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Have you ever gotten everything you ever wanted?
'Oh dear, oh dear, oh crumbs,' went the Doctor as he fluttered about the TARDIS console like a bowtied hummingbird. They were in flight, and it was all Jamie could do to hang onto the sturdiest part of the console and hope he didn't get flung into the food machine.
Jamie still didn’t understand what had sent the Doctor into such a panic. One minute, they'd been wandering the market-streets of Mars, the air warm with spice and steam from food stalls. The next, they were running despite never having been threatened with guns, batons, or even pointed sticks, fleeing into the Time Vortex as if there were a great lumbering beastie after them. They were being followed, it turned out. Not by strange monsters or silver men, but by the Doctor's own people.
The Doctor was frightened, it was plain on his face. They'd faced down Daleks and Cybermen and great invisible minds, and sure, the Doctor had been scared then—but this was a different sort of fear entirely. Jamie could only wonder what made the Doctor's people so much worse.
'I dinnae get it,' he said. 'Why are they chasing us? Did ye do something?'
The Doctor’s face was pale, pinched in a way Jamie hadn’t seen since—well, never. 'I'm afraid they, ah, disagree with how I conduct my affairs,' he said, and then under his breath, mumbled something like, 'among other things.'
'And if they catch us, it won't be good, aye?' Jamie surmised.
'Aye—I mean, yes. It wouldn't be good at all.' Something on the console burst into sparks, and the Doctor fanned at it with a handkerchief. 'Oh blast, she's really not meant to do this sort of flying.'
'Can't we just—fly away?' he asked. 'Go somewhere they cannae find us?'
The Doctor's hands continued to dance over the controls—one lever slammed down, another toggle flipped, his foot tapping against a pedal like he was trying to coax an old piano into song. The central column shuddered, a wheezing groan rising as if the TARDIS herself was protesting the strain. When at last he looked up and met Jamie's eyes, his expression was unusually grim.
'It's not that simple,' he said, sighing. 'My people aren't known to chase, per se. They wouldn't do something so uncouth, not unless they were certain. If they’ve gone through the trouble of pursuing us into the Vortex, then they've already found us everywhere we could go.'
'Eh?' Jamie frowned. 'What'd you mean, everywhere? But we're not everywhere, we're here.'
'In a way, we are everywhere,' the Doctor said in that funny way of his, when he felt he was being clever and enigmatic. 'Past, future, and sideways. The details aren't important. What matters is, the TARDIS leaves a multi-dimensional wake in the Vortex as we sail. It's child's play to track, for one of my kind.'
The ship gave a particularly bad lurch to the right. Jamie's hands began to feel numb with how tightly he held onto the console. 'Alright, so what're we to do? Keep running until they get tired?' It sounded daft even as he said it.
'I suppose there is—Oh.' The Doctor sighed like it was the last breath of a dying man. 'There is one thing we could try.'
'Och, then do it! Don't waste time we don't have.'
His hands fluttered. 'It's quite risky, is the issue.' He met Jamie's eyes, ice-blue meeting his warm brown, begging for complete sincerity as he asked, 'Jamie—do you trust me?'
Jamie stared back, breathless with the ship’s juddering, his hair a mess with sweat. His knuckles were white against the console, but his voice, when it came, was steady. 'Aye, I trust ye. Ye know that.'
The Doctor smiled, and it was so terribly sad that Jamie nearly wished he hadn't agreed to it, whatever it was. 'Of course, of course you do, Jamie. Now—' He motioned Jamie over to his side of the console. '—come here. I've got to fetch something. Watch these instruments. If anything starts whining or going into the mauve, jiggle this plotter a few times.'
Jamie blanched. Not from the instructions, which weren't all that complicated, but from the mere allowance the Doctor was making here, tolerating him at the ship's console. Now Jamie knew they were in dire straits. The Doctor never let him at the controls.
Then the Doctor left for the depths of the TARDIS, leaving Jamie alone in the console room. He could hear the TARDIS groaning around him, the floor vibrating faintly under his boots. He watched the instruments, hand hovering above the funny wee lever in case, but nothing had changed in the time it took for the Doctor to return.
He came back with a small box clutched in his hands, which he'd placed on the console. 'Here we are,' he said, pulling the box open. 'This should do it.'
Jamie leaned over to see. Inside sat something metal: a strange, battered steel helmet, only with wires and small circular ports. If he tilted his head, it almost looked like a crown.
'What's that for?' he asked.
'We're going to lay low for a while,' said the Doctor, lifting the strange crown out of the box with a sort of reverence, like one might hold a precious jewel. Or a bomb. 'No TARDIS travel, no temporal footprints, no trail for them to follow.'
'Aye, alright. I get that,' said Jamie, growing impatient, 'but how's that crown gonnae help us?'
'The only chance we have is to fool my people into thinking there's no Time Lord to pursue. So I'll have to change, of course. This device allows me to do so.'
'Of course,' he echoed. He couldn't take his eyes off the contraption. For it was a contraption, he realised, some sort of machine that the Doctor was now plugging into the console. 'Er, wait, what'd ye mean, change? 'Cause I know what Polly said and—'
'No, no, not like—like my renewal, nothing of the sort. Same face and all. We're not very particular about faces, my people, the face isn't important. But I have to, ah—I have to become human. If I'm not myself anymore, there'll be nothing to find, you see.'
Jamie stared, wondering if he was meant to laugh at some joke he was missing. 'You're serious,' he realised. Not a question. Just the shape of one too stunned to ask properly. 'You—you can do that? Change yerself into something else?' He didn't like the sound of that; it sounded strange—more strange than usual, at least—and wrong.
'Someone else,' the Doctor corrected him. 'A new man entirely, with his own, ah, his own history, memories, personality, even. A complete disguise.' He set the crown down on a panel of the console, and got to work at the controls, typing rapidly. 'And yes, I can. If I can get this chameleon arch programmed properly.'
'Someone else?' echoed Jamie. 'A new man? Will he know he's you?'
'No. Everything that I am, my memories, my physiology, will be stored in this.' He paused in his typing to remove from the box another wee metal thing. 'This will become me, so to speak.'
Jamie took it. There was a latch at the bottom, which he pressed with his thumb. The thing clicked open, revealing—'It's a watch.'
'It only looks like a watch, mind,' the Doctor said quickly, 'it doesn’t keep terribly good time; it's much better at compressing biodata.' He was still typing. Whatever he was doing, it seemed quite complicated. 'You'll have to watch over me, or him, as it were. Make sure he doesn't get into any trouble.'
'A new man,' Jamie murmured, cradling the watch in the palm of his hand. The surface of it was engraved meticulously, like the best artisan crafts of his time. He ran his thumb over the circles. A wee pocket watch, and inside it, a whole man. The Doctor. His friend. More than, maybe.
If they got through this, maybe he'd finally tell him.
He tried to picture it: meeting the Doctor's eyes and seeing a stranger there. He found it wasn't hard at all. He already knew what it was like. The memory of Salamander's smile—same mouth, same lips, but wrong—prickled at the back of his neck. This time, however, the stranger wouldn't be an enemy. That might be worse.
'So he’ll be you—but not you,' said Jamie. 'What am I supposed tae be tae him, then? Just some lad who’s hangin' about?'
The Doctor seemed apologetic. 'I'm afraid I can't answer that. The TARDIS will pick the setting and, and integrate me, she'll be responsible for the story. I should remember you as someone important, at the very least. Now—as for how long to hide, we'll just have to guess. A few months should do it. Long enough for the trail to fade and for them to lose interest. Four, five months, maybe longer, to be on the safe side. Then you open the watch, and I'll be restored.'
Months without the Doctor in some strange place. Instead, with an odd created man in his place. 'And if it doesn't work? If your people find us anyway?'
The Doctor eyed him over the console. 'Then we improvise.'
Jamie nodded, but it didn’t feel like agreement. It felt like surrender.
The Doctor moved again, brisk now, fiddling with the helmet contraption—wires looping from it like tendrils, like exposed nerves.
Something occurred to Jamie. He couldn't get the last, dreaded question out of his mind, not until he asked it. Softly, as if afraid of the answer, he asked, 'Is it gonnae hurt? The change?'
The Doctor looked down at the contraption. 'Yes,' he said, quietly. 'Yes, I'm afraid it's going to hurt a great deal.'
Jamie felt his stomach twist, sick with the thought. The air seemed thicker in his lungs. But they had no choice, hadn’t they?
'If—if you don't wish to watch, the TARDIS has prepared some luggage that needs fetching,' fretted the Doctor, 'it's not a terribly long process, over and done with before you get back—'
'No!' he insisted, with such force that he surprised himself. 'I won't leave ye, not until I know you're okay.'
'Right,' murmured the Doctor, 'quite right. Well, once I've changed, I'll, ah, be unconscious for a while. Half an hour or so, I imagine. Which is fine. There's some preparations you'll need to do.'
He held out his hand, and Jamie returned the watch. The Doctor then placed it neatly into a slot on the side of the crown, clicking it into place. 'The console will print a cheat sheet—instructions, things to watch out for, the works. Just be sure to pick it up afterward.'
'Aye, I'll mind ye,' Jamie said, softly. 'I'll mind ye and the watch.'
The Doctor fitted the crown onto his head. He gave him one last look, his expression unreadable. 'I'll see you soon, then,' he said. A heavy moment passed, then: 'Thank you, Jamie.'
Then, he flicked the switch on the side of the crown.
From the console, there was a humming, a buzzing that rattled Jamie's teeth, his very core, as if the TARDIS herself were protesting.
All at once, the Doctor seized, his fingers clenching around the metal bars of the crown. His jaw clenched tight until he couldn't hold it anymore, and then he began to scream—
The sound followed Jamie out of the memory, as loud and raw as if it had only just happened. It was almost the same pitch as the train that ripped across the platform, sending the wind tearing at his hair and his kilt. He took a half-step back from the edge, his ears ringing in the train's wake. The great beast had already torn through the station and gone now, off toward its destination—wherever that was.
Trains. He'd seen a great many technological wonders in the future. Cars and planes and helicopters and stranger things besides, but there was something about the train that turned his stomach. So loud, so fast, but right there, so close he could reach out and brush his fingers against it as it roared past.
A soft clearing of a throat behind him made Jamie turn.
'Well, ah, we're on the right platform, but looks like we'll have to change at Preston,' said the Doctor, setting his basket down by his feet to offer Jamie a crumpled piece of paper. 'The direct line's not running.'
Jamie reached out, taking the paper, their fingers brushing for just a moment. Same sort of red stump as the ticket he'd been handed earlier.
'Oh, aye?' he said. He tucked the slip of paper into his coat pocket and glanced toward the tracks. 'Why's that, then?'
'A signal failure on the line, I believe,' the Doctor went on as he folded his train schedule carefully, along the creased edges, and slipped it into a trouser pocket. 'But I hear the new route's more scenic.'
The weight of the early morning pressed in as they stood there, the soft hum of distant engines and the occasional call of a railway worker the only sounds between them. The lights on the station were still on, a sharp and incandescent glow against the darkened sky beyond the train station. The air was cool, tinged with the faint, oily smell of diesel smoke, mingling with the mist that curled low over the rails.
The Doctor glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the platform and, seeing no one, rested a hand on the small of Jamie's back, gentle as anything.
'We've got time,' he said quietly. 'Might as well enjoy it.'
And then his other hand moved, this time coming to rest just under Jamie's chin. He nudged his head up until their gazes met, smiled once, soft and sweet, and without very much fanfare at all, kissed him.
For a moment, there was nothing else but Jamie and the Doctor, standing there on that empty train platform in the early morning light. Jamie let himself believe, just for a heartbeat. The comfort of it, the quiet, the way they fit together—it could have been the Doctor. It should have been.
But this was not the Doctor.
The world seemed to slip away beneath Jamie at that thought, sending him tumbling—again. That thought. Always that thought.
John Smith pulled away, but the heat of his touch remained—nothing at all like the dry chill it should have been, burning all the more for it. He offered him a small, easy smile.
Jamie swallowed hard, eyes flickering away to the empty tracks stretching into the distance. The early morning light caught the edges of the station, but all he could feel was the heat of John’s hand still resting lightly on his back. It seemed to say we're here, we're together.
Jamie shifted slightly under John’s hand, his breath still uneven. The station around them remained hushed, the world holding its breath with them. For a moment, the mist curling over the rails seemed to blur the edges of reality, as if the morning itself was reluctant to intrude.
John’s smile softened, but there was an unspoken hesitance now, a subtle pause as if he sensed something just beneath the surface but didn’t quite understand.
'Are you alright?' John asked quietly, his voice low enough that only Jamie could hear.
Jamie forced himself to meet John's eyes. 'Aye. Just... the morning’s colder than I expected.' His voice was steadier than he felt, though the familiar ache twisted quietly in his chest.
This might have been the moment where the Doctor would have given a pointed look to Jamie's bare knees, as he always did whenever they'd landed on some frozen world and Jamie had refused to change out of his kilt.
But John simply nodded, his hand lingering a moment longer before he slowly withdrew it. 'We can wait inside, if you like. It’s warmer.'
'No, that's alright,' he said. He glanced back toward the empty platform, the tracks still shrouded in mist. The chill bit at his skin despite the promise of warmth nearby. He rubbed his hands together, trying to chase the cold away.
John watched him quietly, as if weighing whether to press further, but instead he simply let the stretch between them, neither quite sure how to fill it.
John shifted his picnic basket from one hand to the other. 'Jamie,' he said at length, 'I still cannot believe you've never been to the Lake District as a young boy.'
It was only yesterday that it'd come up at all, by way of some meandering conversation over supper, and John had responded by dragging Jamie to the train station at nearly six o'clock in the morning—with a picnic basket—or a day trip.
'I know it's nearly four hours from Inverness,' he went on, 'but it's a common enough spot for a walking holiday, I'd thought.'
Four hours? More like four days! came Jamie's immediate thought. Then he thought cars, planes, trains, and said nothing. Strange, how those thoughts persisted, even when he was standing nearly two and a half centuries after his time.
Jamie shrugged. 'We were busy wi' other things.' Which wasn't exactly a lie, unlike most everything else he said these days, to John or to himself or otherwise. He'd been too busy losing a civil war that was old history to John.
'You'll like it,' said John. 'The hills, the lakes.' He hefted his basket. 'The food.'
Jamie smiled despite himself. 'Aye, I'm sure I will.'
It sounded nice, in truth. Manchester was something else. So much concrete, so much noise. The sky felt smaller here, boxed in by buildings and chimneys. Even when he worked the docks, it was at a sea of concrete and river locks, a man-made port far from the expanse of the ocean.
There was a rumbling in the distance: their train coming down the tracks, approaching the platform slowly.
John snuck another kiss from Jamie like he was stealing joy itself. 'We'll make a day of it. Just you and me, dear. No rushing.'
Dear.
Jamie's heart skipped a beat.
Dear, love, darling, slipping from between John's teeth with such ease, such familiarity, like he'd been doing it for years.
How many times had he heard it this month? He'd lost track. It made his stomach flip every time, even now.
No, he'd stopped counting the pet names, the intimate touches, the kisses at the door, the time spent writing out grocery lists, divvying up household chores, the evenings spent curled around each other in front of the telly.
But he was still counting, as much as he told himself he wasn't. He was counting down the days. The days until he opened the watch. Until he unmade John to bring the Doctor back. Until this dream disappeared like mist in the early morning sun.
As the train rumbled closer, Jamie slipped his hand into John's and held on tight.
No, but I once got very close.