The 'new Doctor' glanced around outside. "Now, since we're acting like common burglars, I suggest we get out of plain view."
The part human Doctor stepped out of the way to let him inside, and as soon as the door was closed, they started looking about the house.
The Doctor in the brown suit asked the 'new Doctor', "this investigation you're doing? What's it about?"
"It started with a murder," he answered, dramatically.
"Oh, good!" he enthused, then realized how that would be taken, "I mean, bad, but whose murder?"
Rose and his other self came over to listen to the story he was about to tell.
"Mr Jackson Lake, a teacher of mathematics from Sussex. He came to London three weeks ago and died a terrible death."
"Was it Cybermen?" Rose asked.
"It's hard to say, his body was never found. But then it started. More secret murders. Then abductions. Children… stolen away in silence."
"So," the Doctor in blue queried, drawing out the word, "who does this house belong to?"
The other man moved onto a different shelf and looked through items sitting on it. "The latest murder. The Reverend Aubrey Fairchild. Found with burns to his forehead, like some advanced form of electrocution."
"Who was this Reverend? Was he important?" the Time Lord asked.
The 'next Doctor' turned around and looked at the three of them. "You know, you lot ask a lot of questions," he commented, acting slightly annoyed with having to answer them.
"We're your companions!" the Time Lord replied.
"We're supposed to do that," the part human agreed, "helps you think and stuff."
"The Reverend was the pillar of the community," the man finally answered. "A member of many parish boards. A keen advocate of children's charities."
"I hate that phrase, 'pillar of the community,'" The part human said, in nearly a whisper. "There's always something about them."
"Children again," the Time lord mused, "but why would the Cybermen want him dead?"
"What's his connection to the others?" Rose wondered aloud, "I mean to this Jackson Lake and the others who died."
The Doctor knew that this man in front of him wasn't a Time Lord, he had checked to make sure. Rose was right, the man was human, but there was still one possibility where this man was him, and Rose wouldn't know anything about that.
"It's funny," the 'new Doctor mused, "I seem to be telling you everything. As though you engendered some sort of... trust." He looked a bit unnerved at how quickly these people had wormed their way into his investigation. "You seem familiar, especially the two of you," he gestured to the twin Doctors. "I know your faces. But how do I know them?"
"I can't help but notice that you're wearing a fob watch," The Doctor in brown remarked. In his mind, he felt Rose's confusion. "I'll tell you in a bit," he thought to her.
"Yes," the man in question replied. "Is that important?"
"Legend has it that the memories of a Time Lord can be contained within a watch like that." he told him. "May I?"
The other man handed him the fob watch, with the chain still attached to his pocket. The Doctor held it in his hand, with his finger on the latch.
"It's said that if it's opened..." he paused, and popped open the watch. Instead of the golden light he had hoped would come out, bits an pieces of the watch flew out and scattered over the floor.
"Well, there's another theory shot. Apparently you didn't fob yourself again. Which is good because it went sooo well last time," his other self snarked in his mind. He felt his twin's and Rose's amusement coming through their links, both for different reasons, and shot them both a mental glare.
XxXxXxXx
"Or not," Rose smirked. She kneeled down to pick up the pieces of the watch and handed the pieces to their owner. "I think I saw a cog roll over there," she said, mostly to herself and walked over to the desk, where the piece of the watch should have went.
"It's more for decoration," the 'new Doctor' explained.
"Okay, then. Time to look for evidence of alien infiltration," the part human Doctor advised. He pulled his glasses off his face and rubbed his eyes before putting them back on.
She listened to the man who wasn't the Doctor explain what sort of things they should be looking for. She found the last piece of the watch at the foot of the desk and picked it up. She decided to look in the desk for anything that might help them figure out why someone would want to kill the Reverend. Or something from the Cybermen.
The part human Doctor came over to the shelf nearby and was in the process of searching it when she tried to open the desk. It was locked. With a quick look over to the 'new Doctor' to make sure that he was engrossed in his search, she unlocked the desk quickly.
"...but unlike any organism of the natural world." The man continued his description of what he thought they might be looking for. He stopped suddenly. "Shh! What's that noise?" he wondered.
Rose jerked her screwdriver back where he couldn't see it, and put it in her pocket.
"Oh, it's just me...whistling," the part human Doctor next to her covered for her. He followed it up with a funny impersonation of the sonic's noise that sounded nothing like it, and Rose had to keep her amusement from showing.
Rose opened the desk as if it had been unlocked all along, and inside, she found a metal cylinder. She'd never seen anything quite like it before.
"Look at what I found," she announced to the others. She held up the cylinder.
The Doctor in blue took it from her and looked it over while the other two came over to see what she had found.
"Different and metal, you were right," the Time Lord commented. "That is an info-stamp." He must have realized that they were still trying to play companion, and a companion wouldn't know that right away unless they had seen it before. "I mean, at a guess," he tried to cover up his gaff.
The part human Doctor rolled his eyes, pushed up his glasses, and pressed the end of the cylinder. The other end projected images onto the wall. Dozens of images flashed by quickly, images that Rose was sure all had an origination in England, if not London itself.
The man watched the info-stamp with wide eyes, then sat down in a chair quickly, with his hand over his face. Rose had watched him do it and knew that a previously suppressed memory was surfacing. From his reaction, it wasn't a good one. She went to go over to him and comfort him.
"Don't," she heard the part human speak in her mind.
"Why not?" she queried.
"A memory is returning, it may be the key to unlocking the rest of his memories and finding out what happened to him. If you disturb that, he might have a harder time remembering," he informed her.
The Time Lord put on his glasses, that Rose knew he didn't need, but he only wore because they looked impressive. "See? Compressed information, tons of it," he lectured. "This looks to be the history of London, 1066 to the present day. This is like a disk, a sort of Cyberdisk. But why would the Cybermen need something that was so simple?" He continued talking his thoughts through without realizing that the other man was remembering. "They've gotta be wireless. Unless...oh, they're in the wrong century, they haven't got much power. They need plain old basic info-stamps to update themselves." He turned around and finally noticed what the others had noticed already. "Are you all right?" he asked the human man.
"I'm fine," he declared, in true Doctor fashion.
"No, you're not," Rose called him out on it, now that the Doctor in brown had said something to him. "What are you remembering?"
He looked up at her, then looked to the other two and sat up straighter. "I've seen one of these before," he told them. "I was...holding one of those the night I lost my mind. The night I regenerated." He swallowed. "The Cybermen, they made me change. My mind, my face, everything that I am. And you were there." He looked between the twin Doctors. "Who are you? To me?"
"We're friends," the Time Lord responded, "I swear."
"Then I beg of you, John, James, Rose. Help me."
"Ah, two words we can never refuse," the Doctor in blue said with a smile. He handed the cylinder to the 'next Doctor.' "This isn't a conversation that we should be having in a dead man's house, though. It'll make a bit more sense if we head back to your TARDIS." He made to leave the room.
"Hold on," his twin called. "I need to do a final check, won't take but a tick." He began opening doors and looking around in places they hadn't looked before. There's one more thing I can't figure out. You see, if this room has got info-stamps, then maybe, just maybe, it has something that needs info-stamping" He opened one more door. "Okay, then." He closed it quickly. "I think we should run."
A Cyberman pushed the door back open.
"Run Doctor, now! Rose, let's shift!" They ran out of the room. The part human Doctor pushed the human man out of the room, and the Time Lord grabbed Rose by the hand and pulled her along. Rose closed the door of the library behind her, hoping that it might slow the Cyberman just a bit.
They tried to run out the front door, but were blocked by a second Cyberman. Then they turned back, hoping to find another exit, but just then, the first Cyberman broke through the library door and they were trapped.
"The Doctor will be Deleted." One Cyberman claimed.
"Delete!" the other one warned.
"Okay, up the stairs! We can't lead them outside!" The Time Lord called. The one hearted Doctor rushed the man who thought that he was the Doctor up the stairs to get him out of immediate danger.
The Doctor with two hearts started looking around for anything that might be of any use. When he pulled an umbrella out of a stand and it absurdly popped up, Rose remembered her Christmas gift from the Doctors. She pulled her katana out of her inside pocket about the same time that the Doctor found the cutlass on the wall.
She unsheathed the sword and wished that she had been able to practice with it before this moment, as she was a bit rusty with it. She gave it a quick experimental swing to check it's weight and balance. She'd only have one chance to get this right.
"I'm a dab hand with a cutlass. You don't want to come near me when I've got one of these," the Doctor that was still downstairs with her boasted, as the Cybermen came closer to them. He flourished the sword in his hand. "This is your last warning." The Cybermen came even closer. "No? OK, this is really your last warning!"
Rose was a bit off to the side and grateful that the Cybermen were focused on getting to who they thought was the Doctor. She herself could run away at any time, except that would never do, especially not with the Doctors and a man who thought that he was the Doctor and had done a bang up job so far in trouble.
For the Cybermen from Pete's World, there was a spot on the back of the neck where it was possible to cut the circuitry with the sword. She knew this because she had done so before, in a moment of panic, when her weapon hadn't worked. One would turn up every now and then. Not all had come over here. People usually didn't get upset if one was clearly trying to kill you or someone else when you killed it.
The Cyberman closer to her held it's arm up, the weapon on it poised to hit one of the men above, and cried out "Delete!" Before it could get it's shot off, Rose, who had already been subconsciously and instinctively calculating force, angle, and trajectory for cutting the bundle of wiring at the back of it's neck, brought her sword down on it. There was a shower of sparks, and she jumped back and nearly dropped the long sword.
The Cyberman's arm dropped, and a moment later, it's whole body dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
The Time Lord was halfway up the stairs by now, fending off the Cyberman with his cutlass. "Listen to me properly! Whatever you're doing stuck in 1851, I can help! I'm the only person in the world who can help you! Listen to me!"
There was her Doctor, always trying to give their enemies a second chance, always trying to talk them down. She loved him for it, but there were two species she knew would never, ever took what he offered: Cybermen and Daleks.
She wanted to help, but where she was, at the bottom of the stairs, she couldn't do much. Her sword wouldn't reach the weak spot at it's neck. The angles she had to work with made it nearly impossible to help with what she had on hand. She looked around her for anything that might help, noticing the discarded and open umbrella on the floor, which was too flimsy to do anything with. A quick glance up at the landing showed the Doctor in blue searching his pockets and around him in the same manner as she was, and the other man was staring down at the info-stamp in his hand as if he was somewhere else.
The Doctor going up the stairs tried a new tactic. "I'm The Doctor. You need me. Check your memory banks, my name's The Doctor. Leave this man alone! The Doctor is me!" He then kicked the Cyberman that he had been blocking. It stumbled and Rose got out of the way, expecting it to fall, but it somehow stayed upright. It only moved a step down.
The Doctor ran up the rest of the stairs with his twin and the other man and noticed Rose still at the bottom of the stairs, a twitchy Cyberman at her feet and her sword out. He opened his mouth to say something to her, when the Cyberman that was still moving up the stairs got to the landing and he had to turn his attention back to it. He tried again to convince it that he was the Doctor and not the other man, but it was very determined to take out the poor human man.
Said human suddenly flipped open the end of the tube he had been holding and pointed it at the advancing metal man. A bright beam of light shot out of the end, and the Cyberman dropped to it's knees, held it's head, and then fell over on the floor.
"Oh, brilliant!" she yelled up the stairs. She sheathed her sword and made her way up the stairs, listening to the Doctors gush over the other man's brilliance and using technical words that the man wouldn't even begin to understand. They were gonna botch up the whole thing, she thought.
When she got to the landing, she asked him, "can you do that to the twitchy one down there? It's still a bit dangerous." At that moment, as if to illustrate her point, the laser weapon on it's arm went off an burned a hole in the umbrella.
"Yes, of course," replied the shaken man, who then pointed his new weapon at the Cyberman on the lower floor. A moment later, it was finally, completely still.
He then turned on the Doctor in brown. "You told them that you were the Doctor. Why did you do that?" he queried.
"I was trying to protect you," he answered softly.
"You were trying to take away the only thing that I've got, like they did." The man looked so broken. "They stole something from me, something so precious, but I can't remember. What happened, what did they do to me?"
"We'll find out," the Doctor in blue promised.
They went past the dead Cyberman and down the stairs. When they went to go past the other, which was laying on it's side, Rose registered it for the first time, the one thing she had hoped to never see again.
These Cybermen had the Cybus Industries 'C' on their chests.
As the part human Doctor and the other man went out the front door, Rose stood frozen. She couldn't tear her eyes off of the logo on it's chest.
"No, no, no, no, no, it can't be," she whispered. The Doctor took her hand and she turned to meet his eyes. "How are these Cybermen here in this time? I thought I'd never have to see them again."
"I have a theory," he told her, and pulled out a pair of 3D glasses and slipped them on. The sight made her want to tear them off his face and break them up into a million tiny little pieces. He sighed, took them back off, and handed them to her.
A quick look through them showed so much void stuff that you couldn't actually see the Cyberman when she wore the glasses. A bit of curiosity had her hold her hand in front of her face. She could barely see her own hand. She hoped they'd never have to open the void again.
XxXxXxXx
They stepped outside of the house and followed the "new Doctor" to wherever he thought he was going. On the way there, they listened to the man describe what he had remembered from the night he lost his mind. They other three were half paying attention to him as Rose told the Doctors about the accidentally found weak point on the Cybermen and the Doctors both told Rose about his other self's theory with the fob watch.
"So, you can turn yourself completely human?" she asked gobsmacked.
"Sort of," the part human Doctor replied. "The body is human, but so is the mind. You don't remember who you are, just whatever the Chameleon Arch puts into your head. But bits and pieces of the true person can leak through."
"And you did that!?" she mentally shrieked at them. "Why?"
"Welll," the part human sheepishly replied, "I was trying to be kind." They then told her about the Family, but left out the part about what they had eventually done to them, and how hard it was to come back to being a Time Lord.
"What if you had been alone?" she worried. "What if you had been on your own? What would you have done then?"
"I don't know," his counterpart replied honestly. "Thankfully, I don't have to find out."
Darkness had fallen, and they had turned into an alleyway.
Suddenly, Rosita was there. She ran over to the 'next Doctor' with an, "Oh, my god, Doctor, I thought you were dead!" and hugged him.
"Now, now, Rosita," he replied, "a little decorum."
She got a bit angry then. "You've been gone for far too long!" She turned and faced the other three people in the room. "He's always doing this, this leaving me behind, going frantic!"
"What about the TARDIS?" the man asked.
"She's ready, come on!"
"Oh, I am so looking forward to this," the part human murmured. The other two agreed.
If this wasn't the Doctor, then what was the TARDIS?
The five of them entered a building that looked like a stable. Inside, clothes and suitcases were scattered around. The three time travelers looked about the place with interest as the two pure humans talked with one another.
"...were right though, Rosita," he complimented her. "The Reverend Fairchild's death was the work of the Cybermen."
"Do you live here?" The part human asked them.
"'Tis only a temporary base, until the enemy is routed. The TARDIS is magnificent, but is hardly a home." He replied.
"It's a great home to me," he heard Rose in his mind. Even her dual layered mental voice sounded a bit pouty. He looked over to her as she watched this other man wash his face while his counterpart stood at the opening of the stall and asked about the TARDIS. He wanted to nip that bottom lip sticking out. She glanced over at him with a blush and he realized that his errant thought had projected. Even his other self glanced over quickly, with an amused eyebrow raise.
"Like I said before, a bit of human DNA, and you can only-"
"Oh, shut it, Spaceman," he snapped back.
"What's with all the luggage?" Rose asked the human man, getting them all back on track.
"It's luggage, the property of Jackson Lake, the first man to be murdered," he answered her query absentmindedly. He turned back to Rosita. "My new friends are fighters, Rosita, very much like myself." He pointed at the brown suited Doctor and said, "he faced the Cybermen with a cutlass." The finger turned to Rose. "She faced them with a sword, and managed to take one down with it." He then pointed to the Doctor in the blue suit, "and he kept me from making a mistake and being killed." He puffed himself out proudly. "I am not ashamed to admit it, they were so very much braver than I."
The Time Lord used his distraction to start sonicing things around the room. He focused his attention on the biggest pile of luggage.
"It was quite brilliant," the "next Doctor' gushed, "They made quite the team. He turned to the Doctor in the brown suit. Are you whistling again?"
He had gotten the two of them confused, which was a good thing, as he was on the other side of the room and couldn't cover for his counterpart the way he could cover for Rose before.
"Yes. Yes I am, yeah," the Time Lord hid the screwdriver behind his back and said, having caught on quickly to the mix up. He put the screwdriver back in his pocket and made a shushing motion to Rosita, who had seen him do it.
Rose went over to the pile of luggage and helped the Doctor shift it to get to the box where he had found something with the sonic.
"That's another man's property!" Rosita protested when they popped the clasps on the trunk
"Well, a dead man's," his other self said, a little too flippantly, maybe.
"'Sevidence," Rose explained incredulously. "'Ave you two not gone through it to find out if there was anythin' 'ere tha' might' explain why 'e was murdered?"
"It's not proper," Rosita weakly protested.
"Not proper, the man is dead, and what's in here could be the key to finding out why!"
The part human Doctor decided to step in and change the subject before Rose got into one of her famous arguments. "So, Rosita, how did you meet the Doctor?" he asked the woman.
"He saved my life." she told him simply. Wasn't that always the way? "Late one night, by the Osterman's Wharf, this...creature came out of the shadows. A man made of metal. I thought I was going to die." She looked over to the man she thought of as the Doctor, who was busy with something. He was certain that the man was listening in, though.
"And then there he was. The Doctor. He grabbed my hand and told me to run."
A glance over at Rose showed her to be intently looking through one of the cases, a smile on her face as she remembered their meeting, which could be described almost exactly the same way, just substitute plastic for metal.
"Can you help him, sir? He has such terrible dreams. Wakes every night in a state of terror."
"Come on now, Rosita," the other man cut in. "With all the things a Time Lord has seen, everything he's lost, he must surely have bad dreams."
And didn't that just cut right to the bone? He tried to keep a blank face and looked over to his counterpart, who had lost everything he had up to the moment that he became two men. His counterpart had an intensely sad look on his face that he tried to hide and he knew must surely be on his own too. He then looked over to Rose, who had put her hand on his counterpart's arm and was giving him a sad look. She knew about a lot of what they had lost, but not all of it, not yet. He also knew, even without the telepathy, that she had to be thinking of his loss at that moment. It was inevitable, and he found himself to be extremely glad that they hadn't made it to Pete's World after all. At least here, she'd have his other self and Jack when everyone else was gone.
"Oh look at that," the Time Lord said, trying to change the subject. "Jackson Lake had an info-stamp" He waved the shiny silver tube.
"How? Is it significant?"
"The answer to all of this is in your TARDIS, may we see it?" he asked the man.
"Oh, yes sir," the human man replied proudly. "It would be my honor."
XxXxXxXx
Rose walked out behind the others into the yard of the stable. In the middle of it, a mostly blue hot air balloon stood, inflated and ready to leave at a moment's notice.
"There she is!" The 'new Doctor' exclaimed. "My transport through Time and Space. The TARDIS.
"You've got a...balloon," the Doctor in blue slowly stated.
"TARDIS," the man corrected. "T-A-R-D-I-S. It stands for Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style. Do you see?" He looked proud of his accomplishment, and he should, really. It was brilliant, a way to fly in this day and age. She wondered how long he thought about how to name it and keep it within the letters he knew.
Rose walked around it, checking it out from every angle. She came up close to it and looked inside the basket, then up at the works.
"Well, I do now," the one hearted Doctor stated as he inspected the balloon
"I love it, TARDIS, it's brilliant!" Rose exclaimed. She'd never seen a hot air balloon up close before.
"Nice one," the Doctor in brown congratulated him. "It's inflated by gas, yeah?"
"We're adjacent to the Mutton Street Gasworks, I pay them a modest fee." He turned to the young man that tended his balloon. "Good work, Jed." He clapped him on the back.
"Glad to be of service, sir," Jed replied.
The other man, who Rose was sure of his real identity now, handed Jed some bills.
"Oh, you get nothing for nothing," the man replied. "How's the ripped panel, Jed?"
"All repaired, sir, should work a treat. You never know, tonight may be the night, Doctor. Imagine it, seeing Christmas from way up above!"
"Well not just yet, I think. One day, I will ascend. One day very soon," the 'Doctor' said with longing.
"Have you never actually been up there?" the blue suited Doctor asked.
"He dreams of leaving, but never does," Rosita answered with an eye-roll
"I can depart, in the TARDIS, once London is safe," he shot back, with the air of someone who had had that conversation several times.
He looked up at the balloon again with that longing that Rose knew too well. She imagined she had the same look in her eyes every time she had climbed up to the roof and watched the stars when she was stuck in Pete's World. "And when I'm finally up there..." he started. "Think of it ladies and gentlemen, the Time and the Space."
"The perfect escape," the dual hearted Doctor gave him a knowing look. "Do you ever wonder what you're escaping from?"
He looked over at the Doctor and replied, "oh, John, I do, with every moment."
"He's Jackson Lake, isn't he?" Rose asked both of her Doctors.
"I think so too," one agreed.
"Yeah, and I know how he came to know about us," the other replied. At their questioning thoughts, he showed them an image of an info-stamp The Time lord had been last in line as they went to see Jackson's TARDIS, and he took the opportunity to see what was on the info-stamp
"Then would you like me to tell you?" he asked Jackson. "'Cause I think I've worked it out now. How you became the Doctor. Would you like to know?"
"You've figured it out?" the poor man asked hopefully. "Oh, yes!" Jackson was excited.
XxXxXxXx
The Doctor led Jackson Lake back to the stable full of luggage. There, he gestured for Jackson and Rosita to sit down. He sat on the bale in front of them, his counterpart sat next to him, and Rose chose to stand behind them with her hands on their shoulders. They let him take the lead, as he was the one who figured out the final piece of the puzzle first. He decided to tell his tale as a, well, tale. It might be easier for the man.
"This story begins with the Cybermen," he started. "A long time away, and not far from here, The Cybermen were fought. They were beaten by sending them into a howling wilderness called the Void, to be locked inside forevermore." He felt Rose's grip on his shoulder tighten, and heard her breath catch. He reached up and put his hand over hers.
"But then a greater battle rose up, so great that everything inside the Void perished." her grip got tighter, and he wondered, not for the first time, and probably not the last, just what she had seen and been through between Canary Wharf and the Medusa Cascade. "But before that happened, as the walls of the universes weakened, the last of the Cybermen must have fallen through the dimensions and back through time. And they landed here, and found you."
"I fought them, I know that much, but what happened?"
"When the Cybermen came to London, so did another man," his other self picked up the story. "One, Mr. Jackson Lake. Plenty of luggage, money in his pocket. Maybe he was coming for the season, or maybe he had a acquired a job or something. Whatever the reason was, it doesn't matter, because he also found the Cybermen. And like you, he took hold of an info-stamp"
the man looked back and forth between the twins with wide eyes. "He's dead, though, Jackson Lake is dead. The Cybermen murdered him."
"But you yourself said that no body was found," Rose spoke up. "So many people go missing, but aren't really dead."
"You kept all of his suitcases, but never opened them," He told the man. "I told you that the answer was in the fob watch, may I see it?" The Doctor in the brown suit held out his hand so the other man could give him the watch. The other man handed it to him again, and the Doctor flipped it over, showing an engraving on the back. "I saw this before, but it didn't connect at the time," he told the man. He read off the initials on the back. "J. L. This watch belongs to Jackson Lake."
Rosita picked up on it immediately. She stared at the watch for a moment, then turned her attention to the man she had always known as the Doctor. "Sir, Jackson Lake is...you?"
"But, I'm the Doctor," Jackson said, still in denial.
"You became the Doctor because the info-stamp that you picked up was about one man," the Doctor in the brown suit said softly. He pulled the info-stamp that he had found out of one of his pockets and used it to project a stream of images on the wall, like had been done with the London stamp.
Pictures of all of his incarnations showed on the wall, and he watched Rose's face more than anything else, trying to gauge her reaction to them. She only knew the two faces and three bodies she had traveled with, and he wondered what she'd think of some of the other possibilities that he could become next.
He knew that there would be a lot of questions after this. They still didn't know if she could regenerate or not, and she was worried about it. But even if that wasn't on the table, she was inquisitive by nature, and would ask a lot of questions anyway.
To his delight, she looked at each one of his faces with awe. When it got to his big ears and daft face self, she had a look of sorrow, then it went to the picture of his current incarnation and she had a smile. He knew that she still sometimes missed his daft face, and he also knew that she had appropriated his leather jacket and it was hanging in her wardrobe. He had a suspicion that his current trench coat would disappear to there as well when its time was up. Or maybe the suit jacket.
"This is the Cybermen's database," his twin continued while the slide-show of faces was still going on "Probably stolen from the Daleks while inside the void, but it's everything you could ever want to know about the Doctor."
When the pictures had gotten to the last face, his current incarnation, Jackson looked stunned. "That's you!"
"Time Lord, TARDIS, enemy of the Cybermen," The brown suited Doctor then clicked his tongue. "yep! The info-stamp must have backfired and streamed all that information right inside your head."
Jackson looked between both Doctors with his eyebrows scrunched. "B-But you can't be, you're twins."
"Not quite," The Doctor in blue cut in. "It's complicated and deals with regeneration energy, but I'm literally him." he pointed to his double. "There's two of me now for a while. This me is part human."
Jackson continued staring at the Doctors in an effort to figure it out. He then looked to Rose, who nodded.
"It's all true, Mr. Lake," she confirmed for him.
He sat back in despair. "Am I nothing more than a lie?" he questioned of them.
All three time travelers said, "No!" together.
"Info-stamps are just facts and figures. That didn't make you who you are," the Time Lord assured him.
"Rescuing people like Rosita, defending London? That took real bravery," Rose added.
"The invention, your TARDIS. That was all you!" The blue suited Doctor enthused.
"What else?" The poor man asked. He looked up at the three Time travelers and his face took on hints of anger. "I demand you to tell me, sir. Tell me what they took!"
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Rose said as soon as he finished. She walked over to Jackson and put her hand on his shoulder. "Tha's an awful lotta luggage for one person."
Jackson looked over to the pile of luggage in realization.
"An info-stamp is just basic technology," the part human Doctor informed him sadly. "It's not enough to make a man lose his mind."
"What happened to you is called a fugue state. It's where the mind just runs away, because it can't bear to look back." The Doctor with two hearts took a deep breath that was almost a sigh and continued. "You wanted, needed to become someone else, because Jackson Lake had lost so much."
They gave the man a moment to process this. As he did, they all heard a bell toll twelve times in the distance.
"Midnight. It's Christmas Day," Rosita announced.
Suddenly, Jackson sat up. "I remember...Oh, my God!" He slumped forward with his head in his hands. "They killed my wife! Oh my God, Caroline, they killed her!" He cried, and both Rose and Rosita rushed to comfort him.
Suddenly, the info-stamp in his pocket started beeping. And a loud beeping came from one of the trunks. Both of the Doctors rushed over to it and opened it. Inside, there was a whole belt of info-stamps.
"Oh, would you look at that..." the part human said in wonder.
"Looks like you actually found a whole cache of info-stamps," the Gallifreyan man told Jackson Lake.
"What is it?" Rosita asked.
"Doctor, what's that noise?" Rose questioned.
"It's activation, a call to arms. The Cybermen are moving!"
A/N: I know not much has changed up to this point, but I consider most of "The Next Doctor" to be the story of Jackson Lake finding himself again. I've tried to change as much as I could without changing the basic story. From here, though, the changes start getting bigger.