Rose and I stared at him, her in shock, me in amusement, as we watched the man flick switches on the console and checking the monitor. "6 PM...Tuesday…" I moved away from Rose a bit as she inched away from him, concealing herself behind a pillar. "October... 5006... On the way to Barcelona!" He straightened up and looked at us, smiling happily. "Now then... what do I look like?" I started to answer but he stopped me. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. Don't tell me." Our eyes met and a moment later, we started to giggle. "Let's see..." He began to examine himself. "Two legs, two arms, two hands..." He took his wrist and circled his hand around it. "Slight weakness in the dorsal tubercle." His hands shot up to his hair and he ruffled it. "Hair! I'm not bald!" I glanced at Rose to see she was slightly taken aback before turning back to him, letting out a short laugh as he played with his hair. "Oh, oh! Big hair!" His hands travelled to his sideburns. "Sideburns, I've got sideburns! Or really bad skin."

"Sideburns. Your skin's fine."

He winked at me before continuing on. "Little bit thinner." He slapped his stomach. "That's weird. Give me time, I'll get used to it." He made noise that I could only assume was good from the excitement in his eyes. "I. Have got. A mole. I can feel it."

"That's great. Where?" I asked, barely noticing Rose's scared expression.

"Between my shoulder blades, there's a mole." He rotated his shoulder. "That's all right. Love the mole." He looked up and grinned at us. "Go on then, tell me." He straightened up completely, waiting for our assessment. "What do you think?"

"Who are you?" Rose tentatively asked.

His face fell. "I'm the Doctor."

She shook her head, not believing him. "No... Where is he? Where's the Doctor?" Her voice rose. "What have you done to him?"

"Rosie, he's the Doctor. We watched him change."

"You saw me, I- I changed..." he motioned his head to the spot where he had changed. "Right in front of you."

"I saw him sort of explode, and then you replaced him, like a... a teleport or a transmat or a body swap or something."

"Come on, Rose. You saw it."

"No. How can you think he's the Doctor? What, now that you kissed him, you know?"

"No, it's what I saw. We saw him change. That light was dim enough for us to see."

She ignored me and walked up to him. When she was at arm's length, she pushed him in the chest. "You're not fooling me." He stood there listening, his expression showing that he was slightly hurt. "I've seen all sorts of things. Nanogenes... Gelth..." She glared at him. "Slitheen..." The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Oh, my God, are you a Slitheen?"

"I'm not a Slitheen."

"Send him back. I'm warning you; send the Doctor back right now!" she shouted at him.

"Rose, it's me." He leaned closer to her, trying to make her believe him. "Honestly, it's me." She was fuming. "I was dying. To save my own life I changed my body. Every single cell, but... it's still me."

"You can't be."

"Then how do I remember this? Very first time we met, it was at your flat. You were upset with Cerys for not telling you what had happened. She was attacked by a plastic hand controlled by the Nestene Consciousness. When we tried to get it off her, we broke your mum's coffee table. I told you both to forget about me. But you didn't. Not Rose Tyler. She wanted to get to the bottom of Cerys' mystery man. We did so much running. Oh, the running we did, the three of us." Rose glanced at me and I nodded. I could see the tears in her eyes. She slowly turned her attention back to the Doctor.

"Doctor," she whispered.

I watched as he broke out into a grin. "Hello." Rose sighed and stepped back, the weight of everything finally hitting her. She walked over to me and draped an arm around my shoulder while the Doctor returned to the console, flicking switches. "One time we had to hop. Do you remember? Hopping for our lives." He started to hop in his spot. I chuckled a bit but Rose remained stoic. "Yeah? All that hopping? Remember hopping for your life? Yeah?! Hop? With the..." He stopped when he noticed her lack of reaction. "No?"

"Can you change back?"

"Do you want me to?"

"Yeah."

"Oh."

"Can you?"

"No." He sounded disappointed, as if he had been rejected. He looked down at the floor. "Do you want to leave?"

"Do you want us to leave?"

"That was for you, Rosie. I'm quite fine with the change."

She glared at me but reworded her question. "Do you want me to leave?"

"No! But... your choice... if you want to go home..." I watched as her face dropped. The Doctor must have noticed it as well since he returned to the console. "Cancel Barcelona. Change to... London... the Powell Estate... ah... let's say the 24th of December." He glanced at her. "Consider it a Christmas present." She edged closer to the console. "There." He took a step back, tucking his arms under his armpits. Rose looked at him and then me and the console. The Tardis shook a bit from the sudden change.

"I'm going home?"

"Up to you. Back to your mum... it's all waiting. Fish and chips, sausage and mash, beans on toast... no, Christmas! Turkey! Although... having met your mother... nut loaf would be more appropriate." I laughed, noticing that Rose looked down to hide her smile.

"Hey Rosie, were you just smiling?"

"No."

"That was a smile…"

"No it wasn't."

"You smiled," I teased.

"No I didn't."

"Oh, come on, all I did was change, I didn't-" He stopped when he started to gag on something as the Tardis continued to shake. Rose gave him a questioning look while I was more worried.

"What?"

"I said I didn't-" It happened again only this time it was more violent and he made a nasty retching noise. I left the captain's seat and went to his side, rubbing his back even though I knew it would do nothing. "Uh oh."

Rose cautiously came over. "Er…are you alright?" A wisp of time energy left the Doctor's mouth. "What's that?"

"Oh, the change is going a bit wrong and all." He gagged, grabbed my arm and fell to his knees, bringing me along with him. His face contorted in pain.

Look... maybe we should go back. Let's go and find Captain Jack, he'd know what to do."

"Gah, he's busy! He's got plenty to do rebuilding the Earth!" He looked up to the console and focused on a specific lever. "I haven't used this one in years," he said as he pulled away from me and flicked it. The Tardis began to shake even more violently and we were nearly knocked off our feet.

"What're you doing?"

"Putting on a bit of speed! That's it!" He began to turn more knobs. I gave up on balancing him and clutched the console with all that I could muster. Rose did the same. "My beautiful ship! Come on, faster! That's a girl!" He sounded like a crazed man. I glanced at him worryingly bud said nothing. "Faster! Wanna to break the time limit?!"

"Doctor!" I exclaimed.

"Stop it!"

"Ah, don't be so dull. Let's have a bit of fun! Let's rip through that vortex!"

"You've lost it!" I yelled as I released my hold on the console and slapped him upside his head. "You're scaring us."

I wasn't sure if it was the slap, my words, or our frightened expression but he finally calmed. "The regeneration's going wrong. I can't stop myself." He grimaced in pain as he slumped forward a bit. "Ah, my head." Almost like flipping a switch, he was back up and all reasoning went out the window. "Faster! Let's open those engines!"

Suddenly a bell rang. "What's that?"

The Doctor moved from me to her. "We're going to crash land!" He sounded too happy for me, laughing manically. I grimaced, no longer enjoying this version of him at the moment.

"Well then, do something!" Rose and I screamed over the bell.

"Too late! Out of control!" he said hysterically before he ran around the console giggling. "Oh, I love it! Hot dawg!" He hopped in the air, clicking his heels.

"You're going to kill us!"

"Hold on tight, here we go!" Rose and my eyes met for a moment before she shut her eyes. I looked over to the Doctor to see he was grinning like a mad man. I groaned and braced myself for impact. "Christmas Eve!"

Hello all! So, we finally have TEN. While I was extremely sad to part with NINE, with TEN, we get to see an entirely new dynamic to the Doctor and Cerys' relationship that I think you'll all love.

I was so ecstatic to see the reviews for the previous chapter. Like I've said before, I love to hear from you guys. I'm so glad and thankful for your reads and for taking the time to leave a review. It truly means a lot to me.

I'm-a-Klaus-addict: Great question that I would love to answer but can't. Sorry. But I will say that one of them is pretty close to the answer :)

Setsuna1415: I can't wait to post school reunion actually. It's definitely one of those defining chapters between the Doctor and Cerys.

NicoleR85: Rose in School Reunion... all I can say is she will for the most part be Rose ;)

Oh, and these were some reviews that just popped up although they were from other chapters.

Hae: I'm really glad you're enjoying the story and that it actually got you to watch the show. It is... WOW. Yea, the withdrawals are pretty bad but writing Her Secrets helps a bit. With the Slitheen bit, I kind of wanted to add more to her intelligence and awareness. Earlier in the chapter she was able to explain that surfboard (sorry, didn't want to look up the name) and the fact that she had that knowledge made her a threat to Blon, and the hint dropping didn't help much. So, that's basically why I did it that way. It was more like Blon testing her, seeing just how "human" she was, so to speak.