FIVE BY TEN

I am no more important than you are. (I've been told I am; it's not true.) All right, I do save whole planets, sometimes whole universes, at once, but you save them too; you just don''t get the headlines. Ever hear of Martha Jones? Donna Noble? Wilfred Mott? Rose Tyler….

Maybe I have saved your ass. You've probably saved mine too. Many have. Hopefully, in doing so, you don't make the enemies, en masse, that I did and still do. I don't even have to try. It just happens.

Anyway, I am not allowed to go back in time and save my own life, and I won't. There is someone else who needs saving, but to do that I have to change some things about the circumstances of my death. It's not cheating. I swear it's not. I can prove it, too: the Time Lords haven't said anything to me about it, not word one. They are not trying to stop me – not that they could. (They are, let's call it "otherwise engaged.") That makes it all right, right? Yes, all right, I'm not really in joking mood either.

And now, for my first trick, ladies and gentlemen and variations thereupon, I have to land my TARDIS exactly where my TARDIS was. Is. Ooh, this will be confusing. Can I talk about my fifth incarnation in the third person? It will be so much easier, not so much for me as for you. For me, well, I am he and he is… goo goo g'joob, and all that. I am wrapping my TARDIS around his, perfectly. I am no more important than you are but I am awfully clever.

Now I have to to wait around a bit; I'm early. This gives me time to collect my memories and make my plans. It's one thing to remember, vaguely, and another to be thrust in the middle of those memories, as I am about to be, unless I can change things beforehand. Even so I will see him in frighteningly awful shape. If I make so much as a single error, I will be forced to watch myself die. The fact that I am dying now anyway only adds to my sense of urgency; I have to stay alive long enough to do this, just as I, I mean he, has to stay alive long enough to do what he needs to do. And if we don't? Well, let's just make note of the fact that I have been flickering for a while. I've made my amends – well, most of them – but this still needs to be done.

I'm not sure when it started but I am pretty sure I know why: something or someone changed my history and I have to change it back or I will never have existed. I mean this me. Well, this me long enough to do more than get killed. This me and the next me and, well, I think I have this limited regeneration thing licked but I wouldn't want to test it, especially not that way. In any case, if I didn't use my incarnations up lickety-split, they could stop at any time and just throw me out into space. Let's just say if I have ever saved your ass, your ass is now toast.

I say I'm early. I am sure I could not have talked him out of going into the Androzani blowholes, and once he had done so he wasn't alone long enough for me to have made a difference. One thing I remember vividly is not being able to free myself from my chains, or even from the wall of the spaceship in which I was being pulled away from Androzani Minor, away from Peri, away from any possibility of saving myself or her. In the short time I was alone, I tried my best but I wasn't strong enough to pull the brackets that held my chains out of the grating on the wall, much less free myself of the thick cuffs chained to the brackets. My abductors returned to the cabin refreshed, laughed at me, then, for the most part, ignored me until Morgus arrived. Stotz had been furious with me for having the nerve to exist (it was his idea to drag me along!) and for precipitating Morgus' order to put the ship in geostationary orbit, but now he was positively jovial. He didn't bother blindfolding me this time but Morgus, saying he needed to speak with Stotz in private, wanted me (and the other gunrunners) out of the cabin so I was hauled rather ungently to a small store room, where I was secured to a wall much as I had been in the cabin. Things went quite pear-shaped after that (and I hate pears!) I am convinced that what I need to do is free my… um, him while the gunrunners are sleeping. He can take it from there. We're clever fellows, after all. I hope he's up to it. We weren't in good shape.

Good, there's the ship. Small one, this is, but it brings with it powerful memories, memories I'd rather not relive, well, live for the first time, well, live again for the first time, but I may have no choice. My best bet is to hide before they bring him. The craft is on automatic return; there's no one in it to stop me, but there shortly will be. I run and hope no one sees me from the blowhole. I have now what I didn't have then: my trusty sonic screwdriver, so it's easy enough to get in. I zip through the cabin, then zip back in to use the sonic on the wall brackets that held my chains; it's best if he can free himself without meeting his future self. That's me. Then I race across a short corridor and into a room: a common room, a place to rest, but not for me. The next room I find, across from that, next to the cabin, is the store room, and if seeing the ship land jolted me, being in this room almost overwhelms me. I am paralyzed by total recall, total recall of something that never happened but suddenly did happen. I remember it as if it always had happened and my other memories dim, as if they are of what never happened. I distinctly remember saying this was going to be confusing. Am I right or am I right? I was chained to that wall, there, in the store room, and I waited, alone, knowing that my captors intended to torture me, and since I am here, now, those same captors will indeed torture me, him. Still, it's the best hiding place for the time being. "Stop it," I say to myself. "Cut it out. Never mind that it used to not have happened. New reality: it happened. Now figure out how to make it not have happened." Easier said than done. As I see the wall, I am chained to it. I sonic these brackets as well but the memories persist.

Stotz is laughing to Morgus, "We don't have your sophisticated equipment here, Boss, but I think we can get results with this." He withdrew what looked like a mobile from his vest; I knew it had to be a disguised stun gun.

"I don't care," says Morgus, "how you get results, as long as you get them. I want to know who hired him, how much he is being paid and whether triple pay will turn him."

"He's dying, Boss," says Stotz, sotto voce. "He won't be of much use to you."

"Then I can promise him quadruple pay, since he won't live long enough to collect it."

Stotz, in a normal voice, says, for my benefit, "You know, Boss, shocks are good, but since it makes no difference to you, I might just start out with a good old-fashioned thrashing. I would definitely enjoy that."

"Whatever," Morgus yawns. "I don't suppose you have anything as convenient as a chair. I'd prefer not to stand for however long it takes to break this miscreant."

"I'll get you one, Boss." Stotz leaves the room and Morgus gives me a strange, searching stare. I return it, as defiantly as I can under the circumstances.

When Stotz comes back with a folding chair, unfolds it and makes a sweeping gesture toward it, Morgus sits and says "I hope this won't take too long. We do need to get started. We don't know how long their little skirmish will last. We need them occupied, out of our way. Well, go on, man, get started!" He sits back in the chair, almost tips it, as it's flimsy, then sits back more carefully. I can see him clearly until Stotz, coming toward me, fills my vision, his face, with its self-satisfied grin, so close to mine that I flinch back against the wall, which, being a grate like the one I'd been chained against in the cabin, pulls my hair. Seeing this Stotz grabs me by the hair and knocks my head against the wall just a tad more roughly, then knees me. He straightens me up against the wall again before I have recovered from that, and I catch a glimpse of Morgus, sitting slightly forward in the little chair, looking for all the world as if he has just tasted something delicious. Shaking in my hiding place between two tall shelving units, I stare at the blank wall with its empty brackets and hear Stotz and his fellow gunrunners laughing in the cabin; I know they are affixing my chains to the brackets in that wall and I hope I have loosened them enough. If I haven't, Stotz may have the pleasure of killing me twice.

Once I hear the gunrunners retiring to the common room, I am tempted to pop into the cabin and make sure my little sonic adjustment worked. I resist that temptation, which grows more powerful when I hear my predecessor cry out; I vaguely remember burning myself, though now that is a fantasy; it never happened. It is hard to keep the two histories separate. I don't like this feeling one bit. I must focus. Didn't I always have trouble with that? I haven't changed. I creep to the door of the cabin and listen. I hear him moving around in there. We mustn't meet but I must help him. The door is locked; good. That buys him time. Then I hear a soft whining sound. I know that sound, but only from the inside. Is this how it sounds from the outside? It's too early; we mustn't regenerate!

I sonic the door and burst into the cabin. "Don't!" I whisper. "Not yet! Hold on!" He stares at me in astonishment and, I admit it, fright. I lock the door and look back at him. He looks young – an illusion, I know; what am I, about 800 back then? - determined, terrified, at death's door, ready to fight. "Let me help!" Now he still looks all of those things but confused and hopeful as well. "Give me your hands." He holds them out obediently. A whir from the sonic frees him from those heavy cuffs. His eyes are huge now with understanding; the sonic was a dead giveaway and now he knows who I am, who we are. Unfortunately, he thinks he can die now, that I am his next incarnation, that I will take over for him. This is not good, not good at all. This is disastrous. I shouldn't even be here and now I've made things worse. His determination, which I wanted to bolster, has vanished. He rises from his seat, perhaps so I can sit and finish the sequence that will get us back to Minor, and collapses in my arms.

We are probably tearing a hole the size of Luxembourg in the fabric of the universe and all for nothing.

I set him back down in the seat, his head lolling, then take a step back and begin to rummage through my pockets. No, the yo-yo is useless, ball of string irrelevant – don't tell me I still have that apple! – psychic paper won't help me now, and what's this? Smelling salts! Wasn't I clever to have packed that! He comes to with a start and his eyes are alert. He knows he's not me yet. "Save Peri," he says, and I don't know whether he is speaking to me or to himself, so I respond,

"Yes, you must. Hurry! Lock the door after me." I leave him alone there, and stand, exposed, by the door, until I hear the lock click behind me. Good! Maybe I can just leave, before the gunrunners come back and find that door locked. No, I'm not yet sure he is up to the task. I still have the new memories. There is no time to let them play out; the common room is occupied, the store room will be unsafe because that's where the cutting tools are – I vaguely remember watching them burn through the locked door - and there is only one more room on this small ship, at the end of the hall. I enter it, close that door, which has no lock, and look around. There isn't much space, barely room to stand; the room is filled with the guts of the ship, electrical stuff and such. I sit down against the door, trying not to touch anything in case there is a live wire or other dangerous element with which I could suddenly destroy myself. That will come soon enough. I am still needed here.

The idea of a lethal shock is a powerful trigger and suddenly I see myself once more in the store room, my hands still chained behind me but now I'm on the floor, unable to protect my face as Stotz kicks me around. Once in a while I catch a glimpse of Morgus licking his lips. Oddly, neither of them is questioning me. Stotz is just having fun; Morgus is soaking it all in. His face is impassive, except for his eyes. They gleam. I don't care. I don't try to hold anything back; pain is pain. If Morgus gets off on my cries, let him. That's not my concern. I need to get away. I know that's not going to happen.

"Stop, stop," I say, too loudly, and put my hand over my mouth. I do need to get away, but not until he has gotten away. I have to be sure. If I am still having these flashbacks, he is still at risk of living them. I couldn't stop them, though.

"Time's a-wasting," says Morgus. "Amusing though this may be, we need some answers."

"Shock time," grins Stotz. "Up you go." He drags me to my feet and chains me to the brackets again. I lean forward, letting the chains support me. Stotz pushes me back with one hand on my chest. "Doctor," he sneers. "What is your real name?" I couldn't tell him if I wanted to. He touches the innocent-looking mobile thing to the wound on my forehead. I scream.

Hunkered down against the door, I groan, "Stop!" It stops. I open my eyes; I didn't even know they were closed. I hear shouting, and running footsteps. The gunrunners are awake and very pissed off. Good. I remember snarking at them. This is very good indeed. The memory is strong, and the alternative memories are fading. Have I changed history back? It's hard to believe I am mentally celebrating this; no matter what I do, this is the day I die, the old me, I mean, and maybe this me too. That is as it should be. Then I realize my job is not yet done. I need to get out, get to my TARDIS, move it off of his TARDIS. How on Minor am I going to do that?

Right on schedule – my schedule - the ship crashes. I skid a little; there's not enough room to skid a lot. "Good boy!" I exclaim, not bothering to whisper, as everyone is shouting and no one could possibly hear me. How much time should I give him to get out, and for Stotz's two underlings to go after him? That will leave only Stotz, and although he is armed and I am not, I do have the element of surprise on my side. I would rather have the element of being far, far away, but one makes do with what one has. At least I can sneak down the short hallway. I don't know whether Stotz will stay in the cabin or find a reason to come back into this hallway but either way I have to go through the cabin to get out, and he is in my way.

I eschew violence. I also eschew never having existed. I tiptoe down the hall and listen carefully. There's a nice big jagged hole in the cabin door but the door is open anyway. I can see Stotz's shadow in the doorway; I know it's Stotz because the others have gone after me. Him. The shadow moves away from the doorway so I move toward it. I peer in, then pull back, as he is facing the doorway. I think he's seen me! I slip into the common room before he can come out into the hallway. I hear his footsteps go past the common room, so I slip back out and into the cabin, to the other side, down an even shorter hallway and I'm out, out on the sand, and now I remember the mud bursts: I'd better high-tail it to the TARDIS or I'll be scalded and buried.

It's not that long a run – only endless. Stotz has figured it out and that M10 of his has a nice, long range - half a football field - so bullets are flying at my feet, whizzing past my head; I feel one rustle my hair. The TARDIS isn't more than 50 meters away, at that; it could have bullet holes in it by the time I reach it. I could have bullet holes in me and never reach it.

Then the mud bursts start and the bullets stop. Stotz has apparently gone back inside, a wise move. I reach the TARDIS and now that I am safely inside, I am conflicted. Have I done my job or am I still needed? I can't just fly away and leave him without knowing. I haven't saved his life, nor have I saved my own, but I never intended to do either. Have I been flickering? I am too distracted to pay attention to that. No, I'd better pay attention. It's important. I sit down on the floor by the console, try to regulate my breathing, look at my hands, my legs. They seem solid enough. I stare and stare until my mind wanders – that's what my mind does – and then I stare some more. I appear not to be flickering. Well, that I appear at all the main thing, isn't it?

Then I realize that he could be dead, shot by the gunrunners, and still regenerate, but not be tortured because they wouldn't stick around to kill him again and again. My continued existence would be more certain, if not guaranteed, but the gunrunners would not be killing him over and over until there was no possibility of regeneration. I am almost certainly safe now, but if he dies, Peri will die.

You are thinking, ah, the stakes have become smaller. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am no more important than you are. I am no more important even than you who don't understand anything that happens to you, you who bully others or are bullied by others, you who do good works, you who steal, you who care for the elderly, you who lived long ago, you who aren't born yet, you who live quiet lives and save not a single planet from your birth to your death, you who… what do you think I do it for? Hmm? I do it for you.

If I can do it for you, I can do it for Peri, too. She is no less important than you.

Short hops are tough. I am getting better at it, though. Well, a little bit better. Well, a little bit better some of the time. I take a chance; the TARDIS dematerializes with a groan and rematerializes with a similar groan not far from the blowhole entrance Peri and I had entered so long ago. The TARDIS has no cover; she would certainly catch the eye of anyone leisurely wandering in the vicinity of the blowhole – but a dying man struggling to carry a dying woman in a beeline toward a distant TARDIS during a mudburst would be hard pressed to turn to the side to see whether a duplicate TARDIS just happened to be parked nearby. I'm not sure whether he's already found his way in, now that his pursuers have turned back. There's even a chance that my interference has changed things beyond what I have intended and my former self is lying dead among the dunes. No, I can't let myself think like that. He'll get it right, now. He's getting it right. He got it right before; he'll do it again. My job is done, but I can't leave. I don't want to leave. Theoretically, I could have left after I loosened the brackets. What is keeping me here? I open the TARDIS door and look out but stay safely inside.

The thing is, I could save his life, no problem. I have oxygenators in the TARDIS. How hard could it be to get some extra bat's milk and either hand it to him or leave it in his TARDIS? He lives, Peri lives, they fly away and have brilliant adventures… and one day, when he regenerates, it is somewhere else, into someone else, who eventually regenerates into someone else, and so on, and everything is different; I just never happen. There is no me, as I know me. Can I do that? Think of all the planets and people I won't have saved. But think of all the planets and people he could save, if he lived!

He gave, and is about to give once more, his life for Peri. Should I, could I, give mine for him?

There is, of course, a chance that even if my predecessor dies later than expected and elsewhere, his successors will still be the same and that will include me. No one really knows what determines the outcome of a regeneration. If my direct predecessor had choked on a chicken bone or been trampled by a camel or fallen off a cliff instead of absorbing the Time Vortex, would he have regenerated into me or some other incarnation? I try to think about this rationally but I am partial to myself, and my mind does wander….

Then my mind wanders right into a shock. All this while I've been oriented toward making sure my fifth incarnation is able to save his companion and regenerate, to ensure my own incarnation's existence;, and it doesn't hurt that I have figured out a way for him not to be tortured beyond what, if I dare, I already remember. Not a speck of a scintilla of a fraction of a nanocogitation have I dedicated to figuring or finding out why and how my personal history changed. Let's just say my jaw drops to my knees. I stand in the doorway of the TARDIS and marvel at the insufficiency of my otherwise incredibly clever mind.

Someone emerges from the clouds of flying sand and spurting mud, and I am relieved. He made it. Wait, that's not him. It's not one of the gunrunners either. Who is this? In fact, what is this? The person, clearly a sentient person, more or less humanoid but huge, sees me and approaches rapidly enough that I want to retreat into the TARDIS and close the door, but I resist that impulse and instead come out, closing the door behind me. I smile.

The person smiles back, lifts a finger to point at me and right out of his finger he shoots an electrical charge at my chest that knocks me down. I try to stand and open the TARDIS door but he shoots me again and I'm as incapacitated as he needs me to be, conscious but helpless as he slings me over his shoulder – he's huge – and starts back toward the gunrunners' ship, deftly predicting where the mud bursts will be. I'm hanging upside-down so I see something behind him he misses: me, him, stumbling toward the blowhole, anxiously looking back, single-minded, determined, then, spotting me, performing a perfect double take. He stops, then, braving small mud bursts (they seem to be diminishing) comes after us. No, he mustn't! He is risking both of our lives and Peri's too. I can't call out to him, though, and that's good, because my abductor isn't aware, and must not be made aware, that he's being followed. My weary, poisoned self stoops to pick up a piece of fused silica, and I guess he snaps the piece to get a sharp edge, because he rushes the guy carrying me, falls against the back of those big legs, can't get up fast enough to do more than cut one of the thick ankles, but he cuts again and again, and it's enough; the giant falls and drops me, and I scramble away, then stand up and trudge back to stamp on each of his outstretched hands, hopefully disarming the fingers. The giant yells and struggles to get up but my poisoned self kicks him in the butt, knocking him back down. From a pocket, from that muddy, bloody coat that by itself tells such a sorry story, he pulls out a ball of string just like the one I have in my pocket – we haven't changed! - and jerks the giants arms behind him.

"No," I say, taking the string and the silica from him. "No time. Go save Peri."

I take his arm to help him rise, which he does with difficulty. He turns and stumbles on toward the blowhole. Then he turns back, just for a moment, and gives me a look I'll never forget. It tells the coat's story, his sallow face's story, everything important: he knows he will die soon but he knows one day he will be me. Is that good news or bad? He doesn't smile or speak but he nods ever so slightly, then turns and, as best he can, runs.

I finish the job of tying back the arms of my attacker, cutting the string neatly with the bloody silica. That's when I notice the vortex manipulator, remove it from his wrist and pop it into my pocket. To be extra sure he can't finger-shoot me again, I roll him onto his back so that he is lying on his bound hands. I have but one question for him: "Why?"

He spits at me. That's my answer, all the answer I'll ever get. I'll never know his name or species, or even know whether his target was me, my fifth incarnation, an incarnation between the two of us or someone to come later… maybe not so much later. I can guess why in a general sense: one or more of us did something to him or to his people, but who? What? No, I'll never know that either. It has to suffice that I stopped him.

Huge as he is, I manage to drag him into my TARDIS so he'll be out of the way when my brave former self carries Peri to his TARDIS. That will be a while, but I'll wait and see him off. I won't be saving his life, nor can I act to save mine; we both die today, alone, in our respective TARDISes,

On my way home I drop the giant off on an undeveloped planet with an Earthlike atmosphere. I honestly don't know if that's the ideal atmosphere for him but he'll be okay, and without his vortex manipulator he is not likely to cause any more historical disturbances. I wrap duct tape loosely around his hands and untie him. I even leave him the silica and the string (not the whole ball – that's handy stuff! - just the bit with which I'd bound him). I want to render him harmless, not starve him to death.

Now I still have a tiny bit of work left to do. One or two more goodbyes and a wedding gift to deliver and I'm off to pass the baton. I won't pretend I'm happy about it. I really don't want to go – think of what I could still accomplish! - but I am proud of who I am and who I've been. No one can take that away from us.