a/n - This was initially written as an epilogue to another story, but since I don't know when or even if I'll get around to writing it, I decided to publish this scene on its own. Obviously this contains major spoilers for the end of that tale, should I ever finish it, but I've definitely kept a few secrets safe, don't worry. For reasons that will become clear as you read it, this is very much a pivotal moment in the series arc I have planned for Alt!Five.

Building a Better Gallifreyan

The Doctor was dead. And then he wasn't.

When awareness returned, the first thing the Doctor saw was Romana's pale face; she looked grim, older somehow, but alive. The room was dim and had the oppressively hushed atmosphere of a medical ward. His mouth felt dry and his head ached fiercely, which, when you considered that by all rights he ought to be a corpse right now, was fine by him.

"What happened?" he asked her.

Her expression became guarded and she avoided his gaze when she answered. "You died."

"I remember that, I think." He frowned. "…I shouldn't." Had he regenerated after all? It didn't feel like he had, though something was different. The shape of his body and his voice were familiar to him still; he brought his hands to his face and swept them cautiously over the top of his head as well. His features felt unchanged, though his hair was alarmingly short.

"It will grow back," she assured him, noticing his dismay.

He looked at her, waiting for further explanation. When it became obvious that none was forthcoming, he asked another question. "Where are we?"

"Gallifrey. We're deep beneath the Capitol," she replied reluctantly. He was starting to get the impression that she was waiting for someone to join them. She was clearly agitated.

He was about to ask her what was wrong when he realised; Gallifrey was at war. She'd been sent to find him personally when the summons to return hadn't reached him, to force him to enlist in their bloody conflict with the Daleks. He'd refused, having seen enough death and destruction to last him several lifetimes, but then the war came to him anyway. The memories were hazy and chaotic, but he was certain of one thing: he shouldn't have survived.

And he hadn't.

"Romana. Tell me what is going on," he demanded quietly, sitting up in the narrow bed.

Finally, she turned to face him again and he was startled to see that her eyes betrayed barely-repressed anger, not sorrow. "You died. I brought you home," she said, her jaw tight, "and they brought you back." Her tone implied that this was not a thing to be celebrated.

A bubbling sense of panic rose in his gut. He took in his surroundings with new understanding in his eyes. This was hardly an officially sanctioned procedure, or at least, not a publicly acknowledged one.

"How long?" he croaked. "How long have I been…" He couldn't finish the sentence.

"Four weeks, relative time," she replied. When he looked at her, she continued to speak in a hushed voice. "The War Council has authorised the use of the looms for troop augmentation…"

He started at that. "I've told you, and I've told the High Council, I'm not a soldier!" he hissed.

"You weren't." The line of her mouth was hard. "I don't think you're going to be given the option to refuse now."

"They can't force me to fight, Romana."

"Oh, I think you'll find that we can." A new voice interrupted them. It belonged to a Time Lord in black and white robes who stood in the doorway looking insufferably smug. "Good evening, Doctor, I'm pleased to see that you're awake." He approached the bed with the businesslike manner of someone checking on a patient. "How are you feeling? By your conversation, it sounds as though you've emerged without any significant neurological impairments – we'll have to run some tests to be sure – but this is encouraging."

The Doctor glared at him balefully, but the other Gallifreyan was unfazed. He carried on conducting his examination, consulting a handheld medical scanner while he worked.

"Ah, I see the incision is healing nicely as well," he said with a glance at the side of the Doctor's head.

"What incision?" the Doctor asked, already raising a hand to check for himself. He found a tender, slightly swollen spot just above his right ear. "What've you done to me?"

"You mean the Lady Romana hasn't told you yet?" The Time Lord shook his head and made a tutting sound. Romana remained silent, but her expression made her disapproval clear.

"You are aware that the Lord President Rassilon has returned from his tomb?" The Doctor nodded and he carried on with his explanation. "Since his return and the escalation of the war, there have been a number of operations implemented to ensure our victory is achieved as swiftly as possible. As someone who has had extensive contact with the Daleks on previous occasions, your expertise was deemed of vital importance to the war effort, hence the Lady Romana's mission to retrieve you. When she reported that you'd been killed, authorisation was obtained to use your body for the project –"

"What project?" the Doctor interrupted him, his patience wearing thin.

"I'm getting to that. Your resurrection was made possible by certain advances in the bioengineering and regenerative sciences. As you've learned first-hand, the Daleks have developed weapons which are capable of short-circuiting our regenerative abilities, technology which has dealt a crushing blow to our forces on the ground. They outnumber us already and are creating new troops every day." He sighed.

"Our only option has been to learn to build a better Gallifreyan. Thus far, this has manifested in a two pronged approach: firstly, we have been somewhat successful in augmenting existing regenerative processes, though the technology is still in a trial stage at this time; secondly, war looms have been brought online and recalibrated to produce adult bodies with basic combat imprinting to increase our numbers, but this is a stop-gap measure at best. Setting aside the ethical considerations which some of our people have voiced regarding their use," he cast a significant glance at Romana, "these soldiers are hardly as effective as fully fledged Time Lords. We need minds as well as bodies if we are to win this war."

He crossed his arms and looked back at the Doctor. "The Celestial Intervention Agency, in conjunction with a secret research team, has been tasked with recruiting from Gallifrey's past, in a manner of speaking. We've been allowed access to the Matrix archives to select candidates from the ranks of deceased Time Lords whose skills or knowledge might prove especially useful. Those approved for the project are loomed into new bodies and equipped with the latest regenerative enhancements. Your sojourn into the Matrix during the Omega incident made it especially easy for us to obtain an accurate bio-data extract and suitable neuro-imprint for you. The posthumous supplemental memory extraction from your… previous body was the tricky bit. You may discover gaps in your recall of more recent events; there was some damage to the neurons that may have prevented a complete transfer."

The full implications of what he said took a moment to sink in for the Doctor. "This isn't… you're saying I've been given an entirely new body. I'm not actually the Doctor then; I'm some sort of copy, an amalgamation of the Time Lord I remember being?" His voice was remarkably calm, if only because he was feeling so numb due to the enormity of it all.

"If that is how you choose to look at it. As I see it, you're as much the Doctor as he was; you wear the same face, share his memories, his thought patterns, even your Imprimatur has been preserved so that your TARDIS will recognise the bond you shared together. Spare yourself the existential angst. You've been given a new lease of life, Doctor – a whole new modified regeneration cycle with enhanced physical conditioning!"

Suspicious, the Doctor narrowed his eyes; there was undoubtedly a catch. "Modified how, exactly?"

For a second, the CIA spokesman appeared uncomfortable, clearing his throat before answering. "As I stated earlier, our chief concern has been countering the effects of new Dalek weaponry. The combination of gene therapy and use of an implanted backup triggering device has proved very promising. You've been equipped with the very latest trial version. We expect approval for broad distribution very soon." He was stalling and beginning to irritate the Doctor.

"Just tell him, Coordinator," Romana spoke up before the Doctor could.

"Very well." He pursed his lips. "Under normal circumstances, in the event of fatal trauma in an otherwise healthy Time Lord, the lindos organ is activated, releasing the hormone necessary for inducing regeneration into the bloodstream. We've discovered that the improved Dalek weapons produce retro-genitor particles that target this organ specifically, inhibiting its function. Through a few select gene transforms, we've increased the organ's resistance to this particle and added a failsafe, in the form of a subdermal implant containing a sufficient quantity of the lindos hormone to be deployed if regeneration has not begun within a set period of time following cardiac failure. We've adjusted the symbiotic nuclei and biogenic molecules as well, and in the process solved another problem inherent in combat regenerations: they are messy, unpredictable, and leave the affected Time Lord extremely vulnerable for an extended period of time afterward."

He paused to take a deep breath. Here comes the bad news, the Doctor thought.

"The implant performs another key function – by precisely controlling the energy output at the point of regeneration, it is possible to limit the process to mere cellular repair and restoration and omit re-organisation. The Time Lord's body is simply returned to its original state, thus avoiding the usual post-regenerative confusion and disorientation."

The Doctor blinked at him. "Meaning I'll heal, but never change my face again. You've effectively eliminated regenerations as we know them."

"Yes, though perhaps not permanently. We believe the procedure will be reversible, should the prospect of a lifetime in a single body prove unattractive to some after the war. I shouldn't think you would have any cause to complain, Doctor. Your current form is young and capable, perfectly suited to all that gallivanting about the universe you're so fond of," he said with an audible note of distaste. "If you survive the war, you'll be welcome to return to that life."

"If I survive the war," the Doctor repeated. "We're back to that. What's to prevent me from simply leaving again?"

The Coordinator lifted an eyebrow. "My apologies, Doctor, I neglected to discuss the terms and conditions." His smile was not a friendly one. "That implant I mentioned?" He tapped the side of his own head. "Also equipped with monitoring features. Standard battlefield kit. We can track your movements at all times, even in the vortex, and if necessary, patch into your visual cortex. We see what you see; very handy for commanders in the field."

The Doctor leaned forward angrily only to find that they'd placed force restraints on the bed. He growled in frustration. The robed Time Lord flinched slightly before regaining his composure.

"Easy now, don't lose your temper; it won't do you any good. We brought you back to life, and we control whether you will be allowed to continue living, provided the Daleks don't finish you off. You want your freedom, you're going to have to earn it, so I suggest you start cooperating just as soon as you're on your feet again." He turned on his heel and left them alone in the chamber.

"Romana, you allowed them to do this to me?" The Doctor turned to his friend and former companion.

The deposed Lady President grit her teeth. "I'm sorry Doctor. It wasn't my decision." She met his eyes now, and he could see the barely-checked emotion in them. It made him feel guilty for questioning her.

"I had to watch you die on that planet," she said, "and drag your lifeless body through the rubble afterwards. The High Council wanted you back on Gallifrey, no matter what. And you were my friend. How could I abandon you when there was still hope of seeing you alive again? Would you rather I had left you there to rot?"

Her voice became pleading. "We do need your help, Doctor. No matter what these CIA fools say, if something doesn't change soon, we are going to lose this war. I tried to impress this upon you when I came to find you, but you wouldn't listen! By refusing to return with me then, you've played right into the Council's hands. Before, they lacked an effective means of controlling you; now, you belong to them."

The Doctor dropped his gaze to his hands, clutching tightly at the white bedsheet that covered his lap. He released his grip and turned them over to examine them. These were not the same hands that had piloted his TARDIS for seven hundred years, but he knew them. He felt his fingers twitch as he lifted his chin to look at her again.

"The implant – " he began.

"Would likely kill you if you removed it and they'd know the instant you tried tampering with it." She shook her head. "Believe me, I've had a lot of time to think about this in the past four weeks."

He swallowed and nodded. They hadn't left him with many viable options, had they. He closed his eyes and reached out to his temporal senses, tasting the probabilities in the web of time. His stomach lurched. The timelines over Gallifrey were twisting in an ever-tightening knot, and they were, as yet, nowhere near the front lines. Romana was right; they might easily lose this war.

Where was his own thread, he wondered, the one cut short just shy of nine centuries by his own blind stupidity? That man had been killed, but if they met again through some quirk of fate or inevitability of time travel, would he finally be able to see his own timeline? Would it matter? He knew how that story ended, after all.

A better question occurred to him. He'd run away from it all because that's what he did best, so sick of trying his hardest to make things better and having the universe take away everything and everyone he cared about, little by little. Now here was another opportunity to try again. Sure, it came with some hefty strings attached, but when was the last time that hadn't been the case somehow? Was he really so stubborn that he would be willing to sacrifice this second chance?

No.

Hadn't he once said that a man was the sum of his memories? Whether or not he was the original Doctor, he was the only one this universe had now. A sense of purpose settled over him; he could feel it sinking into his bones. Two hearts beat in his chest, and for as long as they continued to do so, he would keep trying, even if he had to fight.

The Doctor turned to face Romana. "Where do we start?"