Stopped Cooking
Amy had no idea what she had done wrong for the Doctor to go so weird on her. One minute, they had been to see Winston Churchill, the next he had shown her to a room which was to be hers, and then they had gone to the kitchen.
It had just been sitting there, and she hadn't even thought about there being anything wrong with her touching it, so she had picked up and started fiddling around with his sonic screwdriver.
He had been getting something to eat at the time, turned around with two plates in his hands, and froze. The plates dropped to the floor as he lunged at her, snatching the sonic away from her so fast she could barely believe what was happening.
He then left the room, looking extremely agitated and shaky.
She had no idea what had set him off, but surely it couldn't have been her playing with his screwdriver. That'd be weirder than he already was.
She went to look for him almost immediately, but it took her a lot of tries and guesses before finally finding the right door.
The Doctor was in the library. There was no pool in sight, thankfully, so who knew where that was now. But the Doctor was in there, carefully scanning pages of books a lot slower than his normal reading speed.
He kept on rubbing his face with his hands, or rubbing the back of his head. When she got closer, she could also hear that he was mumbling to himself.
"Come on. It's got to be somewhere! Where is it?"
"Doctor? What are you looking for?" she asked carefully, sitting on a seat near his, but far enough away that she'd have enough time to duck out of the way if he started suddenly throwing books at her.
"Medical texts, Pond. It's got to be in here somewhere. This can't be the first time this has happened after a regeneration like the one I just had..."
Shaking her head slightly, not knowing what he was going on about, she decided that, just like him too, if she wanted an answer, she'd have to ask. "What's regeneration?"
He talked loudly, his pacing fast and furious and she had a bit of a hard time keeping up with a concept that was hard enough for a normal human like her to understand. "Regeneration is a process Time Lords go through when they are dying. It's a complete cellular restructuring. Body image, personality, likes/dislikes, all those things, they all change, but the mind and the brain is always the same. It's just the way it works. A different body has different needs."
She had lost track of what he was talking about, only that it was to do with brains. "What's the brain got to do with anything? Doctor, you're acting really weird right now. I mean...more than usual."
He looked at her then and grinned widely. "Exactly! I'm acting weirder than normal. Even for me, I'm acting weirder than normal. It isn't normal!"
She shook her head and frowned at him a bit more, completely losing the plot of what he was going on about. "Okay...so, you went and changed your body into what it looks like now recently, then?"
He rolled his eyes and rubbed at his head. "Sort of. Yes. Weren't you paying any attention when I kept on saying I was still cooking, while we were looking for Prisoner Zero? That no one could recognise me but you, because everything was brand new?"
"Sorry, I was a bit too preoccupied with Jeff and his Gran telling you about my Raggedy Doctor phase. As if that wasn't embarrassing enough. And then there was the whole world ending in 20 minutes thing."
He blinked and frowned. "Oh, yes. Sorry, thought you might have taken note. Thing is, even after I was done with the regeneration process, I still acted like I was in some sort of crisis. It's not right, not right at all, and I want to see if there is anything at all written about what may happen to the brain if a regeneration comes a...little too late. I held off last time. Don't know why, either? Not like me to do that, not really."
Now he had gone back to mumbling to himself, like as if she was no longer in the room, but she at least understood a little better. He was afraid that something had gone wrong to his brain with this regeneration thingy. He began looking at the book titles, none of which she could read, and getting more agitated as the seconds rolled on.
"Damn it! Why is it not here! I know I have a copy somewhere..."
He sprang to his feet suddenly and began pacing. She opened her mouth to say something else, only a tiny sound escaping her before he covered her mouth with his hand. "Shhh, I need to think. Need quiet to think properly."
She nodded and thought about biting his hand to get him to get off, but he released her a moment later.
"Alright...I know I have a copy somewhere, but it's not here. Oh come on, my wonderful, beautiful ship. Where is it old girl? You can tell me."
And now...he was talking to the TARDIS. Yep, he was definitely a madman with a box. When he cocked his head to one side, one hand tapping at his leg to some beat she couldn't hear, she almost began laughing out loud. He looked ridiculous.
Then his face lit up, he snapped his fingers and ran off to another part of the library, hopefully to get this book he was so desperately looking for. She waited patiently for him to return with his book, but after five minutes, got fed up and decided to try and find him between the shelves of books.
It didn't take long to find him this time. He was sitting down, leaning against a bookshelf, a heavy book in the same language as the others, the one she couldn't read, carefully balanced between his knees and belly. He was slowly reading. Slowly for him anyway, or else he was going over the information again and again to make sure he understood it.
She knew something was wrong when he kept frowning at the page he was looking at.
Clearing her throat, she walked over to him, sat down, and took a quick peek at the page he was looking at. All she saw was a mass of circles and lines and it made no sense to her at all.
"So...what's the diagnosis, Doctor?"
"Hmm?" he replied, before looking at her. "Oh! Um, yes. My regeneration was a rather...violent one, you see. It screwed around a bit with the...wiring, as you humans say. Or at least, you did last time I was here. There. I'm getting myself confused."
She nodded and grinned at him, thinking this might calm him down a bit. Let him see that whatever he meant, it didn't matter, because this was the way she had always known him.
He squirmed on his place on the floor, and closed the book. "Basically...don't touch my things without asking. I don't like it. Especially my screwdriver. I'm rather quite fond of my screwdriver."
She blinked at him for a few seconds, before shrugging. "You went to all this trouble to find one book, and when you do, the only answer you can give me is 'Don't touch my things'?"
He shrugged back at her and looked down at the book. "Well, the book doesn't really state anything about this. All I know is that I really didn't like you taking my things without me knowing about it and I got rather irrationally angry about it. I apologise if I hurt you."
She rolled her eyes at him and sat down, so she could watch him more closely. "So, it didn't say anything else?"
"No. Not really, just a lot of nonsense about acting different, which is pretty much staring both of us right in the face."
She laughed at that and nodded. "Yeah. You're the madman in a box. I think you can act a bit weird. Plus, to me at least, you're an alien. How am I supposed to know what is right or wrong with how you act?"
She spotted him grin, and patted his knee. "Well, at least you're not angry with me for the whole screwdriver thing any longer. And I won't touch it again without your permission. Happy?"
He nodded and his grin went up to a full out smile. "Yes. Thanks Amy. So! Where do you want to go next?"
She blinked again (she was doing that an awful lot around him lately) and shrugged. "To bed. I'm tired. All this running does that to us poor humans, you know? But, afterwards, somewhere fun where I can learn a bit about history. A museum would be good. I like a museum, I do."
His smile, if anything, went up even higher. "Amy Pond! Brilliant little Amelia Pond. I like you. I know the perfect place!"
He got to his feet rather fast and almost tripped over his own feet in his rush, which got him laughing. Before she decided that now may be a good time to remind him of the importance of sleep to humans again. "After I've slept, Doctor. Not now."
He nodded. "Yes. I'll wait. I'm kind of hungry anyway. I think I may have smashed a few plates earlier. Oops."
He changed direction, going to the kitchen for a meal, instead of to the console room, the TARDIS humming nice things to him all the way.
Well, things could have been worse. His head could have exploded.
He would get used to his odd mood swings given time. He had them quite a bit in past incarnations, but nothing quite like this.
Still, he survived and Amy didn't care if he acted weird, even if he could tell the difference.
At the moment, that was all that mattered.