"Donna, are you sure you're alright?" Wilf asked, hugging his granddaughter tightly.
"Gramps, I feel wonderful! Honestly, it's like none of that meta-whatsit ever happened!"
Ten said nothing and walked over to pick up his trench coat from where it had fallen.
"What happened?" Eleven asked. "What did she mean by 'fix'? In my head now… it's like you're, you're -"
Ten sighed and took the man's hands, placing them on his chest. Eleven stared at him.
"But that's –"
"She fixed us," Ten said sadly, releasing Eleven's hands and letting them move away from his steady double heartbeat. "Took the Time Lord out of Donna and put it into me. Back to regenerations! Probably have rebooted them, too. I've got thousands of years ahead of me now!" His voice broke on the last syllable. He cleared his throat. "We should get back to the TARDIS," Ten said after a moment. "There's somewhere we need to go." He turned and abruptly left the room.
After a brief argument regarding whether or not Donna would be joining them ("What are you on about, dumbo? I never said I was leaving to begin with! Don't you think for one second that you're ditchin' me again!"), they regrouped at the TARDIS.
The moment they all had set foot inside, though, it started to move, the time rotor churning them on to another destination. The floppy-haired bow tie-clad Doctor rounded on his counterpart.
"Would you like to explain what is going on?" Eleven demanded as Ten leaned broodingly against the wall. "She's sending us off somewhere again! What in the name of Rassillon did you do to your child for her to be like that? Some sort of imitation Time Lord initiation gone wrong? Although I can't imagine why you'd do that to anyone, much less your own daughter… And why didn't you mention her before?"
"I didn't do anything!" the other Doctor retorted. "I didn't mention her before because I can't talk to her telepathically like I can with the twins and she's old enough to take care of herself. Rose and I raised her, but Janie isn't biologically ours. She was like that when I found her. Or rather when she found us…"
"Found you? Is she from some sort of perverse Pete's World society? What sort of twisted…" Eleven trailed off.
River. Oh no, what if this was the alternate River? Little Melody Pond, taken and abused and exposed to power sources, flooded with radiations that no one quite understood.
"What's her name?" he asked.
"Jane," Ten sighed and pushed off from the wall to pace. "Well, she gave her name as Jane Doe, which we both know is just a rubbish alias used by the police. We raised her as Jane Doe Tyler. I don't know what her real name is. I honestly think she doesn't know either – or rather, didn't know. But, something's happened to her. She's never acted like this before."
"Tell me what you know. Please, this is important. I knew someone who… well, you met her as well. Her mother was abducted while pregnant and they exposed her to various power sources and time/space rifts and radiations and drugs to, well, cook up a time baby. They somewhat succeeded, but her life was…" Eleven trailed off and shook his head.
"I don't think it was that," Ten replied. "When she came to us, she was scared, but not of anyone or anything. She was just out of control and frightened of what she might do. She could easily have destroyed the multiverse, but she didn't. She didn't want to and that she could terrified her." He smiled wistfully, thinking of the day his eldest appeared. "She's from this universe, not Tony's World. She crossed over, looking for me."
"But that's impossible!"
"Yeah, did I mention I'm not allowed to use that word anymore?" He grinned. "I estimated at the time that she was around six Earth years old, but I've never been entirely sure - her timelines are hazy and twisted and impossible to read."
"You just said impossible," Clara piped up.
"Yes, thank you, Clara," Eleven sighed. Donna met Clara's eyes and rolled her eyes dramatically at the Time Lords. Clara grinned at her new ally.
"Riiiight," Ten continued. "Well, like I said, she was looking for me, like she knew that I could help her. Her powers overwhelmed her in this universe. Even in Tony's World, I had to knock her out in order to get anything accomplished, honestly. She managed to get them under control once she was firmly in that universe, but then, it was strange. I couldn't even communicate with her telepathically. It was like she didn't really remember what she could do except for when I was training her on how to control it. Well, that and one other time."
"What other time?"
"It doesn't matter," Ten said dismissively. "What matters is that she is about to do something very, very foolish and we have to stop her. Like I said, she has a good heart, but she's just a girl; she doesn't know what she's doing. As soon as we land wherever it is we're headed, wherever she's sent us, we have to leave immediately."
"Leave for where?"
"I need you to not panic, though," Ten continued, looking at the other man. "I'm serious. Time is in motion right now and I don't like where it's headed."
"But shouldn't we go where she's taking us?" Clara asked. "I mean, she did just rescue Donna and put you back together. Obviously, she means no harm. Maybe there's something we need to do or someone we're supposed to see."
"She has a point," Eleven agreed, looking Ten over. "But I can see you're not exactly convinced."
"We can split up if need be, but we have to go immediately. I know what she's doing and I have to stop it. It's going to be difficult to even land there, in all honesty. You're not going to like it and I'm sorry, but this is my daughter and I have to stop her from doing something foolish."
"How do you know what she's doing?" Donna demanded. "You just said that she's never acted like this before. Seems to me, it might just be a bit of teenage rebellion – on a bit of a large scale, but still."
"Yeah, but teenage rebellion for a Time Lord… I mean, when I rebelled at her age, well a teenager by Time Lord standards at any rate, I changed the evolution of an entire species."
"Oh, right, the Voolavelt…" Eleven mused.
"Wait, so she's a Time Lord?" Clara asked.
"Not… not exactly. It's complicated. But she told me so I'd know where she was going. Right before she left, she…" Ten raked a hand down his stubble.
"What did she say to you?" Eleven asked quietly.
"She said one word, just one word." Ten looked straight into his other self's eyes. "'Spoilers'."
