From whofic.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author's Notes:
The Doctor's gem is blue goldstone.
The 'black and white fellows' the Doctor and Jamie met are CIA agents, aka black lace onyxs.
A flat stone splashed out across the sea, hopping once, twice — “four!” cried the Doctor, throwing his hands up to the heavens. “Did you see that, Jamie? Eh, Jamie?”
“Aye, you’re very good,” said Jamie from his vantage point by the cliffs.
The rocks were smooth and had a look about them as if they’d been draped like soft dough, oozing and puddling into fat rounded bulges. The Doctor said the shapes had been formed by the softly beating sea over millions and millions of years. Up close, they had marks in them like waves, fine, curving lines of glittering white, bands of brown and grey and grey-blue.
The sun was setting over the sea and when the Doctor turned to face Jamie, proffering a stone fished out of the shallows, the gem in his forehead caught the light, flashing, brilliant as blue fire. “Come and have a go!”
Unfolding himself from the rocks, Jamie paced across the stony shelf to the shore. Taking the stone, he weighed it in his hand, angled it, and —
Splash, splash, splash. Three jumps.
“Oh, good show!” The Doctor clapped his hands.
“I was aimin’ for three, ye ken,” Jamie assured him.
“Of course you were.” The Doctor stretched his arms above his head. “My, what a beautiful sunset!”
“Aye,” Jamie agreed absently. “Listen, Doctor —”
“Hmm?”
“About those black and white fellows.”
“Oh, dear.” The Doctor tapped the tips of his fingers together, his face twisting into a grim smile. “I was wondering when we’d get to them.”
“That thing they did —”
“Ah.”
“There were two of them, and then there was one big one,” said Jamie, struggling to explain what he’d seen. “And then —”
“Fusion.”
“Eh?”
“They fused.” The Doctor brought his hands together, interlocking his fingers. “It’s a trick we, ah, Time Gems have.”
“Hell of a trick,” said Jamie, his head spinning at the thought. “Hey, now — does that mean you can do it?”
“Well, I suppose I could.” The Doctor stopped to fish another stone out of the water. “If I had a, ah, suitable partner.”
“So have you,” said Jamie. “Done it, I mean?”
The pebble sat in the Doctor’s hand, flat and slippery as a fish. “Now and then.”
“Oh.” Jamie rubbed the back of his neck, not sure what to say. Quirks and gems aside, he’d got used to thinking of the Doctor as more or less a man. Being reminded that he was something else, something stranger and older, was a touch uneasy and a touch thrilling. “How does it... work?”
“Hmm? Fusion?”
“Aye. How do you do it?”
Standing, the Doctor wiped his damp hands on his trousers. “It’s simple, really. You dance.”
Jamie stared at him. “You dance?”
“Yes, you dance,” said the Doctor. “It’s a way of, ah, getting to know a person, I suppose — finding a shared rhythm. A bit like, hm, synchronising your hearts’ beats.”
