For the third time that class, the lead of her pencil snapped. Or, more accurately, she snapped the tip on purpose. Sighing, she got up from her seat and walked to the sharpener. Everyone knew she was breaking her pencil on purpose. Every time there was a math test she would finish in the first fifteen minutes, easily score a one hundred, and was left with the rest of the period to pretend she was still taking the test. The teachers wanted to move her to a one on one session with the head of the math department since she was so ahead of everyone else, but she refused. She didn't want to be acknowledged as any more of a freak than she was.

She was taking an excruciatingly long time sharpening her pencil when the door to the classroom opened. As if on cue, everyone stopped writing to look at the stranger who had walked into the room. He seemed to be in his mid to late twenties and was dressed in nice brown slacks, a button up shirt, a corduroy jacket, and a bow tie. He had a smile on his face that made him look instantly conceited and when he opened his mouth to talk, she heard his English accent, like hers. It almost made her smile. She hadn't heard a real British accent in person since she was shipped off to America after her mother had died in Britain thirteen years ago.

"Sorry to interrupt, but is there a Sarah here?" Everyone's eyes turned to look at her who had stopped sharpening her pencil.

Sarah frowned, "That's me."

"Can I talk to you for a moment? Outside?"

She looked at her teacher who shrugged, and then she walked across the room. Everyone had decided that the situation was boring and had gone back to their tests.

Sarah followed the man outside and he shut the door behind them, "We shouldn't be more than a few minutes." He called to my teacher as the door shut. Then he turned to her.

"Sarah Temple, I'm the Doctor. Nice to meet you, now run." Without further explanation he grabbed her hand and they started running.

"Let go of me!" Sarah yelled, "Where are we going?" She tried forcing his hand off her wrist, but he was too strong.

"Sorry, I'll explain everything once we get to the TARDIS!"

She frowned, "What the hell is a TARDIS?" They were running down the stairs and were approaching the quad, a square grassy area in the middle of the school.

"I'll explain when we get there." He repeated and flung the door open to outside. There in the middle of the quad was a blue police box. The Doctor let go of her hand and ran toward it, snapping his fingers until it opened. Then he disappeared inside.

"…The blue box…" She whispered.

The Doctor poked his head outside, "Yes, I know, it's a blue box, now get in here."

Sarah continued to stare at the box and then back to the Doctor, "Tell me it's not bigger on the inside than on the outside."

He frowned, "How did you know that?"

"Oh my God…" She ran past him inside and looked around in awe at the spaceship, "She wasn't crazy after all…"

"You mean your mother? Donna?" He was standing next to Sarah now, looking at her with concern.

"You're the Doctor. I mean, you really are the Doctor."

"Did Donna tell you about me?" His concern was clearly growing.

Sarah just nodded, "The last month of her life it was all she talked about. She died so quickly… Nothing was wrong for a while and then all of a sudden the doctors say she's mentally ill and they lock her up in an asylum… They didn't even let me visit her. Not even to see her body when she died."

"I'm so sorry." The Doctor said softly, "Sarah, I need you to listen to me very carefully. How did your mother die?"

Sarah shook her head, "They just told me she had a psychotic fit and she ended up killing herself."

"They lied."

"What?"

"Donna, your mum." He paused and sighed. "This is where it gets complicated. First of all, this is a time machine as well as a spaceship. It can travel anywhere in the universe at any time ever. TARDIS stands for—"

"-Time and relative dimension in space." I muttered and then frowned, "How did I know that?"

He grinned, "I'm getting to it. So, anyways, your mother used to travel with me on the TARDIS until one day, something that had never ever happened before in the history of the time lords happened. Donna received some of my time lord DNA in a two-way biological meta-crisis. She had my mind. That was never meant to happen and if I had let Donna continue living that way she would have died so much sooner. She would have never met your father and had you. So, I had to erase her mind of all memory of me. If she ever thought of me again her brain would overload and kill her. That's how your mother died."

"But I don't understand, you said you wiped her memory. How could she think of something that to her, never existed."

The Doctor's face grew solemn and he looked away from her as if he couldn't bear to see her reaction to his next words. "When Donna and your father, Shaun, had you… Donna passed on some of my DNA to you. Sometimes, you think like me, you talk like me, you even have the same knowledge as me. Which is how you knew what the TARDIS meant."

She waited for him to continue and when he didn't, Sarah frowned, "Sorry, I'm not following. What does this have to do with my mum dying?"

He looked away from her again, "The way you talk, some of the things you say or do are things I would say or do. You sparked her memory, Sarah."

Sarah slowly back away from him, her head shaking. She saw him come toward her and it felt like slow motion as her eyes blurred from tears, "I killed her." Sarah said, "I killed my mum."

The Doctor gripped her wrists, "It's not your fault. Don't blame yourself." His voice sounded far away and all of a sudden everything went black.

Sarah woke in a bed room that she had never seen before. Alarmed, she shot straight up in the bed, which was an immediate bad decision as she grew dizzy and her head pounded. As she laid back down she noticed there was a man's jacket draped over her and that was when someone walked in the room.

No, not someone.

The Doctor.

He was just in a button up, suspenders, and a bow tie; no jacket. Sarah looked down at the jacket draping over her, then back at the Doctor. Ahh.

He sat on the edge of the bed and put his hand over hers, "How do you feel?"

"Like I just found out I murdered my mum." She frowned, "Oh wait…"

"Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, please stop. If anything, I murdered your mum. It was my fault that even happened to her in the first place." Sarah searched his eyes and found that he really did believe this was all his fault. He wasn't just trying to make her feel better.

"But if it weren't for you… She wouldn't have had the best days of her life." She smiled sadly at him, and then looked away imagining everything that happened between this man and her mum, "I mean, the adventures you two must've had, traveling through all of time and space, saving planet after planet after universe…"

He squeezed her hand and she looked back at him, "The best days of her life were spent with you."

She shook her head, "Don't lie to me, Doctor. I know as well as you do that her best days were with you. The best of her is with you. You knew the real Donna Noble. No one else."

He took his hand off hers, looked away, and cleared his throat. She had the sudden feeling that she had offended him somehow and was about to apologize when he turned back to her, "Sarah, I hope this isn't too personal a question, but what happened to your father?"

Fury spread through her, the feeling she always got at the mention of her father, "Long story short, he abandoned me. Sent me off to America. I'd rather not talk about it if you don't mind." Sarah said coldly. "Now, tell me Doctor, why am I really here? You wouldn't have worked so hard to find me just to tell me I killed my own mum, yeah? So what is it?" The Doctor continued to stare at her, "Well? What is it, Doctor? Spit it out, will you?"

"Close your eyes." He mumbled.

"…What?"

"Just do it, will you?" He snapped impatiently.

Sarah rolled her eyes, "Attitude." She mumbled and then closed her eyes.

"Now, when I say the word 'Dalek' what comes to mind?"

Images flashed across her eyelids rapidly. She saw the Doctor in his tenth incarnation sending alien forms through the void. She saw the same alien forms screaming "Exterminate!" over and over. She saw the current Doctor threatening to blow up the TARDIS in a spaceship with all of the aliens—the Daleks in it. Sarah's eyes snapped open and she noticed her increased heart rate and her heavy breathing.

"Sarah, what did you see?" The Doctor said calmly. He was about three inches from her face.

"I… I saw them… The Daleks… It was like… Like I was recalling a memory… But they were your memories! How did that happen? How can I see something that happened to you when I wasn't even alive yet?" She was becoming hysterical, but she didn't really care, "Doctor, take them back." She was crying again now, "Please. Please take them back. I don't want them, I want to go back to school and pretend like none of this ever happened, just please, please don't make me see them again."

"Sarah, shh. I can't take them away, it doesn't work that way. You've had these memories your whole life, you just never had any reason to think of them."

"Why are you doing this to me?" She cried desperately.

Hurt washed over his face and she suddenly wished she could take it back, but he got up and turned his back to her as he continued to talk, "I wouldn't have told you this if I didn't have to. The Daleks are after you, Sarah, and it'll do you no good to wait for them in blissful ignorance with your foster family."

"Why are they after me? I'm just a normal eighteen year old…"

He smiled at her, "Yes, a normal eighteen year old with my mind."

She frowned, "I still don't understand."

"Close your eyes again."

"No, no Doctor please… I don't want to see them again."

The Doctor walked to her and cupped her face in his hands, "This time we'll do it together, okay?"

She took in a shaky breath, "Okay."

"On the count of three, okay?" She nodded as he stared into her eyes, "One… two… three." They both closed their eyes and Sarah saw both the Daleks and the tenth doctor… They were talking about humans… creating a new race of Daleks. …No… not just Daleks… Human Daleks. When her eyes opened again she took a step back from him.

"You were helping them… You were going to let them turn everyone into Daleks!"

He shook his head, "No, Sarah, they had already killed all the humans that were in that lab. It was either convert them or let them die."

"And you think that was okay!" She yelled, "I would rather be dead than one of them! Why would you do that? You know it was wrong, you know it."

"You don't know anything!" He shouted back.

"I know that the Doctor would protect every last human on this Earth even if it meant dying a thousand times over. And I know even when you were letting those Daleks transform the humans you knew it was wrong, because you were relieved when it didn't work out."

"You're wrong." He said fiercely.

"No." Sarah said and took a few steps toward the Doctor, "I think I'm 100% right. And that scares you."

The Doctor stared at Sarah for a few moments and then turned away, "They want to convert you. They want to try the whole half human half Dalek thing again and they want you to be their new leader. And then…" He turned back to her, "They want you to kill me."