A/N: Well. It has been a while. I'm not quite sure what happened, but one day I was writing and the next day I wasn't. I physically couldn't pull it together to write anything... I've tried. Oh, how I've tried. But I found I couldn't put a sentence together, let alone an entire story.
So ... So I took a break from it. I took a break and tried to figure out what had happened, and how I could continue where I'd left off.
Coming back, I decided to do a wee exercise before heading back into my bigger stuff. Here is a short trip, exploring something I hope is a little different, that will hopefully get me back into the swing of it all. Bear with it .. it's been a while ...
Oh, and yeah: I don't own Doctor Who ... all of the characters and the fun stuff belong to someone else. I'm just playing a little in the playground to have a wee bit of fun...
~~oooOOOOoo~~
The spring air whistled warmly across the rocky ground at the bottom of the gorge and blew up the cliff face to rise with a howl over the edge. The Doctor closed her eyes and smiled with a warmth that matched the winds as it kissed at her cheeks and ruffled her hair.
Nurilia: nestled within the spirals of the congellan galaxy of the Trudillin constellation. It was the hidden gem inside an otherwise hostile network of oversized gas giants and unpredictable meteor fields. The only hospitable planet for ten thousand light years, Nurillia hosted a wealth of resources that could easily sustain any advancing civilization for millions of years … yet not a single form of intelligent life form had taken control of it.
Which was a good thing. Nurillia truly was a beautiful planet. Unlike the other planets within its solar system, it was lush and green; full of single stemmed evergreen trees that reached up high toward the blazing sun to cast elongated dark shadows across the landscape. Each of these trees were dense and thick with needle-like foliage that completely blocked the sun's rays from the ground below. Even in the middle of the day the forests were as dark and as chilled as night. The forest grounds and trees sang a perpetual song filled with the sounds and murmurs of the nocturnal hunters and gatherers. Outside the forest, however, the sun blazed hotly above. The raging sun created a symphony all of its own with the melodic song of birds in search of their mates and the rustle and scurry of the ground wildlife scavenging the bushes and scrublands for food. .
Moving from night into day was as swift as setting foot from the shadow to the light. Once could stand astride the line between the forests and the open landscape and quite easily feel the difference between the day and night from one outstretched hand to the other.
This was a new planet for the Doctor to visit. Never in her lives had she visited Nurilia or any planet with in the constellation of Trudillin. There had never been any real particular reason for her to do so. There was no known uprisings or incredible historical events that would spurn the need to drop by. It wasn't a registered or well-known vacation destination in any era of its existence. Nurilia – and the constellation within which it quietly resided – were barely a blip in the great tourist map of the universe. Trudillin and pretty much all of her planets were simply unremarkable and uninhabitable…
….which, of course, made it very remarkable in the eyes of the Doctor when the TARDIS had offered it up as a potential destination for a short visit.
"Well," she had drawled through a smile as she leaned into a stoop and scrolled through the listing of planets on the TARDIS monitors. "I've never been there before, have I?" She didn't rise out of her lean, but she did lift her eyes to the rotor column and given it a slightly excited smile. "Which begs a question or two, doesn't it? Like: Why haven't I visited before; and why are you suggesting it now?"
Her grin only widened as she reached a hand to the side and flicked a switch beside a flashing orange button. "So what d'ya say, TARDIS? Want to go see a brand new world. You know. Something different, just you an' me for a change?"
"I think that sounds brilliant." She cooed as she'd straightened up and looked down at the console. She entered in a few more commands through the console, and then looked up with a wink in her eye. "An' I don't want to know anythin' about it, yeah? Let's just do what we do best, and go in blind."
A cookie popped out of a small dispenser on her left side, and the Doctor's eyes widened as her mouth stretched into a grin. She took a bite with her smile still firmly in place and hummed appreciatively. "Ooooooh, yes. Now how about we just swoop in and discover this new world. How does that sound?"
The hum and whine of the time rotor answered in the affirmative and within a moment, the TARDIS had materialized on Nurillia.
Immediately upon exiting the blue TARDIS doors and setting foot on this new world, the Doctor's excitement shifted toward disappointment to be met with darkness and the endless low murmurs and chirping of nocturnal life. Going in "blind" with no intel was one thing; going in blind because the world around her was in pitch darkness was another thing entirely. Not wanting to go back inside the TARDIS to wait it out, and certainly not wanting to traipse about in the darkness all alone, she decided to instead gather some wood for a campfire.
That was three days ago.
The Doctor had spent three days of complete darkness seated beside a crackling campfire telling herself and her TARDIS stories of adventures and companions past, and roasting marshmallows waiting for the sun to rise so that she could explore this new world.
And, well, three days had been quite enough, thank you, so the Doctor had given up waiting beside the fire. It had been tempting to climb back aboard the TARDIS and meterialise elsewhere on a planet far more exciting. Very tempting. But she'd already invested three days of her current incarnation on this planet waiting for something interesting to happen, and by Rassilon, she was going to go and find something interesting to … happen…
Once she had stepped out of the thick canopy of trees and into bright and warm sunlight, the Doctor had hit her palm to her forehead and let out a moan. Of course. How did she not consider that it was the tree canopy above her that had put her into perpetual night. She'd looked up over the light of the flames and remarked on the dense foliage above her head a few times during her sabbatical by the fire. The fact that she felt the need to comment on it should have been an indicator…
…Superior Time Lord Intellect indeed.
Self recrimination only lasted a short while, however, as the warmth of the gas giant in the sky lapped at her face. For the first time the true beauty of the landscape was laid out before her, and the Doctor couldn't help but close her eyes and let out a long breath of awe.
"Beautiful," she breathed out through a wide smile as she opened her eyes to look across the canyon. "Absolutely beautiful. I'm sure that Yaz, Graham and Ryan will love it here."
Her smile didn't falter as the winds around her picked up. In fact, she opened her arms wide and made a slow turn of her body to capture the wind in the flaps of her jacket to flare it out around her. Her grin shifted to a laugh through a wide open mouth smile of complete and utter exuberance and freedom.
"Somewhere new to take them. Brilliant."
That smile and laugh only lasted a short moment. From a crop of trees in the near distance, the acrid smell of Lindos crackled through the air to assault her nose with a tangy, sour scent that made her gag.
She staggered her slow turn to come to an uncoordinated stop facing the source of the smell. There, in the distance, she saw a figure bathed in shimmering amber energy stagger from the trees and into the open landscape.
"What in the name of Gallifrey…?"
The figure stumbled, fell to a knee, and then rose with a cry of pain to stagger toward the edge of the cliff.
Immediately the Doctor launched into a run. "Stop!" she called out with urgency. "You'll go over the edge!"
The figure turned to glare a blinding amber stare toward her and barely had time to drop into a defensive pose before its head was thrown back and they're entire body exploded into light.
The Doctor kept running, but brought her elbow upward to shield her eyes with her forearm. Despite the pressure of what she knew were regeneration energies pushing her backward, she continued forward. She had to: A fellow Time Lord had succumbed to an attack and was regenerating before her eyes, she wasn't going to back off until she knew that any – if any – danger was neutralized first. She drew her sonic screwdriver from her coat pocket and held it out ahead of her as she continued to push forward into the regeneration wash.
The cry of fear agony coming from within the flaming light broke both her hearts, and the Doctor pushed forth with more determination.
"It's okay," she yelled out through gritted teeth as she struggled to move forward. "I'll protect you. Stop fighting it, and just let it happen. I've got you."
The screaming stopped suddenly, and the Doctor peered up over the top of her forearm into the light. "That's right," she assured firmly as she looked into a terrified face that was shifting and warping with the change. "You're safe. I promise you."
"I'm never safe," the figure sobbed out with a broken voice that was as skewed and warped as its face. Its arm lifted to point toward a sucking, slurping sound only metres to her right. "Never."
The Doctor turned to look toward where the figure was pointing and gasped with horror at the sight. It was a large fracture in reality, a pulsing hole that was puckered blue and white at its edges with a centre as black as nothingness. Her breath blew past her lips with a sound of worry.
"Get back!" her mysterious new companion belched out in warning. "He's coming!"
The Doctor wasn't going to take that kind of warning from just anyone, so she strode curiously forward. "What have we got here, then?" she asked worriedly as she lifted her sonic Screwdriver to get a read on the anomaly. She narrowed her gaze beyond the glow of the sonic and swore to the stars that she could see a snarling figure moving within.
Before she could open her mouth to query the vision, the Doctor found herself suddenly seized in the grasp of the regenerating Time Lord. Bright and terrified eyes bored into hers, and she peeped as she was thrust to the ground and held in place by a single hand against her chest as the Time Lord hurled an explosive toward the gaping wound in reality.
"Get down!"
She was quickly smothered by a heavy body and choked by fiery regeneration energy as an explosion boomed over the top of them. Birds cried out shrill calls of warning, and trees groaned and splintered, as hot orange flashes of fire shot over the top of them both…
…and then all was silent.
Well, silent except for the quiet chanting of the body above her, of course.
"Please tell me he's gone. Please tell me he's gone. Please tell me it worked. No more. No more."
The Doctor blinked lashes heavy with mascara up at the face hovered above hers with an expression of surprise and worry. The man that hovered above her held himself with complete fear. His eyes were clenched tightly shut and he shuddered enough that she could feel each tremor along her entire body.
"It's okay," she cooed gently as she looked over his shoulder toward where the menacing tear in the fabric of reality had been. She let out a relieved breath to see nothing but trees in the distance and a lavender sky above those trees. "Whatever you did, it worked. There's nothing and no one there."
The man continued to chant and to shudder with fear, and his head shook slowly as the clutch of his eyes tightened further. It was clear that the man above her had tried to escape his danger at least once before and had been unsuccessful at it,and that he didn't believe for a moment that this attempt had worked either.
The Doctor lifted her hand to touch at the man's shoulder. "Hey… I said it's okay."
The man's eyes shot open and he inhaled a gasp so deeply that he almost took a lungful of the Doctors hair into his mouth. "Oh! Oh my God. I'm… I'm so sorry!"
The Doctor grinned helpfully as the man tried to awkwardly climb off the top of her. "No need to apologise, really. I've done the same thing myself once or twice to a distressed person who's found themselves in the path of an explosive." She frowned in thought. "Or maybe that's three or four times." She blinked and looked back up at her savior with a grin in her eyes. "So maybe I should be the one to be expressing apologies and offering my thanks to you."
There was an expression of dumbfounded surprise from above her, but the man said nothing.
"However," the Doctor offered with an expression morphing into discomfort. "Now that the danger has passed, please feel free to get off me."
Again, the man let out a gasp that was far less masculine than his physical appearance would suggest he should be. He scrambled to get up, and when he found that effort too difficult to manage, simply rolled off her and thumped heavily onto his back beside her. He lifted his hand to cover his eyes and shook his head. "Well, this day just keeps improving, doesn't it?"
The Doctor hummed and lifted herself to her elbows to take a look at the spot where the anomalous hole had been. "Well yes," she breathed out with a bit of a huff. "As it seems that you've escaped whatever crisis you were running from, then I would say it is, actually." She turned her head to look down her shoulder at the man, who had now adopted the very same position as herself. "Unless you were speaking paradoxically, of course."
The man flicked weary eyes toward her. He huffed and then dropped back onto the grass with a moan. "I really don't know what I'm saying."
"I have days like those," the Doctor admitted with a chuckle; one that quickly shifted to a clearing of her throat. "Sometimes those days lengthen into decades, unfortunately. I've had those days spread across entire incarnations." She gulped. "My sixth body was particularly prone to those kinds of days."
He sighed a sound that could have been a laugh, but it was hard to tell. "You sound like an old friend of mine."
"Oh?" the Doctor said with sudden interest in her tone. "And this friend of yours, was she a good woman?"
"Man," he answered along a whisper of exhaustion. "And yeah. He had good intentions. I suppose that makes him a good man."
"Good intentions, but not always the best of executions, I suspect," she offered with a roll in her eyes. "Yes. Sounds like several people I know – myself included."
"Me too," he replied with a smile. He then let out a long breath that held a moan within it.
"Are you alright?" the Doctor asked gently.
"Yeah. Nothing a good soak in a bath full of bubbles won't solve," he offered back with a smile as he relaxed in the grass and closed his eyes. "I'd give my right arm to have a good long soak and a glass of wine right now."
"Erm," the Doctor hummed unsurely. "Well."
"Oh," he sang out with a smile, although he didn't open his eyes. "Admit it. There's nothing like a long soak, a good book, and a glass of wine while listening to the sappiest boyband on the planet singing one of their ballads of love and romance."
It was at this point that the Doctor noticed her new companion's wardrobe. Decidedly feminine in style: a fitted lavender shirt underneath a cropped leather jacket, tight black yoga pants with see-through panels in a line along the outside of the calf – all of which were now obscenely tight across his newly-minted male physique.
She cleared her throat. "So. You've undergone a gendering regeneration, I see."
Her companion frowned in confusion and rolled his eyes toward her. "Excuse me?"
"Regeneration," the Doctor clarified. "You appear to have had a change in gender. Quite remarkable that, really. Traditionally it's never really been a particularly common thing; this changing between genders during regeneration; but there certainly seems to have been a bit of an upswing in occurrences lately." She blew out a breath and shrugged. "The last four regenerations I know of have involved a gender reassignment. Been through it myself quite recently, in fact. Two-thousand years as a man, and then one day: Bam! Female."
He simply looked confursed. "What…?"
She jutted her chin toward him in a gesture toward his mid-section. "You're male this time around. I don't know that you'd noticed that."
Her companion's eyes widened and he visibly swallowed. His voice lowered to a squeak. "I'm what?"
The Doctor let out a short chuckle. "I was going to comment on the low register of your voice as an indicator, but you quickly nixed that idea by opting to speak like a mouse."
"No," he sang out as he slowly lifted himself to a seated position. "No no no. I can't be."
The Doctor's eyes pinched as he watched his companion carefully and slowly assess the new length of his arms, twisting and turning his hands in front of him. "Oh no," he repeated with horror lacing his voice. "This can't happen."
"It can," the Doctor said with a shrug. "And I'm afraid it has."
His companion looked down toward her groin, and the bulge that the yoga pants weren't designed to hide, and her eyes widened in horror. "Oh hell no," she parked put as she put her hands onto ground and shuffled backward in the dirt as though to escape the package between her legs. "Get it off," she ordered urgently. "Get it off me!"
The Doctor's eyes widened as she watched her companion do all that she could to escape the bulge in her yoga pants. It should have been comical, seeing a buff young man trying to escape the defining feature of masculinity with all manner of twists, turns, shuffling, and even swatting at it, but she understood the shock.
"I'm sorry," she offered gently. "I know it's a shock right now, but I promise you that you'll get used to it soon enough."
Wide and frightened eyes lifted to hers. Her companion shook his head and gasped. "How? How can I get used to something like … like …" He gestured toward his groin. "I don't know how to use one of these. I've never had to use one. I don't want one!"
The Doctor widened her eyes and rubbed at her chin. "Well. I'm afraid that it's quite necessary for you to have one," she answered flatly.
"I want to change back," he shot in petulantly. "Can I … can I just regenerate again or something, and hope that I'll be a girl again next time?"
"I wouldn't recommend it," the Doctor admonished with a frown. "It's not like you have unlimited regenerations you know." She tipped her head to one side. "Didn't' they tell you about this at the academy?"
The man stopped his shuffling and looked to the Doctor with a pinch of confusion in his eyes. "Academy?"
"Oh," she sang out as she finally rose up onto her feet and brushed down her thighs. "Where they taught you to be a Time Lord," she said condescendingly. "I know it's been a fair while since I roamed the halls of Cadon campus, but they made sure to make us aware of the somewhat remote possibility of a gender-switch occurring during a regeneration." She levered her eyes to him. "I would imagine, with the sudden rise in gender-swapping regenerations, that the current cadets would be more ardently educated in it."
"So," he asked her flatly. "I guess that's your way of tellin' me that you're a Time Lord, as well?"
"Possibly a rhetorical question," the Doctor admitted with a shrug. "But I'll answer it anyway: Yes. I am a Time Lord – currently Lady – of Gallifrey."
"I didn't think there were any of you left."
The Doctor was taken aback by that. "I'm sorry?"
"Back in the Time War," he clarified as he drew up to a stand, taking care to brush himself free of dirt. He kept his eyes on her. "Wasn't Gallifrey destroyed?"
The Doctor's eyes were wide at that. She turned her head to one side and warily looked toward this man with a drop in jaw and a worried glint in her eye. "Why would you say that?"
"Because it was, wasn't it?"
"No," she breathed out long. "Gallifrey lives."
The man's eyes widened in horror and she shook her head with apology. "Oh no. I've come back too early, haven't I? The Time War hasn't started yet, and I've just told you what happened?" He clutched fistfuls of his hair and practically stomped around in a circle. "God. I've just gone ahead and blown it all now, haven't I? Destroyed the whole universe because I'm too stupid to know when to keep my mouth shut!"
"Oh settle down," the Doctor growled impatiently. "No need for you to panic. The Time War was a very long time ago."
He stopped panicking and dropped his hands to look toward her. "But I was told that Gallifrey was destroyed in the Time War."
The Doctor slowly nodded her head. "Yes, well, that was a long held belief in the immediate aftermath of the war," she admitted. "But circumstances. Well. Things may have been revisited and timelines changed … or realigned … or stayed the same .. really hard to work that one out, actually."
"So, the Doctor didn't destroy Gallifrey?"
Her brow flicked. "Who told you that?"
He shrugged. "He did."
The Doctor's eyes widened. "Oh. You know the Doctor, then?"
He thumbed at his nose and looked off to the side. "May have done. Once upon a time. Long time ago." He shook himself and then stilled as though to calm himself somewhat. After a breath he shifted his eyes back toward her. "All in the past now. I take it you know him?"
Curiosity set in firmly. "You could say that," she answered cryptically with careful tone of voice.
He snorted and rolled his eyes. "Ruin your life too, did he?" He shrugged and slid his hands into the jacket pockets. "Turns out he's pretty good at that."
That hit a little hard into her hearts. She narrowed her eyes and tried very hard to think back on any Gallifreyan friends and just how she may have ruined their lives. Aside from the Master, and maybe the Rani, he couldn't think of anyone in particular.
Susan? No. She would have recognized her immediately. Romana? No, they remained friends long after she left the TARDIS. She became President of Gallifrey …
.. Although if that future was to befall her, she'd likely consider it something that may ruin her life…
She blinked that through out of her head and looked back to the young man who had started to slowly pace in a small circle. "How," she ventured with a slight waver in her voice. "How did the Doctor ruin your life?"
He flicked his eyes to hers, held his breath for a moment, and then exhaled and shook his head. "That's. That's my story to hang on to," he answered. "Not goin' to wander about spreading rumours and bad mouthing Time's Champion." She let one edge of her mouth lift into a rueful smile. "This universe needs to keep their faith in that he's a selfless God … I'm not goin' to ruin that image. Forget I said anything."
"I won't tell anyone," she offered with a conspiratorial smirk. "We can share stories."
The man shook his head. "I won't," he affirmed vehemently. "Every hero has his flaws – especially him." He lowered his head with a smile. "I may blame him for how my life went, but it wasn't his fault. Not really. It was all my doing that led me to where I ended up."
The Doctor stepped in closer to the man and narrowed her eyes to look deeply into his. She saw nothing to give away who this man was, but he saw something there that skipped at least one of her hearts.
"You love him," she breathed out.
It was as much statement as it was a question, and the man slowly nodded his head. His smile was one full of pain and heartbreak. "Not the first one to love him," he answered with a shrug. "Doubt I'll be the last."
The Doctor's brows pinched tight as she watched a tear fall from the man's eye. "This is more than just love, isn't it?" She asked curiously. "You are in love with him."
The man actually let out a series of quiet laughs at that. Although outwardly projecting amusement, his heartbreak was obvious. "Foolish me, yeah? Bein' in love with someone like him. Stupid pursuit, that. It's like falling in love with a sunset or a warm summer breeze … they'll never return the love. They won't love you back. They can't." She exhaled. "Just like he can't. He won't."
The Doctor lifted her hand to his face, lingering in the air a moment before letting fingers brush at the sweat and stubble on his cheek. His words were so similar to words spoken back in his last incarnation by a woman who held more love for the Doctor than she could ever have given in return.
"River?" she asked softly. It had to be her – River Song. Who else could it be? Who else loved her that much despite how much she altered and ruined her life? "Is that you?"
The widening in the young man's eyes, and the expression of hurt within them told the Doctor that his assumption had been wrong: This person was not River Song. By the clear pain in those eyes, she could tell that this man knew who River Song was.
"I guess not," she managed to mutter.
The man stared at her a moment longer, and then seemed to shake himself out of whatever thoughts or questions he hadn't verbalised out of his head. He shrugged and stepped off to one side to look across the canyon toward the horizon. "But enough of that, yeah? Whatever I had – or didn't have – with the Doctor is long past now. He's moved on. I've moved on."
The Doctor tilted her head curiously at the forced joviality in his voice. "Are you quite sure about that, because it doesn't sound as if you're quite over him."
He snorted an indignant laugh and pointed toward his groin. "Not much choice in that, really. Not quite compatible with him like this, am I?"
"You'd be surprised," the Doctor said quietly with an amused rise in her brow. She inhaled deeply and lifted her head, schooling her amusement back behind curiosity. "So what's your name, then?"
"Mike," he answered with a shrug.
"Mike?"
He looked back to the Doctor. "Yeah, Mike. Seems to fit this body a little better than the name my mum gave me. Not quite an androgynous name, that. So I'll go with Mike." He held up his wrist and pulled back the sleeve of his jacket to reveal a crudely constructed device with a lump of broken coral wedged inside it. "Now," he began distractedly. "To find my way to Earth."
The Doctor's head lifted with intrigue as she moved closer in an attempt to investigate just what, exactly, Mike was wearing on is wrist. "Need to find your way to Earth? I can help you with that if you want."
Mike turned his head to look at the Doctor with a raised brow. "Need more'n a lift to Earth, but thanks anyway."
The Doctor's tongue pressed up against her lip as she rose up on her toes to try and get a better look at the device on Mike's wrist. "Looking for that bath as well? My ship can handle that request well enough."
Mike chuckled. "Tell me that your ship travels in time as well, and we may be onto something."
"I'm a Time Lord. What other kind of ship would I have?" she answered with a shrug as she finally locked her eyes on the device. It didn't take long to surmise that the devise was a crudely constructed time and space hopper.
Crudely constructed meant dangerous, which meant that the device needed to be procured and then deactivated immediately. She reached out to grab it, but was quickly swatted off by Mike.
"Oi!" he snapped as he took a full stride backward. "Do you mind?"
"You really shouldn't have that," the Doctor warned with a frown on her face as she pointed to his wrist. "It's not a device for amateurs." She flicked out her fingers in a gesture of demand. "Now give that to me, please, and let me deactivate it. I'll get you where you need to go – that's my promise to you."
Mike narrowed his eyes at her in a very feminine – and very familiar – manner of challenge. "And what? You think I'm going to just trust you on this?" He pointed at the device. "This is all I have in the entire universe," he growled. "I'm not going to give it to just anyone."
"I'm not just anyone," the Doctor corrected shortly. "I'm the authority on this kind of thing…"
"An' I'm the authority on detecting bullshittin' Time Lords," he countered darkly. He pointed to the space where the tear once pulsed and suckled at this reality. "Put up with one for near a century on the other side of that…"
The Doctor's eyes widened and flicked toward the point of Mike's finger…
"And this thing…" he pointed at his wrist. "Is how I finally got away from him. No explosion or rupture of reality. No reapers of destruction of worlds and universes. Worked just fine thank you."
The Doctor's eyes flicked worriedly toward Mike. Her mouth dropped just slightly as she tried to take in all that he was saying. "When you say the other side of that," she began with a gulp. "Are you telling me you were in another universe?"
"Ding! Ding! Ding!" Mike chirped out sarcastically. "Give the Time Lady a banana."
"Well there's no need to be rude," the Doctor huffed.
"I learned from the best," Mike muttered sourly. "Bit of an expert at it now." He poked at the coral chunk, tapped it with his nail, and then pushed hard at it to secure it more firmly within its strapping. "Course, I learned torture, pain, and suffering as well…"
"I … I'm very sorry to hear that," the Doctor offered softly.
Mike shrugged. "I'm free now, that's what matters, right?" She looked back over her shoulder to where the tear was. "As long as he doesn't find himself a way to cross through, I should be okay."
The Doctor's eyes followed Mike's gaze. "Who was he; the man you were escaping from?"
"Time Lord," Mike offered with a shrug. His face screwed up slightly and he shook his head. "Well. Half Time Lord, half Human if I'm going for full disclosure here."
The Doctor's eyes flicked curiously toward him. Worry toward the legend heard by his last incarnation filled her mind. "A hybrid?"
"Metacrisis," Mike corrected with a sneer.
The Doctor's mouth fell open and dread filled her. "What did you say?"
"Metacrisis," Mike repeated. "Created during the Doc… erm … During an aborted regeneration of a Time Lord right before we all ended up on the crucible facing the Daleks." He shuddered and sapped his tongue on the roof of his mouth in disgust. "Unpleasant time, I can assure you."
"You," she queried with a waver of panic in her voice. "You were on the crucible?"
Mike's brow pinched. "Yeah. I was. Invited by Davros himself, actually."
"The Doctor's most loyal companion," the Doctor breathed out almost inaudibly as realisation set in. "You crossed entire universes, striding parallel to parallel to find him again."
Mike took a stride backward. He shook his head and panted out a short series of negatives. "You can't … how could you possibly know about that?"
"Because," she replied softly as she walked toward Mike and looked into his face. "Because I was there." She lifted her hands to cup at Mike's face. "Because I was there, Rose."
Tears filled the young man's eyes and dribbled thickly down his cheeks, but he didn't pull away. "H-How?" he stammered out. "How do you know my name?"
The Doctor gave a forced smile and swallowed back her own distress. "It's me, Rose."
Rose's eyes blinked quickly. He moved his face closer to her. "D-Doctor?"
The Doctor stretched wide a grin that was so reminiscent of her Tenth self. "Hello."