Circling

Chapter 1

A Trip Down Memory Lane

I looked out the open door, startled at what I had seen. I had traveled through time and space. It was marvelous. Just marvelous. I could go anywhere, in every period of time. All with this man, this wonderful, wonderful man. He was wearing odd clothes, though. As if he was from another time. Well I guess he was, actually. But I didn't think about it at that time, because I was in a time machine, which was still amazing.

"What do you think?" He asked, standing next to me.

"We are on another planet. In the year 12059. You are an alien. You have two hearts. And you look human but you're not you're an alien with two hearts I mean who has two-DON'T TOUCH ME." I finished the sentence with a shriek, as the Doctor was about to pad me on my uncovered shoulder.

"Sorry, I forgot. We're just stopping to pick up a friend of mine, it won't be long. Wait here, please?" He asked, and I nodded, sitting down. He left the TARDIS in my hands, which was weird since he knew that I knew how to control it, and we had only known each other for a mere 7 hours. I take it he trusted me. Or just did not believe me. But it was incredible, it really was. The TARDIS, The Doctor, everything. This technology, that I now knew, but didn't quite understand. This astonishing, mind blowing, absolutely fantastic bigger-on-the-inside time machine, it couldn't be real, it just couldn't be!

"It's real, and you know it, Al." I murmured to myself. "You know it. The pool, the library, the male wardrobe, music collection, the female wardrobe, anything you've seen on this ship, and also the regenerating man with two hearts and his friend, who is.. Oh hi!" I said, when I noticed that the Doctor had returned with his friend.

"Hello, I'm-" He started, but I cut him off. "Captain Jack Harkness, I am aware. It is nice to meet you." I said, smiling at him, but making no effort to approach him. He reached out his hand to shake mine, but I just promptly shook my head no.

"Sorry, I don't touch people." I shrugged. He raised an eyebrow, looking quite intrigued.

"And may I ask how you know who I am?" He asked, and I glanced at the Doctor for help, since I had no idea what to say.

"Oh, all the many stories I've told of you, of course!" He said, as I was about to open my mouth to say something not very similar. He stepped forward and smiled. "So, Jack, Allison, Allison, Jack. Greetings!" He smiled, and went to start up the TARDIS again.

Jack and I sat down, and started talking while the Doctor was controlling the TARDIS.

"Are you from earth, or?" He began, while he was following the Doctor with his eyes.

"Yes I am. I was born in nineteen sixty eight. You sound American.. Uh, when are you from?" I asked, sort of precarious of that last question.

"I'm from the golden age of the Time Agency. Do you know what that is?"

"I, um, I've heard of it." But I knew. I knew precisely as much as the Doctor did, nothing more, and nothing less. But I did get a headache when I thought about it, so I was trying to sort it all out in a slow process. But yes, I knew about the Time Agency. It was strange to talk to him when he didn't know about my thing. I mean, not that kind of thing. But I had this huge thing that was circling around me, never out of my mind. I kind of zoned out at that point, I guess. I do that a lot. My mind wanders to some memory that is not mine, memories that I have stolen, memories that I have unwillingly copied from other people. Some of them being complete strangers. Incidentally, I also remember thinking about Jack. I liked him. He did not question me when I said that I did not touch people, he just nodded and took a small step backwards. He respected me for not wanting to touch him, and not many people are like that. The conversation ended there as I recall. The following thing I remember is the Doctor asking me where I would like to go now.

"Oh I don't know.. I've never really given much thought into that sort of thing." I said, looking at the Doctor.

"Well, you should start doing that, cause he's been practically everywhere so it doesn't matter to him. What would you like to see?" I could hear Jack saying, but I was still looking at the Doctor. My eyes moved to look at the control panel, and I started thinking of people I would want to meet.

Let us see.. It would be interesting to meet someone historically famous like Amelia Earheart or Abraham Lincoln, but getting to rock out with legends like Freddie Mercury or John Lennon would also be amazing.. I guessed that I was not allowed to change time, so doing things like talking Kurt Cobain out of suicide or taking a bullet for President John F Kennedy were out of the question. This was a hard one..

"I have no idea, my mind is being a fucktard right now." I said, and let out a yawn.

"Sorry about that. I don't know. Why don't you use that thing that sees those extraterrestrial signals so we can go save the world?" I asked, but did not take precaution to the word 'fucktard', so they just kind of let out a laugh at that one.

"Pardon my french.." I mumbled, but smiled a little when I noticed that Jack had his eyes locked on me.

"Yes we can do that, since your mind is being a.. fucktard." The Doctor said with a small grin.

So the Doctor looked at some screens, and the TARDIS picked up a signal from an alien ship in the 1960's on a pirate radio. This should be interesting, I thought. Having seen the movie 'The Boat That Rocked', and loving rock from the sixties, I was kind of looking forward to it, actually.

"The thing is, I have met the Beatles, and they always loved listening to pirate radios. And I haven't seen this sort of spaceship before, but maybe they want good. They probably picked up the radio waves and thought it fun to take a look. Just like us, actually, except we picked up their signal, not the radio signal, which is actually logical but not the point here."

"You have met the Beatles?" I asked. I was stunned.

"Yes, several times, but never in this body." He smiled, and pulled some handles. Jack was quiet, just watching me. It was sort of weird, only I guess I did not really mind, although I was not used to men looking at me at all, and especially not the way he looked at me, but it was quite nice getting attention. I mean, if it were positive attention. Thinking of it, Jack was rather handsome. Brown, thick hair. The way the light affected it, it looked a tad gleaming, and when he smiled, you could see the dimples in his cheeks. His eyes were a beautiful blue colour, lighting up along with his smile. I was happy that I hadn't touched him yet, because if I had, I probably wouldn't look at him that way. Incidentally, if I had touched him, he would not look at me that way, either.

I guess it is all a bit confusing to anyone reading this.. If there are any. You see, other than having OCD, I have this thing, as I have mentioned previously. Some might call it a gift, some might call it a superpower, but it is both that and a curse. Mostly the last. Whenever I have bodily contact with a living creature(or living objects such as the TARDIS), I can see everything physically about them. Everything their eyes have ever seen. Everything their body has ever done. Everything they have done, I can see. Every step they have taken, every person they have met. I can hear everything they have ever heard, and see everything from their perspective, but I can not feel what they feel, not physical nor psychological pain. I can not read their mind. Everything they have ever physically seen, done, smelled or heard I can see, smell, and hear. It started around my early teen years, when my body was evolving. Those were also the years I started developing my OCD. But it's impossible to understand if you don't live it. It's such a blessing at some points, but such a curse. The first time I met the Doctor, he touched me for a bare second, and I fainted almost immediately because of all the thing's he'd lived and done and all his bodies and.. I get headaches just from remembering it now. I will explain it to you in a right way, I promise, but my thoughts are too over the place right now. Getting back to what I was telling you about, I was happy that I hadn't touched Jack at the time, because then everything would be different. I probably would have fainted again, knowing about his life and death thing from the Doctor's memories, but it didn't matter, because he just accepted that I don't touch people. I had tried to control it, and with one guy, I practiced. Apparently I can only control it if I really seriously freaking trust this person, I can do it. I can keep it out of my head, and just plainly look at the person in the presence instead of the person's past.

When I first met the Doctor, we were at the school I worked at. Madelyn's School for Talented Youth. I was a secretary. I was staying there overnight, because my roommate had his boyfriend visiting, and they are always loud. Sometimes fighting, sometimes other things. And yes, those kinds of things. Anyway, I was sleeping on the sofa in the office, when I heard this sound. The TARDIS sound. Of course I wasn't aware that it was the TARDIS sound at the time, so I thought it to be a bit strange. It was in the middle of the night, and I got up to find out what had caused this sound. The school had a strange essence to it, which I also noticed. I got up, and walked out of the office towards the sound, but did not reach it before it stopped. Suddenly I was standing in the middle of a dark hallway in my pajamas, and a man was running towards me. "RUN!" he screamed, and I ran after him as fast as I could, because I didn't want to risk whatever he was running from. Running a few stories up, he suddenly stopped and turned around.

"What are we running from?" I asked, and he looked at me.

"We are running from a bunch of killer robots sent from Mars, do I know you?"

"I suppose not, I can't remember having seen you before. Why did we stop running?"

"The robots have stopped moving, they are confused as to where I am because I am with a human."

"So you are not human, then?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. As if I believed that story.

"No." He promptly answered, without any form of hesitation. Did he think I was an imbecile?

"Who are you, then?"

"I'm the Doctor." He replied. Simple as that. The Doctor. Not Dr. Acula, or Dr. Love. Not Dr. Feelgood, or anything else equally stupid. Just the Doctor. But I couldn't resist the question on my tongue.

"Doctor Who?" I inquired, as I stepped a little closer to him. I was getting cold, because the school wasn't heated at night.

"Just the Doctor. Are you the only one here?" He said, whilst he was pulling something out from his inner pocket that looked like some sort of glowy screwdriver, he then pressed a button the made a sound and started pointing his glowy screwdriver thingy at the walls, as if he were scanning them or something like that. I followed his movements carefully, examining him with my eyes, literally forgetting that he asked me the question because I was so curious of this person standing before me.

"I guess you are, then. What are you even doing here?" He asked, still scanning the walls, but now he proceeded to doing the floor as well.

"I work here."

"Right now?"

"No, not right now, obviously. I'm sleeping here. Or, I was, until you came. Where did you come from?"

"Same place the robots came from. Mars. I mean, I am not from Mars originally but right now that's where I've been." As he spoke those words, he stood up in full figure, facing me.

"So you took them with you?"

"You could say. They were following me. We need to go, come on. Allonsy." He added, and then started running again, this time down the stairs.

"We need to get to the TARDIS, in there we'll be safe until I figure out what to do!" He yelled to me, running a couple of meters in front of me.

"What's a TARDIS?" I asked while still following him.

"Time And Relative Dimension In Space." The Doctor quickly replied, and got out a key from his inner pocket. That was the exact moment I knew, that he was telling me the truth, because behind us I could hear whole bunch of gibberish, and the Doctor started talking the same language, yelling at the robots that were approaching us quickly. I was starting to get scared, when we apparently reached the TARDIS, in the basement. It was a small blue phone booth, that had the words "POLICE BOX" written on them. Never in my life had I seen one before, but I didn't have time to wonder about it, because the Doctor hurried up with the lock of the door, and we went inside. I almost did not have time to think about how in the world that thing would keep us from killer robots and how we were going to fit inside it, when I stumbled into a room quite possibly bigger than the whole private school we were in.

It was bigger on the inside.

"What is this place?" I shouted, when I had sat on the floor after falling over a couple of steps.

"This is the TARDIS," the Doctor replied. "It is my time machine. Or space ship. It can travel through time and space. What did you say your name was?"

"I didn't. What are we going to do about those robots?"

"I will figure it out." He looked at me, but it was actually more of a stare. Like he was trying to solve some sort of equation, and I was the answer, yet he did not know what the question was.

"Something isn't right.." He mumbled to himself, whilst still having his eyes rest on me.

"What, you think I don't hear you? I know something isn't right, there are killer robots from mars outside that door!" I looked at him with a nettled look.

"No, with you. You're giving them a strange signal, what is it?" He walked towards me, and I jumped a bit. I didn't want him to touch me. I never wanted anyone to touch me.

"Don't to-" But it was too late, his brain hadn't registered my started sentence, and he had touched my face, just for a second, but that second had a thousand years in it. It felt as if I'd been struck by lightning, and in the second his hand brushed my cheek, I could see everything, ever. But it was so much more than normally. This person wasn't human. He has had ten bodies, and my brain just couldn't keep track. Is was too much. I could see, hear, and smell everything. The tears and Rose and Martha and Donna and Sarah Jane and Captain Jack and Mickey and all the bodies and the regenerations and the time traveling and the being tortured and all the losses he had suffered and it was too much, not a single part of my body could hold that sort of energy. I fainted. I had been on this mind wrecking dangerous undertaking through his life, and it all happened in less than a second.