Black Doctor
A/N: This was suggested by a friend of mine, who posed the interesting idea that maybe the Doctor could regenerate not as a woman, but as someone different. This is very slight 10th Doctor. He turns into Doctor 11, with Martha looking on.
This is very much an Alternate Universes story, and it is also OOC in that the Eleventh Doctor is not one of the ones who might be cast in the series. So, take heart, dear reader: you have been warned!
As usual, any disclaimers that I don't own anything apply.
PROLOGUE
Martha Jones forced herself from the rubble as she checked her legs for any bruises or broken bones. She breathed a sigh of relief when she didn't feel any. The Doctor, her traveling companion, had thrown her clear, it seemed.
"Doctor!" She cried, standing up slowly, trying not to place too much weight on her legs.
When she didn't feel any pain radiating on either leg, she walked quickly into the next room. She saw several pieces of rubble; the room she stood in was completely buried. The Quaxaforians, the aliens they had defeated, were buried under it, their blue faces scruntched up in their death throws. Martha checked the bodies that were in the room for any signs of life, but there were none. The Doctor's little explosive device had worked all too well.
"Doctor!" The dark skinned British woman tried again.
She was about to search another room when she heard a moan coming from a pile of rubble. Training her eyes on the place the sound came from, Martha saw a thin, pinstriped leg sticking out from beyond the debris. She ran to the spot, digging as fast as she was able. Examining him with all the precision of a doctor, Martha could tell the explosion had a much more devastating effect on him than he had allowed it to have on her. The Doctor didn't look broken externally—he looked practically the same, from his freckled face with the mop of brown hair, to the thin frame she had come to know, love, and finally feel the greatest of friendships with. But as she saw his chest rising and falling, and heard his struggles to breathe, she knew that he wasn't in even passable shape. Martha knew she'd have to risk moving him. At least, she remembered, the TARDIS wasn't too far away.
"Doctor…can you hear me?" Martha asked, forcing down her tears.
For a moment, no noise came from the Doctor, then, as his brown eyes fluttered open, he whispered, "You…okay?"
"Yes," she answered. She gingerly felt his chest, saying, "I need to use the equipment on board the TARDIS to be sure, but you I think you have a punctured lung. Try not to talk too much, or breathe too hard."
"Quaxa…forians…are they…?" the Doctor murmured.
"They're dead, all of them," Martha pronounced sadly.
"If there…had been another way…I would have…" the Doctor whispered, his silent tears falling. "I couldn't let them…complete their plans…"
"I know, I know that, Doctor," Martha said, determination taking over her anguish at her friend's rapidly deteriorating condition. "But now, you have to help me. I'm going to move you, okay? But if you feel anything, you must tell me."
The Doctor nodded, propelling his legs forward with Martha's attempt at moving him. She smiled when she saw the TARDIS. Helping him through it, she was happy to see the Doctor's beloved ship folding back corridors to help her reach the medical center.
Martha strapped the Doctor to medical devices, as the TARDIS translated the sequence of tubes and equipment the young woman was to attach or turn on. Later, as she saw the instruments rising and falling, Martha dared to hope against hope that the Doctor would recover from his injuries.
She saw the Time Lord motion for her to come over. "Glad you made it…" he said in a slightly louder voice. "Sorry to say, I won't."
"Don't…" Martha ordered sternly, her tears falling. "Don't talk like that! You'll overcome this!" She held his hand, feeling his temperature rising, even though it still remained cooler than a human's.
"An' I thought you were a doctor, Miss Jones," the Doctor joked, then saying sadly, "I've been through death nine times over…I know the signs." Martha's response was to grip his hand tighter as he continued, "you won't see me again in this form, but I will go on."
"I don't understand," Martha said, but then asked, "you're going to change…what's that word…regenerate?"
The Doctor's head bobbed up and down, his brown hair following, saying, "I don't recall explaining the process to you."
"You didn't," Martha said. "I had a chance to talk to Rose before we said goodbye again in the other universe. She told me about it."
"Ahh…" the Doctor commented, "always did have a big mouth, she did."
"How long…?" the black British woman asked.
"Could happen anytime now," the Doctor said. He winced as he felt the stirrings of change. "In fact," he said, "the process is beginning…again!"
Martha stared at the Doctor as a white light enveloped him. She saw lines and eddies of brilliant glowing matter wash over him. The Doctor she had known was morphing, then, the light faded as the last remnants of the man she had traveled with, broken up with, and then traveled with again vanished. When the light disappeared, Martha's jaw dropped as she beheld the change to the Doctor's person.
"Oh, my God…" she gasped.