The road less travelled...

Title: Finding A Way Home – A Bitter Blow Part 2
Author: katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: There’s nothing to do but wait.

Part II

Something happens at one hundred and three hours.

The Doctor lets himself sleep.

Only for a short time, of course. He is certain that will be all he needs to drive away some of the darkest thoughts that are encroaching more often, and also enough to prevent him making some silly mistake in the readings.

He knows that the lack of sleep must have been getting to him, otherwise he wouldn’t be imagining tiny, almost imperceptible flickers on the machine showing readings in the Time Lord’s brain.

With a groan, he settles in to the chair on the other side of the room, leaning forward to rest his chin on his hands, staring somewhere between the bed and his own feet. It is, he has to admit, sheer bliss to sit down. His back, legs and torso have gone beyond intermittent aching to that place where it doesn’t hurt unless you move, and past that to the stage where no single thing hurts but everything is begging you to lie down.

He gets exactly eleven point three seconds of heaven with his eyes closed before the TARDIS gives him the mental equivalent of setting off an alarm clock in his mind.

Sitting bolt upright, his hearts racing, he finds himself staring at the screens showing the pattern of the Time Lord’s brainwaves. The tiny movements he had written off as the by-products of sleep-deprivation have grown into something he can no longer doubt.

Somewhere inside the depths of his mind, the Time Lord is beginning to return.

The Doctor leaps for the bed, easing his hands beneath the healing pod so that he can get his fingers to touch the other man’s temples. A spark hums through him almost audibly. Consciousness is still some time away, but there is at least life. Independent life that is beginning to fight its way out.

He feeds some of his own energy into that spark, to boost it, like blowing on a young ember. He would like nothing more than to pour all his energy into that feeble thing, to give it his own life, knowing that he would regenerate in his own way, back to what he is now. However he stops himself. He can’t bear not to be awake when the Time Lord regains consciousness. He has to be there to answer questions, to care for him, to bring him back to Donna.

Fixing his eyes on the screen showing brain activity, he wills it to grow with every passing minute. Almost as if in response to his thoughts, the wave pattern increases in size and activity

As he watches the signs on the machines strengthen and stabilise, he considers taking the TARDIS back to Chiswick and picking up Donna. Quite apart from her feelings, he wants someone to share this news with. It’s so hard to crush the sheer joy and relief burning in his chest that almost makes him want to weep.

And yet there is always the danger that something could still go wrong, that the Time Lord isn’t simply going to open his eyes and have everything be back to normal. He can’t be certain of anything until this terrible coma comes to an end. Even now, there is no guarantee that this is a permanent recovery.

Driving that fear away, he concentrates on the readout from the machines, seeing as the Time Lord’s brain activity continues to spike.

“Come on,” he mutters under his breath. “How much longer, for the love of all things holy? Gee, and you called me Sleeping Beauty!”

The waves of brain activity intensify, lifting on the scale, inching towards the point at which the Doctor knows it will be safe to remove the healing pod. To do it too soon would risk redirecting the Time Lord’s energy into the non-critical parts of his body, but with them paralysed, the brain and circulatory systems will be revived first, as they will need to be for him to survive.

The Doctor shakes his head and stops trying to give himself a lecture about something he already knows perfectly well.

Lights on the screen flash green as the Time Lord’s brain waves enter the safe zone, before fading when they slip back. Up and down. The Doctor rides the crests and troughs, holding his breath for as long as he can, as if his breathing could somehow affect the end result.

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, the green lights remain illuminated for longer intervals. He counts them out with the time sense that is an innate part of him: five seconds, then six, now ten. Fifteen, twenty, thirty. And finally, after what seems like the longest period of his life, the lights stay green.

He presses the button to deactivate the healing pod and all but throws it on to the hook on the wall to get it out of the way. A nearby shelf contains heated blankets and he snatches them out, wrapping them around the Time Lord, whose core temperature is only gradually approaching its usual levels.

The longer the healing coma, the slower the body is to readjust to normal.

And he’s talking to himself again.

The kettle sings almost cheerfully and he quickly makes up a cup of tea, liberally adding sugar and then setting it next to the bed. Almost as if in response to the aroma, the Time Lord’s brain activity leaps again, for a few seconds even approaching the level where he might be expected to regain consciousness, before it falls back.

Almost leaping for the kitchenette once more, the Doctor puts several banana muffins onto a plate and slides them into the oven, which the TARDIS has obligingly already been warming. It only takes a few minutes for the scent of warming banana and cake to pervade the room. The Doctor can’t exactly go stuffing food down his Time Lord counterpart’s throat, so smells will have to do the work instead. Lathering the butter on once the muffins are warm, he can’t help cramming half of one into his mouth as he carries the others over to the bedside table.

Just the feeling of food being chewed and swallowed makes him realise how hungry he actually is. His stomach growls as he tears another muffin into bite-sized pieces, chewing so enthusiastically that it’s a wonder he doesn’t choke. Still munching, he goes and stands in front of the screen, staring at the lines flowing across it.

Slowly the brainwave patterns continue to increase in intensity. There is less of an up-and-down action, too. More stability. Creeping ever closer to the thick white line on the screen that shows the normal point of consciousness for a Time Lord.

The Doctor checks the machines one more time and sets them to run a series of tests, just to make sure he hasn’t missed anything. Vital organs all normal and will begin functioning again when the coma ends. Blood cells showing normal and tests in the various elements in the Time Lord’s blood show typical levels. Pressures within the head are normal, too. No increased pressure on the brain. No swelling. All of the fractures and bruises were healed long ago. Even the nerves appear gloriously undamaged.

Then the device recording brain waves gives a hum as the level of activity rises past the white line and stays here.

The man in blue turns sharply and is back at the bedside in an instant.

“Doctor?” His voice is quiet, persistent, and he places his fingers over the other man’s hands, squeezing gently, trying to prompt a response. “Can you hear me? It’s time to wake up now.”

The man in bed remains motionless.

With one eye on the screen, showing that brain activity is all but normal, the Doctor tries again.

“Open your eyes,” he orders sharply, giving a hard squeeze of the limp hands in his, and this time he’s thrilled to feel a reaction. The fingers beneath his twitch, as if in protest against his rather brutal methods.

“Look at me,” he demands, hearing his tone becoming harder as he allows the first worries to slip in. He is going to wake up, isn’t he? “Open your eyes,” he repeats, “right now!”

The Time Lord’s brown lashes finally twitch and begin to flicker. His eyes move beneath his closed lids, moving from side to side, and the Doctor reaches over to dim the lights a little so that the shock of the brightness won't be so painful.

“Doctor,” he calls again, a certain degree of urgency in his voice, “wake up!”

Now he gets a far more definite response. The Time Lord’s head moves on the pillow, turning away slightly from the noise, and his eyelids move far more deliberately. He blinks several times without opening his eyes and finally, even as the Doctor scarcely allows himself to breathe in case something else goes on, the dark eyes open and the man stares up at the ceiling.

For several seconds, he gazes blankly before blinking a number of times and then his eyes travel around until they come to rest on the Doctor’s face. That man manages a smile with muscles that don’t feel as if they have been required to make that motion for far too long.

“Nice of you to join me,” he says softly.

This prompts a faint grin on the Time Lord’s face in response and he moves as if he is about to try and sit up.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the man in blue protests, one hand held gently against his chest to stop him from moving. “Not so fast. Not after what you’ve been through. Let me help you.”

He raises the bed-head a short distance, keeping an eye on the colour in the Time Lord’s face. The last thing he needs is to pass out as a result of rushing things.

“What happened?” asks the man in bed, his voice nothing more than a harsh whisper.

“What do you remember?” queries the other man, gently holding a cup of water to the other Doctor’s lips and helping him to sip the contents.

“If I remembered,” the Time Lord says rather sharply when he can speak again, his voice stronger, “I wouldn’t be asking, would I?”

“Fair enough.” He offers the cup to the other man and then sits on the edge of the bed. “You fell,” he begins. “We were leaving the restaurant, the four of us, and you must have slipped on the stairs. The balustrade broke and you hit the ground. Do you remember any of that?”

The man in bed frowns a little. “No,” he admits at last. “No, I’m afraid not.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” the other Doctor admits with a half-shrug. “Not sure you’d want to relive that moment too often. It’s going to be bad enough for the rest of us.”

“Us?”

“Mmm.” He nods, his eyes fixed on the machine showing the Time Lord’s heartbeat. Its pattern is reassuring familiar. “Me and Donna and Verity.”

“Oh.” There is dawning comprehension in the other man’s tones. “Of course. Yes. Sorry, don’t know why I didn’t realise before.”

“Well, you’ve gone through quite a bit,” admits the Doctor, crossing one blue-clad leg over the other and hugging his knees. “It’s not really surprising if you’re a bit out of it. Still, that should wear off soon en...”

The half-spoken word dies as he finally returns his gaze to the man beside him. The Time Lord is staring at his hands, which he has splayed out on his legs. He turns them over and over, staring intently, his body stiff with tension.

The Doctor waves a hand on the periphery of his vision, careful not to make a sound, a sudden fear flashing through him that the fall might have damaged the Time Lord’s vision. That concern abates when the man in bed reacts normally, lifting his eyes to those of the man next to him. However there is a lost, almost frightened look on those familiar features that shouldn’t be there if everything was normal.

And it’s at that moment the Doctor understands his mistake. This isn’t an after-effect of the healing coma. The Time Lord isn’t simply a bit dazed. It’s far more serious than that, a thing that makes him suddenly more grateful than he could ever have imagined that he didn’t bring Donna back to be here when her husband woke up. This is definitely not something she needs to witness.

The Doctor stands up and crosses the room to pull up a chair beside the bed. The man between the sheets turns to look at him, curiosity evident in his face as the fear fades a little. But there’s something missing from his eyes, and the Doctor can only wonder why he didn’t see it before.

Still he has to forgive himself because he can understand how he missed it. After all, the Time Lord is so used to finding himself in strange and unusual situations that his responses are almost habitual by this time. Ask questions. Get answers. Work out which ones are correct. Apply them to pre-existing knowledge, if any, and use that to determine where he is, what he’s doing and why he’s here.

Waking up in the state he is, he has fallen back, without knowing it, on those same practices, able to conceal his own emotions – the terror and uncertainty he must be feeling.

None of that, of course, makes this moment any less frustrating.

“Why didn’t you say something earlier?” he prompts.

The man in bed gives a faint frown, peering at the Doctor as if he’s never laid eyes on him before. Well, there’s clearly a good reason for that.

“You,” the Doctor says quietly, “have no idea who I am, do you?”

“I’m sorry.” The Time Lord speaks politely, giving a slight shake of his head, and then arches an eyebrow. “Should I know you?”

Next Part