AN: Hello everyone! Fair warning, I'm setting myself up to commit to a longer story. There will be elements of romance and such interwoven into the whole story, but if you're hoping to find them falling in love with each other straight out of the gate, you're going to be quite disappointed. Faire credit, where credit is due, I got my initial inspiration for the jumping, crisscrossing timelines dynamic from AnaDona's Jumping through time. If you haven't already seen it, it might be worth checking it out. I will not be making any attempt to emulate her, or anyone else I've seen with a similar concept beyond that. I've really wanted to see a different sort of relationship dynamic evolve out of this premise for a while now, and sometimes if you don't see it, you've got to make it. The ideas for this have been jumping around in my head for a while now, but the writing it all down bit is relatively new, so I'm not sure what the posting schedule will look like until I'm a few chapters in. But I do promise you, I have plans. Muahahaha... Or something like that. Anyways, enjoy!


Preface


December 12th, 2014.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what I expect will come of this. There is nothing in this act of writing which promises me any sort of closure. This blank page has nothing within its nature which might guarantee me any sort of solace through the reliving of old memories, from the momentary eternity where we met and intertwined.

Hell, I can't even guarantee that this little amateur submission of mine will find its way under their eyes. Which is more than a little depressing, really. Because what's going to be the point of taking shots at them anymore, if I'm not even going to get the satisfaction of ruining their afternoon tea? But then I suppose that it can hardly be expected of any individual with their head shoved that far up their arse - despite the unforgiving and overly long stick already inserted there previously - to pay very much attention to a "primitive" online forum which struggles to gain mainstream acceptance and credibility amongst its own native populace... Mores the pity, I've been really rather fancying the idea of a second round with Mr. "God Complex" himself. If he still wants to "ascend" away from us lesser beings that badly, I remain more than happy to oblige him. Not going to happen though, if he's not going to read this. But I digress.

It remains a basic fact that every story that begins, must also one day end. We both knew that. Oh, sure, it was easy enough to forget most of the time. To leave an appealing trail of loose ends behind us, zigzagging so thoroughly through eternity that I suspect we rather gave it a headache once or twice. We fought it time and time again, raging against circumstance, raging against the metaphorical dying of the light, raging against... Well against Time itself, really. But just because you pronounce yourself the lord of something, that doesn't mean that it will automatically and always bow to your every whim.

Every story ends, and I've been burdened with his twice now, it seems.

Of course, that I'm sitting here, writing this, with the very idea of him firmly and definitively grounded under the label of "the past," means that he now knows my ending as well. It was the kindest end I could ever hope to give him, to give us. I know that. In my heart of hearts I know that this was the right choice, bringing us to the proper ending of our seemingly never ending story. Books always seem never ending to me, until I'm staring out at the bottom of the last chapter. Only, I had hoped that as I wrote out this final prologue to my own story, it wouldn't be such a bitterly solitary musing.

Oh, In suppose I could start over, if I wanted. And I'm not alone, not really. It's just, I find myself feeling as though I'm once again both at the beginning and middle of things. As though those moments in time could somehow exist at once. For the second time in my life I look to find myself surrounded my familiar strangers, and completely out of my depth in how to function within the confines of my own life. I don't know that I have the strength left to start this all over again, without him here to anchor me. I needed him here to bridge the gap, be a constant to me as I change and adapt.

I know it's what he wanted me to do. This whole starting over again, or where I left off business. But he's been more than selfish enough, in his own way. And frankly, he has done more sulking over the years than I could ever even hope to accomplish in my one small human life. So if I want to spend the next sixty odd years sitting around pouting like a small child, all the while accumulating an ungodly amount of cats, then I will do as a damn well please!

Currently my pleasure consists mostly of moping about a small town in Scotland, in an exact replica of one of the properties we used to own. No cats as of yet. But if those damnable birds don't soon find another stoop on which to practice their early morning mating calls, I'll get myself an ambitious Tabby, name it Leela, and let her have at it.

I always did love Leela. I was most fond of the undoubting confidence that she carried in her own strength as she moved about the universe. I was also pretty fond of that animal skin bathing suit she considered to be appropriate clothing, and the particular shade of pink he would turn whenever I caught him out for noticing. But again, I digress on the matter. At least for the moment. The goal here is to sketch out some kind of consistent and relatively linear narrative, and I was already a fair ways down the rabbit hole before I first ran into her.

...The truth is, I can't imagine undertaking this, without writing it for him. I know that, in reality, this is all just for my benefit. But I think maybe I'll write this down to replace all of the conversations I wish we'd had. In lieu of the time where I briefly dared to imagine that we could both just be honest with one another. No more secrets, no more burdens, no more "spoilers" to weave through like carefully buried mines. Just as I was given the opportunity to understand him, I wanted him, just this once, to finally understand me. All of me. I have spent innumerable and countless days dreaming of a time where we might finally, truly find each other on the same page. And so, I will spell my story out to you, all the while pretending it were him. So that I can imagine each dawning of understanding as it would flicker across his face; each smile, each pucker of the brow, and the sadness that would sometimes come and go. Then, once I can feel myself understood, maybe then there will be some meaning that I have thus far overlooked. Something that will help compel me back into the world one last time. Or maybe I'll find some sort of peace before I, too, find myself on the last page.

But really, enough of my nattering melodramatics! This is hardly the way that anyone should hope to gain any sort of interested readership! I blame the Doctor, of course, for all of it.

Honestly, the man was an absolute drama queen, and after a while it sort of rubs off. It makes sense though, I suppose. After a few centuries (or millennia) you have to increasingly put your own personal work into making your life interesting, and exciting, and new. Can't expect the Universe to go doing all the work for you, forever. Probably best not, really. In my experience, the Universe's version of "exciting" has a few more rows of decidedly pointed teeth than most people would be comfortable with.

So on that note, let us dive in, face first, with no particular plan other than a potentially impressive "thing," which we can build as we go along, and see where it will take us!

My name is Kay (It's short for something, depending on who you are and who you ask). I am/was a Human-Time Lord experiment that mercifully had nothing to do with the Silence (those idiotic bastards), and everything to do with Fred. Which, if you're reading this Fred, my dear, call me. I mean it, I'm not amused. My age is none of your business and frankly too depressing at this point to warrant me doing the math. But let's just say that I'm 27-ish, and have been for a very, very long time. Except for that period where I was jail-bait, but you'll hear more about that shortly. I lived a perfectly lovely, not by any means boring life that I was actually rather fond of until I was 25 years old. Then one day, I met a woman. And then I woke up on the inside of a very blue box that was, rather predictably, crashing.

This is not simply a story about love, although it did, eventually, get there. This is not one of those stories where a perfectly ordinary girl is swept away in a whirlwind by a fabulous and impossible man (with a box), only to then be shown, for the first time, her place in the world and through his eyes how wonderful she already is.

I rather went kicking and screaming, in a decidedly undignified fashion, and was plopped down into the middle of absolute chaos. This then happened again on countless more occasions, usually in various states of embarrassing undress. While impossible describes the Doctor perfectly, I've always found the word ridiculous to be far more apt than fabulous. And for the record, I already knew my own worth quite well, thank you very much. I didn't need it reflected back to me through him or any other man in order to see it. Except, perhaps, for the handful of times where I did. Finally, a person's true place in the world is the one they build for themselves, piece by piece, with every decision they make. The ones simply given to us by others are rarely as satisfying as the ones we carve out ourselves. That is the only sort of place, I've ever had an interest in staying in. Surprisingly enough, both the Universe and the Doctor's ego (brought together into the sentence by virtue of the similarity of their size) survived this.

I am/was/will be the Doctor's partner, and this is my story.

...

(Seriously Fred, there is still the matter of one of two particularly important loose ends that need tending to. Let's not seriously fracture the entirety of the space/time continuum simply because you're the kind of date who doesn't return calls.)