The Sum of His Parts Ch7/8
Title: The Sum of His Parts by gruaig_rua
Rating: PG-13
Series: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Characters: The Tenth Doctor (both of them), Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Rhys, PC Andy, Mickey, Martha.
Spoilers: Set post Journey's End, pre Children of Earth.
Summary: The Other Doctor achieves the supposedly impossible and returns... But why?
May cause triggers. Highlight for Warning - [Character death ]
Chapter 7
It’s funny the things that go through your mind when you know something catastrophic is going to happen. The Doctor thought back to when he first met Rose. Before he had any inclination to invite her on board the TARDIS as a companion. I can feel it, the turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. He sees the bullet moving in the slowest of slow motion as he feels the world turn and still the Doctor knows it’s going too fast to avoid its intended target.
It hits and the world stops.
The bullet smashed into his sternum, shattering the bone and sending shards into both hearts. The force of it knocked him off his feet, onto the ground. The pain was excruciating and were his lungs and throat not filling rapidly with blood, he would have screamed. The damage was so much worse than Los Angeles in 1999 and through the painful haze, as he clung tenuously to consciousness, the Doctor knew he had no choice but to regenerate. His doppelganger looked on, inscrutable, as the TARDIS interior was washed with a golden glow.
***
The Doctor came around, feeling like everything was uncomfortably tight. The band on his trousers dug into his waist as the buttons on his shirt strained against his chest. He wanted to open a couple of buttons to ease the discomfort, but couldn’t make his arms work. His vision focussed on a large, still damp, crimson stain down the front of his light blue shirt. That would be the blood from the bullet wound that just killed him, then. As the world returned to sharp focus, the Doctor soon realised why his arms were immobile. They were both stretched out and securely tied to the struts that formed part of the TARDIS security barrier.
“Sorry about that, but I hadn’t time to get you to the medical bay and I can’t risk you trying anything before I’m ready.”
“You killed me!” The newly regenerated Doctor shifted uncomfortably against the railing.
“Well, you gave me a life sentence, so let’s just call it even.” his clone snapped, before turning to the TARDIS console and working underneath it in silence, ignoring all attempts by the eleventh incarnation of the Doctor to engage him in discussion until he was sure he had everything set up to his satisfaction.
After a while, the other Doctor, having calmed down from his initial anger, gave his counterpart, who couldn’t see his new features, the once over. “Now let’s have a look at shiny new you. Brown eyes again, still have great hair, dark brown though, so still not ginger.”
“Oh no.” the new Doctor dryly quipped. “Maybe you should kill me again until we get it right.”
“Still rude.”
“Considering what you did to me and my current circumstances, you hardly expect me to be sweetness and light!” he pulled angrily at his restraints.
“I knew exactly what to expect from you which is why you’re safely restrained and out of my way… In some ways, it’s not entirely different to what you did to me - getting rid of me like that.”
The new Doctor protested. “I didn’t get rid of you…”
“You couldn’t wait to get shot of me.” the other Doctor snapped, standing up and towering over his captive. “Was it because I was wrong… like Jack? Is that why I couldn’t stay here?”
“You know why I sent you Pete’s World.”
“So under the guise of giving Rose a happy ending you abandoned me on a backward rock in the 21st century without so much as the sonic screwdriver - something you could have replaced in an afternoon, but something I’d have had to wait around 30 years to even make a start on and I don’t have the luxury of time anymore.”
“I brought you there for your protection.” the new Doctor said.
“Protection from what? From whom?”
“Yourself. And it would seem I failed miserably.”
“Ah yes… Blood and anger and revenge… or was it some sort of punishment because I finished off the Daleks? You know what they’re like. They don’t have compassion in victory or the humility to walk away from a battle when they know they’ve been defeated. They don’t stop, so I stopped them.” he hunkered back down in front of his prisoner. “Why is what I did so reprehensible? I didn’t do it for fun, you know. I did it because it was necessary. Why is it different to what happened to end the Time War, or what Rose did on the Gamestation? We all committed genocide against the Daleks, yet I didn’t get to travel through time and space as a reward. I just got exiled to Earth again and this time I didn’t even have my TARDIS for company.”
“You got the opportunity to live out your life, in full, with someone you love.” the new Doctor snapped. “I went on alone.”
“No!” the other Doctor rose angrily to his feet and started pacing on the metal grille in the console room. “You bring that all on yourself. When we towed the Earth back from the Medusa Cascade, we were surrounded, in here, by people who loved us… The closest thing we’ve had to family in years. So not only did you cut me off from travelling in the TARDIS, but you cut me off from them too. Sure there was a Donna, Martha and Sarah Jane on Pete’s World, but they weren’t my Donna, Martha and Sarah Jane. I thought maybe I could form new friendships with them, but they weren’t the same people.”
“You had Rose.”
“IT WASN’T ENOUGH!” the other Doctor exploded. I needed so much more than just to play happy families with Rose Tyler…” he sighed, rubbing his eyes. “And the funny thing is, so did she. Rose fought so hard to get back to you - you have no idea what she risked - and without even asking her what she wanted, you left her back at square one. Bad Wolf Bay was the last place in the universe she wanted to be and having me there didn’t make it better. If anything, it made it worse because Rose saw in me everything that she’d lost too. She didn’t just love us. She loved the travel and the adventure as much, but you couldn’t see beyond that massive Time Lord ego of yours to see that it wasn’t All About You, you know.”
“So… what, you just left her?”
“We pretty much left each other.” he shrugged. “You see, I’m The Other One. It didn’t matter that all I’ve ever known in my life is that I’m the Doctor. I came into being with over 900 years worth of memories and experiences, but I didn’t have a TARDIS, or sonic screwdriver and, let’s face it, a week in the Italian Alps really can’t compare to sweeping her off to Woman Wept.” the other Doctor looked lost and bereft. “You may have told Rose that I’m the same man, but nobody else saw it that way, not even Rose. In reality, I was never going to be the Real Doctor to anyone who knows you. I was the cheap knockoff. The consolation prize.” he spat it like an insult.
“I’m sor…”
His counterpart angrily interrupted. “Apologise to me and I swear, I will kill you again!” Not wishing to continue the conversation, he stalked back over to the console and began tinkering.
The new Doctor set about finding some way of releasing himself from the bindings that held him secure. It didn't take too long to realise it was a futile exercise and to concentrate on winning round his counterpart - or attempt to distract him at any rate. "How did you do it? How did you get back after all the fractures had re-sealed themselves?"
"I did what you did when saying goodbye to Rose. I found a micro fracture, but instead of having to create a supernova, I used the dimension cannon to pinpoint and concentrate the energy. It’s small, but perfectly formed and about 30 feet underwater, but I’m sure you’ll find something in the bowels of Torchwood to move it into the Hub. There was always a risk of collapsing 2 universes, but as you can see," the other Doctor waved his hand around the console room. "it didn't happen."
"Would you have cared?"
"Oh Doctor, you wound me! Y'know, I'd forgotten just how sanctimonious you can be sometimes." the other Doctor shook his head. “I’ve created a stable link between the two universes and all you can do is judge me.”
“I’d give you a congratulatory round of applause only… you know” he waved his bound hands.
“So feel free to drop over there whenever you like. You can go visit Rose and get that mortgage. You’ll need alternative accommodation because you won’t be staying in here for a while… You can refine the cannon while you’re there. Iron out all those little kinks I didn’t have time for. That pesky human need for lots of sleep slowed me down considerably.”
“How exactly did you manage to do it in secret, if it took so long?
“I had no gadgets or technology so I pretty much had to rely on alternative methods.” the other Doctor, cocked an eyebrow. “I didn’t have a sonic screwdriver, but I had my persuasive charms.”
“Mind control?” the new Doctor was horrified.
“Needs must and all that. I couldn’t sonic locks in the middle of the night so I just asked really nicely for the door to be opened and to be left alone to do what I had to do.” the other Doctor shrugged. “I mean, it’s not like I mind wiped a couple of years out of someone’s life, is it?" he stalked angrily over to his captive. "Oh yes. Martha told me about what you did to Donna, you bastard.”
“Would you rather she was dead?” it was the new Doctor’s turn to be angry. “Don’t get all high and mighty and tell me there was another way, because you know there wasn’t! Her mind was breaking down too fast to even put her in stasis. It would have been destroyed in minutes and I couldn’t let that happen. Not to Donna.” The new Doctor sighed wearily, all 904 years reflecting in his tired eyes. “She’s alive, that’s the important thing."
“And I can’t go anywhere near her looking like this, because it will kill her.” he wearily rubbed his eyes. “All this way, after all this time and all I’ve done is completely destroy the relationships with the very people I cared about.”
“Martha and Jack?” A sense of panic rose in the new Doctor’s voice. “What did you do to them?”
“Nothing permanent, nothing that would hurt them…" his guilty tone earned him an incredulous scoff from his prisoner. "Stop looking at me like that! I’m not a monster. I did what I had to do to get back to the TARDIS, but I would never physically harm them.”
“So, let me get this straight, you came back because you missed all your VBFs and in doing so you’ve alienated the very people you wanted to return to? Are you sure that’s a Time Lord brain in there? Because, quite frankly, you’re behaving like a retarded ape!”
“Oooh, sticks and stones with a side order of superiority! What’s for dessert?”
“Tell you what, seeing as you’re screwing up all your Earth based relationships, why not pop round to Chiswick for tea with Donna. She’ll simply die when she sees you!”
“My first mistake was not gagging you, you know that?”
"Te-le-pa-thy." the new Doctor exaggerated each syllable as if he were teaching the pronunciation to a child. "Like mind control, only less of an intrusion."
“Like you’ve been trying to do since you woke up?” the clone Doctor scratched at his temple. “Nice to see you’re not adverse to lowering yourself to my standards! I may be human but I’ve got a Time Lord brain. You don’t just get to sneak in there and make a few helpful suggestions about loosening ropes… Or didn’t you think I’d notice?”
“Where are you going to go?”
“Everywhere, every when… Anywhere but here, that’s for certain. I’ve had enough of 21st Century Earth to last me a lifetime. And the people that know me will have no desire to ever see me after what I did to them.” The other Doctor hunkered down in front of the new incarnation. “Anyway, all the main TARDIS controls are locked out to anyone but me. There’s no point in trying to crack them because we both know our own brilliance and you’ll never figure it out. Besides, I have, at most, 60 years of this and then you get it back. Sixty years, that’s nothing. It’s the blink of an eye to you, I have it all set up so that when I die, it all reverts to you.”
“So what’s to stop me killing you the minute I’m untied?”
“Nothing.” the other Doctor shrugged. “But I’m betting you won’t. You couldn’t bring yourself to kill the Daleks, you could barely see your way to punishing the Master… Can’t see you killing a part of yourself.”
“You’re that sure? Remember, I’m not you anymore.”
“Well, there’s always the massive paradox that will be created if you do.”
“Obviously I’m still suffering the after effects of regeneration,” the new Doctor drawled with more than a hint of sarcasm. “so feel free to elaborate.”
“River Song.” came the reply. “If I, meaning the incarnation of the Doctor who looks like this, don’t have a long, happy relationship, gadding about the likes of Byzantium and Asgard with her until she goes to the Library…” He made a noise that sounded like and explosion, accompanied by appropriate hand gestures. “Remember her description of your time together and how you didn’t recognise yourself in it? That’s because she was talking about me.
“But she knew about me having two hearts and regenerating.”
“She also knows our name, don’t forget that. Obviously to ensure the timeline, I’ll have to embellish a little, but judging by the condition of River’s diary, we’ll have a lot of opportunities to talk to each other.” The other Doctor looked around the console room feeling content for the first time in years. “I’m going to head off out into the universe, in this TARDIS, to find Professor Song and have that predestined relationship that you found so unappealing.”
“I never said…”
“You didn’t have to! It’s all in here.” he tapped the side of his head. “But three years stuck in the one spot, taking part in the daily grind, changes your perspective. The idea of searching for her and travelling with someone who possesses her sense of adventure? Let’s just say it kept me going long after my relationship with Rose fizzled out.”
“Wait… you’re saying you killed me so we wouldn’t look alike anymore?” the new Doctor snapped. “You couldn’t have done something a little less drastic, like grow a beard?”
“The plan had been to do what I did all those centuries ago. Just steal the TARDIS and run away from everyone. I’d finally get to live out my life doing the thing I loved. But then Martha told me about what you did to Donna and I couldn’t stop thinking about what you did to Rose and me… Because it’s all about you, isn’t it? You make decisions regardless of how it affects anyone but you and everyone else suffers as a result.”
“And I needed to be punished is that it? Give you your pound of flesh?”
“I didn’t kill you for revenge, or fun, for that matter. I came to the conclusion that I needed the insurance because I know what I’m like, which means I know what you’re like. You’re incorrigible and you’d find some way of stopping me and I couldn’t trust you to not dump me in the nearest parallel universe again.”
“I’m sorry.” the new Doctor said with genuine regret. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“Well you know what thought did!” the other Doctor muttered as he stood up. “Anyway, I’m not getting any younger and time’s a wastin’. You’re still going through the regeneration process and you need to rest. There’s little chance of that happening with you tied up in here, so…” he took the injector from his waistband and before his restrained counterpart could protest, he shot it into his leg.