A/N: Wow. You see? You guys were just AWESOME in last chapter's reviews! You inspired me so much that I had to update FAST. Thank you for reading this story, my wonderful readers, especially Addicted, Guest, Cure Eclipse, Shadowdragon1317, mp22mp22, Angelic915, Anaika Skywalker!
WARNING: This chapter is a bit long! I mean, very long. I didn't want to make the pace of this story too hurried, but I just couldn't keep the Doctor in a coma for too long. So I simply… lengthened the chapter. Now, let's start!
Chapter 4
A Shock a Day Keeps the Angst Away
It was chaos.
It was dark. So very dark. And confusing, too. It was like looking into the Schism all over again. And I was afraid. Very, very afraid.
In my dream, a saw a blue police box dancing in the night sky. I saw an old man with his granddaughter, a man who liked playing music, a man who had an incredibly long scarf, and many, many others.
A man with big ears and a broken heart; a big-haired man who liked to grin cheerfully, but couldn't hide his loneliness. A man who regrets, a man who forgets. And a man with floppy brown hair and a manic grin.
They were all there, right there, in front of me. But it was just… so. I didn't know who they were.
I didn't know who I was.
I saw a blue planet called Earth. Sol 3, right? Wasn't it? In my dreams, I had many friends there. But it was just that; dreams. I couldn't even recall their faces. It was all too vague, and it felt like they were all slipping away, dissolving into nothing but dust.
"Doctor!"
Hey, I'm not a Doctor. Why are you calling me so? The Doctor— it stood for a Saintly Healer, the determination to be never cruel or cowardly, never give up, never give in. Hmm. Nice word! Almost as nice as… pond. Or river song. Yes, that's it! That word rolls off your tongue like music. I like it. What does it mean to me, though?
Hmm. Doesn't matter, I guess. Maybe I'll choose that word, 'the Doctor', as my name when I'm older. When I go to my Naming Ceremony.
…I'm hungry. Pears. I hate pears. Who eats pears? Pears are evil. Apples are evil. Bananas? Good. Fantastic. Custard cream, jelly babies, great. Fish fingers? Perfect! Does fish have fingers? I hope so. I love jelly fish, baby fingers, banana cream. Oh. Wait. Did I just get mixed up a little?
The Doctor frowned in his dream, trying to put his thoughts in a straight line but failing miserably. Concentrate, Doctor! Wait. Was his name the Doctor? No, of course not! It's Theta Sigma. That was what people called him at the Academy! Yes, he was definitely Theta, not the Doctor. Definitely not. Why did he keep getting all confused?
Oh, and the memories—they were so befuddled, regressing, sinking away. All one thousand years of his life— they were gone. Fading away like a whisper in the wind— and that left behind this young Theta Sigma, age ten, a Time Tot.
Through all those drastic changes beat his two hearts, steady and regular and strong.
Th-thump. Th-thump. Th-thump. Th-thump.
Listen. Four heartbeats are drumming against his chest, singing for him to wake him up, singing a new song that had never been sung before. Listen.
Once upon a time, there was a man.
He was young and old, wise and idiotic, sad and cheerful, a Lonely God with the biggest family on Earth.
A man who saved his wife but lost his memory, lost his memory but found his lost family again, lost but found, found but lost.
This is the story of a man who returned.
This is the song of the Childish Hour.
This is the story of Theta Sigma, the Boy who Remembered.
Listen.
The clock struck six. The Doctor's finger twitched—but no one noticed.
DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW
"Oh, it's you!" Donna exclaimed, frowning. "Captain Jack, right? Sorry, my memories are still fuzzy."
"Oh, it's just Jack. Jack Harkness," Jack said, winking at her. "And if this isn't the Donna Noble, Savior of the Universe! Nice to see you again."
"Oh, you're welcome here any day."
"How about any night?"
"Shut up."
"Aww." Jack pouted playfully at that.
Donna, Wilfred and Jack were in the living room downstairs, watching the fire crackle pleasantly in the fireplace. Donna's house was magnificent now. Very magnificent. It was not 'bigger-on-the-inside' like the TARDIS, but it was still big enough. All thanks to the Doctor's wedding present—damn him! Donna scowled. Who gave out wedding presents when they were dying? Obviously no one, save this selfless, stupid Spaceman! Hmph.
Jack, who was taking a look around the house, finally returned to the living room and sat back down. He gave Donna and Wilf a flirtatious smile.
"Oh, nice house, by the way! I just took a brief tour of the first floor. Is the Doctor—is he here? Upstairs or something? I saw his TARDIS on the garden, but I couldn't see him anywhere."
His voice was carefree and light, but Wilfred noticed that the Captain's eyes betrayed his feelings; they were so full of worry and anxiety for the other man. Looks like the Doctor has a bunch of great fellows for friends, he mused.
Donna, on the other hand, answered Jack's question quite hesitantly.
"Ye—s, he's sleeping upstairs."
"Oh," Jack breathed in relief. Then he added, leaping up from his seat in excitement. "Then can I go see him?"
"Oh, no, no, no, no, no," Donna shook her head, taken aback. Oh no. She couldn't just tell him that the Doctor had kind of— 'regenerated- degenerated- de-aged'. No, that wouldn't work at all. Oh my God, Spaceman! How could you make me do the explaining part? Even with a partly Time Lord-ish brain, she was never the spokesman type; the Doctor was the one with a sonic tongue or something.
Oh, whatever. This was all his fault.
"It's a bit… complicated," Donna said, vaguely motioning toward the staircase. Jack's eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
"You see, on the way here, something went wrong for him. Something similar to a regeneration, but other things came along as well, too. Oh, that idiot! It's really, really complicated, but he is… all right in a sense, so you don't have to worry too much."
"Oh. All right," Jack replied, confused. Then his eyes suddenly lit up with hope.
"Is this regeneration incredibly sexy or something? Isn't that why you are keeping me away?"
"WHAT? I mean, NO! But don't you DARE flirt with the Doctor. You will end up getting yourself arrested, and that's for certain, Captain!"
"Awwww… what a disappointment. Can I ask why?"
Jack grinned, but Donna placed her hands on her hips, assuming a stern look and glaring at the man.
"Look here, Sunshine, I'll explain when others arrive!"
"Others? What others?"
Out of curiosity, Jack leaned forward and was about to inquire further into the issue when the doorbell rang. Wilfred got up and rushed to the front door. When he opened it, Mickey and Martha was standing there, to Jack's great surprise.
"Where's the Doctor? Is he alright?" Martha barged into the room, breathless. Jack and Donna had barely managed to calm her down with a cup of tea and a few assuring words ("Yes, the Doctor is here, he's sleeping upstairs." "No, he isn't dying or severely injured…") when the doorbell buzzed again. This time, Sarah Jane stomped in, K-9 trailing behind her.
"Where's the Doctor? Did he get himself hurt again?" She demanded.
Martha and Mickey persuaded her to sit down, catch a breath, have a cuppa, no, the Doctor was not 'hurt'—and, of course, the Doorbell trilled for the fourth time in a day.
Donna's headache was getting worse.
Poor Wilfred's legs weren't having a good day, either.
He practically dragged himself over to the door, muttering something that sounded like 'no more', and opened it—only to find three Ponds loudly arguing with the police.
Martha and Mickey had to drive the angry policemen away with their UNIT ID cards, telling them that this place was under their authority. When they retreated rather reluctantly, the couple sighed out of relief and returned to the now crowded living room, where chaos reigned.
Donna's jaw dropped when she saw River, alive and healthy; they were now hugging, laughing, and merrily chatting away. Jack was attempting to flirt with Amy rather unsuccessfully, and when Rory got angry and told him off for that, he flirted with him, too. Wilfred was bringing out tea and breakfast, Sarah was thanking him—and exactly where was the Doctor?
Martha poked Mickey. He groaned—making these people quiet down was going to be as difficult as making the Doctor eat pears. ("Pears? Seriously, pears?! PEARS ARE EMBODIMENTS OF EVIL!") However, being a soldier, Mickey decided to give it a try. He braced himself, inhaled deeply, and then—
"OKAY GUYS, SHUT UP—!"
—And, miraculously, they did.
For a split second, there was utter silence as they all stared at Mickey, eyes wide. Mickey sighed, lifting both of his palms and explained.
"Okay, I'm sorry for that, but we need a bit of order around here. You all got messages from the TARDIS, right? Then we came here to help the Doctor. We aren't getting anywhere like this."
"Mickey Mouse is right," Jack nodded, his face suddenly serious—before he cracked into a grin and winked at Rory. "Oh, how about this: Introduction first, and explanation from Donna next?"
"Right." Rory coughed, promptly ignoring the man's flirting. "That's good. Yes. Introduction, explanation, first things first. So… anyone going first?"
A beat—and Sarah Jane stood up, a soft smile upon her lips.
"I will. My name is Sarah Jane Smith. I used to travel with the Third and Fourth Doctor. I…"
DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW
Upstairs, a young boy was sleeping in a four-posted, big, comfortable bed. His breathing was even; and his body was completely still.
A crack of sunlight seeped in through the window, illuminating the carpeted floor. A faint sound of laughter echoed from the first floor.
The child's finger twitched.
A moment of silence.
Then his eyes fluttered open.
DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW
Being the last, River stood up and said quite simply: "Professor River Song, archaeologist. I travel with the Eleventh Doctor." Then she promptly sat down without any more explanation. Frowning, Amy poked her in the side.
"Why didn't you mention that you were my daughter? Or that you were married to the Doctor?" She whispered. River smirked and whispered back.
"I like giving shock to people."
Amy sighed and just shook her head. Oh, Mels. You'd never change, would you?
"Okay, looks like we are done with introductions!" Donna got up and announced. She was holding up a brand new CD in her hand.
"Umm… you see, the Doctor left a recording for us to see. I downloaded it from the TARDIS data core, and I think watching this will cover many things," she said, then grumpily muttered under her breath: "Hopefully."
She turned to the TV, and inserted the CD into the device. After a short pause, it started playing. The TARDIS console room came into view.
The room was shaking violently, and there was a young man with a bowtie, fancy black suit, floppy hair and big brown eyes, running in and out from the screen. Finally, he managed to grab hold of a handle and steady himself. That done, he flashed a toothy grin at the camera.
"Hello! This is the New Doctor speaking!"
"Doctor," River breathed, staring into the screen, captivated. Jack gasped.
"Blimey. Look at the chin. That's the Doctor?!"
"I've seen him before," Sarah Jane commented absent-mindedly. Wilfred was simply staring at the new man.
The Doctor was now grinning, a manic grin that all of them knew all too well. He clapped and spun on the spot, spreading his arms wide.
"Yeowza! New Doctor, new face! Some of you guys would have never seen this one, but whatever. I seem to be getting younger and younger every time I regenerate—huh, I'm rambling again. But the thing is, well, I don't know how many of you would have answered my call, but if you are there, Sarah Jane, Captain Jack Harkness, Donna Noble, Wilfred Mott, Martha Jones, Mickey Smith, Amy Pond, Rory Williams, River Song—"
But they couldn't hear what the Doctor was saying, as the TARDIS crashed once more and he was flung out of the view—and it was unbelievably comical, the way he pitifully yelped and tried to cling on to the handles as he hung upside down, the gravity not doing its work at all for a moment. Martha and Jack had to stifle their giggles at that.
The TARDIS flipped back into the right direction, and seemed to stabilize a bit; the screen stopped shaking. The Doctor, noticing this change, gingerly let go of the handle. He was swinging his arms, trying to keep himself from falling or being thrown into the walls, and he looked almost childishly excited when he managed to balance himself on his feet. He grinned at the screen triumphantly, bouncing on his feet a little.
"Look! Look! I'm not crashing!"
"Oh, that child of a man," Sarah laughed, fresh tears springing to her eyes. Rory nodded, smiling nostalgically.
"He never changes, does he?"
"Always the same," Amy agreed, laughing along. Other people sitting in the room were also smiling at their banter. The Doctor tapped at the camera screen rather impatiently, as if he knew what was going to happen and wanted to get the attention back to him.
"Okay, look here. For those of you who want to know more, it went like this: I went to have a cup of cocktail on the moon. They have some really good bars there, you know, I especially like the Silence Café—they make you think that you are having a really awesome cup of coffee, and even I thought it was great, till the Silents tried to kill me. Huh, whatever!" He waved a hand and shrugged. "That's not the important thing here! The problem is, I think— I might have landed on a Dalek spaceship."
The Doctor drummed his fingers on the console, laughing nervously. Everyone groaned in exasperation.
"Oh no, Doc, seriously…?"
"—And they happened to have a stolen Vortex Manipulator!" The Doctor hurried on, trying very hard to look unabashed. "Really, you humans should take better care of your technology—stop handing them out to the wrong hands. Family of Blood, then Daleks… I'm getting tired of it! Yeah, that's right; I'm currently rushing through the Time Vortex, and those insane pepper potts are right behind me. Chasing me. And, mind you, I have thirteen minutes and fifty-six seconds—ooh, it's fifty-four now—before being shot to death. But don't worry!"
He clapped cheerfully, jumping over to the control panel and flashing a carefree grin. "There is a way, one single chance that I can make it out alive. Care to know?"
"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" Mickey muttered. River crossed her arms, her face calm and controlled—but an oncoming storm in her eyes. She quietly murmured.
"I'm going to kill him."
"Shhh, River, don't!" Amy whispered. Somehow she had a feeling that her daughter was really going to shoot down the Doctor for good this time. The Doctor in the video screen, being unaware of this new threat on his continuing existence in the Universe, pointed at a prominent yellow lever and rambled on monotonously.
"You see—if I pull this lever here, a specific, most dangerous Time Lord technology is activated via the heart of the TARDIS: 'the EETCR'. I believe that even River won't know of this," the Doctor's face darkened all of a sudden as he stared straight into the camera, his eyes stormy. He continued in a low voice. "But it stands for the Emergency Escape Time Crack Route."
For a second, no one even dared to breathe. A moment of foreboding silence.
"It works like this: A whole TARDIS explosion can create a Crack in Time that penetrates all time and space, like a wrinkle that appears when two universes press against each other. This can result in an apocalypse for the entire universe, and it actually did, once. I had to throw myself into the Void and cause a Big Bang, erasing myself from existence completely, to stop it from happening. But that's a story for another time." He placed his fingers together, his face dead serious as he stared into their eyes.
"So the Time Lords came up with a theory. If that can happen, why not erase, like, about fifty rooms in the TARDIS, create a much smaller, controlled explosion, generate an artificial, safe, temporary crack, and escape through it? Two time-and-space events, and a shortcut in between. Simple, isn't it?"
River and Donna gasped, being the only ones who could understand the danger of such an act; the others just looked confused, listening intently to understand his explanation. The Doctor was smiling sadly as he simply shook his head.
"Yes. It is a brilliant idea, really. You have to give them some credit for thinking this up! But you know why I never used it? Martha Jones, you remember when I erased my memory and converted myself into a one-hearted human being just to put the Family off scent? Why didn't I use it then, when it could be much simpler and quicker?"
A pause. Martha's heart beat wildly, her eyes wide with remembrance. Yes. Why hadn't he used it? It sounded much less complicated, much safer than losing all the memories and changing one's entire species! Unless…
Unless there were very, very severe side effects.
The Doctor leaned forward, his eyes so impossibly old and sad.
"Just like you humans acting all sensitive and prickly to radiation, the Time Lords are… sensitive to time. Very, very sensitive. And the crack is full of it. A flood of Huon Energy, and what happens? Timey-wimey, spacey-wacey, and my timelines become all… disintegrated."
"Oh no," River breathed. "Please. Don't tell me…"
"No, I didn't die or get myself crippled, in case you are getting the wrong ideas, which I am sure you will," he assured, a ghostly shadow of a smile upon his lips. "But… the thing is, I don't know what will happen at all. Aging, de-aging, regeneration, degeneration, up, down, backwards, forwards, an entire change in personality, memory loss—anything can happen! And as much as I hate to say this and would rather hang myself, I, I… I need your help."
He looked utterly embarrassed, his cheeks flushing bright red. Obviously he wasn't used to saying this kind of stuff. He coughed once or twice, trying his best to shake off the feeling. Amy bit her lips, feeling sympathetic. Poor Raggedy Man.
The Doctor managed to continue, but his eyes were suspiciously downcast as he spoke in a calm, level voice that was so unlike him.
"Whatever happens, don't give up on me. Stay, help me out, and just… hold onto me. Please. I can come back, it's just a matter of time, literally, and I will—"
His words were abruptly cut off as he struggled for breath, suddenly overwhelmed by emotions. Finally, after what seemed like ages, he whispered into the camera, letting a drop of tear that he was trying so desperately to hold back roll silently down his pale cheek.
"I'm—I'm sorry."
Oh, Raggedy Man, Amy thought sadly. The Doctor quickly wiped away his tears, averting his gaze. Leaning forward, his hand outstretched to stop the recording, he let a hollow grin appear on his lips.
"Well then, this is it," He whispered. "Geronimo."
And the screen went black.
DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW
The atmosphere of the once-cheerful living room was now heavy. Somber, almost. No one was speaking for nearly a full minute; each and every one was caught up in his—or her—own complex contemplations and emotions, remembering, grieving, and wondering what happened after that.
Finally, it was Amy who stood up.
"So, I think it's time for us to know what's going on," she declared, her voice firm and determined. "Where. Is. The. Doctor?"
"Yes, Donna. Tell us—please." Sarah Jane added, nodding. "You said that he was upstairs, sleeping. What happened?"
"Ummmm, that's—" Donna bit her lips, her eyes squeezed shut. Oh, god. She sighed. This was even worse than before. With all this sorrowful people staring at her like this, how on earth could she explain that the Doctor had regressed into a child and was in a coma? The ginger woman nervously stood up, desperately searching for the right words. She just didn't want to shock these poor people too badly. Nor make them even sadder.
Engrossed in her thoughts, she didn't notice a soft padding sound of footsteps descending the stairs. And her eyes snapped open in shock only when an unfamiliar, childish voice abruptly spoke up from the bottom of the staircase.
"Hi, hello, good morning! You're humans, right? Or am I wrong?"
People spun around, eyes wide in shock, and found themselves staring into the big brown eyes of a little boy. He was slenderly build, and despite his silky brown hair wildly sticking up on all sides, he had a look of an adorable angel. His eyes tinkled with curiosity and playfulness as he flashed a cheerful, cheeky grin at them.
"Well— I'm Theta, Theta Sigma. I'm ten years old, I'm a Time Lord, and I go to the Time Lord Academy. They are boring. So boring! Is there any chance that you kidnapped me? That would be so cool! I always loved traveling. Then, is this Earth? Earth of the Solar System? Wow. That's just… wow!" He rambled excitedly, spun on the spot, and waved his hand. Then he looked up at them again, his brown puppy eyes shining expectantly.
"Anyway, can someone tell me why I'm here?"
Oh.
Whatever.
"Okay," Donna said in an awkward voice, motioning vaguely at the boy. People gaped at her, but she didn't care.
"So that… happened."
And they all stood speechless for a second.
A/N: Just one more thing: I try to keep everyone in character, but I admit it's a bit of a hard work. So forgive me if you spot an OOC or two (if they do exist)! I tried my best :( And, by the way, in case you don't know— Theta Sigma is the childhood name for the Doctor. And I just found out that the Doctor has a brother. Spoilers!
And forgive me for ignoring most of the Torchwood cannons. I just couldn't keep our immortal Captain Harkness out of the game. (wink wink!) Thanks for all your Reviews and Favorites! They keep me going so much!
A Sneak Peek into the NEXT CHAPTER: "Vale decem, ad aeternam…" Some talk, a TARDIS, a Broken Radio, and Flashbacks. Theta gets the shock of his life. People are about to learn how the Tenth Doctor died.