Author's Note:
Sorry for the delay. From now on I'm working on updating it at least monthly.

There was only little spare room left. Just enough room to spread his arms.
But the box should be fine. It should be as good as expected.
On the other hand he didn't expect much.

It was dark. And maybe that was the best part.
The Doctor wouldn't be forced into looking at it.
He wouldn't be forced to see it at all.
He stroked his bulge carefully but unloving.
He concentrated on imagining what it would feel like to give birth. He tried to convince himself that it wasn't happening to him. He tried to escape once more, tried to invent someone like John Smith who would know what had to be done.
Because it was normal for him.
Or her.

The Doctor dug his nails into his thighs.
He was right about it. He was a girl. Nothing more than a scared little girl, who had been punished by nature for her lascivious way of living with the worst punishment.

"Doctor you can't lock yourself up in there! This is madness!"
Martha banged her foot against the box once more.
"Would you be so kind as to shut up?" yelled the Doctor, "Bloody hell! Don't you know you shouldn't knock on aquariums because it's louder on the inside?"
"Haven't heard anything about an alien in a box!" shouted Martha, "You can't stay in there!"
"Leave me alone," muttered the Doctor and clenched his fists, which had till now been resting on his thighs.
For all he could tell it'd started.
And he sure hoped Martha hadn't planned on staying.
He wouldn't let anyone come near him.
He knew what he was supposed to do. He was forced to wait, just to wait and scream and deal with unbearable pain until someone came to take...

Would it be a boy or a girl?

The Doctor gritted his teeth and dug his nails into the rough surface of the box, scratching along the sides until every nail was broken and his fingertips were rubbed sore.
"Doctor," the Doctor came to notice that Martha was still on the other side of the box, "please keep calm... breathe in deeply and..."
"Don't you dare tell me what I'm supposed to do and how am I preparing my body correctly Ms Jones," snapped the Doctor.
"Just calm down," replied Martha uneasily. "I've already called for Jack. He should be here by now."
It sounded as if she took a few steps towards the box.
"Listen, I'm very sorry but I had to fetch him. I'm at my wit's end; I don't know what to do anymore. And you're not much of a help either."

"You should have let me return to my Tardis," countered the Doctor. "You people of Torchwood are all the same. If it's extraterrestrial and slightly interesting you'll keep it locked up."
"You're not our prisoner, Doctor," explained Martha in a lower voice, "I promised you I'd let you go any time."
"Then do it," mumbled the Doctor and crouched into a corner.
"I'd love to, but..."

"Doctor, I can't let you go."
Jack's honest and blank reply made him furious. He pressed his hands on his back and suppressed the tears swelling in his eyes.
"So be it," hissed the Doctor and moaned. "But don't expect me to hold back. I advise you to leave me alone. You can't help me. And I dare each one of you to try to force this box open."
Then he breathed in deeply and screamed.

It had definitely started.

He rolled over to one side and wrapped his arms around his knees.
His back was killing him. His bulge must have grown bigger over the past two weeks.
His body looked nearly as disgusting as it felt.

There was a sound of fading footsteps; Jack must have left. Why should he have stayed in the first place? He couldn't help him. Of course, Martha was of no use as well right now, but the Doctor knew that she'd stay, no matter how often he'd beg her to go.

The Doctor pressed his face against the wall and panted. His forehead was sweaty and he tried not to scream again as soon as the next contractions started.
This is it, he assured himself. All he had to do was to survive the next... hour, possibly more. And he had good chances on surviving due to his regenerating powers.
He held his breath, and after two painful contractions, coughed while gasping for air.
There he was; naked and all alone. Nothing inside except for him...
And the small blade.

The Doctor had considered the book of Neakahla, a medical book written by the probably best surgeon in the whole universe and of course, due to the fact that he was a Time Lord, the greatest surgeon of all times as well.
He had been fortunate to borrow one of the rare scripts back then in Gallifrey.

Well no really borrowed as such, well, no one had been looking and, well... due to the Time Lock he hadn't been able to return it till now.
But he definitely would.

The Doctor hammered against the box and howled while smashing his knuckles against the solid surface until he was sure that his hand was broken and therefore was supposed to hurt more than his pelvis.
The Doctor was cracking up. And that was probably normal right now, too.

It was traditional craving privacy when you were giving birth. At least on Gallifrey it had always been this way. You had to go alone, to be alone and return with the newborn – or don't return at all.

As a child the Doctor had wondered why a mother-to-be wouldn't come back if she had failed to give birth to a healthy child. He had figured it had something to do with shame.
But after studying the book of Neakahla he had learned that it was simply fate's choice.
You gave birth or you died.
No wonder the birth rates had decreased over the years.

Dr. Neakahla had mused that pregnancies not only affected a body physically, due to the hormonal redesign it was undergoing, as he called it, but mentally, too. The two bodies, the alpha-body of the mother and the beta-body of the unborn, existed together only. A child was born out of the mother's time line in the moment of conception but seemed to be connected to it until its day of birth. Their time lines moved and changed concurrent.
So if the child died...

The Doctor closed his eyes and flinched. He had touched the blade absent-mindedly with his fingers but felt the bleeding cut closing itself already.
His healing powers had increased. He sure hoped he wasn't going to regenerate after giving birth.
Then again...
He was sick and tired of his current self. He wouldn't mind being someone new, someone else...
Someone who wasn't forced to carry a baby for the greater good.

He sighed in order not to start sobbing again.

It seemed that he was still stuck in depression, the phase of depression actually.
And still he couldn't remember what it had been all about.

Dr. Neakahla's script had been quite of interest to him when he had been younger. A lot younger. He'd nearly devoured the book, deprived every single word of it to keep it in mind.
Back then he had been fascinated; fascinated by the characterizations, by the classifications and the bluntness of Dr. Neakahla's words. Every detail was unbiased.
Dr. Neakahla had observed the world around him and the creatures inhabiting it completely unprejudiced.

The Doctor felt stronger contractions and grunted. And his goddamn hand was back to normal again so the pain in his lumbar vertebrae worsened.
He gasped for air and tried to distract himself by recollecting the stages of...
His hands tried to support his back. He screamed and hit his fists on the wall repeatedly.
He panted and closed his eyes.

There were five stages, he could remember, five stages of...
But somehow he wasn't able to recall it; only four stages came to his mind.
First: Denial.
Second: Anger.
Third: Bargaining.
Fourth: Depression.
And fifth...
He sighed and poked the bulge nervously, though he'd only hurt himself. He just couldn't remember. And it was driving him insane. He wanted so badly to recall it; he wanted to concentrate on...

He screamed again but broke off surprisedly. The rhythm had changed. There was a decrease in his cardiac rhythms. His skin was cold and sweaty.
His hearts were slowing down.
But why? , he asked himself, Why would they change their rhythms?
A few premature heart contractions followed that scared him to death.

Someone outside of the box had gasped in horror.
"Leave me alone!" cried the Doctor while sobbing, "I'll do it myself; and there's nothing that you could do."

Embarrassing silence was sucked into the box from the outside.

"Just leave, Martha! I told you to stay out of my business. And it's my business, after all. It's my fault, I never should have come here in the first place; I should have left Torchwood as soon as I had regained consciousness, then you wouldn't have been forced into sharing in."
The Doctor howled and buried his face in his hands.
"It shouldn't have happened... I never should have let Jack see me ever again. I should have fled to my Tardis and just disappeared. I've brought shame on both of us, Jack and me."

The Doctor sobbed.
He'd cut his fingers again on the small blade and left scratch marks on the... He looked at his hand.
The ring.
He was still wearing Jack's ring. Involuntarily he tried removing it. He thought it to be bad luck after all. He should be alone. He should be all alone during the process. And he definitely shouldn't spare a thought for Jack.

But it was of no use. His fingers were too swollen; no matter how hard he pulled he couldn't manage to get it off.
He snorted angrily. It was terrible bad luck. If only this goddamn thing...

"Martha," the Doctor knocked on the wall, "Martha, you're still there, aren't you? You'd never leave, I know. There's no sense in pleading, you'll never leave me alone..."
He heard muted sniffing on the outside.

The Doctor whipped the sweat off his forehead and touched the closing cut lost in thought. "Martha, if I don't come out of here... You've had some wires attached to the box or some other stupid gimmick, haven't you? I bet you're monitoring me and each of my movements, isn't that right?"
A muffled sound came as a reply only; the Doctor assumed she was crying but had tried to agree.

"When I'm gone," the Doctor conceded, hissing between his teeth, "don't let Jack see me, don't let him even take a quick glance at me. He shouldn't be compelled to see my distorted body ever again. And before you're going to perform an autopsy, Martha, I want you to take the ring off my finger. And please return it to Jack. I'm so sorry, that I couldn't have been what he had wanted me to be..."
The Doctor could hear Martha sobbing even in here.
"Just tell them that it was my last wish that YOU'd perform the autopsy... I mean, I hope you're friends in Torchwood are respecting dying wishes from locked up aliens... Dunno... But I guess it'd be worth a try, what do you think?"
The constant sobbing on the other side wouldn't stop.

"Oh Martha, no, please stop crying. It's not that I WANT you to perform an autopsy on me. It's just that I know that those responsible for Torchwood have been looking forward to splattering my blood all over an operating table and groping around in my still warm intestines since..."

"Stop it Doctor!"

The Doctor held his breath in speechless astonishment as soon as he'd heard Jack shouting.

"Just stop right there! I don't want to hear another word! You're not going to die, I won't let you die, I...
YOU CAN'T DIE...!"