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

3: Collapse

Several hours after all the companions we didn't know disappeared, the Doctor stopped changing. He was stuck in the form of a tall man with strawberry hair (which he was very excited about) and bright green eyes. He said it was dangerous for him to be in a form he didn't know, but seemed relieved to stop flashing back and forward in his timestream all the same. He said he thought it was his fourteenth, though he couldn't tell for sure. He also explained to us that when he was flashing between faces and personalities, the companion to go with that Doctor appeared. When he got stuck as the fourteenth Doctor, everyone he hadn't met yet went back to their own times to wait for him. Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy, Rory, River, Sarah-Jane, and I were left with him.

"Is he still asleep?" I ask a tearful Amy, who is stationed outside his bedroom door. She refused to move for anything, and everyone else had eventually gone to bed. I only stayed up because there was no possibility of sleep for me. Not with everything that happened because of my slip-up.

"Yes." she replies quietly. I frown.

"Rory's worried about you," I say after a while. She just shakes her head. "He is. It hasn't been long, but you've been sitting here ever since he fell asleep. There's nothing more you can do right now, and you need to rest, too."

"He needs us, Grace. Can't you see that? I know the Doctor-"

"Not this one! The Doctor you know is a completely different man than the one inside that room. When he regenerates, it rewrites everything about him. His looks, his personality, even his heart. Both of them," I try for a joke. She doesn't laugh. "Look, Amy. The Eleventh Doctor loves you. You're his family. But the fourteenth has already lost you. He's already trying to move on from you. This man," I point to the door, "is a stranger to you and me both. We haven't had time to get to know the finally-ginger-Doctor. He could be a total psycho for all we know. He might not even know us anymore, much less need us. So for Heaven's sake get away from that door and go to bed." I don't wait for a reaction, just push by her to set the glass of water I'd brought for him on his beside table. It's half empty now. I must have sloshed it around while I was talking to Amy.

"You do tend to talk with your hands, Hallows," The Doctor whispers, making me jump. "This form knows so much about you," he says. "Now that I'm solidified in one body, I can kind of hack into it's memories. I don't think I was supposed to meet you yet," he whispers even more softly.

"What do you mean?" I say, but he's already asleep. I smile and exit the room, shutting the door quietly behind me. Amy's nowhere to be seen. Presumably, she's asleep too. I hope so. She's looked exhausted all day, and worrying about the Doctor probably hadn't helped.

"Grace?" I hear Rose's soft voice coming from her doorway. I walk over to her. "Why don't you get some sleep, too? Like you said yourself, there's nothing to do until we can figure out how to put everything straight again," she repeats my words to me. I shake my head, about to say that I can't sleep, but she puts her hands on my shoulders and steers me to my door. She crouches to get on eye level with me. Her brown eyes stare into my blue ones, as if analyzing them. Finally, she says, "You seem so much older than fourteen."

"My parents always said I was too tall for my age-"

"No," she laughs. "I mean the way you act. You're so. . . sophisticated. And everything that's happened today, with your childhood hero coming to life before your eyes and then getting into possibly fatal trouble, you are being the leader, though you're the youngest out of all of us." I smile involuntarily. I'm struggling to find a decent response when something on her hand glues my mouth shut. I double-check to make sure it's her left hand before grabbing it and holding it up accusingly.

"What is this?!" I demand, indicating to the gold and diamonds that surrounds her left ring finger. She looks alarmed.

"My wedding ring. . . What else?" she says, obviously confused. I am about to start ranting about how she loses the Doctor and then runs off with some random guy when she understands. "Oh. . . Right! You know a lot about me and the Doctor don't you? Our history?" I nod and motion for her to continue. "Then you know that the Doctor was with me in that parallel world. At least a copy of him. I married him, not a random man off the streets. Okay?" I laugh a little, embarassed.

"Oh, right. I forgot." She smiles at me and tells me to go to sleep before head to her own room and closing the door.

When, after three hours of tossing and turning, I finally get to sleep, my worst nightmare lights up behind my closed eyes, where I can't block it out. I'm riding in the car with my parents and baby cousin, who we pick up from daycare every Wednesday. There's a really steep dropoff next to the road, overlooking a beautiful lake. Somewhere, my brain recognizes the start of my most frequent dream and tries to wake me up, only succeeding in making me panic. There's a spot up ahead where the guardrail has been torn away by recent storm winds. We are almost past the gap, when a huge truck sIams us in the side and pushes our tiny four-seater off the road and toward the lake below. As we plummet to our deaths, my cousin is crying, my dad is praying, and my mom is telling me to be brave. We hit the water with a jolt. And so begins our slow drowning. Water leaks in through cracks in the doors and the air vents, slowly filling the bottom of the car, covering the floor. Somewhere, Martha and Rose are yelling at me to wake up, that something's happened, but I can't pull myself from the sinking car and my drowning family. The water goes over my head and I hold my breath in the dark for as long as I can. My mother's hand finds mine, and we clutch at each other as we run out of air. . .