Reality Crisis

Now that the TARDIS had finally settled into her new desktop, River had taken a break from working on her. She was well aware of the new passengers on board, but had chosen for now to keep her distance. She was already a confusing element to the Doctor - she wasn't interested in being a conflict with the others yet. Though the Metacrisis was a curiosity to her. A human Doctor. It was an odd reflection of herself: a human with Time Lord knowledge and memories, versus a Time Lord with none of the influence of Gallifrey. And with no remaining regenerations to speak of, she never identified herself as a Time Lord. Or Lady. The Doctor was the last of that race, and she wouldn't insult him by claiming it herself.

She was making the rounds through the TARDIS as usual, checking on the various rooms, where the swimming pool was hiding nowadays, and of course, ending up perusing the library. It was one of her favorite spots in the wonderful ship. She selected one of the volumes on Gallifreyan history and settled into an overstuffed armchair to read.

Here was one place where everything was exactly the same -- her room in the TARDIS. In the dim light, Rose lay staring at the sweeping ceiling overhead, listening to the quiet hum... quieter now... that meant she was home. In Pete's World, before she'd crossed back over into the universe where the Doctor had been, she would lie awake at night and stare at the plain white ceiling above her, wishing that it was exactly what she was seeing now. Now that she was here, sleeping seemed the worst way to spend her time.

Hope had started its unsteady climb back up into her again. Nothing would be the same, nothing but the TARDIS... and maybe that was enough for now. She straightened the blankets around her for the seventh time and dropped her arms back at her sides again.

Finally. Finally home. The spark started in her chest and radiated out. Finally home. Before she knew it, she was smiling in the dark. She rolled over onto her side, then, and curled her arms around her pillow. Home. And she wasn't, she really wasn't tired at all. Oh, she felt the exhaustion, the wear on her body from the long walk, the lack of sleep, the bad food -- exhausted, sure. But tired... no. Not tired at all.

The next minute, she was slipping into the thin robe laid out on the foot of her bed, tucking her toes into the blue slippers waiting, pushing still-damp hair back behind her ears. The light was dim, maybe because it was night, and maybe because the TARDIS needed to conserve power, but it was still enough to see. She edged her door open, then gently closed it, and tiptoed down the corridor. It was time to get reacquainted with home again.

Strawberry shampoo.

The lather spun lazily down the drain, and Rose stuck the toes of her left foot into the bubbles. Strawberry shampoo. She hadn't used this stuff since her father grabbed her and dragged her into his world with him. But there it was in the bathroom, waiting for her. She wondered if the TARDIS put her things in temporal stasis while she was gone. It was heartwarming to think that the TARDIS held out hope for her return, even if the Doctor himself might not have.

"Thank you," she whispered, the heated water pouring over her shoulders. She sniffed hard and shoved at the wetness on her face.

She hadn't had a good shower since arriving here, and it was long overdue. There was no small amount of guilt, realizing that everyone outside those great blue doors had no such comfort, but it was clear that the TARDIS was struggling already. To invite others into her now would surely overtax her. Rose was grateful for every tiny thing she was given, here.

Funny, that. She'd been amazed and bewildered the first time she'd showered in this bathroom, but never grateful. How blind she'd been, not to grasp at every little ounce of this life while she could. How foolish she'd been not to tell him every day just how glad she was that he'd let her come along, just how thankful she was that the TARDIS gave everything that she did.

The towel was soft and warm. Again, Rose murmured words of gratitude. It was just flowing out of her now, that gratefulness, like the tears had when she realized that she'd found and lost her Doctor all in the same instant. Rose had brushed through her wet hair and was just pulling on a hot pink cotton camisole over her pyjama pants when a knock came at her bedroom door.

She pulled the bathroom door shut, and opened her bedroom door instead, toweling her hair as she did.

Their exploring had been cut short by the evacuation of the settlement - die Festung, it was called, or so those who lived in it said... The stories of what'd happened the world were nothing short of harrowing, and nothing out of the ordinary for Rose and the Doctor.

The Doctor... Even now, Rose had reservations about the one she'd been left with. Her Doctor wanted her to make him better, so he'd said. Rose didn't know if it could be done. At the very most, she imagined her influence could only make him different. And yet, as she spent more time with the Metacrisis, she found herself noticing parts of him that were very much like the one she'd first fallen for... and she wondered...

Was different better?

He was compelling... The best and worst parts of each of her Doctors, all in one, with a dash of something else nothing like the ones she'd known before... He was entirely different, and so very familiar.

These thoughts rolled around in her head as they milled out with the rest of the settlers onto the hardly-could-even-be-called-a road. Unlike others, who moved with urgency and dread, she wandered... hands in pockets, eyes and ears open, taking all of it in. There were some that weren't, apparently, from this world. There were ones that believed the others were some sort of blessing (or curse), so the whispers said. And somewhere along the line, during her wandering, she lost sight of the Metacrisis.

That was when she found it: A blue box, inert and quiet, no lights to be seen, being towed in the caravan.

Bright hope fizzled and burst through her, fireworks set off by desperation and love and too many other emotions to capture. She almost immediately looked around for him, not him, but him, her Doctor. It was all that was in her mind -- that name, over and over. She found herself shouting it at last, discomfiting those around her. Didn't care. She needed him now.

When he closed his eyes, his mind was a tangle of memories, thoughts, feelings -- no, not feelings -- emotions of such a strong nature that they hardly felt real. He tried to compartmentalize those emotions. Life as he thought it was. Life as he remembered it to be. And life in its truthful, painful actuality. You are he. He is you. And you are you. Me is me. But, at the same time, he wasn't any of those things.

He was a paradox of nature. A puzzle within a puzzle within a confine of flesh that was both his and not his; both old and new. But the oddity was deeper than that. Beneath the skin and muscle and bone was the sound of -- lub dub, lub dub -- a single beating heart. And that made him feel more alone than anything. Not even the vastness of time and space, which once so delicately danced upon his fingertips, could compare with the void that was left in his chest. An emptiness where his Time Lord heart used to beat.

But he had her. He had her and he didn't. That should have made up for everything else. And, in his mind's time (so short and fleeting that it was with newfound mortality,) it did. Because what they had (or what he believed they had) seemed to transcend the connection that he had with all others -- excluding, of course, that whirring, whuzzing, whizzing, machine that once beat in time with his second heart. His first love. His only love? Well, the definition of that word was so transcendental. So existential. And when one was comparing the universe to, well, anything else ... Not exactly apples and oranges. But all together fantastic. In a wibbly-wobbly sort of way.

He opened his eyes to find himself staring up at an unfamiliar sky. And where that was once normal for him, he quickly adjusted to just how abnormal it felt right at that very minute. Beneath his fingers was the sensation of cracked, malformed sidewalk. A few bits of mossy weed peeking out between the slivers. The clouds were wrong. The air was heavy. Musty? Not hard to breathe, but not easy. He slowly turned his gaze to the side and peered out among desolation. His mind raced like a computer, but some of the timey-wimey spark was gone. Missing. That little tinge that made him the--

No, not him.
( The human biological metacrisis. )