Author's Note: Hey, look, I'm not dead! (And neither is the Thief fic, just suffering from SEVERE block. Which is what I get for posting something before I've finished it.) And this, I think, is the final chapter of this particular collection. (Looks embarrassed. Good grief, I posted the others a DECADE ago?)

Near Culloden, Scotland

18 April, 1746

He feels different than he had this morning–and he doesn't think it's just to do with losing the battle two days before, or the fact that his attempt to flee has not gone nearly so well as he planned. He feels older, changed, with strange thoughts in his head he can't quite grasp. He has scars he can't remember getting–and scars that were recent this morning are old and white now.

It seems a bit ridiculous to become obsessed with these oddities when death will take him at any moment. The wound in his gut, courtesy of a British soldier's bayonet, is very recent indeed, and the blood soaking into his jacket and kilt suggests that, very shortly, no mysteries or unanswered questions will matter in the least, except possibly for that greatest mystery: what happens after. The pain is so bad, it should consume his world–and nearly does, except for that niggling part of his mind that is concerned over these odd little inconsistencies that have so abruptly turned up.

He staggers and nearly falls, catching himself against a boulder, smearing lichen across his already-bloodied hand. (The other remains clamped firmly across his belly. He's seen more than one man disemboweled on the battlefield today, and it doesn't matter that his own wound is more puncture than sliced open, he's damned if he's going to spend the last minutes of his life picking his entrails out of the gorse. Or imagining he's going to have to.) He seriously doubts he will live to see the sun set; if the British don't catch him, he'll bleed to death long before he can get away again–and even if he does manage that, a gut-wound is almost always a promise of slow, painful death. But still he toils on, uncertain where this strange, stubborn drive, this will to not give up, came from. He's always considered himself a relatively brave man–it's practically a requirement to be born into his clan–but this is something more. As though this were not the first time he has seriously faced death–and he knows that this is not the case. To be sure, he faced danger aplenty during the preparations for the uprising, and in the battles that followed, but never before has he been so close to actually dying. He's certain of that, but despite this there is some part of him that insists he has faced worse than British steel and lead. And he cannot shake the feeling that he needs to keep moving, that if he can just get a few steps further, all of this will go away and he will have...what? A better life? Answers? The best he can hope for is Heaven, a thought which is at once comforting and curiously unsatisfying...

The pain spikes, and what little strength left to him flees. He feels his knees buckling, and knows that when he falls, he will not get up again from that place. No answers, no mysteries solved–though in light of the fresh wave of agony, he feels that if he can only die quickly he will be content.

But even as he begins to crumple, hands close around his arms, bearing him up. "Steady on there, old son," says a voice. It is male, a resonant tenor.

It is also distinctly British.

He tries to struggle, to get away from what promises to be a much more painful, lingering death than already waits for him, but the other man is obviously not wounded, and much too strong for him. All he succeeds in doing is magnifying the pain in his abdomen tenfold.

"Sh, sh, sh," says the British man. "It's all right, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm a doctor."

He does not find this a reassuring statement: no doctor he has ever heard of can do anything for a gut-wound–though a British one might want to keep him alive for as long as possible so he can be interrogated. Not that he knows anything of use at this point, but that has never mattered much to torturers, so far as he can tell. But he has no strength left to fight, and can do nothing but sag in the grip holding him, weeping softly.

The hands on his arms shift, and he feels an arm slip beneath his shoulders. It is a thin arm, but hard with muscle–not something he has ever associated with doctors, who in his experience tend to be old, overweight, and fond of making up diagnoses for their "patients" so they can either charge a lot of money or experiment on them. The stranger is also taller than he, perhaps more than six feet, and is hauling him along without apparent effort. He tries to get a look at his captor/rescuer, but his eyes are blurred with exhaustion, pain, and blood-loss, and he has only a confused impression of brown. "Wh-who are you?" he mumbles.

"A friend, Jamie. A friend."

He wants to ask how this British stranger could possibly know his name–let alone be familiar enough to call him Jamie rather than James–but he hears voices ahead. More British voices, and the sound of guns and equipment rattling. Soldiers are approaching. The man carrying him mutters a soft, "Damn." Then, in Jamie's ear: "I'll try to head them off. Lie still and lie quiet. I'll ease some of your pain–should make it easier to keep mum."

Jamie feels himself lowered carefully to the ground, then cool fingertips settle onto his temples and cheekbones. "Listen to my voice," says the stranger, "and just relax. You have nothing to be afraid of; I won't hurt you." He continues to speak, his voice low and soothing, and despite the accent of the enemy, it engenders a strange trust in Jamie–as though it belongs to someone familiar. Despite himself, he begins to relax, listening only to the stranger's voice, and to his great surprise the awful pain begins to ebb. His breathing steadies, and his vision clears. He begins to process details again. His jacket and shirt are stiff, scratchy against his skin; the bleeding must have slowed, or even stopped, the dried gore glueing the fabric against the wound. He can feel the breeze, damp with the promise of mist or rain, against his cheeks. He blinks, realizing that the stranger has placed him amidst gorse and heather, in the lee of some tumbled boulders, and something soft and heavy has been draped over him. A coat? He tries to get a look at the man's face, but the stranger is already on his feet and moving away. All Jamie can see is an pair of legs in trews of brown cloth, patterned with little blue stripes, and the strangest shoes he has ever seen.

The soldiers are now very close. Jamie lies still, trying not to breathe and inwardly marveling at how the stranger took the pain away. It isn't that it's completely gone, exactly, but it's as if he no longer cares that it hurts. He can hear the stranger, speaking to the soldiers.

"–head of the battlefield doctors," he is saying, sounding indignant. "And just who the bloody hell are you to challenge me, soldier? Take a good look at these credentials. Oh, can't read, can you? Well, how about your sergeant, then, can he read? Yes, go on, have a look. That's right, you'd better salute. Now, I saw quite a few wounded men back that way, a few hundred yards. Must have been ambushed by rebels. I want you to round them up and get them to the tents, do you understand me? How would you like it if your mates left you out here on this godforsaken moor to bleed to death in the mud? No, I will not accompany you; you're a sergeant, aren't you? Surely I can trust you to find half a dozen groaning men in broad daylight? I have urgent business elsewhere."

Despite the certainty that he will be dead very soon, Jamie cannot help but smile. The stranger isn't letting the soldiers get a word in, bowling over protests and questions and faint suspicions without slowing a bit. It reminds him of someone...but he can't think who.

Noises indicate that the cowed soldiers are moving away, and he hears the stranger's footsteps returning. "Not generally fond of soldiers," the man comments, taking away the coat covering Jamie, and grunting a little as he hauls Jamie back up out of the scrub, slinging one arm over his shoulders.. "But they do so like it when someone gives them orders in a firm tone of voice." Jamie sucks in a breath as the pain, returning, intensifies. "Sorry," mutters the stranger. "Not far now."

"Wh-where..."

"Somewhere safe. Somewhere I–or rather, my amazing machines–can patch you up so you don't die out here from blood loss or infection."

"But why...?"

"Ask why later. For now, just concentrate on helping me get you there, okay?"

Jamie wonders briefly what 'okay' means, then decides it doesn't matter. He can't summon up the energy to reply in words, so he nods his head instead.

What follows seems like the longest trek of his life, though it is not more than a hundred yards or so. The ground is rough, and he begins bleeding again, feeling the shocking hot trickle down his stomach and groin. By the time they reach their destination–he has a blurred glimpse of something tall, blue, and box-like–the pain has returned in full. Even as the stranger reaches out to open a door, darkness sweeps over Jamie.

When he wakes again, the pain is gone. He is lying on something firm but not uncomfortable, a soft cheeping filling his ears. The stranger stands a few feet away, checking something on a box with a glowing face, a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of his nose. He is youngish and extremely odd looking, with wild brown hair sticking up every which way and large, brilliant dark eyes. Jamie has never seen him before in his life.

Nor has he seen anything like the room he was in, full of strange objects and sounds. The walls seem to be made of bronze–or something like bronze in color and sheen, with strange, roundish alcoves marching at regular intervals from floor to ceiling and emitting soft, greenish light. He glances down at himself, and sees that his mud-crusted, bloodied clothes have been exchanged for a soft robe of some material he's never seen. He is cleaner than he has been in weeks.

"Wakey, wakey," says the odd man, turning away from the box to smile at him over the tops of his spectacles.

"Wh-where am I?"

"The medlab of the TARDIS which, let me tell you, was a chore to find. Good thing I went looking for it before I popped into your timeline, eh? Or we'd be in a right mess."

Jamie knows he should be terrified–and in some distant part of his mind, he is, but the blessed absence of pain makes it difficult for the fear to gain any sort of hold. And there is the odd trust this stranger wakes in him, which has not gone away. "Who are you?" he whispers.

The stranger pulls off the spectacles, and his face is closed now, guarded, the dark eyes watching Jamie closely. "I'm the Doctor," he says. Then he smiles, faintly. "Doktor von Wer, if you like."

Jamie catches his breath, and sits bolt upright. He half expects a return of the pain, but there is only a slight twinge from his belly. "You can't be! He's–"

"A foot shorter, twenty years older, and a great deal younger than I am," the stranger agrees. "Also, I'm better dressed. But nevertheless, I am he and he is me." He sighs, and shoves his hands into the pockets of his trews. "Go on then," he says. "Tell me I'm crazy."

"You are crazy," Jamie tells him. "Or I am." He looks around the strange room. "Because none of this looks as strange as I know it should. And I find myself trusting you, even though you're a Sassenach and a stranger. Why is that?"

Now a vivid (and more than a little daft, Jamie can't help but think) grin breaks across the other man's face. "This is why I always liked you, Jamie MacCrimmon!" he declares. "You're brilliant, you are. Go on, what else is bothering you?"

To his surprise, Jamie finds himself readily explaining. "I woke up on the moor a few hours ago, just in time to get into a fight with a redcoat and catch the worst end of the battle. Don't know how I got there, either, since the last thing I remember is helping the real Doctor von Wer and his friends get to their property." Jamie frowns, and one hand drifts to his stomach. "I know it's the same day, or near to it, but..."

"Feels like years have passed, doesn't it?"

"What's going on, then?"

The stranger–'Doctor' suits him somehow, Jamie can't help but feel–tilts his head to one side. "Someone stole memories from you. I can give them back to you, if you like. They aren't all good, but...hell, might as well admit it: I'm being selfish. I'd really only planned to pop in, save your life, and get out again, but...We were best friends, you and I, Jamie, and I'm feeling awfully short of friends at the moment."

"Friends? You and me? But you're a Sassenach!"

"I'm really not. I just sound it because...well, actually, I'm not sure why I sound British to you lot. Always have, though, to one degree or another. Maybe it's the tea. Or the fact that many of my friends on this planet come from this little island." He shrugs. "Doesn't matter. I'm not a Sassenach, Jamie. I'm a Time Lord. And you used to travel with me, to distant worlds and other times, until–until you were sent back here and made to forget, because my people wanted to punish me."

Jamie wants to believe the man completely mad. A part of him wants to run out the door, possibly screaming. (This impulse does not last long, as his Scottish pragmatism informs him that, wherever the hell he is, getting out might be a wee bit difficult, particularly wearing nothing but a dressing gown and with no shoes.)

And then there's the rest of it. The sensation of lost time. The old scars that were new just yesterday, and scars from wounds he never had. How he got from helping the odd little Doctor and his friends Polly and Ben to find their strange blue box to waking up out on the moors. And sitting here, in this very strange room with its very strange furnishings, he cannot help but feel that mad claims of other worlds and times aren't all that mad, after all.

On some level, it even feels...familiar.

"All right, then," Jamie says slowly. "I'm not sayin' I believe you, mind. You said they aren't all good memories?"

"Not all of them," the Doctor admits. "But there are plenty of good ones in there, I should think."

"And what if I decided not to have them back?" He can't quite believe he's saying this. Of course he wants them back–he wants answers–but it all seems a bit too, well, convenient.

"I give you your clothes back, and you walk out that door–well, several doors, actually–and get on with running away from British soldiers."

Jamie wrinkles his nose. "Not much of a choice, there, is it?"

"Well, it's not one I would pick. I've done my share of running away from British soldiers too, you know. And non-British ones. But you do have a choice, Jamie. They–my people–didn't give you much of one before. I suppose I'm trying to give it back to you now."

"Why'd they do it, then?"

"As I said, they wanted to punish me. Exile me, send my friends off home. I suppose they felt you would be less trouble shuftied off to your own timeline if you didn't remember everything you saw out there. And, again, it hurt me. They did not," he said, with an edge in his voice that Jamie recognizes, somehow, as an old, bitter anger, "like me very much."

"So what's to stop them coming and taking my memories away again, then?"

And now there is grief, and not a little guilt and pain, and Jamie recognizes the expression in the other man's eyes, because it's something he's been feeling himself since Culloden. "Gone," the Doctor says curtly. "They're all gone."

That's a raw wound there, and not just from being the one left alive, either. Jamie–though he cannot be sure how he knows–senses there is a particular anger buried deep beneath the sorrow, so deep that perhaps even the man who holds that rage forgets it exists most of the time, and remembers only the loss.

But at the moment, the motivations of this very strange stranger are not his primary concern, interesting as they promise to be. He considers the choice being offered him (and is he mad, he wonders, for even entertaining the idea that this man might be telling him the truth?), and tries to ignore the clamoring part of him that wants answers and wants them now. Knowledge isn't always a good thing, his mam always said–just ask Adam and Eve. He needs a few more answers, then. "If I choose to remember, what then?"

"We-ell..." The Doctor fiddles with his spectacles, twirling one earpiece between thumb and forefinger. "I suppose you'll have more choices to make, then. To stay, or to go elsewhere. Elsewhen, even." He hesitates. "I can even make you forget again, if you decide you don't want to know after all."

Oh, hell with it. It isn't as though he's made any wise choices recently; why should this be any different? "Go on, then," he says–half-challenging, because the still rational part of his mind insists that all of this is impossible–"make me remember."

Another brilliant smile flickers across the Doctor's angular face. "All righty, then," he says, putting the spectacles on again. "If you're sure." And he hesitates, just a little.

"I wouldn't have said it if I weren't," growls Jamie. "Just...get on with it." He wonders, briefly, if it will hurt. But it isn't likely to hurt worse than a gut-wound, and so he tries to relax.

The Doctor reaches out to touch Jamie's face. His fingertips, resting against his temples with thumbs pressed just below Jamie's eyes, are still cool; it seems to Jamie not simply a case of cold hands, but rather that the blood running through the man's veins is colder than his own. He tries not to shiver, and when the Doctor closes his eyes he does the same.

There is an odd pressure, as though someone were pushing on his head–but on the inside of it. It doesn't hurt, exactly, but it is one of the strangest sensations Jamie has experienced in his short life. The pressure increases sharply, and his ears begin to hum, and then–

He gasps, and feels as though icy water has been poured over him. He remembers it all, every instant of it as sharp and clear as if he were reliving it: Polly, Ben, Victoria. Zoe, her dark eyes laughing at him. He'd once thought he'd spend the rest of forever with her, traveling through time and space, and the memory of it breaks his heart. The Yeti, the Daleks, the Cybermen in their icy tombs. The Mind-Robber and the Celestial Toymaker, playing God with their minds and their lives. Running, so much running: for his life, for someone else's life, for the sake of it, simply because they were alive and seeing all the wonders of creation. The TARDIS, different to the bronze-and-green he sees around him now, but just as warm and familiar as ever.

And the Doctor. Best friend, mentor, father and brother rolled into one. Different, now. And so much older: for all that he wears a face only a few years older than Jamie's own, he can see the weight of years and sorrow in his dark eyes that had not been in the clever, wizened face of the Doctor he'd known. The Time Lord lowers his hands from Jamie's head and watches him, dark eyes almost wary. "Maybe you should–" he starts to say, then breaks off with a grunt of surprise as Jamie flings his arms around him and hugs him tightly. After a moment, Jamie feels the wiry arms close about him and return the embrace fiercely. "I've missed you," the Doctor says, his voice thick in Jamie's ear. He pulls back, grinning. "I can't begin to describe how much I've missed you!"

Jamie shakes his head; it feels oddly full. "It's not been two days since I saw you last!" He eyes his friend. "And how long has it been for you, I wonder? Longer than two days, I'll reckon–longer even than two years!"

"Longer even than two centuries," agrees the Doctor, and Jamie shakes his head again, this time in wonder. The Doctor never ceases to be full of surprises, and never will.

"So now what happens?" Jamie asks.

"Well..." the Doctor fidgets. "You could stay. I can take you somewhere safer, of course. I know you probably want to help your clan?"

He's not entirely wrong, but on the other hand (and with his memories now intact) Jamie can't help but remember why he ran away with the Doctor and his friends in the first place. He's tired. Tired of the fighting, tired of endless plotting to bring about something that he suspected–and now knows, with the experience of years of time and space travel–is almost certainly never going to come to pass. Not in the way his kinsfolk want it, at any rate. "Couldn't I come with you again?" he asks, feeling suddenly, oddly shy. More than two centuries, the Doctor had said. Perhaps there was a reason he never came back sooner–perhaps he'd realized that Jamie, and the others, were just a burden?

These fears are washed away by the brilliant, wide smile that breaks over the Doctor's face. "Really?"

Jamie returns the smile. "That was the best time of my life, Doctor. Why wouldn't I want to do that again, if I could?"

The smile fades. "The universe is a darker place than it used to be, Jamie," the Doctor warns him. "And...well, so am I, I suppose. I'm not the same man you knew."

"We all change, Doctor. And you're still the same man at your core–otherwise why should you have dragged me off a battlefield and patched me up?" He holds up a hand as the Doctor opens his mouth. "Yeah, I know, you said you were bein' selfish. Funny sort of selfishness, though–you could have as easily been shot out there, if you hadn't managed to flummox those soldiers." He rubs his stomach again, and grins wryly. "And I suppose I'm bein' a bit selfish myself," he admits. "A real hero of the clan would go right back out there and start the fight again, but..." Jamie sighs. "I find I'd rather see the stars again, and help people I know can be helped. I don't think we can win this war here, Doctor."

"Not...at this time, no. There's hard years ahead."

"Well, then I suppose when I'm done being selfish I can have you drop me off where I can be of some help during those years."

"It might take a few tries, but yes."

Jamie finds himself grinning again. "Well then, I suppose it's off on another adventure!"

The Doctor's answering grin is, if possible, even more brilliant than his earlier one. "Molto bene! Where to first?"

"What say we track down Zoe and fix her memory, too?"

"That," says the Doctor, "is the best idea you've ever had."