"You're not my mother."
The words had pierced the poor woman's heart. Steph had immediately regretted them, but she couldn't take them back. The damage was already done. The woman lowered her eyes, and walked away. Later that week, Steph was back where she had started. But she didn't care, not really. There was no where on this planet she truly belonged. It was a cold hard fact of life, one that had begun to destroy Steph from the inside.
"Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie. What will we ever do with you?" The social worker had sighed, running her hand through her hair.
Steph had continued to stare at her plate, ignoring the less than displeased expression on the woman's face, as she sat in the foster centre.
"Why does it never work out with all those lovely parents? So many people willing to give you a nice home and you alienate all of them! Steph, will you ever tell me what's going on in your head?" The social worker stared at the young girl sitting across from her on the table.
Steph didn't meet her gaze. She just continued to look at her plate. The social worker shook her head and turned back to her own dinner, but she didn't see the small tear that was running down the young girl's face.
She opened the TARDIS doors, and took once last look behind her at the two aliens and their ship.
"Won't ever forget you!" Called Rose.
"Neither will I!" Added the Doctor, pulling a wide grin.
Steph grinned at them and stepped out onto the lawn, closing the doors behind her. She turned and watched as that familiar wind and sound rushed by her.
"You can bet on it."
Those words were the most honest thing Steph had ever said in her entire life. She missed them then, she missed them now. Over the months, Steph had come to realise that more than anything, she wanted to see the two aliens that had utterly destroyed her life.
About four months earlier, Steph had been leading a normal life. She was just like any other fourteen year old; she went to school, she had lots of friends, and everyday she would come home to two loving parents. Despite all the troubles of a teenage life, Steph had it good. But then the Doctor came.
Steph was thrust, unwillingly into a great battle that would decide her own life. The Doctor revealed to her that she was actually an alien, a being from another world, who had been sent to earth in order to avoid a holocaust on her own planet. All of her family, her world, was dead. The parents that Steph had been coming home to everyday had adopted her when she was only weeks old. If that was shocking enough, she was also being hunted.
A species of alien, known as Ethae, were hunting her. She provided a source of power, which would enable them to leave Earth and find a Cyl, a living star. They were prepared to kill her in order to save themselves. The Doctor managed to stop them, just in time. He had offered them a chance to find a Cyl, without killing Steph, but by this time, her adoptive parents had already been murdered by their ruthless leader, while searching for Steph.
Then the Doctor had gone. He left Steph to deal with the aftermath of the battle. The very pieces of her life that had been destroyed were the very ones that Steph had depended on. How the Doctor expected her to recover, she didn't know. All that she did was that somehow, she had to make it through life. She had to get off Earth.
This realisation hadn't happened over night. It took two months to realise that she couldn't give up, she couldn't just stand there, a blank slate for the rest of her life. Trying to pick up the pieces was a noble enough cause, but there was a better one. But by the time Steph finally woke up to herself, she had almost completely lost everyone and everything she had ever cared about.
All of her friends, the family of her first adoptive parents, shunned her. She had retreated into nothingness, and for two months she alienated all of them, preferring to stay in her bedroom and descend further into her own despair. By the time she realised what she had done, no one wanted to be near her.
Because her first adoptive parents had been killed, Steph had been going from family to family, never staying for very long. Perhaps it was that she new that she wasn't like them physically, or she never wanted to accept them as a new family. Steph didn't know. But she could never get along with any of them. It was the same each time. They could never be her parents, her real parents died, so very long ago. So Steph went from family to family, never staying long. It drove the foster home social workers mad. But Steph didn't care, not really.