A/N: Hello readers, welcome to Heart of the Storm. This is something I've been working on for at least the last two years, trying to get it just right before beginning to post it. This will be an incredibly slow burn between the Doctor and my OC, quite possibly the slowest slow burn I've ever written, and that's saying something.

I know there are a lot of sources for Doctor who outside of the show, including audio stories and comics, but none of these will be taken into account in this story. This is strictly show-canon, and always will be (this makes things so much easier to track).

A lot of people have been doing 'Time-Lady' and 'timeline-jumping' stories (which, don't get me wrong, I love and spend hours reading myself) but I felt like I wanted to bring something a little different to the table. This story will be moving chronologically with the show, starting with nine and going forwards. I will be doing episode rewrites – but not every episode, only the ones I felt were crucial to keep the plot moving – and to balance it out I have original chapters and new adventures interwoven throughout.

I sincerely hope you enjoy reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it! We're about to go on a crazy journey together you guys, I hope you're ready for it! xx

PROLOGUE

"We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life."

- P. D. James

Hartley had always believed she'd been meant for more than this.

More than weekly meetings with her publisher, or late night writing while she could barely keep her eyes open, or press conferences where reporters asked her the same questions over and over about her novels; all of this while trying to deal with the general ups and downs of everyday life...

It was exhausting.

She liked it, don't get her wrong. She enjoyed her job, and she knew she had it a lot better than most of the working force.

She'd always wanted to write, ever since she learned how to properly hold a pencil in her hand. She loved the scratch of graphite under her fingers, loved the smell of old parchment, adored the feeling of a pen gliding over paper, and the way the keys of a computer sounded when she tapped away at them, the story appearing on the screen before her like her own special brand of magic.

She loved everything about writing, even the boring parts. But that didn't mean she didn't still want more out of life.

She wrote about all kinds of things: shooting stars and rockets, knights and dragons, aliens and vampires. She couldn't get enough of fiction, she couldn't get enough of adventure. It was like she was hardwired for writing, unable to stomach doing anything else with her time. Growing up, her dad had called her his Little Storyteller, and she supposed it was an accurate nickname.

She was content to daydream, to write out exciting stories and publish them for people old and young alike to read and enjoy. She knew those types of things didn't happen in real life, no matter how much she – and her readers – wished they did.

So, it was to say that she was at least mildly surprised when she was torn from the boring repetitiveness of her life and thrust into the real world, one that existed all around them, one that nobody knew about. She was moderately shocked when her universe, everything she'd ever known, was ripped out from underneath her and she was tossed into an adventure greater than even she could have ever imagined.

She was bewildered, terrified and ecstatic all at once, in every minute, of every day, in her insane new life that she still wasn't completely convinced wasn't a dream.

So, she was right in a way. She was meant for something bigger and greater and more meaningful than she could have ever predicted. It would bring her pain, yes, but didn't all things? It would also bring her such joy and such love that she wouldn't know what to do with it all.

This was the story of how she became the Heart, and the family she found along the way.