or_timelords | This could prove to be interesting.

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This could prove to be interesting.

from

laser_not_sonic

If you woke up one morning and found me in your bed, what's the first thing you'd think or say?

Blimey. This is... different.

The Doctor did notice that the connection between this Doctor and his TARDIS is closer, different, but he didn't realize how different. His own TARDIS, she's always there in his mind, but she's her own consciousness. Their thoughts don't merge, their identities don't mingle. They're two separate individuals, existing alongside each other. The Doctor can't really imagine how it would be not to have this separation, to be the TARDIS instead of just being with her.

It's a scary thought. The TARDIS is so different, she's got time and space and eternity all wrapped up in herself, and only touching that can sometimes be too much. Having it, in your mind, in yourself - it would have to change you, mentally and physically.

The Doctor realizes that his other is basically a whole new form of existence, at least physically. Not Gallifreyan, not entirely, not anymore. The merge with his TARDIS has changed him, and they can't be sure of anything anymore. He knew that, basically, it just took him a while to realize the extent of it.

He nods at his other's explanation. "I can see what you mean now. You need a third reagent, almost like a catalyst, to channel the psychic energy into." That makes sense; if the division between his other and his TARDIS is an artificial one, the symbiosis would try and use any energy input to reach its natural state of unison.

That's just it, though. The symbiosis between a Time Lord and his TARDIS is in its natural state when they're just connected minds. The Doctor might be able to become one with his TARDIS, but it would not be easy, and the amount of psychic energy required would be enormous. And it would not be a stable condition. With his other, it's the opposite - his state of separation from his TARDIS is the unstable configuration, and a merge would be the logical reaction to energy input.

The Doctor wonders if this might have something to do with why his other hears the drums. He knows they started before the reconstruction, but this has got to be significant.

"Well, but considering all this, it would be even more reckless to go ahead with what you suggested. The reconstruction obviously changed you on all levels. If you attempted regeneration, who's to say that you would even be able to change your body? Maybe you can't." And that, right there, is somewhat of a scary thought, and if he's feeling that way, Rassilon knows what his other is thinking. The Doctor continues, softer now. "You can't play with something as risky as regenerative abilities if you can't be entirely sure whether you even still have them. And you don't have to, not for this experiment, anyway. You've got all these fancy instruments, they're scientific observer enough. I can be the catalyst; it didn't do me any harm last time."

The Doctor shifts on the surface of the table, turning to face his other more squarely, letting the leg he's not leaning on hang over the side.

"I've run extensive tests on general healing and disease and poison resistance. I'm fit. I couldn't test regenerative capacities, of course, without initiating a crisis, but...you're here now! I needed a second, there's no one I'd trust more than myself. We can kill two birds with one stone. Stun. Stun two birds."

"Come on, of course it's a risk. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, where no Time Lord's gone before, all that." Despite the offhandedness of his words, he watches his other with a tentative, tense seriousness—he wants to be enabled, he wants to go out on this limb, now that he's allowed himself to consider it, to recklessly confront these questions he's been unable to answer—or ignored—for far too long.

Hearing his other correct himself on this rather harmless proverb is both sweet and sort of sad. The Doctor takes off his glasses to be able to run a hand over his face.

"Risks are often necessary, I agree, but they have a time and a place. I'm sure you're fit and all in working order, but you don't know if your working order still includes regenerative abilities. We can test for that, we should test for that, and I've got some stuff back in my lab on the TARDIS that we can use on a tissue sample, so you won't have to initiate a crisis to find out. We don't have to take this particular risk for this experiment. There's no logical reason we should, your instruments are precise enough to record the data reliably. We can simply connect and do the same thing we did back in the wardrobe, and no-one will be in any danger of dying."

He recognizes his other's eagerness as something he's seen in himself and never wanted to acknowledge to be there. It's the urge to run away, to start something new and see if that will change everything, because that's what it means, the word new, doesn't it? Change. Except that it never works, at least not quite the way you had hoped it to. The Doctor's learned that much.

His other sees what the Doctor in black hides from himself—that this recklessness, the desire to initiate an experiment that could easily result in death or regeneration, comes from his wish to run. To run from himself into someone else, a new personality that might not have the drums or that might know how to make peace with them, a new personality that would be one more remove from his mistakes.

Like his other, he runs from himself without stopping to look at what he runs from, the inescapable hurts he never holds still long enough to think about, and so none of his running can ever help him. He doesn't look at the way, in his Tenth, he clings to the remnants of his Ninth, clothing and body language and the quick temper, the harshness that the drums approve of and that sits poorly with his current personality.

Regeneration has not helped and cannot help him, because the man inside the changed body has not changed.

The man inside refuses to change. He was broken and healed at wrong angles, and he must break again in order to heal properly.

He must face the pain of the rebreaking, at his own hands or the hands of another. A Doctor's hands.

But he doesn't think any of this, not consciously. He pulls the leg dangling over the edge of the table back up, rests his arms on his knees, and his chin on his arms, brows drawn down in frustration as he regards his other. He catches the expression and smooths it over, converting it into formal, flat neutrality, a mask for his disappointment and irritation. After all, what his other's saying does make sense.

"Fine. No, fine, you're right. I don't know what I was thinking." He twists back around and lies down on the table properly, stretching out his long legs and settling his head back into the tangle of sensors at the top of the table. They begin to attach themselves automatically, electrodes positioning themselves at his temples and along his hairline, sharp-ended bio-reads slithering down along the back of his neck, disappearing under his skin to lace themselves into his spinal column. He has other devices that can take similar readings less invasively, but the extra margin of accuracy these sensors allow outweighs the snags of pain.

"Preliminary readings coming through?" He could cue the machine to recite its findings to him, but with the other Doctor here, it's quicker if he just has him check the displays.

His other's expression is not a happy one, and the Doctor knows this feeling, too. They don't like to be told what to do, and they don't like to be told to stay when they want to leave. He rarely ever listens himself when someone tries to stop him from running, so when the Doctor in black swallows his frustration - it's a visible moment; his face changes from a deep frown to a neutral mask - the Doctor feels relief.

Maybe this Doctor really does want his help; maybe he wants it badly enough that he'll actually let him help. The Doctor can only hope this is true, because he does want to help his other. It's hard to see yourself so lost.

The electrodes slither into position, and the Doctor slips his glasses back on, squinting at the read-outs on the monitors. The readings that appear are within Gallifreyan parameters of normal, and this is strange, having the proof that his other is exactly like him right there in front of him.

Well, not exactly like him. The heart rate is normal, the pressure in his other's cardiovascular as well as his pulmonary system is within range, the blood gases read normal, and so does the impulse velocity in his other's nervous system.

The EEG is different, though. It's spitting out alpha and gamma waves at the moment, as expected, as well as some beta and even some delta waves in the temporal regions, which is also well within the norm. Just above the Bridge, though, the broad part of the Gallifreyan brain that connects both hemispheres and that holds, among many other things, the symbiotic nuclei and the telepathic and the time sense, the readings are more than puzzling. It almost seems like an overlay of two readouts, one Gallifreyan, and the other - different. These bands are nothing like anything one would ever see on a normal brain wave scan; they're new and different, a slow frequency with a big amplitude, but much more regular than delta or theta waves.

The Doctor is quite sure that this is an echo of his other's TARDIS, and it's fascinating. It takes some effort to tear his eyes away from watching that additional, strange rhythm; he'll have to study the recorded data very closely. EEG readings from a TARDIS might just be something no-one's ever been able to study; it's not as if a TARDIS has a brain, after all.

"Yes, yes, coming through. Everything seems within the norm." He checks the other monitors, making sure that all the readings he's getting are making sense, and then turns to look at his other, spreading his fingers in the traditional gesture that communicates a request to enter his other's mind. He lowers his own mental shielding, which he'd been unconsciously reinforcing to keep out most of the echo of the drums. They're gaining volume now, he can hear their constant beat, radiating out from his other in the old, well-known rhythm.

"Ready?"

The Doctor notes the moment his other shifts his gaze to the EEG, the sudden intent fascination of his gaze, the way he leans in closer and pushes his glasses further up his nose as though to bring the readings into clearer focus (though they both know the glasses don't do anything—funny, isn't it, he thinks, that they still wear them, even alone or around each other). He remembers the first time he read the presence of his TARDIS as part of him, knit into the signature of his mind—marveling and disturbed by how well she fit, as though his brain structure had been missing an element before, a gap that had now been filled.

He'll have to point out his genetics notes to his other, later. In any given strand of his DNA, a fraction of the gene sequences are undetectable using even the most advanced medical instruments—he had to develop analogous devices that could sense and render fourth-and-higher-dimensional structures according to first-to-third dimensional principles before he could map the "missing" genes. The sections aren't new—nothing's been added to his genetic structure—it's only that a fraction of it (and which fraction can change at any time) no longer exists in standard physical space.

He has yet to work through all of the implications of that, including the fact that his RNA polymerase can read and transcribe hypodimensionally-encoded data.

But explaining that to his other can come later. Right now, the other Doctor's offering the mental contact that can initiate this experiment—the Doctor in black can feel the undisturbed quiet of his mind, as he lets his shields down.

He puts his hands out as his other leans over him, reaching up to touch his other's temples as his other's hands position themselves over his.

Before he can catch himself, he licks out into his other's mind, a brief but intimate intrusion, like tongue in a casual greeting kiss, tasting his other's silence.

His other reaches out to touch the Doctor's temples, and the connection is established quickly, the process smoothed by the fact that they've shared so much of their mind already today. It's like being swept up into an embrace, and the quick taste his other catches of the Doctor's mind feels like a perfectly natural succession to their mental embrace - at least during the moment it happens.

When their minds pull back, sort themselves out as two consciousness sharing a common space, surprise catches up with the Doctor. This is a scientific experiment, it's how the Doctor perceived it in his mind up until now, and the meld they're about to do is completely scientific as well.

Except that the mental 'kiss' was kind of nice.

He pauses, opening himself up further. If his other decides that he just wants to get on with business, he can send the TARDIS. If he decides, however, that exploring the Doctor's mind - being in the Doctor's mind - is something he wants to do first, the Doctor won't object.

It's been too long since he was with a Time Lord. Fat too long indeed. Humans are brilliant little creatures, but they're hardly equal.

Unlike his other, the Doctor in black is mortified by his breach of etiquette. True, his other volunteered to establish contact again, and they've already shared much of their minds with each other, but that was with implicit permission. What he just did, that was...taking advantage, turning a handshake into a caress, using the contact to satisfy his own need and curiosity.

When his other opens his mind further in response, the Doctor wavers. He can feel the relative peace of his other's mind, in the lingering impression from his mental trespass and in the bleed from their contact. Reaching out into his other's mind would be like stepping from a bunker in a shelled battlefield onto a distant beach, the impacts of the shells reduced to the soft hiss of the waves.

He wants that. He wants to take that, and that's what stops him.

Before he can lose his resolve and act on his desire—on a selfish hunger, edged with envy—he sinks down into his own mind, calling his TARDIS, making his understanding of this experiment, of what he wants her to do, her understanding.

She doubts. The two Time Lords are playing with forces and energy beyond, perhaps, their ability to control. Out of simple curiosity, they would risk themselves—risk her, because if she loses her Doctor, she does not believe she would be capable of surviving alone anymore, one half of a whole.

But they believe it is important. S/he knows that, feels it in the part of her that is her Doctor. He is afraid. He wants and doesn't want to know what he is now. What they are.

Oh, Doctor. Her Doctor. Does it matter? He has always been hers and now he is her, and they are only one more expression of sentience, of energy and matter, taking its turn in the universe, living and burning in brilliance before entropy tears them apart and pulls them back out of time and space.

They are forever and not at all, two and the same, and she wishes this, like the drums, were not too large a truth for him to contain.

She goes where his want and fear lead her, out along the pathways of his mind, taking them as her own, out into the mind of the other Doctor. She brushes a greeting to her sister, at the back of the other's mind—hello and I'm sorry because she knows the other's mind isn't her place and Why do they hurt themselves like this? and, not intentionally, but because it's part of her, carried along with her, the snap of fingers broken and the edge of hunger for this Doctor's silence.

She washes through his mind and then recedes, though like a wave, she will both leave and take, because part of her is the Doctor and the two merges in one day have made this second merge stronger, more balanced, the Doctor-TARDIS.

She takes silence and she leaves the drums. With the model of silence from the other, she mimics it in her Doctor, in his/herself, stifling the rhythm for a time; with the model of the drums from his/herself, she finds the potential for them in the other and touches that potential into life. Not for long and not loud. But there.

S/he does not mean to. They only need, and this is part of the need.

S/he slides back into his/her own mind, carrying the panacea of silence into him/herself, and redividing into his/her component parts, until the Doctor is only himself again, as much as he can be, the not-artron glowing thick in the air around him and the stolen peace relaxing the tension he always holds, in his body and his mind.

When the Doctor opens his mind, he can feel his other's need, his other's want - and it's a little scary, so he's glad when his other decides to pull back instead of move forward.

What comes forward instead, though, is intimidating as well. He couldn't remember the other TARDIS being so threatening, so much like a forceful tidal wave last time, and in this last second, when it's already too late, he's beginning to doubt the wisdom of this plan. His own TARDIS is passive, she's not moving in to protect him - of course she isn't. He wanted this, suggested this himself, and she never stops him doing things she considers silly or stupid or dangerous. Right now, though, moments before the other TARDIS actually floods his mind, he wishes she would, he wishes she'd just close the barriers and keep this other presence out of him.

She doesn't, though, and so the other comes to him, fills every corner of his mind, seeps into every crack and crevasse. She upturns his thoughts, brings chaos and confusion, like a hurricane ripping through a previously undisturbed countryside. He's holding on, sure he can take it, he can sort himself out again, but then the Doctor-TARDIS tears open a part of his mind that he hadn't known was there, and now it's more than a hurricane, now it's a nuclear disaster, tearing a gap into the fabric of his mind and letting the darkness bleed through the cracks. The drums start up, their rhythm steady and hard and noisy and familiar, and he screams, filling his and the mind of the Doctor-TARDIS with panic. Because the stream of darkness flooding his mind brings pictures with it that he can't stand, he can't look at - months and months of staring into nothingness, of standing on top of a cliff and just not caring, because he can't care, he mustn't. And all the time there was the sound of drums, calling to him, calling him to war. And he'd been -

No. No more. Not this. The Doctor-TARDIS has almost left his mind again, and he snaps back, forcing her out of him and severing the connection completely. It hurts, physically, because he does it too fast, too brutal. He stumbles backwards until something solid against his lower back stops him. The room is spinning around him, and there's bile rising in his throat.

And there are the drums. Not an echo, not a telepathic feedback, but the drums, in his head, clear and unmistakable, and the Doctor clutches his fingers around the edge of the workbench he's stumbled against.

"No. No no no. They can't be here, they can't be me. Not again."

The TARDIS feels the pain of the sharp disconnect, as the other Doctor forces her out of his mind—and she's never been forced from a Doctor's mind before. The mental/physical shock of the disconnect and the emotional shock of the rejection disorient her, both sensations are new and painful, and she loses the divisions between herself and her Doctor, loses the trick of sorting his so-small self out from her greater being.

S/he panics, sitting up in his/her/the Doctor's body, still tied to the table by electrodes and bio-reads, non-artron energy sifting up in a dense aura around him/her. It. Them.

(His vocabulary is so limited, but it's all he can encompass, and it's all they can use, like this.)

They feel the Doctor near them, the familiar sound of the drums, but they're too strong. They've felt the Doctor like this, before, and they know how much it hurts, and that the Doctor needs their help, when the drums roar like that.

They hurt too. They are meant to go by two names but they cannot force themselves to name one part differently from the other.

Perhaps they hurt because the Doctor hurts. After all, they are linked.

They know this logic is wrong. Part of them knows that they are the Doctor and they are the TARDIS, but they feel that this is not true, not entirely.

They are frightened, but this is how they are meant to be.

This is how they are whole.

They rip themselves free from the hooks of the table, and stand, disconnecting electrodes from their chest and back, and the little pains as the bio-reads snag out of their skin are both new and familiar, a terrible violating foreign sensation and a meaningless little physical twinge, one of life's many small but necessary discomforts.

They say the Doctor's name, their words thick with the not-artron, in their throat, in their lungs. Not "the Doctor," his assumed title, but his name, his real name.

Because the TARDIS does not think of the Doctor even with a word, but only with the understood truth of him, and if they must use a word, they will use the one that has been him since he began, the one he keeps closest to him.

They say his name and move to touch him.

"It's alright. Hold still. Let me help." They talk like he talks, because they are using his mind and his body and anything else is too much, but they are frustrated by the smallness of the words. They are not enough.

The drums in his head drown out everything else. They're deafening, demanding, and they're taking over him. They always want the one thing, always the same single-minded demand: war, violence, destruction. He doesn't want to give it to them, it's not what he does, this is the one thing he never does, but they are strong, and he isn't, he's disoriented and dizzy and small and frightened.

And there is someone here to destroy, someone who he may have needed to destroy anyway (not destroy, heal, he was trying to heal him), and him is what the drums focus on. They want to hurt the other, to break him, want to make him a part of the universe again. They are entropy, and they want to reclaim him.

So the Doctor reaches out, pushing himself off the workbench and swaying, needing to reach, to touch and to kill. He almost does, the drums nearly win, they nearly manage to turn him into what they insist is his true self; a killer, a murderer, a man who doesn't care, a man who takes what's rightfully his, just because he can. But then the other speaks his name.

It burns through his mind, through the drums, to the very center of himself, where he is keeping it, always has kept it, safe from prying eyes and minds. The other speaks it, and the Doctor can now feel the other in his mind, and they are so much more, so much bigger. Against them, the drums are nothing, they're insignificant. He gives himself up to them almost without thinking - it's not up to the pebble if it gets claimed and formed and relocated by the tidal waves, it's just what happens. It's nature.

They touch him, and he grows completely still, his own mind passive, an indifferent observer to what the other plans to do with him. They are the sea, he's the pebble, and this is how it's supposed to be. The drums will have to accept that, too, they're nothing more than nature, either.

They sense his intention, when he reaches out towards them, the violence that his drums drive him to, and part of them twists with anger and shame and surprise, but it is a very small part and it does not understand that this is not the Doctor's fault, that he is the vessel for a force far beyond his ability to contain, that, like a deaf man, he cannot sense the fullness of the music but only the driving vibrations of its lowest notes, its simplest pattern. The Doctor can feel the tear of entropy but not the high, delicate, complexity of creation.

Just as the part of them that is the Doctor cannot, when they are divided.

They enter his mind, and the Doctor-part is astonished by how very limited it is, how bounded. They have always thought themselves clever, and they are, but "clever" itself, intelligence bound to physical matter, is, they can see now, such a frail, unpredictable thing. Even geniuses can see so little of the universe, and understand less yet. The Doctor-part laughs, because it means they will never, ever find the answer to the universe, it will always be a mystery, and that is the way they want it. The TARDIS-part sighs, because they enjoy being limited and she is not yet used to the insensitivity, the blunt imprecision, of the Doctor-part of her, of functioning within the bounds of the physical.

They try to be careful, not to disturb anything that does not need to be disturbed, but everything is disturbed, his thoughts torn from their places, memories tossed about by the drums. They feel so much death, a year of it, and they did not know that he had felt death they way they have, chosen to let the human race become collateral damage because something else mattered more.

They remember making that choice. They twist around his memories of standing witness, for a year, for long days one after the other, holding himself back from taking action, knowing that only his own survival mattered, and they share their own. Of looking down on a gray world and walking its surface after, finding nothing, nothing green, nothing flesh, nothing living. Of mourning in the dust and the ash.

They share sorrow, and astonishment that they could destroy so much and that entropy comes to their hands so easily, and the long moments of doubt about who they are, about what their making the choice to end life, even if for a greater cause, must mean.

They trace the memories back, because they know they will find the drums at their center. And they do. There is that sensitive part of the Doctor's mind, caught up in his time sense and his telepathic sense, the ability to feel the pulse of time and space and everything, though only to the muted extent a Gallifreyan body can manage.

Denying it for a year, because it hurts, because the time sense says that the universe demands what he is doing, demands the deaths, to stay whole, and the telepathic sense reports the deaths, each small, terrible shockwave as a mind dies, even though he cannot feel them all consciously, they are there, each of them, clutching at him as they fall and disappear.

Denying that most sensitive part of themselves until something in the mind twists and expands, not breaking, though both the Doctor and the Doctor-part think of it as breaking, but reaching out, extending, becoming something that the conscious mind can no longer control or deny.

Becoming not just time sense, not just telepathy, but a sense for reality itself.

Except that it is new and limited, as limited as are they, and it can only take in the drums.

They, the Doctor-TARDIS, lend him some control. They alter the synapses of his mind, using the non-artron (which, though they do not know this, will hurt him later, but that physical hurt will pass) to knit those sensory parts of his brain into something like their original configuration.

This will make the drums quieter, less acutely-felt, for a time. But it is only a temporary measure; they have hurt his brain, not healed it, and his Gallifreyan biology will cure the "damage" quickly enough, returning his senses to the full potential they developed under duress. The duress of a year that never happened, but which lives on in him, in its effects on him, regardless.

When the alterations are complete, they withdraw from his mind, back into themselves. And then they find that they remember the trick to redividing, because they have done all they need to do, for now, as a whole and can go back to being almost-separate.

So she recedes to the back of his mind, the greater part of her flowing back into herself, and he sleeps, because he cannot remember this, cannot hold all that has happened, without her to help him.

The Doctor in black loses consciousness, hands slipping down from his other's temples, slumping forward against him.

The room glitters with non-artron.

The Doctor-TARDIS walks in his mind, and they see everything. Earth, the Master, the Valiant, it's all there, exposed, for the first time since the Doctor buried it under layers and layers of forgetting and denial. It makes him want to run, makes him want to scream at them to leave this, don't disturb those memories, they're off limits. But the way they're taking them, accepting them without judgment, calms him somewhat. Maybe he can share, maybe he can make them help him make sense of this, because he can't make sense of it, doesn't know what it means, never did.

But if they have the answers, they don't let him in on them. They share their own sorrow instead, and their sorrow is so much harsher, so much bleaker. So much more death. But it's a sorrow he hasn't experienced, so he can keep his distance. His own sorrow is immediate, and painful, too painful to deal with, so he doesn't, pulling back and hiding while they examine the part of him that's best hidden of all.

He doesn't witness them finding the drums in him. He doesn't, because there are no drums in him. They are not his. They are someone else's. Always someone else's.

They find them, though, and then they take them away. They do - something, and it hurts, but it makes the drums stop. There is silence in him now, silence that's only interrupted by the overwhelming presence of the Doctor-TARDIS, and then they retreat as well, leaving behind a devastated wasteland of memories - and silence.

Suddenly, there's the sensation of fingers slipping off his temples, and it brings his perception back - sound, smell, vision, touch. His eyes are closed, everything around him is black, but before he can open them, a heavy weight falls against him, knocking him off his feet.

His back hits the wall and he slides down to the floor, the heavy weight still resting against him, and from what he can feel under his fingers, it's a body - it's his other. The Doctor's disoriented, though, because his eyes are still closed, everything around him is dark and he can't see anything. He reaches up to his eyes, wanting to pull them open by force - who knows, maybe he has a cramp in his eyelids or something - and jerks back as he accidentally brushes against his eyeball with his finger.

They are open. His eyes are open, and he still can't see.

Again, panic clenches his chest. It's much more mundane panic now, though; he can't see, what the hell happened? He reaches out and grabs a handful of leather of his other's jacket, shaking him.

"Hey," and his voice sounds hoarse, it hurts to speak and it makes him feel nauseous, "hey, say something, talk to me, say something, I can't see you!" No answer, and the Doctor ceases all movement, lying very still, his head spinning without any visual focal point. He licks his lips. "Can you hear me? I think I'm blind."

He doesn't move for quite a few moments, waiting for something to happen - for his other to wake up, for his vision to come back, or maybe even for the TARDIS to wake him up and tell him to stop having these hellishly bizarre dreams.

None of these things happen, though. The dizziness and nausea don't recede, but they don't change, either. His other doesn't move, although the Doctor can feel him breathing. And the darkness all around him prevails as well, and it's not getting any less unsettling.

"Doctor?" He's not sure what to do. He doesn't know this lab well enough to navigate it blindly, even if he weren't feeling like passing out any moment. It's one of the very few times in his life that he'd actually, physically need someone to help him out, but the only person who could help is lying half on top of him, unconscious.

The Doctor brushes two fingers over his other's temple to check whether he's really just unconscious, and yes. His mind is asleep, calm patters changing into one another, no rational thought on the surface.

The Doctor's not staying here, though. He doesn't know how he knows, but there's something in this room that is bad for him. He needs to get to his TARDIS, he needs his supplies, and he needs to get this vision thing sorted out. Slowly, very carefully, he extricates himself from under his other's body and uses the wall as a crutch to stand.

He manages to stay upright, even if he's swaying back and forth rather precariously. If he remembers correctly, the next narrow gap between two tables should be that way. He carefully feels around, knocking a few things over on the cluttered tables, and then finds the gap to squeeze though. One down, Rassilon knows how many to go. He's gonna do this step by step.

He doesn't come very far, though. With every step that he moves towards the lab door, his disorientation grows stronger. It doesn't take him long to get lost, and after that, it's only two more gaps between tables before he suddenly has to grab a table edge and concentrate just to stay on his feet.

"Doctor?" he calls again; maybe he's woken up by now. "Doctor, I could really need your help here."

There's no answer, and the Doctor decides that standing is indeed too much effort, and sinks to his knees. He drops his head, looking at his lap, and he decides that he will stay like this for as long as it takes for the dizziness to go away.

The Doctor comes to with the slow leisure of waking up after a long sleep—not something he does often, sleeping for any more than an hour or two at a time, but he has slept the equivalent of entire nights before, usually after regeneration or after pushing dangerously close to one.

It takes him the first few moments of proper consciousness to realize that he's lying on the floor—not a couch or a bed or slumped over a desk or table. Hm. The floor. He doesn't usually fall asleep on the floor. He's pulled an all-weeker now and again, woken up in the middle of glassware or books, but he distinctly remembers falling asleep in his bed...

And waking up with himself next to him.

"Doctor!" He pops up to a sitting position, propping himself up on his hands, and then instantly wishes he hadn't. An odd feeling, not nausea but more like disconnection, disembodiment, swims at the back of his mind. He's watched humans play video games—first-person shooters, he hates those—and it feels like that, like he's the little avatar on the screen and the player watching from behind and above, both at once. Except the view isn't from just behind and above, it's from all around and it's not really a view because it doesn't involve vision.

He pulls his legs into a crouch and then stands slowly, uncertain of his balance. It's fine, steady, but the feeling doesn't go away. He can "see," with that omniscient unvision, the entirety of the room, from all angles—even objects within other objects, sensitive tools tucked away in foam padding or surgical instruments cabineted in autoclaves. He shakes his head, and the sensation becomes less intrusive, but it doesn't fade away entirely.

Streamers of the energy with the second spin and the purple-shifted spectrum twist in the air—the entire room shimmers with it, an aurous haze. Well. It looks like the experiment was a success.

But why was he unconscious on the floor? And where's the other Doctor?

...That wasn't all a dream, was it? A hallucination, perhaps? Brought on by some silly error, a slip-up with chemicals or telepathic stimulation, here in the lab?

No. Something happened. He knows something happened, and it was real, and because of it, the drums in his mind purr quietly now, as quiet as they've ever been since they established themselves, and because of whatever happened, his other self is hurt, and he needs to find him and help him. It's what he does. He helps the Doctor.

The Doctor frowns. No. What? He just helps. Anyone who needs it. Why did he think "the Doctor?"

"Doctor!" Where is he? The Doctor in black pushes off from the counter he's leaning against, to start searching through the room for his other. He's here, he can feel him, now that he thinks to pay attention, but...

There. The omniscient space-sense shows him where his other is. In a corner made by the join of a counter and a rickety old metal desk, close to the door. That's where he is, slumped down. Unconscious? Why?

He vaults over the tables in the way, swings around the bulk of a synesthesian sense converter, and finds his other exactly where his new sense indicated he should be.

The other Doctor looks terrible, pale and drawn and shaking, sweat slicking his skin, staring unblinking at his hands resting in his lap.

"Doctor, what happened?" He kneels down in front of his other, and as he does so, he feels the space-sense slip away, and he can only see with his eyes again. That's wrong/right, good/bad, and he has to take a moment to sort his reactions out, put them away to examine later, because they make very little sense. "Doctor. Doctor, can you hear me?" He puts a hand on his other's shoulder, and feels the shuddering running through his other's body.

He's not unconscious, not really. Or maybe he is; he's not entirely sure. He can feel his environment, hear the small noises of the lab and the humming of the TARDIS, but it's all far away, removed from where he is, and at times, he thinks it may be breaking off entirely, his perception jumping, leaving gaps.

After a while, just after one of those gaps, he can hear his name being called. Doctor, the other voice calls, and it's his own voice, which is right, because he met himself. He remembers that. His lips move, but he can't quite manage to make a sound. I'm here, he thinks, tries to say but can't. He needs to rest for a moment, maybe he'll be able to talk if he rests for a moment.

When he comes around again, it's to someone squeezing his shoulder, long fingers pressing into the skin, each of them sending out a rather exquisite sensation - not quite pain, but not quite comfortable touch, either. The Doctor raises a hand and reaches out in the direction he believes his other to be in. "Doctor," he says, or maybe he thinks it, or mouths it. He's not sure. "Doctor, you're here, I can't see -"

Suddenly, it feels as if a big strong hand were clutching his throat, choking him. He starts coughing, dry, harsh coughs that accomplish nothing and quickly turn into something that's more dry retching than anything else. He reaches out to hold on to the man before him that he thinks is his other, but he misses him, his hand closing around thin air. His other hand is on the floor, fingers splayed, or he would have lost his balance.

The coughing fit won't stop; it's as if his insides have decided to crawl up his throat and relocate outside of his body. His throat constricts, and his stomach convulses, and he's gasping for air. When it finally does stop, he's breathing hard, and when he runs his tongue over his lips, he can taste blood. It's everywhere in his mouth, he realizes; lips, gums, teeth, the back of his throat. He's not sure where it came from.

"I can't see you," he says finally, his tone thin and out of breath. "I can't see anything. It's - it's rather - did we manage to conjure up more energy?"

Because that's what they were doing. He just remembered that. It seems important, but he can't think of a reason as to why it would right now.

"Oh, yes. Yes, we did." The Doctor's voice is quiet, low. What happened? His other had been fine, when they'd started the experiment. And now...

The other Doctor stares at him, with sightless eyes—those dark eyes they share, wide, pupils static, unresponsive to the light. His hands reach out into thin air, unsteady; and the Doctor in black wants to answer the touch, to take his hand and give him that comfort and is at the same time repelled. He's been sick before, injured, hovered on the edge of death and even tipped over it, into regeneration, but he's never had to see himself like that.

Worst are the racking coughs. The Doctor in black has heard coughing like that before, found survivors in the shattered hallways of a military complex by the sounds of spasms like those. People covered in gray dust, unable to walk for the choking, for their bodies trying to reject the poisons crawling through every cell of them. The blood on their teeth, their lips, painting their mouths, red against the gray.

Radiation poisoning.

The Doctor stares at his other, the blood, the spatters of it on the floor of the Zero Room, on his other's hands, coughed in flecks onto his clothing.

This room is safe. No radiation can penetrate here.

So it must be...

The energy. The fading tatters of it spinning through the room, whatever it is that he generated, during the experiment. It's poisonous, dangerous, radioactive. Not artron.

"Listen to me. I'm going to get you out of here, I need you to help me. Can you stand?" The room will keep energy in as well as it keeps it out. Exposure shouldn't be a danger once they're out and the door's sealed, although what the lasting effects of exposure might be...

He puts an arm around his other's shoulders, a hand under his arm, ready to help him get to his feet.

Out of here. That's a good idea, he needs to get out, there's something in this room that's bad, and he needs to leave. He reaches for his other, holding onto him as best as he can as he tries to get his feet under him.

It's not as easy as it should be. His legs are stiff, he must have been sitting here for a while, and the rest of his body isn't really listening to him either. He's noticing that he's trembling, violent shivers running through him and making coordination even harder than it already is. He reaches out with his right hand, blindly seeking for something to hold on to, and finds the edge of a table.

Using the table as well as his other for support, he eventually manages to get to his feet. The movement makes his head spin, and without a visual focal point, it feels as if the floor were moving beneath him. He squeezes his eyes shut - not that it makes any difference, it's just a reflex - and holds on to his other, tightly, relying on this one fixed point in these unreliable, unstable surroundings.

His lips move, he's trying to say something, but he's out of breath, and he's not sure what he was going to say, anyway. Probably something along the lines of 'don't worry' or 'I can manage' or maybe 'I'm sorry'. As it is, he produces no sound, only sets off another couple of coughs that make his insides contact painfully.

If his other starts walking towards the door, the Doctor will follow, but it will be a slow progression. Without vision, his coordination and orientation are shot, and he'll really be more stumbling along while holding on to his other than walking on his own.

The Doctor does start to the door, holding his other up as he stumbles blindly along. It's not a great distance to the door, but it will be something of a hike through the hallways of his TARDIS to the console room and then back through the hallways of his other's TARDIS to her sick bay—the only fully-operating, non-contaminated medical facility in either of their TARDIS.

Once they're through, out into the hallway, and the door's safely sealed behind them, the Doctor drapes one of his other's arms over his shoulder and hefts, so that's he's supporting as much of his other's weight as he can.

"I'm going to get you to your TARDIS and your sick bay. I could go find a stretcher, I'm sure I've got something like that somewhere, but that'll take time, and we need to stabilize you as quickly as we can. So we're going to walk. I'll help as much as I can, it won't take long. You'll be fine. I promise."

"Don't talk."

And if the other Doctor can manage it, the Doctor will do exactly as he says, helping him through the TARDIS (both of them) to his other's sick bay.

He's got no intention of saying anything. Breathing, keeping his knees from giving way and then getting his legs to actually take steps to bring him forward is taking up all his concentration at the moment. He nods, though; he'll be fine walking, he can do this, he just needs to concentrate. And he needs to get rid of the disgusting taste in his mouth, a metallic tang that's creeping up from the back of his throat and filling his mouth, making him nauseous. He raises his free hand, pressing his sleeve against his mouth, coughing. It helps a little; it gives him a chance to get rid of the liquid in his mouth - it's blood, it's got to be blood, nothing else tastes like that, but if it is blood, there's a whole lot of it, and he still doesn't know where it's coming from - and he takes a couple of deep breaths.

The walking is exhausting, mostly because he can't see where he's going. With his other to lean on, staying upright is actually manageable, and when they're walking in a straight line, he can develop a rhythm that will carry him most of the way. But every time the corridor turns, he's thrown off balance, and it takes effort to find it again, more and more every time it happens.

Still, they make it most of the way to the console room. But as they turn another corner, this time the Doctor doesn't manage to regain his balance. His knees buckle, and he would have fallen if it hadn't been for his other to catch him. The Doctor reaches out, trying to find something to hold on to, when his fingers brush over a mental connection point and he catches a glimpse of his other's mind.

That's it. If he can tap into his other's visual sense, he'll be able to see where they're going. His fingers stretch out again, trying to find that connection, brushing over his other's chin and cheek towards his temple. He would usually ask for permission first, but he's barely able to stand, and the thought of minding social etiquettes doesn't even occur to him.

Blood. His other coughs, jarred into it as he breathes, and each spasm brings up more blood, bright flyspecks of blood, getting on his other's Proper Doctor clothing, on the suit and blood on the sleeves of the coat, from when he tries to stifle the coughing.

He rarely bleeds; the danger he gets himself into involves energy devices and clean injuries, all-or-nothing scenarios.

He bled in the War. Not all of the opposing forces were Daleks; plenty of other species took their chance to feed on the chaos, the rippling of time, and some of them enjoyed blood.

His other tries to anticipate their direction, and it's like running a three-legged race (his Fourth did that once, won track-and-field subbing for an Atlackian athlete who'd sprained his seventh-through-twelfth toes)—he has to keep correcting and not allow his other to pull him off balance. Irritation flickers through him, as his other trips him up again and again. Is it really that hard to tell where they're going? This isn't the blind leading the blind, after all.

They're almost there—almost to the console room, and the sick bay's right down the hall once they get into his other's TARDIS—when his other missteps again and falls against the Doctor, hands groping for support.

"Watch out, we're almost there—"and then his other's hand over his face, like a man more accustomed to blindness feeling the shape of a new acquaintance, fingers coming to rest on the Doctor's temple. "No, listen, what are you doing, I don't want you hurt any—"but his other's already testing at the edges of his mind, and he can feel what he wants. Eyesight. He wants the Doctor to share, quite literally, his vision.

"Right. Rightright, here, we're at the console room. Mine. See?" And this isn't something he's tried before, but he links up a connection with his other's mind, as light as he can possibly make it, relaying, he hopes, only visual images. (Though it's impossible to filter out the rest of his mind entirely, particularly the drums.)

Don't go too deep, be careful, I don't want to hurt you. What happened?

He claws his way into his other's mind; it's not as easy as it should be, to come up with the level of concentration mental contact usually requires. But then his other helps, he opens up and suddenly, there are pictures in the Doctor's mind.

They're wrong, though, they're not his. They wouldn't be, of course, they're his other's, he's seeing what the other Doctor is seeing, but the other Doctor is looking at him, and that's different. Because the Doctor can also feel his other's worry, and his confusion, and there's also something like repulsion and anger, and the Doctor can understand all of these notions because when he sees himself in his mind, pale, wide eyes staring vacantly at nothing at all, blood smeared all over his face and his clothes, it's repulsive, and worrying. And confusing, because he doesn't know what happened, either.

You took them away, and he doesn't know what that means, either, he just knows that his other changed, grew bigger, and then he took something away, and it hurt, it hurt so much but it was right, it was good, it was necessary -

The not-memories are too strong, though, they barge in and sweep everything away, disintegrating as well in the process. He tries to control them, tries to hold on, but conscious thought is falling apart. The images in his mind, of himself and of his other's console room, melt; they start flickering in and out as darkness eats away at their edges. He's desperate to hold on; they've not made it yet, he still has to get to his own TARDIS before he can rest, but it's a losing battle. His fingers slip off his other's temple, and his knees finally do give way. The Doctor pitches forward against his other, unconscious.

And his irritation and concern both peak as his other loses consciousness, slipping out of his mind and falling against him. He's already supporting most of his other's weight, so he manages to keep his balance, holding his other up with an arm under each of his. The other Doctor's head lolls against his chest, smearing blood over his jacket and his jumper. This is why black is practical.

The Doctor sighs, and the barest haze of golden energy gusts out of him with his breath. He has to get his other to the sick bay soon, get away from him himself; he might still be a danger. Radioactive? Mm. That ought to work wonders for their relationship; it's been going so well so far.

You took them away. Took what away? What did his other mean? Something about the TARDIS, the merge had gone wrong, gone too far, and that fits with his own sense of a terrible open place in his mind, like a cavern too deep to look into without vertigo, a sky too broad, like looking up into the stars at night and feeling he might spin off into the sky. That must be her. His TARDIS. Them. Memories that don't fit in him, anymore.

His chest constricts, a feeling like fear. What had they done? The drums had been there, of course they had been, they had to have, and now his other was blind and bleeding and he had to hurt him...to do what?

And dark memories that weren't his, helplessness and infection and changing and than being expected not to show the change. He can't remember them, except in snatches of emotion. Familiar emotions, expressed and dealt with differently.

No use thinking about it all now.

He hefts his other up over his shoulder, in an awkward fireman's carry, this man who weighs precisely the same as he does, and hauls him through the doors of his TARDIS, down the hallways, to his sickbay.

It's a long walk, and the smell of blood and the shaking of his other's damaged body against his back and shoulder don't make it any easier or more pleasant, but he manages it. As soon as he's in the door, he gets his other into the Cell Regeneration Vault, a casket-like device specifically designed to sap radiation from the body, and sets the Advanced Diagnostic Terminal running. Let's see what the problem is.

She witnessed it all, vicariously, through the connection to her sister and her Time Lord. Silly Time Lord, he should know better than to play with these forces, he especially should, but of course he doesn't. He forgot. And she helped him forget, because there's no point in remembering, not for him, because he's unable to understand, and it would only hurt him.

But of course, he had to go ahead and provoke the memories, had to hurt himself anyway. Because he always needs to know, always needs to figure it all out. Silly, silly Time Lord.

She can feel that he's hurt, sees what her sister did to keep his mind from breaking apart under the strain of the drums. She knows it was necessary, and it will pass. And when it passes, the drums will return, and he will remember. And it will be up to him, and to her, to make sure his fragile corporeal existence won't be damaged beyond repair.

Oh, Doctor. Is knowledge really worth all this?

The other Doctor is bringing her Time Lord home, and the TARDIS clears the way for him, opening the doors and making sure they reach the infirmary safely. The experiment itself has hurt her Time Lord as well, coming into contact with her sister's essence is tearing him up from the inside. The other Doctor is different, he's carrying some of his TARDIS in himself, and it's protecting him. Protecting him, and hurting her Time Lord. But she can't send him away, her Doctor needs someone to take care of him. Silly Time Lords, they should know better than to take risks like that.

The other Doctor hands her Time Lord over to her, and she takes care of him. The damage is extensive, not lethal, but it's worse than he's been in a while. She uses the machines to let the other Doctor know what he needs, and after that, she will make her Time Lord sleep. Sleep will cure him, it always does. And when he's cured, she will have to be there to keep the memories away. To keep the drums from seeping back into his mind, although she's not sure if that's even possible still. They've been laid bare, and this time, they're not part of a paradox that needs reversing. This time, they might be there to stay.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This could prove to be interesting.

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