A/N: The prologue to this story is mostly for the benefit of Big Finish fans. If you are following me here from the Quiescenary Series (to which this book ties in) and you're not familiar with Big Finish, don't let the prologue scare you into thinking you won't understand this book.

I'm doing something I NEVER do with this book... I'm posting the first chapter before I've finished the last one. I'm doing this because this book has been sitting on my hard drive for a very long time, and unless I get some fresh enthusiasm for it, I'm afraid it might not get done. So please enjoy, and please share your enthusiasm if you do feel it. I need the encouragement on this very old project.

Special thanks to thagrrrl79 for her contributions as a cowriter, and to Howlcastle for the initial spark I needed to start this book, waaaaaaaaay back when I started it.

PROLOGUE

The console was humming softly, an ambient sound that Charley had never noticed before in her Doctor's Tardis. This room, white-walled and sterile-looking, was still so unfamiliar to her. Gone were the enormous, industrial-meets-gothic designs and architecture of the Tardis she had known. Instead, her surroundings were small and very plain looking in comparison. White and grey, tiled and smooth with few shadows. A small, sophisticated looking console. It looked like an enormous computer, not like the oddly shaped and colored controls of the Tardis she had travelled in for so long. But it was the same Tardis. The same but different. Like the Doctor...

"Hello again."

Charley wasn't expecting a response. She wasn't surprised when she didn't get one. Sentient or not, the ship couldn't actually talk. She knew that. Taking a deep, shaky breath, she straightened her posture as she stepped closer, running her hand lightly over the edge of the console.

"I know you're supposed to be... alive or something. In a manner of speaking, anyway. I don't know if that means you can hear me, but right now, I haven't really got anyone else to talk to. So I guess... it's just you and me."

The hum continued. Other than that, the room was silent. Eerily so. She sighed deeply as she continued, watching her hand as it trailed along the controls, careful not to change or press anything. The last thing she needed was to accidentally send them on a collision course with the nearest star.

"He said once that you're timeless," she whispered. "The Doctor, I mean. That you see everything that was and everything that will be just as if it's happening right now. If that's true, then you at least should know who I am. It's not much, I suppose, but it's more than anyone else knows."

She bit her bottom lip, wishing for all the world that she had something - someone - to look at, other than a big grey computer with a clear cylinder in the middle. Something that could respond. Some way to know she was being heard. But there was nothing.

She sighed as she leaned forward, letting her blonde hair fall in her face as she took in a deep breath and continued quickly, without thinking. What did it really matter if anyone was listening? Probably better if she wasn't heard. It didn't matter. She still needed to talk, to get it all off of her chest before it ate her alive.

"I'm so alone here. Everything is so unfamiliar and I... well, I can't exactly talk to the Doctor. Even if it didn't violate the laws of space and time, what would I say? Yes, Doctor, someday we're going to fall in love and you're going to..."

She trailed off as the memories hit her, more powerful than she'd been expecting. Trapped in a world of sensory deprivation. The first time she had realized that he loved her... "I sacrificed myself for you, to save your life! And I did it gladly. I thought I'd never see you again, but it wouldn't matter so long as I knew you were safe."

"I don't understand. You're saying you did care for me after all! That you... loved me?"

"Of course I loved you!" His anger caught her off guard, and she recoiled instinctively. "I killed myself for you, didn't I! Of course I loved you. Of course... I love you."

He'd loved her. He'd never meant to, but he'd fallen in love. And she'd fallen just as hard. Her closest friend. The line between friends and lovers was blurred somewhere in the Divergent Universe...

"Are you alright?"

"Cold..."

He settled beside her, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer. It probably wasn't intended to be a romantic gesture; this was neither the time nor the place for it, out among the rocks and wind. But his solid presence felt good, nonetheless. It felt... reassuring.

"Think warm thoughts," he whispered to her.

"These stones are hard."

"They're filled with the softest down..."

He'd succeeded in making her smile. "Yes, alright. Swans' down, is it?"

"Of course, nothing but the best."

"That's alright, then." She settled against him, snuggling in closer for warmth. "Good night, Doctor."

"Good night, Charlotte."

He'd hardly ever called her that...

It was impossible to tell how long they'd been there, in that other universe. Impossible to keep track of how many nights she'd dared to fall asleep in his arms, or very closely under his watch, at the very least. They'd grown comfortable, relaxed to the point of indecency if they were really just friends. Even "just friends" who were in love...

"In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not exactly dressed for swimming."

"Since when have you needed to be dressed for swimming?" He was already stripping his clothes, puzzled by her dilemma.

"Well, I'm hardly going to swim that distance wearing this. It'd be far too cumbersome. And modesty demands I wear a bit more than you did in that fountain in Light City."

He laughed. "Nonsense, Charley, there's not another living soul for miles in any direction. Light years, in fact."

She smiled as she shook her head in disbelief at the fact that he didn't seem to consider himself "another living soul."

"Oh, Doctor."

She smiled as her memories played out, one after another, vision blurring as her eyes welled up with tears. But they weren't tears of sadness. No, it was joy that filled her, when she thought of those times. The awkwardness and uncertainty of the first time he'd kissed her. Really kissed her, properly. The first time he touched her the way that only a lover would...

"Enjoying yourself, Charley?" he teased in a low, mischievous voice that let her know he was smiling.

She was barely able to squeak out an answer. "Yes. Yes, Doctor. Very much."

And lying naked in his arms in the warm afterglow...

"I've never been in love before. Not like this."

"Well, that's a good feeling, though, isn't it?"

"It is, Charley, but it's also a rather frightening one. Because I know I'll love you forever and for a Time Lord... forever is a very long time."

In the end, he'd given her a freedom to feel, to be, to love him openly and passionately, that she'd never imagined. She'd hardly even felt embarrassed when C'Rizz had walked in on them.

"Oh!"

Struggling to pull her top closed with one hand and steady herself on the edge of the console with the other, she was too startled by the intrusion to even notice at first that C'Rizz very distinctly had his head turned in the opposite direction.

"Don't mind me; I'm not looking. Just needed to get my notebook."

The fact that neither he nor the Doctor had flinched - only a smile and a respectful pause while the Eutermesan grabbed what he'd come for and left again - had made it clear that it was nothing that he hadn't already known. It should've mortified her. But it hadn't. Somehow, it had still felt just as good, just as right.

She could feel the tears on her cheeks as she ran her hand lightly over the edge of the Tardis console. A different console. A different Tardis, and a different Doctor. But still the same. At least, someday he would be. Someday, in a world that she would never see again.

"This all feels so foreign," she sniffled, wiping the tears away roughly. "Nothing's the same. Even the Doctor, he's not... He's not the same."

She would never forget her shock. When the door to the Tardis opened and a man she'd never seen before stepped out.

"I'm sorry. I was expecting someone else."

"Someone else? I hadn't realized dimensionally transcendental vehicles disguised as police boxes were quite so commonplace."

The man she travelled with now was drastically different. He was a man with flamboyant clothes and tight blonde curls. A man who was openly arrogant and superior in a way that sometimes frustrated her and other times made her laugh. But he was a man who didn't love her, who didn't even know her.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm trying to work out what to make of you... Charlotte. Is that really your name?"

"Yes! Why wouldn't it be?"

"I don't know. Not entirely sure I trust you."

"Oh."

And in spite of all of that, he was the Doctor.

All that she knew about the Web of Time left her with one burning, painful question. Was it possible that the Doctor - her Doctor - could've known all along that she would end up here, with his former self? Could he have known all of this - her daily life now - and never said a thing? She wouldn't have thought him capable of hiding something like that from her. There were so few things in the universe that would truly surprise her anymore, but that would be one of them. The Doctor had many faults. But one thing he was not was a liar.

The other, perhaps more painful question had to do with what he didn't know. He'd died; before her very eyes, the ship had crashed. He couldn't have regenerated after an explosion like that; there would have been nothing left. Had he known, in the end, how much she loved him? Had he known that she never would've left him? A lump caught in her throat and she swallowed it down as she brushed her cheeks again.

"Oh, who am I kidding?" she muttered, self-deprecatingly. "I would've left. I did leave."

She lowered her eyes shamefully, longing for a sense of absolution and knowing that this was not the proper confessional booth if she sought an understanding ear. Still, she couldn't stop the words from pouring out.

"I was so... hurt, so angry. All those human emotions I don't imagine you could possibly understand." She glanced again at the time rotor. "After what happened to C'Rizz... the way the Doctor reacted... I don't know why I thought he would react any differently if I left, if I'd died. It was like he never would've thought twice about..."

She trailed off, shaking her head. But he had thought twice. She knew he had. She'd counted down from ten and she'd wanted him to be gone when she'd opened her eyes; she really did. She'd really meant that. But she hadn't thought about what it would be like to go to bed alone that night and realize...

"I didn't even say a proper good bye. I didn't tell him that..." She swallowed hard. "But he knew. I'm sure he knew. At least he will. Someday..."

"Know what?"

The voice behind her was startling, and she wiped the tears away quickly as she turned to face the curly haired man in the doorway. "Doctor," she greeted with a forced smile. "Sorry, I didn't see you there."

"Yes, I know." He eyed her suspiciously as he stepped closer. "Who are you talking to?"

"Oh, just... myself."

"I see. Regular habit of yours, is it?"

"Sometimes," she admitted.

"Well, as long as you're awake, we might as well find something interesting to look at, don't you think?"

"Of course," she answered. "I'll just... go get dressed."

She could feel his eyes - suspicious and slightly concerned - following her as she left the console room. A few steps down the hallway, she paused at the door that led to his room. The hallway looked different, but she knew that was where his room should be. At least, in her own time it was where his room should be...

"If you can hear me..." She touched her hand to the door and felt it warm under her hand. The living ship, warm and responsive. She took a breath, and let it out slow as she tried again. "I know you don't like me very much, but we have something in common. We both love the Doctor. So if you can understand any of this - anything at all - then please... Just tell him that I love him."

She let the words linger in the stillness as she lowered her hand to her side again, and slowly continued down the hallway to her own room.