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Running across himself was never pretty. It usually only happened when the crisis was so big it needed more than one Doctor to solve, which didn’t help his lingering frustrations with his counterparts, and then there was the strain on Time that burned somewhere in the back of his head. But even without all of reality ending, the Doctor meeting the Doctor tended to bring forth arguments and resentment and comments that he could never take back.
So the situation with Donna and the Metacrisis was generally unpleasant for the Doctor.
It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, he supposed. After only a few moments it was obvious that, while Donna had definitely gotten some of his knowledge, and maybe (please Rassilon let it not be true) some of his dimensional structure, she hadn’t really gotten his memories and personality. She wasn’t him, but the DoctorDonna predicted to them all those months ago. The Metacrisis, on the other hand…
The Doctor was doing laps around the TARDIS as they flew the Earth back home, giving people instructions and correcting course where he needed. He brushed past the Metacrisis as he did so, and caught the flicker of resentment in his eyes. His own eyes.
He’d said, at the time, when he had siphoned off the regeneration energy into his hand, that it had been because he hadn’t wanted to change. Which was true, he supposed. But it had really been because the situation was dire, and he couldn’t afford to deal with the physical and mental consequences of regeneration during the hell that was to come. But now, looking at the Metacrisis, he wondered if he’d do it again, given the chance. And with the way the Metacrisis eyed him, he knew his counterpart was thinking the same.
He was already planning on leaving the Metacrisis on the parallel world when he dropped the Tylers off. Based on the way Rose was gravitating towards the Metacrisis, she’d stay with him. He resented the Metacrisis for that, too.
They reached where the Earth was supposed to be and locked it back in its gravitational pattern. The joy of success bloomed around him, everyone clapping and laughing and hugging each other. It broke through his quiet brooding, made him smile and join in.
He turned his gaze to the rotor and slipped out of English and into Gallifreyan. “You were brilliant, you were,” he said. “Thanks.” Then, because he couldn’t help himself, he continued. “Not exactly an Earth shaking revelation, though, is it?”
His grin at his own humor didn’t surprise him. Nor did the way the TARDIS laughed in his mind and twirled her rotor around. But the appreciative bark of laughter from the Metacrisis…
The Doctor whipped around to look at him, and their eyes met. It suddenly hit the Doctor what the Metacrisis represented. He wasn’t the Last anymore. There was another. He was him, of course, but there was Donna in him, too, and experience would make the pair grow into different people soon enough.
Maybe keeping the Metacrisis around would be okay. There would be some rough spots to work out, of course, but it would be worth it, if only for someone else to understand when he spoke. If only so he could hear his language come from someone else’s mouth.
There was a gentle smile forming on the Metacrisis’s face. Of course there was. Their minds were similar enough that he was having the same thought processes as him, still. He returned the smile with one of his own.
“Everything about our TARDIS is Earth shaping,” the Metacrisis said, and all of the hope the Doctor had let himself feel came crashing down. There was utter horror written all over the Metacrisis’s face as his hand rose to his throat. They both knew he had meant shaking.
There were many differences between Human and Gallifreyan biology, but their voice boxes were mostly the same. Except for one detail. The Gallifreyan voice box had an extra muscle that allowed them to speak harmonics. It took being a tonal language to a whole new level, and was one of many reasons why the Doctor never bothered to try to teach a human anything about his language. Humans simply couldn’t speak it—they didn’t have the right parts.
And the Metacrisis was human.
The room tunneled. The humans around them (the other humans around him) were still celebrating, but to them it was just the Doctor and the Metacrisis, staring at each other, one with pain and horror, one with disappointment, resentment, and sympathy. The Doctor started running through all the words he knew that used harmonics—there were many. There was a whole tense marked only by harmonizing the second to last syllable. But something had hit the Metacrisis like a truck, something the Doctor hadn’t realized yet. He could see it written all over the other man’s face as his gaze faded from the Doctor to the middle distance around him. It hit the Doctor right as the Metacrisis turned and ran from the console room, disappearing into the depths of the TARDIS.
The Doctor’s given name used four separate harmonics.
A better man than him might follow the Metacrisis into the depths of the TARDIS, make sure he’s okay. Instead, the Doctor returned to the console and began the process of taking the TARDIS out of space and landing on the planet below. He went slowly, listening to his ship humming in his mind, not quite hearing the humans celebrating around him.
--
It was the sympathy in the Original’s gaze that had really done it. The Doctor and the Original had been having a minor battle of wills since the Original had learned about him, of who was Really The Doctor and who was the Irritating Upstart. It was standard practice when different versions of the Doctor ran into each other, and the fact that no one ever really won was more annoying than anything. But the upshot of the battle of wills was that it meant the Original had viewed him as a rival. He was The Doctor just as much as the Doctor was.
But the Doctor never had sympathy for himself. Which meant that the Original had stopped viewing him as the Doctor.
The Doctor ran through all the words he couldn’t say. There were many, way more than he’d ever really thought about before. But the obvious one hit him like a truck. His name. His own name, he couldn’t say his Gallifreyan name—
He turned and ran.
For the past few years, his entire personality had been Last of the Time Lords. He was the lone carrier of a culture and tradition soon to be lost completely to time. And then he’d heard Gallifreyan from someone else’s lips, and it had taken his heart and shaken the dust off and raised it up through the ceiling into the stars themselves. He wasn’t the Last anymore. He wasn’t alone.
Now he still wasn’t the Last, but that was because he was a failure. He couldn’t even say his own name. He was nothing and no one.
He slammed into a wall, deep enough into the TARDIS that all he could hear was the thrum of the engines. He suddenly realized that she wasn’t in his head, not the same way that she had been when he was one with the Original. She couldn’t be. He was a human/time lord metacrisis. If he’d gotten the dimensions that would let him talk to her properly his mind would shatter and burn.
He was completely alone.
The Doctor slid down the wall, staring at nothing. Wordlessly, he mouthed the syllables of his name—the Original’s name, feeling how his throat failed to react to the harmonic markers. He squeezed his eyes shut against the tears he could feel building and buried his face in his hands.
It wasn’t fair.
He’d saved the world. And the Original had been furious. He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened while he and Donna were trapped in the TARDIS, but whatever it was it had paralyzed the Original, prevented him from seeing, seeing that if he hadn’t done anything the War would have started up again, this time without the Time Lords to hold the daleks back. He’d saved the world while the Original had been utterly useless, and now he didn’t even have a name of his own. And in return, the Original would be carrying on like nothing had changed.
It wasn’t fair.
He took a deep breath, wincing when it came out with a shuddering gasp instead of being even. He shouldn’t be upset, not really. He was still the Doctor. He could still say “Doctor,” even in Gallifreyan since it didn’t have a harmonic. But it wasn’t the same, not really.
The last time he’d heard his name said by someone else had been in that awful library, and Professor River Song, Archaeologist, hadn’t had the right muscle to hit the harmonics either.
He wondered if the Original would say his name for him, just one last time, before he was left behind.
--
“Where’s your double?”
The Doctor looked up, seeing Donna glaring at him. He had just said goodbye to Sarah Jane once again, watching her run off towards her home and her son. Next stop would be for Jack and Martha, then on to Norway.
“In the TARDIS, I suppose,” he responded. His ship would have told him if the Metacrisis had slipped out somehow or was in trouble or anything. She hadn’t, so all he could assume was he was somewhere in the depths, reverberating with the shock of their discovery.
It wasn’t fair.
“I’d have thought he’d be here, seeing people off,” Donna said, eyeing him carefully.
“I’m doing that,” the Doctor said. “Don’t need both of us to say goodbye.”
“Doctor, you forget that you’re in my head. I know you. You want to be here. So why doesn’t he?”
The Doctor sighed. “A thing happened. He’s upset and wants to be left alone.”
“Does he?” He shuddered under Donna’s look. “Go to him, you prawn. Help him. The rest can wait.”
“I don’t think--”
“GO!” Donna shouted, loud enough to draw the attention of everyone else in the console room, pointing into the depths. The Doctor stood there for a moment longer before turning and leaving. As he went he heard Donna turn to the others. “Good lord, can that man successfully navigate any emotion ever?”
The Metacrisis wasn’t hard to find. Even if the TARDIS hadn’t been helping, the Doctor could hear the shuddering breath echoing through the halls as the Metacrisis cried. He looked down on the other man, curled up on the floor, back against the wall, head resting on arms wrapped around his knees. He was visibly shaking. The Doctor sat down by the wall across the hall and watched for a moment. What should he do? The Metacrisis was still similar enough to him that he could probably guess what he wanted based on his own impulses. He thought about it for a few moments, just watching the Metacrisis sob quietly into his arms.
Then he spoke aloud, saying their name in Gallifreyan, hitting the harmonics perfectly.
The Metacrisis shot up straight, staring at the Doctor through red rimmed eyes still dripping tears.
“What are you doing here?” he asked in English.
The Doctor considered the Metacrisis carefully for a moment, formulating a sentence. Then, in Gallifreyan, he said, “The last person who spoke our name said it badly. So I desired to see to it that you heard it well.”
It wasn’t the greatest sentence ever, but it had one important thing going for it. None of the words used harmonics.
The Metacrisis frowned, looking at him a moment longer before his eyes drifted down to his hands. Slowly, in halting, careful Gallifreyan, he responded. “It isn’t—really our name, is it? I’m not… you.”
“Yes and no,” the Doctor said. “You were me, and we will grow apart. But the bit where we got that name, that--” he cut himself off. That tense needed harmonics, and he didn’t want to use them. “You are named just as I am” was what he finally settled on.
“Can’t even say it,” the Metacrisis said, a shudder ripping through his body.
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Can you still think it properly?”
The Metacrisis was silent for a long moment. “Yes.”
“Then you’re fine,” the Doctor said. “’s not like we’re using it all the time these days. Besides—” the Doctor’s gaze faded to a middle distance as well, and his eyes drifted up and over to above the Metacrisis’s shoulder-- “we never really felt especially attached to it.”
That wasn’t the point, nor exactly true, and they both knew it. But after the moment passed and the Doctor stood, offering a hand to the Metacrisis, the Metacrisis took it and stood with him. He scrubbed the last of the tears off his cheeks and straightened his blue jacket.
“C’mon,” the Doctor said. “Dropping Martha and Jack off next, and you’ll want to say goodbye to them, I’m sure.”
Neither of them pointed out that “goodbye” in Gallifreyan used two harmonics.