I don't own Doctor Who - the BBC does, and Big Finish produces amazing audiobooks with incredible stories, introducing new characters.
A nice little spoiler for The Eleven, where the renegade Time Lord whose personalities are merged together to form a mad mess until he's arguing with himself. This is just a drabble where the One becomes the Two, starting off the chain until we go through the different incarnations of the Time Lord; down from the Six, the Seven, the Eight, the Nine, and the Eleven.
Enjoy!
One to Two.
It had started.
He was regenerating, he could feel the burning sensation which had been well documented as a symptom of regeneration, and he could feel it gathering strength and he looked at his glowing hands with horror as he stared down at the console of his TARDIS as he had set the ship to take him as far away
from where he had received the killing shot which had started off his regeneration.
"Well, at least I've had good innings in my body," he said.
The One was a former member of the High Council of the Time Lords. He had left Gallifrey, disappearing from the scene when he had become tired of living there. At the same time he had been inspired by the stories of other renegades like the Master, the Monk, and the Rani, but the one who inspired him the most was that of the Doctor.
All the Doctor had done was flee Gallifrey in a battered old Type 40 TARDIS, and he had begun interfering in the affairs of other species, only the One had no intention of doing the same thing since he was still too much of a Time Lord to really care. In any case, it didn't feel right to him to get involved although he had tried, just the once.
It hadn't gone well. Anyway, before that, he had needed to leave Gallifrey, and he had. The One had renamed himself, and he had stolen a TARDIS for himself, and he had left Gallifrey. At first he had just travelled around, and then he had decided to try out the criminal life. And eventually, he had begun to enjoy it for a few centuries.
Yes, it had been invigorating. Until now. The One had been encountering a belligerent group of Rutans and Sontarans. It was his own fault, he should never have gone into the middle of a battle scene, but he had been curious and he had wanted to see if there was any way he could manipulate things for his own benefit. Now he was dying, regenerating for the first time.
The One took a deep breath and stepped away from the console, bracing himself as he prepared to regenerate. "Alright," he whispered. "Concentrate, concentrate….I can do this... Something good."
"Something better than us."
"Something….?" the One gasped as he realised what he had just heard. "Wait….was…was that me?"
The One stilled and thought about what had just happened. He had just heard himself, as though he had just time travelled back into his own past. But he hadn't…He had just heard himself speak just on the point of regeneration, and he hadn't even generated the thought behind the speech.
Regeneration.
Oh no, please no-! The One was reminded of lessons, horror stories, myths and legends about regeneration during the years. Horror stories of Time Lords who had undergone regeneration, and they'd lost a large amount of their former persona until it was unrecognisable. Or regenerations where the Time Lord would have the personas of his previous lives.
Regenerative dissonance it was called.
Oh, Rassilon, please no! He couldn't have regenerative dissonance, could he? Well, how would he have known or even realised he might have it? The problem with the ailment was it couldn't be diagnosed without the Time Lord regenerating.
"Goodbye, One," he heard the other…him say? The One wasn't even sure how to describe the experience of hearing himself with his voice, his personality speaking while he was still there, like a transmat double or a clone with the entire memory downloaded into his mind.
Fear entered the One's mind at that point. He looked around desperately through the orange-red haze of the regeneration for any inspiration for stopping the regeneration, but there wasn't one.
But by then it was too late anyway, and the One screamed as the energy surged through him, making him feel like his insides were being torn apart and the remains were set on fire-
-And then it was over, and a different man was standing in the TARDIS console room looking around bemused and shaken by the regeneration. He looked around for a little bit longer, slowly recovering from the trauma of the change.
"Wow!" the new man grinned and then whooped with glee as he recovered enough from the pain. "I made it."
"Yes, but don't forget I had to die first. Give me some gratitude, at least."
The man, the Two, jumped. "Who was that?"
"It's me, you fool. I am the One. I am you, your previous self."
The Two stiffened and gasped. "H-how is this…possible?" he said quietly.
And then he remembered, the realisation he'd had come to at the point of regeneration. The reminder, temporarily displaced because of his regeneration and post-regenerative trauma, hit him with the power of a blast from a Dalek gun.
"No, I can't…I can't have you in my head! Not like this!" the Two said, his voice rising in tone while he clutched his head. "No!
"Too bad, Two. You are stuck with me, and there's nothing you can do about it."
"No!"
"Face facts, Two. We're going to be stuck with our voices forever, including with the others."
The Two stilled. "What do you mean?" he stuttered hesitantly.
"You mean to tell me you haven't worked it out yet?" Contempt filled the voice of the One. "We have thirteen lives. We have twelve lives left. Twelve different personas, all filling the same head!"
"You're right!" the Two hissed, shaking his head, and wishing this was all some hideous dream.
"I know I am, Two. And I'm dreading it!"