The road less travelled...

Title: Finding A Way Home – Some Time Alone 2/4
Author: katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: It’s time for a visit to Chiswick! So – who’s coming…?
Characters: Both Doctors and Donna and a few other familiar faces

Part II

“So whose house is this?” the half-human Doctor asks his possible future incarnation as they enter a large living room that speaks of a wealthy occupant.

“The latest murder,” the other Doctor tells him. “The Reverend Aubrey Fairchild. Found with burns to his forehead. Like some advanced form of electrocution.”

This can’t come as a surprise to someone who’s faced the Cyberman as often as the Doctor has. “But who was he?” he prompts. “Was he important?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” the other man retorts, his suspicion obvious.

The half-Time Lord spreads his hands in a placating gesture. “I'm your companion!”

Clearly the later Doctor is persuaded. He gives a half-smile as he continues, “The Reverend was the pillar of the community. A member of many parish boards. Keen advocate of children's charities.”

This isn’t the first reference to children, and the Doctor can’t help noting it. He pushes for more information, both about Reverend Fairchild and Jackson Lake, the murder victim first mentioned by this Doctor. Eventually, though, his questions once more raise the suspicions of the other man.

“I seem to be telling you everything,” he says warily. “As though you engendered some sort of - trust.” His eyes track over the younger Doctor’s face. “You seem familiar, Mr. Smith. I know your face. But how?”

“I wonder,” he replies softly, his eyes tracking quickly over the attire worn by the other Doctor, finally lighting on the chain he had half-expected to see. “I can't help noticing you're wearing a fob watch,” he offers.

“Is that important?” comes the sharp reply.

“Legend has it,” he says, “that the memories of a Time Lord can be contained within a watch.” He extends a hand. “D'you mind?”

Without a word, the other man passes it over. He weights it in his hand for a moment, unable to remember those moments as John Smith, wondering what will confront him when he opens it.

“It's said that if it's opened...” His finger presses on the button – and then there’s a dull thud as the watch internals drop to the floor. “Ooh, maybe not,” he finishes, unable to help feeling embarrassed.

“It was more for decoration,” the other man tells him.

Annoyed, the man in blue hands it back, only now detecting the absence of the whispering voice that he had been able to hear even through the casing when he had last held a possessed watch. Frowning, he turns back to search for the metal object that the other Doctor has just described.

He can’t help wondering, as he searches, whether the Time Lord would have been fooled.

He can at least be pleased that it’s him and not the other Doctor who finds the infostamp.

“See, compressed information.” He peers at the images flashing up on the mirror from the infostamp he is pointing in that direction. “Tons of it.” Donning his glasses, he takes a closer look. “That is the history of London, 1066 to the present day. This is like a disc, cyber disc. But why would the Cybermen need something so simple? They've got to be wireless! Unless... they're in the wrong century!” He’s relieved to make the connection. “They haven't got much power. They've been playing the basic infostamps to update themselves.”

Movement out of the corner of his eye makes him realize that the other man is no longer beside him, but has dropped into a chair a short distance away and is in visible pain.

As he crosses the short distance, he doubts again whether this man is the Doctor that he genuinely claims to be. He knows that neither he nor the Time Lord would act like this.

“You all right?” he asks.

“Fine,” comes the reply from the man who is clearly anything but fine.

“No, what is it?” he prompts gently. “What's wrong?”

The other man’s fingers close over his and over the cold steel of the infostamp. “I've seen one of these before. I was holding... this device... the night I lost my mind. The night I regenerated.” Tears form in his eyes. “The Cybermen! They made me change. My mind, my face, my whole self.” And then his gaze suddenly fixes on the man who has moved to kneel in front of him. “And you were there! Who are you?”

“A friend,” he promises. “I swear.”

“Then I beg you, John, help me.”

“Ah.” He sighs, almost relieved to be asked for the same help as people always want from the Doctor. “Two words I never refuse. But,” he adds as a tiny noise comes from outside the room, “not a conversation for a dead man's house.”

He leaps to his feet and starts opening the many doors that lead out of the room. “It'll make more sense if we go back to the TARDIS.” He has to act quickly to cover his error, even if he’s not sure that the other man is capable of listening. “Your, ah, TARDIS. I just need to do a little final check. Won't take a tic. 'Cause there's one more thing I can't believe,” he goes on, talking as much to himself as the other man. “If this room's got infostamps, then maybe, just maybe, it's got something that needs infostamping.”

At that instant, he opens the final door, only slightly surprised to find the looming form of a Cyberman on the other side of it.

“Okay,” he says briskly, closing the door, as if that will help. “I think we should run.”

Even as the silver figure begins breaking down the door, he races back to the chair and hauls the supposed future Doctor bodily to his feet.

“Come on, Doctor!”

Shoving that man ahead of him out of the room, he sonics the door behind them in an attempt to buy them a few more seconds and turns towards the front of the house. Too late, as a Cyberman appears out of a nearby room.

“Stairs!” He drives towards them, wishing he was dealing with Daleks, preferably before they learned to hover. “Come on, we'll lead them outside!”

The other Doctor heads up the first few stairs, but the man in blue snatches at the handle protruding from a nearby hat-stand, hoping to find something they could use to barricade the stairs. The umbrella he pulls out is no use, and in the end, with the Cybermen closing fast, he pulls one of the swords off the wall where it’s hanging, yanks off the scabbard and turns to face the enemy.

“I'm a dab hand with a cutlass,” he warns. “You don't want to come near me when I've got one of these. This is your last warning,” he adds, not completely surprised by the back of reaction. “No? Okay, this is really your last warn - Okay,” he runs up the stairs, “I give up.”

At the first landing, with space to face them, he turns back. “Listen to me properly!” he pleads. “Whatever you're doing not going to make any difference.” He slashes at them with the cutlass. “I can help! I mean it! I'm the only one in the world who can help you! Listen to me!”

The Cybermen close again, their feet clanking on the stairs.

“I'm the Doctor!” he bursts out, momentarily forgetting the charade he’s been keeping up to avoid hurting the other man’s feelings, as well as his own uncertainty. “You need me,” he tells the Cybermen, who continue to advance. “Check your memory banks! My name's the Doctor! Leave this man alone!”

He can’t be surprised when there’s no reaction, but he has no time to think about this, as the first Cyberman leans over him. Placing his feet in their cream Converse on the broad, metal chest, he pushes with all his might, shoving the huge figure away enough for him to recover his feet.

“The Doctor is me!” he insists as they come at him again. “I'm the Doctor! You need me alive. You need the Doctor and that's me!”

Suddenly huge metal hands clutch the cutlass, forcing the blade back towards his chest. He struggles for several seconds before the Cyberman wrenches the cutlass out of his hand and throws it away.

At the instant that he’s left defenceless, the Doctor feels the fight drain out of him. He knows that the TARDIS will eventually make its way back to the Time Lord and Donna in Chiswick, but, as he averts his eyes and waits for the final, fatal strike, he has to wonder if or how they will learn of his fate.

A sudden bolt of blue-and-white light flashes appears in his peripheral vision and he looks up to see that it has enveloped the heads of the Cybermen, which are shaking violently. Relief floods through him and he scrambles to his feet, turning to find that the other man is holding out the infostamp like a gun, and that the power from that is aimed at the Cybermen.

Seconds later, the heads of the metal figures both explode, sending small pieces of shrapnel flying. He ducks them before turning to the man who has saved his life.

“Infostamp with a cyclo-stone core!” he says proudly, only now remembering who this man is claiming to be. “You ripped open the core and broke the safety! Zap! Oh, only the Doctor would think of that!”

“I did that last time,” comes the response in a shaky voice.

“You'll be okay,” he replies, fishing in his pocket with one hand as he places the other on the supposed Doctor’s shoulder. “Let me just check.”

Pulling out his stethoscope, he places the metal disc on the other man’s chest, eager to learn the truth.

At the same time, though, he can’t help wondering what he will hear. He had to admit that he misses the reassuring throb of the double heartbeat he’s had ever since his first regeneration. It’s a guarantee that, while he might change, he isn’t going to die, no matter what enemy he faces.

Not yet, anyway.

He can still remember the moment he realised what this body was missing, the instant that he discovered he only had one heart. It wasn’t the fact that it made him more human that he objected to. It was the feeling of mortality.

Dragging his attention back to the man in front of him, he listens for the throb of blood being pushed through the body.

“You told them you were the Doctor,” that man says, his voice reverberating through the stethoscope and into the Doctor’s ears. “Why did you do that?”

“Oh,” he hears the single pattern of beats, “just protecting you.”

“You tried to take away the only thing I've got,” the supposed Doctor protests weakly. “Like they did.”

The half-human Doctor listens for a moment longer to ensure that the beating of a single heart is coming from the stethoscope and not his own body.

“Something so precious,” the man in contemporary attire begins to weep, “but - I can't remember. What happened to me?” he pleads. “What did they do?”

“We'll find out,” the half-Time Lord promises, removing the stethoscope. “You and me. Together.”

There is little conversation as they head out of the Reverend Fairchild’s home and into the silent, darkening streets.

“People haven’t gone out much in the evening since the Cybermen,” the pretender explains. “The Cybermen are most active then.”

“Why’s that then?” he demands.

“No idea.” The man in the scarlet waistcoat shrugs, having recovered himself as they went along. “Doubtless they have some plan that I have yet to uncover.”

“Of course,” he murmurs softly.

Suddenly a figure detached itself from the shadows and flings itself at the man in the period clothing. “Doctor!” Rosita’s voice exclaims, and the half-human Doctor lets himself relax that it isn’t a threat. “I thought you were dead!” she goes on, a tone of panic in her voice.

“Oh, now then, Rosita, a little decorum,” the other man scolds lightly, although the Doctor notices that hugs her before letting go.

“But you've been gone for so long!” she protests, before suddenly turning to the man in blue. “He's always doing this! Leave me behind. Going frantic!”

“What about the TARDIS?” comes the next question, in a blatant attempt to change the subject.

“Oh, she's ready.” She offers her hand, which the other man takes. “Come on!”

It’s the first time that the half-Time Lord has had a chance to think about what the other man’s ‘TARDIS’ might actually be.

“I'm looking forward to this!” he murmurs, following them through the doorway. He finds himself, much to his surprise, inside a large stable.

It’s somewhat frustrating that they don’t immediately arrive at the other TARDIS. Still, he’s able to pick up a few more hints about this stranger, and although the name he has adopted is almost certainly false, he can’t help being impressed by the courage and determination he’s shown.

The real clue to the truth of it all, however, comes when he finds an infostamp in one of the cases that fill the room.

“Ooh, now, look,” he says eagerly, another piece of the puzzle falling into place. “Jackson Lake had an infostamp.”

“But how?” the other man demands, before asking, “Is that significant?”

The half-Time Lord raises his eyes to his host. “Doctor,” he says carefully, “the answer to all this is in your TARDIS. Can I see it?”

“Mr Smith,” the ‘Doctor’ smiles, “it would be my honour.”

He is impressed, but not surprised when the TARDIS turns out to be a massive blue hot-air balloon. The Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style only serves to confirm his ever-increasing suspicion, as does the money that the man hands over to the young lad from the gasworks.

It doesn’t take much persuasion for him to draw the other Doctor and Rosita back into the stable – merely the promise of an explanation. And as he explains about the war that tore Rose into the parallel universe, and the second battle that resulted in the meta-crisis and his own creation, he can’t help the way his mind races ahead, drawing parallels between the situations of the two men facing one another, one who has just discovered that he was not the Doctor he believed he was, and the other who has moments of wondering if he can properly lay claim to the title.

“It's everything you could want to know about the Doctor,” he say at last, nodding at the flickering images of the ten faces of the Time Lord, reflected on a nearby wall.”

“But that's you,” Jackson Lake declares as the Doctor’s current face appears.

“Time Lord, TARDIS, enemy of the Cybermen,” he says almost desperately, wishing he could believe it himself. “You see,” he goes on, “the infostamp must have backfired, streamed all that information about the Doctor right inside of your head.”

Jackson’s eyes fill with tears as painful memories clearly resurface. He presses his fingers to his mouth.

“I am nothing but a lie,” he chokes out.

“No, no, no, no, no,” the Doctor protests at once, unable to help wondering just who he’s reassuring. “Because ‘the Doctor’ is just a name, nothing more. All that bravery, saving Rosita, defending London Town, and the invention - building a TARDIS - that's all you.”

As he says the words, he can’t help remembering other words spoken to someone else who was described as a Time Lord – Jenny.

You're an echo, that's all. A Time Lord is so much more. A sum of knowledge. A code. A shared history. A shared suffering.

He has the knowledge. But he can’t be sure about the rest.

Next Part