After an hour of painstaking silence, my human father, the doctor's duplicate, finally said something. "Who were you before?" It was vague, and nobody but me would have known what he meant.
"I was the Doctor's daughter."
I knew he needed to ask how I became like this, how I was alive, but first he said, "I'm not the Doctor. Whatever you thought when you chose this human existence, I'm not him anymore." His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, and his eyes were fixed on the road.
"You're talking to me like I'm not your daughter anymore!" I said, quietly, but still powerful.
His eyes widened slightly and he loosed his grip on the wheel, "I'm sorry," was all he said. I looked at him incredulously, this was not my father. This was not the man that taught me to ride a bike, when he couldn't himself. This wasn't even the Doctor. This was just an angry, hurt shell of a time lord, and suddenly I realized that I caused it.
"I fused myself with the vortex," I started. He looked at me like I was mad. Well I had to start somewhere, and if I was going to get my dad back, this was the place to start. "Every Time Lord has a little bit of the vortex already inside of them. That's what makes them able to regenerate. The vortex is also fused inside of the TARDISs' race. That's what makes them able to time travel. But when I looked into it, I realized that if a Time Lord has more Vortex energy in them, they can regenerate without changing faces, so that's what made me want to try it…" my soliloquy had started of energized and confident, but as I neard the end I began to realize how my father would react to this information. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, he still had a bit of Time Lord left in him, and messing with our biology? The ultimate sin.
"Oh my god, Theta you didn't," he abruptly pulled the car the side of the road and looked me straight in the eye with a glare that would have made the Slitheen drop dead. Well at least the John Smith I knew was back. All I could do was turn away. The Time Lords were a proud race, and changing the chemistry in our beings is something no one has ever even thought of doing, like it was sacrilege. I saw it as progress, but as my father stared me down on the side of the highway, all I felt was shame, and I turn away.
"I had to," I whispered. "It was the only way to save the Time Lords!" I meant to sound indignant, but it came out as weak and pleading.
"Save the… oh no, Theta," he looked almost defeated, "you did that to others?... wait… there are more Time Lords out there!" I smiled, he had finally understood why I had to sacrifice tradition.
"Oh I'd say at least two hundred," I was grinning now, grinning my human father's good old grin. His eyes widened and he looked so hopeful. Less like the middle aged man he was, and more like the Time Lord I remember. No, I said to myself. I had to stop comparing the two of them. My human father and the Doctor were two entirely different people.
He smiled, practically breathless. "I am so proud of you," he breathed, still looking completely immortal. I smiled up at him, and we just sat there, for what seemed like eternity. I was completely at peace, I had gotten him to understand, and now I could continue what I had meant to do. Then the cars started honking at us. Just perfect, a peaceful moment between father and alien daughter and they just had to go and ruin it.
"Well I think your mum needs to know, don't you?" he asked as he pulled back into traffic. I sighed. There was no telling how she would take this.
I groaned jokingly, "do we have to?"
He laughed, "Well it will be kind of hard to hide the fact that our daughter never ages, and now knows practically everything about aliens and time travel," he winked at me and suddenly me smile fell. I wanted to tell him now, that I couldn't stay in this dimension, that I needed to wake up the others, but I couldn't. I just couldn't ruin this yet.