Their time capsules were a familiar sight to many a neighboring planet, and experience and knowledge was shared. But things change, and now few civilizations remembered the sound of TARDISes, or the time travellers. Indeed, one planet did not even know that other civilizations existed beyond its own atmosphere.
It was to this planet that one of the explorers went - and stayed.
She enjoyed it at first - the culture shock, the single sun that rose and fell without a Dome in the way to obscure her view - the way the people seemed at one with their environment, adapting to it instead of adapting it to them - the crude way they reproduced, random and joyful, without computers and gene selection, so much like the ancient Gallifreyans had once done.
Her endless summer lasted many lives as she hopped this tiny globe in her trusty Type 4 TARDIS, seeing countries rise and fall, watching Earth grow up, writing everything down in her journals to take home. Oh, the stories she could tell her stuffy friends stuck back home in the Capitol!
But as she aged, so did her TARDIS, and the day came when she opened its doors and found only an empty cupboard. No warm reassuring hum. No telepathic bond. After countless millenia, it had given up the ghost. She was marooned now. No identification. No money. No country. Nothing that the newly industrialised world required as proof of one's right to exist on it. And no more lives, either. Her age was lost to history, but she could remember every one of her regenerations, and knew there were no more coming.
For a time she wandered, lost and frustrated, and then she did something completely irresponsible.
She fell in love with one of the locals.
--
"I didn't know my mother that well...she died when I was seventeen."
"Tell me what you do remember."
"She never got sick, until the very end. By then it was too late and she went down fast. But growing up, I don't remember her ever going to a hospital or a doctor for anything. They told me it was cancer that killed her...but who knows?"
"Anything else that seemed unusual?"
"Well - one time, I was in her room, looking around, and I found these books in a cupboard. She really freaked out when she saw me there, and told me to never look in that cupboard again. I tried to ask Dad what they were, but he didn't know."
"Where are the books now?" he asked.
"I don't know, probably in the attic or something at my Dad's house."
--
Rose had gotten herself lost in the TARDIS. Again. At her insistence, the Doctor had opened the interior console room door, handed her a ball of string and said "Have fun!" The string had run out an hour ago, and she was in a blank corridor, dimly lit. But it was warm, and not at all frightening - just the opposite in fact. There was a feeling of safety here, and as Rose turned the corner, she saw a door she hadn't seen the last time she'd passed. She opened it and went through.
It was
the messiest library Rose had ever seen. Books were piled to the
ceiling(if there was one, she couldn't see it) and covered most of the
floor. In some places they had been scooped into rough shapes, like the
walls of a maze that beckoned. Rose shuddered. She was already lost
enough.
A nearby stack caught her eye. It wasn't as dusty as the
others - either it was new or the TARDIS had dusted it just for her to
find. Given what she'd seen it do of late, either possibility seemed
likely. She opened the top book and turned to the first page, which was
covered in a strange script unlike anything she'd ever seen before,
even in her pagan friend's book of runic alphabets. Before she could
study it further, though, the letters shimmered and changed into block
English letters.
"A magic book," she whispered. But it was the TARDIS, translating the book telepathically for her. "No...it's a diary," Rose observed, reading the top line. But what a strange diary - the first entry was over 10,000 years ago.
--
The lights were bright, too bright! And shining right into her eyes as she bore down in what the irritating nurse promised would be "one last push now!" How many last pushes had it been? There was no time now, only pain and sweat and tears and those goddamn lights searing her retinas and bearing down now, the world ripping itself open in a flourish of pain and -
A child cried out, and now the pain was receding and there was emptiness inside her, but her arms were full as they pressed the newborn into them and she saw her own flesh and blood for the first time, this sweet impossibility with downy hair and massive sea-green eyes, and she wept anew, with joy this time. Her husband stepped into the room now, and sat beside the bed.
He held his big hands to the tiny face swathed in the blanket, and whispered "Imogene...we'll call her Imogene."
--
Now, some twelve years later, Imogene Tierney is wondering what in the nine hells her parents were smoking when they gave her such a dumb, old-fashioned name. They taunt her on the playground to the point where she begs her parents to let her go by a nickname, which they do.
--
Rose turns to the first page…
--
1900, Winter(they call it January here)
It happened again in the night. The dream of the child. Why is she so familiar to me?
As this body's wearing down, seems my mind's going as well. Is this
that dreaded dementia they warned us about in the Academy? Oh, the
Academy...it seems like a million years ago that I wore the ceremonial
collar and robes for the first time,took my title and diploma. I
remember the "girls" as we called ourselves - top in the class, closer
than subatomic particles - bet they're all dead now, just like him.
I never thought he'd die. They never said in the classes, or the manual. He didn't even know, though I suppose he could have looked ahead and found out. But who'd want to know the day their number was up? He's still with me, but they don't know. Better they don't.
--
Jeannie is a curious and moody thing at fifteen, more interested in books than boys, she has already read everything in the house twice over, and her weekly allowance was blown on a magazine that turned out to be more advertisements than content. She's seen the pile of books before, in her parents' room, and they look interesting in an old sort of way. Maybe they're occult, and she can whisper secret words from them to make the walls bleed or turn her enemies into slugs. She peers both ways down the hall and tiptoes in. An hour till Mom gets home at least. She's safe.
The books are in an old cupboard with a lock, but it's unlocked and Jeannie gets to the books easily, grabbing the first one on the stack. It's bound in red-brown leather with gilt-edged pages. Embossed into the cover are strange symbols. Occult indeed, Jeannie thinks. Jackpot! She cracks the book open and that delicious smell of paper, glue and age wafts out at her. Below her on the page are more of the symbols she can't read...but wait..they're changing now...blurring their shape into...
"PUT THAT DOWN!" Mom's voice. Caught!
"What are you doing home?" Jeannie squeaks, dropping the book. It hits the ground hard, and Mom dives for it. In a flash, the book and its companions are back in the wardrobe, which is locked by a key that Mom had strung on a necklace. So that's what...
"DID YOU HEAR WHAT I SAID, IMOGENE FORSYTHIA TIERNEY?"
Oh damn, Jeannie thinks - she's in Full Name Mode now. What've I done?
"Sorry Mom!" she yelps. The storm subsides.
"I know, honey, I shouldn't have yelled like that. But you shouldn't have been snooping about in our stuff. That cupboard is private. I want you to promise never to look in there again, and never tell anyone about the books in there. Not even your father."
"Why?" Jeannie asks.
"Just promise." And she gives Jeannie a strange look at that point, half-angry,
half-pleading, and Jeannie realizes that she's being trusted with something big...
--
"I just don't understand why she would keep that from me," Imogene says as they leave the cemetery.
"She must have had her reasons," the Doctor says thoughtfully, taking off his velvet coat. "It's unusual, but not unheard of, for this kind of thing to happen…"
He gives her a searching look. Her grey eyes stare back at him, accusing. "What?" she asks.
"When you were born..."
She sighs. "We've been over this already. Normal everything."
"You mean, normal for a human," the Doctor says. "That's it!"
"What?"
"She thought you were...no, no, no, this doesn't make sense! The DNA would have...how could the traits receded like that? Maybe she was..."
"Doctor?" she asks. "Tell me again how long they live."
He gives her an odd little smile. "Oh, thousands of years...if they're careful."
"Was she careful?"
For that he has no answer. He smiles again, and wraps the coat around her shoulders. Imogene feels his warmth in the soft fabric, and relaxes a little. The Doctor takes her hand in his, and they walk.
--
Early Spring, 1967
Well, it was bound to happen at some point. I didn't think I'd be doing it here though, alone. I didn't know it was possible alone - everyone I know did it at home or in their TARDIS. But my thirteenth life has begun now, and for better or worse, it's the last.
It's not a bad planet at all, really. I've spent the last 7 of my lives here, just - what is that word they use - globetrotting. In all its times and all its places, carefully avoiding my future selves. I never did encounter anyone else from home, and though I heard stories of a renegade in a blue box, we never met. He was after my time anyway, long after the rules changed. These young types never do respect their origins!
Seems strange for me to say that now, walking around in a body that looks twenty-five, but it can't be helped. Sometimes I do miss home and its strange little ways, but this is home for me now. They're friendly around here, and I've got a place to live and a job to do, and there's a very nice young man who lives across the hall from me.
--
Imogene is growing up, and reclaims her given name as she claims adulthood. Books have given way to boys, but not totally. The locked cupboard still haunts and taunts her, but she's respected her mother's will and avoided it, even now, as her mother lies in her sickbed and can't yell at her anymore.
There's a boyfriend now, Timothy's his name, and he's received her parents' blessing. They marry that summer, and by winter, her mother is gone.
--
Rose snaps the book shut. A sheaf of paper falls from its pages and she picks it up. It's a different color, written in a different hand. It says just one line:
"Dear Doctor - For everything you've given me, this is all I have to give you. I know she wouldn't mind. - Jeannie"
She races out of the room...
--
Imogene stares at the chart on the wall. Its shapes make no sense to her, the light and shadow of spine and tissues. The world has been reduced to one tiny circle in marker, inside what the oncologist says is her liver, and his voice seems as if it's coming down a tunnel from light-years away. Rambling on about T-cells and chemo and metastasization and survival rates.
Hers, he says, is about 10 percent, and she snaps back into the real world at the sound of the words said out loud.
"What do you mean, 10 percent?" she cries out. "I'm only thirty! I haven't had a chance to really damage my liver like that"
The
doctor seems unmoved. "It's not about drinking, Imogene, you know that
and I know that. This kind of cancer runs in families. Your mother died
of it as well, right?" Imogene nods mutely. "The tumors have likely
been growing for years, asymptomatic until now."
"What are you going to do about it?" she asks him.
"Well, there's not much we can do, except chemotherapy and radiation. A liver transplant may not even be enough, if the cancer spreads before a suitable donor is found." He takes a long look at her. "I'm sorry, but it's probably best that you get your affairs in order."
--
The corridors have never seemed shorter to Rose. It's as if the TARDIS is rearranging them just for her. Unknown to her, it is. She finds the console room easily, and the Doctor is under the console again, tugging at the perennial spaghetti of hanging wires within its luminous base.
"Doctor!" she cries. He sits up, bangs his head on the underside. "Ow!" he says, and stands up more carefully.
"You didn't tell me you'd had other...assistants," Rose says.
The Doctor looks sideways at her. "I'm nine hundred years old, Rose. A lot of people have wandered in these old corridors."
"Yes, but they never saw this, did they?" She holds out the book with the note in it.
He takes the book from her. "Let me see that!" He opens it and reads the note inside. His face falls. "Oh."
"What is it, Doctor? Who is she?"
A faraway look comes into in his eyes. "It's nothin'. Just...someone I...knew. A long time ago." He sets it down on the floor and closes the cover, returning his attention to the console.
"Why does it upset you so?" she asks.
"Just a mistake," he says, choking up slightly, "another stupid bloody mistake, and you really shouldn't be pryin' into me stuff Rose, some things are not for you!"
He rounds on her then, about to yell again, but stops at the look on her face. Her eyes are big and frightened. "I- I'm sorry," she says, turning to leave. "I'll go put them back."
"Rose-" She stops, turns around. "It's all right. I didn't mean to yell." The Doctor walks over to her, picks the book up off the floor. It falls open, as if wanting to be read, and he sighs.
"I let her down."
"Why?" Rose asks. "What happened?"
The Doctor flips to a page in the book, but he's only half reading it. "It was before you and I met," he says. "I'd gone to Earth for a bit of rest..."
--
2000
The light of dawn streams into the little room, but Imogene barely notices. All her strength is focused on holding on. Holding on until she can say goodbye. The doctors have run out of ideas, of treatments. She's been poked, doped and sliced open too many times to count, but the cancer keeps on spreading. Sometime in the last month it reached her brain and spinal cord, began the slow suffocation of her senses.
No more, she's said to the nurse, no more pills, no more monitors, no more bloody needles. She could feel every bit of her age now. So much of it. When was Tim going to get home? Was that the screen door now, and footsteps?
He's there in a heartbeat, squeezing her hand, stroking her pale face. She tries to speak, but her throat is too dry and he puts his finger gently to her lips. No words. He leans in and kisses her softly, one last time...
--
The TARDIS lands, and the Doctor steps out. There are no companions with him this time. They've all gone their own ways to their own lives. Lives...strange to think of it that way, as if he died seven times and yet only had the one life, its strand unbroken for so many centuries. There are no lines in his young face to betray the exhaustion he feels. The TARDIS is feeling it too, her paint faded in places, even though it's a facade.
There is no sound here, beyond the ambient noises of nature. The air is cool and damp in the dim light before dawn, and a slight breeze ruffles his curly light-brown hair. The stones paved here and there into the grass tell him this is a cemetery. The Doctor looks puzzled for a moment, then walks off into the grass.
--
Heads bow in mourning as the priest finishes the recitation. The ritual scattering of earth over the casket. The single white rose falls from Timothy's hands into the grave, and he walks away. Relatives surround him, clad in black, opening their arms to him, and Imogene Tierney is laid to rest. The little group of mourners disappear down the hill.
Several minutes later, the casket is immolated in a brilliant burst of light.
--
July 1987
I still can't believe I'm a mother. How did this happen? I've spent the last seventeen years wondering that, as I watch Jeannie grow up. She's the apple of her daddy's eye, and thank the Other that she was born in his image and not mine. She'll have a normal life. She'll fit in here like I never did.
--
Darkness. Warmth. Air.
Air?
She breathes deep, feels her limbs come to life. Is this heaven?
Folded up tight like origami, she discovers her limbs are pressed in on her. Above and below her is unyielding darkness. A surface of some kind. She presses up -
- and dirt cascades down on her. She screams. The dirt stops and the surface gives way above her, revealing the bright sunshine.
Slowly she begins to climb out of the hole, standing on the top of the box to reach the rim. Only when she reaches the cool grass above and looks back down does she realize it's a grave. The marker reads:
IMOGENE F. TIERNEY
1970 - 2000
REST IN PEACE
She panics, and runs away, bumping into gravestones as she passes them. Petals cascade down as she crashes into a memorial wreath. Everywhere is death, and she is alone.
This is Hell!
--
The Doctor has walked for several hours now. The sun is up and he squints to see. His foot slips, he narrowly misses falling into an open grave. He looks down into the hole. The casket's open as well. "No, no, this isn't right at all," he mutters to himself. By the side of the hole, nearly pounded into the grass, is a white rose. The Doctor picks it up.
A scream breaks the silence. He tucks the flower into his pocket and takes off running in the direction of the scream.
--
"When
I found her, she was a mess," the Doctor tells Rose. He bites his lip
to stop the next sentence. No need to tell Rose about that just yet. It'll only frighten her. "She was...well, she wasn't herself exactly..."
---
She's on the ground now, screaming at shadows, wearing the suit she was buried in, but it doesn't fit her. She cries and thumps the earth with her fist. The Doctor observes her carefully from behind a butterfly bush. Something's off. There are no graves in this area. She is not a mourner, but she is hysterical about something.
He steps out from behind the bush and approaches her. She is too worn out from her fit to fight him off. "Hello," he says. "I'm the Doctor. Are you all right?"
She looks up at him with swollen eyes. "Who am I?" she asks.
--
"It still doesn't seem real," Imogene says. "I don't feel real."
The Doctor puts his hand on hers. "You get used to it. Sort of. And the amnesia will wear off soon."
She sighs. Her head is still swimming with the shock of it all, but one thing is clear in her mind. I came back from the dead, she thinks to herself. Out loud she says, "I'll have quite a job explaining it to the family when I get home."
"You can't go home," the Doctor says. Imogene stares sharply at him.
"What do you mean? I can explain it...I'll say the doctors made a mistake! It was just a coma, I wasn't dead. People come back from being buried alive, you know."
"No, they don't. Not like this."
"What do you mean, not like this?" The Doctor digs into his pocket, produces a small mirror. He presses it into her hand.
Imogene looks into the mirror and screams. She throws it to the ground.
"Who - what - what happened? Where's my face? Oh, God what happened to my face?" She looks down at the rest of herself now, sees the long legs and arms, the slender fingers, the black hair, the -
She howls and falls to her knees. The Doctor kneels down beside her, singing comforting words in a strange tongue. They reach into her heart, sounding for all the world like the old song her mother used to sing when she was little, when it was quiet in the house and every little creak would wake her.
"How did you know that song?" she asks eventually.
He doesn't say anything, just presses his fingers to her wrist. Now he nods to himself, and takes her hand in his. He places her hand on her heart, and she feels its strong beat. Then he moves her hand to the other side...and Imogene feels a second heart beating. Her eyes widen and she opens her mouth, but he puts his finger to his lips. "Shhh." He lifts her hand gently, placing it on his own chest. Despite the thick waistcoat and shirt, she can feel it here too - his twin hearts.
"I don't understand," Imogene says. The Doctor releases her hand, and places his hand on her cheek. "I do," he says. "You've just regenerated."
--
"Imogene," Mother's voice calls. So soft now, so weak. "Come here a minute." Petticoats rustle as Imogene and her ten feet of wedding dress come flying into the room. "Yes Mom?"
She smiles. "Oh, you look fantastic, my dear. But you're not quite ready yet." She reaches into her pocket, takes out a length of chain with a metal pendant on it. It's teardrop-shaped, with patterns embossed into the metal like lines of a map. "I want you to wear this today."
"Oh, Mom..." Imogene breathes. "I can't-"
"Of course you can." She presses the necklace into her daughter's hand. "It's your 'something old.' This is very old, and now it's yours."
--
"Shh, shh, it's all right," the Doctor is saying, as Imogene sobs into his shoulder. "It's all right."
She breaks from his hold, standing up. "All right? Look at me, Doctor, just look! What is this? This isn't me - my family thinks they buried me an hour ago - and I can't even go back and explain it to them...they'll never believe it! How could it be worse?"
"You could be dead," he says simply. She gives him a look of utter hatred. "I wish I were dead, Doctor," she says.
"You don't mean that."
"My life's ruined, Doctor. It's over."
"But it's not, don't you see? It's not. And it's not going to be for a very long time, Imogene. Now listen to me, I don't know exactly how this all happened but it did! And that's what's important. I know - it's not fair, you didn't get a say, but this is the way it is, and all I can do is help you get through it but you have to get through it because you're not going to die for a very, very, very long time, Imogene. You're going to have to find peace some other way."
Imogene looks at the Doctor. His eyes meet hers in wordless contact. He resists the urge to touch her mind with his own. It's too soon for that. Instead he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a crushed white rose. He puts it in her palm and closes her fingers over it.
"It was your grave I saw earlier, wasn't it?" he asks. She opens her hand, stares down at the flower. She's been to enough funerals to know what it means and who it's from. Her hearts ache at the thought of him.
"Why were you in that grave, Imogene? What killed you?"
Imogene closes her eyes, and finds the memories. "Cancer," she says eventually.
The Doctor picks up the mirror from the ground, holds it out to her again. "Not anymore," he says with a little smile. She takes the mirror, sets it down. She doesn't want to see that face again, not yet.
"Is that true?" she asks. He nods. "It's the reason we regenerate in the first place. To heal."
Imogene looks down at herself again, more curious than afraid. She's taller now, and the pants on her suit don't even reach her ankles. A quick shrug of her shoulders and the old jacket falls to the ground. She kicks off the shoes and looks at her toes, then her hands. Her old fingers were short and stubby. Now they're long and thin, and her wedding band is loose on the ring finger. She takes it off and holds it in her hand. She touches her throat, finds a necklace there. The pendant is in the shape of a teardrop. She moves her hands through her hair. It's long, black, almost to her elbows. To have hair again, after the chemotherapy killed her curls….she turns and looks at the mirror lying beside her. Closing her eyes, she picks it up and holds it in front of her.
"Don't be afraid," the Doctor whispers. "It's still you in there."
She opens her eyes. Grey eyes rimmed with thick lashes look back at her. The round face, the pug nose, the freckles – gone. She raises her hand to touch this stranger's face, with its high cheekbones and wide mouth, and gasps when her hands touch her own flesh.
"Why does it happen like this?" she asks. "Couldn't it just…I don't know…erase the disease? Why did I change?"
"It's just how it works," the Doctor says. He laughs suddenly. "You should have seen how I turned out the first time…"
"I mean it, Doctor! Why did it happen at all? I know everyone doesn't do this – why did I?"
The Doctor stands up then, extending his hand to her. She grabs it and he pulls her up. "Walk with me," he says. "I have an idea."
--
Two years have passed since Imogene's mother died, and the strange necklace still weighs heavy on her neck. Sometimes, when Timothy is asleep, she spends long hours at the computer researching amulets and symbols, looking for the name of the pattern on the necklace. But nobody knows. She wears it anyway, openly on her shirt front in case someone recognizes it someday, but it keeps finding its way back under her shirt... as if it doesn't want to be seen.
--
Imogene looks at the necklace in her hand. It had fallen out of her shirt just after the change - she couldn't use that other word yet - and not hidden itself since. The Doctor told her it was a key. But where was the lock?
She stops for a moment, closes her eyes and breathes deep. The memories flood her and she swallows down the lump in her throat. If there was a way back somehow…she stops that train of thought cold. If there was a way, the Doctor would have told her, surely.
The white cupboard was moved to the attic when her mother died, she remembers that. But was it still there? Imogene and the Doctor climb the stairs to the attic and open the door. It's dark and cool up here, and the dust is undisturbed in thick layers upon everything. Her father never comes up here anymore. He won't know they've been here today.
The Doctor spots it first. "Imogene!" he whispers. "Is this..."
"Yes!" She comes over and brushes dust off the lock. "I never saw it locked before." The pendant goes easily into the lock and it clicks open. Inside are books, all bound in leather with gilt edges. The Doctor picks one up and reads the cover. "900 Year Diary," he says with a small smile. "I had one of these once. Never did find time to write in it."
"How did you read that?" Imogene asks. "I just saw squiggles before." But he wasn't listening.
"All this time, right here in front of me," he says to himself. "Another survivor."
"Doctor, what are you talking about?"
He says just one word. "Gallifrey."
--
Rose stares at the Doctor, who is still reading, not even trying to translate the writing now as the tears fall. She asks again. "What happened, Doctor?"
He doesn't look up. "I killed her," he says, closing the book.
--
"What's Gallifrey?" Imogene asks.
"My home planet," the Doctor says, "and your mother's. It was one of the oldest civilizations in existence, until it was destroyed. But it's been rebuilt since. We could even go there if you like, Imogene."
"Don't call me that anymore."
"Why not?" he asks, as he sets the books down.
Imogene frowns. "I've been thinking," she says. She looks down at the floorboards, makes little patterns in the dust with the toe of her shoe. She can remember being so close to her mother growing up, yet now she feels betrayed. Why couldn't she know? What was so wrong with being different? And then, suddenly, she understands.
"When I was little," she says, "there was this one girl in class that everyone picked on mercilessly. I didn't know why. They would spit on her, call her names, one time they even prank called her house until she cried. I asked one of them why they did it, they said 'because she's different.' And in high school, the boys beat up on anyone they thought was 'queer.' They didn't care what the person was like, if they stood out, they caught hell for it." She stroked the door of the cupboard and looked at the Doctor. "I guess...I guess she thought that would happen to me, if I turned out like her. So when I was born and they all thought I was human..." she trails off.
"You are," he says to her. "It's possible to be two things at once."
Imogene sighs and picks up one of the books. She flips through it. The symbols are still unreadable as she runs her fingers over their strange shapes. So much history in these books – her planet's, her mother's, her own. So much to piece together.
"You know what I found out, Doctor, on those long nights online? About my name?"
He shakes his head.
"Imogene. It means in the image of her mother. Part of her knew, Doctor. Why else would she call me that?" She stops now, turns to face him again. "I may have her DNA, but I won't hide it like she did. I'm not going to be ashamed of what I am." Imogene looks away at the cupboard again, remembers the smell of the books and the day she found them. "Call me Jeannie," she says finally.
"Come here, Jeannie," the Doctor says, taking her hand in his. "I have something to show you." He reaches into the pocket of his waistcoat and pulls out a small silver device. He presses a button on the device. In the cold, musty attic, the air begins to stir with a strange noise. The dust whirls itself off the ground and a shape begins to form out of thin air…
--
Just for a moment, the ancient floorboards creak under the new weight, as a mysterious blue box appears in the Tierneys' attic. No one sees the two figures lugging the battered old cupboard into the box. And no one hears the unearthly wheezing as the blue box fades away again.
--
Jeannie circles the console room for the tenth time. "It's massive," she says at last. "Much bigger than I thought it would be."
The Doctor grins. "Everyone says that."
She fiddles with the cupboard again, looking up every so often at the TARDIS ceiling above her. "So this box was once like yours? A spaceship?" The doors aren't locked, and the diaries spill out.
"Not just a spaceship," he says, "A timeship. This is my TARDIS. That box there was a Type 4 TARDIS, according to your mother's notes. She must have been very old...perhaps even at the end of her life, when you were born." He squints up at the central column, fiddles with some knobs and dials on the console, and the column rises and falls with a bluish glow, accompanied by a wheezing, groaning sound as it takes flight.
"Where are we going?" she asks, feeling the massive engines surge into life below her.
"Home," he says simply. "You've got a lot of catching up to do."
--
Rose puts her hand on the Doctor's shoulder. "What do you mean you killed her, Doctor? Tell me."
He doesn't look up from the book. "I took her home," he says simply. "She wanted to know where she came from. She wanted to move on, let her family move on. So I took her to Gallifrey. We saw everything - the Capitol, the Southern Mountains, the wild auroras in the night sky. We even found her mother's biodata extract and learned who she was, saw the Chapterhouse and the family Looms. And when it was all seen and done, she told me she was staying. She'd passed the entrance exams for the Academy...she was going to be a Time Lord."
"And?"
He turns to her now, his cheeks stained with tears. "The Time War happened, Rose. She died with the rest of them. And it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't found her that day and taken her home. If I'd just left her there in the graveyard- "
"She would have died some other way, some other time. What else could you have done?"
He shakes his head. "Oh, Rose," he says, "I could have kept her with me." He sets the book down, places the note back inside it, and leaves the room.
-- end --