Two Ponds, A River, And A Rose {[Doctor Who Fanfic]}

2: One Through Twenty-Four

     He's silent for a moment. He opens his mouth several times, but closes it again without saying anything. After about fifteen agonizing minutes, he says, "My wife." I nod slowly. "And. . . I wasn't supposed to know this yet, was I?" I shake my head. He takes a deep breath and leans his head against the wall. "Grace. Do you realize what you just did?" I open my mouth to answer, but he jumps to his feet, startling me into silence. He begins pacing the room, muttering to himself. I slowly get to my feet, about to attempt to speak to him, to ask what's wrong. "Grace." He says before I can say anything. "I'm not supposed to know this yet. I'm supposed to find out in a different way, at a different time, in a different place. If that place was somewhere I needed to be, and now won't because I have my answer, then my entire timestream could collapse. I could- AH!" his knees suddenly buckle beneath him, and I watch helplessly as he writhes around on the floor of Rose's old room. Then, to my mixed relief and panic, he stops and lies perfectly still. I crawl slowly toward him, on my hands and knees. I touch his shoulder.

     "Doctor?" he moans something in response, then shoves me away, hard. Golden energy-I recognize it as regeneration energy- surrounds him, and I watch, wide-eyed, as his face transforms. I see the tenth Doctor behind the light, then the ninth, then twelfth. He goes back to eight, then five, then one, then presumably jumps ahead to an unknown number. Twenty-four times his face changes, until it finally settles back on eleven and the energy burns away. He glares at me.

     "That could happen," he says. "All my personalities are converging on me at once. I feel the rage and intolerence of my first form. The love and protectiveness of ten, the pain in the future of fifteen, which SHOULDN"T EVEN BE POSSIBLE!" He's shouting now, scaring me. I hear panicked footsteps and Amy and Rory enter the room.

     "What's going on?" Rory asks while Amy goes to try and calm the Doctor. I fill him quietly while watching the Doctor, getting worried. He gaping, open-mouthed at me. Finally, Amy can't take it anymore. 

     "Alright, Doctor. Listen here. Grace made a mistake. But it'll be fine, because fixing these things os what we do. That's what we do. We are going to fix it, together. Okay?" She keeps hold of his arm the whole time she's talking, and by the time she's done, his breathing has slowed to normal. He turns to face all of us. 

     "Alright. Okay, okay. Now, if we're going to fix this, it means you have to trust me. I'm going to be changing my face quite a bit. My personality, too. Not by choice," he adds hastilly, seeing the looks on all our faces. "But if someone you've never seen before comes up to you and starts talking about timey-wimey stuff, ask to see the sonic screwdriver. You'll know it's me if I show you this." He holds it up for all of us to see, though we already know what it looks like. Also, the Tardis is tied to me, so it might change with me. The control room and the console might look different from time to time now-AH!" The energy surrounds his face and he changes into his tenth form. "See? This is what I mean with the changing. Also, my old companions may begin to show up-" As if that was a cue, Rose pops into existence next to me, and I hear Martha and Donna walking toward this room, talking like they never left. Rose, however, looks thoroughly confused. Martha and Donna arrive in the doorway. Both simeply give him a look, asking him what's going on without asking. Rose is doing the same. 

     "Doctor?" calls a voice familiar to me but alien to the rest. Clara. She pushes Donna aside and goes into the room, looking at the Doctor, who had at some point went back to his eleventh form. He sit on the ground, giving up, letting it happen. I decide to try to explain what's going on after everyone who's going appear gets here. But the room is getting crowded.

     "ALRIGHT!" I shout. "I WILL EXPLAIN WHAT"S HAPPENING, BUT I'M GETTING CLAUSTROPHOBIC IN HERE, SO WE'RE GOING TO THE CONTROL ROOM. GO. NOW." Looking confused but relieved to be doing something, they obey and walk toward the control room. "Doctor, are you okay? Can you walk?" He nods and accepts my hand up. He tilts his head in my direction, jerks his head violenty to the side, and changes into the ninth Doctor. I shake my head, feeling sorry for him. I walk to the control room, already hearing more voices. I recognize some, but most are unfamiliar. When I get there, there's around a hundred people clustered in the flashing control room, console changing with the Doctor. I stand up on the console and address the crowd.

     "Okay!" I shout to get their attention. They all fall silent, waiting for answers. "I made a mistake. The Doctor knows too much about his future. Something huge that I told him. It messed up his timestream and now his entire life is happening at once. All of you were or are or will be his companions, but he only knows around half of you, so don't be disappointed if he can't remember who you are. But we are still his companions, and it's our job to help him when he's in trouble. Right now, he needs us more than he ever has before. We have to be here for him and help him, even if he isn't your Doctor. So, we are going to pretend we're back in kindergarten and go around the room. We're going to say our names and which number Doctor is ours. That way we all know each other. Okay?" I hear a collective response of "Okay" and a pretty girl with long, dark hair near the wall in the back starts us off.

     "My name is Meredith Hawkins. My Doctor is the eighteenth." A man next to her intorduces himself as Sean Jacobs, companion of the thirteenth Doctor. Then Martha, Donna, Clara, and Sarah-Jane announce themselves. 

    "I'm Rose Tyler. The ninth and tenth were my Doctors."

     "Mary Walker. Twenty-third Doctor." And so it went, for hours. The companions getting to know each other, taking turns comforting their respective Doctors when he collapsed in pain, and talking out strategies to fix everything. 

      "Wait!" A girl shouts. I remember her name being Alissa, companion of the sixteenth Doctor. "I have an idea that might work. But it'll take all of us agreeing to get out of here. Excepting the ones he knows. They can help him best. The rest of us will make it worse by spoiling the future and confusing him. It's what's best. There's a collective nod as everyone agrees. They all disappear. Just like that. 

     "I'll. . . explain. . . later. . ." the Doctor says, breathing hard. I hit my head on the wall. Waste of four hours I could've spent helping the Doctor. I sit on the ground and put my head in my hands.