Chapter Nine: Surface

They all looked over to see Luke standing in the doorway.

"Luke, what are you doing here?" his mother said, looking hard at him. "I thought you were keeping—"

"He won," Luke said. "Though he cheated with a trick question. And you're not a freak," he said to Jenny.

"How would you know?"

He responded by lifting up his shirt. "Ta-da."

Jenny gasped, stood and moved nearer to make sure she was seeing correctly. "You … you're like me?"

"Sort of," he said, now starting to blush, and after a awkward pause he dropped his shirt quickly. "Not exactly. But enough to have some idea of how you feel now."

Silence fell as Jenny stared at him, her mind slowly processing; the rest of the room looked on at the teens watching each other.

Rani finally broke the silence. "Shall I go up and fill the Doctor in?"

"What Doctor?" Jenny looked up. "I don't need a Doctor." She paused. "On second thought maybe I do, I think I'm going insane."

"You're not," Sarah Jane assured her. "And he's not that sort of Doctor. He's …"

"He's your dad, Jenny," Rani said quietly.

Another long silence stretched before Jenny said, "Oh." Then, "Up as in upstairs? My d—my dad's here?"

Everyone nodded.

"I think he's the best person to explain everything, Jenny," Sarah Jane said, smiling at her. "Rani—"

"I'll go and get him." Rani turned to leave the room.

Jenny thought she heard Sarah Jane mutter, "He'll be relieved."

As Rani disappeared, Jenny thought about shouting at her to stop. She sat back down on the sofa, and for something to do, reached for her tea.

So much had changed in the last couple of hours and she wasn't sure she was ready to meet her supposed biological father, who was apparently somehow going to make sense of why she was a freak of nature, why her 'parents' were robots, and why she couldn't trust her own memory.

If anyone could make sense of that, they were as crazy as she was. Maybe.

She heard footsteps on the stairs, coming back down. Two sets of footsteps.

Jenny had almost forgotten she wasn't alone; the room was so quiet. She jumped as Sarah Jane spoke, in a hurry, as if she'd forgotten something important. "I should warn you—you've met."

One set of footsteps paused outside the door, and the other overtook them. Jenny was just opening her mouth to ask what Sarah Jane meant when the door opened, and her question was answered.

She gasped. "You!"

In the doorway stood her stalker.

As he looked at her, his eyes were full of sorrow. The lump in Jenny's throat doubled in size.

"Jenny," he whispered

She could only nod.

He stepped closer, warily, as if afraid of frightening her off. "I guess I should apologise—I must have scared you, the other night."

Jenny found her voice. "You think?"

"I'm sorry. It was a stupid thing to do, I wasn't thinking straight. I hope you can forgive me."

She didn't know what to say, and an awkward silence stretched. She barely noticed the others leave the room, so it was just the two of them.

He smiled, and she couldn't help it, a small smile appeared on her face. "You're beautiful."

She couldn't make sense of this; she'd caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and her eyes were red and puffy, and she could feel her nose running for England. She gave a tiny laugh-hiccup.

"So you're the Doctor," she said, wanting to say something and at a loss what else to try. "According to Rani."

He nodded. "That's right."

"Doctor what? What's your name?"

"That is my name."

She laughed without humour. "What, that's it? That's all I get?"

"Jenny." He made to step forward and hesitated. "May I?" he said, gesturing to the sofa. She nodded.

He sat down opposite her, and she looked him in the eye again. "I've got some things to tell you that … well, they're not going to be easy for you to hear."

"Yeah, I've had a lot of that today."

"I'm not human."

The Doctor paused, apparently waiting for her reaction. Jenny didn't know how to react. It was just one more bizarre thing that didn't make sense in a day of bizarre things that didn't make sense. How was she supposed to respond to that?

"Oh," she said finally.

His mouth twitched. "Do you believe me? Because if you don't, it wouldn't be the first time."

"I don't know what to believe any more," Jenny whispered.

"This might help." The Doctor dug around in his pockets and pulled out a stethoscope, gesturing for her to take it and listen.

First she listened to his heartbeat. Then she listened to his second heartbeat.

Jenny pulled the stethoscope out of her ears, studied him for a moment, then said, "How did this fit in there?"

He did a double-take. "Sorry?"

"Your pocket looked flat before you took this out; how does that work?"

He stared at her for a long moment, and Jenny wondered if she'd said something wrong, before he burst out laughing.

Jenny was torn between feeling embarrassed and offended, but she was struggling not to smile—his laugh was infectious. "What's so funny?"

"I'm sorry," he said, wiping his eyes, and still with a giggle in his tone. "You're the first person to discover I have two hearts but choose to comment instead on my dimensionally transcendental pockets."

"Dimen—what?"

"They're bigger on the inside." His face split into a grin, but she didn't see the joke.

"So …" Jenny wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer, but had to ask anyway. "If you're not human, what are you?"

The humour, gone, he said seriously, "I'm a Time Lord."

"Time Lord?" She had to be hearing things. But he nodded.

"I was born on the planet Gallifrey in the Kastaborous system."

"Oh," Jenny said.

"'The Doctor' really is my name," he said with a small smile. "In my culture we got to choose our own names; that was what I chose. Though in these parts I've been known to go by John Smith."

"So … I'm not human? I'm an alien?" As if the day could get any stranger.

He hesitated. "Yes and no."

"What's that mean?"

"It's complicated—I'm going to have to tell you a story, Jenny; please bear with me." She nodded. He pulled a silver marked fob watch out of his pocket. "Have you ever seen anything like this?"

"No."

"Any of the patterns before? I need you to think really hard, sweetheart, really hard."

She searched her mind as best she could, and shook her head. He was visibly disappointed, but tried not to show it. "Right. Well … never mind, we'll figure it out."

"Figure what out?"

"A couple of years ago," the Doctor said, "I was being chased by some … rather nasty aliens that could trace Time Lords. This piece of technology enabled me to hide from them, by rewriting my biology. I temporarily became human."

Jenny nodded, unable to see where this was going but encouraging anyway.

"While I was human, I believed I was. I had human memories and no idea of who I really was." He paused as this statement sunk in.

Jenny finally found her voice. "Are you saying that's what's happened to me?"

He nodded. "I'm not certain on the how. Or the who. Or the why. But yes, that is what has happened to you."

"And my—parents?"

He hesitated. "Placed in your life to keep your cover. I'm sorry," he said in a softer voice. "I realise they were real to you."

She nodded, unable to trust herself to speak. The Doctor waited patiently, brushing the watch lightly with his thumb, as she processed what he was telling her, and then found her voice.

"Why would I do this to myself?"

"I don't believe you did."

"Well then, who?"

The Doctor sighed. "I don't know, but I'm afraid it's my fault."

"Why?"

"I've protected Earth from many would-be invaders over the years. That job earns one a lot of enemies. And it doesn't take a genius—which I am, by the way—" She smiled slightly "to realise that my daughter would be my Achilles heel."

Jenny's mind was whirling. "Look," the Doctor said. "I realise you've probably got hundreds more questions. But let's be honest, do you think you can handle any more revelations today?"

"No, probably not," she admitted.

"Then I suggest a good night's sleep right here, and we'll talk more tomorrow. Agreed?"

Jenny looked into her father's eyes, and saw tender concern. She nodded. "Yeah."

TBC …