Fic: Girl In The Mirror ‘Verse-Chapter 1: Everything Old Is New Again
Title: Girl In The Mirror 'Verse Chapter 1: Everything old is new again
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Twelve, Mickey
Rating: PG
Excerpt: His hearts pounded in his chest, begging for some semblance of normalcy-a chance at reconnection with a solid ground, a known entity, something real in his nightmarish trip through the looking glass…
Word count: 2,210
Disclaimer: until Jossed, Twelve is mine-but of course based entirely on stuff that ain’t mine… All hail Auntie Beeb!
A/N: The first chapter of my own series, Twelfth Doctor ‘Verse
TAKE NOTE: I also DO NOT give anyone permission to post this in whole or in parts anywhere else! To do so would be very dishonest and terminally uncool and your actions would kill kittens, make puppy dogs cry and send the Reapers to eat your thieving flesh...
Read the Prologue here
After Nine-hundred years he was still the same man, sod everything else.
The Doctor tore open the ancient blue doors that creaked on their hinges and they felt like dried matzoh. New fingers. New feelings. Everything new. Everything completely different, and everything totally buggered. Rushing through the square, he tried to put as much distance between him and his thoughts as possible. Hardly anyone was about in the early morning, which was just as well, for the torrent of thoughts and emotions that ran through him were difficult to contain.
Something was very not right.
The TARDIS had made suggestions about wardrobe-pulling out various bits and bobs-but nothing had felt right. Nothing was right anymore. Everything hung awkwardly and felt wrong. In the end, what was chosen was chosen for comfort and familiarity: Old cuffed tweed trousers that had last been seen defeating parasitic minotaurs, a plain burgundy v-necked jumper that had seen the end of the world, a pair of well-worn red trainers and a very dependable and much loved, long, brown coat with impossibly large pockets. The TARDIS herself had fetched it from storage and conveyed it down to the console room like a basketball jersey brought down from it’s position of honour in the rafters.
What had once been retired was pressed back into service.
His feet knew the way up the cold cement stairs. He took them two at a time. His hearts pounded in his chest, begging for some semblance of normalcy-a chance at reconnection on solid ground, a known entity, something real in his nightmarish trip through the looking glass…
Throwing himself into the fire door, he was already in the hallway.
Without thinking he’d set coordinates and spun dials. On autopilot, he set the TARDIS’ controls for his maiden-his first voyage in this incarnation…
Hands found the friendly comfort of the smooth grip of the sonic, its busy buzzing yet another happy, reassuring noise, the green light a sentinel, like Tinkerbell-Whatever. That thought was bound to have a point. Still, he gritted his teeth and jammed it further into the lock-as if sheer will alone would have been enough to turn the tumblers and not sonic resonance-until the lock on the yellow door snicked open, allowing him access.
I cannot be barred from here.
The loose kickboard on the door swept over the carpet with a nearly silent whoosh and he was inside.
Inside, and back in time.
The action of opening the front door kicked up dormant dust particles, their dancing caught in the sunlight streaming in from the gauzy curtained windows. It came as no surprise that everything was exactly as it had been left. The gaudy, magenta textured wallpaper in the hallway was flanked by bedrooms on each side, and led into the lounge and beyond that, the kitchen. Everything was still there, nothing had been changed: Pictures hung on walls, the telly sat mute-the silent guardian of the house-couches and other seating begged to be utilized, tables held prized items off the ground and out of harm’s way, plates were stacked in the cupboard waiting to be eaten off of and closets housed hard-earned wardrobes that smelled beguilingly of their former owners. It looked as if it were waiting, simply on hold. Even the kettle was set on the stove, waiting for teatime, waiting to be useful. He inhaled the harsh sting of familiarity, for even after all this time the place still smelled of old carpet, lemon hand soap and shepherd’s pie.
The very flat breathed with sorrow from disuse.
But it was as if its inhabitants were away on holiday and would come though the door at any moment, and bags in hand, the flat would ring with life and laughter once again.
Except it wouldn’t. There was no holiday. The Tylers were never coming back.
He staggered through the flat like a living ghost, haunted by the memories of another life-Kodachrome memories that shone out from their frames on the wall and from the bookshelves and in the nooks-luridly mocking him. And where there were no pictures there were still living monuments that laughed in his ears: The hallway that had borne the brunt of a killer Christmas tree; the bed he had slumbered in with regeneration sickness; the spot outside the kitchen where he had parked the TARDIS after coming home from Pete’s World the first time; the chair he’d sat in while watching the first televised alien crash landing in Earth’s recorded history. Even the couch reveled in sardonic glee, projecting its memories of him holding Rose fast asleep on his chest as they watched Forbidden Planet on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
The very furnishings conspired against him to unravel his wits.
Not that he had far to go in his current state…
He pitched forward, his head a riot of memories, voices and emotions. Snatching up a frame, he stared at the pink and yellow girl who grinned at him from inside. A wretched sob wrung out of him unbidden and shattered the silence of the incongruently cheery room, it’s very timbre jangling his already frayed nerves.
These were strong feelings. They were old feelings. They belonged to somebody else, not to him. Not anymore. This was another man’s grief. But still, here they were again.
Why was he here again?
It was driving him mad.
He flipped the frame over and wrenched open the back. Pulling the photo free, his thumb caressed the image of Rose’s face until his vision blurred. His head continued to ache.
He’d kept this flat as it was since the day they disappeared. He’d paid enough to keep it unmolested and in quiet stasis for years. Whether it was his own private museum or his own private torture chamber didn’t matter. His Tenth self had come back several times, sometimes just to sit and grieve, other times to greedily breathe in her strawberry apple-grassy scent off the clothes that still hung in the closets, or lay on her bed and pretend she was just in the next room, arguing with her mum or on the phone to Shareen.
But she’d never come back. Not after the last time.
She didn’t need him anymore.
With a spark of rage that could only be directed at himself, he flipped the frame over deftly in his hand-itching to propel it into the gaping black maw of the irritatingly tranquil telly-when something else caught his eye.
It was that strange woman’s face…
And then his spell of denial was broken.
For reflected back to the Doctor in the blackness of the television, in every polished surface, in all the glass, in every shining picture frame and in all of the mirrors was the horrible reality that he’d tried to get away from since his regeneration: Those soft brown eyes, curly brown hair and delicate features had mocked him in every reflection and was the only real spectre haunting him now. And it was also very possibly the reason for this headache that pounded behind the eyes.
Her new eyes...
The fantasy, the memory, an attempt at normalcy, a shrine of absolution, or a personal Fortress of Solitude-whatever the Doctor had wanted this to be-shattered at the feet around him.
No. Around her…
Because the simple, horrible, frightening fear was that this regeneration hadn’t gone quite right. This was more than just a gender change-although that was still quite a shock-and it was way more that just the usual temporary amnesia, brief psychotic reaction, annoying cravings or regeneration sickness.
Even then, even if I change, it feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away. And I’m dead…
Except there was no new man-it was so much more than that. Perhaps much, much more. The Doctor couldn’t be sure yet, but she could feel ALL OF THEM behind her eyes, vying for control. And having come to this place, the grief of her Tenth self had been reawakened.
With mutinous hands, the Doctor dropped her would-be projectile and slumped onto the floor between the couch and the coffee table, her head in her hands, clutching the picture to her chest and sobbed at a loss greater than her hearts could bear. Unbearable sadness, rage, confusion and a host of other emotions all bubbled up to the surface. For once the Doctor’s gifts of repression and inscrutability were completely overwhelmed. She was bombarded.
Her feelings had the strength of eleven men.
She had been looking for comfort and reassurance when she instinctively had set the TARDIS down in the Powell Estates, and now she felt more lost and alone than any miserably grey day on Dårlig Ulv Stranden or snowy New Years Eve in 2005.
Mars couldn’t even beat this, but it might come close.
She looked down at the picture again and wryly congratulated herself for having the forethought to give Rose up that final time. Although, there was a part of her that wondered if Rose had stayed, would this regeneration have ever made this change? And if so would Rose have accepted this change? Would forever still have applied? Could her unconditional love and fierce belief in him have accepted even this?
Even after he was a she?
The Doctor shook her head. Thankfully, she would never have to put that to the ultimate test. And the woman in the picture wasn’t sharing her secrets.
Using the sleeve of her jumper, the Doctor wiped the tears from her face and brought herself once again to a standing position. Concealing her prize in her breast pocket, she looked down and wondered again at her wardrobe choices. The thought to search Rose’s closet for an acceptable item of clothing as replacement had not yet begun to form when the door to the flat violently crashed open.
She’d blearily gotten her sonic to her hand and raised it in defense when she saw a very familiar face staring her down the barrel of a gun.
“Mister Mickety Mick Mickey!” Shouted the Doctor, gleefully-despite her killer headache.
“Can it, freak!” he hollered back. “How did you get in here?!”
“Oh, you know the drill, old boy: Front door. Sonic. In like Flynn!” She waggled her eyebrows at him through the increasing pain and waved the sonic around.
“What the hell is that?” demanded Mickey.
“It’s sonic.”
“Yeah, right and I’m President Obama!”
“Well, Bob’s your uncle, then!” She laughed, expecting a hug that did not follow.
Mickey wasn’t giving in and the Doctor couldn’t understand it. Mickey continued to yell at her: “Species and galactic coordinates… NOW!”
She was aghast. “Mickey! It’s me! The Doctor! You remember, don’t you? Blimey, I’ve been gone awhile, but it hasn’t been that long. A few years is all… Remember? Daleks? Cybermen? A great big parallel world? Gingerbread houses? All the stars were going out the last time I saw you! Rose came back and we-Rose came back-and then we-we had to…” The Doctor lost her steam. “Rose had to go again,” she said in a very small voice.
“Listen, you’d better feel lucky that I’ve found you, cos I don’t think that if he’d found you you’d be gettin’ off so easily.”
“No! But Mickey-it is me! I am the Doctor! You’re working for Torchwood now. I know! Mickey the Idiot, Defending the Earth! Brilliant!”
Mickey snorted. “Go tell it, mate. Like I said, you picked the wrong house to mess with.”
“Mickey it’s me, the Doctor. Listen, I know I look different. I’ve regenerated…”
Mickey slowly lowered the gun. He was curious. After all, he’d learned anything was possible when the Doctor was involved. He cocked his head at her suspiciously. “So. You want me to believe that you’re female now?”
The Doctor pulled a face. “Yeah, I know, tell me about it. But I am. It finally happened. Look, it’s not like I get a choice in the matter. It’s not like I can order up what I want next: ‘I’ll have a rakishly thin frame and boyish good looks again, please-oh and don’t forget to give me some really brilliant hair…’ It’s not like I get a say! Oh, hey-how’s Marth-aaah. Ah, aaaaahh!” Clutching her skull and shrieking in agony, she pitched towards Mickey, scrabbling at his leg. “Mickey!!” she gasped, “Something’s not right! My head!!” The pain-a searing scythe-had slashed from eye socket around to the base of her skull, cleaving her brain. As tunnel vision popped and fizzed her eyesight and unconsciousness descended, she managed to wheeze out, “Torchwood! Martha… Help me!”
She passed out at his feet with a thud, exhaling a thin puff of glittery, golden smoke.
Mickey clocked it instantly for what it was: Regeneration energy.
He gasped and quickly checked the stranger’s vitals. After ascertaining she was still ok, he hastily unhooked his walkie talkie from its holster.
“Base, this is Smith,” he barked into the walkie talkie. “I think I have a Code Nine. I repeat: A Code NINE. He may have regenerated again. Prepare the Bioscan, and call Doctor Smith… she’ll want to see this for herself.”
Hoisting the Doctor into a fireman’s hold, Mickey quickly carried the incapacitated Doctor out of the Tyler flat.
To be continued in Chapter 2: Identity Crisis
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Twelve, Mickey
Rating: PG
Excerpt: His hearts pounded in his chest, begging for some semblance of normalcy-a chance at reconnection with a solid ground, a known entity, something real in his nightmarish trip through the looking glass…
Word count: 2,210
Disclaimer: until Jossed, Twelve is mine-but of course based entirely on stuff that ain’t mine… All hail Auntie Beeb!
A/N: The first chapter of my own series, Twelfth Doctor ‘Verse
TAKE NOTE: I also DO NOT give anyone permission to post this in whole or in parts anywhere else! To do so would be very dishonest and terminally uncool and your actions would kill kittens, make puppy dogs cry and send the Reapers to eat your thieving flesh...
Read the Prologue here
After Nine-hundred years he was still the same man, sod everything else.
The Doctor tore open the ancient blue doors that creaked on their hinges and they felt like dried matzoh. New fingers. New feelings. Everything new. Everything completely different, and everything totally buggered. Rushing through the square, he tried to put as much distance between him and his thoughts as possible. Hardly anyone was about in the early morning, which was just as well, for the torrent of thoughts and emotions that ran through him were difficult to contain.
Something was very not right.
The TARDIS had made suggestions about wardrobe-pulling out various bits and bobs-but nothing had felt right. Nothing was right anymore. Everything hung awkwardly and felt wrong. In the end, what was chosen was chosen for comfort and familiarity: Old cuffed tweed trousers that had last been seen defeating parasitic minotaurs, a plain burgundy v-necked jumper that had seen the end of the world, a pair of well-worn red trainers and a very dependable and much loved, long, brown coat with impossibly large pockets. The TARDIS herself had fetched it from storage and conveyed it down to the console room like a basketball jersey brought down from it’s position of honour in the rafters.
What had once been retired was pressed back into service.
His feet knew the way up the cold cement stairs. He took them two at a time. His hearts pounded in his chest, begging for some semblance of normalcy-a chance at reconnection on solid ground, a known entity, something real in his nightmarish trip through the looking glass…
Throwing himself into the fire door, he was already in the hallway.
Without thinking he’d set coordinates and spun dials. On autopilot, he set the TARDIS’ controls for his maiden-his first voyage in this incarnation…
Hands found the friendly comfort of the smooth grip of the sonic, its busy buzzing yet another happy, reassuring noise, the green light a sentinel, like Tinkerbell-Whatever. That thought was bound to have a point. Still, he gritted his teeth and jammed it further into the lock-as if sheer will alone would have been enough to turn the tumblers and not sonic resonance-until the lock on the yellow door snicked open, allowing him access.
I cannot be barred from here.
The loose kickboard on the door swept over the carpet with a nearly silent whoosh and he was inside.
Inside, and back in time.
The action of opening the front door kicked up dormant dust particles, their dancing caught in the sunlight streaming in from the gauzy curtained windows. It came as no surprise that everything was exactly as it had been left. The gaudy, magenta textured wallpaper in the hallway was flanked by bedrooms on each side, and led into the lounge and beyond that, the kitchen. Everything was still there, nothing had been changed: Pictures hung on walls, the telly sat mute-the silent guardian of the house-couches and other seating begged to be utilized, tables held prized items off the ground and out of harm’s way, plates were stacked in the cupboard waiting to be eaten off of and closets housed hard-earned wardrobes that smelled beguilingly of their former owners. It looked as if it were waiting, simply on hold. Even the kettle was set on the stove, waiting for teatime, waiting to be useful. He inhaled the harsh sting of familiarity, for even after all this time the place still smelled of old carpet, lemon hand soap and shepherd’s pie.
The very flat breathed with sorrow from disuse.
But it was as if its inhabitants were away on holiday and would come though the door at any moment, and bags in hand, the flat would ring with life and laughter once again.
Except it wouldn’t. There was no holiday. The Tylers were never coming back.
He staggered through the flat like a living ghost, haunted by the memories of another life-Kodachrome memories that shone out from their frames on the wall and from the bookshelves and in the nooks-luridly mocking him. And where there were no pictures there were still living monuments that laughed in his ears: The hallway that had borne the brunt of a killer Christmas tree; the bed he had slumbered in with regeneration sickness; the spot outside the kitchen where he had parked the TARDIS after coming home from Pete’s World the first time; the chair he’d sat in while watching the first televised alien crash landing in Earth’s recorded history. Even the couch reveled in sardonic glee, projecting its memories of him holding Rose fast asleep on his chest as they watched Forbidden Planet on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
The very furnishings conspired against him to unravel his wits.
Not that he had far to go in his current state…
He pitched forward, his head a riot of memories, voices and emotions. Snatching up a frame, he stared at the pink and yellow girl who grinned at him from inside. A wretched sob wrung out of him unbidden and shattered the silence of the incongruently cheery room, it’s very timbre jangling his already frayed nerves.
These were strong feelings. They were old feelings. They belonged to somebody else, not to him. Not anymore. This was another man’s grief. But still, here they were again.
Why was he here again?
It was driving him mad.
He flipped the frame over and wrenched open the back. Pulling the photo free, his thumb caressed the image of Rose’s face until his vision blurred. His head continued to ache.
He’d kept this flat as it was since the day they disappeared. He’d paid enough to keep it unmolested and in quiet stasis for years. Whether it was his own private museum or his own private torture chamber didn’t matter. His Tenth self had come back several times, sometimes just to sit and grieve, other times to greedily breathe in her strawberry apple-grassy scent off the clothes that still hung in the closets, or lay on her bed and pretend she was just in the next room, arguing with her mum or on the phone to Shareen.
But she’d never come back. Not after the last time.
She didn’t need him anymore.
With a spark of rage that could only be directed at himself, he flipped the frame over deftly in his hand-itching to propel it into the gaping black maw of the irritatingly tranquil telly-when something else caught his eye.
It was that strange woman’s face…
And then his spell of denial was broken.
For reflected back to the Doctor in the blackness of the television, in every polished surface, in all the glass, in every shining picture frame and in all of the mirrors was the horrible reality that he’d tried to get away from since his regeneration: Those soft brown eyes, curly brown hair and delicate features had mocked him in every reflection and was the only real spectre haunting him now. And it was also very possibly the reason for this headache that pounded behind the eyes.
Her new eyes...
The fantasy, the memory, an attempt at normalcy, a shrine of absolution, or a personal Fortress of Solitude-whatever the Doctor had wanted this to be-shattered at the feet around him.
No. Around her…
Because the simple, horrible, frightening fear was that this regeneration hadn’t gone quite right. This was more than just a gender change-although that was still quite a shock-and it was way more that just the usual temporary amnesia, brief psychotic reaction, annoying cravings or regeneration sickness.
Even then, even if I change, it feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away. And I’m dead…
Except there was no new man-it was so much more than that. Perhaps much, much more. The Doctor couldn’t be sure yet, but she could feel ALL OF THEM behind her eyes, vying for control. And having come to this place, the grief of her Tenth self had been reawakened.
With mutinous hands, the Doctor dropped her would-be projectile and slumped onto the floor between the couch and the coffee table, her head in her hands, clutching the picture to her chest and sobbed at a loss greater than her hearts could bear. Unbearable sadness, rage, confusion and a host of other emotions all bubbled up to the surface. For once the Doctor’s gifts of repression and inscrutability were completely overwhelmed. She was bombarded.
Her feelings had the strength of eleven men.
She had been looking for comfort and reassurance when she instinctively had set the TARDIS down in the Powell Estates, and now she felt more lost and alone than any miserably grey day on Dårlig Ulv Stranden or snowy New Years Eve in 2005.
Mars couldn’t even beat this, but it might come close.
She looked down at the picture again and wryly congratulated herself for having the forethought to give Rose up that final time. Although, there was a part of her that wondered if Rose had stayed, would this regeneration have ever made this change? And if so would Rose have accepted this change? Would forever still have applied? Could her unconditional love and fierce belief in him have accepted even this?
Even after he was a she?
The Doctor shook her head. Thankfully, she would never have to put that to the ultimate test. And the woman in the picture wasn’t sharing her secrets.
Using the sleeve of her jumper, the Doctor wiped the tears from her face and brought herself once again to a standing position. Concealing her prize in her breast pocket, she looked down and wondered again at her wardrobe choices. The thought to search Rose’s closet for an acceptable item of clothing as replacement had not yet begun to form when the door to the flat violently crashed open.
She’d blearily gotten her sonic to her hand and raised it in defense when she saw a very familiar face staring her down the barrel of a gun.
“Mister Mickety Mick Mickey!” Shouted the Doctor, gleefully-despite her killer headache.
“Can it, freak!” he hollered back. “How did you get in here?!”
“Oh, you know the drill, old boy: Front door. Sonic. In like Flynn!” She waggled her eyebrows at him through the increasing pain and waved the sonic around.
“What the hell is that?” demanded Mickey.
“It’s sonic.”
“Yeah, right and I’m President Obama!”
“Well, Bob’s your uncle, then!” She laughed, expecting a hug that did not follow.
Mickey wasn’t giving in and the Doctor couldn’t understand it. Mickey continued to yell at her: “Species and galactic coordinates… NOW!”
She was aghast. “Mickey! It’s me! The Doctor! You remember, don’t you? Blimey, I’ve been gone awhile, but it hasn’t been that long. A few years is all… Remember? Daleks? Cybermen? A great big parallel world? Gingerbread houses? All the stars were going out the last time I saw you! Rose came back and we-Rose came back-and then we-we had to…” The Doctor lost her steam. “Rose had to go again,” she said in a very small voice.
“Listen, you’d better feel lucky that I’ve found you, cos I don’t think that if he’d found you you’d be gettin’ off so easily.”
“No! But Mickey-it is me! I am the Doctor! You’re working for Torchwood now. I know! Mickey the Idiot, Defending the Earth! Brilliant!”
Mickey snorted. “Go tell it, mate. Like I said, you picked the wrong house to mess with.”
“Mickey it’s me, the Doctor. Listen, I know I look different. I’ve regenerated…”
Mickey slowly lowered the gun. He was curious. After all, he’d learned anything was possible when the Doctor was involved. He cocked his head at her suspiciously. “So. You want me to believe that you’re female now?”
The Doctor pulled a face. “Yeah, I know, tell me about it. But I am. It finally happened. Look, it’s not like I get a choice in the matter. It’s not like I can order up what I want next: ‘I’ll have a rakishly thin frame and boyish good looks again, please-oh and don’t forget to give me some really brilliant hair…’ It’s not like I get a say! Oh, hey-how’s Marth-aaah. Ah, aaaaahh!” Clutching her skull and shrieking in agony, she pitched towards Mickey, scrabbling at his leg. “Mickey!!” she gasped, “Something’s not right! My head!!” The pain-a searing scythe-had slashed from eye socket around to the base of her skull, cleaving her brain. As tunnel vision popped and fizzed her eyesight and unconsciousness descended, she managed to wheeze out, “Torchwood! Martha… Help me!”
She passed out at his feet with a thud, exhaling a thin puff of glittery, golden smoke.
Mickey clocked it instantly for what it was: Regeneration energy.
He gasped and quickly checked the stranger’s vitals. After ascertaining she was still ok, he hastily unhooked his walkie talkie from its holster.
“Base, this is Smith,” he barked into the walkie talkie. “I think I have a Code Nine. I repeat: A Code NINE. He may have regenerated again. Prepare the Bioscan, and call Doctor Smith… she’ll want to see this for herself.”
Hoisting the Doctor into a fireman’s hold, Mickey quickly carried the incapacitated Doctor out of the Tyler flat.
To be continued in Chapter 2: Identity Crisis