Annnnnd again!

My intro/disclaimer is the same as always: this type of story cannot be denied when it comes to me. They won't leave me alone until they're out of my head and into words. They are erratic and unreliable... well, they're jerks, basically. ;-) As usual, there are a few sci-fi aspects here, but they are excuses to get to the real objective. Which, is, of course, much less lofty: smut. Although I suppose that depends on who you ask!

I believe this will be a five-part story, and the chapters will be of inconsistent length. You'll like it. It's grittier and more "real," in a way, than some of the other smutty fics I've posted. In spite of the extraterrestrial and/or supernatural aspects, I think you'll find our human and Time Lord characters extremely relatable.

Hope you do, anyway!

And if you read, please review! Allons-y!

I

"What is this?" Martha Jones asked, standing in the doorway of the TARDIS, staring up at a giant, black building. To her, it looked like someone had taken a Middle-Eastern hookah pipe made from ebony, then enlarged and made some kind of church out of it.

"It's the Oracles' Abode," the Doctor told her. He stood behind her, gazing up at the same structure. "I'm hoping they'll have some answers for me."

"It's pretty cool."

"It is that."

"Are you sure I can't come with you?" she asked. "I'll be quiet, I promise."

"It's not a question of quiet," he said. "There are strict rules about who may enter. I had to supplicate to seek audience with one of the Oracles as it was - you saw. It was a whole ceremony thing, requiring proof of having attempted to solve the problem some other way. And then they wanted proof that I have no clairvoyance of my own."

"Don't you?"

"Shh, yes," he whispered. "But not at the moment. That's why we're here."

"How do you prove that you don't have clairvoyance?" she whispered back, just to be whimsical.

"They send information via psychic channels and measure your reaction, via psychic channels. If you have no reaction, apparently, then they know."

"Did you have to fake no reaction?"

"Nah," he said. "What they sent me... well, I could 'hear' it, as it were, but it was esoteric enough that I couldn't entirely capture the message. Which may or may not be a symptom of the problem we're trying to solve."

"Well, I have no clairvoyance," she protested. "And I helped you try and solve the problem! Doesn't that make me worthy?"

"It's not a question of worthy either," he said, walking up the ramp and retrieving his coat to put on. "They want as few people as possible traipsing through there, exposed to their mojo. As it is, they aren't that keen on people with actual problems coming in, let alone their companions, who have no problems."

"I have problems. I'm riddled with problems! Look at me!"

The Doctor laughed. "I'll be back soon."

Martha sighed. "Fine. But I want to hear everything about it later."

"Sure," he promised, patting her on the shoulder as he squeezed past her, out the door of the TARDIS.

The Doctor stood in a dark room, waiting. The meagre lighting only shone on one end of the oblong-shaped space. The walls, he could barely see, were decorated with a swirling pattern of deep red and black.

After a few minutes, a door behind the lights opened, like the spreading portals of a lift. He was startled; he hadn't even noticed there was a door there. A wide platform of some kind appeared, and began pressing forward toward him, into the room. On it, there was a woman, sitting at a big black table. She was large, a few steps beyond "plump," and had a very pleasant face. She was dressed in rich-looking brocaded fabrics of red, purple and gold, including something that looked like a chef's hat.

"A Time Lord," she said in a half-questioning, half-mocking fashion. "I was told that the client was guaranteed to have no clairvoyance of his own."

"Well, that's why I'm here, I think," the Doctor replied. "Sorry, how did you know I was a Time Lord?" He had been very careful not to reveal this fact when he had communicated with the Dispatchers that vet clients for the Oracles.

"It's all over your aura, my love," she said.

"Will you still speak with me?"

"Of course," she told him. "Doctor. Is that what I call you? I find you fascinating. I've never met a Time Lord before. And if the Dispatchers were convinced of your lack of clairvoyance, then that must truly mean something is amiss. Please, sit."

The Doctor cast about, and behind him, he found a chair that he was certain had not been there before. He sat, crossing one ankle over the opposite knee.

"I'll assume the problem is something to do with diminished powers or senses," she said.

"Twice, I was not able to suss out the cause of a problem that should have been routine for me," he began, gravely. "On the desert planet of Affo Largo, the Dusk Vultures were swallowing big swathes of time energy, which was causing nomadic tribes to fall into void holes by the dozen, reducing their populations to desperate numbers. But I could not see the time energy disappearing, couldn't feel it. I had to do actual research to find out what the Dusk Vultures resort to when there is no more darkness to feed upon. Only then could I properly be rid of them."

"Oh my," said the Oracle. "Go on."

"Then, I was called into a government facility in the Kheldspan Sector, where there seemed to be a session of their Hemispheric Assembly that was caught in a time loop. I watched the Presiding Senator bang his gavel and pass the same law a total of eighty-nine times, as well as all of the argument leading up to it. I spent hours in the assembly chamber, looking for wormholes. I spent another few hours doing research again, trying to determine if there had been a trip in the sequence of events somehow on that planet, but I was unable to determine the cause. When my companion and I decided to take a break, we went back to my vehicle, the TARDIS, whose Time Rotor was detecting, and already beginning the process of repairing, a breach in the time vortex, bleeding into the Kheldspan Sector. It was able to seal the gap and release the session from the loop, but I should have known, instinctively, upon entering that chamber, that there was a vortex leak. I'm a Time Lord - it's in my blood and guts to know these things. I sense them, the way an animal senses an impending tremor, or..."

"Or the way I sense auras," said the Oracle.

"I'll take your word for that one. But, understand... it's not entirely gone," he qualified. "It's like the knowledge, the sense, is scratching at me, but like it's locked away inside a little box where I can't get to it. It's hard to explain."

"Well, this is a disturbing problem, Doctor," she told him. "I'm glad you've come to me. As the last of your kind, you cannot afford to have these powers weakened."

"I've started to wonder what exactly makes me a Time Lord, if I can't sense anomalies in time."

"What indeed," she commented. "But I believe I have an idea of the cause."

"Really? Already?"

"Yes, sir," she said. "Since I entered this room, your aura has indicated to me beyond a doubt that you are a Time Lord. However, it has also indicated a fracture. It has only grown deeper as you have been speaking about it."

"A fracture in my aura?"

"Yes, it's difficult to understand for those who are not readers themselves. Doctor, your energy is incomplete somehow. You're still you, you're still a Time Lord, but something is... incomplete. I don't know how else to put it."

"Great," he sighed. "What can I do about it?"

She stood, and made her way round the table and off the platform. In her girth, she took a while to walk to the Doctor, but she never broke eye contact with him. When she was about three feet away, she began looking at the area just above and around his head.

"Oh, yes, your energy is definitely incomplete," she confirmed. "And I'm sensing something added, like an appendage upon your aura."

"Something that doesn't belong?"

"Sort of."

"Is it dangerous?"

She looked him again in the eyes. "Doctor, let me ask you: have you been exposed to, say, genetic variation?"

"Erm, yeah," he said flatly. "I've regenerated completely, nine times over."

"No, not that," she said, shaking off his words. "I mean something unnatural. Something that takes natural energy, gifted by the universe, and perverts it."

"Oh," he said. "Yes, I have."

"Had you been noticing your diminished senses before being exposed?"

"No you mention it... no!"

"Has someone been exposed to it alongside you?"

"Yes."

"Who is that?"

"My friend Martha," he said. "She and I got trapped in a machine that jostles existing DNA and, as you said, mutates it, perverts it into something unnatural."

"I know that Martha cannot be Gallifreyan. What is she?"

"She's human."

"Oh," said the Oracle sprightly. "Okay, that answers one question, if not others. That addition to your aura I mentioned, it's something warmer, almost. That must be Martha's humanness reflecting upon you."

"Okay... so are you saying that our energies got mixed up together in that machine?"

"Yes, a bit. But don't worry. She has not lost any of her humanness because of you."

"But, she has part of my energy, and I need to get it back. Right?"

"Well, unfortunately, you can't get it back completely," she said. "It's like mixing black and white paint. All you will ever have is grey - you will never be able to separate the black from the white again."

The Doctor sighed. "Fabulous."

"But the bizarreness of this, Doctor, lies in the fact that her merely having a piece of you should not diminish you in this way. She is using it somehow."