For the LIFE of me I can't remember the exact origins of this plot bunny. What I DO know is that I read somewhere about a line that was in The Christmas Invasion which explained why the Doctor no longer sounded like he was from the north – it was something to do with Rose imprinting herself onto the Doctor 'like a mother hen'. I liked the idea, and I also wanted to see if I could write Ten going CRAZY with post-regeneration sickness, so here you go! Set between the Children In Need Special and The Christmas Invasion.
"We're gonna crash-land!"
"Doctor?" Rose said in a quavering voice.
"I wonder what a crash-landing will be like?" the Doctor said maniacally, cackling loudly as he lunged here and there around the console. "I wonder wh—AAHHH!" He screamed as he doubled up in pain before jumping back upright again and laughing his head off. Rose stood and watched, terrified out of her mind and feeling completely helpless.
"Doctor, what's going on?" she asked, slightly louder.
"I'm not sure!" giggled the Doctor. He giggled for a while before he threw back his head and laughed like a banshee. "I don't know what's going on! But I do know this," he added, suddenly dropping his voice to a whisper and stopping his insane laughter. "I sound different." He chuckled again as if he realised what he'd said, before twitching involuntarily as another spasm of pain racked his new body.
"Doctor, what the HELL is happening here?" Rose shouted, grabbing him and shaking him roughly. She slapped him across the face in an attempt to get him to talk some sense. It worked to a point – he stopped twitching, but now he was holding onto her for dear life. She couldn't prise his fingers off her arms.
"Doctor, you're hurting me, you're—"
"It's your fault."
Those three words stopped Rose dead in her tracks. She looked at the Doctor, looked into his eyes – huge brown eyes, not the beady blue ones she knew so well – and found herself petrified at the lack of emotion behind them. There was nothing there. The old Doctor had had such wonderfully expressive eyes – when Rose had looked into them on previous occasions, even if his face had been impassive she could always tell what he was feeling, always, and it had given her a reassurance that he wasn't as alien as he seemed to be sometimes. But now … now she was petrified. She was petrified because that lack of feeling in those new eyes reminded her just how alien he was, and reminded her of why those eyes were now brown instead of blue. Rose knew it was her fault. She had been the one who opened up the Time Vortex, and had been the one to go back and save the Doctor.
"I know," she whispered, her eyes brimming with tears. "I know what I did was bad, but I didn't have a choice, Doctor, I swear I—"
"AAHHH!"
The Doctor threw himself away from Rose as if he'd been electrocuted. She scrambled away, scared to look him in the eye again, as he looked back at her confusedly.
"I'm not talking about that!" he yelled angrily, snarling at her. "Stupid ape!" He groaned in pain again before running around, frantically altering the controls on the console.
"Doctor?" she said weakly. Rose had never been so terrified in her life. Here was a man who, ten minutes ago, had been her closest friend in the entire world, and who was now a complete stranger to her. No, that wasn't entirely true. There were still vestiges of the man she knew, she was sure of that – the leather jacket, the manic grin, the insults – but the rest of him was so strange, so different, so … well … alien. And that was what terrified her so much.
"My VOICE!" he shouted loudly, in a condescending grimace. He cackled loudly again as he rounded on Rose. "I've got a new voice! I don't sound like I'm from the North any more!" He twitched briefly before resuming his insane cackling. "That's your fault, that is!"
"But—"
"It's one of the things about regeneration I've never understood," the Doctor said hurriedly, words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them. He stared at Rose with wild eyes, and for a second she thought she saw the brown flicker blue, and she felt her breath catch in her chest – but then the eyes were huge and brown again, and she put it down to her imagination. She struggled to hold back a sob.
"Each time I change," he continued breathlessly, panting slightly from exertion and exhaustion, "I take a bit of my companion with me. So, like, if they had a personality trait, I might adopt it into the new me. It's like they imprint themselves onto me, like a chick onto a mother hen, y'know, the little chickies, aren't they cute, they see the mummy hen and they copy it, like I'm doing now with you and your accent, I don't sound like I'm from the North cause you're not from the North, you're from London!" He giggled loudly. "You're the hen and I'm the chickie!" He yelled out in pain before cackling and bursting into song.
"Chick chick chick chick chicken, lay a little egg for me, chick chick chick chick chicken, I want you for my tea!" Rose looked on as he leapt around the console doing an impression of a chicken, clucking and flapping his arms about. It would have been hilarious if she had seen her Doctor do it, and she felt a terrible pain in her chest at the realisation that she would never again see her Doctor. All of a sudden the Doctor stopped where he was, paused for a moment, then collapsed gracefully to the floor. Rose ran over to him and turned him over, and was astonished to see that his eyes were still wide open. His breathing was shallow and he was sweating slightly, and every few seconds his body would twitch and spasm.
"Doctor?" she asked. He turned to look at her.
"Help me, Rose," he whispered. "Help me."
"I don't know what to do," she whispered, her voice cracking.
"Rose, I'm scared," the Doctor said quietly. Rose looked at his eyes and noticed, for the first time, true emotion there. And he had been right – he was terrified too. AndRose realised that that was what scared hermost of all. The old Doctor hadn't been scared of anything. If the new Doctor was scared … she didn't know what she could do.
"It's gonna be fine," she whispered, blinking back tears.
"I'm scared," he repeated, still twitching. "I don't know what's happening to me. I've never been this bad before …"
"Shh," she said soothingly, stroking his forehead. As the Doctor lay there, gazing up at Rose like a lost child, the TARDIS lurched suddenly, throwing Rose off-balance. As she lay sprawled on the floor, the Doctor suddenly leapt up and grabbed hold of the console, staring about in a wild-eyed manner. As the engines ground to a halt and the TARDIS lurched a few more times, Rose watched as the Doctor stumbled towards the TARDIS doors and, with one last manic grin at Rose, yanked the doors open and stumbled out.
"Here we are – London, Earth, the Solar System! I did it!"