It’s too soon. Your brain protests this fact even as your cells start disintegrating from the inside out, new and vibrant replacing the old and dying. But still you protest; it wasn’t supposed to end like this, her scared and almost in tears as you offer clever quips and half-felt assurances that everything’s gonna be fine. It will be, you’ve got no doubt about that, but it won’t be of your doing, not really. And you want to explain it better, you do, she deserves that much, deserves to know that she’s gonna be dealing with a different version of you from now on, one that you can’t guarantee will be very much like how she expects you to be at all, hell, you can’t even guarantee you’ll feel the same irrational need to protect her after this, but as another wave of pain wracks your body you can’t quite find the words to do it justice, instead resorting to some stupid side story about Barcelona and dogs without noses. Fat lot of good that’ll do ‘er. But you cling to it nonetheless, acting as if both your worlds /aren’t/ gonna change completely in the next five minutes, digging your heels in against the light threatening to burst behind your eyes, against what’s coming next. It’s too soon, you’re not ready, /she’s/ not ready... So you cling, holding your cells together through sheer desperation now, fighting against the rising voice telling you to just let go. But I can’t! you yell back, unwilling to just go quietly. A /year/? That’s /all/? The others got more than that, and after what you did, after the price you paid…You don’t deserve to go like this. /She/ doesn’t deserve you to go like this. Who’s gonna look after her, who’s gonna make sure she stays out of trouble, bring her home to ‘er mum every once in a while? She’ll be taken care of, the voice assures you, a voice that’s not your own, and you feel your grip loosen a little with a new wave of pain. Time is short, you’re being dislodged, like it or not. And there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. So you get out a few more quips, a few more encouraging words, flash a smile that’s not as reassuring as you’d like it to be, and that’s it. You may not want to go quietly into that good night, but you don’t have a choice in the matter (no.), and the bright light washes over you (No.), and that’s it. (NO.) Doomed to a dusty corner of the new you’s brain like all the rest, only allowed to observe, never to act.

NO.

Only…that’s not quite how it goes.

There’s a lot of pain, more than you remember ever being associated with the process, and it’s not like the last time this happened was a particularly /pleasant/ one, and the light lasts a few beats longer than you’re convinced it should before the familiar darkness envelops you. And there’s <pushing> and <pressing> and <pulling>, and that’s /definitely/ not supposed to happen, but by now your thoughts are fading fast, and before long it really doesn’t matter anymore.

And then something happens that you /really/ weren’t expecting.

You wake up.

You open your eyes, and…everything hurts. The light’s too bright, the grate underneath you too cold, the clothes against your skin too rough, and your head’s still spinning from the regeneration, axons quickly trying to assimilate all incoming stimuli and pull them together into something approaching meaningful. You flex your fingers and toes reflexively, taking inventory of the situation and filing it away: arms, legs, head, neck, nose. All parts accounted for, though, as you let out a hoarse cough and a slight twinge goes through your chest, maybe not all in working order just yet. That’ll come, no rush. Your thoughts quickly turn to the problem of exactly what just happened, since you /should/ be confined to a room by now, none the worse for wear if a bit bitter, but you shove them aside to be dealt with later.

You push yourself to hands and knees, then slowly gain your feet, gripping the edge of the centre console that you’d swear to Rassilon wasn’t there a minute ago, and stumble off to med bay, which conveniently happens to be only a room away. And again, you could’ve sworn the door wasn’t there before you decided it should be. Later, later, you caution yourself. Get everything in working order /first/, /then/ worry about the questionable surroundings.

Thermometer, sensory probes, bioscan. Regenerations seldom go off without a hitch, particularly when they happen off-world (not that there’s anything /but/ an off-world regeneration now, is there? you think darkly), and while the TARDIS helps the transition quite a bit, she can’t do everything. Check to make sure everything’s working properly, more or less, and even though this isn’t a regeneration – it can’t be or else Rose would be here, and come to think of it where /is/ she? And that train of thought gets an even more emphatic “Later” than the others – it’s near enough to warrant following protocol.

You drop the instruments once or twice before you can manage to get them hooked up properly, your insults at your own clumsiness echoing around the cramped room. It’s Bellerophons, Heliotrophes, and Sycorax that get the bulk of your ire today, not that there’s anyone to listen to you wax poetic about how two out of the three are all thumbs and the third wouldn’t know what to do with your advanced technology if they got hold of it. Well, no-one aside from the TARDIS, and she’s heard this particular rant a half dozen times by now, although she hums commensurately at the appropriate places nonetheless.

As it turns out, you’re running a fever, one of your hearts can’t quite manage to stay in synch with the other, and you’re worryingly low on tannins. Easily fixed, however, and you need the bedrest anyway if you’re to be expected to recuperate properly from…./whatever/ it was that happened. So you flop inelegantly onto the narrow cot, disconnect the diagnostic machines, pump yourself full of the necessary fluids, and sleep.

You dream of killer Christmas trees and robotic Santas with guns, of pilot fish and the sharks that follow them, of Rose crying over your unresponsive form, only you look different, smaller, more boyish. You dream of Mars and terrifying masks, of blood control and millions of innocents standing vacantly on rooftops, poised to jump, and of swordfights. You dream of battles won and territory claimed, of innocence lost, and of politicians fallen from grace with one arrogant action.

The dreams fade away almost as soon as you wake, and you’re left with half-remembered images that mean nothing to you. Not yet.

You wake a few days later, feeling mostly back to your usual self. Aside from the nagging problem of why you’re still here, of course. Which, since you’re back to fully functional, can now be properly addressed.

A change of clothes and a few cups of coffee and toast with jam later and you’re no closer to an answer. The kitchen appeared as much from nowhere as the medical bay and the centre console did, and not in the same way you’re accustomed to. The TARDIS habitually shifts the rooms around, shuffling them to keep the ones deemed most important at the moment closest to where the occupants are, but even so…doors don’t appear out of nowhere, they never have. The only thing that changes is where they lead. It’s as if she’s being pulled into existence /around/ you, and you’re not quite sure what to make of that. That coupled with the dreams /should/ tell you something, but you don’t draw the conclusion, not until much later.

The most pressing thing on your mind right now, now that you’ve got the time and luxury to pursue the nagging warning bells in the back of your mind practically blaring red alert, is where Rose is. ‘Cos by all rights she /should/ be here, should’ve been following you ‘round like an overeager puppy like she normally does. You’ve never managed to go longer’n a day without her popping up /somewhere/ since she’s started travelling with you, and that only happened ‘cos she got cross with you over some cultural difference that would’ve been unavoidable anyway. But here it is, days later, and she’s still nowhere to be found.

Your thoughts race. It’s not like she could’ve been kidnapped, the TARDIS is impenetrable - the only way inside is through the front door. She could’ve left while you were asleep…but you weren’t heading anywhere when you regenerated, and she’s not recognised as the controller. You checked after you took the time vortex out of her, scanned her three times just to be sure; she was completely clean, 100% human. So it makes no sense that she wouldn’t be on board.

And yet.

You’re gonna have to tell her mother. Tell her /what/, you’re not sure; you can’t imagine “Hello, Jackie, remember me? I lost your daughter, sorry….” will end in anything other than a good smack and an earpiercing, tear-filled lecture on the importance of keeping track of poor single mothers’ daughters in your travels through the universe. Never mind that you’d deserve every minute of it.

You’re sorely tempted to take the coward’s way out, and maybe you should. Chalk it up to experience and swan off like you always do. It wouldn’t be the first time you left without so much as a goodbye, and it probably won’t be the last. They’re only humans, after all, rather unexceptional aside from a few quirks that make them more resilient than most other species. Not the most intelligent race, though far from the least, no special abilities to speak of for the most part, although genetic flukes do crop up from time to time, and by and large fiercely determined to ignore anything that doesn’t fit into their preconceived idea of how things ought to be, fighting tooth and nail against it until they have no other choice but to admit their mistake.

But even so, they have an incredible gift for adapting. Give them a little encouragement and they’ll mould to the environment, soaking in every little bit of information almost without realising it until they exceed your expectations, using what they’ve learnt in ways you hadn’t anticipated. Not always the right ones, necessarily, but even so they never cease to surprise you. Which is why you like to have them around.

So you bite the bullet and go to see her mother, not really understanding why you’re doing it even as you type the co-ordinates in and set the course. But when you get there things get even stranger.

First off, she doesn’t recognise you when she answers the door. You’re not terribly surprised, you’ve got a new face now, or so you think, but when she asks who’s calling and you say “the Doctor”, it prompts the usual line of questioning you get when you first introduce yourself instead of the shriller interrogative tones you were expecting. And when you mention Rose, she tells you she’s at her friend Shareen’s, so it’d be quite the trick for her to be in two places at once, and you should try her on her mobile rather than trekking all the way to her home when she’s not even there.

You think it best not to mention that it’s not as hard to occupy multiple points in space at the same time as most people think.

She invites you inside nonetheless, offering you coffee, tea, nightcap (which is a bit of a stretch, since it’s only three in the afternoon, but it’s Jackie Tyler, and you let it pass without comment) in that clumsily attempted seductive voice she tried the first time she met you, and it gets turned down with about as much ceremony this time around. You ask about Rose, trying to figure out how it can be that she doesn’t seem to know you at all, and after a bit of probing it all becomes crystal clear.

That night in the basement of that shop, the one that started this whole mess when you grabbed the hand of a complete stranger and pulled her out of harm’s way on nothing but an impulsive need to save another innocent….According to Jackie, it never happened. The shop window dummies came to life, sure enough, and you must’ve been there ‘cos it was stopped before the Nestene Consciousness could get enough influence to devour the whole planet, but Rose wasn’t there for it, apparently she didn’t even work for that store. In fact, if Jackie were to be trusted, it was Mickey the idiot who worked there, and he was the one who’d disappeared on them, not Rose. Which couldn’t be right at all.

You get up to leave, determined to track Rose down and check the story with her, entirely convinced that she’ll laugh and dispel all your doubts with a plausible explanation for all this, but as you make your way to the door you happen to pass a mirror hanging on the wall. Now, this wouldn’t ordinarily be cause for comment, not like you make a habit of /preening/, if it weren’t for the face looking back at you as you move down the hallway towards the door.

It’s your own. Which for /most/ people wouldn’t be any particular cause for concern, but you’re not most people. You /should/ have a different face, you /regenerated/, after all, and it’s not like you had anything to siphon the excess energy into afterwards to keep from changing. You should have a different face, or be in a small bland room locked off from the rest of your brain like all the others who’ve passed their time, but here you are, staring into a face with the same cold blue eyes, the same big ears, the same close cropped hair. You run a hand through the short hairs and watch blankly as the reflection does the same, and that’s when it all starts to come together, all the pieces finally starting to click into place.

The TARDIS appeared /around/ you; it wasn’t there before you were. That’s the only explanation for why the doors appeared out of nowhere like they did, why the console wasn’t there before you reached out for it. It was like you pulled it into existence, created it around yourself from where you knew everything should be. And this London…isn’t the one you’re familiar with. You /didn’t/ encounter Mickey in the basement, it was /Rose/. But this Rose apparently doesn’t know you, or if she does it’s probably the same way the Mickey you’re familiar with does, more of a reluctant acceptance of your existence than anything else. And then there’s /this/ particular addition, the fact that even after the unusually rough regeneration (and now you’re starting to wonder if it really /was/ a regeneration) you’ve still got the old face.

Jackie pulls you out of your thoughts, wondering exactly what you’re doing staring into the mirror like that, and you have the presence of mind to brush it off, but it’s a close thing. You make your excuses and leave, heading back to the TARDIS, since there’s really no reason to go tracking down Rose now. She’s not here. Or, /your/ Rose isn’t here, anyway.

You get back to the TARDIS and resume your earlier line of thought, the threads pulling tighter and tighter as you get closer to the conclusion. Different London. A /parallel/ London. Certainly explains why the regeneration was off, would have to get pushed through the barrier between the two to get there. Only…that’s never happened before, as far as you know. Should be impossible; you can’t cross between the two without an /incredible/ amount of energy, and it’s only possible through particular technologies, life forms can’t do it on their own. Not multicellular ones, anyway. But it wasn’t the TARDIS, you never set her up to travel /period/, let alone across parallels.

But here you are all the same. Which means there must be another explanation for it.

Your mind keeps going back to the regeneration, the fact that it was unlike any previously. It wasn’t /right/, it was off somehow. At one point it felt like you were getting squeezed through a tube, and that might’ve been the crossing over into another universe if you could explain why it happened. But you’d been disconnected, you /felt/ it….

And there it is, the answer you were looking for.

You didn’t want to leave. You fussed and protested and fought against it as hard as you could, and when your consciousness finally got disconnected, instead of getting shunted off to the room you /should’ve/ ended up in, you somehow managed to end up a universe over. Easy enough when you’re nothing but a collection of brightly glowing particles that refuse to die like they should. What’s a thin membrane between worlds to that? Doesn’t hurt that you’d been messing about with the time vortex before it happened, easy enough to have missed a bit when you were putting it back.

So you belong here, then. Or that’s what your timesense is telling you; by shifting over to this parallel while you were nothing more than faerie dust and coalescing into your old form on the other side, you cemented yourself here, imbedded yourself in the timeline. So you shouldn’t leave. You’ve got the TARDIS, you can go back to travelling like always; there’s a whole universe out there, all shiny and new since there are millions of things that could be different now. And a part of you wants to explore it all, that part of you that’s always questing for something new, never satisfied with the knowledge it has. But another part of you, most of you, actually, wants nothing more than to get back to the universe you came from and get back to Rose. It’s a lonely existence, travelling on your own, and like she said, “better with two”. You’d probably end up picking someone up along the way in your travels, you always do, but it wouldn’t be Rose, and you’re not quite ready to let go. Never mind that she’s already got a Doctor and he’s /technically/ the proper one, since you’re nothing more than a wilful fluke, or that everything you know tells you that you shouldn’t mess with the barriers between the worlds. It’s a tricky business, filled with side effects, some fairly innocuous, others much less so. It used to be easier, but the War took care of that, made sure all the passageways got sealed shut to make it harder for the daleks to win. And now there’s no-one to open them back up, no-one but you, and it’s much too big a job for one person. Hard enough with two, all but impossible by yourself.

But there are other ways to cross, much more primitive ways, ways that could tear the very fabric of time and space into a million tiny pieces, causing chrono collisions, temporal implosions, little ripples in time and space across the entire galaxy that you can’t even /begin/ to predict the effects of. Entire sections in time wiped out completely or irrevocably looped all because you got selfish and couldn’t stand the idea of being without one single, unremarkable blonde ape who probably doesn’t even return your feelings anyway.

You start making preparations for it nevertheless, even as the rational part of your brain presents every argument it can think of to make you stop. You could tear the entire universe apart, shred it like cheese through a grater or worse, break every single law on the books in one fell swoop (but the books are all dust now, aren’t they? No-one to enforce them now, no-one but you) and /then/ where would you be? Are you /really/ gonna put the entire universe in harm’s way for one stupid ape?

Yes. In a heartbeat.

And the grin on her face when she suddenly pops into your ship, even though you weren’t expecting /that/ particular result, makes it worth it.