When the Doctor finally could pull his hands away from her face, he was very, very dizzy and even more confused, which meant he felt lucky to even know who he was or where he had parked the TARDIS.

The girl stood in front of him, looking very worried, as she well should have. "Erm, Doctor?" she asked. "Are. . . are you okay?"

"Yes, yes, I'll be fine in a moment. . . I just, I – what are you?" he asked, after pushing back his hair with both his hands.

"Um, sorry?" she replied.

"What. Are. You. It's a very simple question and I don't believe we have the sort of time for stupid answers. You aren't human, obviously, and . . . you don't know what you are," he realized slowly. The memories came rushing back, the thoughts, the dreams, the awkward thought pauses that happened occasionally to him as well.

"Odd, but your mind and the way you think and the way you process information. . . it's very much like the way a Time Lord does," he said. "But why would your mind work like a Time Lord's?"

Nel, for some odd reason, couldn't think this man was properly crazy. Strange, yes, but not crazy.

"Are you mad?" she asked tentatively. "Just to clarify, you're not insane, right?"

"What? No," he muttered as he shook his head, looking at her in a way that showed she had interrupted some very deep thought. "Not mad, just. . . confused, although I suppose I am mad, but not right now," he went on, hitting his hands on the sides of his head as he sat on a bench across the walkway.

"Sorry, but you're talking about things like, Time Lords and the way I think – what was that thing you did to me? Also, why would you lick an iguana?"

"Ha! See! You saw into my mind as well, so how can I be any more mad than you? And for your information, I was promised Jammie Dodgers and tea if I did it."

"Okay. . . so if I get you jammie dodgers and tea, will you calm down? You look a bit. . . upset. And really I'd sort of like to know how you appeared in a magic blue box and then read my mind, and why it makes a difference that my hairbow is TARDIS blue. Sound fair?"

The Doctor looked up at her and nodded, smiling. "Yes. Yes, sounds very fair, Nel Grey."

Later

"So, basically, what you're telling me is that you're an alien, right, and you're here in the blue police box called a TARDIS, time and relative dimentions in space, and basically you have no real idea why?" she asked, watching as the Doctor swirled his teacup, looking very interested in it's contents.

"Yep, that's basically it," he said. "What kind of tea is this?"

"I told you, but that's not the point. Why did you get all. . . y'know, alien-y when you touched my head? What would make you think I wasn't human?"

"Because you're not. You're obviously not, otherwise I never would have had such a strong reaction to you. You aren't human, I don't know what you are though. Which is odd because I know what everything is. But your mind, the way it's set up, the way you think. . . I would almost swear you were a time lord. . ."

"What's a Time Lord?"

"It's what I am."

"Oh! Okay. . . well. . . I'm not. I am human, I just. . . you see. . . I have. . . erm. . ."

"They told you that you have behavioral problems. . . you're shy. You're smart. You think so fast that sometimes your head hurts and you don't know why you do things, you just know that you do them and the thought is gone."

He stuffed a jammie dodger in his mouth, then pulled a silver thing out of his pocket and pointed it at her.

Nel was starting to get angry. She was human! She had always been, and that didn't change just because a man in a box had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. "Prove that I'm not human."

The Doctor pulled a little silver thing out of his pocket, and pointed the lit end at her. It made a strange buzzing noise as the Doctor waved it around her, then it made a clicky noise as he turned it to one side and seemed to read something on it. "As I suspected. Nonhuman. See?" he said, holding up briefly to her face, then pulling it back immediately.

Nel watched as he stuffed another biscuit in his mouth, then pushed his hair out of his face in an awkward two-handed motion.

"I'm pretty sure I'd know if I wasn't human."

"Not if you weren't supposed to know. . ." he said.

"What?"

He waved the silver thing around the room this time, then said, "your mum, what does she do?"

"She's a banker. . ."

"Your dad?"

"He's a neurosurgeon, he works on people's brains and such."

"So he's probably got a stethoscope?"

"There's an old one in the desk in the office. . ."

He spun 'round once and rushed off to find the office, with Nel in tow. "Don't you have a stethoscope?" she asked.

"I'm not that kind of Doctor. Well, I am. Well, I'm not, both," he babbled as he dug through the drawers until he found what he was looking for. He pointed the silver thing at it, then put the earpieces in his ears and held it against the left side of her chest.

He then moved it to the right side, and furrowed his pale eyebrows. "That's . . . odd, why isn't your other heart beating?"

"I think you should leave," she said suddenly.

This was getting a little too scary, even for Nel, and she suddenly decided that she didn't want her dad coming home and finding her with this strange man.

The Doctor paused, then set down the stethoscope with a nod. "Yes. . . of course. Sorry, I. . ."

"I'll come back to the park tomorrow," she promised, taking the Doctor's arm and leading him to the door. "Meet me at the same place?"

The Doctor nodded, but the way his eyes crinkled at the edges somehow told her he was very deep in thought. But he smiled and nodded anyway. "Don't be late."

That night, Nel tossed and turned in her bed. Her Weird Sisters t-shirt twisted itself around her middle uncomfortably, and a strange whooshing and whirring sound filled her head every time she closed her eyes.

Why was the sound of the Doctor's blue box stuck in her head?

Why wouldn't it go away?

why did it matter?

Who was he? Was she really not human? What would she do if she wasn't? Would anything change? Would everything? Who was The Doctor in the Blue Box?

But it wasn't just the box. It was the Doctor himself. His weary old green eyes that didn't quite seem. . . right. Like they didn't match. It's not his face they didn't match. It's not his personality they didn't match. They just. . . didn't match.

She sat up and nodded. Tomorrow, she'd solve the mystery of Doctor Who.

The Next Morning . . .

"So," said the Doctor, his arms crossed over his chest, standing in the doorway of the blue police box. "You want to see the universe?"

"What?" asked Nel, who had just walked up to him not even a second before, and hadn't even had a second to say "hello".

"Ran some tests last night, borrowed a few hairs, hope you don't mind," he began as he disappeared into the box. He left the door open, so Nel just followed him in – and stopped midstep.

"Oh. . . well."

"Yes, it is bigger on the inside. Now that we've got that out of the way," said the Doctor, while in his head, he went over what had done the night before, poring over every test he'd run, staring at the monitor for hours and hours, waiting for some sign that it wasn't real. But no matter how long he stared, the facts didn't change.

The reason the girl had two hearts.

It couldn't be.

Oh, but it was.

"You do in fact have two hearts, but one of them is dormant, it won't start beating until. . . well I have no idea when. Maybe if you're fatally wounded or if this one gets stopped or something. Or maybe it won't. I have no way of knowing."

A beep rang out and the Doctor said, "ah-ha!" and whirled around to leap up the stairs to a central console.

Nel turned around and tripped on the stairs, falling and landing on the side of her bottom. "What. . . what is this place?"

"TARDIS, Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. It's my spaceship," he added, looking from a screen to her with a wide smile. "It's also a time machine."

"No way!"

"Are you still on TARDIS or have you gotten to two hearts yet?"

"Still on TARDIS," she murmured as she climbed up the stairs.

It wasn't just big. It was beautiful. It was. . . gorgeous. Soft golden light shined all around her, around the edges of the room, but beaming down onto the console was clean white light. Buttons on the console glowed all sorts of colors, things spun 'round and beeped and whirred and whizzed.

It was magical.

"I don't have two hearts. I've had all sorts of scans and tests, I have one perfectly normal heart."

The Doctor sighed. He almost thought "humans," but then he remembered that she wasn't.

"What will it take to convince you?"

"Cutting me open and taking pictures of me on the operating table. Seeing it, feeling it, for myself. I may believe almost anything, after all I believe you and I believe in your box, but there is nothing remarkable about me at all."

The Doctor just grinned again. "Well. Then that's it."

"What?" she asked. "You're just. . . giving up?"

"Yes, of course," he smiled. "No point in going on about it if you don't want to believe that maybe, possibly, there is something about you that makes you just a little bit more special. Because you hate being the sort of special they have already called you. Because it hurts to be different. Even though you can't help it."

Nel stared at him. How. . . how could he possibly have. . . ?

"I. . . I should go home."

"Then go."

Nel hurried down the stairs and ran out the door, pushing it open, but she couldn't get any more than a few steps outside before there was a nagging feeling in the back of her mind that made her stop. When she turned back to see, the Doctor was standing just inside the doorway.

Why couldn't she just leave it alone?