Fandom Doctor Who
Character(s)/Pairing(s) Companion, Donna, Eleven, Ten, Twelve; mention of Ten/Rose, implied Doctor/River
Genre Death/Drama/Fantasy/Future!fic/Multi-Doctor/Scifi
Rating PG
Word Count 2380
Disclaimer Doctor Who c. Newman, Webber, Wilson, Davies, Moffat, BBC
Summary While time can be rewritten, Eleven soon finds there comes a price for rewriting it.
Warning(s) spoilers up through series six episode seven including specials, character death/erasure
Notes I've been imagining this scenario since the idea of series seven potentially being a multi-Doctor series occurred to me and my fellow Whovians. I wrote Twelve with Hugh Laurie in mind for the part. I know he probably won't be Twelfth Doctor, but I wanted someone I could visualize easily in my head.
Fail Safe
It was the length of one and a half Earth years since Amy told the Doctor that "time can be rewritten" while running to see if they saved Vincent van Gough. Seven Earth months since the Doctor saved Amy and her baby before bidding the Pond family goodbye. Three Earth months ago, the Doctor met a reserved librarian in his fifties with a swagger and the stylistic flair of a visual artist, and the two had been traveling together since.
The TARDIS shuddered and both men grabbed onto the console to steady themselves. The TARDIS shook again, a timequake in the middle of traveling through space. Such quakes were frequent now and growing in intensity almost as though the wormholes needed repaving. The timequakes began when the Doctor flew back to Amy and Rory with their baby in his arms.
The rumbling grew louder and the TARDIS' walls creaked under the power of the timequake. The Doctor reached up to the controlled, pushing a lever all the way. His companion pulled on a spring and smashed his fingers along a keyboard. Images flashed through the Doctor's mind. He met an old man and his granddaughter just before he entered the TARDIS after his goodbyes with the Ponds. Then there was the old hobo on Ceti Alpha VI, a dandy in San Francisco in the 1400s, and a giant of a man with a colorful scarf on the plains of Dez in the Farrack system. The Doctor picked up his newest companion soon after from Oxford in the winter of 2013. From there they ran into a man wearing celery as a boutonniere, a crazy clown of a man who was so unpredictable they almost did not escape, a dark bumbler, and finally the regeneration of a curly haired Victorian into a man who looked like a Hollywood rebel. The Doctor had seen all of this and knew all of these men and their companions, however, there was an essential piece missing.
Steam began to fill the control room. "Ah…grab the slinky and connect it to the joystick," the Doctor called across the console to his companion.
His companion followed the instructions and then twisted a few knobs. The rumbling began to subside. The Doctor caught his breath and looked up at the plunger in the center moving up and down properly. "Well, that was…something." He began to mess with a few settings to check their course.
"Turn that lever the other way," the companion spoke. He was fast to learn the TARDIS controls, even faster than Rory was. Sometimes the Doctor thought this man knew more about piloting the TARDIS than he did.
The Doctor looked at the levers, then nodded, and turned it the other way. "I was thinking."
"About what?" the companion relaxed now that the steam dissipated.
"About," the fact that the Doctor could not remember any of the meetings he had with any of his previous forms from the previous forms' perspectives, "timequakes." He looked around as the TARDIS resumed its normal type of ride. After a long pause of silence he murmured, "We're missing one."
"There are a set number of these quakes?" the companion fiddled with a few knobs to steady the course.
"No, there –" the Doctor pitched backwards. The TARDIS shuddered as it collided with something in the vortex. His companion flew forward and smacked his nose into the controls. After the shock of the impact subsided, there came a knock at the door.
The companion rubbed his nose and the Doctor sat up and peered around the console at the door.
"That's new," the companion noted.
"You should have seen the TARDIS in the TARDIS," the Doctor stated. He got up from the floor and went over to the door. He leaned his ear to the door and listened carefully to the conversation on the other end. The companion ambled over and pressed his own ear to the door.
"No manners," a woman stated on the other side of the door.
"It's a paradox," a man responded, "we might not be on the other side."
"Then who? Just you by yourself?" she asked.
"Maybe not even that," he said. "Maybe someone we haven't met yet."
The companion looked to the Doctor. He spoke as quietly as he could, "Friends?"
"It's," the Doctor stepped back and put his hand on the door handle, "it's the one we've missed." He opened the door once the companion was out of the way.
Donna Noble blinked. Her eyes looked at the Doctor's eleventh form briefly before her eyes flickered to his companion. "Hello. I'm Donna Noble."
The companion took her hand. "Charmed." He raised her hand to his lips.
"We're not here to flirt," the eleventh and tenth forms of the Doctor spoke in unison. Their companions separated.
Donna gave them an odd look. "It's harmless," she paused, "right?"
"Just remember, we won't be here long," Ten stated. He clasped his hands together and walked into Eleven's TARDIS. His eyes scanned the control room before falling on Eleven. "You don't remember this."
Eleven kept an eye on him. "No, I don't." He angled his body away from Ten. His shoulders moved upwards.
Ten held his gaze. "That's because this never happened. If there's one thing we should never do but it keeps occurring, it's paradoxes. TARDISes occupying the same time-space, the Death Zone…" Ten's voice trailed at the memories. "This is not like those times."
"Doctor," Donna's head turned to Ten. When both incarnations looked at her, she shifted her weight. "I meant this one. The Doctor."
"I'm the Doctor," Eleven stated. The he amended, "We both are." He could feel the eyes of his companion follow him as he retreated deeper into the control room. He now stood so the controls were between him and Ten.
"What?" Donna looked between Ten and Eleven. "No." Her eyes widened and her mouth elongated in disbelief. "You mean you turn into," she paused, "that?"
Ten nodded. "He's the form that follows me. I've had nine other forms before this one. Remember those pictures? Those were all me. Well, and my companions."
Donna looked around and her face faltered somewhat as though she was thinking of River telling her she would not be with the Doctor forever. Ten took a deep breath and his eyes moved away from her and to Eleven. "You've met all the others before me. I'm the last. You didn't remember those meetings either. They also were all new."
"None of this should be happening," Eleven stated. "You of all of us know this." He touched the console but did not touch any of the gadgets on it. He did not wish to uncouple Ten's TARDIS accidentally. That would create a bigger problem than Eleven currently faced.
"There are a lot of things that shouldn't have happened," Ten returned. He took a few steps closer to Eleven, but still kept his distance. "The cracks in time, the resurrections," he paused, "returning that child to her parents."
"That wasn't a fixed point in time," Eleven stated. His eyes roamed over his controls, avoiding Ten. He caught the reflection of his companion in the glass encasing the plunger. The man looked concerned and perhaps a little sad. Eleven shifted his gaze.
"Those cracks," Donna spoke up, "he – you created them?" She turned towards Ten so he would know that was directed at him.
Eleven looked at Donna and then to his own companion. The librarian stared up at him in his calm way. While Eleven tried to be cool, this man was cool. Eleven's eyes turned back to Donna. "No. I stopped them…" his voice trailed. "They don't exist. I made sure they stopped existing!"
Ten shook his head. Donna reached out and squeezed his hand. "You know that's not true. If I can see these cracks in the fabric of time and all other forms could see these cracks both in front of them and beyond them, then you've seen this damage as well." His eyebrows furrowed. "There is a myth that shouldn't exist about a 'Pandorica.' How aliens of all galaxies surrounded Earth and trapped something or someone inside of it. The Lone Centurion guarded that box to ensure it stayed a legend." He took a breath. "Those creatures were right. The universe –"
"No!" Eleven finally looked directly at Ten. "Not from you."
"If not me, then who?" Ten stepped even closer. "Remember Martha?"
"Of course I do," Eleven did not move from where he stood, though his shoulders hunched more and his body curved away from Ten's advance.
Ten's eyes did not leave Eleven's gaze. "Donna," his eyes hardened, "remember Martha?"
Donna was silent a moment then shook her head. "Who?"
Ten continued to keep his eyes on Eleven. "The woman who came with us to the clone world with the Hath."
"Uh…no?" Donna frowned. "I remember the numbers, but it was just you and me. I think. I don't remember the Hath." Her eyebrows furrowed in frustration. "Should I?"
Eleven's eyes faltered then. Ten spoke again to his future incarnation, "And Rose." He took a step closer. "She was sucked into the crack along with her father. Both of them gone. No one remembers, not even Jackie."
"Her father took her to the other universe," Eleven stated.
"No." Ten shook his head. "He didn't. They fell into the crack before they could escape." He stepped closer to Eleven. "This has to end."
Eleven held Ten's gaze now. He swallowed once. "Your morality stops you."
"Our morality." Ten stayed where he stood. "Our morality saves the universe."
Eleven looked down, took a deep breath, and grabbed Ten's hands. He held them a long moment and then dropped them. "Go."
Ten shared a look and then hurried down towards Donna. The group could hear a distant rumble closing in on the TARDISes. Donna waved to Eleven's companion before disappearing with Ten through the TARDISes' doors. The quake hit just as all of the doors closed again and Ten's TARDIS disappeared into the vortex.
Eleven staggered backwards and then stumbled forwards. His companion reached out and steadied him. "Doctor –"
"It's starting," the Doctor interrupted as his hands glowed for the first time. He felt more than saw his companion let go. His eyebrows wrinkled. "It was a fail safe. So many paradoxes together, everything falls into pl…" and the glow took his body over, growing him taller, thinning his hair. His boyish chin became more scruffy and his feet larger. When the lights faded, he collapsed backwards to the floor beside the console.
His companion did not dare touch the Doctor. He took a sonic out of his own pocket and opened up the side. Quickly he pressed a button and closed his sonic back up. He took a small breath and then stepped around the Doctor, keeping a tight hold on the console as the quake tapered away. Quickly, the companion began to adjust the settings. The TARDIS hummed along without incident until it landed.
The Doctor's eyes fluttered open. He knew the TARDIS stopped moving. He also knew his body was unfamiliar. He sat up and then stood up. He could see his companion standing on the other side of the console observing him. "Sorry about that. When he touched me, I," the Doctor abruptly stopped talking. His eyes widened and his hand touched his throat. He looked into the glass around the plunger in the center of the TARDIS and stared. "You…"
"I was the last piece," his companion stated. "To start a regeneration without killing a Time Lord, it requires all of the Time Lord's past forms and his immediate future."
The Doctor could sense it. Now that he companion deactivated the cloaking mechanism in his companion's sonic, the Doctor knew exactly who his companion was. He licked his lips and then reached into his pocket. He pulled out his sonic and ran his fingers along it. One tip was blue and the other red. It had gold trim and green flecks. "Hold out your sonic."
His companion retrieved his sonic from his pocket and held it up. It was identical to the sonic in the Doctor's hand. When the sonic screwdrivers interacted, there was a small burst of energy. "Same sonic," the companion stated, "same face."
The Doctor opened his sonic and examined the options inside. "It's intricate." He pressed a button and looked to his companion. "Does it work?"
"You remind me of a librarian I traveled with," the companion answered. "Not that long ago."
The Doctor smiled and then lurched as his body continued to adjust to its new form. "What day?"
"Third of November," the companion stated, "2013. It's four in the morning."
"Twenty-four hours until the TARDIS smashes through the bedroom window," the Doctor noted. "That should be long enough." He pocketed his sonic and looked at his companion. "You're going to see her next, aren't you?"
His companion looked down and then at the Doctor. "She's just killed her father when he walked in front of the Silent she intended to kill. It's a fixed point in time. The only way really to fix the scars of the cracks in time is to obey the fixed points. I don't think we want another forced regeneration."
The Doctor held his companion's gaze for a long time and then nodded. "No. Never again." He stepped out of his shoes that no longer fit. He knew where he was going there would be clothes and shoes that would fit his new body. He nodded to his companion and walked with a swagger to the door. "Goodbye," he offered then left the TARDIS.
The companion who no longer had to hide the fact he was now the Doctor took a breath. He observed the new regeneration walk across the street and into the building Eleven would meet him in the next morning. Once the Time Lord disappeared from sight, the Twelfth Doctor took a deep breath and spoke to the TARDIS. "You know where I want to go. You know where I need to go."
The TARDIS responded with a rumble and then the Doctor sped off through time and space to where he was truly needed.
The End