Fic - Which Doctor? - 1/10 - Nine/Rose - Ten/Rose - T

[avoria]

Date Published: 6th May, 2006
Title: Which Doctor?
Rating: T
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler
Genre: Angst, Romance, AU
Word Count: Total, 46,916; This part, 1727.
Summary: The Doctor has just regenerated. He's different, exciting, new. Rose isn't sure if she likes him, or if all she wants is her old Doctor back. So when he turns up at the door of the TARDIS what is she supposed to think?
Disclaimer: The names, images and logos identifying the BBC and their products and services are subject to copyright, design rights and trade marks of the BBC. Used without permission for non-profit, non-commercial personal use.
Fic Type: Multi-Chaptered. Complete.
Archived: Fanfiction.net.
Author's Note: The first multi-parter Who story I did. Not the best, but not too bad either. Written before the CiN special... and without a beta. Oh, for those days xD
Excerpt: He laughed at her simplicity. He supposed it must have been difficult to fathom, him in a new body. He was having trouble getting used to it himself. But then again, he always did.

Chapter I - A New Beginning
“Where was I? Oh yes. Barcelona!”

His big, cheesy grin spread right across the breadth of his face and didn’t recede. His eyes were alive and bright with a new life, a new sparkle, and though he was obviously well aware of whom he was talking to, Rose hadn’t he faintest idea who he was. Her lips were pursed together and her eyes were wide. Fear flickered apprehensively behind them, but it was mixed with confusion.

“Who... who are you?” she asked timidly, her body tense and very tightly together. She didn’t dare to move. He looked different. Whoever ‘he’ was; black hair in a tangled mess, sticking up from his head; bright eyes; a wide smile; a faint trace of stubble. And he was tall.

He looked at her, frowning, as if she’s just asked what two plus two equalled.

“I’m the Doctor,” he said simply. Then he grinned again, the big grin, where every single one of his white teeth shone out at her. “C’mon Rose, you can’t tell me you don’t recognise me. You can do better than that!”

“But you’re not... I mean... you look...”

He chuckled, a light, boyish chuckle; this certainly wasn’t the man, the Doctor, Rose was used to.

“That’s one of the things about regenerating,” he said, almost smiling. “I can look like anyone. Anything. You’re lucky I didn’t end up with four arms and six eyes. Not,” he added hastily, “that that’s ever happened to me before.”

His voice was light and soft, like low-fat creamy butter. He had a voice that you could tell just by listening to it was a charmer, though his accent was hard to place. Definitely English, but Rose had heard nothing quite like it before. It was like a mixture of regions.

“Where’s the Doctor?” she asked, eyeing him suspiciously, though she was still wary.

“I told you,” he replied. He looked hurt at her disbelief. “I am the Doctor.”

“You don’t look like him.”

He laughed at her simplicity. He supposed it must have been difficult to fathom, him in a new body. He was having trouble getting used to it himself. But then again, he always did.

He shook his head in an amused way, but didn’t answer her.

The Doctor moved around the TARDIS feeling the levers and bolts with his hands, gliding carefully over them as if this were the first time he had seen it. He was almost caressing it, and this made Rose smile. She was watching him carefully, not quite sure what to think about him. Was this really the Doctor? He certainly seemed to have that certain... essence... about him. A complete disregard for the rules, perhaps.

She was tired and worn out - from the time vortex thingy, she supposed - and was still quite confused. She couldn’t really remember much of what had happened. It was all such a haze. All she could remember, rather than events, were emotions. Overwhelming feelings and the sudden desire to end it all...

“Do you want to go home?”

The Doctor’s voice had invaded her thoughts and she looked at him. His eyes and face were serious, his smile long gone. Rose frowned.

“I dunno,” she shrugged honestly. “You’re not who I thought you were.”

The Doctor darted quickly around the controls towards her. He looked as if he were about to protest to what she’d said, but then seemed to change his mind.

“I am somewhere,” he offered, as if this were an appropriate answer. “You got to know a part of me and now that part’s gone. I may look different, act different and, well, be different, I suppose. But I’m still the Doctor.”

“Whatever that means.”

He looked at her softly.

“What if I took you back to London?” he asked, turning away from her back towards the controls. “Your London? Then you could make your decision about what you want to do.”

“What if I’ve already made it?”

He looked up. “Have you?”

Rose shrugged.

“I just wish things could go back to the way they were. Less complicated.”

“You don’t like the new me?”

“Well...” she avoided his eyes. “The way you were talking before you... changed. I thought you were gonna die. I thought that was it. The end. And now... there’s this.”

The Doctor had the nerve to grin, and Rose didn’t like it.

“You know me. I love - or loved - a bit of drama. You should have seen the look on your face!”

“It wasn’t funny!” Rose snapped. “That’s twice I almost lost you. In the same day, at least.” Her eyes were beginning to tear up, and the Doctor suddenly recognised at once that this was all too much for her. She wasn’t ready for the change. She had known him, who he was before and - he suspected - loved him for it. At least in some way. Now all that was taken away from her. She wasn’t ready for this, any of it. And he knew he had to make the decision about her return to London even if she couldn’t.

“And I don’t know you,” Rose was saying now. “Not anymore. I stood and watched you change. Regenerate. Whatever. But what am I s’posed to do now? Pretend I don’t see the change? ‘Cause I do, Doctor, and I don’t think I like it.”

The Doctor let out a sigh that took his broad shoulders down with it. He had suspected something like this, he remembered now.

“You’re right,” he conceded eventually, looking her directly in the eye. “I have changed. But I’m still alive. You have to get to know me again, okay, I admit. But so do I.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m different now. I may remember things, yes, like who I am and what I’m supposed to do and that I help people. But who do I help now? How do I help them? I don’t know how I’m supposed to do it any more than you do. Everything inside me’s changed and it’s a bit like test-driving a car to find out how it all works. Only, this car drives itself. And I don’t know where it’s going.”

“You’re not making sense,” Rose said bluntly. He laughed again, at himself this time. Despite herself, Rose quite liked his laugh. It was real and heart-felt.

“I guess I’m not good with words anymore,” he reasoned, smiling.

“Like you were before?” Rose teased.

“Oi, watch it.” But he was still smiling. “But I’m clever, though. Two-thousand-and-sixty-one times one-hundred-and-forty-seven?”

“Uh...” Rose fumbled, not unjustly.

“Three-hundred-and-two-thousand-nine-hundred-and-sixty-seven,” he said, with a definite air of triumph. “See? Clever!”

“There’s more to life than numbers, Doctor,” Rose said as he began to loose interest and wandered back to the controls of the TARDIS again. He reached down and began to fiddle with a couple of levers, and thus didn’t look up when he answered.

“Actually, not much more. The Universe is based on thousands and thousands of numbers and calculations. One big, massive, unbreakable, unsolvable code.” He paused momentarily. Then he looked up. “Hey, aren’t I a fountain of knowledge? Wonder what I look like, though.”

This Doctor was quirky, Rose thought. Unpredictable. And easily bored. Already he was wandering away into the back of the TARDIS to, as it turned out, look for a mirror. He returned, holding one of Rose’s compacts in his hand and starting to open it.

“Hey!” she protested. He looked up, only a little guilt written on his face. Rose had the uneasy feeling that had she been anyone else, he wouldn’t have even bothered with that.

“Sorry,” he said, though he did not put the mirror down. “I guess I’m rude, too.”

“Evidently,” Rose said bitterly. She began walking over to him to reclaim the mirror - it was, after all, a matter of principle. But several things happened at once to stop her from doing so. First, the Doctor lurched forward, as if the TARDIS had just undergone a massive earthquake. He collapsed to the floor on all fours, panting, and concentrating very hard on not passing out. His stomach felt as though it wanted to explode. Rose, forgetting all about the mirror, cried out in shock.

“I’m - okay - ” he panted, though his voice was weak. “I’m - still - regenerating.”

“What does that mean?” Rose asked worriedly, crouching next to him. He couldn’t even look up at her.

“I’m weakening.” He began to stand up, helped by Rose. “Until I rest. It can’t complete unless I let it.”

The second thing that happened was that the door of the TARDIS crashed open, very loudly. The enormous sound startled Rose, and she jumped again. But she was more surprised at who stood in the doorway, his face as dark and black as thunder. His eyes were both cold and alive with - was that... hate? He was panting hard, as if he’d been running, and both his arms were out, on each side of the frame. She gasped and let go of the Doctor, who stumbled a little. She couldn’t take her eyes off the all-too-familiar man in the doorframe. It wasn’t possible. It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t be him.

“Rose,” said the Ninth Doctor slowly. “Get away from him. He isn’t the Doctor.”

End this Part
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