A/N: I'm so bad at updating and I give you my sincerest apologies! I never expected this story to get any sort of following and I'm sorry to make you all wait. I was involved in my school's musical production of Les Mis so the past few months were a little hectic but it's all over now!

I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I appreciate the comments and votes! Thanks for all your support and for getting me to over 1000 reads!

The Point of View of John Watson

    John hadn’t been in St. Bart’s in months. He’d tried to go back, tried to work like he used to, but it always brought back memories and flashbacks that sent him reeling.

    Stepping through those front doors…walking over (well, around) the spot where his best friend had smashed his skull in…it all felt like a dream. A horrible, extremely realistic nightmare.

    The Doctor flew through hallways and down stairs as if he had grown up in the hospital. His tweed jacket billowed behind him slightly, reminding John all too well of Sherlock. As they raced down stale white halls, John shook that similarity from his head. It was poisonous, that kind of thinking.

    When they reached the morgue, The Doctor slowed down, his footsteps barely audible on the walls. Molly Hooper had her back to the doorway, leaning over a corpse, taking notes on a bright yellow pad of paper. She was so engrossed, she didn’t notice when the Doctor opened the door and leaned against the entryway. The Doctor stood there for quite a few uncomfortable seconds, seemingly unbothered, until John cleared his throat to get her attention.

   She didn’t look up from her work. “I already told you, I’m not done yet. Examining a corpse isn’t like ordering a cheeseburger –”

    The Doctor’s face broke into a smile. “Three years, and this is the greeting I get?”    

    Molly’s frame straightened immediately and she whirled around, her eyes wide and her face pale. “DOCTOR!” she screamed, dropping her pen as she ran forward and threw her arms around his neck.

    The Doctor laughed, wrapping his arms around Molly’s frame with a gentle, almost fatherly tenderness. “Good old Molly! You miss me?”

    Molly pulled back and slapped his arm playfully. “Of course I missed you! Three years, not even an e-mail? You could’ve been dead for all I knew!”

    “Not quite dead, no.” Rubbing his hands together, the Doctor strode into the cold morgue, looking around.

    It was then that Molly noticed John. She gasped, as if seeing a ghost. “John! How…how’ve you been?”

    “Just fine, Molly,” John lied, through his teeth.

    John watched Molly’s gaze flicker from him, to the Doctor, and back again. “So…you two – know each other?”

    “Just met, actually!” The Doctor chirped as he opened one of the body bag drawers. He made a face at the body inside and then closed it with a bang. “John had a run-in with some psychic pollen.”

    She looked a little confused, but shook her head and said, “Well, it’s good to see you. I was starting to wonder if last time was…the last time.”

    “The last time? Oh, never,” The Doctor said. “But I’m not here just to check up on you, Molly.”

    “I figured. What you need?”

    The Doctor hopped up on one of the empty examination tables and exhaled slowly. “It’s Jim.”

    Molly’s face darkened, and her hands balled into clenched fists. “Of course.”

    “Didn’t you date him?” John entered the room, folding his arms. “Did you know he was an alien?”

    “Obviously I knew,” Molly said sheepishly. “He was using me to try and find out how to build a TARDIS. I was using him ‘cause I thought he might lead me to the Doctor.”

      John couldn’t fathom the thought that Molly – sweet, little Molly – had manipulated the most dangerous psychopath in the modern world. He looked at her tiny frame and her big, soft eyes. It didn’t look like she could lie to anyone, but clearly, she had.  “All right, then.”

     “So, Molly,” the Doctor said, “how have you been doing with imitating time lord technology?”

    She grimaced. “Not great, to be honest. Come here, I’ll show you.”

    The Doctor trotted after Molly as she led him to the back of the morgue. John hung back a bit, watching her stride to a door labeled “samples” and unlocking it with a flip of her ID card. “Not exactly top security,” John observed as the door opened at her touch.

    Molly rolled her eyes, beckoning the two men inside. “I’m the only one with clearance in here. Everyone assumes this is where I keep spare body parts for testing, so no one questions it.”

    John reluctantly followed her through the doorway. When she flipped the light switch, the fluorescent revealed a vast room, its walls covered with complex technology. It looked like a spaceship had exploded, cramming its consoles and inner workings into this one, tiny room.

    Distracted by the blinking lights and smoking machinery on the walls, John almost didn’t notice the main attraction: a huge console that towered almost to the ceiling. It looked like something right out of a sci-fi movie. John’s eyes widened, trying to take it all in – from the blinking lights to the knobs of every shape, color, and function.

    “Good on you, Molly!” the Doctor exclaimed, running up to it and pulling random levers. “This is impressive.”

    “Hardly,” Molly muttered, stepping up beside him. “This thing is a piece of shit.”

    “Oh come on, don’t sell yourself short. This has all the right pushy things and pulling mechanisms, Molly, it looks just like the real thing!”

     Molly grabbed a yellow legal pad off of another piece of strange machinery. “You should get your memory checked, Doctor. Aside from the engines crapping out every time I start it up, the brakes make this god-awful noise and the index file is nonexistent. Not to mention, I can’t figure out the chameleon circuit.”

    John’s head was spinning. How was she talking so fast? “Wait, wait,” he stammered, trying to catch up. “A chameleon…what?”

    Molly tossed him a pitying smile. “A chameleon circuit, John. It’s the cloaking device, it hides it from the normal people. Hides it in plain sight, if you will. Like as a police box.” She shook her head at the blinking console. “The point is, Doctor, even with all the spare TARDIS parts you gave me, making another one is basically impossible. I’ve been trying for years, and it’s just not happening.”

    The Doctor didn’t respond. Rather, he crouched down and observed the underside of the console, frowning and poking at things occasionally. Molly folded her arms and watched him, breathing audibly. Then, the Doctor’s eyes widened, and he sat straight up, nearly hitting his head on the metal.

    “I’ve got it!” he cried. “It’s so simple!”

    Molly glanced back at John, then moved toward the Doctor. “What’s so simple that I haven’t been able to figure out for years?”

    “It’s understandable, there’s no way you could’ve known, and I forgot to tell you. Sorry about that! Slipped my mind. A lot of things tend to do that,” the Doctor said, frowning, as he stood up. “You can’t have a fully-functioning TARDIS without a Rassilon Imprimatur.”

     “A what?” John and Molly asked at the same time.

    “It’s a fancy term for time lord DNA,” the Doctor explained as he examined the technology before him some more. “In layman’s terms, a TARDIS must have an imprint of time lord biology within it. It’s a safety clause, against the misuse of time travel. That way, no one can try to imitate a TARDIS without a time lord’s consent.”

    John, so confused already with the events of the day, shook his head. “What exactly does that all mean?”

    “Basically, without a Rassilon Imprimatur, a TARDIS would be lethal to operate.”

    “Lethal?” Molly bit her lip. “I’m glad you thought to tell me this before I tried actually going back in time, Doctor.”

    Again, the Doctor stayed silent. He closed his eyes and held out his hand, pressing his hand to the heart of the console. Then, he released a long, shuddering breath as a burst of vibrant gold light spread from his fingertips, enveloping the machinery in a bubble of light. It was blinding – John stepped back, shielding his eyes as the light disappeared into every crack within the metal and the console whirred to life.

    At long last, the Doctor turned and grinned wide, all across his face. “Molly, my love, you’ve successfully built yourself a TARDIS.”