn't talking to you. Was talking to Aeryn."
"What is it, John?" Crichton could hear the way she glared at the ex-Peacekeeper through the communicator, and it made his heart just a little bit warmer.
"Just come here for a second."
"On my way."
It wasn't just Aeryn who showed up after several minutes' wait to interrupt the never-ending nonsense the man was spouting, but Crais, Rygel and Stark, as well.
The man in the suit could only sigh again once they arrived. "I asked not to point a gun at me, actually," he said with a friendly tone.
X
"Just because you were born a Barbarian — "
"It's not like you've been doing us any good, all you can do is scream — "
"I mean, if your kind ruled the universe all intelligent life would have been extinct by now! If you can consider your species as intelligent and — "
"Oh look who's talking, Princess, so far your intelligence has brought us nothing but trouble! — "
"That's because none of you ever listen to me!"
"Yes, because we don't want to go deaf, have you heard yourself — "
"Quiet!"
Of course, John knew Chiana and Jool were arguing before he entered the room, their voices carried out halfway through Moya. He was probably making a mistake by even thinking of walking in and seeing what it was — oh. The Doctor was standing there in front of them, looking slightly miserable and suffering from a headache — quite like John himself. Welcome to my world. All of a sudden, Rygel and Stark and even Crais didn't look like such bad company. And of course…
"Did you make it?" he asked the alien, ignoring his two travelling companions-come-friends-when-they're-not-too-annoying, as this was one of the times they were too annoying.
"Funny thing, actually," the Doctor scratched his ear absent mindedly, obviously relieved at the silence in the room. From what John has seen so far, he wasn't very used to being forced to remain quiet for long periods of time due to other people's loudness. "The Tardis would only travel between Moya and Talyn. I don't know why, but it seems to be drawn to these two leviathans, even though the navigational computer is still obviously faulty — I tried several other destinations, but it wouldn't go, but when I tried reaching Talyn — "
" — so that's a yes?" John might not have known the Doctor for long, but he was quite sure he didn't feel like hearing his ramblings, as well.
"Yes," the Doctor looked at him.
"And you told them the plan?"
"Yes — although it appears they ran into some trouble, it might be a while before they make it to the rendezvous. But they said the transmitter would be online and that you should wait there, and they'll come."
"Good," John was about to leave, when the Doctor spoke again.
"Aren't you going to ask about her?" he asked. John was furious for just a moment, but then calmed down. He brought this upon himself, really. Of course the Doctor would have realised, even if John was careful to tell him nothing — his duplicate was there and they probably weren't exactly subtle about the whole thing.
X
John sat near the Doctor inside his impossible spaceship. John absolutely loved Moya, and wouldn't trade her for anything in the world — the only thing he had going for him with the whole duplicate business, he's been thinking lately, is that the duplicate and Aeryn are on Talyn — with Crais, no less — while he got to stay on Moya. He can't imagine how worse off he'd have been had he lost the both of them. But as much as he loved the ship, he couldn't help but thinking how cool the Doctor's vessel was, now that he's got inside it.
It even had a garden! That's where they were now, inside one of the gardens. John was just wasting time, as Moya was approaching the rendezvous point with Talyn and its crew, and the Doctor was depressed, annoyed and, for the first time during their brief encounter, speechless. No matter what he did, no matter which controls he tinkered with, he couldn't find what was wrong with his wonderful spaceship. Why wouldn't it go anywhere but Talyn and Moya.
So they were just sitting there, and John was having a very hard time finding a way to break the silence. "Could have been worse," he tried, "look at me, the love of my life has left me for my clone."
"I left her with my duplicate in a parallel universe," the Doctor answered quietly.
Oh. It took John a while to try again. "One of my best friends, Zhaan, she died recently and there was nothing I could do."
"Donna is as good as dead. I had to take all of her memories of everything we did away in order to save her life. The person she became since meeting me is dead."
Two-nil. "I can't find the way back to my planet," John tried one final time, and regretted it as soon as the Doctor opened his mouth to speak. "My planet is gone," he said. "I had to destroy it, during the war."
This seemed to be enough for the Time Lord. He got up from the bench and moved around — to try and enjoy the garden, John wondered, or just afraid of whatever next John himself would say? He did open his mouth to say something, even if it was just 'sorry', but then —
"Oh I'm thick, I'm just so thick!" the Doctor burst out, and a huge smile broke into his face.
"What?" John jumped after him, looking at the same direction as the Doctor but seeing nothing. "What is it?"
"The fire escape doors are open! No wonder the Tardis wouldn't move, there are security protocols set against it! Of course! Talyn and Moya share the same DNA and she locked onto that DNA and moved through subspace instead through the vortex because she didn't dare entering the Vortex with the fire escape doors open! All I need to do is to close that door!" and he jumped, closed the door, and ran towards the control room. John ran after him, realising their little adventure is over. If only he could think of a way to make the alien stay — maybe, once they meet up with Talyn, seeing Aeryn and his clone wouldn't be so bad.
X
"Aren't you going to ask about her?" the Doctor asked John again, having seen enough to know how much that very thought, the thought of the woman he's just seen on the other Leviathan and the man with her, the man who was identical in any way to the one in front of him, must hurt.
"Not really, no," he said and walked away without turning around, so he didn't see the Doctor nodding sadly behind him. As he left, Jool and Chiana renewed their argument of whether the Doctor's plan — or rather, condition — for making this happen was going to send them to certain death due to his lack of survival skills, or whether by refusing to assist if they use violence he was showing the superior intellect of a higher species, those who understand the need for reasoning rather than violence. Well, if either one of the two would have stopped screaming for a moment at her nemesis this might have been the topic of the discussion — as it were, they were just calling each other names. So, all in all, things were well and normal on Moya, despite their new and apparently temporary companion. His appearance did not disrupt life on the leviathan as much as it seemed it would at first.
X
"Please don't shoot! It's all a misunderstanding, really! There's something faulty in my spaceship, I just needed to materialise on the closest place possible or it would have exploded! It's a very old ship, you see."
The man in the suit was walking backwards with his hands raised, trying to look as innocent as possible. John wasn't buying it, though, and neither was D'Argo.
"How did you land on Moya?" they demanded. "Pilot should have warned us you were approaching, what did you do to him?"
"Actually, Commander," Pilot's voice could be heard through the communicator, "he did not approach us at all — that is what I was trying to say. His ship simply appeared in the middle of Moya. I have never seen a technology like it, and neither has Moya. It is most… curios," he added, as if unsure what the word he actually wanted to use was.
John knew, though. Suspicious. He might be relatively new to this strange and dark universe — although he's seen more in the two and a half years he's been stranded away from home than most of the people who took an active part in the galactic quest for power did in an entire lifetime, so he wasn't going to dismiss his own opinion so quickly — and his opinion was that he's never seen anything to suggest spaceships could show up inside other spaceships without entering from space.
"If such a technology was even possible," he pointed out to the intruder, "the Peacekeepers would have used it a long time ago against the Scarans!"
"Oh, I'm in vector 37?" the non-apparition looked delighted. "Always wanted to see what it's all about, although, frankly, hope you won't mind me saying, with the constant state of war in this part of the galaxy it never seemed the right time — and I have all of it, mind. You deserve congratulations, even humans never keep consistently at war for that long!"
That threw John off his guard, for just a moment — and D'Argo, too. "Humans?" he repeated.
"Yes — they actually look a bit like the Peacekeepers — on the outside, at least, like me. Although unlike me you're actually related so a bit more so on the inside as well, and — "
"I'm human," John blurted out, despite warning glances from D'Argo to shut up. He could feel what his Luxan friend was about to say — it's a trap, some sort of trick, probably Scorpios'. But John just couldn't stop himself. "From Earth," he added.
"Really?" the man calling himself The Doctor looked at him, surprised. "But humans aren't supposed to have been in this part of the galaxy, not in the early 21st century, at least! You're not a member of Torchwood, are you?" he narrowed his eye suspiciously.
X
A Luxan, a human and a Time Lord walk into a bar. The Luxan asks for Luxan ale, the kind he's been meaning to drink in the past five planets, and gets it. Drinking it makes his head spin a bit, but he doesn't mind. The human asks for whiskey and after receiving a blank look from the bartender changes his order to another Luxan ale, which makes his head really spin, and he does his best to pretend he doesn't mind but is about to drop off his feet and into blessed unconsciousness at any minute now. The Time Lord gives up drinking altogether and tries instead to think of a punch line for a joke that begins with "A Luxan, a human and a Time Lord walk into a bar", but is interrupted when a creature that looks like a blue tentacled seal walks into the bar as well. Being rather happy both his trading partners are too drunk to do anything and mess this all up — he's pretty sure they both brought their guns despite his warnings - he walks towards the tentacles creature. They complete the transaction within five Earth minutes. The Nebari and the Interion are very, very impressed when they all come back in one piece, but not so much when their two friends collapse. They're even less impressed when they ask the Time Lord how much they had to drink. Still, they now have the parts they needed. They can continue.
X
"And this is the plan," the Doctor finished.
Everyone's faces around him were blank.
"Who came up with this idiotic plan?" Crichton was the first to ask.
"Actually, you did," the Doctor said.
Crais rolled his eyes. "Obviously," he said.
For once, it seemed Aeryn was willing to team up with Crais against Crichton — or, at least, against a Crichton she didn't see every day. "He has a point, John. It's bad. Even in your standards, it's just bad."
"We need a new plan," Rygel hovered into the discussion, being ignored by the rest of Talyn's crew.
"Look, we've been over it several times, we think it has a chance of succeeding. And without it, you might be lost — Talyn and Moya can no longer communicate with each other over great distances, you'd keep on missing one another forever."
Whether the Doctor noticed the glance between Aeryn and Crichton, he kept quiet. Yes, that was something Chiana said quietly after John had left. Talyn's crew might not want to get back in touch with Moya — some of them, at least.
"But you can travel between the two ships?" Crichton pointed out.
"I can, for the moment. But something's very wrong with my ship. I need to get it fixed — besides, I'm not your telephone!" he pointed out indignantly.
"Email? Fax?" Crichton tried, but only the Doctor got the joke, and he wasn't laughing, either.
"So you're going to try to get these extremely rare parts from an extremely unreliable trader that's tried to sell us to Scorpie in the past? And you're not going to use guns? You're going to get yourselves all killed!"
"In that case," the Doctor smiled a smile that failed to reach his eyes, "it would probably make life easier for you. Get the transmitter ready on time so Moya can pick up the signal. Good luck."
When Aeryn caught up with him on the way to his ship to tell him off for the comment that has clearly upset Crichton, the Doctor pointed out it wasn't her Crichton who was risking his life to make this work.
X
"Goodbyes aren't my thing," the Doctor scratched his nose and looked a little embarrassed. He should be, John thought — trying to sneak off without even saying a word. "But it doesn't have to be goodbye. I could, I dunno, give you a lift home?" the alien's eyes pierced John's. "Show you a bit of the universe outside of sector 37 along the way?"
This box goes anywhere in the universe, John thought. He could just leave all of this behind.
But that would mean…
"I think I'll wait for her," he said. "No point going home without her, you know? I mean, I miss my family, my dad, my friends… but it wouldn't be the same. I wanted to show her Earth, what a great planet this is. But it won't be the same without her."
"She's with him," the Doctor said softly.
"I know. Which is another reason I can't go home just yet. Maybe I'm the duplicate, or the clone, or whatever. Need to sort if out before."
"Alright," the Doctor nodded. "Goodbye then — and good luck, Commander."
"Doctor?" John stopped him before he could enter that incredible box of his.
"Yeah?"
"What are you going to do?"
"Oh, what I always do," the Doctor smiled a big smile. "Keep on travelling. There should be this starfire on the Fynex galaxy, been meaning to go see it for years now! Got a chance now she's working again," he patted his ship fondly, and John couldn't help but smile.
"Good luck."
"You too."
X
Donna was unsurprised to find the human Doctor already in the garden. She felt the urge to go there herself — even though she's never been there before. It was the exact same urge to go and say goodbye now to Sarah Jane, Jack, Martha and Mickey, who the Doctor was seeing off at that exact moment. But she's already said her goodbyes to Martha and really, she was the only one out of these Donna really knew. The rest — oh, she had memories, she knew how brilliant they are, how wonderful. She did know them, knew them through and through, to a level she's never known anyone else, ever. But they didn't know her.
And besides, it won't last long. The Doctor was busy now, distracted by saying goodbye again to all these people — and what he must do afterwards. But Donna and his human counterpart, they knew as well, but they also knew they're not the ones who had to do it. So they could also think about what would happen next. And both found their way into the garden.
"I wondered when you'll get here," he said.
"Yeah," she smiled.
"How long, do you think…"
"Long enough."
He was quiet for a moment.
"He wouldn't know what to do with himself."
And before he could say another word, Donna walked towards the fire escape door and opened it — just a little bit. The Tardis still had to go to a couple more places, after all.
"You're brilliant!" he said, surprised and delighted.
"I reckon it'd do him good," she answered thoughtfully, "Get his mind off things. Too busy to think, you know."
He nodded, and then his senses, dulled by the human part but still much better than hers, caught something. "It's over," he said, not a little bit sadly. He'll never see Sarah Jane, Martha, Jack and Mickey again, after all. And he'd remember them — even if it'd only be for sixty more years. "We better get up there again, so he wouldn't suspect."
"Come on, Spaceman," she said and they walked back, preparing their own goodbyes in their heads even though they knew he probably wouldn't give them the chance to say the words out loud.