I was a fool, he thought, the Time Lord Victorious? How could I believe that, now the universe is punishing me for being so selfish. Even know he could feel the regeneration energy surging through him.
If there was only one thing the Doctor excelled at it was repressing things, he pushed back the regeneration, knowing that after he got rid of this face he needed to let go of everyone. He'd lost too much, everyone he'd ever known and cared for, everyone he'd ever loved- a sharp jolt of pain shot through him as he thought of Rose- left. Now here he was, alone regenerating by himself. He knew he was going to survive, but it sure as hell felt like he was dying.
Stumbling into the Tardis the Doctor winced in pain, it was incredibly painful to hold off regeneration, but he was determined to say goodbye. The Tardis helped him, taking him where he needed to go with little direction on his part.
Saying goodbye to Rose was the hardest. She was so young then, so full of life and happiness. That Rose had wonderful days ahead of her, days he could hardly bare to remember without fearing another regeneration from the pain of it.
He could feel it coming now. He could only stall for so long before regenerating and he had said all of his goodbyes. Back inside the Tardis he stood and waited, thinking of Rose and all the times that they never got to have, they never made it to Barcelona, he never got to tell her that he loved her, and now he never would.
"I don't wanna go," he said just before everything shone gold.
When the Doctor opened his eyes he was in a hospital bed. Gasping he shot up straight and looked at his hands, they still looked the same, as did his legs and arms. No, he thought, there is no way I could be that lucky and avoid regeneration twice, yet when he ran over to the bathroom mirror, after skillfully removing all of the tubing from his arms and head, the same face, his tenth face stared back.
Presented with a puzzle the doctor racked his brain trying to figure out how he could have avoided regeneration. Suddenly he realized he had no idea how he got into the hospital in the first place. Returning to the bed he saw a life support machine, he supposed thats what he was hooked up to. It looked wrong somehow. It was very 21st century, but with a few subtle changes that he had never seen before.
Flowers decorated the bedside table, but no card could tell him who they were from. With a sudden pang he realized they were pink and yellow roses, though much less beautiful than his pink and yellow Rose. Finding the pager attached to the side of the bed the Doctor paged in a nurse.
A petite middle-aged woman came in and almost had a heart attack when she saw him.
"You're-you're awake!" she exclaimed. "That's not possible you were brain dead!" That was strange, regeneration normally caused an odd sickness that humans would detect as a horrible fever or possibly a coma, but never brain dead.
"If I was brain dead why would I need a pager?" the Doctor asked.
"Well your girlfriend is here almost all the time, she barely leaves your side, I thought she called me in here with a question or something." That sparked the Doctors interest.
"My girlfriend, who do you mean?"
"You know the blonde girl who looks at you like you put the stars in the sky? I believe her name is Violet? No, Daisy… it's some sort of flower." the nurse said.
"Rose?"
"Yes! Rose, see you must remember her." The Doctor's two hearts swelled. Rose was here? Maybe this is what happened after regeneration, the old identity carried on some wild fantasy inside the real doctors head. Just as the idea was starting to morph into a theory the doorway to the room became occupied with a figure all too familiar.
"Rose!" he cried running across the room to sweep her into his arms. Fantasy or not Rose was here, and the Doctor would never have enough strength to resist Rose.
"John? Oh John I thought you were dying!" Rose exclaimed burying her head into his shoulder.
"Wait, John? Rose it's me its the Doctor," he said holding her back at arms length.
"John I thought you didn't want to be called the Doctor anymore, you said you wanted to be your own person," Rose said confused. The Doctor looked around, of course, the slight differences in the machinery and the different taste in the air. They were in her universe, Pete's world.
"Rose, it really is me the Doctor, the dumb two hearted bloke who left you on the beach twice. I just regenerated back in the other universe and somehow I ended up here." He looked at her face and watched a flash of pain on her face, of course he had left her twice, once purposely and as soon as he was back the first thing he did was remind her of that.
"Doctor?" she said searching his eyes, "is it really you?" hearing the hope in her voice lifted his hearts.
"Yes, Rose it really is," Rose threw her arms around the Doctor pulling him into a bone crushing hug.
"I've missed you so much. And with John… Oh Doctor, my Doctor I've missed you." Tears filled her eyes as she said it.
"Wait, Rose what happened with the other me? The metacrisis-John?"
"A couple of weeks after you left us here, he started getting ill. He said that a Time Lord consciousness was never supposed to be stuck inside a human body. He was trying to heal himself, make his body more Time Lord so that he could survive, but he didn't work fast enough. A few days after that I found him collapsed on the floor of our kitchen. I brought him here and they told me he was brain dead. I didn't want to believe it I thought maybe the Time Lord part of him was doing something to his body repairing it or something so I wouldn't let them turn off the Life support." Rose was choking up at the end of the story.
It made perfect sense. The Doctor was a fool for hoping that the metacrisis would survive, the same thing had happened to Donna. When he regenerated he must have somehow slipped through the cracks of the universe and into the metacrisis' body since there was no one occupying it and the DNA matched. There has never been a metacrisis before so everything was speculation but that was the most likely scenario.
"Rose Tyler, you wonderful Rose," he said pulling her close again. Nothing could compare to the feeling of Rose in his arms. "I'm sorry, but I think John is gone. Somehow when he went braindead it left his body open for me. I just regenerated in the old world and somehow my consciousness must have latched onto this body and slipped through the cracks of the universe to this body."
"Oh Doctor, you regenerated again?" Rose said, her eyes filling with tears. "But you've only been in that body for a couple of years! At least tell me you weren't alone?" The doctor looked at his feet. "Doctor you should never be alone, the universe is to big to travel alone in."
"Oh you know me, I'm sure the new me has already found someone new to travel with," he said hoping to drop the topic. He knew that if Rose knew just how lonely he had been before he regenerated it would break her heart, and that was the exact opposite of what he was trying to do. "Welllll, now that I've "woken up", well arrived is probably more accurate. I think it's time I get checked out of this hospital!"
The Doctor helped Rose gather all of the things she had scattered around the room, flowers, cards, some sweatshirts, and books that she admitted to reading to him while he was, how shall he say, otherwise occupied?
The Hospital was weary to let him go so soon after he woke up but after Rose flashed an id card which he could only assume was psychic paper they let them go.
"Where in the world did you find psychic paper here? in our universe earth didn't have it until the 22 century or so."
"It's not psychic paper that's my work ID. After we got back last time, I was already respected by a lot of people because of the dimension cannon and got promoted to the second in command, and since that was a torchwood hospital my ID goes a long ways."
"Well look you Rose Tyler, or should I start addressing you as Ma'am? Or maybe Phlato, thats the highest form of respect on the planet Kandon, they use it only for Kings and Queens, or the occasional farmer, they do take their fruit seriously on Kandon." Rose laughed.
"I missed your rambles, always going on about something you are." She grinned. Rose lead the doctor out of the hospital and out to her car. On the way she told him all about her flat, warning him not to expect much, because it could never compare to the TARDIS, but she and John had tried to make it as home-y as possible.
The Doctor couldn't wait to see her flat. He couldn't wait to do anything when it involved her. Rose, he was finally back with Rose. He could take her to Barcelona now! Even if it was just the city in Spain, they would make it an adventure, it was the Doctor and Rose, they were the stuff of legends, they made everything better.