#nonbinary doctor

Notes:

this isn’t the fic i mentioned i’d started writing, but i realised i’d never posted this here.

Title from What Does the Fox Say? by Ylvis.

I have no idea if animal shifter fics are a thing in this fandom but this idea wouldn’t leave me alone. So here, a fic.

—x—x—x—

Regeneration wasn’t the only ability that the Time Lords had. There was another, the ability to shift — to transform — into an animal form, regardless of whatever form they normally inhabited.

While this particular ability had never been banned or prohibited, it certainly had never been particularly celebrated. This secondary form was always an animal, it was never humanoid. And it could be any animal from any planet in the galaxy, regardless of if you had seen or knew what it was.

Humans didn’t have an animal shift. They, like most species considered to be ‘primitive’ by the Time Lords, were restricted to one form for their entire lives.

The ability to regenerate meant that the animal that a Time Lord could shift into changed with each incarnation. For example: where once you may have been able to shift into a bird, you now found yourself shifting into a mammal.

Which was why the Doctor stood here in the Temple-Nobles’ kitchen watching a sparrow flitter around the grass through the window, the sight echoing memories of the shift form belonging to one of their past incarnations.

Their thoughts wandered into wondering what animal form they currently had. Despite having their old face back for all of the past five days, eleven hours, and nine minutes, it was very unlikely that their corresponding shift of a 21st century Earth red fox had also come back.

…They could always just shift and see.

But Donna and her family didn’t know about their animal shift, and they were bound to wake up and come downstairs any moment now. What would they think of finding a seemingly random animal in their kitchen? Even one that was potentially alien?

They could go into the TARDIS and shift in there. Then none of them would see them. But Donna had banned them from the TARDIS for the next week, and even dead asleep upstairs she would know if they even entered the TARDIS.

“Doctor?” The redhead’s voice was startlingly loud in the quiet kitchen when it rang out behind them.

Too late.

Any thoughts of wondering what their shift was slipped from their mind as the flurry of activity that was breakfast in the Temple-Noble-Doctor household.

—x—x—x—

The Doctor shot up from the bed, their hearts beating out of their chest. Fear and panic still had its claws in their mind. Blinking unseeingly against the darkness of the room.

Their bed felt much larger than it had been when they had gone to bed hours ago.

They reached a hand up to run it through their hair, which was bound to be a rat’s nest.

Or they had tried to.

Instead they found a distinct lack of fingers. And hair.

Paw met fluff. Fur?

Ice trickled down their spine as the Doctor found the edge of the bed and made to stand up.

…Only to fall to the floor in a heap when their legs weren’t in the place that they had expected the limbs to be.

As they lay in a heap, the Doctor took stock. They had shifted in their sleep. And their shift form was fluffy. Definitely a mammal. Quadruped. A dog, or fox of some kind.

They shut their eyes, not that it made much difference in the dark room, and focused. Searching for the xxx within this form that contained their humanoid form. For the anchorpoint that they could get a grip onto to be able to shift back.

They find nothing.

Well okay that was a lie.

It was still there, just barely. And every time that they reach for it, it slips further out of their reach.

A thought struck them, they’re stuck in their shift. For an unknown amount of time.

Been a while, since that had happened.

Billions of years, really.

The Doctor ignored the memory of another redhead and a Roman and an obsession with bowties and an Earth leopard shift that the thought brought up, by getting to their feet. All four of them.

There was no way that they were going to try sleeping again. Not just because of the nightmare they had just woken up from but also because sleeping risked them getting stuck in their shift for even longer.

So after a measure of difficulty with manipulating the door handle in this form, they venture out into the house.

—x—x—x—

Donna had been having a rather nice dream when she’s suddenly awoken by a feeling.

A feeling that something is wrong.

The last time that she had been woken by this feeling, she had discovered the Doctor in the kitchen with the burnt remains of something in the bin and the toaster on fire.

Shaun was still very much asleep next to her.

Then she hears it.

A scratching.

It’s faint. Very faint.

She had to really listen to be able to hear it over the howl of the wind outside.

It sounds like claws scratching against wood.

What on Earth could be making that sound at — Donna glanced over at her bedside clock — 2:28 in the morning?

They don’t have any pets. And she had checked that all the doors were locked when she had gone to bed at ten.

Her curiosity won out and she climbed out of bed to go investigate, being careful not to wake Shaun up as she did.

Clicking open their bedroom door, Donna had been expecting to find an empty hallway and maybe the hall table on the ground. That was not what she found; instead she was greeted with a bundle of red fluff knocking against her legs.

It wasn’t fluff, it was a fox.

Why was there a fox in her house?

“How did you get inside here?” she asked.

Donna wasn’t sure if she had imagined it but the fox looked offended at her question, before it barked at her and took off.

It stopped after a few steps to turn back to look at her with a huff. Like it wanted her to follow.

Once it saw that she was indeed following, the fox continued on its way. Heading towards the Doctor’s room, the door to which was ajar.

The fox disappeared inside and Donna poked her head into the dark room. She found rumpled sheets and no Doctor. It was sitting on the bed, watching her as she crossed the room to the window.

Had they snuck off to the TARDIS to go on an adventure while everyone else was asleep?

But a check of the garden through the window disproved that thought, the TARDIS was still there, parked in her spot on the grass.

So if the TARDIS was still here and their room was empty (minus fox), then where was the Doctor?

Donna turned around, headed back out to the hallway, and downstairs. The click of nails against the wood followed her down.

“Doctor?” she called out quietly as she passed through the doorway and into the kitchen.

When she found no sign of her Doctor there, she moved onto the living room. Being careful not to wake her grandad asleep in the sun-room as she went.

The fox followed close behind her the whole time. Even as she left the house and crossed the grass to the TARDIS.

If the Doctor wasn’t in the house, then they had to be in the TARDIS. The door were unlocked when she pulled on it and the lights came on as she stepped over the threshold.

The fox even followed her inside the TARDIS. She hummed softly as Donna stepped inside, although it felt different this time…not like something was wrong, just different.

“Doctor?” she called again as she walked deeper inside.

The blindingly white console room was empty too.

She hadn’t had much time to have a look around this new TARDIS so she hoped that the rooms were in the same configuration as the last time she had ventured this far.

Each and every room she checked was empty.

Her fluffy red shadow disappeared at one point, the click-clack sound of its claws against the metal flooring vanished. She assumed that it had finally grown tired of following her around the endless hallways and wandered off.

Donna eventually found the library. But just as she was about to enter, a sound rang out startlingly loud against the quiet TARDIS. A muffled bark. So the fox hadn’t left after all.

“What do you want?” she asked, turning around.

Anything she was going to say next died on her tongue.

The fox was carrying — more like dragging, really — the Doctor’s coat. It had gone back into the house, upstairs to their room, grabbed the coat, and came back into the TARDIS with it. Why?

It dropped the coat to bark again at her, the sound wasn’t muffled this time. It nudged the garment with a paw. Then leveled her with the most unimpressed look she had ever seen on a fox (not that she had many to compare it to).

Oh.

Oh.

“Oh my god,” Donna breathed, as a realisation hit her. “You’re the Doctor, aren’t you?” she asked.

The fox yipped at her and closed the distance between them, although not before picking up their coat again. Compared to their bark, the sound was less sharp and more happy.

The TARDIS’ hum had turned warm — pleased? — she noted absently.

So she had gotten it right.

“But why are you a fox?” she questioned. “Are you cursed, or something? Did you sneak off to another planet while I was sleeping and piss someone off, and now you’re stuck like this?” the redhead rambled.

The fox — the Doctor frowned and moved forward. Until they were standing just shy of Donna’s feet. Then they reached out a paw to touch her foot, which was still bare because she hadn’t thought to put on any slippers or socks when she had gotten out of bed.

The moment that their paw made contact, Donna’s mind exploded with colour and memories that weren’t her own. Telepathy.

Memories of exchanging skin and two legs for fur and four, or even scales on a handful of notable occasions.

The Doctor was showing her that no, they weren’t cursed. And that this was something that they could do, much like how they regenerated. Only, unlike regeneration, this ‘shift’ could be done whenever they wanted.

Then the Doctor showed her images of somebody sinking into quicksand, of thick molasses, and of a bird frozen in ice.

“You’re stuck like this?” Donna asked, blinking herself back into her present in the TARDIS library.

The Doctor yipped the affirmative, keeping their paw on her foot. They showed her the image of a lady nodding. Yes.

“So how do you get un-stuck?” she asked. “Is there something that I can do to help?” she added.

A red ‘x’. No.

But then a green tick, and a question-mark. Maybe?

“Okay…” Donna trailed off as she thought. “Is there something specific I should do or—“ She cut herself off. “—Why are you stuck? Maybe if we know why you got stuck it’ll make it easier to get you unstuck,”

Donna got a barrage of images in response. Screaming. Shadowy figures that look suspiciously like Dalek or even herself once, for the briefest moment. Fear. Inky panic. A nightmare.

The Doctor had a nightmare and had woke up as a fox.

If a nightmare had been what had gotten them stuck as a fox, then maybe safety and comfort would get them unstuck?

As fantastic as the TARDIS was, Donna didn’t quite fancy having her family wake up and think that she and the Doctor had gone off galavanting somewhere. And she didn’t feel like wandering through all those hallways again to find her old room, if it even was still here. The two of them ended up returning back into the house. Off to the couch it was.

Much like when Donna had searched for them earlier, the Doctor followed her back inside.

Donna glanced at the clock on the microwave as she went…5:04 am…no point in either of them going back to bed now, they might as well stay up.

The Doctor paused when they saw Donna beckon them over after having sat down on the couch, their front paws just barely on the carpet.

“I’m assuming because it was a nightmare that got you stuck like this, that maybe feeling safe would work to get you unstuck?” she explained. “And that you don’t want to go back to bed just yet either?”

The Doctor whined and frowned again. No, they did not.

After a moment of lingering, most likely considering, they crossed the carpet and bounded up onto the couch to settle next to her.

When the Doctor next woke up hours (one hour, forty-seven minutes, and eleven seconds) later, they were confused. They had fallen asleep while stuck in a shift, that never ended well.

Wait.

The Doctor sat up. Realising as they did that they were back to their proper size. Skin and clothes back where they all should be.

They weren’t a fox anymore.

They had fallen asleep while in a stuck shift and had woken up unstuck for what had to be the first time ever.

They ran a hand through their hair and found that it was indeed a rat’s nest.

Only then did they notice the noise. Voices, the scrape of ceramic against the countertop, timelines tangling over and around each other in the corner of their eye. And the sunlight streaming in through the windows.

Morning. Breakfast time.

“Morning, brainbox,” Donna greeted, appearing in the doorway.

“Morning,” they returned. “Sorry, about…“ the Doctor trailed off.

“What? Letting me search the whole house and a good part of the TARDIS while you were behind me the whole time? Yeah, it was two am. But falling asleep on me?” the redhead questioned. “Don’t be sorry for that,” she added. “Were you ever going to tell me that you can become a fox whenever you want to?” Donna gestured at them with the serving spatula in her hand as she spoke.

“Uh…no?” they said.

“Did all of the Time Lords shift into Earth foxes?” she asked, pulling a face at the name. “I would have expected something more alien,”

“No. I am the only one whose shift ever took on that particular animal,” the Doctor explained. “And our shift changes with each regeneration, it’s supposed to, this isn’t the first time that my shift has been a red fox,” they added.

“Your old face wasn’t the only thing that came back, was it?”

“No,”

Sylvia poked her head in. “Oi, Donna, your pancake is burning,” she told her.

Donna turned on her heel and hurried back into the kitchen with a muttered “Not again”.

—x—x—x—

The Doctor chuckled as they stood up and headed to the kitchen just in time to watch the redhead save her mostly-fine pancake.

Days later the two of them, the Doctor and Donna, were sitting side-by-side out in the garden. The sun was just beginning to set, painting the sky in vibrant oranges and pinks.

It wasn’t quite the right time for tea but the Doctor had been craving the choc chip chai that they had recently discovered and Donna had joined them.

“It'd been years since I’ve shifted before that night, when you found out,” they said.

“How long? How many years?” Donna asked instead of commenting.

The alien was silent for a long moment before they said “Four and a half billion, or nearly two thousand,” They shrugged. “Depending on who you ask,”

Donna frowned. Regardless of which measure was correct, that was still such a long time.

“You hadn’t shifted at all in that time?” she asked.

“Nope,” the Doctor confirmed. “And, no, I’m not supposed to go that long without shifting,” they added, reaching for their mug.

The two lapsed into silence again, watching as the sky grew darker and darker. Neither of them said anything until the sun was nearly gone from view completely.

(You have revealed the secret Rainbow Electricity Alternate!Thirteen which tumblr has compressed to hell and has a weird halo that Procreate makes but I refuse to open my laptop for)

The Doctor was angry, more angry than they had been for as long as they could remember. Their hands balled into fists at their sides, trying to keep the feeling bottled up inside.

Then they were slamming their fists into the wall, throwing their whole body against it as they screamed at the top of their lungs. They let their rage tear them open at the seams until they shattered into pieces across the floor.

And the Doctor was left curled up against the wall, sobbing. The universe hated them, they were sure of this. When their friends fell apart, the Doctor was always there to pick up the pieces. The Doctor was always there to guide them through the pain. But now, when the Doctor was fractured into shards across the floor, no one was there to help piece them back together.