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“You ok? You’re really quiet.”
The question broke the silence that the Doctor had been sitting in quite comfortably. She looked up from the console, and deliberately molded her features into an expression of polite confusion. She held this face for a moment longer, but Yaz kept staring at her, expectantly.
“Yeah, you have been for days now.”
Ryan seemed to emerge from out of nowhere. The two humans exchanged microscopic, furtive glances. They were worried about her.
“They're right, five planets and you’ve barely said a word”
Graham stepped between the two kids, approaching the Doctor. There was less accusation in his tone, but his eyebrows quivered upward in earnest curiosity.
“I’m fine,” the Doctor insisted, launching herself from her seat and making her way to the opposite side of the console. She walked with a practiced jaunt, the sort of thing that came naturally to this body when she was in higher spirits, “Talking about five planets though, have I ever told you about the pentagonal carousel? It’s the only solar system in the universe where all the planets share one orbit path. Used to be six, but then the smallest planet–”
“Doc.” Graham sighed, his voice was heavy with reproach, “Who was he? That guy– O– or whatever you called him.”
“Nobody,” The Doctor dismissed, fiddling with a silver dial in front of her, trying to look busy.
“He said he knew you, back when you were a man.” The sentence hung in the air. Yaz and Ryan glanced at each other again, though this time it was a look of pure confusion.
The Doctor crossed her arms, “Yeah?”
“Were you a man?” Graham spelled the question out for her. “I’m not judging or nothing. Just seems like something you ought to mention to your friends.”
“Course I was a man!” The Doctor’s smile relaxed a bit; she’d found a way out of the conversation, “It’s not exactly a secret is it? It was one of the first things I told you! I remember it.”
She made her way back over to the Fam, and with a quick flick of the wrist summoned a hologram of her previous face. The image stared sternly, unblinkingly, at the three humans.
“About half an hour before we met, I looked like this.”
“Is it like how humans do it?” Ryan cut in, “Y’know where you get surgery and they cut your bits off?”
“Ryan!” Yaz scolded.
“What?! It’s an honest question!”
“Bit more alien than that.” In that moment, the Doctor decided to make a trade: exchange privacy in one subject for transparency in another. Briefly, she thought of Rose and Clara– how they had reacted to unexplained regeneration. Maybe, if the Fam knew in advance, it’d make it easier for them if things ever came to that. She really hoped it wouldn’t. But the rationalization helped her next words to leave her lips. At least, it seemed to, in the moment.
“It’s called regeneration.” The Doctor explained, “It’s this trick that Ti– I use. Sort of a way of cheating death.”
“But you change?” Yaz asks, her voice was quiet, and she was eyeing the doctor with new unease.
“Yes.”
The Doctor stared past the Fam, at the wooden TARDIS doors behind them.
“That’s the way it works,” She explained, allowing her vision to slip out of focus, “If I’m dying, my body rebuilds itself— literally tears itself apart on the molecular level and rearranges— so I can keep on living.”
“Can you control it?” Ryan asks, “Decide what you look like?”
“No,” The Doctor gives him a wry smile. She was officially ready to be done with the conversation. So she went to her tried and true escape route: playing it off as a joke. “Who has time to pick an outfit when they’re busy dying?”
“Does it hurt?”
Graham’s voice signaled to the Doctor that her plan hadn’t worked. Fed up, she cast aside niceties, and blatantly ignored his question.
“I’m starving,” She announced loudly, turning her back away from her friends and towards the monitor, “Anyone for Pizza? There's this incredible place on the Lower East Side of New New York.”
Yaz took the hint immediately. “New New York?” She asked, “What’d they need a second one for?”
Having successfully weaseled away from the prying questions, the Doctor’s mood immediately shifted. She was all smiles as she explained to Yaz that they were actually headed to the ninth New New York, and described the alien toppings one could order on their Pizza.
They landed briefly to pick up their order, before settling on a grassy cliff overlooking New (x9) York. Graham and the Doctor sat on the stoop of the TARDIS. Yaz and Ryan had sprawled themselves out further away from the TARDIS doors. The two younger travelers sat with a white cardboard box open between them. Clueless to the fact that she could still hear them, (superior Time Lord biology and all) they were talking in hushed tones about what the Doctor had just told them.
“It’s scary to think,” Yaz sighed, “That she could just change like that— everything about herself in an instant.”
“Yeah, but it’s still the Doctor.” Ryans rebuttal brought a smile to the Time Lord’s face, “Long as it’s still her under there.”
“Can I ask you something, Doc?” Graham asked between bites of Pizza. His interruption reeled the Doctor back to the present: back to her seat on the stoop of the TARDIS.
The Doctor scoffed quietly, “Yes, it hurts,” she said sullenly.
“Sorry?”
“Regeneration.” The Doctor explained, “earlier you asked if it hurt.”
“Oh,” He paused for a moment, “No, sorry, different question.”
“Oh, alright,” She relented, leaning against the blue wooden doorframe. “Go easy on me.”
“Why don’t you ever share anything with us?”
It hadn’t been what she was expecting. She’d braced herself for prying questions about her species, her home planet, or her family. Instead, Graham looked at her with an earnest, gentle curiosity. There was nothing demanding in his voice, but rather a timid tone which suggested that he wasn’t really expecting an answer. Strangely this made her more inclined to offer one.
“I dunno,” She said. She sat there quietly for another moment, then dove into uncomfortable waters.
“You’re not the first humans I’ve traveled with, ” saying it felt strangely like a confession, “In fact I don’t usually travel alone. I always promised them adventure, something simple. Don’t want to get too involved in my…” She stops herself, considering the next word carefully,”...past. I wanted to make good on that promise this time. Just have some good simple fun.”
“Sure,” Graham nodded, “but Doc, you warned us. When we first came aboard, you made sure we knew what we were getting into.”
“Offer a kid a suitcase full of sweets…”
“What?”
“Nothing,” The Doctor moved the conversation along at a brisk pace, “Point is I wanted to do it properly. No getting mixed up with old enemies, no universe-breaking, planet-exploding nonsense, just a new planet every day, a new adventure. I thought maybe for once I could—”
She cut herself off with a strangled noise.
“Could what?”
“Be a good man– woman– person. Oh you know what I mean.”
“Right,” Graham leaned back on the palms of his hands, sighing quietly as he shifted his posture, “Well, for what it’s worth, you’ve saved humanity a handful of times, stopped a hospital being destroyed, kept half a dozen people from dying, and that's just been in the time I’ve known you. That’s pretty good to me Doc.”
For a moment, the Doctor thought of Bill, screaming at the sight of her own reflection. She scrunched up her face and shoved the image away.
“It was the least I could do,”
“Nah,” Graham dismissed, “That was you being good.”
The Doctor stood up, tired of questions, it seemed her only escape would be to disappear underneath the console until the whole thing blew over.
“I try,” She said, turning inside, “‘Night Graham.”
“Night Doc.”