Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it belongs to Russell T Davies and/or the BBC.


The Doctor takes the stairs two at a time and bursts onto the roof. He is tempted to look over the parapet, to make sure that Rose is far enough away from the blast zone, but he schools his mind back to the task at hand.

He dares not approach the relay device, his smarting arm a reminder of what it could do to him. "Lucky for me," he tells the Nitro-9 as he sets its timer, "I learned the art of txklpit from a master player on the planet of Verba. I think the humans would call it horseshoes." He doesn't want to examine too closely what it means for his sanity that he is already desperate enough for conversation to resort to talking to a bomb.

He judges the distance, the wind, the weight of the explosives, swings his good arm experimentally a couple of times, and finally lobs the bomb at the Nestene device, just as the door to the stairwell flies open and disgorges a horde of Autons. The Doctor pauses just long enough to see his shot land perfectly up against the relay ("Ringer!"), then runs for the edge of the roof where the building butts up against its neighbor. He hurls himself over the parapet just as the shockwave of the blast hits him, propelling him safely onto the next roof.


Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor ponders his next move as he runs the dermal regenerator over his arm. He has bought some time by destroying the device in the shop, but there are bound to be others, and of course, the danger won't be past until he convinces the Nestene Consciousness to abandon its plans. He needs to do some tinkering on the sonic screwdriver to install settings that can detect and disrupt the Nestene signal. And he will need to concoct some sort of anti-plastic, just in case. If the Time War taught him anything, it was that reason and persuasion don't always carry the day.

But before all that, he needs to make another trip to the wardrobe. He peels off Wilson's leather coat and his own ruined jumper, drops them to the floor, pulls on a maroon top identical to its predecessor, and starts to head for the lab, then stops and retrieves the jacket. It is comfortable, it suits him well, both in size and style. But more important, it is a reminder of a kindness and a sacrifice, and the Doctor could do with more such reminders. He slides his arms back into the sleeves and immediately feels better protected from the world.


The sun is illuminating the London skyline when the Doctor finally steps out of the TARDIS and surveys the weedy council estate that the ship has landed in. After a long night in the lab, he returned to the console room to try to pinpoint the location of the Nestene Consciousness. But the Consciousness was apparently anticipating his interference, because the signal was camouflaged beyond even the TARDIS's capabilities to detect. The one thing he was able to track was the receiving of the animating signals; a map of London on the monitor is covered with little blips representing living plastic. He hopes that if he can get his hands on one of these Autons, he might be able to trace the signal back to the source. And so he has picked one of the blips, mostly at random, just because it seemed a bit more mobile than many of the others, and landed as close as he dared. Now his task is to finish tracking it on foot.

The new Nestene-detecting setting on the screwdriver leads him down a street, through an alley, across an asphalt courtyard, up several flights of concrete stairs on the outside of a graffiti-covered brick building, and to a banged-up metal flat door with a cat flap set in the bottom.

The Doctor crouches down, reaches out with one finger, gives the flap an experimental poke. It moves easily. He is about to push it again, try to see what might be beyond the door, when it suddenly flips wide open, and he finds himself staring into a set of decidedly non-feline eyes. He jumps to his feet as the door is flung open, and comes face to face with the shop girl Rose.

"What're you doing here?"

"I live here."

She lives here? All of London, and the Nestene signal happened to lead him right to her door? Is this just an astounding coincidence, or is there something else going on? His mouth spouts randomness as his brain spins. "Well, what do you do that for?"

She looks a bit irritated. "Because I do. I'm only at home because someone blew up my job."

"I must have got the wrong signal," he says, mostly to himself. Then a terrible thought strikes him: the Nestene Consciousness is wont to make copies of people to further its plans. "You're not plastic, are you?" He raps her forehead and is relieved by the sound and feel. "No, bonehead. Bye, then."

He turns to go, but a non-plastic hand grabs a fistful of leather jacket and hauls him backwards. "You. Inside. Right now." He shrugs and resigns himself to follow her. The screwdriver led him here, after all. Might as well find out why.

From down the hall, a woman says, "Who is it?"

Rose sticks her head in the doorway that the voice issued from. "It's about last night. He's part of the inquiry. Give us ten minutes," she says, and continues on down the hall.

The Doctor pauses to see who she was talking to. A rather blowsy woman in a pink satin robe is sitting at a vanity full of makeup and hair supplies. "She deserves compensation," the woman declares.

The Doctor has no idea what compensation Rose deserves or why, but agreement seems the safest course. "Oh, we're talking millions." He glances around, part of him looking for evidence of Autons whilst another part is just fascinated to observe a middle-aged human in her natural habitat.

Said human tilts her head in a way that strikes him as strange. "I'm in my dressing gown."

"Yes, you are," the Doctor agrees with this statement of the obvious.

"There's a strange man in my bedroom." Her voice seems to have suddenly dropped in pitch, and he drops his to match it, not sure why.

"Yes, there is."

"Well, anything could happen."

Anything could happen? What is she talking about? Is a human trying to give a Time Lord a lesson on timelines and possibilities and…oh. Oh, that sort of anything. His face unconsciously twists as he considers whether there is any potential chain of events that could involve him and this creature. Nope, the timelines can't be stretched that far. "No." And he hurries down the hall after Rose.

"Don't mind the mess," Rose is saying as he catches up to her. "Do you want a coffee?"

"Might as well, thanks. Just milk," he says, having learned through unpleasant experience during his day as a tourist that this body has gone off of sugar. Rose is still wittering on in the kitchen about the previous night's events, but he ignores her in favor of continuing the anthropological examination that he began in the bedroom. A gossip magazine on the coffee table proclaims an exclusive on the latest celebrity couple. The Doctor snorts when he recognizes the faces on the cover. "That won't last. He's gay and she's an alien." In the not-too-distant future, a Cassalurian princess pursuing a pop career on Earth will call home crying to her mother, the Supreme Queen, after catching her all-too-human husband in bed with another man, and the Doctor's fifth self will have to use some fast-talking diplomacy to turn back a battle fleet sent to avenge the princess's honor. Ah, the good old days yet to come. He drops the magazine and reads through a current potboiler instead, while Rose is still rambling in the kitchen about jokes gone wrong. "Hmm. Sad ending." He tosses the book away. There are enough sad endings in life; he doesn't need them in his leisure reading.

A pile of unopened bills, several marked "Final Notice", give him a bit more information about the girl he saved. "Rose Tyler." Remember that. And then he is distracted by catching the first sight of his face in a mirror. He had studiously avoided mirrors in the TARDIS wardrobe, not too eager to see who he has become. But now, with lives to save, an invasion to avert, a purpose to accomplish, the bands constricting his hearts have given just a little bit, and he finally feels capable of facing himself. He studies the new visage. Severe haircut, sharp features, steely eyes – a fitting regeneration. But he still has enough vanity to be not totally displeased with what he sees. "Ah, could've been worse. But look at the ears." He flicks the protruding appendages with his fingers, then turns back to exploring his surroundings.

His attention is next caught by a pack of playing cards. Every regeneration has its own interests and talents, and some of his selves were dab hands at sleight of hand. Maybe this body is too. He attempts to shuffle, and is very glad that Rose still has her back to him when the pack goes flying in every direction. "Maybe not." Fine, so these hands aren't meant for card tricks. But the ears like satellite receivers prove useful when he hears the noise of something scuttling across the floor. "What's that, then? You got a cat?"

"No," he hears her reply as he looks over the back of the couch. And then he doesn't hear much else, as the Auton arm that he thought he had disposed of last night attaches itself to his throat. He staggers around the room, fighting to loosen the deadly strong grip, and falls back onto the sofa as Rose enters with the promised coffee. He has just enough presence of mind to notice that she is unfazed to see a death struggle going on in her living room.

"I told Mickey to chuck that out. You're all the same. Give a man a plastic hand… Anyway, I don't even know your name. Doctor, what was it?"

With a herculean effort, he wrests the Auton from his throat and flings it away – then watches in horror as the arm defies Newtonian physics to stop in midair, make a right turn, and launch itself at Rose's face. The Doctor lunges after it, and the three of them crash into the wall, the coffee table, the sofa, until he can finally pull the arm free and find the right screwdriver setting to jam the Nestene signal. He glances about at the carnage, the shattered glass, the coffee soaking into the worn carpet, and deals with it as he always deals with the aftermath of his adventures: with flippancy. He tosses the plastic to her. "It's all right, I've stopped it. There you go, you see? 'Armless."

She is not so easily amused. "Do you think?" She swings the dummy piece at him. Hard.

"Ow!" He grabs his own arm, then the Auton's. "Well, if you're going to go around beating people with it, you're not having it." He starts back down the hallway, then turns around to see her standing, hands on hips, amid the ruins of the coffee table. "Fair play to you, though. You didn't freeze and you didn't panic and you didn't scream. I've seen a lot of people in a lot of tight spots, and there's not many I could say that about. Well done, Rose Tyler. Now you go have a fantastic life." Then he is out the door before she can reply.

Well, that was his plan, anyway. Apparently Rose Tyler isn't fully clued in to said plan, because she has a reply after all. The flat door reopens a second after he shuts it, and then she is chasing him down the stairs. "Hold on a minute. You can't just go swanning off."

"Yes I can. Here I am. This is me, swanning off. See you."

"But that arm was moving. It tried to kill me."

The Doctor rolls his eyes. "Ten out of ten for observation."

"You can't just walk away. That's not fair. You've got to tell me what's going on."

Fair? A tough, smart girl like her, living in a rundown estate like this, and she still clings to the idea that things should be fair? He isn't sure whether to scoff or to salute her. He settles for a simple "No, I don't."

"All right, then," she says, still not giving up, still chasing him down the driveway and past rows of garages. "I'll go to the police. I'll tell everyone. You said if I did that, I'd get people killed. So, your choice. Tell me or I'll start talking."

He glances over at her. "Is that supposed to sound tough?"

She has the self-awareness to sound a bit abashed. "Sort of."

He snorts. "Doesn't work."

"Who are you?"

"Told you. The Doctor."

"Yeah, but Doctor what?"

"Just the Doctor." Honestly, humans have such an obsession with proper names.

"The Doctor," she repeats dubiously, but he decides to interpret it as a greeting and gives her a little wave and a big smile.

"Hello!"

"Is that supposed to sound impressive?"

He has the self-awareness to realize that he is playing the clown. But if it pushes her away, if it protects her from getting dragged into this whole Nestene business that has already nearly killed her twice… "Sort of."

But, Rassilon, the girl is persistent. He is walking fast now, trying to shake her off, but she jogs a couple of steps to catch back up. "Come on, then. You can tell me. I've seen enough. Are you the police?"

He scoffs at that. Imagine, him in a uniform, taking orders from a commander. "No, I was just passing through. I'm a long way from home."

"But what have I done wrong? How comes those plastic things keep coming after me?"

"Oh, suddenly the entire world revolves around you! You were just an accident. You got in the way, that's all."

"It tried to kill me," she half-shouts.

"It was after me, not you," he says, exasperated. "Last night, in the shop, I was there, you blundered in, almost ruined the whole thing. This morning, I was tracking it down, it was tracking me down. The only reason it fixed on you is 'cause you met me."

"So what you're saying is the entire world revolves around you."

"Sort of, yeah."

"You're full of it."

He grins. A bit of Sarah Jane's fire, this one has. "Sort of, yeah."

"But all this plastic stuff – who else knows about it?"

"No one."

"What, you're on your own?"

It is the concern in her voice that nearly undoes him. This human who has known him for only a few minutes, fretting over him with a question that pokes a wound she couldn't even begin to guess at. He swallows down the lump in his throat and forces a flippant tone. "Well, who else is there? I mean, you lot, all you do is eat chips, go to bed, and watch telly, while all the time, underneath you, there's a war going on."

She reaches across him, takes the arm back. "Okay. Start from the beginning. I mean, if we're going to go with the living plastic, and I don't even believe that, but if we do, how did you kill it?"

Ah, an intelligent question. He likes people that asked intelligent questions; they help him organize his often-whirling thoughts. "The thing controlling it projects life into the arm. I cut off the signal – dead."

"So that's radio control?"

"Thought control." He glances over at her to see how she is handling these revelations. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," she says, her furrowed brow telling him that she means it, that she is processing the implications, already moving on to the next question. "So who's controlling it, then?"

"Long story."

"But…what's it all for? I mean, shop window dummies, what's that about? Is someone trying to take over Britain's shops?" she asks with a sly smile, a little giggle.

Her laughter makes him laugh, and he is slightly surprised to see that he still knows how. "No. It's not a price war." She laughs a bit harder at that, and in a mercurial shift of mood, he has the sudden urge to wipe the grin off her face, to make her understand what he is up against, what is on the line. "They want to overthrow the human race and destroy you. Do you believe me?"

Her smile fades. "No."

"But you're still listening." She stops, and he keeps walking. The TARDIS is in sight now; just a few more steps and he can leave her behind, safe from his struggle against the Nestene Consciousness, safe from him.

But then he hears her voice behind him: "Really, though, Doctor. Tell me, who are you?"

He turns around, sees her squinting at him in the sunlight. Too stubborn for her own good, this girl. Can't she just let him go? Who is he? He is the Bringer of Darkness, the Destroyer of Worlds, an Oncoming Storm which a sunny human child certainly could not handle. He glances away, a ghost of a smile flickering at the naïve curiosity that he is about to smother. "Do you know like we were saying about the Earth revolving?" He walks back towards her slowly, and she holds her ground, but he can see her awareness of his darkness rising with every step. "It's like when you were a kid. The first time they tell you the world's turning, and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it." He takes her hand, and it is cold, nearly as cold as his own, and trembling slightly, but her eyes are unwavering on his. "The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling round the sun at 67,000 miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go…" He drops her hand, and it falls limp back at her side. He meets her eyes again, sees her suck in her breath almost imperceptibly. He knows he is scaring her, and he feels bad about that, but it is for the best. She needs to be afraid, needs to walk away and not look back, needs to let him go before he drags her down in his wake as he does everyone else. "That's who I am. Now forget me, Rose Tyler." He takes the Auton from her, waves goodbye with it. "Go home." And then he walks into the TARDIS without a backward glance, dematerializes, leaves Rose Tyler behind. For good this time.


To be continued...