Three Months After
Fortunately, this was one of those nights that they slept in the same room together, which they did more and more often now, blaming insomnia or homesickness or (in the Doctor's case) loud and often uncited noises in the bedroom upstairs that simply could not be dealt with. It was about midnight when the dreams sucked themselves from the Doctor's mind and he sat up with a cry, panting and staring desperately into the dark.
Rose jolted awake beside him.
"What is it, what's wrong?"
The Doctor did not immediately reply. He scanned the darkest corners of the bedroom, and in the deepest shadows could almost catch silhouettes of the control room, the arches of TARDIS coral, the lights on the walls. They were burning. And deep in his brain — no, not in his brain, in some other, core part of himself — he could hear the faintest snatches of a song, deep and mournful, and near its end.
"The song is ending," he breathed.
"What?"
For an instant, a flare of bright light blazed up in front of his eyes, and then it was gone; the song, the images, the strange pain in his veins all faded away and he was alone again. He was even more alone than before — a presence in his mind, one he hadn't even been aware of until now, flared and faded completely from existence.
"I've regenerated," said the Doctor.
"What? How? How do you know?"
"I just do. Must be some sort of… psychic link, across worlds. And it just broke."
"What happened? Why did he regenerate?"
"I don't know. We'll never know. This body is a copy of that regeneration of myself, so I must have been linked to it but now all his cells will have replaced themselves… it's gone. Our last link to that universe. It's gone forever."
Rose was silent for a long time after he said that. She was thinking about the other Doctor, the one who had left them on the beach, the one who had taken the TARDIS, the one who already had two hearts. He really had been a sort of god, she realized. She'd never thought of him like that before, but there it was.
What about the one beside her, what was he? Was he different, for being more human?
A snore jerked her from her reverie. The Doctor had slumped back onto his pillow in the interval. A thin trickle of saliva trailed from his mouth.
Different enough, she thought, with a smile.