Title: Acceptance
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/Ten.5
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: slash_me_twice
Prompt: 36, Progress
Author's Note: The human version of the Doctor is being referred to as John Smith in this fic, since it's the Doctor's human alias and his clone needed a name.
Author's Note: Spoilers for Journey's End, somewhat. This is an completely alternate take on the ending of Season Four.
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the Tenth Doctor, or his human clone. Please do not sue.

***

Jamie leaned back against the tree he was propped up against, looking up at the blue sky above him. The green leaves of the tree made a canopy that shielded him from the brightness of the sun, even though looking up made him squint a bit.

He was making progress in his quest to feel more human. But he was still struggling with his desire to be a complete Time Lord; maybe he always would be. There was no way that he could even think about what he had come from and not feel unworthy.

Every time he looked at the Doctor, he saw what he wanted to be. He was proud that this man was a part of him, proud that he was with the Doctor. He didn't feel that the Time Lord had taken anything away from him; rather, he was grateful to his lover for giving him life.

No, it was the cruel fates that he was angry with. The fates that decreed he had to settle for less than what he wanted to be, less than what he could remember. His memories had begun to plauge him more and more, the feeling that he was less than he should be gnawing at him.

He was trying to get past that; there was no way that he was suddenly going to wake up one morning and be a complete Time Lord. He would always have a Time Lord brain in a human body; this was the hand he'd been dealt, and he had to learn to live with it.

As the Doctor had so often pointed out, if he spent all of his time feeling sorry for himself and wishing that he was something more, then he wouldn't be able to enjoy the life he had. And there was no sense in spending time wishing for something that couldn't be.

He couldn't waste the short human life span he had wishing for more. That couldn't be, and he might as well stop dreaming about it. Besides, as wonderful as it would be for him to suddenly become a full-fledged Time Lord, he really shouldn't brood on what he was.

That would only make the Doctor feel worse, and it wasn't his lover's fault that he was in a human body. The Doctor hadn't even realized that he would create a human version of himself when he had sent that regenerative energy into his severed hand.

He had only known that he would -- hopefully -- keep himself from regenerating. He hadn't bargained on gaining a human copy of himself, with his mind and his memories. It must have been a lot for him to fathom when he realized just what had happened.

And not only that, but he had taken on such a huge responsibility when he'd taken Jamie away with him. He hadn't had to do so; he'd done it because he loved Jamie for who and what he was. So houw could being in a human body be completely bad?

Still, he had to admit that he would be much happier if he wasn't human. It wasn't just that he felt he was so much less than the man he loved; his reasons for wanting to have a longer life span had more to do with the Doctor than they did with himself.

He dreaded leaving the Doctor alone again. Just the idea of his own demise, and what the Time Lord would go through when that happened, made Jamie's single heart ache. They'd talked about it, but he still knew that he couldn't begin to imagine the pain that his lover would feel.

How could he? He would never know what it was like to experience regeneration in this body. He couldn't do that; he was human. He had the Doctor's memories, but even so, some of them were vague, only in the back of his mind, as though a veil was pulled across them.

Those memories seemed hazy and gauzy to him, as though they were part of a film he'd watched, or something that he'd merely been told about from someone else's life. Those memories didn't feel as though they were part of himself -- or even part of the Doctor.

Those memories didn't feel real. But they were; if he closed his eyes and concentrted, he could bring those memories into focus within his mind, crystal-clear as they played out on the viewscreen of his inner sight. Those things had happened to the Doctor.

But not to him. Those memories were a part of him, but they weren't his. He wasn't the Doctor; he wasn't a Time Lord. He was a human, with his own life to live, who happened to have a Time Lord brain that contained the transplanted memories of the man he loved.

Jamie closed his eyes, resting his head back against the trunk of the tree. It was strong and solid behind him, making him wish that he himself could be as strong and as immovable as this tree. Or that he could at least be better at accepting his fate.

Yes, he was making progress with that. But there was still a part of him that resented being human. He didn't want to be in this body; he didn't want to have such a limited life span, and a body that wasn't as resilient as the one he had in his memories.

But this body wasn't all bad, Jamie thought, raising his hands in front of his face. It was an exact physical copy of the Doctor's body, and it was a body that he loved. There were much worse fates than having a human version of his lover's body.

If only he wasn't human! He would be parted from the man he loved all too soon; there was no way that he could lengthen his life span to match his Time Lord's, and there was no way that he could magically become what he wanted to be.

Was he really making progress in his quest to accept what he was? Jamie sighed, shaking his head in frustration. Sometimes it felt as though he was, and sometimes it felt as though he was just as far away from acceptance as he'd ever been.

It wasn't easy to accept being human, when his memories were of being something so different. Of course, he himself had never actually been a Time Lord. He had to remind himself of that on a constant basis; it was hard to get it through his head that those memories weren't his own.

Sometimes, those memories seemed so much a part of him that he could almost feel he was the Doctor. He was a part of the other man; that was undeniable. But those memories hadn't been of his own life; technically, he hadn't lived through them.

Those memories belonged to the Doctor, not to him. They were part of someone else's life, albeit someone who he loved more than anything in the universe. He couldn't call them his own; he had no pretensions to being the person who had actually lived through those experiences.

He wanted to make himself think that he was making progress in his quest for acceptance of who and what he was, but if he was honest, that progress was very slow. He still wanted to be a Time Lord; being human was so .... so limiting.

How did humans live like this? he asked himself, placing one hand on his chest to feel his single heart beating there. How did they get by with knowing that their lives were over in the blink of an eye, that they were so fragile and restricted in so much of their lives?

He might be trapped in a human body, and he might have only one heart, Jamie told himself, trying to look on the brighter side of his life. But he had one thing that other humans didn't have -- and that he might not have had if he wasn't human.

He had the Doctor. He had the man who he loved more than life, the man who meant everything to him. He was a part of the Doctor; his home was in those dual hearts that beat within his lover's chest, the other man's love for his unchallenged and undisputed.

Nothing else mattered, really. He could be human or Time Lord, and as long as the Doctor was by his side, he would be happy. Being human was only a minor irritation in his life. One that he could live with as long as he was with the man he loved.

Jamie sighed and rested his head against the tree trunk, wondering if these thoughts meant that he was indeed making progress in his search for acceptance. He wasn't sure if they did, but at this point, he felt that he was at least a little closer to finding what he was looking for.

***