Chapter One: The Doctor Returns

When Clara Oswald closed her eyes, all she saw was his grave. She remembered him rescuing her out of his time stream. She saw all of his faces up to that point from that old man to the man she had traveled the universe with. Her time echoes were out there saving the Doctor as she spoke throughout time and space. There was one in Victorian London. There was another trapped on Skaro in the Dalek Asylum. One had suggested which T.A.R.D.I.S. he take back when he first ran away from Gallifrey. But what she really wanted was for him to come around and sweep her off her feet again. He was the older brother she never had had growing up. Lamenting this fact, she walked into her apartment on Baker Street.
Opening the front door, she saw the T.A.R.D.I.S.
"DOCTOR!"
"Hello, Clara."
She ran up and hugged him.
"Why didn't you come by and see me after you exposed that awful Salamander?"
"Well, different incarnation. I don't think I had met you yet."
"Doctor, what's going on? Oh, you've regenerated."
"Yes, I have. Sorry if I'm just a little bit erratic, I've just regenerated. This is the middle of 2018, isn't it?"
"Uh huh. So?"
"Clara, surely you remember all the natural disasters throughout the past few years that have been caused by the recently deceased Ramon Salamander?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"Well, I'm here to help clean up. Put the world back into place. It recently occurred to me that while I go around and stop the alien invasions, the lives of the survivors are always destroyed, and I always leave before helping them."
"But Doctor not until you tell me what caused you to regenerate!"
"Clara, I can't. I refuse to risk the time stream. As far I'm concerned, you can't even know whether I'm a future incarnation or a past incarnation of your Doctor. Just because an event has happened for you doesn't mean that it has happened to me."
"But Doctor-."
"No, buts, Clara."
"I'm confused, in order to know my name, you would have to be a future incarnation."
"Not necessarily."
"Anyway, what happened with Salamander? You looked a lot like him."
"Oh yes, I used that to my advantage actually. It was an espionage adventure, so unlike the base-under-siege that I'm usually dealing with."
"What happened to Salamander, really?"
"He tried to take control of the T.A.R.D.I.S., flipped the dematerialization circuit, but fell into the time vortex because he didn't understand that you had to shut the door first. But enough about that, are you going to help me?"
"Yes."
"Now, I have two other companions to introduce you. One is a returning companion of mine. The other is her boyfriend. Have you read the play "Troilus and Cressida" by old Billy Shakespeare? Because they're the inspiration."
"WHAT?" Clara shouted.
"Who is this, Doctor?", a young woman about Clara's age came out of the T.A.R.D.I.S. A man peered out as well.
"Hello, Vicki Pallister. In my life since you've departed the T.A.R.D.I.S., I've had many other companions. This is one of them. Her name is Clara Oswald."
"Hello, I'm Vicki. It's not short for Victoria or any other name. Still, I'm not be confused with one of his other female companions.. I travelled with the Doctor when he looked like a grandfather, an old man. I remember our first adventure, on the planet Dido. It was where I first met the Doctor. I ended up being one of the only two survivors of a spaceship. This is Troilus."
"I was off to visit the time period to help U.N.I.T. when it hit me. I should see Ian and Barbara. And then I remembered one of the conversations I had with Vicki before our first adventure with Steven Taylor. She said that someday we might run into Ian and Barbara again and catch up. So that's what I did. I brought them here." the Doctor explaining why Clara wasn't the lone companion this time.
"I know them! Mr. Chesterton is headmaster at Coal Hill School, his wife is named Barbara."
"How do you know about Coal Hill school?"
"Because… I'm a teacher there."
"Oh, hoh,hoh. How appropriate."
"Why?"
"My granddaughter once attended that school in 1963 on Earth time. Mr. Chesterton and Mrs. Wright were her science and history teachers, respectively. Susan was proving to be a genius in areas that rarely crossed. She was so good, they discussed whether to hand classes over to her or not. Meanwhile, she lacked in basic knowledge in other areas that she should have known. Her inconsistencies baffled them."
"Hang on, your granddaughter once attended Coal Hill School, and Mr. Chesterton and his wife both used to be teachers of her. Did something happen?"
"Yes, we traveled back to 100,000 B.C. back when I was still the First Doctor."
"What?"
"Why don't you ask them yourself?"
The four hopped into the T.A.R.D.I.S and whizzed over to the Principal's office at Coal Hill School. Barbara was bringing Ian his lunch which he left at the house that morning. Ian was attending to his duties as headmaster in his office when he heard a familiar whooshing noise.
"Barbara, do you hear that?" Ian asked his wife.
"I hear it, but, it can't be." Barbara replied as she heard a sound she hadn't heard in almost fifty years.
"Hello, Ian. Hello, Barbara." the Doctor replied, stepping out of the T.A.R.D.I.S. with Clara following him.
"Doctor, is that really you?" Ian looked incredulous.
"How can it be him, Ian. He doesn't look the same. He was an old man when we last saw him." Barbara pointed out.
"I regenerated. It's a Time Lord thing." The Doctor answered.
"Time Lord?"
"Oh right, you see I'm a Time Lord, and one of our biological process is regeneration, when our body wears thin, we can replace all the cells in it for a new one. And I'm sure you know Clara. And here's Vicki."
"Vicki?! Vicki Pallister?"
"Yes, Barbara, it's me."
"Hello," Troilus entered.
"Who are you?" Ian asked.
"I am Troilus."
"Like the character from the Shakespearean play?"
"As I'm been informed, yes."
"Wait a minute, Vicki, you mean you became Shakespeare's inspiration for Cressida?" Barbara responded, aghast. "I've read that play, and it was based on your lives?!"
"Mrs. Oswald, you know the Doctor?" Ian asked.
"Yes, I do." Clara responded.
"Doctor, why are you here?" Barbara asked.
"I'm here to see my first two companions. But I'm sticking around to help the world recover from Salamander's series of synthetic disasters." The Doctor said. "I'm heading to U.N.I.T. with Mrs. Oswald, Vicki, and Troilus, but before I went, I thought I'd drop by."
"Mr. Chesterton, what exactly happened to you and Mrs. Wright in 100,000 B.C.?" Clara asked.
"Oh, that was our first adventure. We had absolutely no idea what we'd gotten ourselves into." Ian replied.
"What a brilliant idea Susan had with those torches and skulls." Barbara continued.
"Say what? I'm going to need some context here." Clara looked incredulous.
"We were in 100,000 B.C., and had just discovered the T.A.R.D.I.S. and its interior. The Doctor was more hostile at that point. He kidnapped us. Those first adventures were the worst. On our first trip to Skaro, I thought we would die from radiation poisoning." Ian recounted.
"The Adventures continued. We saw goodbye to Susan at the end of a Dalek invasion of Earth." Barbara continued. "Soon after, we met Vicki."
"I remember, most of my adventures with the combination of you three ended with me facing the Daleks. You only got back by using a Dalek time travel machine." The Doctor replied.
"Vicki, what happened with you and the Doctor after we left?" Ian left.
"Well, we almost immediately found Steven Taylor as a stowaway on the T.A.R.D.I.S. and then we ended up in 1066 off the coast of England. There was a Meddling Monk attempting to stopping the Viking invasion so that England could repel the French invasion at the Battle Of Hastings. He had a T.A.R.D.I.S. and everything!" Vicki continued.
"Was he another Time Lord?" Clara asked.
"Yes, while he wasn't villainous, he didn't understand the delicacies of Time travel." the Doctor pointed out.
"Eventually, I met Troilus and I stayed with him." Vicki finished. "But if the Doctor ever stops by, and asks for us to help him with something, Troilius and I gladly do so."
And so the afternoon passed into evening, as Clara asked about the adventures of Ian and Barbara. They told her about their trip to see the Aztecs, how it was to talk to Marco Polo, and so forth. Clara listened in awe to each and every one of those stories. The Doctor had no fear of a time paradox. After all, they only had stories from his first incarnation. He was definitely a later model than his original counterpart.
"Barbara, do you remember how I said you couldn't change history? Not one line", the Doctor asked.
"Yes, why?"
"Well, I have an explanation for you. 'Fixed Point'. That was one of them."
"What's a fixed point? Is this some space-time concept that I'm unfamiliar with? " Troilus asked.
"Yes, Troilus. A fixed point is an event in space-time that must happen. Or to define it more narrowly, it's not the actual event. It's the consequences originating from it." the Doctor explained. He thought to himself.
Good, I'm finally communicating more effectively now. If I'm able to explain a concept like fixed points in space-time to a human being who originated from about 1300 B.C. in words that he can understand, I'm doing a good job.
"Well, I think we'd better leave. It's time we pick up Astrid and Donald."
"Wait, Doctor!" Barbara exclaimed.
"Hmmm, yes?" the Doctor responded.
"Has the inside of the T.A.R.D.I.S. changed?"
"Yes, it has."
"Can we look at it, for old times' sake?" Ian asked.
"Well, give me a moment; I'll revert to the old desktop. The one with the round things."
"Did you mean Astrid Ferrier, daughter of the former finance deputy of European zone, Jean Ferrier? Were you referring to Donald Bruce, the security chief for the World President and newly-minted World Vice President?" Ian asked, wondering how the Doctor had known those well-known figures in world politics.
"Yes. I mean both of them. They helped me stop the attempted world conquering by Ramon Salamander."
"Why are you going to contact them to help you? What about us?" Barbara asked.
"I'm terribly sorry, but you're both too old if something broke out. Those two are still young, and very trustworthy."
"What could possibly break out?" Ian pointedly got into the Doctor's face.
"Chatterton, this is me we're talking about. I can hardly go anywhere anymore without running into the Daleks invading this planet, or the Sontarians attack that planet or a Zygon infilitration of a moonbase or something of that sort. I just wanted to see you two and have a nice chat about history. No frantically dematerializing while cavemen launch spears at us, no need to figure out the Daleks and their static electricity motors, no need for any of that, my dear boy."
"Boy? I'm an old man, Doctor." Ian retorted.
"Well, before my life is over, I'll have lived more than a millennium and a half.", the Doctor snarked back. "Come along,Vicki. It was nice seeing both of you. I'm dropping you off earlier this evening at your home at about 6 P.M. Goodbye, Ian. Goodbye, Barbara."
"Goodbye, Doctor", the two said in unison as the T.A.R.D.I.S. materialized outside their flat.
"Now, Clara, Vicki, Troilus, let me introduce you to Astrid Ferrier and Donald Bruce. Just a precautionary word, be prepared to help convince them that I am indeed the Doctor. "