Author's Notes: I do not own Doctor Who, the Duplicate Doctor, Donna or Rose. Thanks for the reviews and the reads, I'm so glad you're all enjoying it. Please enjoy and let me know what you think of this chapter.
The Doctor had almost never been sick.
Time Lords hardly ever got sick. John couldn't remember having been sick since the Doctor was a boy. He had made himself ill on cakes and custard in honor of the ceremony where his older brother had just chosen his name. He had been sick everywhere to his mother's dismay and his father had put him to bed and taken care of him, making him drink broth and water for days. He had been miserable, the whole situation of a sick Time Child was almost laughable, but that all seemed like a pleasant holiday compared to this.
He was in hospital, hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor and he had oxygen. He was wheezing, hacking and hadn't been able to move more than a few feet past his bedside for days.
Hypothermia. Pneumonia. Oh, if his dad could see him now, what would he say?
It was the strangest thing about being human: all the thoughts of home and family that the Doctor somehow managed to block out for centuries were suddenly at the forefront of John's mind. It was some effect of Donna's or just being human or maybe just lying alone in a hospital bed wondering where it all went wrong.
He finally realized what his dad would say. He would say the same thing about Rose Tyler that he had said during the turbulent month at the Academy where he had gotten involved with the Rani.
"Son, do not get involved with crazy."
It was quite a surprise not to find Rose on the sofa at home when Jackie, Pete and Tony came in from the Christmas program. They put Tony to bed and then settled in by the telly while Jackie cleaned up the mess Rose had left.
Then it was even more of a surprise when Rose stormed back in the sitting room and shouted, "Why didn't anyone tell me?"
Then again, perhaps it wasn't.
"Tell you what?," asked Pete.
"He is with Donna now? What's he doing with her?"
Pete looked at Jackie.
"What do you care?," asked Jackie.
"He... he was supposed to be with me."
"Sorry, Rose, but I think that ship sailed when you pushed him off the ferry!," said Jackie.
"It's not as if you've been rushing off to declare your undying love to him," said Pete.
"Does she even know what he is?," asked Rose. "Bet that wouldn't make her happy."
"Leave it, Rose," Jackie said sternly. "Just because you didn't want him doesn't mean he deserves to be alone the rest of his life."
"The Doctor loves me." It was becoming less of a statement and more of an invocation.
"Maybe he did, but he thought you were gone forever and he found someone else," said Jackie. "If you really cared for him, you would be happy for him."
"Happy? I'm supposed to be happy."
"Fine," said Pete, "you don't have to be happy, but you do have to leave it alone. It's called growing up."
Rose stormed out of the room.
John was tidying up in the kitchen. The banana chocolate biscuits had been a success. He was certain Josh had enjoyed them even as he tried to hide all signs of pleasure. Donna came in.
"I'm confused," said Donna. "You told Josh it was okay to hate you?"
"Yeah," said John.
"You're acting as if it's obvious."
"It's simple. He needs to be angry at someone but if he's angry at his dad, he has to admit his father's a bastard but you need years of therapy before you can do that, so he yells at you, then he says he hates me, so I just let him." John shrugged.
"Thanks," said Donna. "You're really, really good with them. I can't believe you don't have any of your own."
John thought about the Donna he left behind and the ginger Time Baby that was probably just learning to sit up. And he thought about the Donna in front of him and what a charlatan he would be if he went around pretending to be better than Ethan when Donna still didn't know what he really was.
"Donna, I have to tell you the truth."
He looked up at her. She had this look of dread.
"Oh, God," she said.
He sat down next to her. "I don't know what you're going to say. I told you a while ago about Rose and the man she's in love with and his wife, remember?"
"Yeah..."
"That man was me."
"You have a wife?"
"No. Yes. Mostly no. Did you ever wonder how Rose came to work at Torchwood?"
"Yeah, but now I'm mostly wondering how you have a wife!"
"Rose travelled with an alien called the Doctor, that's who she was in love with."
"Now you're an alien?"
"I'm not the Doctor! Not quite, not anymore. See, the Doctor's a Time Lord-"
"Time Lord? Who made that up?"
John sighed. "It would go quicker if you didn't interrupt."
"As if that's happening."
"When they're about to die, Time Lords can regenerate and form a whole new body, become a different person. During the regeneration cycle they can heal themselves and grow a new limb. When the Doctor regenerated last, his hand was cut off and it sort of sat in a jar for a few years."
"How is this-"
"Donna, I came from the hand in the jar."
Donna shook her head. "You what?"
"He was about to regenerate again, but he stopped it by transferring the excess energy to the hand, but that wasn't the end of it. See, his wife touched it, causing a metacrisis, giving me both human and Time Lord characteristics. And giving me their memories. So, I feel like I had a wife, but I really don't because she already had a husband."
"You said she was sick and she was pregnant."
"The other effect of the metacrisis was that she took on too many Time Lord characteristics herself and human beings just aren't built for that. Her mind might have burned. The plan was for the Doctor to wipe her memory and hope the child's own regenerative energy could heal the mother's brain. Two of us might have reminded her of the metacrisis- see, I look just like him- so I agreed to come back to this universe with Rose."
"But if you felt like you had a wife, you must have felt like you had a baby," said Donna.
"I did..." he admitted. "..and I had to leave her as well, for her own good, but she has two parents who love her. She should be fine."
Donna nodded. "That's definitely a new one, John. Is your name really John?"
"Might as well be."
"Your wife... what was her name?"
Oh, he really wanted to lie.
"Donna. Her name was Donna."
"Donna." She paused. "Wait, you said universe, you came to this universe, you don't mean...?"
"You're not the same. You're very similar, I'll grant you that, but you are definitely not the same."
"She's me? In another universe?" Donna snorted. "Does she have terrible taste in men as well?"
John didn't answer.
"Oh, God, she does." She shook her head. "John, why do you look so worried?"
"I'm waiting for you to slap me."
"I'm not going to slap you. I've never slapped anybody except Ethan tonight and that's just because he's a total bastard. You haven't done anything except be a hand in a jar."
"That is different."
"She... what's she like? Come on, it's not every day I get to hear about myself in a parallel world."
"She's brilliant and beautiful, like you. Only she never believed it, she worked as a temp until she met the Doctor."
"That's how I started out," said Donna. "Then one day I figured I was cleverer than the people I was working for and my friend had this idea for a virtual reality shopping channel and my granddad lent me the money to get it started, just on the Internet. My mum thought it was daft, she said no one could compete with Lumic, but it hung on and then Lumic was gone and it was all there for the taking."
"She never figured put how to be successful in the world. She beat herself up for it. She never knew it, but she was always meant for something else. See, she saved the universe, not just one, but all of them, the whole of Creation."
"Well, that's making my little multinational communications giant look pretty pitiful, isn't it?" She smiled. "So, I'm... John, you're the only decent man I've known, I would hate it if you were just attracted to me because-"
"No. Yes. I mean, that's what made me want to get to know you, yes, but you're so different. I love you for you."
John and Donna sat in silence.
"So, I should be leaving then," said John.
"What? Why are you leaving?"
"You were going to kick me out."
"When did I say that? Stay right where you are."
John froze in his seat.
"You're decent. You're gorgeous, you're great with my kids, you love me, you can bake, you are excellent in bed."
"What are you doing?"
"Weighing pros and cons. You have so many good qualities. I can see why you didn't open with this whole I came from a hand in a jar line..." She paused thoughtfully. "This part alien thing, if we wanted to have a baby, what would happen? We could? Would it be part Time whatever?"
"We... we could. I don't know why we couldn't. It would be part Time Lord, but frankly, Donna, I've lost so much of what makes a Time Lord a Time Lord, I don't see that a baby would have any problems."
"What do you mean you've lost what makes a Time Lord a Time Lord?"
"Imagine the Earth. Spinning, but it's like in school and they tell you the world's spinning, but you can't understand because it looks like everything is still, but I used to feel it. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour. The entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour. We're falling through space, clinging to the skin of this one tiny planet... and I used to be able to feel that. Or at least I can remember being able to feel it."
Donna reached out and held John's hand. "I'm sorry. That sounds... amazing."
"You're still not kicking me out," he said.
"No, John. God, do you want me to?"
"It's just usually what happens."
"Well, it's not happening tonight, not ever if I can help it." She leaned in. "In fact, I won't even make you go home tonight."
"You're serious?"
"No, just try to keep it down, I do have children," she smiled. "At least until I can get some soundproofing or something."
"Oi, I'm not exactly alone."
"Yeah, because it was me the upstairs neighbors were banging the floor about."
"And what were the downstairs neighbors banging their ceiling about then?"
"We've got to get you out of that flat," said Donna. "Come on, off to bed."
John took her hand and followed her upstairs with a goofy grin on his face that only a man in love could pull off.