Izsterlia thrashed about, knotting the layers of blankets around her legs, whilst others made murky puddles of fabric on the floor by the bed.

She lay flat on her back now, staring at the ceiling, a scowl fixed on her face.

A lot of what she did in life was mainly through necessity and sleep was one of those things. She had figured out a long time ago, whilst at the academy, that sleep was the thing you did in order to be ready for battling through another day. You couldn't lie there thinking or worrying, you just simply switched off and that was it.

It didn't always occur like that for her though, if she was completely honest with herself. Tonight was definitely one of those occasions.

Her room was pitch black, but despite there being no light source, she was still acutely aware of her surroundings.

She reached out to the little wooden table at the side of her bed, and found a little flat square object. She wafted it a couple of times until it illuminated, filling the room with an eerie pool of bright blue light.

She brought it towards her eyes, squinting with its sudden brightness "Urgh, 1:30am relative" she murmured "brilliant".

She reached back over to the little table and dropped the square of light down onto it. She sighed loudly, as if making herself aware of her own objection and punctuated it by flapping her lips together as she let out yet another huffing sigh.

Deciding that there was little use trying to sleep, she sat up in her small single bed, letting the remaining covers fall to her waist. She swung her legs over the side of the thin mattress and stood in the blackness.

"Lights" she said quietly.

The single source of light in the ceiling dimly flickered on, lighting the small room that she called her own aboard the TTC. Its current and longest running occupant preferred to call it his 'TARDIS', a colloquial term that she had little care for, but had no great aversion to.

Her room was small and simple, exactly as she had specified.

It was little more than nine feet wide and twelve feet long, enough for her to place a small metal framed bed, a little wooden night stand by the head of it and a wardrobe for her meagre belongings. She had been bemused by the Doctor's suggestion that she should perhaps consider moving to more comfortable quarters whilst she remained aboard. She had also wanted to laugh when he had once poked his head round the door, wrinkled his nose in distain and trotted off again, muttering something about it reminding him of a prison cell from the eighteen-nineties. Izsterlia could only presume he had been referring to a time period - one where prison cells were not especially pretty.

She cast a tired eye about the room and found everything in order.

Her long black boots stood obediently next to the wardrobe, leaning slightly against it as though even they had managed to find some sort of repose.

"I'm envying boots now" she sighed, sliding her long thin fingers over her face.

She turned to face her little wooden stand and picked up a simple wooden hair brush, and began to pull its prongs gently through her mass of softly falling raven curls. After she was happy that every lock was suitably detangled, she placed it back down carefully, frowning at it.

Brushing her hair usually had the odd tendency to make her sleepy, but it hadn't worked this time.

Why couldn't she sleep?

She stood by her bed and closed her eyes, chewing on her bottom lip.

The answer was stark and obvious, but it did not make it any easier for her to admit or digest. How was she to reconcile this growing, no, burgeoning mass of messy, knotted thoughts and feelings that now easily occupied her mind?

It was like a virus – it had invisibly and unnoticeably gained access to her hearts and soul, mercilessly seizing her. There were few things she could imagine that could possibly cure her and so far, all the ones she had suggested to herself made her feel sick.

She breathed in deeply and exhaled just as slowly.

This jumbled web of emotion, heaving like a stormy sea inside her, was getting clearly out of hand now, especially if it was starting to interfere with her sleep. It had already stopped her eating, paying attention and made her stumble over words. She hated being unable to even control herself, she just wanted to be free of it all – but that would mean taking one of the very unpleasant options open to her and she had already decided none of them were viable.

Right now, in the early hours of the morning, all she wanted to do was sleep, but then, what sleep did she really have?

Her mind entwined her thoughts with her feelings and played out impossible scenario's where her desires were more than sated and realised. She would wake in the morning aching in every single way, brimming with wants and needs that she never knew she was even capable of.

She wasn't a coward, which was something no-one had ever had the guts to say to her, at least to her face. In fact, she had garnered an infamous reputation back on Gallifrey for charging in and rolling her sleeves up. She had never understood why problems that had cropped up within Time Lord society had managed to cripple it for so long. Then along she came, a whirlwind of determination and resolve.

So why couldn't she just deal with this? Deep down she knew why and she hated herself for it. It was fear. She feared the consequences of her actions and it was that fear that kept her stuck between an extremely large rock and a particularly impenetrable hard place. How did humans pick their way through this? To them, these sorts of matters were common place and routine. Back home, these sorts of fancies and feelings were instantly dismissed and laughed away. What was it she was told at the Prydon Academy? Time Lords do not need to engage in such 'business' as they were evolved far beyond the need for that. After those words were uttered, the tutor would usually glance wistfully at the seal of Rassilon above the door and then scan the room sternly for any student not looking as though they completely agreed.

She had been sent to the Dean's office immediately.

She had disagreed instinctively there and then and the price for having that opinion was ridicule by her fellow students, which was nothing new, and a firm telling off by the Dean of the Chapter. Undeterred, she had in fact written a very cleverly worded paper on the matter and published it. She'd have even gotten away with her 'free thinking' if it hadn't been for her tutor, Lord Elsbub, a thin, silently angry type, showing it to the Dean. She'd been suspended over it whilst it had been 'investigated' and she was only allowed back into the academy if she agreed to write a paper retracting it.

She had. An even more clever, innuendo filled missal named "Reasons not To Love ".

Now her mind had wickedly made her admit it to herself by dragging that old memory up!

"Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!" she hissed to herself, as she hopped about in a little circle. She had sworn never to use that word in relation to how she felt. No, it wasn't that particular emotion she felt towards him was it. Was it? Her tired and aggrieved head spun as a torrent of newly formed ideas stomped about inside her head like an army of trolls thumping over a wooden bridge.

She knew she should give in and let the thoughts form and then fall apart again until they settled into some form or other.

Not tonight though. Tonight she was completely determined to be free, even for just a short time.
"To the books" she muttered cryptically to herself and she shuffled forwards to find her slippers and to shrug on her long grey dressing gown that hung limply on the door of her wardrobe.

She stepped out into the corridor of the ancient time travel capsule and turned left.

Heading left, she had found, was usually the best bet when it came to navigating around the TARDIS. It moved itself about regularly, like it was stretching itself. The only problem with this, was that it would rearrange things at impromptu moments.

The upshot of which, resulted in the semi-regular occurrence of one emerging out of the bathroom clad in little more than a towel and taking three quarters of an hour trying to find your room again.

It was times like that, that Izsterlia missed the more up-to-date models of the TTC's that were used now on Gallifrey. She never had those sorts of problems on them, to the contrary, when it came to designing upgrades, she and the gaggle of chief designers and engineers would 'um' and 'arr' for months trying to find a way of somehow improving on perfection.

This made her smile as she trundled down the darkly lit corridors that snaked back and forth and up and down. The bureaucracy always did make her smile, it was so pointless and so wasteful, but it gave people security and a sense of purpose, so who was she to cut through all of that red tape?

Other times, she did mind. Very much indeed, especially when faced with the High-Bloody-Council. Just the thought of them made her more awake and alert as she walked along, picking up her pace a bit. She tended to view them as a pack of self-indulgent idiots whose only goal in life was to make her own administration as difficult as possible.

She muttered several expletives under her breath which gave her an enormous sense of satisfaction by the time she was finished. It was safe to say there was no love lost between the upper echelons of government on Gallifrey and the Commander.

As she huffed and grumbled, her mind decidedly taken off the 'other matter', she reached the door she was seeking: the library.

She had come to really enjoy the library on board the TARDIS; it was very unlike any aboard the newer type TTC's that she was used to working with. In fact, it wasn't anything like any she had ever encountered, which was probably why she liked it so much.

In every other library she had ever been in, she had never had a book physically brought to her by a turtle that then wandered back off into the dark forest of shelves and bookcases. Nor had she been greeted by two bats that insisted on seeking her out every time she entered and lying on her shoulders, purring loudly when she stroked them as she read.

She reached out in the dim light for the handle, when a noise suddenly arrested her ears, causing her hand to pause in mid-air.

It was a soft, bittersweet sound that gently dispersed on the air like perfume.

She turned her head in the direction it appeared to be coming from and followed it, curiosity getting the better of her. Her tired mind found itself easily susceptible, like a rat following the enchanting sound of the Pied Pipers playing.

Her feet seemed to know the way and she allowed herself to be led by them.

The sound was ethereal, like none other she had ever heard before. She was certain it wasn't a recording as it had a crystal clarity to it that separated it from past to present.

After a few minutes of wandering the corridors, she eventually came to the door that seemed to be the only barrier now between her and the music. She looked at it with puzzlement; it was the one that lead into the console room.

"Okay..." she said almost silently, smiling with her uncertainty and eagerness to investigate.

She pushed open the door as slowly and as noiselessly as she could possibly manage and peeped through the gap.

The entire console room was lit by only the blue light of the Time Rotor and the small glimmers of the controls and dials on the console. It cast a strange collection of fierce, jagged shadows all over the viewable objects, making them seem threatening and leering.

Far be it for Izsterlia to feel unnerved by being faced with any scene after her years in the military and before that, the Gallifreyan guard units, but this sent a shiver down her spine.

Her smiles had all faded now and were replaced by concern; why did this scene make her feel so uneasy? Then there was the music, that beautiful, heart rendering music that soared into the purest, highest octaves and dipped deep down, reaching into the listeners soul and rendering them open for all to see.

She wrapped her arms around herself in a bid to stave off the shivers that tumbled over her skin. Who was making this music? The Doctor? Surely not, he was hardly a philistine by any means, but despite the numerous talents he did surprisingly possess, she had not thought for one moment that he could play like that.

She looked around the room once more, but could not see another living soul. Perhaps it was a piece of music the Doctor had left on and forgotten about. Perhaps her ears deceived her and it was a recording after all. Yet when she touched the door in order to open it further, it trembled with the vibrations created by each note being played.

She crept in stealthily, now eager to solve the mystery.

She moved softly across to the dais, upon which the console itself stood.

As she got so close to it that she was about to lift her foot to step up onto raised platform, she saw him.

Transfixed now with her foot hanging in mid air, like she was about to start marching, she gaped at the figure with his back to her, playing the violin.