The newly regenerated Tenth Doctor wasted no time in dashing to the console and inputting the new coordinates he hadn't gotten to before regenerating. It was a bit rude of him right out of the gate, considering Rose was fearfully clinging to a coral strut and I was still standing by the door, sniffling the last of my tears away.

"6 PM... Tuesday…" he started. I managed to get my feet to work and walked over to Rose, trying to provide some semblance of normality in her now upside down world. "October... 5006... On the way to Barcelona!" The Doctor straightened up from the console and turned to face us, grinning and looking absurdly pleased that he'd managed to remember how to input coordinates into his TARDIS. The console room hadn't even changed this time, for God's sake.

"Now then…what do I look like?" he asked. Rose opened her mouth to say something, but Ten's uncontrollable mouth beat her to it. "No, no no, no no no no no no no." He held up his hand to stop us talking, still smiling like a lunatic. "No. Don't tell me."

Rose crept out from behind the strut slowly, never taking her shocked eyes off the Doctor, and fumbled around for my hand. I gently laced my fingers through hers and squeezed, although that didn't seem to help either of us relax much.

"Let's see... two legs, two arms, two hands…"

"You can come back without those?" I said, my voice much weaker than I'd intended. The Doctor continued, completely unaware of anything or anyone else in the TARDIS.

"Slight weakness in the dorsal tubercle," he muttered to himself, sounding disappointed as he felt around his wrist for the weakness. Roses expression slowly shifted from shaken and confused to just confused as she seemed to realize this man was not a threat to us. For my part, the guilt was still practically drowning me, and I couldn't take much humor in what I'd always thought was a funny scene.

The Doctor's hands flew to his head, as he carded his fingers through his new hair. "Hair!" he cheered, delighted. "I'm not bald!" He kept running his hands through his hair gleefully, which sort of explained to me why that became a tick in this body. "Oo, big hair." His hand trailed down the sides of his head, and his eyes lit up again. "Sideburns, I've got sideburns!" Rose swallowed hard next to me, finally closing her mouth. I squeezed her hand again. "Or really bad skin.

"Little bit thinner…" The Doctor slapped his stomach a few times, and I squeaked out a laugh more from shock than anything else. At least that meant the guilt was fading. "That's weird. Give me time, I'll get used to it," the Doctor said, addressing Rose and I for the first time since he'd started talking.

The Doctor started to turn back to the console, for whatever reason, then immediately straightened back up. "I... have got... a mole," he said slowly, turning to make eye contact with Rose. I looked too, and found the fear had returned full force. The Doctor didn't seem to notice. "I can feel it. Between my shoulder blades, there's a mole." He smiled that manic grin again. "That's all right. Love the mole."

Rose was projecting so much fear, it was almost seeping past my mental defenses to affect my mood. I forced my face into a smile for the both the Doctor and Rose's sakes. One of us had to be ok right now, and it wasn't about to be either of them.

"The real question is," I managed before needing to take a deep breath. "Which of us has more freckles now?" I gestured between the Doctor and I. His smile only widened.

"Go on then, tell me," he said to Rose

"Well, it'll take awhile to count," I joked weakly.

"Who are you?" Rose asked, voice quiet and scared. The Doctor's smile vanished.

"I'm the Doctor," he said simply. Rose shook her head, unbelieving,

"No…" Rose whispered so quietly she probably didn't even hear herself. "Where is he? Where's the Doctor?" Oh, I knew that tone. That was a defensive tone. That was a 'if I'm not under attack, you're about to be' tone. "What have you done to him?" The Doctor looked just as surprised as Rose had a few moments ago.

"You saw me, I, I changed…" He sounded so… small it scared me. The Doctor was not small, and he never acted like he was. He pointed over his shoulder, to the spot where he regenerated. "Right in front of you."

"I saw him sort of explode," Rose insisted. "And then you replaced him, like a... a teleport or a transmat or a body swap or something." The Doctor expression was slowly shifting to something more heartbroken, as he was realizing it was more than shock affecting Rose. It was denial. It was the first stage of grief.

"No, Rose-" I tried. I couldn't say much before she dropped my hand and advanced on the Doctor. At arm's length, she pushed him in the chest. Anger, the second stage.

"You're not fooling me," Rose said. The Doctor rocked back on his heels, seemingly not in control of his body right now, so in disbelief was he. "I've seen all sorts of things. Nanogenes... Gelth…" Rose narrowed her eyes. "Slitheen." The Doctor raised his eyebrows." Oh, my God, are you a Slitheen?" she asked with slowly returning fear. I snapped out of my reprieve and stepped in between the Doctor and Rose Tyler, a place I would normally never go.

"I've also seen Slitheen," I reminded Rose. "He's a twig. How could he be a Slitheen?" The Doctor nodded in a 'see, there' way.

"I'm not a Slitheen," he said. Rose took a second to process that, and seemed to agree with us.

"Send him back," she ordered anyway. Her voice rose in volume with every word. "I'm warning you, send the Doctor back right now!"

"Rose, it's me," the Doctor pleaded. He was starting to look desperate. "Honestly, it's me.

Rose just kept staring, breathing hard. "I was dying. To save my own life I changed my body. Every single cell, but... it's still me." Rose didn't look anymore convinced. I turned around to the Doctor, to let him know I was on his side. "Katelyn, please…" I wasn't really sure what I could say that would convince her any more.

"Rose," I said gently. "Have I ever lied to you?" It almost hurt to ask, because I had. Well, I had if you considered a lie of omission a lie. "I promise you-" I stepped to the side and pointed. "-that is the Doctor."

Rose followed me instead of where I was pointing. "He can't be." I nodded. She turned to the Doctor. "You can't be." Like she wanted to believe it, but she just couldn't.

"It's a Time Lord thing," I explained weakly. Rose still looked unconvinced. The Doctor gave me a 'oh, very helpful' look. I took another step back in shame and sat on the railing.

The Doctor took a few steps closer to Rose, looking straight down into her eyes, probably deciding in the direct approach was the best one.

"If I'm not the Doctor, then how could I remember this?" he asked. "Very first word I ever said to you. Trapped in that cellar. Surrounded by shop window dummies... oh... " He looked away for just a moment, reminiscing, then looked back into Rose's eyes. "Such a long time ago. I took your hand-" He did now, too.

Rose glanced briefly down at their hands and then back up at his face. The tiniest spark of hope blazed to life in Rose's expression. "-I said one word," the Doctor continued. "Just one word, I said... 'Run'." The Doctor held her gaze, waiting. Rose looked back, her eyes full of tears.

"Doctor," she whispered, like even now she could hardly dare to believe it.

The Doctor grinned. "Hello," he said absurdly gently. I suddenly felt dirty watching. This was a private, pivotal moment in their relationship, and here I was, keeping myself balanced on the railing and watching it like a Rom-Com. I forced my vision down to the grating, refusing to watch anymore than I already had.

Not that it helped really. I could still hear Rose let out a tense breath and stumbles backwards on the grating. I could still picture her face as the impact of what had just happened hit her. Since glaring the grating into submission didn't help me at all, I looked up like normal and watched events play out.

The Doctor took off as soon as he was sure Rose Tyler knew he was himself, dashing around the console in that way that he did.

"And we never stopped, did we?" he asked. "All across the universe. Running, running, running…" He paused to flick a few random switches on the console. "And that one time we had to hop," the Doctor said, pointing at Rose and starting to hop. "Do you remember? Hopping for our lives." He pointed at me, still hopping in place.

"Doctor, maybe not the best time," I suggested. The manic grin faded slightly, but the Doctor did not stop hopping. He turned back to Rose.

"Yeah?" he tried. "All that hopping? Remember hopping for your life? Yeah?! Hop? With the…" When Rose still wasn't responding, the wild enthusiasm was fading from his voice. The Doctor stopped hopping. "No?"

Hopping for your life on a planet made mostly of bounce house material is not the thing one can easily forget. Obviously, we both remembered. But really, was it the regeneration energy that destroyed the Doctor's ability to read a room, or was he just really that dense this time?

The silence may have only lasted for a few seconds, but it was heavy and that made it feel like it lasted so much longer. It didn't feel much better when Rose broke it.

"Can you change back?" she asked quietly.

"Do you want me to?" the Doctor asked before Rose had even finished talking.

"Yeah," Rose answered with certainty.

"Oh." The Doctor shot me a fearful look.

"Can you?" Rose repeated. The Doctor turned back to her.

"No," the Doctor said simply. Oh, I thought. Does he think I tried to prevent his regeneration because Rose would want to leave him now? It wasn't the reason. I hadn't even really remembered she rejected him this strongly.

I'm not sure my surprised expression was the reassurance the Doctor had been seeking.

"Do you want to leave?" he asked like it hurt him to do so.

It took a second for that to sink in for Rose. "Do you want me to leave?"

"No!" the Doctor said immediately. He swallowed. " But… your choice... if you want to go home…" Rose said nothing. She looked stricken at the thought of leaving, but also afraid and confused where she stood with this new, new Doctor. I was sure, as someone who knew Rose Tyler, that given time to actually think about it, she'd have chosen to stay on the TARDIS. She'd always choose the Doctor.

She didn't get time to think. The Doctor took her short silence as rejection and turned to the console again.

"Cancel Barcelona," he decided. "Change to London" He flipped a switch, "The Powell Estate" He spun a knob. "Ah... let's say the 24th of December." The Doctor looked over a Rose, face the picture of cheerfulness. It didn't fool me and I doubt it fooled Rose. "Consider it a Christmas present."

Throughout the Doctor's ramble, Rose had been slowly stepping slowly closer to the console. She was standing exactly next to him, when the Doctor pronounced "there" and stepped back. He tucked his hands into his armpits in a very Nine-like way. Rose looked at him, shocked and slightly scared, then looked at me, then back at the console. The TARDIS shook as it changed direction.

"I'm going home?" Rose asked. Funny, how a few minutes ago, she had been pretty insistent this was home. I almost, almost, turned to make a sarcastic comment as such to Jack. I remembered he wasn't there, and promptly decided this wasn't at all funny.

I sniffled and looked down at the floor again. Rose and the Doctor each had enough to worry about without knowing I was crying again.

"Up to you," the Doctor answered. "Back to your mum. It's all waiting." She just gave Mickey a rousing speech about how she doesn't want that. Ironic that the life Rose was so happy to run away from was the very kind of life the Doctor had always secretly wanted. "Fish and chips, sausage and mash, beans on toast- no, Christmas! Turkey! Although, having met your mother-" The Doctor grimaced slightly. "-nut loaf would be more appropriate."

Rose looked down quickly, to hide a smile that could only be described as fond. The Doctor latched onto that immediately.

"Was that a smile?" he asked.

"No," Rose denied, but the smile was still there. I wiped my eyes and forced a smile myself.

"That was a smile," the Doctor said knowingly.

"A bit of a smile," I agreed. Rose didn't look up from the console.

"No, it wasn't." The smile was gone. The Doctor didn't seem to see this as a set-back.

"You smiled," he teased, drawing out the word.

"No, I didn't," Rose snapped at us. When my flinch almost knocked me off the railing, I decided to get down. A good idea on my part, considering what was about to happen.

"Oh, come on, all I did was change," the Doctor complained. "I didn't-" He gagged suddenly. The TARDIS shuddered in solidarity. Rose looked afraid again. This time, I think I did too.

"What?" we both asked.

"I said I didn't-" The Doctor was cut off with a gag again, except this time it was a full body reaction. I spared a thought to running down to my room to get the nanogenes, but I couldn't imagine they'd do much more than regeneration energy could. "Uh oh."

Rose started stepped cautiously around the console. I walked up behind the Doctor. "Are you alright?" Rose asked the now very panicked looking Doctor. He panted for a moment before breathing in deeply and breathing out excess regeneration energy. "What's that?"

"The change is going a bit wrong," the Doctor tried to explain. "I'm all-" He gagged again, this time hard enough to fall to his knees, his face contorted in pain,

"Look," Rose started, eyes desperately flicking back and forth between the Doctor and I. "Maybe we should go back. Let's go and find Captain Jack, he'd know what to do."

"Rose-" I started.

"Gah, he's busy!" the Doctor interrupted, lying. "He's got plenty to do rebuilding the Earth!" Bent over as he was, a lever on the side of the console caught his eye. "I haven't used this one in years."

"Probably a reason!" I shouted, taking faster steps toward him. He flicked it anyway, before I could stop him. The TARDIS shuddered violently. Rose got thrown into the console. The Doctor fell on his back on the ground. I'd managed to snag the console and stay upright.

I stretched over and flipped the switch back down. The TARDIS shuddered again, but I could tell she had slowed down, more from the relief now buzzing at the base of my skull than anything else. Excellent, I'd been really hoping that worked.

"What're you doing?" Rose asked, incredulous and not nearly as afraid as I was expecting.

"Putting on a bit of speed!" the Doctor said as casually as he was currently capable of being. "That's it!"

"Putting off a bit of speed!" I said in a bit of a panic. The Doctor moved so fast over the console, it was hard to even see which controls he was using. I scrambled around the console, trying to undo whatever the Doctor had done. I, however, was but a simply human woman who only knew to unturn all the knobs he turned and such. I'm not sure it really helped.

"My beautiful ship! Come on, faster there, girl!" The TARDIS shuddered, a sure sign that my counter efforts were doing exactly nill. I locked panicked eyes with Rose across the console. "Faster!" the Doctor shouted, sounding as crazed as he looked. "Wanna to break the time limit?"

"That's a thing?" I asked at the same time Rose demanded "Stop it!"

"Ah, don't be so dull," the Doctor said rudely. "Let's have a bit of fun! Let's rip through that Vortex!" In a breath between rambled sentences, the Doctor caught Rose's eye. For just that moment, he calmed down

"The regeneration's going wrong," he explained. "I can't stop myself." That was all he could get out before he grimaced in pain, dipping his head to rest on the console. "Ah, my head…"

The Doctor sprung back to standing, looking somehow more manic than he had moments ago. "Faster!" he shouted. "Let's open those engines!"

The cloister bell tolled, the TARDIS's most extreme alarm.

Fuck.

Rose looked around at the sound, and was probably not comforted at all by my expression. "What's that?"

"Alarm," I shouted, just to be heard over the bell. The Doctor popped up next to her.

"We're gonna crash land!" he declared, delighted, laughing insanely.

"Well then, do something!" Rose shouted at him, barely loud enough to be heard over the increasingly loud bell.

"Too late!" the Doctor shouted back. "Out of control!" He ran around the console, giggling, but didn't touch anything. Much as there was nothing that could be done to help, there was no more damage he could do. "Oh, I love it! Hot dawg!" The Doctor jumped up like a hyperactive toddler.

A button on the console lit up, and in my panic, I pressed it.

"You're gonna kill us!" Rose shouted. I'm not entirely sure what, precisely, that button did, but it must have been good, because the TARDIS buzzed pride in my head.

The cloisters kept ringing anyway.

"Hold on tight," the Doctor commanded, as if Rose and I were not already clinging to the console for dear life. "Here we go!" The Doctor meet Rose's eyes across the console, grinning madly, Rose looking scared. He turned to me with that grin, and I offered a nervous one in return, on instinct. "Christmas Eve!"

...

I won't lie and say the TARDIS landed elegantly outside the Tyler flat, but I will say, quite proudly, that it did not crash out of the vortex and into two buildings, thank you very much. I still wasn't sure exactly how I'd made that happen, but one should never look a gift horse in the mouth and all that.

I slammed the lever that I'd learned from observation was the handbrake down as soon as I was sure we were on solid ground. The Doctor wasted no time in running to the doors. "Here we are then, London. Earth. The Solar System. We did it!" he cheered. Then he was gone outside, the doors swinging closed behind him. Rose was still standing, stock still, clinging to one of the coral struts.

"Hey," I said quietly. I walked over slowly, like one would approach a very scared kitten. "You ok?" She let out a shaky breath and finally moved, ignoring me and running for the doors. I followed, only slightly hurt by that. It was a weird day for her; I'd let it slide.

We got outside just as Mickey was lowering a very unconscious Doctor to the ground.

"What happened? Is he all right?" Rose asked with significantly less worry than I had expected.

"I don't know, he just keeled over," Mickey explained. I pushed past them all and checked the Doctor's pulse. It was really hard to tell, but he seemed ok. Maybe? How many beats per minute was healthy for a binary vascular system? Why had I never asked that question before? "But who is he? Where's the Doctor?" Mickey demanded.

"That's him, right in front of you," Rose said numbly. "That's the Doctor."

"What do you mean, that's the Doctor?" Jackie asked. "Doctor who? And who are you?" It took me a minute to look up. She was staring at me. I pointed to myself.

"Oh, you mean me." I looked around. "Yeah, I'm Katelyn. Katelyn Laurin. I was on the TARDIS when we pulled the console open." Jackie Tyler was looking at me like I'd just sprouted wings, and only then did I remember that was months ago for her, and I had hidden in the hallways most of the time. "Anyway, we should probably get him inside."

...

After extended assurance from both Rose and, to my slight surprise, Mickey, Jackie had let me into her flat. Then we'd all had an extremely awkward debate over who should change the Doctor into pajamas. Rose and I both won, which did not make the situation any less awkward. Especially with Rose making sad eyes at him the whole time. It was so weird, and I would have dropped dead from embarrassment if Nine's choice of underwear had been anything but boxers. And that was something I'd never wanted to know about the Doctor.

"Here we go." Jackie Tyler, to the rescue. She came in and sat on the bed with Rose, passing her daughter a stethoscope. "Tina the cleaner's got this lodger, a medical student, and she was fast asleep, so I just took it." Rose was not listening to what her mother was saying. "Though I still say we should take him to hospital."

"We can't." Rose finally looked up at her mother. "They'd lock him up. They'd dissect him. One bottle of his blood could change the future of the human race." Jackie opened her mouth to keep arguing, but Rose was just not having it today. "No! Shush!"

"Besides," I said quietly while Rose listened to the Doctor's hearts. "What he's doing right now is better for him than anything any hospital could do." That seemed to placate Jackie a bit, although I have no idea why she believed me.

"Both working," Rose sighed in relief.

"What do you mean, both?" Jackie asked.

"He's got two hearts," I told her.

"Oh, don't be stupid."

"He has," Rose defended.

"Anything else he's got two of?" I tried not to gag, I swear.

"Leave him alone," Rose growled on the way out. Jackie followed her daughter with only a short backward glance at the Doctor.

I lingered in the room for a minute after the Tyler woman left. The Doctor almost looked peaceful, but there something on his face that told an onlooker he wasn't. It was like the look children wear when they're having a nightmare or sleeping off a heavy cold. I'd seen the look on my little brother often enough to recognize it.

I pulled the blankets higher, just to give my twitching hands something to do, when the Doctor took a sudden breath. I watched him breath out the excess regeneration energy with a pain in my chest.

"I wish I could help you," I whispered. I reached out to brush his hair out of his face, but snapped my hand back before I touched him. He may not be conscious to remember, but I doubt he'd appreciate the contact. "I hate that I know there's nothing I can do for you." I looked over to the room's open door, suddenly determined. I would not be useless today. "So I'll do the next best thing."

I found the Tyler women in the kitchen. "How can he go changing his face?" Jackie asked. "Is that a different face or is he a different person?" I opened my mouth to answer, but Rose beat me to it.

"How should I know?" Rose snapped. Then, she sighed. "Sorry. The thing is I thought I knew him, Mum." I wanted to hug her, but I knew she needed to get this out, and I had a feeling she'd stop if I touched her. "I thought me and him were- And then he goes and does this." Rose sniffled, wiping her eyes with her hoodie sleeve. "I keep forgetting he's not human." Unable to wait any longer, I walked forward and put a hand on Rose's back. She leaned into me, so I hugged her then.

"It's an easy mistake to make," I assured lightly, hoping to make a joke. "He looks human." Rose laughed a bit.

"This is the bit where he says we look Time Lord, yeah?" she said. I laughed back, and Rose pulled away. "How are you ok right now?"

"I'm…" I wanted to tell her. God, did I want to tell her what I was, but now was probably not the time for another big shock. "I'm just better at hiding it than you," I half-lied instead. "I've had a lot of practice." Rose very nearly laughed again. I considered that quite the victory.

"The big question-" She turned back to her mother, wiping her sleeve under her eyes. "-is where'd you get a pair of men's pyjamas from?"

"Howard's been staying over," Jackie said in a tone that told us both this conversation was not over, but she'd let it go for now. I almost winced. Mothers. I'd forgotten.

"What, Howard from the market? How long's that been going on?" Rose pulled away from me to seek comfort in her mother.

"A month or so," Jackie dismissed. "First of all, he starts delivering to the door-" I left the two woman in the kitchen to go sit in the living room. I had no desire to hear about Jackie Tyler's romantic escapades.

The Tyler's couches were surprisingly comfortable. I flipped the TV on to a news channel and smiled ever so slightly at Harriet Jones' face on the screen. I really did like her, even if she made one truly terrible decision.

"Is that Harriet Jones?" I heard Rose ask. "Why's she on the telly?"

"She's Prime Minister now," Jackie explained. "I'm eighteen quid a week better off. They're calling it Britain's Golden Age. I keep on saying my Rose has met her." Rose plopped down onto the arm of the couch next to me.

"Did more than that." The blond elbowed me, so I looked at her. "Stopped World War Three with her."

"That was the first thing with the Slitheen, yeah?" I asked, pretending I hadn't seen series 1 about seven times.

"Yeah. Harriet Jones," Rose said fondly. We both turned our attention back to the TV.

"Prime Minister, what about those calling the Guinevere One Space Probe a waste of money?" a reporter asked.

"Now, that's where you're wrong," Harriet Jones, Prime Minister, answered with conviction. "I completely disagree if you don't mind." Rose chuckled, which got a smile out of me. "The Guinevere One Space Probe represents this country's limitless ambition. British workmanship sailing up there among the stars."

"About time someone else got up there," I teased. "I was starting to think Americans would be 21st century Earth's sole ambassadors to the stars." Rose scoffed at me, even rolled her eyes, but she was smiling again, so mission fully accomplished.

...

After watching an hour or so of the Guinivere One news conference, Rose decided to go shopping with Mickey. She'd asked me along, but I didn't have money or an excuse to borrow any from anyone, so I had just stayed in the flat and told her to go have fun.

Like any mother, as I was starting to remember, it had only taken Jackie Tyler a minute of not worrying about her own child to notice that I, a child, was just about as bad off.

"How d'you take your tea?" she asked from the kitchen.

"Uh, just straight. Nothing in it, thanks." Jackie gave me a weird look when she passed me the mug, but didn't comment out loud, which was much better than the first time Rose had made me tea. She just sat next to me on the couch. We sat in silence for a minute, watching more of the news conference, before Jackie sighed dramatically to get my attention.

"It's Christmas eve," she commented.

"T'is," I agreed, taking a sip from my mug.

"You should be with your family." Well, she certainly got straight to the point. I could see where Rose got it from. I took a long sip from my mug to avoid talking. Jackie, however, said nothing more, and I knew there was no getting out of this conversation.

"I'm as close as I can get," I told her honestly, shrugging around the heartbreak. "It's fine, really."

"Come off it. I'm not an idiot," Jackie protested. "You can't be a minute older than my Rose. You're just a kid and you should be with your family."

"I'm 19, so yeah," I deflected easily. That was a trick I had picked up from the Doctor. "Well, technically Rose is actually about 13 years older than me, cause I was actually born-" Jackie stood up with a sigh.

"Alright, when you want to talk about it properly, I'll come back," she said with that voice only mother's can do that would make you feel guilty about damn near anything.

"Jackie." My voice cracked, so I took a deep breath before turning to look at Jackie. She had stopped two steps from the entrance to the kitchen and was watching with a gentle expression. Mothers. God, I really had forgotten. "Really, I don't have a family to go to. Even with a time machine, they're gone. My only friends are your daughter and, on a good day, the Doctor. I wasn't lying when I said this isthe closest I have to family."

"Oh, sweetheart-"

"I think I'll go check on the Doctor again," I whispered. Jackie, surprisingly, let me go without a fight.

He was fine, like I knew he would be, but I couldn't be in the same room as Jackie Tyler and her damn sympathy. I'd had quite enough of that from her daughter, Jack, and, on very, rare and only recent occasions, the Doctor. I just wanted to be done grieving.

When I heard the phone ring and Jackie pick it up, I decided I needed to get out of the Tyler flat in general. It wasn't cold outside, not for someone raised in the American Midwest, so I didn't even grab my coat on the way out. I wandered around until I found the staircase to the roof, walked up, and perched myself probably a little too close to the edge.

It was probably a bad idea, but I let myself think about home. It was Christmas Eve today, or maybe never, which meant round one of opening presents at my Grandma's house. It meant snacks for dinner and Cousin Missa's macaroni salad. It meant my Dad talking to my uncles about football (the American kind), and my brother trying to explain Pokemon to the older men. It meant cold toes and hot chocolate and fellowship and I didn't even realize I was crying until I went to brush my hair out of my face and felt wet cheeks.

Tomorrow, or maybe never, I would be the last one to wake up. My family would be so excited to start presents that we all nearly choked on our breakfast, but we took the time to make a mug of hot chocolate for each of us. I'd used the same mug every year for the last two years. It was the one my Aunt had bought me on what would now be my last family trip to Walt Disney World. We always emptied our stockings first, before working on the presents that were wrapped.

In those minutes or maybe hours or maybe days I spent on the rooftop of the Powell Estate, I was achingly aware of how far away from home I was. I had already given up on ever trying to get home, so it shouldn't have hurt as much as it did. I had a life here now, however the hell here had happened.

I had a life, if not a home, but that was fine, I lied to myself. I'd always had an advanced case of wanderlust. When I was little, a TARDIS would have been a dream come true. It still was, mostly, but if only I'd thought harder about how much it would hurt to not have anything familiar to hold on to or return to.

What did they think had happened to me in the old world? Was I dead? Was I just missing? I'd rather be dead than missing. At least my loved ones would know to mourn and move on. But then again, here I was, still in my body. Either way, it would completely crush my little brother. He was bad enough when I left for college. How would he-

I'd never been more glad to get a phone call in my life.

"Rose?" My voice was somehow steady. Guess I'd passed into the broken stage of grief.

"Thank God. You have to get Mum and the Doctor. You have to get out of the flat now-"

"I'm not in the flat," I whispered. This reality started filtering back into my mind.

The Christmas Invasion.

"I'm gonna get killed by a Christmas tree!"

"Oh God, I'm not in the flat!" I slammed my thumb on the hang up button and bolted off the roof. Rose, Mickey, and I got to the door at the same time. We didn't even acknowledge each other, just burst through.

"Get off the phone!" Rose shouted to her mother.

"It's only Bev," Jackie defended when Rose tore the phone from her mother's hand. "She says hello." Mickey rolled his eyes in a clear gesture of 'we don't have time for this'.

"Bev? Yeah. Look, it'll have to wait." Rose hung up and slammed the phone down onto the nearest flat surface. "Right, it's not safe. We've gotta get out. Where can we go?"

"My mate Stan, he'll put us up," Mickey answered immediately.

"That's only two streets away," Rose dismissed. "What about Mo? Where's she living now?"

"I don't know. Peak District," Jackie answered.

"Well, we'll go to cousin Mo's then," Rose decided. Jackie scoffed.

"Ah, it's Christmas Eve! We're not going anywhere! What're you babbling about?"

"Mum-" Then I saw it.

"That's a different tree," I interrupted. I should have been here. I should have warned her.

"That's a new tree," Rose agreed. "Where'd you get it?"

"I thought it was you," Jackie said to her daughter.

"How can it be me?" Rose asked, worry rising in her voice.

"Well, you went shopping. There was a ring at the door, and there it was!" Jackie defended.

"No, that wasn't me."

"Then who was it?" Jackie was starting to understand why we were all scared.

Rose pulled her mom slowly away from the tree and stepped to the front of our group. My mind was racing. Lights started turning on on the tree. "Oh, you're kidding me," Rose sighed. Sections of the tree slowly started rotating in different directions. How could I fix the fact that I hadn't fixed this? The tree advanced, the momentum of the spinning carrying it forward. It chopped through the coffee table before any of us could shake the shock enough to run.

Rose and I peeled off into the bedroom with the Doctor. Rose ran right over to him, but I had a different goal. I started digging around in the Ninth Doctor's leather jacket, because I needed to keep him asleep. Then he'd heal faster. Then he could get up there faster. Then we could save more lives. Once Jackie had run in, she and Mickey started moving a dresser in front of the door.

"Doctor, wake up!" Rose shouted.

"No, I can do this!" I shouted back, pulling what I needed from the Doctor's old leather jacket. I positioned myself on the far side of the bed. "Point and think. Point and think."

The tree burst through the door and tore up the dresser like it was nothing.

"I'm going to get killed by a Christmas tree!" Jackie whined. I took a deep breathed, aimed, and pressed the button on the sonic screwdriver. To my shock, delight, and amazement, it ground slowly to a halt.

"Ha!" I lowered the sonic, which was a bad idea, because the tree started spinning again. I lifted and pressed again. The tree stopped again.

"What are you doing!" Rose shouted.

"Well, I thought, 'hey it's spinning, which probably means they're gears in there somewhere', and I know the sonic can turn gears, so there's probably a setting that stops gears from turning. And that worked." I couldn't look away from the tree. "Slight problem: 'stop' doesn't appear to be 'off', so as soon as I lift my thumb off this screwdriver button, we are, for lack of a better word, fucked."

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Rose lean down and whisper something in the Doctor's ear. I didn't even have time to try and stop her. The Doctor shot up to a sitting position and snatched the sonic from my hand. He pointed for only a second, and the tree burst into a million pieces around the room.

"Remote control." The Doctor almost sounded impressed. Everyone in the room was staring at him in shock, except me. I just felt my heart sinking to join my stomach at the bottom of my torso. "But who's controlling it?" He practically flew out of bed, somehow snagging a robe on the way. The others followed him immediately, but it took me a minute to make my legs to work. God, no matter what I did, I couldn't get it right.

"What kind of rubbish were they?" I heard Mickey laugh when I finally joined the others. "I mean, no offence, but they're not much cop if a sonic screwdriver's going to scare them off."

"Pilot fish," the Doctor said ominously.

"What?" Rose asked.

"They were just pilot fish." The Doctor's voice caught on the last word. He collapsed back against the wall. I could only imagine the pain he was in.

"What's wrong?" Rose asked, worried. The Doctor panted, trying to think of words.

"This is why I didn't want you to wake him up," I said numbly, unable to conjure emotions anymore. The Doctor managed to lift his head enough to look at me, and I could almost convince myself I saw worry in his eyes.

"I'm still regenerating," he explained. "I'm bursting with energy." He exhaled, and breathed out more excess regeneration energy. "You see? The pilot fish could smell it a million miles away. So they eliminate the defence, that's you lot, and they carry me off. They could run their batteries on me for a couple of ye-" The Doctor cried out and pushed himself off one wall to the other. "My head! I'm having a neuron implosion. I need-"

"What do you need?" Jackie interrupted.

"I need-"

"Say it. Tell me, tell me."

"I need-"

"Painkillers?"

"I need-"

"Do you need aspirin?"

"I need-"

"Codeine? Paracetamol? Oh, I don't know, Pepto-Bismol?"

"Shut up, Jackie!" I shouted, annoyed.

Why that was what got the Doctor's attention, I will never know, but it was after I said it that the Doctor pushed himself off the wall and toward me. He clung to my arms in some attempt to keep himself upright. "You can't accelerate the regeneration."

"I know, I-" He yanked the watch he was still wearing off his wrist and pressed both it and the sonic screwdriver into my hand. "Wh-what are you-"

"Setting 14-C cuts off-" He cried out again and collapsed against the wall. "We haven't got much time," he said to the group. "If there's pilot fish, then - why's there an apple in my dressing gown?"

"Oh, that's Howard. Sorry," Jackie apologized.

"He keeps apples in his dressing gown?" The Doctor almost sounded normal.

"He gets hungry," Jackie defended.

"What, he gets hungry in his sleep?"

"Sometimes." The Doctor looked very ready to comment on this, but just shouted, face contorted in pain, and slid down the wall.

"Argh! Brain collapsing." The Doctor fumbled around, eyes closed, until he found Rose's hand. He looked at her like a man dying of thirst looked at water. "The pilot fish- The pilot fish-" He could barely talk.

"The pilot fish mean something is coming," I said. The Doctor just managed to tear his eyes away from Rose to look at me before passing out.

...

I left Rose alone to take care of the Doctor. Instead, I curled up on what was left of Tyler's couch (which was most of it by some miracle) put the watch on, and watched the hands tick away the last few seconds of Christmas Eve. Why the watch? Did he think I knew how long it would take for his body to be done healing? Because I did not. I played with the sonic in my hoodie pocket.

"Jackie, I'm using the phone line. Is that alright?" Mickey asked. Ah, the 00s. When you couldn't have Internet and phone. So glad I was a little kid for most of them.

"Yeah. Keep a count of it." Jackie came over and handed me a mug. It hurt my heart to realize it was hot chocolate, not tea. Well, at least I was feeling, I guess.

The clock on the wall chimed. "It's midnight," Jackie observed. "Christmas day." Rose walked in, twisting her hair.

"Merry Christmas," I muttered.

"Any change?" Jackie asked Rose.

"He's worse. Just one heart beating," Rose admitted, sitting on the arm of the couch next to me. "Do you still have those nanogenes?"

"In my room," I said. "They're only programmed for humans though. Well, and I guess Chula." Rose sighed, then we all fell silent, which let us focus on the report coming from the television.

"Scientists in charge of Britain's mission to Mars have re-established contact with the Guinevere One space probe. They're expecting the first transmission from the planet's surface in the next few minutes," a reporter, well, reported.

"Yes, we are. We're, we're back on schedule," the scientist, Daniel Llewellyn explained. I managed to smile a little bit.

"Have I ever told you how much I love how British people say 'schedule'," I said to Rose. She huffed out an almost laugh.

"Yeah, just about every time you hear it," she shot back. She bumped my shoulder with her hip, and for a second, everything felt normal again.

"But is it true that you completely lost contact earlier tonight?" a reporter asked. That put the frowns back on our faces.

"Yes, we had a bit of a scare," Llewellyn explained nervously. "G-Guinevere seemed to fall off the scope, but it, it was just a blip. Only disappeared for a few seconds. S-She is fine now, absolutely fine. We're getting the first pictures transmitted live any minute now. I'd better get back to it, thanks." He rushed off, clearly glad for any excuse to get off stage.

Mickey's computer dinged. "Here we go, pilot fish." Rose rushed over, but I really wasn't in the mood for shark CGI from 2006ish, so I stayed on the couch. "Scavengers, like the Doctor said. Harmless. They're tiny. But the point is, the little fish swim alongside the big fish."

"Do you mean like sharks?" Rose asked.

"Great big sharks," Mickey clarified. I looked back at the TV, but the image had changed to a stand by message. "So, what the Doctor means is, we had them, now we get that." The shark on the screen roared, actually roared, like a tiger, and ate the camera.

"Something is coming," Rose repeated. "Katelyn, how did you know?" I looked back to Rose, but there was no accusation in her eyes. Of course there wasn't. What would make her think I could possibly be what I was?

"I had a marine biology phase," I answered semi-honestly. I mean, I had, but that's not why I knew. "Mickey, how close?"

"There's no way of telling, but the pilot fish don't swim far from their daddy."

"Now, that's just not even close to a biologically accurate thing to say," I said.

"So, it's close?" Rose asked, starting to chew her thumb.

"Funny sort of rocks," Jackie commented. Rose and I swung back toward the TV to see what was certainly not the martian landscape. It was distinctly more red than that. We'd seen the martian landscape. Rose had been insistent after I'd told her humans had discovered flowing water on Mars in 2015.

"That's not rocks," we both said.

"This image is being transmitted via mission control," some newscaster explained. "Coming live from the depths of space on Christmas morning." The image finally cleared of all the static to show an red-eyed alien with a head a bit like a deformed goat's skull. It growled at the screen, and we all jumped back. Damn real life jumpscares.

"What was that?" Jackie screeched.

"The shark," I said.

...

Mickey had been hacking away for nearly an hour now. I'd given up trying to watch him. It had only given me a headache. I'd never been good with computers.

Collectively, we gone through about 15 mugs of tea, 10 checks on the Doctor's condition (six of which were Rose's), and a few sandwiches. I was trying very hard to think of a way to convince the others to let me leave. Maybe I could get to UNIT HQ and get sent up to the ship early. Maybe I could-

"Rose, Katelyn." We both shot up off the couch and ran to Mickey. "Take a look. I've got access to the military. They're tracking a spaceship. It's big, it's fast, and it's coming this way."

"Coming for what, though? The Doctor?" Rose wondered.

"I have this sinking feeling he's just an added bonus," I muttered. Mickey typed a few more times and got us a very clear image of the Sycorax. They were speaking in that spitting language of theirs. I shouldn't have been shocked that it didn't translate, but it still felt like a punch in my already twisted guts.

"Have you seen them before?" Mickey asked hopefully.

"No," Rose said quietly.

Yes, I didn't say. If I tried really hard, I might even be able to remember what they were saying right now.

I shook my head instead.

The Sycorax talked for a long time, before repeating their name a few times and cheering. I wasn't paying attention. I was trying to reach for the thread of the TARDIS consciousness in my mind. It was hard so far away, but I could just barely feel her, which gave me some hope. I just barely knew the Sycorax language, but maybe it was enough.

"I don't understand what they're saying," Rose admitted in defeat. "The TARDIS translates alien languages inside my head, all the time, wherever I am." The TARDIS was almost reaching back, but it was like something was blocking her. My hopes flew a little higher.

"So, why isn't it doing it now?" Mickey asked no one in particular.

"I don't know," Rose admitted softly. "Must be the Doctor. Like he's part of the circuit, and he's, he's broken."

"Too far away," I mumbled, accidently out loud. "I-I just need-" I ran out of the flat before anyone could stop me. I took the steps down two at a time, and tore across the cement toward the TARDIS. I crashed into the doors with my momentum, and I was pretty sure I was going to have bruises in some awkward places later, but I didn't care. I pounded my hands on the doors that wouldn't open.

"Come on. I know you don't need a key to open." The doors stubbornly remained closed, even when I backed up and tried snapping, so I decided to plead my case.

"The TARDIS translation circuit is telepathic," I said to no one, since no one had followed me. "It's not working because there's a tear in the pathway for the current. Now, I'm not a Time Lord, and I'm certainly not the Doctor." I pulled the sonic screwdriver out of my hoodie pocket, more to have something to hold than for any useful purpose. Not like I knew the 'unlock' setting, which to be fair was something I probably should have asked about a long time ago. "But I am a telepath. Powerful too, based on the sheer amount of people who have tried to take advantage of that. Just ask the Sernox. Can you use me instead?"

The TARDIS was silent. I reached for her in my head, but she stayed frustratingly out of reach, like she was backing away every time I tried to reach for her.

I sagged and rested my forehead against the doors. "Oh, come on. You're already in my head in a different way from other humans. That has to mean something." That pathetic attempt also changed nothing. She stayed silent. I punched the door in frustration, and all the fight drained out of me with that punch.

"Can't help the Doctor, can't fix the TARDIS, can't save Llewellyn." I turned my back to the doors, leaned on them, and slid down to the pavement. "I'm useless," I whispered to no one, since no one was there to care.

(A/N: And we're off! Thanks to everyone who read through all of "Of Nine Lives" and choose to continue the story. More to come soon.

Story updates every Saturday (Or very early Sunday morning). See ya next week!)