Part 31 (1/2)

The Doctor stared at her. 'How did you know that?'

'Because if you hadn't, she wouldn't have let you out of her sight.'

He glared down at the ground, his hands describing awkward little circles. 'She doesn't know... She thinks I'm... It'd be difficult.'

'Not half as much for you as for her. Doctor, you owe her an explanation. Your experiment in being human has hurt-'

'Hurt? I'm a Time Lord. Smith was a human.' He gazed at Bernice vacantly. 'I can't love her. I don't feel that way about her.'

'So she's lost the man she loved.'

'Then how can I help her?'

Bernice looked at him sadly. Distantly, she thought that she might have felt angry, but he looked so lost. 'What, you didn't find that out? What was this all for, then, this holiday in the human condition?'

'I thought it would be peaceful.'

'I'm not talking about the aliens. You're not responsible for them. I'm talking about the heart that you would have broken, battle or no battle. Doctor, please, go and talk to her.'

He looked at her for a moment. Then he nodded. 'Yes.'

Joan was tidying her house as the sun rose over the battered town. The military had arrived in force in the market square and fire brigades from the whole county had been going from house to house, helping to repair the damage. All that had happened to her own place, thankfully, was that a few pictures needed straightening and a bit of that silver dust that was everywhere needed brus.h.i.+ng out of the carpet.

She glanced at the ring on her finger and smiled. It was quite a motif, that the sign of his love had spared her. And now he would be a hero, when the story got round, the schoolteacher who had saved everybody. It was quite a shock to discover that there were hostile creatures from other worlds. But there was also her own fallen angel. And he was, perhaps, representative of a gentler humanity that existed in the stars.

She sat down and let Wolsey leap into her lap. 'You're going to have to get used to a new householder,' she told him. 'But you like him, don't you?'

There was a knock on the door. She leapt up, much to Wolsey's disgust, and ran to it.

Her fiance stood there, wearing a hat and a jacket that she'd never seen him in before.

Joan folded him into her arms and kissed him.

Then she withdrew, staring at him in surprise.

She picked her way back through the hall and into the sitting room, supporting herself on the furniture as she went. She finally sat down. 'John...' she murmured.

'Do come in. I'm sorry to be so...forward.'

'It's not that.' The Doctor closed the door and stepped into the centre of the sitting room, not quite looking at her. 'You know what's happened, don't you?'

'No.' She looked up at him, terrified. 'Please tell me.'

'I had to change back. To save you. You asked Smith not to give August the Pod.

He didn't. I did. I'm the Doctor.'

'Oh...' Joan closed her eyes for a long, hard, instant. Then she opened them. 'I'm very pleased to meet you. Doctor. Is there nothing about you that's like the man to whom I've become engaged?'

'I think we believed in the same things. In the end. We're the same shape of person, using different memories. You made him more like me. He was willing to give his life.'

'Don't tell me that, I didn't want him to give his life. I didn't want to go through that again! My G.o.d, I don't think I can go through -'

She forcibly stopped herself. 'You don't love me then? You have his form, his habits - and you move like him. But you don't love me?'

'No. I can't.'

'Why? Is he not a part of you? The human part?'

'There is no human part. I'm a Time Lord. A different species. He was a character I created, a fiction.'

'Rubbish. I don't give my heart to fictions. When his spirit inhabited you, you were not so different to the way you are now. John, if you're simply lying to me, there's no need, you can take my heart and go- '

'No!' The Doctor grabbed her forearms and made her rise. 'He loved you, he loved you so much that he was willing to become me again to save you. Feel.'

He took her hands and put them over one of his hearts. Then the other.

'And is one of them his?'

For the first time since he'd come here, he allowed himself a moment's uncertainty.

'I think that both my hearts are mine. That was one of the things I wanted to learn, where one part of me ends, where the next begins. Many of his att.i.tudes and ideas, his ways of acting, were mine. But he's a different person, a role I created in order to learn things.'

'So you remember everything?'

The Doctor paused, then decided to tell the truth. 'Yes. What would be the point otherwise?'

Joan gave a short, bitter, laugh. 'You haven't learned how to love.'

'A fish can't learn to -'

'Walk?'

'Not that. A better metaphor. Whatever it is, I'm incapable of it.'

'Could you not become John Smith again?'

'If I could find another Pod. But such horror followed me. Such - ' He dropped his head. 'That's not true. I might become a man again, but it wouldn't be John. And I wouldn't want to do it. I know everything I am, and that includes the knowledge that I want to be me.'

'Well...' Joan let go of his hands, and moved off a little way. 'I believe that you're a good man. You didn't know that your human self would fall in love.'

'It seems obvious now. What else do humans do?'

'Go to war.'

'I did both, then. And I was half successful.'

She smiled, sadly. 'Oh, more than half.' She plucked the ring from her finger. 'Do you want this back?'

'No. Keep it. Please.'