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AN: This chapter take place almost IMMEDIATELY after the last chapter, looking at Martha after she's escaped the Toclafane slaughter of Japan
Broken Faith
As the brilliant blue of the Time Vortex faded from around her, leaving her alone on a deserted beach that should be the outskirts of America- assuming that she'd entered the coordinates correctly-, Martha fell to the ground and threw up, her body continuing to violently reject the food she had eaten until there was nothing more than dry heaves left.
God… she'd witnessed Lazarus feeding on people and thought that would be bad enough, but what the Toclafane had done…
She nearly felt like throwing up again at the memory even as her stomach reminded her that she didn't have anything left to lose.
She didn't know how it had gone so wrong so fast. One minute she was sitting in a building with a couple of local sailors, plotting the best location to land in Australia without the Master's forces spotting her, and the next she'd found herself running for her life as the Toclafane blasted away at everything around her, whole buildings collapsing under their laser weapons while their blades sliced and tore at everyone who survived that attack. She'd barely managed to escape by activating the vortex manipulator at the last minute- remembering what Jack had done to enter the coordinates for the Valiant into the machine and modifying them to aim for Australia-, but now that she was here…
She just couldn't cope!
Why hadn't the Doctor asked Jack to do this; why did it have to be her? Even if she didn't fully understand what a 'Time Agent' actually did, Jack could probably cope with this whole mess in his sleep after everything he'd seen while waiting for the Doctor even without his immortality; he had training in coping with this kind of situation.
She…
She was nothing… she was just a medical student who'd stumbled into something bigger than she could ever hope to be…
She was meant to be worrying about passing her exam; she couldn't cope with this kind of shit (And she'd just sworn; she must really be getting frustrated)!
It wasn't like she hadn't screwed up enough when dealing with the Family of Blood by losing the watch- to say nothing of the Doctor nearly sacrificing himself to the Clade just to save her-, she was the only reason the Master was even active in the first place! If she'd just waited to draw Yana's attention to the watch when the Doctor was present, maybe he would have been able to stop the Master getting out…
God, it was no wonder the Doctor had preferred Rose over her; Rose had single-handedly ended the Time War- even if the Daleks had shown up again in New York, she must have still dealt them a pretty decisive blow based on what the Doctor had mentioned while explaining Jack's condition to him- and brought Jack back to life (Albeit before she went and married the Doctor's oldest enemy), while the only thing Martha had managed to do was set the stage for Earth to be conquered by a homicidal maniac with delusions of grandeur and superiority that didn't even have the decency to be complete delusions…
She couldn't do this.
She couldn't…
She'd failed her planet, she'd failed her family, she'd failed the Doctor…
Somehow, that last one hurt the most; the man who'd saved humanity for so many centuries, the one man to whom possibly the whole universe owed a debt to at some point or another, had counted on her to save the world…
And she'd failed him.
With that thought dominant in her mind, Martha Jones fell to the ground, barely even registering the presence of backpack that she still carried- containing the fake 'gun' she'd developed with Professor Chesterton's assistance to provide her 'cover story'- pressing against the back of her head as she curled up in a ball and began to cry.
Martha wasn't sure how long she'd lain on the ground sobbing before she heard the faint sound of footsteps approaching her, but even when she registered them she couldn't bring herself to care.
She'd already failed the Doctor; it would probably be better if whoever this was just killed her now rather than letting her live with the knowledge that she'd failed the man she-
NO!
She couldn't think… that; she was in too much pain as it was…
"Come come, my dear," a voice said, its tone soft and comforting as opposed to the harshness she'd been expecting. "This isn't going to help anyone; let me help you up."
Looking up, Martha could only stare in confusion at the sight of an old man with white hair standing over her, dressed in a dark jack and brown trousers that seemed vaguely Victorian in appearance, one hand outstretched towards her with a slight smile on his face while he held a walking-stick in the other.
What was an old man doing alone on an Australian beach at a time like this…?
Then she looked closer at the older man's eyes, sparkling with a certain combination of enthusiasm, knowledge and compassion that she'd only seen before in one other man, and inspiration struck.
It couldn't be…
Then again, hadn't Mrs Jackson and Professor Chesterton said that the Doctor had been an old man when they began travelling with him?
"Doctor…?" she whispered, her eyes wide as she took the offered hand.
"Quite," the old man replied, nodding at her with a slight smile as he helped her to her feet with an ease that belied his physical age (And even his chronological age; if the Master had needed to forcibly age the current Doctor a hundred years before he reached old age, how old would this Doctor have to be to have reached this state naturally?). "The original, you might say."
Martha's eyes widened in shock at the implications of that last statement.
The original…
"You're… you're the First Doctor?" she said, instantly wishing she could take it back; it sounded so stupid when she phrased it like that, to call him the 'first' Doctor like he was a make of car rather than his own person…
"I am," the man said, smiling at her with a warm expression that reminded Martha vaguely of her grandfather- and God, she couldn't quite get her head around that; even knowing that he was centuries old, the idea of the Doctor as a grandfather was something she still had trouble getting her head around- while still retaining a certain essential 'Doctorishness'. "Or, at least, I am the idea of him…"
Martha blinked in confusion.
"Wh… what?" she said, looking uncertainly at the man before her.
"I am not actually here in the sense that I am here, Miss Jones," the old man- she couldn't quite think of him as 'the Doctor'; she acknowledged that he was the same person underneath, but in the end he was no more the Doctor she… cared for… than she was still the little girl she'd been when she first decided to become a doctor after breaking her arm- replied, smiling at her in a manner that was probably intended to be comforting even if the effect of it was dimmed by her current confusion. "I am… well, to begin at the beginning, we are within your dream."
Martha blinked.
"My… my dream? " she repeated, looking in increasing perplexity at the old man in front of her before another thought occurred to her. "Oh God… I've lost it, haven't I?"
"Oh no, my dear girl, you aren't mad," the old man said, smiling reassuringly at her. "I- we- have simply taken advantage of the telepathic field created by the Archangel Network- a tragic abuse of such an exceptional concept, really; it could have done so much good if used properly- to reach out to you and allow us to talk with you."
Martha wished she could stop herself from showing the confusion that she knew was now evident on her face, but the old man clearly understood without her needing to ask in the first place. "You are, of course, aware that we are telepathic?"
"Yeah…" Martha said, nodding uncertainly even as the memory of the Doctor accessing Peter Streete's mind just by touching his head and concentrating.
"Well," the old man said, shrugging casually as he smiled at her, "with the telepathic field created by the Archangel Network creating a link between the entirety of the human race, it is thus far easier for the current version of us- particularly with us having spent the last few months working on tuning himself into the network- to use it to find your… 'brain pattern', if you will; since you have spent so long within the TARDIS, we are familiar with your mind's… presence, if you will."
"Right…" Martha said, nodding slightly uncertainly as she looked at the old man, hoping he wouldn't take what she was about to say the wrong way. "And… you're here because…?"
"Oh, his conscious mind is simply otherwise occupied by maintaining this connection in the first place; with the personality you know thus occupied, it was decided that we would come in his place to speak with you," the old man said, before he turned around to glance behind himself with a slight smile. "Ah, and here come the rest of me."
Glancing behind the old man, Martha's eyes widened as she saw eight other figures begin to fade into existence, many of them smiling at her with a warmth that she'd sometimes wished she'd receive from 'her' Doctor- she wished she could come up with a better term; it sounded so possessive- while a couple of others looked slightly uncomfortable at their presence here, seemingly making an effort to look everywhere but at each other.
As they moved into view, Martha couldn't help but be amazed at the sheer diversity of people spread out before here. Apart from the old man, there was a short man dressed in clothing that seemed to be a couple of sizes too big for him with a haircut that reminded her of the stereotypical Beatles style, an older man in a blue velvet jacket and a frilly shirt- the ensemble reminded her vaguely of Austin Powers, except that this man actually made it look smart rather than stupid- with a well-furrowed face and thick white hair close behind him. To the velvet-clad man's right came a tall figure with thick brown curls wearing a long dark coat and a massive scarf that Martha was certain she'd seen in the TARDIS wardrobe, the next arrival wearing a cricket jumper and a beige, red-lined three-quarter-length coat with a stick of celery pinned to one lapel. The man next to the cricketer was a large man- both in terms of height and weight- with long curly blond hair and a patchwork coat made of various assorted fabrics that seemed to have been stuck together completely at random, the rest of his clothing- including an equally vivid waistcoat and yellow-and-black-striped trousers- so flamboyant that Martha almost missed the short man in the brown suit and blood-red waistcoat following him, an umbrella with a thick red question-mark handle in his hand and a straw hat on his head. Following the short man- Martha hated to sound shallow, but this new one was probably the best-looking one yet- was a young man with long brown hair dressed in a green velvet coat and cream-coloured trousers and waistcoat, who smiled warmly at her when he saw her. The last figure- who Martha noted hung slightly back from the others even as they all gathered around her- was a tall man with big ears and short hair- the shortest hair of any of the Doctors present, she noted- dressed simply in a battered leather jacket and a dark jumper and trousers.
For a moment, Martha simply stared in silence, the Doctors clearly waiting for her to be comfortable with the current situation, before she finally spoke.
"You're… all the Doctor?" she said at last, staring with wide eyes at the assortment of people around her.
Even after seeing the drastic difference between Professor Yana and Mr Saxon, she'd partly assumed that the radical difference between them was mainly due to their different physical ages rather than anything else; looking at the nine men before her, man of them looking rather close to those around them in terms of age- the one in the cricket outfit seemed to be the youngest man here-, it was almost impossible to believe they were all the same man…
Then she looked into the eyes of the men gathered before her- each one reflecting the same intellectual and emotional depth that she'd recognised in the old man from all that time she'd spent gazing into the Doctor's eyes as he explained some new alien or piece of technology to-, and knew that she was right.
It was almost unbelievable even to Martha; here she was, facing nine different men of vastly different physical appearance- to say nothing of personality; the cricketer seemed slightly shy while the one with the Beatle-style haircut was grinning broadly at her and the one in the leather jacket hung around at the back-, and she could still see something of 'her' Doctor in all of them…
"Not only were we the Doctor, Miss Jones; in a sense, we remain him to this day," the one in the bad coat explained, looking over at her with a confident smile. "We all represent… parts of him, if you will; each one of us serves as the personification of a certain aspect of the personality of the Doctor you know. While the old buzzard over there," (Glancing over at the 'old buzzard', Martha couldn't help but smile slightly at his indignant glare) "represents his intellect, I," (Martha's smile grew broader at the sight of the older- she knew consciously that he was younger than the Doctor she knew, but he looked physically older- Doctor straightening up slightly as he spoke, assuming an attitude that reminded her of some of her more pompous lecturers), "represent the part of us that grants me the strength and resolve to take action when all is lost, the part of us that knows that we can accomplish anything once we put our minds to it, the part of us that-"
"Basically, he's our ego," the Beatles-style fellow said, shrugging apologetically at Martha even as the other Doctor turned to stare indignantly at his other self. "You'll have to forgive him; when he first got here he didn't get out much, so he tends to talk like anything when he gets the chance."
Martha wasn't sure if that was meant to comfort her or apologise for the other Doctor's attitude; quite frankly, this whole situation was getting far stranger than anything she'd experienced so far, and she'd thought the living sun would be the peak of strange encounters in her time in the TARDIS…
"OK… so… you're his ego…" she said, nodding briefly at the man in the multicoloured coat before she turned to look at the Beatle-esque Doctor. "And… you'd be his…?"
"Essentially, I'm his sense of humour," the little man replied, shrugging slightly as he looked down at himself before glancing up at her. "It's the Chaplin similarities, if you ask me; everyone always thinks of me as the comedian version of us…"
"Don't mind him, he's always a bit short like that-" the man with the frilly shirt began, in an exasperated tone that suggested he was used to doing this in matters relating to the shorter man.
"Do you mind?" the little man said, glaring over at the speaker with a furrowed brow. "Just because you were one of the more athletic-"
"I happen to represent his technical expertise these days; the fact that I was one of the better ones of us when it came to hand-to-hand-" the white-haired figure retaliated.
"Can we please calm down over there?" the blond man in the cricket outfit asked, looking over at the other two Doctors with a frustrated gaze that suggested to Martha that he was used to acting as the mediator in these situations. "We do have company, you know…"
"Uh… yes, right, of course; I apologise about that, my dear," the shorter Doctor said, looking apologetically over at her.
"We both are," the white-haired Doctor said, reaching over to place an apologetic hand on Martha's shoulder. "It's always a bit difficult when we're all in the same place; even in here, we all can't resist showing off a bit for the rest of us…"
"Uh… right," Martha said, nodding slightly awkwardly at the man before her before she stared above her at whatever passed for the sky in this place (Wasn't there some technical term for a place where minds met; the 'astral plane' or something…?). "This is… insane…"
"Of course it's insane," the little man with the Scottish accent said, smiling at her in a casual manner. "Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way; why should we be the exception?"
Despite the situation, Martha couldn't help but smile slightly at the Scottish man's last comment; she couldn't quite explain it, but there was something about that one she found rather comforting in his way, his face evoking an unusual combination of favoured uncle and teacher in one, despite the solemn shadow lurking in his eyes that wasn't visible in the eyes of the other Doctors…
"And… what are you?" she asked the Scottish Doctor uncertainly, hoping she didn't sound rude.
"Tactical expertise, really; I'm the part of him that came up with the plan you're helping us in right now, among other things," the Scottish man replied, smiling at her once again. "And I must congratulate you on your progress, on that topic; you've only been travelling for just over five months and you've already reached Australia-"
"Although, of course, we acknowledge that you hardly wanted to get this far under these circumstances," the cricketer added, looking scathingly over at the Scottish Doctor for a moment before he turned back to Martha. "I apologise about him; I sometimes think that they feel they don't have to worry about what they say because I'm the one who serves as the conscience…"
"Well, we all have our burdens to bear, Doctor; it's never easy for us to do what we're here to do," the man in the scarf said, smiling reassuringly at his other self- Martha suddenly wished she knew what order these Doctors were in; she knew that the old man was the 'original' Doctor, and from what she'd heard from Mrs Jackson the little man with the Beatles-style haircut and the large clothing was probably the second, but anything else would have been primarily guesswork- before he glanced at Martha. "After all, I'm representing his enthusiasm for everything he's enthusiastic about; the way he is these days, that's a fairly full-time job."
"Uh… I know what you mean," Martha said at last, unable to stop a slight smile crossing her face at the memory of some of 'her' Doctor's old speeches- this was the man who could make equally passionate speeches about humanity's ability to survive to the end of the universe and his appreciation for the 'nibbles' at Lazarus's party-, before her gaze fixed on the short-haired man in the leather jacket, still slightly hanging back from the other Doctors.
"And… what about him?" she asked, indicating the man in question, curious about his more withdrawn nature compared to the others. "What does he represent?"
"He's… complicated," the short man with the umbrella said at last after the Doctors looked uncomfortably, the Doctor with the Scottish accent exchanging another brief, slightly uncomfortable look with the Doctor in the multi-coloured coat that Martha couldn't quite make out before he looked back at her. "We recently realised that he made some… well, 'mistakes' is the best term we can come up with, really… in his time 'in charge', and…"
"Well, to put it simply, we're having trouble working out how we feel about them and what they say about him as one of us," the one in the Austin-like clothes said, shrugging slightly as he looked at Martha. "We're not blaming him for the mistakes, of course- we learned our lesson about doing that during the Scottish fellow's time in charge; we're all the Doctor, and we have to learn from all our mistakes, even the ones we made in other bodies-, but we just… can't work out what to think of him as."
"Oh," Martha said, briefly wondering what that meant before deciding that she didn't have the right to ask; if it was something that was enough of an issue to leave the Doctor as troubled as he currently appeared to be, she was fairly certain that he'd prefer not to discuss it unless he had to.
That question answered, she turned to look uncertainly at the only remaining as-yet-unidentified Doctor. "And… you are?"
"I'm… our responsibility," the man with the long brown hair said, sighing slightly as he looked around at the others.
"By which he means that he personifies the part of us that accepts the responsibilities and burdens that we must endure if we are to consider ourselves the Doctor," the old man explained, noting Martha's uncertain expression. "He taught them to me long ago- an interesting little paradox, really; remind us to tell you about it when this is all over-, and the events of his life made it all the more appropriate that he take this role onto himself now that he has become part of the persona."
For a moment Martha wondered what the old man meant by that, and then an explanation came to her.
The Doctor who accepted the responsibilities of being the Doctor…
And he did match Anji's description of the Doctor she'd travelled with; given everything Anji had told her about the Doctor having had an 'accident' before he met her that had erased his memory and left the TARDIS so badly damaged it had taken a century to recover…
"You… you're the one who fought in the Time War, aren't you?" she asked, looking uncertainly at the Doctor before her.
The younger Doctor nodded solemnly.
"I was the one who made… that call, yes," he said at last; Martha immediately regretted bringing up a topic that he was unquestionably uncomfortable talking about, but the Doctor before her still seemed willing to continue discussing the matter regardless of his personal feelings. "If there had been any alternative, I would have taken it… but with Gallifrey having practically fallen already, and my people seemingly destined to face a prolonged war across time and space that all evidence suggested we'd lose anyway…"
He sighed. "I had to do it."
Martha's heart went out to the tortured man before her; how could the Doctor cope with that kind of responsibility?
"Because I chose to," the Doctor said, looking up at Martha as though he'd heard her thoughts (Which, given their environment, now that Martha thought about it, was probably accurate).
"You know…" he continued, staring upwards as the other Doctors stepped back slightly, apparently recognising that the current speaker needed some space, "Someone once asked me why I do what I do when there is so much evidence to support the idea that humanity is basically a mass of idiots who would blow themselves up in a matter of seconds and seem to delight in finding new ways of killing each other every other week."
"And… what did you tell him?" Martha asked, wondering why the Doctor would tell her something like that.
"Because, in the end, none of me want to accept that things are that way," the Doctor replied, as he looked resolutely over at her. "Injustice is the rule, but I want justice. Suffering is the rule, but I want to end it. Despair accords with reality, but I insist on hope. I don't accept it because it is unacceptable."
Looking at her, the Byron-esque Doctor smiled. "And that's why you're doing this, isn't it? Because you recognise that, no matter how hard it is, someone has to stand up to the Master… because the alternative is simply unthinkable."
Looking at the Doctors gathered before her, Martha knew, as clearly as if they'd said it out loud, that they had finished with the 'introductions' and were now getting down to the real reason they'd come here; to make sure she didn't give up.
She just wished she could feel like she deserved it…
"I… well, I knew I couldn't do anything on the Valiant…" she said as she looked uncertainly around at the various Doctors gathered before her, suddenly feeling inadequate in the face of these men who had each done so much with their lives, "and… well, you told me about your plan, I couldn't get to anyone else without the Master shooting me…"
"And you'll do it," the man in the bad coat said, nodding at her as though his word was all she needed.
In some ways, it was that simple certainty that did it for Martha.
"But… I can't!" she yelled, looking in frustration at the Doctors before her. "I'm not like you, don't you get that? I can't just go around the planet, pass on this message, and never look back at what's happening-"
"Just because we don't look back doesn't mean we don't care, Martha," the cricketer said, walking over to look sympathetically at her. "We might not always show it- some of us are a lot better at that side of things than others-, but we do care about everyone we meet; just because we don't always show it at times-"
"God, I know you care, Doctor; I'm not saying you don't!" Martha yelled, looking at the young man before her in frustration. "I'm saying that I can't just… I just can't keep this up! I'm not a hero; I'm just the girl who ran into you in the hospital-"
"And we allowed you to hear our second heart," the Scottish Doctor put in, looking slightly solemnly at her as she turned to look at him, evidently perplexed at his addition to the conversation.
"Didn't it ever occur to you, Doctor Jones," the velvet-clad Doctor with white hair continued- Martha didn't bother correcting him on her title-, "that if we had allowed anyone to hear that heart when we were initially admitted to the hospital, we'd have either been turned away as a freak or attracted a lot more attention as the result of us being a medical curiosity? Allowing you to hear our other heart was a conscious choice… and we made that choice because we knew that we could trust you."
Martha paused.
"R… really?" she said at last, looking uncertainly at the Doctors before her.
After so long thinking that the Doctor had never seen her as anything other than a replacement, the knowledge that he'd trusted her enough on meeting her for the first time to allow her to hear his second heart…
"Y'know," the silent Doctor said as he looked at her, cutting off another line of thought before it could get started, "I never even told Rose about our second heart until she heard about it after I was subjected to this body-scanner thing by some alien enthusiast in 2012 and the staff ended up asking me about it when we were leaving after… one of the exhibits activated; she just knew I was alien without having anything specific, and I only even told her what species I was after an argument about it on our second trip."
"Oh…" Martha said, once again wishing that she didn't feel as proud about that as she did; the idea that the Doctor had so casually mentioned something to her when he'd concealed it from Rose was… nice… but given what she'd seen of this Doctor- apparently the one that Rose had travelled with originally-, who was to say that her Doctor wouldn't have mentioned those details to Rose sooner than this version of himself would have done in the same situation?
"The point is," the one in the scarf said, looking over at Martha with a reassuring smile, "we chose to share those details with you because we trusted you… just as we trust you to achieve the task we gave you now."
"But… but I can't!" Martha protested weakly, looking tearfully at the Doctors around her; she wished she could be stronger, but after everything she'd witnessed since she began this nightmarish journey it was just too much to stop herself. "I'm not a hero! I'm not a Time Lord, I'm not even a Time Agent; I'm just the girl who spoke to you when the Judoon arrived! I'm… I'm scared…"
For a moment there was silence as she lay on the ground, sobbing once again, momentarily overwhelmed by the emotions she was current feeling, until she felt a comforting hand on her shoulder, prompting her to look up into the eyes of the white-haired Doctor in velvet, looking at her with a comforting smile.
"Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know," he said, smiling slightly at her. "It's being frightened and doing what you have to do anyway."
"He's right, you know," the cricketer said, smiling at her himself. "I'd say brave heart, but I think you have one already; you've certainly proven that you possess one so far."
"We believe in you, Martha Jones," the Byron-esque Doctor said reassuringly, reaching over to place a comforting hand on her shoulder as she looked at him. "All you have to do is believe in yourself."
For a moment, Martha simply sat in silence, looking contemplatively at the people around her, before she finally voiced the one thing she really wanted to know.
"If you always believed in me…" she said, trying to hold back her tears as she looked at the assorted Doctors before her, "why did you never act like it?"
Once again, there was silence, the Doctors exchanging uncomfortable glances, before one of them spoke once again.
"We… cannot answer that, my dear," the old man said at last, shaking his head apologetically.
"But," the man in the scarf added, smiling slightly at her, "if we combine our mental energies to allow us to take over from him for a few moments, I think we can provide you with someone who can answer that question to your satisfaction."
Before Martha could ask what he meant by that, all nine Doctors closed their eyes and concentrated for a moment, before they were all apparently 'consumed' by a brilliant white light, forcing Martha to close her eyes at the intensity of it.
When the light faded and Martha opened her eyes, it was to see the Doctor- 'her' Doctor- stood alone in front of her, albeit now dressed in a strange amalgamation of his other selves' clothing; umbrella in one hand, walking-stick in the other, scarf wrapped around his neck, stick of celery pinned to the lapel of a multi-coloured coat, a frilled shirt over a cream-coloured waistcoat and a lopsided bow tie, and dark trousers.
"Huh," he said, glancing down at his clothing thoughtfully. "Wasn't expecting that; must be because the shift's a bit unstable…"
He shrugged slightly, evidently concluding that it wasn't important, as he turned to look at Martha. "Anyway, Martha… you think I never saw you?"
Before Martha could reply, the Doctor had already stepped forward to lightly caress her cheek with his thumb, tilting her head back to smile at her as he brushed away a tear that Martha hadn't even realised was trickling from her eye, momentarily overcome by this show of tenderness from the man who'd so often trampled over her feelings without ever appearing to notice what he was doing.
"Martha Jones…" he said, his tone solemn as he stared at her, reflecting a depth and sincerity that she'd never seen him show to her, "sometimes you amazed and terrified me so much, it took everything I had not to look at you."
Before Martha had time to wonder what the Doctor meant by that, he was leaning towards her, his eyes slightly closing as he did so, Martha momentarily stunned into silence by what was happening…
Then she opened her eyes and found herself back on the beach where she had been when she fell asleep- as she presumed she must have done before the old man first appeared to her-, alone on the Australian coast once again.
For a moment, as Martha sat up, she wondered if that impossible 'encounter' had all been a dream…
Then she looked down at the key that hung around her neck- the key that now stopped anyone from seeing her unless they wanted to-, and re-evaluated her original thoughts; unlikely it might be that the Doctor she knew would say all… that… to her, after everything that she'd seen and witnessed since joining the Doctor in the TARDIS, the idea that the 'dream-message' she'd just received was real was far from impossible.
She'd need to ask the next old companion she met what 'their' Doctor had looked like- the more she travelled the more likely it seemed to her that she'd encounter another old companion; the Doctor really had encountered a surprising amount of people-, but until further notice she'd assume that what she'd experienced with those other nine Doctors had 'really' happened.
She just wished she could believe that the last part of the dream had been real…
AN 2: For those wondering where the idea for this chapter came from, it was partly inspired by the novel "Timewyrm: Revelations", where the Seventh Doctor and Ace battled the Timewyrm- a legendary time monster- in the Doctor's mind, aided by the Doctor's 'memories' of his previous incarnations. The comment about the Sixth Doctor 'not getting out much' when he first arrived was due to the fact that, initially after his regeneration, the Seventh Doctor's memory of his sixth self became increasingly twisted due to the Seventh Doctor's own guilt and self-loathing over the actions he committed in this incarnation- such as destroying an entire alternate timeline where the Silurians killed the Third Doctor ("Blood Heat")- combined with his increasingly negative opinion of his past self (For various reasons connected to the Sixth Doctor's methods and attitude) to make the Sixth Doctor a more twisted, darker version of himself, hating his seventh self- to the extent that he once attempted to kill the other Doctor after a dimensional rift gave him the energy to physically manifest- before the Seventh Doctor learned to forgive himself after a near-death experience forced him to recognise that he was the Doctor in all his incarnations (Hence why none of the Doctors are that angry at the Ninth for 'latching on' to Rose after his regeneration despite the mess it's left them in; after what the Sixth Doctor nearly became when they started blaming him for his actions in that incarnation, they're not going to repeat that mistake)