Fic: In His Own Image [spoilers for The Doctor's Daughter]
Story: In His Own Image
Author: wmr wendymr
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Donna Noble, Jenny
Rated: PG
Spoilers: The Doctor's Daughter, other episodes from all seasons
Disclaimer: Some dialogue is directly from Stephen Greenhorn's script; all characters and general storyline belong to the BBC and the production team
Summary: She’s like him, a part of him, in a way no-one else has been for a very long time.
With very many thanks to dark_aegis for BRing at this late hour.
In His Own Image
Donna, I’ve been a father before.
The words spill out, and he wants them to. He wants her to understand, this human who won’t shut up, who won’t stop asking the questions he doesn’t want asked, who won’t stop judging him by such human standards. Dad-shock, indeed. As if.
Does she really think it’s as simple as that? That he’s some deadbeat dad living in fear of the Child Support Agency and attachment of earnings? But that’s her human perspective. It’s all she knows.
And so he tells her, not to shock, not to shut her up - as he did once with Rose - but because he thinks just maybe she might understand, given context. Because she’s understood so much else, made him see so much about himself that no-one else has managed to. Or maybe he just needs to say it, and there’s no-one else he can say it to.
He’s looking at Jenny, after all, so new, so young, so free from all the pain he’s lived through. Yes, fighting’s all she knows, but the indoctrination’s not deep. Can’t be, because she’s already changing, seeing things differently. There’s already excitement in her eyes at the idea of travelling, exploring, running, all the thrilling, brilliant things that lie ahead of her.
And, too, he suspects, at the idea of belonging, because any sense of belonging she felt with the humans here on Messaline’s already gone. She knows she’s not part of them. She doesn’t think like them, not any more. She’s not built like them, either. Two hearts. However it happened, however that extraction machine did it, she’s inherited his physiology. She’s like him, a part of him, in a way no-one else has been for a very long time.
She’s genetically a product of his body, his biological mass. She’s his daughter.
I lost all that a long time ago.
That’s just it. They’re all gone. Every last one, and he can’t, he just can’t.
That’s why he’s still talking. That’s why, even though he knows that at any other time he’d be changing the subject, running away, talking about anything other than this, the thing that’s in his head, taking over his brain, driving him mad, he’s still talking to Donna, telling her things he hasn’t told anyone before.
And anyway, if he’s talking to Donna he doesn’t have to talk to Jenny, not for a while. He doesn’t have to keep up the façade of the proud, protective dad, the man who’s going to take care of her because she’s his daughter.
So he lets down his guard, and he talks.
You talk all the time, but you don’t say anything.
So human, that. Talking. On and on, ad nauseam.
Oh, do you wanna talk about it? You know, bottling it up doesn’t help. It’s good to talk. All those human fallacies. Placebos.
Talking doesn’t help, at least not most of the time.
Of course he talks about stuff that matters - well, sometimes - but people don’t understand. How can they? How can a human, someone like Rose, like Martha, even like Jack - despite his hundred and fifty-odd years, he’s still a mere child in experience, and a human - understand what it’s like to be him?
Losing people over and over. Making decisions with terrible consequences, because it’s the only possible decision to make and he’s the only one who can make it. Wiping out his own people, destroying his planet, to save the universe.
He tells them bits and pieces, and he pretends that talking makes it better. That having someone to listen is a comfort. It’s a lie, of course, and that’s why he’s never told them more than scraps.
They can’t understand, and he won’t burden them with the knowledge.
Yet he’s talking now.
When I look at her now, I can see them. The hole they left, all the pain that filled it.
It’s always there, of course, the pain, the knowledge of what he’s lost, the grief. It’s not as raw as it was, but now this is ripping open the wound again. One of his kind besides him. Just one. And it hurts, because it’s one where there should be thousands. An entire species.
Like he told Rose, the space inside his head is silent now. There’s no-one to hear. There was, briefly, with the Master, when he wasn’t shielded by the Archangel Network and, for all the Master’s barbaric, murdering insanity, he couldn’t feel anything but relief that there was someone to connect with again.
That’s not there with Jenny, not yet. It might be, given time, given training. She’s got his genes, his heritage. She’ll be telepathic, once he’s taught her how to use the latent ability that’s there, inside her. It’s just like learning to speak. You can’t do it unless someone shows you how. If you’re brought up among non-speakers, you grow up mute.
The pain’s always there, but he pushes it aside. That’s why he keeps on running from place to place - it’s why he’s always run, though the War made it worse. If he keeps Jenny with him, there’ll be nowhere to run from the pain. Yet what else can he do?
Like he’s already told her, he can’t exactly leave her behind.
And, for her, he’ll pretend that he’s pleased, that he’s happy to have her with him. Because, for all her assertion that she’s an adult, she’s independent, she’s still just a child. Barely a day old, and it’s no more than a couple of hours since she started thinking for herself, letting go of the indoctrination she was born with. She’s happy. Thrilled at the prospect of exploring, discovering, seeing new places with those eyes that’ve never seen anything but underground tunnels. Learning new ideas, new thoughts with her brain that’s bursting with questions.
She’s just like him, really, isn’t she? Too much like him. He called her an echo, but she’s so much more than that. She was bred to be a soldier, though she doesn’t want to be one, not any more; he never wanted to be a soldier, yet that’s what he had to become.
They’re not different, not really. She’s... a chip off the old block, if he must put it that way.
He has to take her with him. But he won’t be her dad. He can’t. He just... can’t.
When they died, that part of me died with them.
He was a father once. Once. Not any more. A father and a grandfather, and now he’s the only one left.
The only one, except for a genetic manipulation, an accident, an anomaly who shares his DNA.
And, yes, she’s amazing. She’s clever, brave, quick-thinking, beautiful, daring, funny and absolutely brilliant. Anyone would be proud to be her dad. Anyone but him. Because he can’t.
He won’t be her father. She can call him Doctor, just like everyone else does. She’ll be a companion, like all the others. A friend. No more. That will have to do, because it’s all he’s got to offer her.
No matter what Donna says, he can’t be her father. He just doesn’t have it in him any more. Not now. Not ever again.
I think you’re wrong.
No. She’s wrong. Because if all he wanted was not to be the last Time Lord, he could just stick his hand into that processing machine again and again. He could build an entire army of Gallifreyan clones.
It’s not the same. It could never be the same. He doesn’t want to be the founder of his own race, and he’s certainly never been vain enough to create an entire species out of his own DNA, even if he did it once before by accident.
Jenny’s his daughter, yes. But she can never even begin to replace what he’s lost.
And even if Donna’s right, even if he can get used to having Jenny around, to looking at her and remembering everything he’s lost, to knowing that she’ll never know her own people thanks to what he was forced to do, there’s one thing he knows without a doubt. One reason he can’t allow himself to get close to her. To care about her. To... love her.
He’s not going to get to keep her.
The universe simply isn’t that kind.
He’ll lose her, just as he’s lost everyone else. His people. His family. The Master. Rose. Martha. Astrid.
It’s not even a guess. It’s not him being pessimistic. He knows. No idea where or when or how, but it will happen.
He’ll lose her sooner or later, and he’ll be alone again, and then what?
That’s what Donna doesn’t understand. He was the instrument of Jenny’s creation - his own image - whether he intended to be or not, and he’s going to be the instrument of her destruction.
He is the Storm, and there’s no other fate for those who follow in his wake.
~ end