Quiet...

Strange, that. I thought this place was _never_ quiet.

But it is 2 in the moning, so I should have expected that... Especially since I volunteered for the night shift.

There's nobody around. I keep repeating that to myself, like I'm trying to convince myself of it... but there *is* no one around...

And it's so _quiet_...

I dunno. Maybe I'm just too inured to travelling with the Doctor. Every time it goes quiet, it usually means the big monster with drooling fangs is about to pounce on us. I keep expecting something to leap out of the broom closet, or the wine cellar, and announce 'I have come to invade your planet!'

Do I actually _have_ a planet it could invade? I mean, Earth is where I came from in a sense, but... is it home anymore? Honestly?

But there's Skale, and Filippa...

'The girl I left back home'... I never thought it'd actually happen to me. There I am, having every cliche 'bout outer space and the future I ever dreamed about shattered... and when I'm not looking, one of them sneaks up and grabs me..

But it isn't home. Not yet. Maybe it won't be.

I started out on the run from the cops... Now I'm on the run from the ultimate cops, the guys who give you a speeding ticket for breaking the laws of time.

Just me, Compassion... and the Doctor.

There's a way he looks at us, sometimes. All of us, the companions of this incarnation. It's like... he gave up something big and powerful and important to be with us, to try and... _live_ with us, I suppose. And he doesn't want that big, important thing back, 'cause it'd mean he'd be *old* again, distant... I dunno.

...I'm scared of him. I'm scared _for_ him. I know what's coming, I've read the blurbs, heard the Author Mafia's whispers. Alone, for an entire century. Trapped on Earth...

...Sam told me once he was imprisoned for three years. Three years. No way out. Eventually, she broke in and saved him.

She said... she said he was half-mad when she got him out. Nearly crazy, because he'd had to endure three years _alone_. Three years of _nothing_.

A century. A _whole_ _sodding_ _century_. What's gonna be left of him?!

What's gonna be left of *us*?

Maybe it'd be better to bail out now, before I find what they've got in mind for me....

...then again, what could the Mafia do that'd be worse than what they've already put me through?

...And I just _know_ they're waiting for a chance to demonstrate...

...Tegan asked me, a couple weeks back, why I stayed around. 'It's stopped being fun for you' she said, 'so why do you stick around?' Well, it was a bit pithier than that, but that was the basic gist...

It _was_ fun, in the beginning. Bopping around alien planets, chatting up beautiful women, moving in as the dark mysterious stranger at the casinos... (okay, so it didn't quite come off, but...)

China. That's where it changed. Well, not quite, but that's where it began. It wasn't a game anymore, it was _real_. A world with real people, people you cared about, could fall in love with...

Where you could find a purpose.

Where you could be _hurt_.

Where people could _die_.

I remember... I remember what taking Om-Tsor was like. How it made me feel. What I was able to _do_ with it... What others did with it...

The monk... King George. He saved me with it. Threw me out of the helicopter, broke the fall... and blew up the helicopter. With himself inside.

And Ed. Ed Hill. The Revolution Man. We were... racing against time, trying to get to him. Had to stop him before he could start World War 3. Or _save_ us from World War 3; that's why he provoked it. Wanted to make himself saviour of mankind...

And I killed him. I panicked, thought he'd know me, try to kill me...

...he must be laughing now, wherever he is. Laughing at the cosmic joke played on me...

...you took Om-Tsor, you gained the power to warp space. Distort buildings, shatter mountains.

'God-man'. That's how the monks described it, when you took the drug.

Ed took the name of the Revolution Man. Spirit of the Revolution. Here to overturn the old order, no matter what he had to do.

And he knew what he was doing. Oh yes. Whatever you did with Om-Tsor, it was always _you_ doing it.

...and now the Revolution Man's back. 'Cept this time, it's not a person, it's a force. And _I'm_ its host. Nowhere _near_ control of it; it reaches out... and changes the world.

And there's nothing I can do about it.

It can do whatever it wants. And I can't stop it.

What if it goes too far? Forces the others into a situation where they have to kill me?

Would that even _work_? I've seen what happens to Adric, the deal he has that lets him come back; what if that happened to me?

I'd be trapped with it. For the rest of time.

Even if they _did_ succeed.... what'd be there to stop it jumping hosts? Choosing Sam, or Izzy, or the Doctor...

I don't _want_ to die.

Even back on Anathema, trying to escape the Faction... even then, scared as I was, I didn't want to die.

But... I know what happened next. I read 'Interference', after it was all over.

I... well, the 'original' me, anyway... joined Faction Paradox.

And for the next two thousand years, I/we learned that _some_ things are worse than dying...

I'm not the original. Hell, I'm not even the 'first' copy. I'm just the final one in a long chain of remembered Fitzs, who had the 'good' fortune to be remembered by the TARDIS.

Back to the way I was. Remembering everything that had happened to the original... well, up until I left the TARDIS...

And it occured to me, just now... what would happen if Fitz Kreiner, Father of Faction Paradox, walked in here? What'd he say? What'd he do? What would _I_ do?

But... he's never been in here. In all the time since 'Interference', he's never been here.

Maybe he will, one day. Maybe he just wants to forget. I can empathise with that.

Maybe he's just getting ready to nuke the place.

Hell, that's what *I'd* do, if I were him.

But I am him.

Uh-oh...

No. No, I wouldn't. I'd just sit there, look at the place, and wonder where I'd gone wrong...

... Why do I hang around?

'Cause of the _hope_.

We go in, we defeat the bad guys, we make everything different...

...but it's for the hope. People hoping we can save them, drive off the invaders, overthrow the Fascist Government of the Week.

Hope that we, a group of strangers they've never met, can put things right.

And when we mess up, when we lose...

...it hurts. But it hurts *him* so much more.

He knows who he is. He's the Doctor. He's supposed to put things right. He _always_ puts things right. He's supposed to make things _better_. And when he can't, when he's unable to...

...He never talks about it. Never. Odd... You'd think a guy that enthusiastic, that moody... he'd be bursting to tell you what was wrong. But he doesn't. Dunno why...

...He suggested a holiday, a couple of days back. Take a break from the adventures, from the 'Round, from _everything_ related to the series. Just throw ourselves on a beach somewhere and kick back. Have a quiet time. No duties. No responsibilities. Just lie back and relax, then get back to business refreshed....

...Think I'll take him up on that, see what he had in mind. Knowing our luck, it's probably a beach on Skaro or somewhere...

...Have to get someone to cover for me in the 'Round, though... I remember when I first got the job here, Sam said something about me wanting to play some 'Tom Cruise' guy. Still have no idea what she was talking about...

...Maybe see if Adric can cover any more shifts. Reminds me, must see 'bout getting that package to him.

Well, we _did_ check it for poisons, explosives, booby-traps and what-have-you.. Came up clean, so it _seems_ safe enough. Chang said some Writer's Guild guy had dropped it off...

...Writer's Guild? Naah, couldn't be...

...surprises me, sometimes. I _remember_ growing up, I remember my childhood. I remember being remembered. And I _know_ that my memories before Inty are second-hand copies, the TARDIS' memories of me, imprinted in my mind. I _know_ I wasn't the one who experienced them. But I still remember them as if they were mine....

...but I also remember being created, when I first came into existence. When they first dreamed me up, gave me concept, existence, _life_... I'm fictional... but I'm real, too. Hell of a paradox to get your head round...

...And it's odd, sometimes. The 'Round has its own miniature library. A library. In a pub. And, of course, the only books there are the ones set in our continuities...

...'Course, we don't get to read our adventures 'till we've actually experienced them. Something about breaking a Law of Time or something...

..It's... weird... you know? Reading about something you've already done, seen from someone else's perspective. Makes it... distant. Like it's about someone else...when you know that it actually happened.

Can't imagine what it's like for the Doctor. Doctors. They get to read them, see them, listen to them... all those different tellings of their story, all those different continuities. Christ alone knows how they deal with 'em all...

..This is what I get for doing this. Say hello to depression, morbidity, angst, etcetera...

I _really_ need that holiday...

..Huh? Quarter to eight? So where's Adric? And what happened to the time?

I can't believe I just asked that...

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End

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Copyright 2001 Imran Inayat