Disclaimer: None of it is mine (but damn would I love to own the Doctor ;D)
So, as I've been obsessed with Doctor Who (and likely will be for the rest of my life), that's where I went with this AU. For any readers who haven't watched David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, I'm disowning you. No, in all seriousness, I borrowed the story arc of this from the episodes Human Nature/Family of Blood, so if you haven't watched those basically you just need to know that the Doctor can turn himself human if he has to and store his Time Lord consciousness in a watch. If you aren't a Whovian...I apologize. Not really; I actually just hope I'll convert you.
"Paton, I'm frightened." Julia stood at his shoulder, body tense and alert, ears tuned to any unnatural noise from outside. "What's going on? Why are they chasing you? Who is this 'Doctor'?"
Beside her, Paton was a silent statue, his expression lost in the growing twilight streaming through the window of the small shed. "I..I don't know," he replied, frustrated. Absently, he turned the ornate pocket he cradled over in his hands, tracing the looping circular symbols with a finger that shook. "I hear…voices, almost, coming from this watch. They're calling to me, telling me something…"
Julia's brow furrowed. "What? But that's…"
"Impossible? Yes, I know." Without warning, Paton groaned and doubled over, clutching his head. "It hurts," he moaned, "so very much."
Throwing her arms around his shoulders, Julia cradled his head to her chest. "What hurts?" she asked, frantically checking his racing heartbeat. "What's the matter?"
"There are thoughts and memories coming through," he grit out, "eons worth of someone who is me—but isn't."
"Doctor!" The cruel voice cut through the sound of Paton's pained gasps. "We know you're in there. Surrender yourself or give us the watch—either way, know that you and your girlfriend will die."
Julia gave a choked sob. "Who are these people?" She hugged herself about the waist, sending a furtive glance out the window of the shed in which they sheltered. The night had been one of multiple horrors, prefaced by the arrival of this Family—or so they called themselves—and their untoward acts of violence. "We live in a tiny city where nothing happens, I'm a librarianand you're a history professor—why are they after us?"
A fresh wave of pain assaulted Paton as more thoughts assailed his mind, and he moaned. "Not after you because of you," he mumbled, nearly indecipherable in his agony, "after you because of me—but not me."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
He shook his head. "Not on earth, either." Forcing himself to stand and shaking violently with the effort it cost him, he looked into her eyes, meeting her terrified gaze with his darkened one. "It's the watch, my dear; it is—I am—something more, something not from here."
Something unfamiliar gleamed in his eyes—a touch of eternity, of times long past and times that had yet to come, all bottled within a single being and churning with the fires of the universe. Julia stifled a gasp, for whoever was leveling that look at her was not Paton; oh, Paton was there, but he was only a small part of a much larger whole.
"What—"
"Time Lord!" The party standing just on the other side of the thin wooden door answered her inadvertent query. "Surrender yourself or you both will rue the day you ever crossed our Family."
Fear gripped Julia in its iron grip. "Paton," she cried, "what can we do? They killed—oh, gods, they killed the dean and half of Sam's biology class." Trembling violently, she buried her head in his chest, tears streaming silently down her face. "I don't want to die!"
Paton, too, shook with terror, though his had a far different source. "Nor do I, but I think I can save us," he said quietly, looking down at the small silver timepiece clutched in his hands.
"But?" Julia asked, sensing a catch. She hadn't been best friends and half in love with this man for over half a year without becoming well acquainted with his mannerisms and personality.
"But I'll lose myself," he whispered, looking at her with dread-filled eyes. "There's a consciousness imprisoned in this watch—a being of whom I am but a part. If I open it, I'll be able to save us, but Paton Yewbeam as you know him will cease to exist; I'll become this Doctor person."
Tears welled in Julia's soft brown eyes. "Oh, Paton," she murmured, reaching up to trace the sharp contours of his face.
He caught her hand in his and pressed a soft kiss to her palm. "I have to do it, my dear," he said, black eyes earnest and determined. "If I have even the slightest chance of saving you…" His voice faltered as that consciousness, so foreign and forceful and so very familiar sent another tendril of everything curling toward him. "But…I'll be different; I'll still be me, but I'll be more."
"How—"
Combing a gentle hand through her hair, he cradled her head to his chest. "Paton Yewbeam is human; the Doctor is not." Silencing her questions with a shake of his head, he continued on, "He—I—am a Time Lord, an alien; this Family" (he uttered the words with such disgust and loathing that Julia could almost believe he was a different man) "was pursuing me—him—and I locked his—my—consciousness away, foolishly believing it to be the safest route. I—he—became human so they couldn't find me."
Choking on suppressed sobs, Paton covered his face with one trembling hand. "But, I—he—I didn't expect to fall in love; Time Lords usually don't. If—when I change…"
"You won't feel the same," Julia finished in a nearly silent whisper. "It will all just be a memory; you'll be a different man." She gave a choked, bitter laugh. "It figures the first time you own up to your feelings would also be the last."
He gave her a tormented look. "I'm sorry," he said miserably. "I have to keep you safe, and this is the only way…"
She parted her lips, though to say what she wasn't sure.
Paton didn't allow her the chance to vocalize anything, halting the progress of her words with the presence of his lips, brushing his mouth ever so softly over hers.
"Whatever happens," he whispered, breath tickling her ear, "whatever I become, this was real."
He drew back and, with one determined glare at the window, twisted the knob on the watch, releasing the consciousness contained within.
Julia shrank back against the wall, the hair on the back of her neck rising as she sensed the entity emerging from its confinement.
It poured into Paton, filling him to the brim and spilling over; he overflowed with auric light and song, eyes glowing molten gold. As human gave way to Time Lord, Paton screamed, an agonized wail that ripped through the silence that had fallen on the grounds, tearing through the very fabric of time and space as Gallifreyan overcame human.
Tears coursed swiftly down Julia's face as she was forced to watch Paton's agony, terror and love and heartbreak carving a silent stream along her cheeks.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity, his hoarse yells subsided until they were but raspy breaths. Paton—the Doctor—stood bend at the waist, bracing himself with one hand against the wall as he gathered the wits and strength to stand.
"Pa—Doctor?" Julia caught herself with a grimace, reaching a hand out to his shoulder. "Are you alright?"
He looked at her with a gaze so black that Julia could swear she saw stars. It was a pair of eyes she had met countless times before—yet one she didn't know at all. "Right as rain!" he replied, voice deadly quiet, attention wholly tuned to the threat outside. "Now, I believe I have an alien menace to take care of."
How long Julia stood in the shed after he departed she didn't know, her thoughts chasing each other round and round in circles through her head, her emotions in turmoil as she thought and didn't think about the events of the past day. Finally, a loud noise shook her from her reverie, and she all but jumped out of her skin as an honest to goodness police box materialized in the space before her.
"What?"
"Time Lord," the Doctor said, stepping smoothly from the door. "I can travel through time and space using this-my TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimension in Space."
Julia gaped, thought of about one thousand different questions she wanted to ask, then swallowed them all as a fresh wave of misery swamped her. "Was he even real?" Her words were daggers, tearing through the Doctor's outer impassive façade like it didn't exist at all.
"Was who real?" he asked, knowing well the response but unwilling to voice the words himself.
"Paton Yewbeam," she replied, tears glinting at the corners of her eyes and restrained only through sheer strength of will. "The man I fell in love with. The man who taught here at this university for over a year, human as can be, sharp as a blade and kinder, more genuine than anyone I've yet to meet. The man who looks like you, but isn't you. The man whom I fell in love with—and who fell in love with me." Her honeyed eyes glinted with suppressed emotions and accusations as reality assaulted her and incited a barrage of confusion, a year's worth of memories raging within her mind.
He was Paton, this man, this alien—yet also not, the mind of her love now but a miniscule, now likely-submerged part of the infinite, awakened alien consciousness that had been slumbering deep within him. Sable eyes mirrored and unreadable—an expression that had seldom appeared on her Paton's face—the Doctor met her ferocious, terrified gaze with an unreadable frown.
To her surprise, though, Julia found that she could unlock that seemingly inscrutable face. Paton had often tried to hide himself away; it seemed that was a trait that had carried over from his alien counterpart. Guilt lived there, etched into flesh by years and years of life and experience and love and loss—a guilt so profound that it served as the base for all other emotions, for the agony and regret and fury and terrible sadness and joy that all lived on that face she knew so well and yet did not know at all.
"He is real," the Doctor finally said, stressing the tense. "He is me, me without all of my layers, without all of the burdens and knowledge of a Time Lord—me as a human, which of course is what he is."
Giving a strangled laugh, Julia stepped up to him and laid her hands over his chest, a motion oft repeated on Paton but one that felt so much more intimate now. Even knowing that this new man possessed two hearts, that he was alien, she was startled and slightly awed by the gentle dual thuds beneath her palms.
"It sounds like something out of a book," she murmured, avoiding his eyes and looking down instead at where her hands rested on his chest. "Aliens, time travel, biological conversion…" Honeyed eyes sharpened and turned back to his face. "You saved my life." The words came out like an accusation. "You chose to change back because those other aliens threatened me. Why?"
The words were a whip, licking through the air between them to lash against him, a tongue of pain and regret lacing up through his veins. "Because he loved you," he said, taking her hands in his, grasping them tightly, holding her captive with body and words.
"But not you," Julia struggled to extricate herself from his hold and turn away, not bothering to hid the bitterness and heartbreak she currently felt. "I would go and fall in love with a man who doesn't even exist," she choked, casting her eyes down in shame as tears began coursing unbidden down her face, carving long tracks down her fine cheekbones.
Ever so gently, the Doctor reached up and wiped them away, fingers lingering against her skin.
"He is me," he reiterated. "Every part of Paton Yewbeam exists within me—his thoughts, his actions, his characteristics, his feelings. I'm simply…more."
Snorting despite herself, Julia reached a shaky hand up to scrub at the tear tracks still gleaming on her face. "And that would be the understatement of the century." Momentarily forgetting herself, she leaned against him, resting her cheek against his chest, listening to his dual heartbeats pound beneath her ear—a very real reminder of his alien nature. "What will you do now?" she asked.
"Oh, you know," he said, assuming a flippant tone, "Back to the stars with me; so many galaxies still out there!" The shadows in his eyes told a different story, though—one of sadness and too much time spent alone.
"All by yourself?" She already knew the answer to this question, of course. He had been alone when he arrived here a few months ago, human and with an apparently falsified background, and he would be alone when he left, alien and ancient.
The Doctor hesitated. "Well…" He drew the word out, shifting his weight slightly between his feet. "I don't have to be." He peered over at her from between his shaggy black bangs. "You could come, if you like."
"What, travel with you?" Julia shook her head. "No, I couldn't—can't." She bit her lip. "I have my job, my sister, my life here…I can't just waltz away from all that."
A frown creased the Doctor's brow. "You told Paton that you felt trapped here, that you always sensed there was something else waiting out there for you. What if this is it?"
The hope and sheer loneliness burning in his eyes made Julia's pulse shudder; he needed someone, needed her. "You must get lonely," she murmured, her hand unconsciously rising to trace the contours of his cheek.
Eyes closing at the tentative touch, he nodded. "900 plus years will do that," he said softly. They stood like that for a long moment, Julia's fingers just barely tracing his jaw, the Doctor standing tall and straight and still, both lost within the realm of thought.
"But the world—the universe—waits," he announced, eyes flying open and flashing in excitement. "Entire galaxies yet to be explored, planets teeming with adventure—we could see it all." He waggled his eyebrows at Julia. "What do you think?"
It sounded marvelous to Julia, but she was cautious by nature and seldom leapt headlong into anything—and whatever he said, she barely knew the individual standing before her. "I don't know…" she hedged, face a maze of indecision.
The abject hope on his face nearly made her concede right then and there. "Whatever you and Paton had," the Doctor averred, "whatever he was and whatever he did, he was me. Nothing existed in him that does not already exist in me. I'm not the same man—but I am." He waggled his eyebrows at her. "Confusing, that."
"Confusing does not begin to cover it." Julia sighed and drew a hand through her hair. There was no denying that this was the opportunity of a lifetime, travelling the universe in the company of an undeniably attractive alien who may or may not reciprocate the perplexing attraction she still held for him despite his duplicity. But, there was also her life, her career and family and everything she had ever worked for and dreamed of—all here, on Earth.
The Doctor could sense her indecision, saw the war waging in her mind playing out upon her face. He knew her hopes and dreams, had spent long hours as Paton discussing life and love and longing with the intriguing woman before him. She was still young, even by human standards, and aspired to eventually own her own bookshop—a proper one, with leather bound tomes and first edition rarities—rather than mind the library of an antiquated local university. Right now she did what she had to do, accruing tenure and squirreling away bits and pieces of her paycheck for books and that hazy someday when she could afford to buy a building of her own.
Paton had known all of this, had shared her dream and longed to help it to its fruition, living with her in the apartment above the shop and changing the front display and decorating for holidays and doing domestic—his heart gave a pang, because even now, as the Doctor, a part of him still wanted that.
It was simply a part he had to force himself to ignore—a task that required more effort than it should, and one at which he more often than not failed.
Rubbing the back of his neck, he looked at her with eyes glinting with suppressed humor. "Did I mention it also travels through time?"
A brilliant slowly grew on Julia's face, spreading to illuminate her entire countenance as she turned first left, then right to take in the gloomy camps behind her. Without uttering a word, she placed her hand in his and squeezed his fingers. "Well?" she asked. "What are we waiting for?"
His answering smile was the only reply she needed, and they stepped together into the TARDIS, the universe at their feet.