AM I A GOOD MAN?

Chapter Thirteen

The Doctor tried to hide his discomfort while Gaz dematerialized on top of his TARDIS, putting it in storage while it continued to repair herself. Gaz's TARDIS had an interior similar to the one he had in his ninth and tenth lives, a design he hadn't had for centuries and it felt odd to be standing inside it. Even odder was the fact that he was now traveling with his former lover and clone while they prepared for takeoff. Despite the fun they had earlier, he still had some reservations about traveling with his clone and especially with Rose. Looking at her stirred up old feelings that he would rather keep buried.

He noticed Clara looking his way and forced a smile onto his face as she walked up to him.

"Hey, are you alright?" she asked.

"Fine, I'm fine, Clara," he replied, not sure that sounded convincing. "Just strange being here with my clone, traveling with him in his TARDIS."

"Not used to being in somebody else's TARDIS?" Clara teased.

The Doctor smiled at that and nodded.

"You'll adjust, big boy," Clara said with a playful poke to his side.

The Doctor watched as she walked away.

"I hope so," he muttered to himself as he leaned back against one of the coral support columns.

Clara walked over to Rose who was sitting on the jump seat, watching while her husband plotted out their destination. She liked Rose. Not only was she a friendly woman but she loved finding someone who had traveled with the Doctor before her. It was nice to be able to swap stories with someone who had been there and knew what it was like to travel with an alien. She sat down beside her and Rose gave her a warm smile while Gaz circled around his console.

"So…when did you first meet the Doctor then?" Clara asked her.

"His ninth life. I was working at Henrick's Department Store and there was some autons…living plastic beings that were posing as mannequins. They were in the basement and I was down there with them and they were about to kill me when the Doctor took my hand and told me to run. Been running ever since. You?"

"I met him during his previous life," Clara said. "I actually rang him because a lady in a shop gave me the phone number to the TARDIS and he located me because of that."

"A lady in a shop had the Doctor's phone number? Who was it? Where was it?" Rose said in amazement.

"It was a shop called Sparrow and Nightingale and her name was Sally Sparrow. Used book shop but the woman's fiancé also knew quite a bit about computers. I was in there trying to find a book for a friend and she was minding the shop and we were talking and I mentioned I was having trouble logging on to the internet and she gave me the number. Lord knows where she got it from. Maybe she traveled with the Doctor at some point," she said with a shrug. "But I rang the Doctor when I couldn't access the internet and I reminded him of someone he'd met before…twice, actually. So he came round and introduced himself. He saved me from this…internet cloud. People's souls were being uploaded into this cloud thing and I was part of it and the Doctor made them download the entire thing to save me. He then asked me to come with him and I've been with him for about a year now. And then this happened and he changed and suddenly he's not the same man I knew. It's very strange."

"I went through that as well," Rose said, nodding. "The Doctor also regenerated in front of me. Of course the git didn't explain it and I was terrified at first. Thought he'd been kidnapped or something."

"Yeah, the Doctor's not really one for explaining things," Clara said. "Apparently, you need to know everything that's going on by osmosis or something like that."

"What was he like before?" Rose said. "The previous Doctor. I don't think I ever met him. Gaz is a copy of the tenth Doctor…"

"And he's the twelfth Doctor," Clara said, gesturing to her Doctor as he leaned up against the support column. "At least…I think he is. There was another Doctor, a hidden one, but the Doctor said he didn't call himself the Doctor during that time so he doesn't count him and then the tenth Doctor regenerated but kept the same body and that counts as a life also."

"I was there for that. The time the tenth Doctor regenerated and kept the same body," Rose said. "But he said he didn't go all the way with it so I figured he stopped the process."

"My Doctor said it counted," Clara said. "But he was on his last life and I managed to ask the people of Gallifrey to help him so he could continue living and they gave him a whole new set of lives."

Rose gazed at the Doctor, thankful that his people had helped him to cheat death. The Doctor felt her gaze and turned his attention to her. Rose smiled and the Doctor smiled at her in return. Then suddenly a hologram of another man appeared in front of her and Clara. The man was dressed in a Victorian outfit with a long purple jacket and bow tie. His brown floppy hair peeked out from under a bright red fez on top of his head. The Doctor leaned up as Gaz stopped what he was doing and froze.

"This is the Doctor's eleventh life," Clara said loudly as she gestured to it. "Rose wanted to know what you looked like before you regenerated," he added as the Doctor and Gaz walked towards it.

Rose stood up and the Doctor studied her reaction while she walked around the hologram.

"Wow, you were quite young," Gaz said to the Doctor.

"Yes, I was," the Doctor replied.

"What's this on top of your head?" Rose said, pointing up.

"A fez," the Doctor and Clara said in unison.

"You wore a fez" Rose said, amused, as she turned towards the Doctor.

"Fezzes are cool," Clara said while the Doctor grinned. "As are fish custard, bow ties, thongs…"

"I did not say thongs were cool, Clara Oswald," the Doctor said while the women giggled.

"What was wrong with your hair and where are your eyebrows at?" Rose teased as she stared at Eleven's face. "And why are you dressed like Charles Dickens?"

"I liked that outfit, thank you very much," the Doctor said in exasperation while the women laughed harder.

Suddenly, the hologram changed and now the Doctor was wearing his original tweed outfit. Rose made a face.

"Okay, I never saw this outfit," Clara said, gesturing to it.

"Wish I could unsee it," Rose said. "Tweed, ugh!"

They laughed when the Doctor threw up his hands in exasperation. He noticed Gaz was trying to be polite but he was still shaking with inner laughter. Then the hologram shifted again and this time Eleven was wearing the bottom half of a Winnie the Pooh costume. His head was exposed and the fez was back on, making him look odd.

"And you actually wore this in public then?" Clara said, pointing to the Pooh costume.

"No, that's the TARDIS having a giggle at my expense," the Doctor said while the women bent over laughing.

He watched as the women roared with laughter and cracked a smile.

"And if you know what's good for you, you'll behave or I really will put this on," he said to them as he pointed to the costume.

"Oh yes, do! I dare ya!" Rose said.

"Yeah, go put it on now!" Clara said.

They laughed harder at the peeved look on the Doctor's face. The Doctor looked at Gaz and he smiled and shrugged.

"Should know better than to say something like that, mate," he said to the Doctor while the Doctor slowly shook his head in exasperation.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

After the hologram disappeared, Rose and Clara sat back down and talked softly, sharing stories while Gaz and the Doctor worked the console. As the Doctor worked, he kept noticing that Gaz was looking at him from time to time with an odd look on his face. After twenty minutes of this, the Doctor finally asked him what was wrong.

"You look familiar to me," Gaz said. "Your face, seems like I've seen it somewhere before."

"I have the face of Caecilius, that bloke from Pompeii" the Doctor said.

"YES, THAT'S IT!" Gaz yelled, causing Rose and Clara to look his way. "I knew I've seen your face somewhere before. But…why him?"

"I didn't choose this face, the…whatever it is that picks the face picked it for me," the Doctor said. "I'm guessing it's from my memories since I needed a new face for the reboot."

"So…the next body could be Davros then," Gaz said.

"If it is, shoot me," the Doctor said while Gaz sniggered.

They looked at the console when the TARDIS suddenly landed and powered down.

"Here we are, at our new destination," Gaz said with wide eyes. "Shall we go out and explore it?"

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