Chapter Text
1.
By the time the Doctor arrives, Peggy has stopped screaming. It’s not a relief. It’s not a sign that he’s too late, either.
The Doctor knows the nature of silences, just as he can identify the nature of any scream without even having to think. He knows that Peggy had been screaming in the shape of its absence. This is the silence of people who think there’s no hope left. They’re too exhausted to make a sound, as if the pain that had taken Peggy’s voice has stolen theirs, too.
Peggy’s father is crying silently. From the stillness of his face, he might be unconscious of his tears. Her mother’s hands are white where she’s wringing the wet cloth out with the focused determination of someone who knows that when they wind down there’ll be nothing left to make her start again. Their eyes are empty when they gaze past the Doctor. He’s allowed into their house, but they don’t believe that there’s anything he can do. Luckily, opening the door is enough.
There was a time when this was the sort of moment when the Doctor felt most alive. He could walk into silence where hope was no longer even an ember and coax it into a bright flame. Fixing things that people thought were beyond broken and changing people’s perceptions of what it means to ask ‘is that possible’ in this vast and beautiful universe. Making things better. These days, he’s little more than a ghost, repeating the same moves over and over because there’s no changing the routine of the dead, instead of a weight that could shift the wrap and weft of the universe.
Still, he plays his part. He runs through his role. Even ghosts have their pride.
The Doctor smiles at Peggy as he enters her room. It’s an automatic gesture, though one she likely wouldn’t be able to register if rote. If she’s somehow conscious enough of her surroundings to notice his presence. He hopes she’s not. He kneels down next to her bed, glancing up at the picture hanging on the wall above her bed. It’s a look just as rote as his smile. He’d seen all he’d needed the first time he’d entered the room.
The girl’s skin is cracked. It looks like what you might get from a clay jar dropped on a hard surface, not a corpse shriveled and desiccated under the desert sun. But there would be little chance for her to learn what the sun can do to the living, let alone the dead. Not in the grey, endlessly foggy city. What could she be expected to know what ‘sunbaked’ might mean, beyond what she knows of baking?
The cracks are red with unshed blood, the only color to stand out against the grey of her skin. They look like open wounds, but not open enough for the blood to start spilling out. Perhaps she was lucky, she didn’t see a clay jar crack and spill water across the floor. He thinks of kintsugi, a tea bowl sitting on a shelf that doesn’t exist.
In another world, in another time, he might have told the parents that the blood was a good sign. An unthinking comment, followed by his surprise when he saw that his words had failed to offer any comfort. Maybe a companion would be there, to do their best to soothe the parents as he continued his work. In that other world, he wouldn’t be here at all.
He opens the doctor’s bag he keeps with him whenever he goes out, especially at night, and begins to methodically remove his instruments. The tools are a fantasists’ fiction of what a doctor’s bag might contain. The work of a particularly imaginative child, perhaps, who had gotten the chance to glimpse fragments of the real thing.
It could have been a delight if it weren’t for the circumstances. If it was his choice, a trick to make sick little girl laugh, instead of a trick being played upon him. There’s a small plop as Peggy’s mother squeezes out another drop of water. Her attempts to stop her daughter from crumbling away are marked out by the slightly darker patches where the water has soaked into the ‘skin’. Water, then.
The Doctor soaks his handkerchief – black, of course – in the bucket of water. He runs the cloth across the girl’s cracking feet (no toes fallen off, at least), before moving to her hands (a full set of fingers, they’d acted quickly). He focuses completely on the girl.
He can hear her father start to protest, the first sound in a cry about the futility of something they’ve tried before, to no use. He can hear her mother gasp as she sees the skin revealed by his handkerchief, pale and sickly but human. He hears but lets the noise wash over him, not breaking his concentration. They know better than to try to touch him. Not now. Not when they’re beginning to hope, and in that hope cling to everything they were told about the man who might be able to save their child.
Peggy’s face is wiped clean, last. For the sake of the necessary dramatics, and because he hopes the cracks there have kept her from registering what’s happened, not just stopped her from making a sound. He carefully runs the cloth across her cheeks and nose, moving as lightly as possible over her eyelids and then her forehead. He squeezes the cloth, so the water drips down through her thin hair to her skull. His skin is too cool to sweat as a human’s would if they made the mistake of trying to come close to the energy that’s now coiled up in the pretense of a piece of cloth.
Peggy’s eyes snap open, and the Doctor tries another smile. It’s not any more real, but her eyes are likely unable to focus enough to see him, for now. He tries his best to hide his exhaustion as he tucks the cloth away in his sleeve. Luckily, no has eyes to spare for him. Her parents clutch at her, something they haven’t dared since she started to crack. He wiggles his fingers at her, showing her there’s nothing up his sleeve before producing a ball to juggle for a moment. Trying to draw out any expression from her.
The shadow might have been removed, but the shock remains. There are streaks of blood on her nightshirt. Her hair is short from where it had turned brittle and then fallen away, leaving just a soft fuzz. There have been worse cases. There have been times when he’s left without being able to offer the parents any words to bridge their joy and their horror at what couldn’t be fixed. This should be a good night. He takes the coin they offer in payment; he has to. It’s as much a part of the whole production as the way his coattails flutter as he disappears into the foggy night.
They say the sickness was brought back with the soldiers; shades of death carried within the bodies of those who’d managed to survive the battlefields. And since it was said, it was true.
The Doctor doesn’t know young Peggy’s story, but he knows the shape of it from all the others he’s heard. She had come into contact – or believed she’d come into contact – with some poor boy who’d gone to fight and had the fortune (or misfortune) to be able to return home.
In her case, the soldier had probably spent his time in a faraway desert. Doing his best to bear up in a war he didn’t know the purpose of and could never understand, only to come back home to find that instead of reclaiming the life he could have had if it wasn’t for the war, he was simply lost. Or perhaps she’d just spent a lot of time looking up at the picture above the bed. The sands of Egypt, though not quite.
The Doctor has spoken to a lot of soldiers. Unsurprisingly, they’re common among his patients. Not as much as they used to be, but that’s more because the sickness spread beyond them. They tend to speak haltingly of their experiences, both those endured and those current. The Doctor has never asked them to tell him. Still, he tries to offer them some words in return. Something they might be able to use to anchor themselves in the present. There’s not much.
War is like the fog, which hangs heavy regardless of weather, or the streets that can twist without reason. It’s unconnected to the normal sequence of action then consequence. Impossible for a human mind to comprehend. Yet it’s undeniable there, and the lack of context makes it harder for those involved to deal with what has happened to them. There’s nothing to forget, and that absence can be far harder to push out of your mind. They just know that they fought, just as they know the fog doesn’t lift and that the streets can’t be trusted.
They call it the Great War, and so it is and was and will never be again if he’s done his work right.
The fog is thick tonight. Despite its ever-present nature, there are still times when it’s thicker or thinner. The fog is always thick with shadows after the Doctor has ‘healed’ another patient. He can feel them calling to the shadows he holds, trying to draw them out or perhaps twist them into consuming him. They know they’ll fail, but they always make the attempt. Something to admire, maybe, or perhaps just a sign of insanity. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have the space to care.
The Doctor knows his path. The grim repetition is what stops him from getting lost in the fog. He’ll return ‘home’, or as close to home as the lodging above the clinic can be called. Close enough, even if he rarely takes advantage of the rooms. He’ll take care of Peggy’s shadows, rendering them harmless. Perhaps he’ll fall asleep in his chair, consumed by the nightmares that make waking up and looking out into the dismal gray that he’s grown accustomed to almost a relief. There’s a routine to his days. There’s a solid context for his life.
Should he be grateful? It’s not a question the Doctor should allow himself to entertain often, not with the bitterness clinging to it. But after a difficult day or when the tolling of the clock tower feels particularly loud or after what should be a good night, he can’t help but come back to those words. Should he? Grateful?
After all, he had thought he was consigning himself to non-existence. His life as sacrifice. The destruction of all that he’d ever been and could’ve been so that the universe could have a better future. Perhaps it would be enough that even Gallifrey could be better, though that had been hard to believe even at his most optimistic. Still, a penance, of sorts, for its destruction. For the difficulty of its rebirth.
There had been one eternal moment where the Doctor had believed that he would truly be gone forever. Yes, he would leave another Doctor in his place, but a Doctor who had never been ‘him’. He’d felt it was worth it, at the time. His war had ended. His duty done. It was better that the next Doctor would not have all that he’s done living inside of them. Then the Doctor opened his eyes and seen this city.
In this picture of London, with its streets that don’t always lead where they should and endless fog and haunted by a war they can’t name. In a city where belief twists reality and shadows laugh and there’s no escape. In this broken timeline, a string knotted in a circle to stop it from lashing out and infecting the rest of time with its rot.
Should he be grateful? He had thought he was going to die, and then he’d survived. He’s done his best to live – not no matter what, but as best he can. Hasn’t he found a purpose, even here? The Doctor, become a doctor. The fixer of all ills, a figure that lives in the imagination, a savior for people who have nowhere else to turn.
It’s the type of person he’s always tried to be, in part. Or the image of that person. It’s all about what people see. He’d probably be even more effective if he added a plague mask to the dark clothes, but he won’t give up that much. He knows what masks can do.
The Doctor hadn’t died, and so he lives. He had woken in a world where the war had just ended. They’re in the cave and the shadows of the Great War look like what he’d call the First World War. It’s how the minds of the people here have recontextualized the lashing strands of the Time War that had ravaged all of time and space into something that they can even come close to understand. Though ‘close’ is still very far away, and the broken pieces cause their own problems. Still, it’s likely better than if they had nothing. It allows for the semblance of sanity. It lets them hold onto the idea of an order that no longer truly exists.
The Doctor had woken up with a home and a job and a place in the world. He doesn’t know if there had been someone else occupying this space, before him, that had been consumed when he’d taken it over. He looks, sometimes, for hints that someone else had lived this life before, but all he can find is emptiness.
The heads of his other selves had long ago been removed from spikes and the images remade into something less dramatic. Truly, the melodrama was enough to embarrass anyone. But there aren’t even any whispers. He doesn’t know if they destroyed when his timeline was ripped away – given to that other Doctor, the one that had taken up a place in a real timeline – or if they just have nothing to say. He has long days where he has nothing to say, either.
He has more long nights than long days, though it can be hard to draw a firm boundary between the two. When he steps out of his house to see someone lighting the streetlamps it’s not that much gloomier than when he’s stepped out for lunch. There is a line in the imagination that, thankfully, can hold firmer.
During the day he treats a normal range of minor complaints and illnesses among the down and out that make up most of the people who come to the door. Many of them would be fine if they had more sunlight or better food or work that didn’t drain their bodies, but there’s nothing he can do about that. Once night falls, the other calls start to come in.
He’s removed water from the lungs of people who’ve only ever been on dry land. He melts frost that is trying to spread from the corpse to eat up the whole room. He opens wounds to clean out rotting flowers with deep roots. But most of these only manifest themselves as night approaches by the ringing of the bells. People say that he can, so at least he has a chance. He doesn’t know how they know.
There is so much he doesn’t know. He knows that there was a time when he would’ve found that exciting. He doesn’t look for that part of himself. It’s better not to see.
The have been times when he’s left his house without proper precautions, that he passes someone whose face he recognizes or knows that he should recognize. It’s almost unbearable. He suspects that Compassion remembers him, which at least means they both keep a purposeful distance. It helps that the Doctor refuses to go anywhere near Parliament. He doesn’t know what she remembers. Her memory is probably better than his.
There’s no one to make the obvious, not particularly fun, joke about his memory. There is no one else who has something to remember. The rest are simply faces. It would be a cruel joke if there was anyone behind it. There are reasons he tries not to go out often.
He saw Grace, once, wearing the clothes appropriate to the time this pretends to be. That was early on, back when he didn’t fully understand. He had asked around, trying to learn more about her. She had served on the battlefield as a nurse, he’d heard. They said she’d stepped in to perform miracle operations when there was no doctor to be found. They said it had gotten into her heart. He hadn’t asked anything more. He let himself be glad that she never came to his door, and he let himself hate the relief.
At least the others are simply a feeling of déjà vu. There’s a blond boy who puts on a truly terrible accent who runs errands for a chemist the Doctor sometimes visits. There’s another doctor, not too far away, often slumped in exhaustion that he recognizes more than her face, even as she takes on the patients she can and sends others his way. There was a girl who came to him, whose bones had grown out of her skin as if to try to be some sort of armor. He does his best to avoid them. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he saw a shadow with Anji’s face or Sam’s or anyone else he’s loved.
None of them approach him. He can only hope that any memory had been taken, if there had been any memory to take from these reduced phantoms.
Everyone knows about him, what he can do, even as that part is rarely spoken of above a whisper. The people who come to his daytime clinic try to avoid his eyes. It’s the truly desperate who are willing to brave his door, and it’s not just because of where his clinic is located. Everyone knows his real business. Everyone knows that he’s summoned by furtive knocks in the dark, accompanied by desperate eyes and mouths that stumble when they try to explain the unexplainable.
He always goes with them. He’s the Doctor. If he didn’t go, he’s not sure who he might become. He’s afraid he might know the answer, even though it can be hard for fear to make it through the fog that lives inside of him as if he breathed in too deeply and forgot to breathe out. He tries to care.
After Peggy, he’s not looking forward to another knock. It’s rare to get two in one night, but it’s happened before. It’s already been a long night. He could likely manage another case, as long as it’s not too severe, but there’s no chance that he wouldn’t fall asleep after expending that much energy. He does his best not to sleep too deeply, when he can’t avoid it altogether. They could give him that much, in exchange for all the dark miracles he performs.
When the knock comes, he can feel the temptation not to answer deep in his bones. He hasn’t lit any lamps yet. He hasn’t had time to settle in and give any signs of occupancy. If he’d needed to spend more time with Peggy, there’s a good chance he wouldn’t have been home.
But he wouldn’t do that. He can’t. Besides, this knock is different than the usual. It’s muffled, of course, but still loud and impatient in a way those frightened knocks aren’t, however much the urgency of their situation should demand it. Those are always the same. If it’s not a case to solve, then someone is looking for him for other reasons. The prospect of yelling at them gives the Doctor enough energy to go to the door. He feels that he manages an appropriate level of intimidation purely though how he opens it.
It's not a lacky sent by Parliament on another doomed journey. That’s obvious right away, dispelling his half-formed assumptions. It’s a soldier, dark hair wet from the fog, his sleeve pinned up where he’s lost an arm. He looks impatient, even annoyed, and not trying to hide it. Unusual to find such emotions in a soldier, especially the ones that come to his door, in this neighborhood.
For a long moment, the Doctor doesn’t feel any recognition. It’s only when the man steps closer, face lit by the greasy light, that the Doctor recognizes the face. He sees the pointy features and grey eyes and irritated scowl, and it comes together like a magic eye puzzle tilted just the right way.
“Fitz?” He can’t stop himself, even though he knows it’s pointless.
“Try again, Doctor.” The man’s smile is sharp, meant to cut. His eyes are old and full of dark shadows not cast by the light. The sleeve is empty –
“I believe I told you not to call me that.”
2.
The Doctor gives Kreiner a job. Taking everything into account, it’s probably not a good idea. He might admit that that lends the choice a certain thrill. He’s made lifetimes out of bad ideas. It’s nice to know he still can.
Even if there’s no one around to ask worried – or just skeptical – questions about whether he knows what he’s doing.
It’s not just because it’s a bad idea. It’s not out of guilt, either (or not just guilt), though he reads that assumption in the narrowing of Kreiner’s eyes.
The Doctor had let the man who is and isn’t Fitz Kreiner into the clinic. Into his house. He hadn’t even really thought about it. He certainly wasn’t going to leave him standing on the doorstep. It’s an odd combination of not exactly automatic politeness and the potential threat Kreiner could pose. To other people. There were a lot of questions he could ask.
The Doctor had started to make tea – a much more automatic process than ‘good manners’ – as his ‘guest’ took a seat at the table.
“Why are you here?” The Doctor had asked, leaning against the table.
Kriener had just shrugged. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“I’m not going to call you Father Kreiner.”
That had gotten another lopsided shrug, and another smile that doesn’t fit his memories. “I didn’t think you would. Not sure it’s really fitting, these days. I think I was probably kicked out. Don’t call me Fitz.”
A large part of the Doctor doesn’t want to call him ‘Fitz’. He’s not the boy who had travelled with him. Not the one who had died for him, and then never even existed. There’s no one left who could get angry over his death except for the person responsible.
He doesn’t particularly like ‘Kreiner’, either. It feels like he’s giving in to an argument he couldn’t explain. It’s an acknowledgement of something that the Doctor doesn’t want to grant him. A weapon hanging over both their heads. But once upon a time he had been Fitz, too. He had traveled with the Doctor.
The Doctor hadn’t asked any more questions.
Neither of them had said much more that night. They had finished the tea and the Doctor had showed Kreiner the spare bedroom. The next day he had offered him the job over breakfast. Kreiner had looked up from his eggs and toast – he’s trying to eat carefully but there’s egg yolk on his hand from when he’d given up and just put it on the toast. There had been that narrow look, and then he had accepted and had claimed use of the spare room as if it was a fight he had won.
But it’s not guilt. The name, perhaps, is guilt.
He doesn’t want to be called Fitz. He would have a right to say it was his name first. Perhaps he would if he realized the Doctor doesn’t want that. It had been his name first, just as he had traveled with the Doctor first. But he’s not the person he’d been then, not the man the Doctor remembers traveling with. The Doctor isn’t the person he’d been then, either.
Fitz Kreiner had left behind everything to travel with the Doctor. Perhaps that everything hadn’t been much, or had even been good to leave behind, but it had still been there. He had been failed by the Doctor, multiple times. He’d come back, vicious, and violent, and a corruption of everything he could’ve been. He’d come back to kill him, and he’d died. The Doctor doesn’t know if he’d died for him.
Fitz returned and then forgotten. A symbol of what was to come if only the Doctor had been able to remember.
Perhaps the Doctor does owe him something for that. It’s an idea that Kreiner veers between ignoring and trying to use as a weapon. He’s still vicious and frequently unpleasant and an even more unpleasant reminder of a whole host of things the Doctor should probably feel guilty for.
But the Doctor hadn’t made the offer – hadn’t kept to the offer – because of whatever might be owed. He hadn’t asked questions, but there were some he hadn’t needed to. He had given Kreiner a job because there are few for the taking and even less for a former soldier with only one arm and a temperament not suited to bending far enough as he’d probably need to for any other job.
The Doctor tells himself that he would’ve given the job to anyone who found themselves desperate enough to ask, despite their fear. Kreiner just hadn’t had any fear to work through. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s become the truth, with Kreiner sitting there: angry, and real, and alive.
Despite whatever suspicions he no doubt harbors – he’s never been stupid – Kreiner doesn’t ask why.
He follows the Doctor on the tour of the few rooms, taking them all in with the same mocking look in his eyes. He pointedly lifts his missing arm when asking what work, exactly, the Doctor expects him to do, as if it’s offering an answer. He seems to mostly be trying to keep it unobtrusive, otherwise. He actually laughs when he catches sight of the doctor’s bag.
“I’d heard the stories, but it’s even more so than I’d imagined.” It’s one of the few things he’s said that’s longer than a few words. He doesn’t talk much outside of whenever he can think of an insult.
He doesn’t say anything about the war. He doesn’t say anything about when he got here. Was he here from the beginning? Whatever that means in this place. Did he take over someone else’s life? Is the answer to that the answer for the Doctor? How did he hear of the Doctor? What did expect the Doctor to do? What was he planning? What is he planning?
Yes, Kreiner would be unlikely to say anything even if the Doctor tried to prompt him, but the Doctor doesn’t really try. The thrill of not knowing lies next to the thrill at the danger of it all. It’s a set of little mysteries that make up a larger one. It feels like it’s been a very long time since the Doctor has noticed a mystery as anything worth his attention.
On the third day, the Doctor wakes from a nightmare to find a gun pointed at him. A service pistol, probably, or whatever they’re called. Looking at it helps him slow down his heart rate. A unique solution to nightmares. He should patent it. It’s not even because he’s been expecting something like this, sooner or later. Perhaps the Doctor could get away if he tried. Perhaps he couldn’t. Kreiner has training and willingness to kill. The Doctor doesn’t try.
“Is there a point to this? It seems a bit redundant. Something of a replay with different set dressings, as it were.”
Kreiner raises an eyebrow. “Would you even care if I killed you?”
The Doctor waves an airy hand. “I asked my question first.”
Kreiner puts down the gun. With his sullen look, he does remind the Doctor of the boy he’d first met in the florist shop. For a moment. The illusion only goes as far as his eyes. He sits back, rubbing his arm above the stump. “I thought you might have been waiting. I wouldn’t want to fall short of my rent.”
“You told me you didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Oh, right, of course. That’s all you need to hear,” his words are heavy with scorn. Kreiner shakes his head. “I’m so lucky to know such a good Samaritan.” He pushes himself up, leaving the Doctor in his armchair as he goes back to working on sorting out the pieces of paper that cover the kitchen table.
The Doctor doesn’t know why he didn’t take the shot.
The Doctor is almost certain that Kreiner is telling the truth about having nowhere else to go. He had woken on a battlefield, and then woken again in a hospital, down one arm and in a body that he hadn’t had in thousands of years. He had suddenly found himself free, for the first time in all those centuries. Perhaps he could’ve gotten a job doing work for Parliament, but that’s unlikely, even if he wanted to submit to that again.
Compassion exists, probably, as she’d been a TARDIS. But she wouldn’t be someone Kreiner would turn to, even if she’d let him. Both Time Lords and the Faction Paradox had been broken into pieces, so if he’d had any other acquaintances, then it’s unlikely to find them here. There’s no one else who remembers that he could have turned to. Even in the Doctor’s first shock of familiarity, he had registered how sickly he’d looked on his doorstep. Everything else aside, it’s been a long time since Kreiner has had to look after a human body.
The Doctor doesn’t know if that’s enough to stop Kreiner from making any real effort to kill him. It would be easy. But it’s a struggle to try to understand the man in general. It’s easier to try to figure out how he could exist than to try to know him. So, he just tries to take him as he is.
Kreiner is actually a decent assistant. Well, he’s a far better assistant than the Doctor would have expected. The Doctor had had an easy time imagining how bad he could be, so ‘decent’ seems like a reasonable word. Especially as it’s not a comfortable association outside of work.
Kreiner can’t be called a pleasant housemate. He makes no effort to hide his opinion of the Doctor. He doesn’t say much, mostly, but the silence is heavy with his hatred and scorn. When he does speak its usually mockery, directed at the Doctor and at Fitz. He pokes at the Doctor, endless attempts to find something that will make the Doctor react, as if it’s some sort of game.
Compared to that, he’s almost a good assistant. He’s terrible with patients, apparently trying his best to make them dislike him more than they fear the Doctor. He’s terrible at writing things down, which the Doctor suspects is often just as purposeful as his treatment of the patients, exaggerating (or not) the difficulties of pinning down pages with only one arm. But he keeps things more organized than the Doctor ever did. He tidies things up, emphasizing how much of a struggle it is whenever he notices the Doctor watching. His existence prompts the Doctor into making regular meals and cups of tea.
The Doctor could almost close his eyes and imagine he was somewhere else. He’s worked hard at not letting himself think of the TARDIS, and yet he lingers on the edge of those memories. It’s one reason he keeps his eyes open.
The Doctor had worried about bringing Kreiner with him during his nighttime calls, realizing almost in the same moment how foolish that is. If Kreiner’s good at anything, it’s at putting on a performance.
He’s the Doctor’s grim-faced assistant. A man who knows the wars firsthand (only hand, he likes to say). He plays up creaking floors and the whistle of the winds. He pulls people in with the apparent conviction of his gaze. He mocks the Doctor’s theatricality all the way back to their lodgings, drowning out some of the shadows.
3.
Kreiner shouldn’t be here. It’s a thought that the Doctor can’t escape, even if he can put it off for a time.
The Doctor’s hands are bloody from trying to untangle the barbed wire from the woman’s arm, focusing on not letting himself register that it’s growing out of her arm, not around it. It’s not going to work, and the Doctor knows that he’s sealed her fate with that quiet thought. Kreiner’s watching her, free of any expression. It’s not particularly helpful.
But Kreiner shouldn’t be here. The Doctor had undone his timeline. There was no Faction Paradox to take him, so no way he could survive the paradox that had granted him his place. Yet here he is. As large as life and twice as unknowable.
The woman chokes on a scream as a piece of barbed wire that had slipped through the Doctor’s grip tightens around her neck. She dies before he can grab it. All that effort, and all he’s left with is blood to wash off and cuts to bandage on his hands. Oh, and the bitter, betrayed looks on the face of the woman’s sister. He knows that his indifferent expression in the face of failure is part of the stories, too.
Kreiner walks next to him as they head back towards the clinic. At least he’s not trying to whistle as they walk, even if his indifference scrapes against the Doctor’s nerves more than that might have. He didn’t care about the soldier who the Doctor had been able to save any more than he had cared about standing next to the remains of a child as the Doctor had tried to explain that they’d called too late for him to even try.
The Doctor doesn’t expect anything else from him, but that doesn’t make it easy. Even if he’d enjoyed the suffering at least it would’ve been something. Kreiner is unmistakably real, but sometimes it feels as if the closest he gets to living is when he’s trying to wind the Doctor up by calling one of his friends foolish for choosing to follow him, and his irritation when it doesn’t work.
Kreiner is uncomfortable in his body. That, at least, the Doctor can understand. At first, he’d thought it was like the discomfort Fitz had sometimes shown when forced to only be himself, but Kreiner has a type of self-confidence that doesn’t allow for that. The Doctor remembers what he’d looked like.
A creature of bone and worn-down technology and rage, now returned to this oh so human form. It’s how he’ll bump into things and stand shocked at feeling anything or the occasional twitches or how he can forget to eat properly.
Even if that was settled, it’s not all. As much as Kreiner purposefully exaggerates - because he purposefully exaggerates – the difficulties that he faces, the Doctor knows the missing hand bothers him. It’s in the small gestures that he tries to draw attention away from. The aborted movements to push away hair or tie a knot or hold something still with a hand that’s not there. It how he automatically turns slightly or moves the arm behind him in an attempt to hide the absence when he’s not thinking about it.
He won’t say how this body lost it, or if it was before or after he occupied it, but the Doctor suspects Kreiner was fully aware of who he was. There are times he slips into memories that he’d likely claim he doesn’t have. The dark bags under his eyes and the bleak moods he slips into when he doesn’t think someone’s watching don’t say anything either way. The Doctor wonders if he thinks about everything that he’d lost to the Faction Paradox – everything he gave away – that can never return, even if his body was restored. He would likely rage at the Doctor if he asked, so he saves that question in case he needs it later.
He thinks time might be helping Kreiner. Or, perhaps, he just hopes that it’s possible for anything to help. Even if it just smooths over some edges.
Kreiner’s almost polite when he announces Doctor Liif has come calling. She gives the Doctor a tired half-smile as he hurries to meet her in the hall, as Kreiner disappears.
“I’d heard you had a new assistant,” she says.
“Charming, isn’t his,” the Doctor says.
She just shrugs, rueful, mind turning to the business of sharing resources. He dredges up memories of a number of different faces he’s seen at her elbow. He doesn’t know if she goes through assistants quickly or just takes whoever comes asking. There are far more who would go to her than to him.
Liif reminds him to visit her clinic in return if he needs something. The Doctor nods, as he always does. He probably couldn’t send Kreiner over, so he might as well go himself if he falls short of something. Liif never brings up the work he does nights, he isn’t sure she knows, but she’s not afraid of him the way most visitors are. Maybe it’s a matter of long exposure.
Kreiner is less polite when he announces that the Doctor has gotten a letter, just throwing it at his head. The weight of it is enough for him to know who it’s from. The Parliament would never settle for paper if they could have parchment, or some dreamed up equivalent.
“I thought they hated you,” Kreiner says, almost conversationally. He’s trying to make tea one handed. The Doctor has idly wondered if the edge of not-quite-concealed viciousness Kreiner tends to pull out at these times is meant as a warning against trying to help. It’s more likely it’s just that this is how he always talks.
“Who?” The Doctor is distracted by considering whether to rip the letter into shreds or feed it to the fire, but Kreiner’s scornful look isn’t undeserved.
“The Time Lords. The Council. All of them that play out their little game, with the big empty seat in the middle.”
The Doctor tears a careful strip from the letter. “I don’t think they think of me at all.”
“That’s impossible.” The Doctor doesn’t know if the twist in Kreiner’s tone is a sign that he’s being ironic, or because he’s being sincere. Either way, he knows where to direct a blow.
They call it ‘Parliament’ because they couldn’t agree on any other word. ‘House of Lords’ might have done, but the opposition had complained and since there was no escaping, the change was grudgingly made. Both sides had realized they shared more similarities than differences. Something they couldn’t manage until after the war, of course.
There is no space for Time Lords, in this fractured, fragmented world. If there were no Time Lords, then the Faction Paradox can’t have been born from them. That would be a nice little paradox for them to build off, if the Doctor hadn’t burned through their web. Now they’re all just stuck. The Cabinet and the Shadow Cabinet. The Lords and the Commons. A building of stone and mortar, with a restrained motif of blood and bone. Perhaps the city offers enough blood that they agreed not to argue too much over choices in design. They have a whole list of other things to argue over, so they can keep themselves busy.
It's not that they don’t have any power. The Doctor doesn’t think they would’ve let themselves exist if they didn’t have power. But that’s all just distant ripples in the fetid water of the city. It’s not something that happens to the Doctor. He doesn’t think it’s likely that they affect most of the people he sees hurrying down gloomy streets.
“They exiled me to Earth, a handful of regenerations ago,” he says.
“I know,” Kreiner says. “I studied up on you. Back when I first joined the Faction Paradox, I told them I was worth something because I’d traveled with you. Hah. They knew I was just trying to use them to escape. I thought I was so clever. What a laugh.” He half-shrugs. “I claimed to know you, so I got a chance to back it up by going through your past. I know what you’ve done. I know you.”
Kriener stares at him, eyes cold and dark. “I know you.” He turns back to the kettle. “It was a nice way to let me know that you were never going be any help. I can’t say they never did anything for me.”
The Doctor fetches cups.
“Well, they’re perfectly capable of ignoring me when they want to. Proximity is a relative time. And space. Luckily, it wasn’t enough to ruin my relationship with Earth. Though it was easier to remember my affection when I was no longer stuck.”
“Yet they keep sending letters. Is that what happened with you and Gallifrey? Or was it the opposite way around, sort of. They lifted your exile, so you went back to visit on occasion.” He almost sounds like it’s merely curiosity. Even if the Doctor isn’t sure he sees why he’d call it the opposite of his feelings for Earth.
“On rare occasions. But it was easier than ignoring them entirely. They made such a fuss.”
Kreiner scoffs. “You say that, but I saw a lot of other Time Lords getting away with doing far worse. They just knew when to shut up. If you hadn’t admitted to being a Time Lord, I don’t see that they would’ve cared what you were doing. I didn’t see them doing anything about the Rani or the Master or even the damn meddling monk. Though I suppose they could use you instead.”
He considers the Doctor for a moment. “On top of all the other jobs they had you for. Done with being their lacky, are you?”
The Doctor cut his heart out for Gallifrey. Perhaps it’s just a matter of patterns repeating. Or balancing the scales. He’d had it torn out for Earth, after all. It’s just a little thing compared to everything he’s destroyed. He knows how to live with one heart. It shouldn’t bother him. He shouldn’t get stuck listening to a heartbeat that isn’t enough.
It’s not often, not always, but every so often he finds himself consumed by the wrongness of it all. The scars across his chest will start to ache, memory of a pain that he can’t remember. He can hear the blood rushing through his body and becomes sure that it’s not as it should be. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He chokes on the smog filled air and it’s wrong.
Kreiner watches him, cool and remote (but not Remote, Fitz would be hovering even as he was pretending not to hover, expression worried and open).
“Don’t you have a handkerchief? A real one? I don’t want you coughing all over my tea.”
The Doctor puts his head down on the table and laughs.
Maybe he should have stayed in exile. Maybe he should’ve just kept running. The first time he’d stood still, maybe that’s when he’d been lost. In that moment, he had shifted the flow of time and there was no way back.
He had just wanted to travel. He hadn’t imagined becoming so much more, and so much less. He rips up every letter they send, turns away every messenger, and ignores any sign. He has freed himself from them, even if he can’t free himself from this world. Too little, too late. He had brought this all down on himself, and he’s all that’s left the juggling act had slipped and it had all come crashing down.
When he finally sits up again, Kreiner is still watching him. The Doctor is too tired to try to guess at what judgment might be behind that impassive stare.