Title: Mind of A Toy
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/Ten.5
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: 50ficlets
Prompt: 3, Partner
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.

***

The Doctor stomped angrily into the Tardis, slamming the door behind him and moving quickly to the console. He pressed a few buttons, and within moments, the familiar displacement of time and space took over the ship.

He was sure that outside, the person he'd been arguing with was watching the blue box shimmer and disappear with a disapproving look on his face, probably shaking his head and muttering words that the Doctor didn't care to hear.

The Time Lord clenched his fists, muttering a few oaths himself. How dare Jack have accused him of only keeping John with him for selfish reasons? How dare he have said that the Doctor only wanted him as a reflection of his own vanity?

John was his lover, his partner. John was more a part of him than anyone else in his life had ever been or could be -- literally and figuratively.

And Jack had intimated that the only reason he was with the Doctor was because of the Time Lord's own vanity -- that he had only wanted someone around who could be a mirror for him, to remind him of who he was!

That was utterly ridiculous, and he'd told Jack so. He'd reminded Jack that he hadn't stayed, that he had wanted to turn his back and walk away from the Doctor, and that he had a right to be with someone who had made him their first choice.

Jack had retorted that John really didn't have any choice, other than the one he'd been given -- to go off to an alternate world with someone who wanted to be with him, someone who deserved him more than the man who had given him life did.

The Doctor had said nothing to that, either -- he'd just turned and stalked back into the Tardis, his hands clenched into fists to keep him from hitting something along the way, or turning around and throwing whatever he could reach at the immortal.

He didn't usually get that angry -- it was useless to do so. What would be the point? Anger only led to violence, and that was something that he abhorred and wouldn't resort to unless he thought it was absolutely necessary.

And then, he would still feel regret that he had, for however brief a time, let his anger take over and possibly make him do something he hadn't meant to do.

But this argument had reached its peak, with so much more that he wanted to say. He hadn't been able to continue; he'd been too angry, too ready to let words spill out that he knew wouldn't have been able to convince the man he was pitted against.

He knew that Jack was wrong. She hadn't wanted John because she'd loved him or wanted to be with him -- she'd only wanted John because he looked like the Doctor, because she thought that she would somehow have a part of him.

And besides -- John didn't want her. He'd made that clear to the Doctor when they'd spent that first night on the Tardis alone together, before the Time Lord had taken him away for the first time and left her to go back to the alternate universe alone.

John had made it very plain where his allegiances lay -- and that he wanted to stay where he was. The Doctor wasn't going to condemn him to a life with a spoiled child who was only using him, who would throw him away when she realized that he wasn't her ideal and she tired of him.

It didn't matter what anyone said, or what they might think of his actions -- he wasn't going to make someone whose well-being was at least partially his responsibility take on a life that was distasteful to them, even if others thought that they should.

Especially not when that person had told him that they loved him, and what they wanted most was to be with him. John knew what he wanted; he wasn't a toy, and he didn't have the mind of one.

He'd been told that before, of course -- by the same person who'd made it clear that they thought they deserved to have John. But he knew those words had come from the whims of a child, not from someone who could be trusted to be constant in their feelings.

John was his. His lover, his partner -- more than anyone else could ever possibly be. After all, wasn't this man literally a part of him? There was no one else who could be better suited to be his partner, no one else who could understand so much of who and what he was.

This man had more of a right to be by his side than anyone else did -- and he didn't care if others refused to see that fact. As long as the two of them were convinced of the rightness of their feelings for each other, nothing else really mattered.

He was still muttering in anger as the Tardis sped across galaxies, across time, taking him as far away from the object of his anger as he could get. Maybe one day he would go back when he was less consumed by his feelings -- but that wouldn't be for a long, long time.

***