Chapter Eight

The Doctor opened his eyes halfway and peered out from under his long brown lashes. He had regained consciousness a few minutes before, but had waited until the heavy tread of footsteps faded, indicating whichever Auton was policing the area had moved on. Of course, 'regained consciousness' was a relative term as he continued to fade in and out, almost as if a part of his energy was being directed into the Nestene duplicate that now walked Fishkill's streets. He wasn't sure the Nestene knew what they were playing with. The life energies of a Time Lord were unique. Still, as broken down as his constitution was by the Bluhdoul plague, there was probably little danger.

Not like he was firing on all burners, you know...

He was still in the warehouse, somewhere away from the Tardis as he couldn't see her. His back was to a supporting beam and his hands were bound behind it. A general numbness had crept into his extremities, and so it had taken him a bit to realize that he was not alone. Someone else was bound to the other side of the beam. On each side their hands touched. Now, this might have presented a possibility of escape as one of them might have effectively freed the other – except for the fact that their captors seemed to have taken a course in tying knots. The ropes that held him were wound around his body and his throat in such a way that, when he pulled on his hands, they tightened enough to choke him.

Not wasting their time in a shipping port, he thought wryly to himself. Been chatting up sailors.

From the time he had awakened, he had been listening and hoping that it was Jeremy Larkin who was trussed up like him and not Amy. The sharp-tongued Scot would never let him live this one down! Whoever it was had neither moved nor made a sound. Until now, that was. From behind him came a grunt, and then a moan like someone coming round.

"Shh," the Doctor prompted in a terse whisper, "incoming."

The other man – and he could tell it was a man by the rough texture and size of his hands – grunted and then lapsed back into silence. The Doctor had been internally ticking off the seconds since the last time the Auton had passed. Two point two minutes. Apparently he was making a circuit of the interior of the warehouse. Didn't mean much now, but later it might ice the cake!

The man behind him shifted, silently this time, as if straightening up. The Doctor waited another ten seconds and then whispered, "Jeremy?"

Whoever it was shifted again. He stifled another groan and then answered," No. Montgomery."

"Montgomery? Lieutenant Rowland Montgomery?"

"You have me at a disadvantage, sir," the soldier replied. "Who are you?"

"The Doctor," he replied, and then he waited. One. Two. It was coming...wait...wait...

"Doctor Who?"

"Aha! Just the Doctor. And I happen to be a friend of both Henry Abington and the Marquis de Lafayette." He paused, letting that sink in. "You've been a bad boy, Rowland, spiking their punch."

Montgomery remained silent for a moment. "Abington was an accident. I regret that." He drew a breath. "But I have no regrets where that French frog is concerned."

"Now, now, Rowland, big boys don't call names."

"He deserves every name I can think of and more; him and the damnable French!"

"Shh!" The Doctor's internal timer was going off. "Guard at nine o'clock. Night. Night."

Both men lowered their heads and fell silent until the Auton's footsteps had passed.

"So, Rowland," the Doctor remarked conversationally a few seconds later, "why is it you hate the French?"

"Where have you been the last twenty years?" the soldier growled.

"Actually, I don't think we have the time for a definitive answer to that. Let's just say 'around', shall we? Twenty years ago, you say? Seventeen fifty-nine? Let's see, Quebec surrendered to Wolfe. You're not Canadian, are you, Rowland?"

"God, no!"

"Now, now. Hmmmm. The Cherokee war? No. Probably not. Let's see, the Battle of Ticonderoga? The Battle of Fort Niagara? The Battle of Beauport? The Battle of..." The Doctor paused. "You humans. You really need to think of something else to work out your aggressive tendencies." He leaned as far over as he could to get a sight of Montgomery. "Ever thought about inventing racket ball?"

Montgomery was silent for a moment. When he spoke the words came out like the report of a machine gun. What...kind...of...an...idiot...are...you?"

"Why, the best kind. Idiot d'excellent. Idiot principal," the Doctor replied. "It's taken centuries to perfect."

"Are you the only man living who knows nothing about the Seven Years War?"

"Seven years? Well, that's like a hiccup to me, you know?" He thought a moment. "Oh, yes, the one also known as the French and Indian War. So why don't you hate the Indians?"

"Because the Indians didn't slaughter my family, the bloody French did!"

"Sorry. Well, sorry for that too. But sorry, you need to shut up. The guard's almost here."

Lieutenant Montgomery's body was rigid against the ropes; the tension causing those about the Doctor's neck to tighten uncomfortably. He felt them ease as the soldier once again pretended to sleep.

"You know," the Time Lord began a moment later, "hating an entire people because of the actions of one or two is, well, puerile, if not to say, all together prozaic."

"What?"

"Well, stupid." The Doctor sighed. "Serves a fellow right for trying to be polite."

"If you had seen your children butchered like hogs, your aged father humiliated and left to die, and your wife..." Montgomery paused, and then breathed hatred through clenched teeth. "Unspeakable French bastards."

The Doctor hesitated. He had seen carnage. More carnage than Lieutenant Montgomery could imagine. And he had wanted vengeance, had longed to bring destruction down on his enemies.

But then, he would have been no better than they.

"Unspeakable bastards," he countered, "know no law, and have no country. They are both unto themselves."

Montgomery's voice grew louder. "These were soldiers! Obeying the orders – "

" Of another bastard. Shush." The Doctor paused. He suddenly felt dizzy. "Hate the bastard, if you must, but not his home base... Two minutes," he lied. "Guard approaching."

The count was about thirty seconds early. The Time Lord leaned his head back and closed his eyes, listening for a moment to his body. Something was happening. After the guard had passed, he glanced at his wrist where it was pressed up against the soldier's, and saw a thin trail of blood trickling from it across Montgomery's to the floor. The Bluhdouls were advancing.

"Rowland. You don't mind if I call you 'Rowland', do you?"

"You are a madman."

"Well, it's always polite to ask. I can see you skipped manners day at school. Rowland, take a look at my right hand."

"Why should I do that?"

"Just...do it!" The words came out with more anger than he had intended. "What do you see?"

There were several seconds of silence, and then the other man said, "You're bleeding."

"Do you know why I am bleeding?"

"How would I...?"

"Because of you."

"Me?"

"Rowland, what are you doing here? Why are you tied up?"

The soldier remained silent for seconds. "More bastards..."

"Did you think, Rowland, when you made the bargain with the Nestene Consciousness to taint the Marquis de Lafayette's blood in order to make him a carrier so that, in going back to France, he would carry the plague there and wipe out the French – did you really think that was what the gestalt wanted? Or that it would stop there? Did you believe that only the French would be destroyed? The Bluhdoul virus doesn't care if you are French or English, American, or from another planet. All it wants to do is eat. By your selfish choice, you have loosed a plague on this continent the likes of which has not been seen since the Yellow Fever in Philadelphia." He drew a sharp breath. "No, wait. Wrong decade. Forget that. Hasn't happened yet. Since the Bubonic plague! Lafayette may be infected, but so is Henry Abington. And now, so am I." The Doctor's next words were spoken with honest feeling and great solemnity. "And though I have every right to class you in with those bastards for doing such a thing, Rowland, I am sorry. I am really, really sorry. If you have even the slightest cut or scrape on your left hand...

"So are you."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

If the Doctor lived through this, she was going to kill him.

River Song stood looking down the barrel of her pistol at Henry Abington. The apothecary had gone pale as a sheet, though to his credit he had neither made a sound nor tried to run away. There had been times in the past where she had had to do things – things that seemed on the wrong side of the law – and she had done them without flinching. Still, the ones she had been dealing with hadn't exactly been angels either.

This was different.

Henry Abington was an innocent. He had done nothing wrong but contract a virus and survive. She should be congratulating him, not thinking of putting a bullet through his heart. But there was the Doctor. She couldn't shake that image of him forever burned into her mind – the image of that bloody corpse on the Tardis floor. Involuntarily, River closed her eyes for several heartbeats. Startled by the lapse, her eyes flew open. She fully expected to find her target had turned tail and run like a rabbit through the door. But he hadn't.

Henry Abington stood before her like the sacrificial lamb calmly awaiting its slaughter.

River frowned. "Do you mind my asking something?"

Her intended victim's auburn head shook.

"Why, in the name of sanity,are you still standing there?"

The young man fidgeted with his cuffs. Then he removed his glasses and ran a hand over his eyes, as if wiping away tears. As he replaced them on the bridge of his nose, he mumbled something. The words were so quiet she couldn't hear them.

"What?" He jumped in response to her harsh tone. She hadn't meant it to come out that way. She almost apologized, but realized that was absurd to a man she was about to kill. "What did you say?"

"I deserve to die."

"No, you don't," she contradicted him. "This is completely and totally unfair. In fact, it is rather selfish of me." The gun wavered. "Really, if it wasn't for the fate of the entire universe hanging in the balance, I would be asking you to sit down to a cup of tea."

"No. No." He was trembling and looked like he might faint. "Do you mind... Do you mind if I sit down?"

She shook her head.

Henry took a seat on the chair by the bed. "I am an apothecary. My friends, well, they think me almost a physician. I have taken an oath never to harm another human being. And now," he looked up at her and his eyes were haunted, "I have taken two lives! The General's and the Doctor's. Madame, I understand completely why you would feel compelled to shoot me."

"Oh, for Heaven's sake! It isn't that. Henry, you had no control over getting the virus or passing it on. You know that."

"But the Marquis... And the Doctor, he had to have contracted it while caring for me."

"And if you contracted an illness from one of your patients, would you consider them a murderer?"

He paled. "Certainly, not."

River lowered the gun. "Physician, forgive thyself," she sighed. With the pistol still in hand, she went over to sit on the bed next to the apothecary. "Henry, you are a man of science, yes?"

He flinched, and his eyes never left the pistol, but he answered. "Yes."

"And you know there are things yet to be discovered, things that now, here, would seem like magic?"

"Like your blinking box?"

She nodded. "Like my blinking box." She drew the instrument out of her pocket. "This is a scanner. As I said, it can read what is within you." She held up her hand at his protest. "You are familiar with James Lind's work? With his ideas on scurvy?"

"Aye. He has discovered it can be cured with citrus juice."

"One hundred, two hundred years ago, would that not – in a way – have seemed magic? One sip of juice and the blackened gums, the rotting flesh, teeth falling out – it all goes away."

He considered it, and then nodded.

"This," she indicated the scanner, "will one day be common. But not now."

"Then how...?"

She cocked her head. "Do you really want to know?"

This time he shook his head.

"This tells me that the cure for the virus is in your blood, but that it cannot be activated – used to cure another – until you are..."

"Dead."

"Yes." Her words were hard, but the tone expressing them was soft with sorrow. "For the Doctor to live, for the Marquis, then you...you have to die." She glanced at the pistol and then back to him. "I thought I could do it. The Doctor... Well, he is more than just a man. The choices he makes, his actions, affect millions. But I know what he would think if he knew that I took the life of just one of those millions so he could live." She dropped the pistol on the bed beside her. "He would hate me forever."

"Madame..."

"No." River shook her head adamantly. "There has to be another way."

"Good girl," a familiar voice remarked. "A+! Though I hate to think you would have shot the poor apothecary if it hadn't been for fear of my disliking you."

River rose and pivoted toward the door. Until that moment she hadn't really realized that she had already reconciled herself to never seeing that long, lanky silhouette again, or hearing that irritatingly cheerful voice. A shout of victory arose within her – until she remembered that the threat was not over. The Doctor might have escaped, or even defeated the Nestene Consciousness, but he still had his death written in his blood.

"How did you escape?" she asked, fighting – and succeeding – in keeping herself from running over to him, throwing his arms around his neck, and making a fool of herself. "I suppose you talked them to death."

"Close," he answered. "I had a plan."

"I remember. A bad one."

"Can't be bad if it worked." He drew the once missing sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and tossed it back and forth between his hands. "Big bad Nestene has gone bye -bye."

"Just like that. You asked them politely and they left?"

"Yes. Well, no." He crossed to the bed where she had been sitting, moved the pistol, and took her place. "They had the Tardis. Did you know that?"

She winced. "You didn't go in it..."

"Yes, I did. Old girl was pining for me, I can tell you, pining! Remembered I had another batch of that anti-plastic I used back in London in '05. The Consciousness recognized it. Shouted a few Nestene epithets when they saw it that don't bear repeating, but they got the hint."

Henry Abington was still sitting in the chair, staring from one of them to the other, dumbfounded.

The Doctor glanced at her and then turned to Henry. "How are you doing, Henry Abington? You look a bit pale. Perhaps some tabaccum or ferrum metallicum for the palpatations?"

"Sir, your speech...this woman," the apothecary pointed at the sonic screwdriver, "that! What madness is this?"

The Doctor stared at him for a moment and then said, "You're right, Henry. You are mad."

"Doctor!" River snapped.

"No, he is. Henry is still quite ill and this is a fever dream. Isn't that right, Henry?"

"I assure you, sir. I am awake!"

"No. No, you're not." The Doctor was still twisting and twirling the sonic in his hands. Suddenly, he activated it and pointed it at the apothecary's head. "Go to sleep, Henry. And when you wake up, you won't remember any of this. Go to sleep – now!"

River started to protest that the device couldn't do that when, suddenly, Henry Abington's eyes snapped shut and he started to plummet toward the floor. The Doctor caught him and placed him in the bed. He glanced at her before he employed the sonic again, adding, "Remember, Henry, none of this is real. It is all a dream."

When he turned to her, her hands were in their usual place on her hips. "Since when does it do that?" she demanded.

"Mark VI," he declared. "New screwdriver, new functions. She's a beauty!"

She shook her head. "You are mad."

"The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success," he responded, hopping up and almost dancing over to her.

River was scowling. "You seem...well."

"Well as Wellington at Waterloo," he replied cheerfully.

He was very close now; tilting his head and looking at her with those light green puppy dog eyes. It had taken her a while to get used to this regeneration. He seemed so very young it made her feel like – well, like a mature predator stalking a defenseless animal. Only the Doctor was far from young, and very far from defenseless.

"Will you give me your hand?" She held out her own and waited.

He blinked. "Are you asking me to marry you, River?"

For a moment she thought he was paying her back for the way she had teased him on the night of Amy Pond's wedding. But then she remembered that for him, that hadn't happened yet. Her smile was slightly forced. "Maybe when you're older," she replied, knowing he would remember when those words had first been spoken. They had been in a tight spot. She had saved Amy and the Doctor had offered to kiss her.

"Biased against younger men, are we? Well, younger looking men?"

"Will you shut up for one minute, you idiot!" she barked. When she was certain he looked sufficiently cowed, she reached out, took hold of his sleeve and slid it back to reveal his arm. The marks were there on his veins, but there was no blood. She stared at his healed flesh, mystified. What was wrong? Why didn't she feel elated?

"You're...cured," she breathed.

"Hale and hearty."

"But how?"

"The Nestene had a cure." He drew himself up to his full height and affected a lordly pose. "I told them they had incurred the wrath of a Time Lord and that they'd better hand it over or else I would travel throughout all time and space making bloody well sure they disappeared from it!"

"You threatened to destroy them?"

"Yep."

There it was again. That nagging feeling.

"River, aren't you happy I'm alive?"

With her free hand she struck him in the chest. "Of course, I am! It's just – " She stopped. He had caught her hand and was holding it. It had been days – years – centuries since she had felt his strength. In this youthful wiry frame it came as a surprise. "What? What is it?"

"I met Aphrodite once, did I tell you?" he asked. Then he leaned in close and whispered in her ear. "She didn't hold a candle to you."

"Doctor!"

He reeled her out to arm's length and inspected her, noting her upswept hair, her silk dress, and last of all, the way her stays pushed everything she had up and face forward. "It suits you better than it did Madame Pompadour."

Fear gripped her. Something had happened to him while the Nestene held him. "You are not yourself," she stated as she tried to pull away, but there was no escaping that grip. "Let me go."

"Why, River? Since I met you, this is what you have wanted – to be with me and to fly away in the Tardis into time and space." He began to reel her in, and kept reeling until her body and his were pressed against one another. He leaned down and brushed her lips with his. "The Tardis is outside." The Doctor showed her the key and then playfully inserted it into the space between her breasts. "Oh, look. It fits. Now what do you suppose that would open?"
Her heart was pounding fiercely. How could she say no? Not only did she love this man in the future, but up until ten minutes ago she had thought she would never see him again. But something was...

Wrong.

River's breath caught. His shirt. There had been no blood on the cuff of his shirt. Her eyes flicked to his collar. It was pristine. Unstained. It wasn't the Doctor. It must be a duplicate.

So did that mean the Doctor – her Doctor – was dead?

Panic seized her, but then a memory fought it down. He had told her once that the Nestene had to keep those they duplicated alive for the psychic link to work. So this man – this creature coming on to her – was her ticket to the Time Lord.

The things she did in the line of duty.

Quickly River channeled her rising anger into action. She took the Auton's hand and lifted the key up and away. "I might need help fishing it out," she chided, smiling sweetly. "You know we need it to get to the ship. If we go fishing, we might never get there."

It laughed. "Aha! River, always right as rain. Though why rain is right I never quite figured out. Falls out of the sky. It's just as left as right. Isn't it?"

The duplicate was cannily accurate. It was almost as if the Doctor's soul was now housed in a plastic shell. Still, this current incarnation of the Doctor would never have propositioned her, or played lover's games. He... He would have...

"Oh," she breathed, "you are brilliant."

"Nice of you to notice at last...or again."

She laughed. River took the key to the Tardis from the duplicate and as she pulled away, ran her hand down its chest and onto its thigh – all the while wondering if a Nestene Auton would even notice. She ran her free hand through its hair and then planted a quick kiss on its replicated lips.

"Come on, sweetie, let's go."

In the Tardis she would have tools – weapons to deal with him.

It.

As she started to drag the duplicate toward the door, the Auton reasserted its strength and drew her back. It caught her about the waist and crushed her to it, and then kissed her with a will and desire that took her breath away.

Plastic passion.

Who'd have thought it?