Chapter 5

Carolyn was working near a console as the Doctor (still in his fourth body) entered the Cloister Room, still carrying his sonic screwdriver. Everything was exactly as it should be except for the Doctor, and except that Nita was not aboard the TARDIS. He looked around the familiar scene, unsure how to respond to all this.

"We'll need to adjust the main deflector later this afternoon. Oh, and look into that inducer problem."

Carolyn finally noticed the Doctor. There was a change in how Carolyn and Michelle knew and thought about the Doctor: to them he was no longer the mighty Doctor, to them he was a mildmannered, slightly nerdy guy.

"Hi Doc. What's new? Do you need something?"

The Doctor remembered the sonic screwdriver. "I have the… spectral analysis for you." He handed Carolyn the screwdriver. Carolyn glanced at it briefly then set it down. She was in the middle of something and the screwdriver wasn't that important. "Thanks." Carolyn moved to her office. The Doctor couldn't help but follow to see what was going on, he was used to knowing everything that was happening aboard the TARDIS. Carolyn sat at her panel and frowned at the display. "So where's the problem?"

"What's going on?"

"Oh, something's causing a power spike in the eye of harmony. If I don't track it down soon, we'll be in trouble."

"Have you tried flushing the transfer conduits with trioxina?"

"No," Carolyn replied dismissively. She stood and moved to another console and began to work.

The Doctor continued to try helping. "The conduits sometimes get blocked by neutrino emissions when the plasma…"

Carolyn smiled, put her arm around the Doctor, and gave him a polite brush-off. "Hey, I think I can handle this from here."

Carolyn moved away, leaving the Doctor standing alone and feeling totally out of place. After a beat, he left.

The Doctor entered the galley and looked around. He saw Michelle sitting at the table. He went over to her. "Am I unterrupting?"

Michelle looked up. She, like Carolyn, is not intimate friends with this man and is a little surprised to be approached by him. "Not at all. Have a seat."

The Doctor sat down. "I wonder if I could talk with you for a moment, about your time on the TARDIS."

"Of course, Doctor." Michelle sat back and looked at him expectantly.

"First of all, I'd like you to be straightforward with me. How do you enjoy travelling with me?"

"Our trips have always been interesting. You're knowledgeable, sensible, reliable…" She paused, unable to come up with anything else. "…punctual."

The Doctor understood that she was damning him with faint praise. "I see. What would you say if I told you I thought I was capable of being more than that…"

"Maybe we should discuss this later."

"I'd very much appreciate it if we could discuss it now."

She acquiesced.

"I would like to try… to be more adventurous… more exciting perhaps. Something more challenging."

"Frankly, Doctor, I don't think that's realistic."

"Why?"

"I really don't think this is the time to be discussing…"

"Please. This is important to me. I know I can do more."

Michelle leaned in to the Doctor. "Hasn't this been the problem all along? Throughout your travels, you've had lofty goals, but you've never been willing to do what's necessary to attain them. You talk about wanting more, but when it comes to doing something about it, you hang back. If you want to be amazing, you have to take chances, stand out form the crowd, get noticed."

"I see."

Michelle tried to salve the wound. "I don't want to leave you, you're a good travelling companion."

"Just not, one who stands out"

"Look, why don't I talk to Carolyn, maybe we can think of somewhere exciting to go."

"But… challenging?"

"Well, we'll see."

This was clearly a crumb thrown to make him feel better. It didn't.

Carolyn's voice came over the com. "Michelle, please come to the TARDIS study."

"All right. Doctor, I think we should talk about this later."

Michelle left, leaving the Doctor sitting alone at the table. He looked around for a moment. "All right, Black Guardian. Enough of this. You've made your point."

But there was no answer.

"Black?" The Doctor came to the awful realization that the Black Guardian wasn't going to just wipe it away this time, that he may have to live out his life like this.

Carolyn's voice came over the com again. "Carolyn to the Doctor. I'm still waiting for your final sensor usage log."

"I'm on my way, Carolyn." The Doctor got up to leave.

The Doctor entered the corridor and headed for the cloister room. The Doctor was very depressed.

"Are you having a good laugh now, Black? Does it amuse you to think of me living out the rest of my life as a dreary man?"

The Doctor entered the cloister room and found himself in limbo. The whiteness as seen before. The Doctor turned around and found the Black Guardian standing before him.

"I gave you something most mortals never experience, a second chance at life. And now all you can do is complain?"

"I can't live out my days as that person. That man is bereft of passion and imagination. That's not who I am."

"To the contrary. He's the person you wanted to be, one who was less arrogant, and undisciplined as a youth. One who was less like me."

There was a beat as the Doctor realized that the Black Guardian was right. Black took the opportunity to rub it in. "The Doctor you wanted to be, the one who did not fall from the transmitter dish, had quite a different life from the one you remember. That Doctor never had a brush with death, never came face to face with his own mortality, never realized how fragile life is, how important each moment can be, so his life never came into focus. He drifted through much of his life, with no plan or agenda, going from one adventure to the next, never seizing the opportunities that presented themselves. He didn't explore the caves on Androzani Minor, he didn't investigate an anomaly near the planet Lakertya, forcing him to crash land, and Nita never fell in love with him. He learned to play it safe. And he never, ever got noticed by anyone."

There was a beat as the Doctor was forced to admit that the Black Guardian was right all along. "You're right. You gave me the chance to change and I took that opportunity. But I freely admit now that it was a mistake."

The Black Guardian's eyes sparkled for a moment. "Are you asking me something, Doctor?"

The Doctor swallowed his pride. "Yes. Give me a chance to put things back to the way they were before."

"Before, you died in Sickbay. Is that what you want?"

The Doctor thought for a moment, but he was determined. "I would rather die as the man I was, than live the life I just saw."

They looked at each other for a long beat. The Black Guardian seemed to be waiting for something. Finally the Doctor broke the silence. "Please."

The Black Guardian smiled a self-satisfied smile as suddenly…

The Doctor found himself at the Pharos Project control room. He was standing at the doorway to the antenna walkway. He had been put back into the scene from his fourth self during the confrontation with the Master.

The Doctor left the control room. The Master noticed and followed, only to trip over the scarf which had been tied across it. He dropped his weapon. There was a struggle and it fell to the ground. Nyssa, Adric and Tegan wached in horror at events above them. The Master ran back into the control room and changed the coordinates of the antenna. The walkway began to tilt as the antenna moved back from vertical to horizontal. The Master watched from the doorway as the Doctor tried to hang on. Meanwhile, guards climbed the ladder to the control room. The Doctor crawled to the other end of the walkway and used a spanner to try and stop the mechanism. He pulled out the cable, but fell, dangling from the end of it in mid-air. His enemies flashed before his eyes.

"Predictable as ever, Doctor," said the rotting version of the Master.

"Doctor," said a Dalek.

"Doctor," said the captain of the Pirate Planet.

"Doctor," said a Cyberman.

"Doctor," said Davros.

"Doctor," said a Sontaran.

"Doctor," said a Zygon.

"Doctor, you shall die for this!" cried the Black Guardian.

The Doctor made it to a piece of antenna scaffolding, but could not hold on. He fell to the ground. As he fell, he let out a laugh of pure joy before hitting the ground.

The Master went into his TARDIS, laughing, and it dematerialized just before the guards entered the control room.

Below the the antenna, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan ran to the Doctor, followed by guards. He was staring up at the sky.

"Doctor?" called Nyssa.

"Doctor?" called Tegan.

"Doctor?" called Sarah.

"Doctor," said Harry.

"Doctor," said the Bridgadier.

"Doctor," said Leela.

"Doctor," said K9.

"Doctor," said Romana 1.

"Doctor," said Romana 2.

"Doctor, Doctor!" called Adric.

"It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for." The Doctor pointed to a ghostly white figure, that walked forward.

"The Watcher," said Adric.

The Watcher merged with the Doctor.

"He was the Doctor all the time," said Nyssa.

The Fourth Doctor turned into the Watcher, then gained youthful features and short straight hair. The Fifth Doctor sat up.

In the TARDIS sickbay, the Doctor was laughing, still on the operating table.

Carolyn, Michelle and Nita were looking on in puzzlement. Only a few minutes have passed since the events outside the conference room. Carolyn was leaning over him with a medical device.

"His vital signs are stabilizing. Doctor? Doctor?"

The Doctor's eyes opened at last and he looked up at Carolyn, still smiling.

"You've been injured, but I think it's going to be all right."

The Doctor was surprised at being here at all. With a final chuckle, he closed his eyes. The others all exchanged glances.

The TARDIS flew through the vortex.

In the library, the Doctor was finishing a long talk with Nita.

"I still don't know what to make of it all. Was it a dream? Or one of the Black Guardian's elaborate tricks?"

"A lot of people who've been near death have talked about strange experiences, but they're not usually so detailed."

"Part of me cannot accept the idea that Black would have given me a second chance, that he would demonstrate that much… compassion. But if it was the Black Guardian, I owe him a debt of gratitiude."

"In what sense? It sounds like he put you through hell."

"There were many things in my youth that I'm not proud of, they were loose threads, untidy parts of myself that I wanted to remove. But when I pulled on one of those threads, I unravelled the tapestry of my life."

Nita smiled at some inner joke. "I was just trying to imagine you as a hell-bent-for-leather young man confronting the Master. I wish I'd gotten a chance to meet that Doctor."

The Doctor smiled and leaned back in his chair. He was more at ease discussing this part of his life than he ever had before, a small demon had been put to rest and he could talk about his youth with a new joy and pride.

"Well, to tell the truth, that wasn't the first time I'd had a run-in with the Master."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes. During my third life I encountered the Axonites who had captured the Master. Well, the Master excaped Axos and made his way to my TARDIS, his own having been seized by Axos…"

The Doctor continued to tell Nita a tall tale from his youth.

The End