"The Mistaken M. Jones"
28. Confidence
Earth, in the year 4529
The TARDIS was conveniently landed for a quick getaway, and once they had Mercedes and Gravis on board - Mercedes had insisted to have him along, she'd believed they would leave right away, but they did not. She greeted both Merit and Annabel, who looked just as they'd done when she'd seen them before the jump, which she took to confirm that they had not gone and lived through the last five years. They were just as surprised to meet Gravis there as he was surprised to meet them.
"What happened to you?" Annabel asked, also remembering him as he'd been. He looked down.
"He said the asteroid disappeared," Mercedes spoke in his place. "Is this even possible?" she turned to the Doctor.
"I don't know," he moved about the controls, flipping a switch and bringing her around to see. "You tell me."
Mercedes squinted at the screen, unsure of what she was seeing until he pointed out one thing and then the other, then repeated the motion until she got it. She looked upward, as though asking herself.
"You didn't..."
"He did," Clara confirmed.
"All those sick people, far away from home and without hope, but now... now..." he gestured overhead. "They've come back."
"But they're still sick," Mercedes didn't understand.
"Sick?" Gravis blinked; he still had no idea.
"Ah, yes, well... Annabel, would you mind terribly helping him find some new clothes? At the same time if you could fill him in..." She hesitated at first, but finally she consented and they went on their way.
"You're going to make them better, aren't you?" Mercedes looked back to the Doctor.
"That is the intention, yes. I just need to find the cure..." They were quiet for a while, all three staring at the Doctor, waiting. When he realized they were watching, he frowned, moving across the control room as though they wouldn't be watching him anymore if he stood there. "Well, someone say something, it'll come," he promised.
Mercedes looked to the cuff on her arm, the ever familiar numbers ticking away. 11:12:02. 11:12:01. 11:12:00… She'd been going around all this time, not asking, but she had to know.
"What is this thing?" she asked, holding up her arm.
"Ah, yes, I'll take that one," he went to her, then looked back to Merit, about to speak, and then he stopped, his tone becoming less playful. "The man who gave this to you, you know who that was," he bowed his head to Mercedes, who blinked, eyes darting for a moment toward Merit.
"Lenton," Merit said it for her, walking up nearer to them.
"I met him, too," Mercedes told him. "When he was sixteen. His hair was orange." This made Merit smile.
"He changed it before he left. It used to be a sort of forest green, but when we found out I wouldn't get to go to the asteroid with him, he changed it to orange."
"Why?" Clara asked, having gravitated toward them. As a response, Merit lifted up his sleeve to show a sort of rubber band, wrapped around his wrist, carrot orange just like Lenton's hair.
"This marked me as unfit for duty. It was his way of taking me with him."
"The way I see it, he was the one planning to wear this cuff," the Doctor went on.
"But why? Twelve hours every five years…" Mercedes frowned.
"Twelve hours every five years, on Earth, in near proximity to the one he loved," Clara had understood it, smiling to Merit.
"He never got to grow up with you," the Doctor nodded. "You have to understand, to acquire something like this, to even find it… It would have cost him everything he had to give and then some. But some things are worth being penniless for," the Doctor tapped Merit's arm. The once violet-haired man had not had so much color in his face since before they'd sprung him from prison.
"But if he was here all this time, how did he get it?" Mercedes had to ask the obvious question.
"How do you think? Somehow he was cured, got to leave the asteroid and wander about space until he found what he was looking for. Clearly someone must have told him there was such a thing as might help him get where he wanted to be."
Merit reached for Mercedes' hand, to look at the cuff, the thing Lenton had fought for. Something didn't make sense anymore. Here he'd known, as much as he didn't want to believe it, that Lenton was dead. But he'd believed the cause of that death was the sickness which had infected the people on the asteroid. So if he'd been cured, and he'd left there… then how had he ended up dead, where he did, when he did…
His thumb pressed down on the side of the cuff, imagining a time when Lenton might have touched it, too. Almost as soon as he did, the cuff gave out a small ping, and he pulled his hand away.
"What…" Mercedes looked at the cuff, as did the Doctor, and Clara, and Merit. They all looked, and they all saw as a series of digits, smaller than the countdown numbers but in the same fashion, appeared in line upon line along the back of the cuff.
The Doctor stared at it, at once stunned and exhilarated. He took Mercedes by the hand, took out the sonic screwdriver.
"Is it a message?" Clara asked.
"No… Well, yes… It's not the news from home, but it will do them all a world of good. This is it… This is the cure, or how to go about creating it." He flipped the sonic back over hand, holding it like something precious as the digits disappeared from the cuff. "I can see why you love this man, he's brilliant!" As Gravis and Annabel returned, the former guard looking much better, the Doctor cut past them. "Sorry, coming through, there is work to be done!"
TO BE CONTINUED (TOMORROW)