Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who I'd have a heck of a lot more money than I do. I'm just playing with it.
AN: Not my usual standard but after seeing the latest episode of Doctor Who it wouldn't let me rest until this was posted.
"The Doctor is dangerous."
"It is her duty to stop him."
"The Doctor has to be stopped and she is the one who will do so."
These are her earliest lessons, taught alongside her ABCs. So early in fact that she can barely remember learning them. She cannot really imagine a time when she didn't know those words, when they didn't shape her every waking moment.
But her dreams...her dreams are another matter entirely.
Sometimes, in the depths of the night, she will dream of a woman, red-haired and pale who whispers of a hero who will rescue her.
More rarely she sees that hero, dressed in Roman armour. He lifts her up and holds her so tightly and yet so gently as if she was the most precious thing in the entire universe.
And rarest of all, a wild impossible man in a bowtie who understands her even when all she can say are baby gurgles and who places her in a cradle where stars twinkle above her head.
With them she is safe and the Doctor cannot frighten her.
The day that her teachers first show her the Doctor's faces she screams.