Four Evenings After
He was thinking of leaving, that evening alone by the fireplace. And she must have realized it because her voice suddenly cracked the silence.
"Are you really him? I mean, are you really the same him?"
The Doctor turned, startled, and saw her standing in the doorway.
"Oh yes," he said. "New body, maybe. Bit more human. But same me."
"You seem different." Rose came carefully around the sofa and sat down beside him. "You've got the same face, but you're different somehow, I just can't put my finger on it."
"Good different, or bad different?"
"No, don't do that. It's not like last time. Last time you just sort of… replaced yourself. But now there're two of you. I don't know which is the real one. I thought I got it, in Bad Wolf Bay. But now I don't know. I mean… there can only be one Doctor."
"That's right," he said. "And we're both him."
"How's that possible?"
"Rose Tyler," he said, smiling. "All that we've been through and that's what gets you. I suppose I am different, aren't I? Well, I did regenerate didn't I, can't be expected to be all the same. The hand wasn't enough to finish all of me. Genetic copy, gaps filled in, that's why I only have one heart."
"You're taller."
"Regeneration's a dodgy business. A metacrisis, well, that'd be even more so."
She was staring at him. Her head was tilted to one side in that way of hers.
"You're… still you."
"I am very me."
She still had a look of befuddlement in her eyes. He thought he had better elaborate.
"It's the energy, the regeneration energy. I'm in the regeneration energy. That's what I am. That's what holds that little bit of self that gets carried along from regeneration to regeneration. Even if I lost my memories I'd still have that little bit of me that's me. Does that make sense?"
"Sort of, yeah." She gave him a small smile, watching his face. It was the same face, but different, too, like she'd said. It was a little more intense, a little more confused. It looked… it looked a little more human. Rose laughed quietly. "Yeah, I suppose it does."
She rested her cheek on his shoulder, and they sat there watching the fire pop and crackle in a universe neither of them really belonged in. Rose didn't see the smile that spread across the Doctor's face, the smile of an old man on young lips.