Oh, it's been two months. I'm sorry (to any of the silent lurkers) for taking a while. I was thinking, if anyone would prefer this to be edited with an actual character, I'd do that and upload it as a seperate story.

Part Four: The Man of Many Faces

I hummed to myself, sifting through the TARDIS's immense wardrobe.

Pursing my lips in an amused manner, I picked up an umbrella with a red question mark handle and swung it around in a silly dance routine. The Doctor was busy - as usual - with something or other in the TARDIS console room and I, in my infinite curiosity, decided to explore the beautiful, magnificent, amazing, fantastic, just - bloody - brilliant wardrobe.

Restoring the umbrella to it's proper place, I picked up a cricket bat and swung it around, almost toppling off balance. I spun around and around, trying to imitate the way I remembered seeing my grandfather play, before falling on my bum. I pouted as the cricket bat rolled away under a rack of blouses and tunics to another row.

I rolled over on to my hands and knees before crawling under the clothes, laces and silks and linens brushing over my back.

"Aha!" I cried, emerging to find the cricket bat at the foot of a rack of coats.

I stood up and brushed myself off before stooping down and picking up my runaway plaything. Straightening, I blinked at the coats on the rack.

There was an opera cape, a long brown trench coat (more than one, actually, of several different styles), a leather jacket, a cricketer's jacket (it goes with my bat!), and...

My eyes lit up.

It was the most extraordinary jacket I'd ever seen.

Some twenty odd minutes later, I trudged happily into the TARDIS console room.

"Doctor!" I called giddily.

He rolled out from under the console. "Yes, (f/n) - what in the name of Chancellor Flavia's knitted headdress are you wearing?!" The Doctor exclaimed loudly upon seeing me.

"Don't you like it? I think it's cool," I said happily, smoothing the front of the large, multicolored jacket with the kitty cat pen on the lapel in which I was swathed. "It's a bit big..."

The Doctor trudged up the steps to the hallway entrance where I was standing and regarded me with a funny expression. "That is most definitely not cool."

"You're jealous because you can only pull off tweed and the geeky maths professor thing - barely. This, this amazing piece of workmanship is above...this," I smirked as I poked the Doctor's tweed clad shoulder.

The Doctor scowled at my offending finger good naturedly. "I am most certainly not jealous, (f/n). Now, where'd you find that atrocity?"

I stuck my tongue out at him before rolling my eyes. "I found it in the wardrobe on a rack with a bunch of other coats and stuff." I then frowned at him, "Who owned the leather jacket?"

"I did...wait, it's still back there? I had thought Jackie had stolen it!" The Doctor then whooped with glee.

"Since when did you wear leather? Whoever pulled that off was scary. You...you're not scary," I laughed openly at the thought of my bowtie wearing, fez loving, clueless, baby faced Doctor in a leather jacket being all tough and macho with jeans or something.

It's a very humorous thought.

He can't do jeans.

Jeans are my thing.

"It was one of my...past selves," the Doctor said, a look of remembrance dawning on his face.

"Past...selves?" I asked, utterly confused. I hugged my new favorite jacket to my body tighter.

"Uh, yes," the Doctor nodded, scratching the back of his head uncertainly. "You see, when my people - the Time Lords - were close to death, whether by age, disease, poison, or a fatal wound or something like that, we could change every cell, every molecule, every atom into something entirely new. Same person, different face, somewhat different personality." He looked at me dead on with a face betraying nervous fear. "Does that bother you, (f/n)?"

I stared at him, turning over what he had just said in my head. "Like...you mean, kinda like a - uh, a Pokémon evolving in its little ball thing?"

The Doctor stared at me, fear gone and replaced with a completely blank face. After a few awkward momenta, he nodded.

"Okay...that's cool. I don't know much about Pokémon but that's cool." I grinned, "Could you show me what you used to look like?"

The Doctor hesitated before nodding. He grabbed my hand and pulled me down to the TV at the console. After pressing a few buttons, sticking his tongue out childishly, and ruffling his hair, the Doctor turned the screen to face me.

"They're in order of incarnation," he stated, crossing his arms and watching my reaction.

The first picture held an old man - the First Doctor, I suppose - with white hair and a black jacket and checkered pants and a cane. I nodded, remembering that cane and jacket being in the wardrobe. The second man wore something similar but he was much younger than the first. He had a top hat and a recorder and a-

"Is he wearing a bowtie?" I asked, slightly shocked.

The Doctor only nodded and I looked back at the screen.

The Third Doctor also wore a bowtie, a velvety one. He was older than the Second Doctor but so lively looking! He had on the opera cape I'd found, a dress shirt with frilly cuffs on the sleeves and a burgundy smoking jacket and matching pants. Paired with his whitish-grey curls, he looked rather like a dandy. The next incarnation, the Fourth Doctor, was rather distinctive in face alone. He had curly brown hair, an Indiana Jones-esqu fedora, big white teeth, a trench coat (I'm sure the Doctor has an obsession), and a long, multicolored scarf.

"That scarf...s'intresting," I nodded, almost solemnly.

"Oi! I love that scarf!"

"Too long for my tastes," I shrugged.

While the Doctor scowled, I looked back at the screen to assess the Fifth Doctor. He was young and blonde and rather adorable. More adorable than this incarnation, I thought rather smugly. I squealed happily upon realizing he was the one with the cricket jacket, Edwardian, I think. I quirked an eyebrow at the celery pinned on the lapel but refrained from asking.

I do not want to know why he went around with a vegetable on his shirt.

Then-

"YES!"

"Ow! Why are you yelling?" The Doctor asked, rubbing his ears and glaring at me.

"He's the one with the coat!" I cried, pointing at the Sixth Doctor with the rainbow coat that I now wore. He looked like a rainbow factory had exploded on him. He also had a brown waistcoat, turquoise polka dot cravat, and yellow and green striped trousers which all clashed with his coat and curly blonde hair. "Can I travel with him?"

"No, that'll mess up time lines and everything will go all wibbly wobbly and I'll have to reverse the polarity of-"

"Fine! Be a dork!" I threw my hands up in the air before giving the Sixth Doctor and his coat a wistful look.

The Seventh Doctor was shorter than all the other Doctors (this prompted me to snicker). He had on a vest with question marks and two more on the collar of his shirt and, I realized, the question mark umbrella I had been playing with. It then dawned on me that there had been question marks on the collars of the last four incarnations of the Doctor.

"What's with the-"

"It was a phase."

I shrugged before examining the Doctor's panama hat atop his short dark hair and tweed pants. Again, he has a serious obsession. My eyes shifted over to the Eighth Doctor and I paused.

He was rather handsome in that time around.

But-

"What is it with you and the Edwardian and Victorian outfits?" I asked, turning away from the picture of the nearly-ginger haired Doctor to the Doctor with floppy dark brown hair.

"Eh..."

"You're mental."

"Eh..."

"It's like, you have a pattern...either Edwardian and Victorian or some weird nerd thing...and the only normal guy is..."

I focused my attention on the Ninth Doctor with his dark, buzz cut head of hair, green jumper, dark jeans, and leather jacket.

The more prominent feature being his ears.

"...him, and he still had weird ears!"

"You are rather insulting," the Doctor pouted childishly.

"I know, it's a quirky thing I like to call 'so - much - cooler - than - you,'" I said smugly.

The Doctor pouted. "You're not cooler than me at all." Suddenly his face lit up and he smiled, "Doctor, Time Lord, cool!"

I blinked, he's mental! "(f/n), human, no!"

He just stared at me, kinda like he expected that, and I sighed before sticking my tongue out at him.

"Just continue with your picture browsing."

"But-" I cut myself off when he turned my head back to face the screen.

The Tenth Doctor was so...so...

"Doctor."

"Yeah?"

"You were so slim and maybe a little bit foxy and I think I kinda like it," I said in the dreamiest voice I had ever used in my whole life of some twenty four and a half years.

"What?" The Doctor exclaimed, sounding aghast.

"And now you're...baby faced and awkward and floppy haired and his hair is gravity defying and he's just...and you're just...and I," I rambled on, sizing my Doctor - the Eleventh Doctor - up to the Tenth.

"He may be 'appealing' to you," the Doctor said, emphasizing the word appealing with air quotes. "But, and this is important (f/n), that incarnation was rather unstable!"

I frowned at him. "What do you mean 'unstable?'"

"Well..." The Doctor hesitated, ran his hands through his hair, straightened his bowtie, pulled at the lapels of his jacket, and at last went to just fiddling with his hands.

"Doctor?" A sudden thought dawning on me.

"Yes?"

"Was it that...was it a girl?"

The Doctor blinked at me. I blinked back. We blinked at each other.

"Well...yes, yes, and her name was...Rose."

"You mentioned her on New Earth," I said, recalling the name.

The Doctor only nodded, and I knew instantly that this Rose was important to him.

"Did you love her?"

The only reply I received was the slightest of nods.

That...something inside me twisted in an unnatural way. I pushed it down and instead placed a hand on the Doctor's shoulder as he buried his face in his hands.

"And...now?"

Another minute nod.

I took a deep breath. "What happened to her?"

"She's in a parallel universe with a clone of my Tenth incarnation," the Doctor murmured, sounding utterly miserable.

Another deep breath.

"C'mon, you need some tea and jammie dodgers," I said gently, taking the Doctor's hand and slowly pulling him up the stairs towards the kitchen.

I glanced at the Doctor, a single thought flashing through my mind; the man of many faces, personas, and likes, brought down by a single girl with a simple, common name: Rose.