The Tardis stands in my living room as though it had always been there. I'm so surprised that I start coughing. The door creaks open and a there stands a man in a suit, a tuxedo actually, a top hat, and a bow tie. He strides across the room and shakes my hand.
"Hello there, wonderful to finally meet you," he says. I'm pretty sure my mouth opens and shuts a few times. "You are the one who keeps sending me letters, right?" he says.
"How do you…, what makes you think that I," I'm blushing now, "I've never told anyone about that. They were sort of a way to deal with my so-called insanity. Although now it seems that the whispers were true."
"The diaries get published after your death. Now it's my turn to ask you a question," he crouches down a bit to look me in the eyes, "How did you know my name?"
I try to avoid the question.
"The doctor?" I say.
"No, you know exactly what name I mean," he says.
"How about some tea," I say, my voice shaking.
"Aha, yes. And maybe something to eat?" he says, following me into the kitchen. While the kettle boils and I make him tea he tells me all sorts of things about my parents and my impact on the world. Things that should be spoilers, excepting the fact that… Well, you'll find out soon enough. We take the tea back into the living room, along with a few cookies that I'd managed to find.
"Doctor, why find me now, of all times," I ask him, "We both know full well what happens next week."
He looks down at my swollen belly, the strangest expression on his face.
"Well I was just..," he eats a cookie.
"You were just," I prod.
"This is something I should not ever do, understand? What I am doing now."
"What, telling spoilers?"
"No. Taking you. Away."
"From what, myself? The greatest danger to me right now is inside of me."
"We haven't met."
"Of course not."
"Well?"
"Well what?"
"How do you know my name?"
"Don't change the subject!"
"Actually, you changed it first. I asked my question before you asked yours! Also, where exactly did you learn all of those things about me?"
"The pictures."
"Pictures?
"On the phone. It's been passed down from a long time ago, and through a very long line of Tylers," I shrug.
"Tylers?" he says, choking on a bit of cookie.
"Yes, what about it?"
"Nothing. I just… knew a Tyler once."
"Okay… Well anyway, the phone started beeping one day and ever since then I've been getting photos of space at random, all with words on them."
"Words saying?"
"Write it to the doctor."
"And?"
"That's the only thing it says. The rest comes from here," I say, patting my belly.
"It comes from your baby?"
I look off into the distance.
"Baby," I mutter, "I guess I just… Ever since I found out what was going to happen in the end I stopped thinking of her as a baby."
"And how did you know?" he asks, "What makes you so sure?"
"She whispers your name to the beats of the drum," I chant, feeling mildly dreamy, as though I'm not the one speaking, "the future, the past. Da da da dum, da da da dum, da da da dum. Always four steady beats, doctor."
He looks stricken.
"She's one of you, doctor. Rose Tyler's great great great granddaughter. The genes built up. The Time Lord pieces snowballing into her, my daughter," I release a humorless laugh, "the bane of my existence."
"May I," he gestures to my belly. I pull up my shirt a bit and he listens, an ear pressed against my skin. He pales and I know he hears it. The double heartbeat of a Time Lord.
"Impossible," he mutters.
"I thought so too. How could I be raising a purebred Time Lord if I'm not one myself?" I shake my head, "Your species always paves a way for itself."
"I will save you," he whispers to the unborn little girl, "and you too, I swear."
"She isn't your grandchild; she's the other one's, the human one's, though that makes no sense either."
He purses his lips when I say this.
"I don't really care about him anymore. We don't even look the same now. Well maybe we do, but…"
He's right. He's regenerated. The baby had been telling me about a different person, the one that Rose remembered. This doctor looks different, with longish brown hair and blue eyes. He's wearing a black tux. I ask him why.
"I just came from a party," he says.
I smile.
"Well," I say, struggling to my feet, "let's get this baby safe."
He stands too.
"Yes. I'm going to take you to the best hospital I know of, one that specializes in childbirth, especially interspecial. I saw a woman give birth to a judoon half her size and walk away like nothing happened," he says, almost bouncing into the Tardis and starting it up. I stand in the doorway. I test the fact that the machine is bigger on the inside. With one hand wrapped around the outside, I shove my other hand in through where there should be a wall, and my own other hand. He smiles at me like a playful puppy and pulls one more switch, snapping his fingers to close the door as I enter the rest of the way.
"Welcome to my humble abode! There's a bathroom that way, but really don't get lost. Took a week to find the last one," he says. I look around in wonder. A huge, roundish control panel adorns the center and there are other, strange contraptions here and there. I hardly remember this Tardis. It has changed so much. He hangs his tuxedo jacket on a switch of his control panel. I lean against a pole that seems stable. He looks at me worriedly.
"Are you going to be all right in here?" he asks me, walking around the control panel to steady me with one arm.
"I'll be fine. Maybe somewhere to sit down?" He points down a staircase and to my surprise there's a stone bench leaning haphazardly against a pillar. I right it and sit down, leaning back on the pillar and closing my heavy eyelids. I wake up and the noise has quieted. There's a face in my field of vision and I smile sleepily.
"Hello there," I yawn.
"Hi," he replies, helping me up. We go up the stairs and out the door into a very white, starchy environment. A woman with feathers instead of hair comes through a doorway and greets us, looking down at my belly.
"Greetings travelers. It seems you are in need of assistance. Your species does not match with your offspring," she says. She seems almost to be reading me.
"That it does not," another woman says, this one looking almost human except for the pure white eyes with a tiny red dot in the center. "In fact," the first one says, "The infant does not seem to be of your kind at all."
I shake my head. "She isn't," I state simply. The women take me by the arms and lead me away from the doctor.
"I'm sorry Lila," he says, "No men in the birthing rooms. I'm right here all the time, I swear!"
A white door shuts between us and I'm laid on a white levitating bed that the women lead away.
Then I'm waking up, feeling strange and fuzzy.
"How is our newest mother feeling?" the woman with feathers asks me. I groan a bit and try to sit up. The woman presses a button on the side of the bed and it bends into a chair. I'm in a room with a single window overlooking a pink and red city. It gleams in the starlight and I observe the insect-like habitations. Everything seems round and warm except for the hospital. I can see some rooms from this floor of the building. The entire building looks like a child took a pile of white blocks and stacked them, the whole thing crooked and disorderly.
"Our beautiful city," she says.
"The hospital looks like a pile of sugar cubes," I say.
"Some people call it that, the sugar building. Mostly it is called by its name, the Harmony building. The most peaceful building in the city. No one can just visit here, though. They are stuck in the bustle of the city," she says serenely, "It is nice though, the busyness. I almost wish I could go back home."
"What?" I ask her.
"Nothing," she says, standing and straightening her skirt.
"Wait," I say, grabbing her sleeve as she walks past, "where's my baby?"
"She is in the custody of the man who brought you here until your strength returns. Is he her father?" she says.
"Might as well be," I reply. She walks off and the bed eventually lays itself back down and I sleep once more. The woman wakes me up and tells me that I am able to remove myself from the cot and bathe if I would like. I decide to, but halfway through my shower I hear a knock on the door and a voice telling me that I am to pick up anything that is mine and follow her as soon as possible. I'm still wet when she leads me down the hall and into an elevator. The Doctor is waiting outside, and he's holding a bundle.
"Aha, there she is, your mother," the doctor says to the baby. He gently hands her to me and I look down at her. Beautiful face, tiny ears and nose, a bit of peach colored fuzz on the top of her head. She's perfect, but she doesn't look as young as she should.
"My baby," I say. I hold her up to my ear and listen to the double hearts beating steadily.
"See that?" the doctor says, "Neither you nor the baby are dead and it's been three weeks since your expiration date." I'm surprised.
"How long was I asleep?"
"At least a month," he says. I'm silent for a while.
"What did you do that whole time?"
"He paced the first half," the woman behind me says. I startle, having forgotten that she was there. "Otherwise he's been caring for the infant," she says.
He looks sheepish. "I'm not all that good at waiting. Time travel and all," he says, "speaking of, it's time for us to go. There's a present for you on the desk," he says to the lady with feathers. Her face lights up and she nearly sprints to the check in-desk. I see her take a backpack from the woman there and rush out a nearby set of doors. "Around here," the doctor says once we're inside the Tardis, "when you get a job it's a commitment, a trap, until you reach a certain financial goal. Sometimes people create really high goals when applying for the job in the hope of getting better wages but they usually just stay longer."
"You set her free?"
"I did indeed," he says, leading me down several passages into a room that looks like a nursery.
"It's new," the doctor says, "I did it while I was waiting."
I put the sleeping baby in the crib and sit in a chair, falling asleep quickly. When I wake up the doctor is sitting there staring at me, but he pretends that he wasn't and turns to the baby instead. I stand, but I'm dizzy and sit again. Now the doctor looks worried.
"Are you feeling all right?" he asks me.
"My head," I say. It's throbbing, and I can hear the drumbeats that I had always thought were from the baby's hearts.
"I'll get you a drink," he says, and he clumsily scrambles out the door. I wonder if his main concern is for me or the baby who relies on me. I pick up the scrawny infant and feed her, feeling very motherly. The doctor runs back in and hastily turns around.
"So sorry," he says. I just laugh. The baby finishes and starts to cry. I hold her up and look into her face. Her eyes are blue like most babies', and her peachy hair is really no more than a downy tuft.
"Look at that, she's ginger," he says, sounding jealous.
"She's beautiful," I smile. Her legs kick weakly and I rewrap her in her blanket and give her to the doctor.
"I hope you don't mind caring for her a little bit longer, I need a few minutes to myself," I say.
"Of course I don't mind. I've been doing it for this long, right?" he grins.
I go into a room that he points out as mine and change into jeans and a hoodie that I find in a closet. I wash my face in the bathroom and take off my socks and shoes and soak my feet in warm water. My back still aches from carrying a baby on the front half of my body for several months, so I stretch a bit, then find some new shoes and go back into the room that the doctor was in with the baby.
He's looking at her with a sad expression, and I watch him unnoticed for a few seconds. Then I get a sudden onset of lightheadedness and fall to my knees with a thump. He looks up and rushes to my side, setting my baby in the crib on the way past it. I gasp as pain enters my head and the doctor lifts up my chin to look into my eyes. He yelps and jumps back, covering his mouth and nose.
"No," he says, all muffled by his hand. He goes and looks down at the baby.
"No no no," he says. I can see the fear in his eyes.
"What is it?" I ask him.
"Nothi- well…some…something is wrong Lila, and um...," he stutters, still covering his face. He runs past me through the door and comes back a few seconds later with a gas mask on.
"You may have something dangerous. To us, me and the baby. And you too somehow it seems," he says, "You shouldn't be able to catch it, but you have. And the baby. Maybe me. Look at my eyes, what do you see?" I look closely. They don't look healthy.
"They look red and swollen," I say.
"Damn!" he yells suddenly.
"Is there no cure?" I ask.
"There is a cure, but it's highly unpleasant. Painful, actually. Excruciating," he says, taking off the mask, now that it's obviously useless.
"Better that nothing at all," I say standing slowly while gripping the edge of the door.
"That's kind of a problem. For you this is entirely new, maybe a different strain. You may not have any cure at all. Same with the baby, who we still don't know much about genetically. The only person that the cure is guaranteed to work on is me," he explains. The baby whimpers and I take slow uneasy steps towards her. Her eyes look the same as the doctor's, and I bet mine look that way too.
"If it doesn't work you'll die," he tells me. I look at him in shock.
"The cure will kill you if the illness doesn't first," he says, "in fact, we shouldn't be wasting any time; I have no idea how long you've had it."
He walks down the hallway with me and the baby behind him. Suddenly he trips and falls over.
"Whoops, that wasn't supposed to happen," he says, struggling to his feet and holding on to the rail to get the rest of the way to a room with a large cube in the middle.
"There's your cure," he says.
I look in through the hole in one side of the cube and see that the inside is lined with glinting black needles. A metal sheet with holes in it to accommodate the needles comes out of a slit in the side.
"I'm so very very sorry, but you're going to have to go first. And you will be feeling all of it. Any anesthesia could dullen the cure, and I need it to be its strongest for you because I'm not sure how it will work," he says, gently removing the child from my tightening grip. I back away from the machine.
"No, Doctor, please," I screech, "Needles, needles, no, Doctor."
I back away almost to the door and then I trip over my own feet and hit my head hard on the floor. I black out for a second but that's long enough for the Doctor to take me to the machine and strap me down to the metal bed. I pull at the restraints and he puts a mask over my eyes.
"NO. NO, PLEASE," I start to screech. I hear a beeping and the machine starts to move.
Then I'm screaming and there's red hot pain everywhere with no escape. All there's ever been is pain, and I can't remember anything else. Eventually, as it does for all things, my body tunes out the awful, furious agony and I'm left only whimpering. Then I sense light and movement and I'm on the floor with my mask off.
My sensitive body knows nothing but the ache of the hard floor against my skin. Then I hear the terrifying sound of my baby screaming.
My baby.
No.
My dear baby.
Where?
I stand against the protest of every piece of my body and try to find my infant. I only hear the sound of her crying as I reach back into the awful machine and try and pull her out.
"No!" the Doctor yells, weakly reaching out to stop me, "let it finish. Lila, you need to let the machine finish. She'll bleed out if you don't leave her in."
I don't really process what he's said, but his warning isn't needed. My body pulls itself back from the machine of its own accord and my arms stream blood from elbows to fingertips.
"Oh dear," he says, looking around the room for something to wrap my arms in. I stare at my life draining onto the floor. My baby screams in the background. The doctor struggles out the door just as I fall to the ground.
I see his feet trip back in and then his knees are in front of my face. I feel one stinging arm raise up and then there's a tightness as it is wrapped. The same happens to the other. I'm woozy and hardly compute this happening. Then there's weight on one arm.
"Hold the baby. Do you hear me?" the Doctor says, "Lila, hold the baby."
I nod.
A few seconds later I hear the screams of the Doctor. It doesn't seem to last very long, but I know that it was probably as long as mine. Then there's a thump as he lands on the ground next to me and that is when it feels safe to fall unconscious.
I'm attached to an IV of someone else's blood when I wake up, and I'm tempted to remove the needle from under my skin. The Doctor's face moves into my field of vision.
"I didn't think you could actually be a doctor," I say.
"I'm not the one who saved you, she is," the doctor says, pointing to someone who's just entered the room. The woman with feathers stands in the doorway, holding my baby.
"When you didn't wake up for a few days I knew we needed help so I came back to this planet and looked for the woman we set free," the Doctor says.
"I am grateful for your donation towards my retirement," the woman says, handing my infant to me.
"Are we cured?" I ask the Doctor.
"It seems so, at this point. Unfortunately we have to do it again even if we are cured," he says. I can feel my face blanche and the beeping sound of my heartbeats on the monitor get faster. Suddenly I realize the sound and I stare at the doctor.
"When were you going to tell me?" he asks me.
"I wasn't planning on telling you at all. The fact that you thought I was actually going to die that week, well.., my plan seemed almost foolproof," I start to explain, "I would raise the baby until it was weaned and then disappear, maybe a feat not as easy as it sounds." The Doctor's face is a stone.
"The last of our kind and you were planning on leaving me and the baby?" he says coldly.
"Well..," I say, my excuse tapering off. I try to change the subject, turning to the woman with feathers.
"I never got your name," I tell her.
"Milani," she says, obviously not liking being brought into the middle of our serious conversation.
"Don't do that," the Doctor shouts, "don't turn away from me. We have the chance to restart our race and you ignore that." I feel a tear.
"I'm not… I'm not who you think I am. I'm not..," I sob a bit, "I've never been to Gallifrey, all that I know is stories. I'm not good enough to restart a species I know nothing about. I'm not the one for this. That's why I needed the baby. She's for you, Doctor; you can raise her knowing what she needs to know."
"You...," he pauses, "You feel like you aren't good enough for your own species?" His face softens and he folds me gently into a hug.
I cry and so does the baby. Milani takes her from me and leaves the room.
"You're perfect," he says, "You're fine. Only one problem though. How many times have you regenerated?"
"Three," I say, "You see, the baby..., she isn't Rose's great great great granddaughter, she's just her granddaughter. Rose was my mother."
The doctor leaves the room and I hear a sound that is awfully similar to muffled howling. I try to ignore the sound and peel off a bit of the bandage on my arm using thick bruised fingers. The skin underneath is pockmarked and red, covered in lumps of sick looking flesh. All in all, it doesn't look like it's healing well at all. I start to cry again and then I sleep, long and dreamless.
When I wake, the Doctor shows no sign of his earlier anguish at the revelation of my parentage, but I make a note not to mention anything about it, or Rose.
"Your arms aren't reacting well to the cure serum," he tells me, "even just that little bit extra has been causing an allergic inflammation of the muscles and tendons and in turn a dangerous decomposition of the epidermis and calcification of various tissue masses." I nod as though I understand. I know that whatever it is it's bad. "I need you to go through the machine again. It regulates itself, and you need to at some point anyways to ensure your safety from the disease."
I start to shake my head without thinking. "I'm truly sorry," he tells me, "I'll be beside you the entire time and I'll be next so you won't be in pain alone." I think about this and somehow the thought of him enduring the same agony that he's inflicting on me helps with the thought of the awful machine. I close my eyes and give the tiniest nod. The Doctor summons Milani and I feel the stretcher that I've been on move. Then I open my eyes. I'm wheeled into the Tardis and down the same series of hallways to the dreaded machine room. The bed slides out again and Milani lifts me onto it.
I close my eyes and the doctor puts on the mask. "Forgive me," he says, and then I enter the machine. Not even being through this before could have prepared me for the excruciating feeling of my skin being torn from my body, for what else could cause pain this awful? I scream as the needles make their way up my body, then I scream no more as they enter through the flesh of my lips into my mouth. Then I simply whimper and groan as the pain enters through every part of me.
I don't notice that I've been removed until I hear the doctor's shouts, and then I notice the soft touch of Milani. Even this, though, causes agony and I eventually become numb to any sensation. I think Milani is crying, or maybe it's the Doctor, but the sound is pitiful and I want to comfort the person making it. Even trying to lift my hand exhausts me. For some reason, though, I don't fall asleep. I lay there with my eyes closed, listening to the horrible crying.
I hear my baby nearby. "Mother is fine," I hear Milani say, "Mother is nearby. You will be all right." Then the infant is screaming and I feel Milani by my side. "Stay still," she tells me, "I know the agony of motherhood, but it will be over soon and your child will be safe." Her words lull me and I listen to my baby yelling with a feeling of serenity settling over me. It is then that I notice the needle in my arm. It is only one pain out of many, but this one is fresh.
Liquid warmth flows through my arm into the rest of me and settles itself in my brain where it swirls and sends me to sleep. Milani shakes me awake what seems like minutes later. "Lila, help! Please, rise and help me," she says with panic in your voice. My aching eyes shoot open and adrenaline floods my veins. "My baby," I screech. "Not her, it's your Doctor. Something is wrong," she says, helping me out of bed and down the corridor.
The Doctor is near the controls but he isn't flipping switches or pressing buttons. He slumps near a screen and when I reach him his skin is cold. "Lila," he says, "there's something important I have to tell you." My blood freezes inside me. Those sound like dying words. "I can't regenerate any more. This is all I've got," he says. "Shut up," I interrupt and I try to pick the doctor up. Milani helps me and we move him down the hall.
"What can we do?" I yell, "Doctor, how do we help?" His head rolls loosely on his neck and I don't hear what he says. Milani helps me lift him onto the bed I just left and I listen at his mouth for breath. Tiny gasps puff against my ear. "Get him on life support!" I plead and Milani shakes her head. "It will not work. The procedure will backfire if his body does not want to work for itself," she says. "Just do it!" I yell, trying to put the mask on his face myself.
She attaches him to the machine and I look desperately for any signs of life. A weak and forced breath chugs from the machine into his lungs and I feel for a pulse. There's a weak beating and I look to the screen to see his progress. Only one of his hearts is working correctly.
"Look," Milani says. The doctor's eyes open. I kneel to be at eye level with him. "I need my screwdriver," he says shakily, "It's in my coat in the machine room." Milani runs for it and I stay by his side. "Lila, listen very carefully. And DO NOT interrupt," he says, "This could be the end for me, understand?" I try to say something but he glares and I simply take a long, deep breath.
"I can't regenerate so I may not come out of whatever this is alive. I have no clue what is going on and NO there is nothing that you can do to help. That baby is our last hope. You know that if you can concentrate hard enough you can change genders during the regeneration process, and I KNOW that you've done it, don't deny it." I blush, he's right. "That baby is our hope for the future. If she can do what you did to get her then her child can be paired with you. It's complicated, but it needs to work. If I live through this then it will all be easier, but even I can't see my own future."
"You do live through it, Doctor. Trust me, you do," I say, smiling kindly at him. His eyes widen and I know that this is when he realizes the consequences of what I've just told him. "Even you can be tricked with a false future, doctor. Even you," I say, then I feel a tugging on my body as though the universe were trying to cast me out. "And here, doctor, is where I make my exit. I'm so very sorry that our time has been cut so short, but the fabric of reality doesn't seem to want me here anymore," I say.
I start to leave, but then I turn back. "Take care of the baby, Doctor. She's safe, don't worry. You can keep her and take care of her without any major damage," I say. The Doctor hasn't said anything since my confession and I leave him like that. As I walk away I remember the entire ordeal from my other point of view so many regenerations ago. When I was him. I will always remember when I was him. And now I'm not. But maybe I will be again. Who knows? Who knows.
I go back to the Tardis, my Tardis not his. It's been following me, I set it up like that, and I find it in one of the insect-like alleys nearby Milani's home. I feel free now, with that off my chest. It had been a problem for a while, seeing as I had to hide my pregnancy from the child who I was going to give birth to. I go to her now, trudging down the winding hallways to the room where I told her to stay for one year. Of course it's been less than that but I made sure that she had no way to tell time.
I unlock the door and step inside. "Hello Penelope," I say. She jumps up.
"Is the time done, then?" she says excitedly. She knows enough not to ask me questions about her purgatory.
"It is," I say, feeling mildly dizzy as a remnant of the machine.
"What happened to your arms—never mind, you're fine, right?" she says. I nod.
"And if you could help me back to the control room a bit, I'm feeling dizzy," I say.
"It's because you're a girl now," Penelope teases. She hasn't let me forget my most recent transformation.
She's very talkative all the way to the control room and I wonder what she had done to entertain herself those ten months. She seems fine, except for the glint of mischief in her eye, and I know that I must watch my words. Whether she knows the danger of snooping around or not, she will try to find out what went on while she was locked away.
"Sooo," she says, "You seem… different."
I grin. "I knew it," I tell her, "You are not allowed to ask questions about this, understand? But I was sick and now I'm cured. Still a bit rough around the edges but I am recovered." She nods, understanding that when I say something it is usually important.
"Unfortunately, this body won't survive the recovery, but hey! That's the wonderful thing about Time Lords!" I say. She's shocked.
"You mean, you're going to regenerate? Again?!" she says, "It's only been four years!"
"I know. But trust me, it will be all right. You may even recognize my new face," I say.
I close my eyes, and feel the burning begin.