Just another little One regeneration piece, written for the prompt "Weakness" on who-contest, on LiveJournal. About 350 words. Thanks for reading!

His head swims. His feet fail him.

A haze descends upon his head, cold-warm and cottony, the feebleness something surreal. He can scarcely think, standing there with precarious balance and hammering hearts.

He has been sleeping. His dreams were queer ones; silver leaves and skies of bloody fire in flashes, childlike tinkling laughter and elusive faces. Time and space and wandering did not make the memories dim, never… yet they only return as flickers now, small shards of home, lost, seemingly. Lost but not; lost to him, in this flesh, with this voice, those hands.

He is viscerally afraid and very calm, perfectly calm. He manages to speak, to walk—to stagger to his ship. Ben and Polly's questions echo as though from some great distance. They fared on their own today, for the most part, facing Cybermen as he drifted… he ought to be proud. He is.

Maybe… surely he will get to tell them, later… show them. A small promise it is, but it is there nonetheless and, for a moment, he holds on to the idea.

The hum of the ship welcomes him. TARDIS, Time and Relative Dimension in Space as Susan would reel out very fast, happy chuckle falling at the end like a light-hearted punctuation. TARDIS as they learned in the Academy—Koschei was the very first to try and build one, then. It might have been either of them. Koschei, back on Gallifrey, or maybe somewhere in the universe, similarly… he wonders if he felt this. If he wobbled and burned, inside, a slow fire; if he now wears an unfamiliar face… Regardless, he would be glad to see it. He has not, since the Monk, happened to meet anyone from back home, anyone who understands… viewing the universe with a deep if inured eye. It is too much. He never dreamed he would come to miss it, not in a thousand years.

But he stumbles, and his old bones meet the floor. Anything is welcome—anything to hold on to.

It starts slow and simmering, ethereal starlight spreading through his limbs.

The weakness leaves. Newness stands in its place, raw, bewildering.