The road less travelled...

Title: Finding A Way Home – Living Memory Part 2/4
Author: katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: Back on Earth, the Doctors have some business to take care of.
A/N: Written for the 33rd Travellers’ Tales with the prompt ‘alcove’.

Part II

“I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” she tells him.

This person who looks as if she belongs decades ago, and yet doesn’t feel out of time.

“What – how did you know it was me?” he demands at last.

The woman pulls out a book, a well-worn leather-bound volume, the sight of which makes the Doctor draw in his breath. She turns to a certain page towards the back of the book, turning it around to show him the figure he had once drawn of himself as he appeared in John Smith’s dreams. Although it’s done in black ink, the stance, the coat and the hair are instantly recognisable, inarguably him.

“So what sort of a Lord are you?” she asks, a teasing smile on her face.

“A Time Lord,” he replies almost automatically. Then, “Who are you?”

She returns the journal to her pocket. “My name’s Verity,” she tells him. “Joan Redfern was my great-grandmother.”

“Ah.” The Doctor pulls away from the alcove, in which he’s been pressed almost since the eclipse began, and takes his first proper look at this woman who has appeared so unexpectedly beside him.

Dressed in a light purple shirt, grey trousers and a grey vest, and with her hair hanging loose around her face, a greater contrast to Joan, with her hair pulled up atop her hair and her stiff, early twentieth century clothing, would be difficult to find. Still, it goes a long way towards easing his fears about whether this woman is telling the truth.

“How did you find me?” he asks at last.

She smiles again. “Well, when all of the store window dummies started moving this morning, I was pretty sure you’d be around.”

“You’ve been looking for me?” he pursues in confusion. “Why? How?”

“It was something she wrote.” Verity pats her pocket. “That, to find you, it seemed as if looking for trouble was a good start. And if walking store dummies aren’t trouble,” she gestures at the street beyond, “then I don’t know what is.”

He chuckles faintly. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“As for why,” she shrugs, “I suppose, if I’m being honest – envy.”

“Envy?!” Shocked, he moves to stand in front of her. “She almost died!”

“No,” she rebukes him gently. “You almost died. John Smith did die, at least in one sense. But Great-Grannie always believed that nothing would happen to her. That you wouldn’t let it. That’s what she wrote in the journal anyway.”

For the first time, as he hears the way she is talking about him, he realises that he hasn’t corrected her about her assumption that he is the Doctor, that he was the person her great-grandmother fell in love with. And with the two of them here like this, and the memories of Joan so strong, he can almost believe that it was him after all.

“I’d rather like to see what else she wrote, what it is that intrigued you,” he suggests, holding out a hand for the book. “May I?”

She looks at him rather uncertainly, taking the book from her pocket and gazing from him to it for a moment before wrapping her arms around it and pressing it against her chest. “On one condition,” she offers, a teasing expression on her face, which rather intrigues him.

“Oh, yes?” He rocks back on his heels, arching an eyebrow. “What’s that then?”

“Coffee?”

It’s a question, and he can see the uncertainty in her eyes. After all, he can almost hear her questioning herself, wondering what on Earth she’s doing, how she got up the nerve to say something like this to the man who played such a pivotal figure in her great-grandmother’s life.

And it’s that very uncertainty that suddenly makes him like her very much indeed.

He smiles and watches as she relaxes, realising he's not angry. “All right,” he agrees, adding cheekily, “But I’m buying.”

She laughs and, as he waves for her to do so, leads the way out of the alley into the street, which is still littered with unmoving Autons.

“What did you do to them?” she asks, gesturing at the motionless figures.

“Oh, just made use of the eclipse to interrupt the flow from its controlling force,” he says rather airily, unable to help showing off a little. “Once the reflecting wavelengths were returned to the Nestene Consciousness, it was destroyed and so they all stopped moving. They’re just plastic again now,” he adds, giving one a surreptitious nudge with his foot as he passes it to make sure.

“Do you do that sort of thing a lot?” is her next question, but he is relieved that her tones carry only curiosity and not fear.

“Sometimes,” honesty forces him to admit. “But it's not all bad,” he hastens to add.

She smiles. “No, I'm sure it's not.”

Holding open the door, he follows her into the cafe, orders and pays for both drinks, and then comes across to where Verity is sitting. She has chosen a table next to the window, and is sitting in the chair that means she has her back to him as he crosses the room to her. It also means that he only sees the journal, lying in the middle of the table, when he is standing next to her.

“How much of it,” she asks as he sits down and draws the leather-bound book closer, “was real?”

He sighs a little. “The only thing that wasn’t real,” he admits, “was John Smith’s belief that he was human. There’s a device on the TARDIS – the blue police box,” he adds, seeing the frown on Verity’s face at the unfamiliar word, “that made him believe that.”

“So all of the things you felt for Great-grannie,” she offers almost reluctantly, “were they real?”

“Oh, yes,” is all he gets out before the waitress brings their drinks. When he has sweetened his tea to his personal taste, though, he continues the subject. “The thing is,” he tells her, “my life is many things, but one thing it isn’t is simple.”

“Actually,” she retorts, her grey-green eyes dancing, “I had sort of realised that.”

He acknowledges that with a grin. “No, but really,” he goes on, “I mean really, totally, utterly complicated, and ridiculous and non-sensical.”

“Doctor,” she reaches across and places her hand on top of his, the one still resting on the journal, “please just tell me.”

For a moment he can’t quite bring himself to answer because he is suddenly aware of the sensation of her skin against his. There were moments with Joan, of course, but nothing as relaxed and comfortable and casual as this. And then the use of that name. Still not his real name, of course, but at least said without the bitterness that he had heard in 1913.

Then he realises she is waiting for him to respond and snaps to attentiveness.

“There’s two of us,” he says at last. “Two Doctors.”

Before Verity can do more than look slightly puzzled, the bell to signal the opening of the door rings with such energy that the half-human Doctor can be in no doubt about the identity of the person who has just entered the cafe. He also has an instant, even as he raises his eyes to meet those of the brown-suited man in the doorway, to be very thankful for the words that have just come out of his mouth.

“Ah, there you are!” the Time Lord exclaims, crossing the room in a few strides. “What are you doing here? It’s over.”

“I know,” the half-human Doctor replies, trying to put as much meaning into his voice as he can. “And I would like to introduce you,” he adds, gesturing to the woman opposite him, “to Verity.”

The other man starts visibly as he gets his first proper look at her. His eyes dart back to the man in blue, who gives a faint nod, understanding the plethora of questions that the Time Lord has.

“Oh,” he gets out at last, offering his hand for her to shake. “I’m the Doctor.”

Verity rises to the occasion with a calmness delightful to behold – or is the half-human Doctor just pleased, for once, to have caused his progenitor to be so rattled? He doesn’t bother trying to work it out.

“Yes,” she agrees as she shakes his hand, “I know.”

“Well, yes,” the man in brown agrees rather bemusedly, glancing at his doppelganger, “I suppose you would do.”

And suddenly the other man can keep quiet no longer.

“Look,” he interrupts, “why don’t you take off and count the rings of Saturn or something? Find a way to keep yourselves occupied.”

A bewildering array of questions and thoughts and accusations from the other Doctor’s mind floods his thoughts, but the one that comes through most strongly is, ‘Really?!’

“I’m busy,” he snaps.

A light of laughter and understanding twinkles in the other Doctor’s eyes. “Right then,” he says briskly. “We’ll see you when we see you, I suppose.”

His coat billows behind him as he leaves the cafe, but the half-human Doctor doesn’t bother to watch him head down the street. He prefers to keep his attention fixed on Verity, who is now looking utterly bewildered.

“There really are two of you?” she demands. “How are there two of you, and,” she hurries on before he can come up with an answer, “if there was another Doctor, why did John Smith have to change back from being human? Couldn’t you have stayed with Great-Grannie while he fought all your battles?”

Numerous possible explanations fly through the head of the man opposite her, but he feels instinctively that this isn’t the time for any of them.

“If things hadn’t happened the way they did,” he offers quietly, “you wouldn’t exist, and we wouldn’t be sitting here like this.”

“Oh.” Verity’s eyebrows dart upwards, but she considers his words and apparently decides to agree with them, giving a small nod. “I suppose so,” she adds.

“One of the problems with time travel,” he confides, “is the massive question of ‘what if?’ And although it sounds cold and rather cruel, you simply can’t think about it too often or it begins to get to you.”

Verity gazes at him thoughtfully. “You sound like you’ve been doing this for a long time.”

He nods. “More than nine hundred years.”

Her eyes widen momentarily, but then she gazes at the diary beneath his hand again. “I sort of got that feeling from reading it,” she agrees, “that everything John Smith dreamed about hadn’t all been crammed into a short period of time.”

“Where did you find it?” he asks curiously, tapping the journal.

“Actually, she gave it to me,” Verity tells him, her hand once more coming to rest on the book, this time so that her fingers brush his. “One day, she found me reading it, and when she realised that I really wanted to know about what happened, she used to tell me stories of the time you spent together. Here.” She slides the book free, turns it around, and flips through the pages before pushing it back towards him. “She wrote about it, the last entry before she gave it to me.”

To be honest, he doesn’t want to read it here in front of her; doesn’t want to waste the chance to talk to her. Still, he can’t bring himself to refuse, so he lets his gaze dance quickly over the page. Joan, he’s surprised to find, is pleased rather than upset to have a reason to recall her memories of John Smith. She even had moments of regret that she turned the Doctor down. The final sentence tugs at something in his hearts.

Perhaps, one day, Verity will have the chance I never did.

“I think,” he tells her softly, “that your great-grandmother was envious of you, too.”

Verity nods. “She never comes out and says it directly, but I’m sure there were times when she regretted asking you to leave.”

“Actually,” he admits it at last, “it wasn’t me, back then. It was the other Doctor.”

He expects her to respond, but she doesn’t. For a moment she studies his features, her eyes passing over his over his face and then wandering down towards his blue suit.

“D’you know,” she says suddenly, “Great-grannie never actually told me what colour your clothes were – as the Doctor, I mean.”

“She was hurt,” he replies, placing his hand on Verity’s. “And I don’t blame her for that. She was lost and hurt and alone. She lost John Smith almost as completely as she had lost her first husband. I can understand why she never wanted to think about the Doctor, or to tell you what he looked like or what he wore. She preferred to remember the human version, the one who loved her, and she was in love with.”

Verity nods a little, lifting her eyes to study his features once more. “I’m almost glad it wasn’t you,” she says at last.

He arches an eyebrow. “Why?”

“It’s just – ” she pauses for a moment before continuing, “it would be more difficult to talk about it with the person who went through it. At least, I think it would.”

“The problem with that theory,” he corrects her gently, “is that, although I wasn’t the one who went through it all, I have all of the memories and emotions that accompany it. So it’s almost as if I did.”

She frowns, clearly not understanding, and honestly he wouldn’t expect her to. “I know I’ve asked this before, but how exactly are there two of you?”

“2009,” he asks in return, “what were you doing?”

“I suppose you mean apart from hiding from the Daleks?” she queries after a moment of thought, and he nods.

“Exactly. The Doctor was part of that. And I came into existence during that time. We, along with a group of other incredible people, helped bring the Earth back where it belongs.”

She blanches. “Excuse me? Sorry, did I hear you say you came into existence six years ago?”

“Yes,” he smiles at little at her sharp tone, “really. I was formed in a process called a meta-crisis. The other Doctor’s hand and a complicated series of events. I’ll explain it in detail some other time. The end result,” he gestures up and down his body, “this.”

“But with all of his memories and emotions and everything?”

“In the most basic sense of things, yes,” he agrees. “There are a few other elements of play, though, because there was a second force involved in my being – a woman called Donna. Donna Noble. She’s married to the other Doctor.”

“I’d like to meet her.” Verity has clearly relaxed a little from the shock she received, learning about this Doctor’s origins, and manages a smile, albeit a rather weak one. “Maybe she can tell me all the things I’m suddenly worried about asking you.”

Next Part