FIC: Just Because I'm Not Ginger?! (1/1)
Title: Just Because I'm Not Ginger?!
Series: It was originally written for “There's The Door!”, but it's now a stand-alone.
Rating: T (lots of yelling - and I do mean a lot)
Author: tkel_paris
Summary: Handy hits on a possible reason the Doctor doesn't see him as his son and is so keen to dump him on Rose.
Disclaimer: I think I've established well enough that I don't agree with the results of New Who, which belong to RTD and the Moff. Okay?
Dedication: Pretty sure this one, too, can be “blamed” on tardis_mole, who seems to want the blame. ;)
Author's Note: Handy had to be PO'd over this detail, don't you think? Anyway, I was struggling to figure out a way to end this that was different than anything else I'd done, but I think this story ended up inspiring Moley to write several different stories. So... I offer this one up as the prequel to “Donna's Baby”. Because it explains what happened before. :D
Just Because I'm Not Ginger?!?!
Started May 31, 2012
Finished March 20, 2015
The Duplicate Doctor watched the people around him. It was all he was allowed to do - the Doctor wouldn't let him fly the TARDIS. Jealous git.
Jackie was restless, and he could hear her thoughts of her son and husband floating in her mind. He smiled. She had come so far. Of course, she had been underestimated and disrespected. Last time he had seen her, technically, she had been a widow who wanted to be loved again, not treated like a passed-it thing because of her age. She was still owed an apology.
He stopped to consider how easily he picked up on those thoughts without effort. That he could hear so easily suggested that he might be a stronger telepath than his father. Or else the Human traits meant he could slip in and out more smoothly. Or something still different he was yet to think of. Didn't matter - he'd enjoy the journey of discovery.
Rose...she just followed the Doctor around, talking about how much she went through to find him again and to make the Cannon work. She wasn't seeing the tension in his face and body, the stiffness over having to tell her that she wasn't coming back to her original universe. Would he give the true reason - that she was finally being punished for genocide and all the harm she caused the TARDIS and the Doctor?
The Duplicate doubted it. His father had a habit of failing to tell companions the truth when push came to shove. And they had a habit of letting him get away with it - until Donna.
Speaking of Donna... his mother... she was going to need help. He sensed that she would be in danger if he wasn't willing to risk dying to save her mind and life. She was stable for the moment, but it wouldn't last. He picked up on her excitement to finally feel as brilliant as he and his father had always told her she was, and her plans for fixing the TARDIS. Ooh, some of them were positively genius! No wonder the Doctor never thought of them - they did require that little bit of Human.
But worst of all was when his father's thoughts hit him. The Doctor was angry about the genocide, even though he grimly knew there was likely no other choice - especially with the time constraints imposed by the Supreme Dalek's actions. But what was he planning-?
The connections started hitting him. They were going to Bad Wolf Bay once the Doctor had dropped off four of the companions. The Spaceman probably thought it would be three, but the Duplicate could tell Mickey was sick of the parallel world and would join the others. The Doctor wasn't talking much. Donna had grown quiet, unaware that she was being swallowed by the Doctor's mind. And the thoughts of his father finally sank fully into the Duplicate's mind. His eyes widened in horror.
“You're going to leave me with her!”
Rose's head whipped toward him faster than anyone's - including the Doctor's. “What?! Oh, you have a problem with Donna, too?”
Several exclamations popped out at once. All with the gist of what she could possibly mean by that.
“A problem with Donna?!” shouted the Duplicate.
Rose stepped back in shock at the flood of emotions. Anger and what she could recognize as protectiveness were at the forefront.
“You're the one with a problem, Rose Tyler! If Davros knew about your efforts to jump universes, did you never think that I - being born at the center of the convergence - would know more?! Especially about what you forced Donna to do in that parallel world? She may not remember anymore, but I remember that you caused her death!”
“She chose to jump in front of the lorry!”
The Doctor sucked in a sharp breath, eyes nearly bursting from his head. He was not prepared for the Duplicate's explosion, but no one was.
“Oh, don't play the innocent card, Miss Light Show! That Cannon, it got you exactly where you wanted to be. So why couldn't you drop Donna right by Sutton Road? That wasn't an accident, was it? You PLANNED it that way because you wanted her out of your way! You've been following them for months, so you had to have heard at least some of the times they were mistaken for a couple. Ooh, that must have grated, didn't it? The only time anyone thought that you and the Doctor might be a couple was before you even looked at him that way, and Jabe wasn't exactly the picture of someone who believed it, was she? No, she said it because she thought it was the polite assumption! If she'd had a clue about your real character she wouldn't have been surprised to learn that you murdered a TARDIS to be able to break into other universes, causing who knows how many deaths!”
“That's enough,” the Doctor interjected, but not with much force.
The Duplicate turned on him. “Oh, you're no innocent either, you great big Outer Space Dunce!”
The words were Donna's. The tone was Donna's. But the voice was his. It was disconcerting, and not just to him.
“I haven't learned yet how to partition off my memories, so I've got all of them running through my mind right now. Everything Rose did to Donna in that parallel world that wasn't necessary, and especially how she just walked away as Donna lay dying!”
“What else was I supposed to do?! If she didn't exist there wouldn't be a convergence and we wouldn't have nearly died!”
The Doctor's eyes flashed and he promptly spoke to prevent anyone else from doing so. “Donna just saved all of Creation, Rose.” His tone was flat, almost lethal. “And she's my best friend. No one insults her around me - she's had enough mud slung her way throughout her life!”
Martha had to put in her sixpence. “Well, good to know someone's earned that from you.”
The Doctor flinched at the acid tone. He tossed her an apologetic look. He probably deserved her venom.
The Duplicate stepped deliberately into Rose's line of sight. “I obviously didn't mean my mother, Rose. I meant you.”
Rose gasped in horror. “What?! What are you on about?! I'm staying with the Doctor!”
“No, you're not.” The Duplicate's eyes flashed with a mixture of Donna's anger and Nine's. He was sure he had a bit of the current Doctor's, too. But he didn't mind the previous Doctor working into his expression. Especially since Rose was startled at the sight of it. “Oh, did you forget about the version he was before you tore open his ship and forced him to give up a life to stop the Bad Wolf? That's just one reason that you have to return to Pete's World. Of course the timelines demand it! And when did you become able to read timelines? If you had, you'd know that Donna was vital to the multiverses' very existence!”
“Doctor!” She frantically grabbed him. “Stop him!”
He just looked at her, and gently pushed her away. “He's right. You have to go back.”
“After all I did?! Everything I went through to get to you?!”
“See, Dad?!” The Duplicate's words cut through everyone's minds, stopping all other speech. “She doesn't get it. That's why you won't bother to explain your real reasons for making her go back. But me? You're not even considering my rights or wishes. Why?! Just because I'm not ginger?!”
The Doctor paled. Donna's jaw dropped as her gaze bounced between the Doctor and the Duplicate.
He fingered his wilder yet softer locks. “If this had been like Mum's, would you even think of leaving me behind?!”
Mickey was the first Child of Time to find their voice. “You're going to leave your own son behind?! But if you're alone, you need him as much as he needs you, right? A kid doesn't do well when their parents leave them behind!”
The Doctor stilled. Mickey Smith would be offended on the Duplicate's behalf. He had been abandoned by his father as a baby and by his mother while still a young child. No wonder he felt the injustice.
Sarah Jane interjected, having her own reasons to be horrified. “I was abandoned as a baby. Until recently I wondered why, but I know now and I still agree with Mickey. In your son's case there is no justifiable reason to leave him behind. He's obviously a little boy in a grown man's body. How can you think of doing that to him? How can you even think of separating a mother from her infant?”
Jack nodded and put in his own sixpence. “Trust me, Doctor. Children hate it when their parents don't give them the love and attention they need. And I mean need, not what they think they want.”
“I agree,” said Jackie, her eyes silently reprimanding him about parental responsibility. “God knows I've made mistakes. But I learned from them. Going by without that earns you selfish brats of children who think they can treat you without respect.”
“That explains her reactions in the Crucible,” Martha muttered, her whole body showing how sick she now was over how the Doctor had talked about Rose.
Three different set of eyes fixed on the Doctor. One begged him to tell her that this was all a joke, that she wasn't going to be left behind. One both glared at him for a punishment considered unjustified and pleaded to stay with his family.
But the third? A ginger who figured out that she would be denied motherhood. Again.
Yep. The Doctor's plans had, once again, gone awry. And he wondered if this time he deserved it.
The Duplicate wasn't done. “Remember what I said about memories? I remember everything Rose did that you papered over because you considered her a Human child. You were a father. Was that how a parent handles a misbehaving child? Of course not! You were contemptuous of Jackie Tyler, but it wasn't because she slept around. No, you understood that better than you let on, knowing loneliness as well as you do. So why did you treat her so shabbily? It was because you couldn't grasp why anyone wouldn't discipline their child when they needed it. And yet what did you do when sixteen year-old Rose Tyler came along? Remember the day she saved her dad and caused a time paradox? You should've killed her for Contempt of Temporal Law, but you didn't. And remember all those times she didn't listen to you and she messed up? Including that one AND this one? She deserved an 'I told you so', but you never did. Remember when she flirted with Jack just because she wanted to make you jealous? That behaviour deserved to be dumped over, but you didn't. Her mother slapped you because you coaxed her underage child to run off with you. You should've dropped her like a hot cake, but you didn't. Now tell me, Dad: how does any of that mean you were in love with her? Love isn't about papering over someone's faults. It's about boundaries and giving set-downs when they're called for. Get a clue, Spaceman! Neither of you loved the other! You were using her as much as she was using you!”
“Take that back!” Rose screamed, lunging for one of the discarded Preachers.
But not everyone was too far focused on the train wreck before them to not react. Jack tackled her to the grating, all gentlemanly instincts tossed aside to protect his friends. He knocked the Preacher away, and Martha grabbed it for safeguarding.
They were expecting more screaming, but none came. Jack checked on Rose. “Oops. I knocked her out.”
Numbly, the Doctor nodded. “I suppose that's just as well. Check her pockets for anything TARDIS or travel related. Jackie, please help him. Martha, Mickey, Sarah Jane: be ready to return to your stations. Donna, take Rose's spot. And...” He paused and looked at his Duplicate. “What should we call you? You are part me and part Donna, but that doesn't mean you're not your own person in the making.”
The Duplicate finally gave a grateful smile. He knew from the turnaround alone, not counting what he could sense from the Doctor's thoughts, that he would face nothing worse than life imprisonment in the TARDIS. Maybe not even that given that his own actions might have never been necessary without Rose's interference. “Mum?”
Donna's answer came quickly, although her eyes watered. “Joshua.”
Her son's eyes watered with her. “Are you sure?”
“I can honour that memory, even if it was created by a computer.”
The Doctor gave her an empathetic look. “Your grief was always real.” He cleared his throat to prevent any questions. “Okay. Take what was Jack's place. We're going to bring Jackie home before I deal with the rest.”
Jackie sighed. “I'll have to call Pete.”
The Time Lord stilled and looked carefully at the woman who had deserved far better from him. “Will he also listen when I hand you something to attach to the Cannon to destroy it and all records of it?”
She nodded. “Give me some proof that none of this would've happened if Rose had adapted to the parallel world, and he'll hunt those spare reports down himself.”
“Right.” He returned to his station. “Stations, please.”
He focused on this task, sending Jackie home. He would have to drop Rose with the Shadow Proclamation, and decided he would do it while she was unconscious. Yet time it so she woke in time to hear her own sentence.
But then he had to deal with something Joshua might not yet have thought about. Could he save Donna, his wife now and the mother of his sole living child, from the meta-crisis? Of course he could. If Donna had shown him anything, it was that he could do anything.
And while he had a moment, he hugged his son and whispered the words he should have said earlier:
“Never mind that your hair is brown. You're ginger enough for me.”
Joshua sniffled and clutched his father. “How are you going to save my mom?” he whispered.
The Doctor sighed. “Honestly? No idea.”
THE END