The Doctor stepped into the console room and paused. He wrinkled his nose and inhaled deeply. He turned towards the kitchen door, feeling pulled. He had been in the back for maybe fifteen minutes to shower and change his suit, and he thought Katie had gone on to bed as he had ordered. After the troubling discussion with the Jahra and Krize they had met on Beriin, she needed rest. So why did he smell cooking oil?
He stepped into the kitchen. Katie was moving about the kitchen in a nervous manner, looking like she was bothered about something. She was wearing the same clothes, but had put a clean white apron on over them. A deep pan full of oil was heating on the stove and she had pulled out an odd assortment of ingredients mostly consisting of flour, sugar, and sweeter spices.
"Kathryn, what are you doing?"
"Cooking. It helps me think."
"Kathryn, you need to bathe and sleep."
"No I don't Doctor."
"Yes you do. You're—"
Katie whirled around, a wooden spoon held threateningly in her hand. Her face was pale and strained. "Don't you dare say it, Time Lord. Don't you dare."
"Kathryn, what's wrong with—"
"Don't say it Doctor. If I hear you say it one more time I swear I will scream. I shouldn't have to be repeating this every other day, but I will say it one time more and it had better make it through that old, thick skull of yours because I do not want to hear it again: I—am—not—human."
The Doctor shifted his weight backwards, slipping his hands into his trouser pockets. "Then what are you?" he asked quietly. Katie lowered the spoon and turned back to her mixing.
"I'm not human; I lost that nearly a year ago. I'm not Jahra, that's for certain." Her movements grew more furious and determined as she continued into a near rant. "Maybe I'm nothing. Maybe I don't have an identity. The things that made me didn't make me the right way so now I get stuck like this, and they don't even have the decency to leave me with a reason!"
"Stuck like what?"
Katie turned around, the bowl tucked in her arm. "I'm a child running around with enough power to potentially destroy a planet, and my only chaperone is the universe's most dangerous man." Katie kept pouring out frustrations as she plunked the dough she had made onto a sheet and started rolling it out, not seeming to notice the flicker of emotion on the Doctor's face.
"There's a set template for the other Jahra the Rahki create: grow a blank person, change the genetic makeup and DNA, give it a character, perform a body swap, let it soak up the culture, bring it back and start over. But those Jahra know what they're doing. Those Jahra know all about the universe while they're playing historical figure. Those Jahra have a recall switch. Those Jahra know exactly what they were built for!"
Katie glared at the oil pan as she tested the temperature with a thermometer. "What do I get? A free mind but no home, a self-chosen name but no family, a bunch of facts but no way to remember them, and then as an added bonus I received the uncontrollable ability to kill anyone I so much as high five!" She looked at the thermometer before pointing it at the Doctor, a hand on her hip.
"And frankly you're no help either. I figured out why I learn so fast. I'm not learning at all! I'm just remembering the junk the Rahki shoved into the back of my mind! Fine and dandy but the second I come to you or Gallifrey or anything to do with TARDISes or applied temporal physics I get squat. You think the Rahki would leave a little something about a person like you, particularly when it seems that every other Jahra knows about it, but no I have to sit and wonder."
Katie turned back to her well-rolled dough, whipped a knife from a nearby drawer, and started cutting the dough into small rectangles. "And then there's that crazy protective drive I've got. I'd throw myself in front of any bullet someone tried to write your name on, but I physically can't watch you get hurt. Someone threatens you, and I growl. They hit you and I bleeding well flip, and I can't stop myself. I've tried." Katie started dropping the dough squares into the oil. She took a deep breath to make herself relax.
"I don't know what I am Doctor, but I know it isn't human. I don't know what the 'Scorch Project' is, but I know it has something to do with me and it's big enough to kill over. I don't know what the Rahki had in mind giving me the energy absorption, but I know it's not good. I don't know why I need so badly to keep you safe, but I know that in the end it will have some horrid purpose as well. I don't know what made Gina Alexis O'Conner so special that they chose her life for me to live, but I know that I miss her life and I want it back. I don't know why I got to live on earth for fifteen years before being thrust into my current existence, but I know that at some point it's going to turn on me, and I don't know why I don't care."
Katie fished the squares out of the oil and set them on a paper towel before putting a few more raw squares in the oil. The Doctor walked over and leaned backwards on the counter. Katie kept watching the squares as they inflated. The Doctor knew perfectly well what they were but still asked.
"What are you making?"
"Cinnamon Beignets."
"What's the occasion?"
Katie's smile was bitter sweet, and a little self-depreciating. "My—Gina's dad's birthday." She looked up at the Doctor for a moment. "You know how something can become so much of a habit that you can't do anything else? Like when you have to get up at five every morning for a year, and then the next year you try to sleep until six you can't because your body is so used to getting up at five? It's like that. Ever since I was six, I got up early on his birthday to fix him breakfast before he went to work."
"Beignets at six?"
Katie gave him a nudge of friendly reproof. "No. It was pancakes that year. The kitchen was a mess, but the pancakes were perfect. I'm not just repeating what my—her dad said either, those were the perfect pancakes." She fished out the beignets and put some more in the oil. She blinked a few times and swallowed, staring into the oil like it was a magic mirror. "He insisted that there was too much for him to eat by himself, so I sat with him. Every year after that I would get up and make enough for both of us and we'd just sit and eat breakfast together. Beignets didn't become part of the menu until I turned ten, but after I found out just how much he liked them, I was sure to make them every year."
Katie fell silent again, pulling out the current batch and putting in the last few squares of raw dough. The Doctor looked away from her, thinking. He didn't really know much about Katie's life before TARDIS. He hardly ever asked people about what their home life had been. It was too normal, too boring to bother with. Besides, he knew that his friends were running with him to get a break from the mundane routine of Earth, or a parallel universe, or whatever other place they had come from. Then again, they had always come by choice. They had been early twenties, late teens at least, ages where running away from home was standard and seeking out their own life was expected. Though he had technically invited Katie, it wasn't as though she really had a choice in the matter. A fifteen year old forcefully removed—no, not removed, ripped from all she had known into a new time, place, and body? Of course she had said yes. It wasn't as though she had any other place to go. Consensual kidnapping is still kidnapping.
The Doctor wondered what would have happened if she'd had the choice to return home. Would she have refused to travel? Asked for a five year rain check to grow up? Said goodbye to her family and left them with a phone number before taking off, promising to come back for holidays?
Maybe he was just as bad as the Rahki, forcing a life on Katie that she had never asked for, then expecting her to just get used to it without so much as a 'how are you taking it?' or 'are you really okay?'
"Here," Katie said, breaking the silence. He turned to see her holding up the plate with the beignets, lightly dusted with powdered sugar. "Tell me how they turned out."
The Doctor started to protest but Katie just rolled her eyes. "I know you don't eat breakfast fly-boy, but what else am I supposed to do with them? Besides, you can just think of it as a midnight snack or something."
The Doctor hesitated another moment before taking one. It was still warm to the touch as he bit into it. For a moment he couldn't speak as he slowly chewed. "Wow. Where did you learn to cook like this?" he said as he took another bite. "Are you sure you lived in America?"
Katie smiled. "Very," she said, purposefully thickening her Texan accent. She set the plate back down on the counter and took one for herself. The Doctor expected her to be wearing a smug smile or perhaps crying, but she had a set face, obviously not really tasting the French doughnut.
"What was he like? Your dad?"
Katie shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. He was a dad. Um, he was kind of on the short side, only a couple inches over me, so maybe… 5' 7"? 5' 8"? A little on the round side I guess. Black hair turning salt-pepper, blue eyes, glasses. Square shoulders, hairy arms, beard."
"Alright," the Doctor said, nodding. "That's fine if I want to pick him up from the airport, but what was he like?"
Katie's stare and voice turned distant as she remembered. "You know that saying, 'Anyone can be a father but it takes someone special to be a Dad?' He was like that. He was smart, oh was he smart. He was a Laboratory Technician at the local hospital, and he should have been in charge of it. He practically was anyway. He was very good at math and science and such. Sometimes, when I would be working on math homework he'd come over and look at the problem, and we'd get into a race to see who would finish first. Didn't count if you were wrong though. He was funny and a good cook. He had a bit of a temper. He never laid a hand on me, but if he got angry at me for something it was like the sky fell in. But when he was pleased—which was most of the time—the whole world was right. He never really said it, but I could tell that he was very proud of me." Katie blinked and smiled shakily, glancing up at the Doctor. "He was my dad."
"It sounds as though you were very close."
"They are."
"Kathryn—"
"Don't say it."
"Even if you aren't human, the memories are still yours. You were the one who made them after all."
"While I was living another person's life." Katie unconsciously flattened the beignet in between her fingers. "I'm not a human. I never was. I don't have a species, and the races that know about me either want me dead or they want me back, neither of which is comforting. I have no family. I have to remember that, otherwise I'll raise hell trying to find a way back to the one I thought was mine." She took a deep breath, and her next words were so quiet the Doctor wondered if he was supposed to hear them, or even if she knew she had said them out loud.
"I just want my life back."
Katie popped the last part of the squished beignet into her mouth and dusted her hands off, her whole demeanor forcefully changing. "Now, I need a shower and a change of clothes. Your job is to pick another planet for today."
"Not until you've slept," the Doctor said, picking up another beignet. "You're only fifteen, you need sleep."
Katie turned, walking backwards from the kitchen. "I suck energy right out of the air Doctor. Who needs sleep?"
You do, if only to give the memories a chance to live again in your dreams, the Doctor thought as he watched her leave. That's the only place you can see them anymore. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
*Constructive critisisim welcome, praise happily accepted, flames not wanted*
