The Bird (Doctor Who Fanfic) Chapter 23

Chapter 23: Doppelganger

“Doc, you’re a great guy, but you’re such a slob,” I whispered to myself, rummaging through his drawer hurriedly. I wanted to get this done quickly so I could go out and prevent the two of them from strangling each other. What worried me was that the two of them would tell me how to repair the device differently. One would make it to detect Time Lords, and one would make it to detect Zygons, and I would have no idea which one to trust in repairing it.
Rummaging faster, I found something that looked like the sonic screwdriver blueprint I’d seen before. Knowing that was supposed to be a surprise, I quickly shoved it back under the papers, spare machine parts, tiny gadgets, and general debris that filled the drawer nearly to bursting. I kept digging, finally discovering some sort of device with lots of wires and tiny gadgets all over it. I sighed, hoping it was what I was looking for.
Taking the device I had found, I dashed back down the hall to stop the Doctor and his literally evil twin from sassing each other to death.

***

“Will you two stop bickering already?!” I snapped. “I can’t concentrate when you’re arguing about ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.” I glared at the two of them. I didn’t want to seem cranky, but it was difficult to repair the device, and although I could understand the mechanics better with an intelligent Time Lord mind, I didn’t have nine-hundred years of time and space and mechanics on my side. It didn’t help that the two of them, just as I had predicted, had told me two different ways to repair the device. With no other options, I was working hard to figure it out on my own, and I was not an expert.
Both Doctors muttered a little, “sorry,” before pacing around, backs to each other, as if looking at the other was worthy of a large mound of barf in the leaves. It was strange to think that only one of them genuinely meant it, and the other was merely being in character. One fancied me but would never say it, and the other was pretending to do the same. Even so, it was hard to imagine one as genuine and the other not.
Thoughts I couldn’t repress flooded into my mind, pushing away the undoable task of fixing the device. Regrets, sad memories, time spent with the Doctor, time I wished I’d made better use of, and most heartbreakingly of all, Bailey, the only friend I’d ever had, apart from the Doctor. The friend I’d known for the longest time, and done the most with. We were almost the same person. And here I was, without my best friend, and in the process of dying from frustration of not being able to identify the only other friend I’d ever had.
I put the device down and stood up, knowing I had no hope of repairing it. I was frustrated, stressed, and feeling a babysitter with two arguing Doctors pacing around me. As one Doctor strode towards me, he strayed from the circle he had been pacing to my side. I didn’t make eye contact. How could I? If I went and appreciated the beauty of his eyes, but they weren’t the eyes I loved, how could I ever let it pass?
When the other Doctor turned around, surprise showed is his expression. But he wasn’t looking at me, as he usually did when surprised, but at the Doctor who stood next to me. Looking over my shoulder, I jumped.
“What the-” I breathed, unable to accept what I saw. “But that’s…” She feigned a look of the same surprise.
And there, in the midst of this crazy mess, was the real Doctor standing in front of me. And he was facing exactly what had been eating at me only seconds ago.

***

“London, you’ve practically destroyed it. I can’t repair it now.”
“Hey,” I protested, but I didn’t have much enthusiasm any more. The Doctor didn’t know who I was, and all I wanted to do embrace him, stay with him forever. And to top it all off, memories I hadn’t pondered in years were popping back into my mind. My mother, the girls in school who had made fun of me, the teachers who thought I was stupid, the nightmare I’d had about my mother when I was ten, the one about the blackbird and the invisible voice. The screams were still haunting me. But what I kept thinking of more than any of that was the look on Bailey’s face when she learned that I was leaving. And I knew I’d never see her ever again.
I was the most dismal member of our party, completely unlike my usual self. It didn’t help that my doppelganger was playing the enthusiastic, though me better than I was.
“We’re just going to have to find some other way of identifying who’s the real one,” he said. “Because I need my London back.”
“Yippity-doo-da,” I muttered sarcastically.
“What’s your problem?” asked my copy, as if she didn’t know. “It’s not like he knows that you’re the Zygon. I’m the only one who does, and I can’t prove it.”
“What the heck do you think is my problem? You look exactly like me, I’m afraid that if I hug the guy I’ve been traveling with for a month who I thought I’d never be able to distinguish again, he’s going to shy away, thinking I’m you, and to top it all off, he has absolutely no way of telling us apart, which means he doesn’t even think I’m the real me! So if you feel like commenting on my attitude towards the universe in general, consider the fact that you just casually strolled into my life, alienating me from the only friend I have left!”
Before either of the two could respond, I was dashing off into the woods, leaving two startled faces and calls for me to come back behind me. Tears I couldn’t hold back were streaming down my face. How was it that I had survived Cybermen, had a complete genetic redo, suffered a concussion, and left my best friend for good, but never cried about it until now?
I was, lost in a forest I couldn’t navigate, afraid that I would be replaced by my doppelganger, and to top it all off, a waterfall of tears was cascading down my face. I looked around, hoping I’d be able to find my way back to the TARDIS, but nothing around me seemed in any way familiar. I wandered a little further, whispering reassuring words to myself, pretending it was the Doctor saying them to me.
Meandering aimlessly forward, I stumbled over something I had been too upset to see, finding myself slamming into something extremely hard and painful. I landed on the ground, back slamming against the forest floor. I sat up, trying to breathe after having the wind knocked out of me. Looking down at my feet, I noticed the really quite obvious root that I’d tripped on. How I’d missed it, I didn’t know, but that wasn’t what was occupying my mind the most. Looking up at what I had rammed into, I discovered much to my surprise that nothing was there.
Sticking my hand out again to explore what I had hit, I felt the invisible force against my fingertips, not only blocking my way, but seeming to want to push me backwards. I was stuck behind a force field.
Looking beyond the place where my fingertips had met the invisible wall, I could see a meadow, the trees ending along the force field. Why was the forest enclosed like that?
Brow furrowing, I realized something strange. But, no… That couldn’t be right… Weather didn’t just work like that. Out over the meadow was cloudy and gloomy, but the clouds broke above the trees. The forest seemed to be contained in a huge, glass dome, where the sun always shined and the clouds and barren landscape shied away.
I sat down at the foot of a tree, too many thoughts running through my mind for anything else to matter. I was curling in on myself, losing all the happiness I’d compiled in my life. Forgetting all the wonderful times I’d had with the Doctor. All I could remember was the look on Bailey’s face when she found out I was leaving. And the terrifying way my mother always spoke to me. And the blinding-white pain that had coursed through me as every inch my body was rewritten. Where were all the happy memories? Dancing like a fool with Bailey, baking chocolate chip cookies with the Doctor, telling stories to all the younger kids in the home for children. What had happened to all that?
I wrapped my arms around my legs, compacting myself into as little space as possible, making me feel like an even less significant part of the universe. I had convinced myself that I’d meant something to the universe with all my time spent with the Doctor, but here I was, the smallest, most lonely girl who’d ever lived, about to be replaced by a doppelganger. Any why? I didn’t know. I had felt so important and significant to the universe just an hour or so ago, because the Doctor made me feel a hundred feet tall. But I knew now that I was never going to see him again. At that very moment, he was probably leaving in the TARDIS with my doppelganger, dismissing the possibility that I was who I said I was. After all, I had been acting extremely out of character. It was a very rare occasion in which I gave up, but here I was, lost and alone in the middle of an enclosed forest, believing that I’d never travel the stars again.
“Oh Doctor,” I whispered, “what’s happening to me?”

***