AN: Hoo boy. Yet another long-term story I need to keep going.
I won't write it if it doesn't get enough popularity, though, so review/favorite/alert if you want it to keep going. Not trying to guilt-trip or anything, there's just a lot going on, and I can't actually keep up stories that no-one is reviewing or liking right now.
Veronica was a very light sleeper. She had been for all eight years of her life.
She also had a very potty mouth that her parents were trying their best to get rid of, the poor dears. That, however, is an entirely different story.
The point is, when Veronica (known to her dearest friends as Vivi) heard screams from her parents' room that night, she woke up.
As she was walking out of her room, she knew something was wrong.
For one thing, there were screams coming from her parents' room, although the screams had presently disappeared.
For another thing, there was a police box in her living room.
As well as a strange man with a rather odd bow tie.
And just to make the overbearing surrealism of the situation complete, the man was talking to a strange, translucent, eel-like creature that was hissing and snapping at him.
"What the hell is that thing?" Veronica asked from the doorway, pointing at the creature, her eyes as wide as dinner plates.
"Oh, hello!" The man looked over towards her bemusedly. "Bit of a mouth on you, isn't there?"
"Watch out!" Veronica shrieked, hiding her eyes as the creature lunged at the man.
"Naughty, naughty!" The man laughed, twirling a strange green-and-silver contraption in the creature's face. "You know what happens if I activate this, don't you? Alien technology," he called over his shoulder to the frightened girl. "The Atraxi will be scanning for non-terrestrial tech, and nothing is less terrestrial than a sonic screwdriver. Of course, it helps that I have helped capture an escaped multiform before… Well, when I say 'helped,' I mean I pretty much did all the work."
Veronica stood where she was, a strange expression of fear and amusement crossing her face.
The man saw this and kept going. "See, the Atraxi and this specific breed of multiform have just a bit of a feud. Well, a bit more than just a bit. Quite a bit more, actually. One or the other invaded a planet the other thought they had claim to quite a while back, and as you people say, the rest is history." He tossed his contraption into the air, where it flipped a few times before he easily caught it, then pressed the button.
Veronica stumbled, hands clamped over her ears, as a high, keening sound filled the room. "You see," the man called over the sound, "this little beastie has only been here for a week at the most. Not nearly enough time to form a psychic link. No other forms, no way to hide."
She had no idea what was going on, but she handled it quite admirably for an eight-year-old. Calmly accepting the sudden appearance of a beam of light coming in through her living room and resting on a multiform prisoner; as the Atraxi, a race of living eyeballs, prepared said prisoner to be incinerated-that takes quite the level of control for an eight-year-old.
Admittedly, she did throw out a few choice curse words and bit her lip until it bled several times—but what did you expect? She was eight.
Her patience, however, was tested as a young man came out from her parents' bedroom and informed the bow-tie man—apparently called "The Doctor"—that her parents would need medical attention quite soon, as they were losing a lot of blood.
Veronica was not amused at this point.
Unfortunately, she never got to ask her most pressing questions, as a young, female redhead leaned out of the police box and informed the two men that she had called the police and an ambulance, both of which would be there shortly.
So little Veronica was left to watch as the blue box faded away in front of her eyes, the strange Doctor and his odd companions with it.
OoOoO
As Veronica grew older, she became obsessed with this Doctor. She did not ever believe her psychiatrists, who told her that he was a product of her imagination that she had created to help her deal with the break-in to her house and stress of her parents becoming hospitalized.
There were so many holes in this theory, she had decided, that there was no way it was possible.
For one thing, she had only known these parents for a year at the time, being in foster care until they adopted her a year later.
To say she did not care for her parents, even at that young age, would be a blatant lie and, quite frankly, an insult to Veronica's character. Veronica, however, was so used to being moved from foster home to foster home (she had been in four different families' homes at that point) that her younger self regarded it as a sort of game, and she would not be unduly troubled if that had been the end of that particular round.
Also, Veronica was a very straightforward girl. If her own senses told her something was real, she believed it, unless said situation, person, place, or thing was placed under reasonable doubt.
Her high-school counselors' half-baked Freudian theories were, in her mind, quite below the level of reasonable doubt.
This may have been the reason that she found herself, at twenty-one, working for Torchwood as a secretary.
Of course, they kicked her out as soon as they found her hacking into the files on the Doctor, but the damage was done.
Veronica, now affectionately nicknamed "Vicky" by her friends (Vivi gets a bit old after you turn ten), had reached the information (showing a strange gift for working with technology along the way) and nothing would stop her getting what she needed.
OoOoO
Two years after her Torchwood career ended, we find Veronica sitting down in a computer chair, eating fish and chips, and attentively studying police logs with a very specific goal in mind.
Our protagonist was slight, but not superbly skinny. She was rather nice-looking, if ordinary, with nondescript eyes and rather plain skin color. Her hair was dirty blonde, and piled on top of her head messily. Veronica was, at this particular moment, wearing an oversized "I Heart NY" t-shirt (which was an ironic gift from her cousin) and boxers. Her sharp nose had a smattering of freckles across it, and her eyes flickered from side to side attentively behind her chic rectangular glasses.
They paused in their journey, her face transformed into an expression of mixed disbelief and delight. "No way. No. Fucking. Way."
A blue police public call box from the mid-twentieth century has appeared at the abandoned factory at the junction of…
Her eyes were drawn down to the date and time.
That morning.
The girl grabbed jeans and a shirt, grabbed her keys, and proceeded to change her clothes and do her hair while driving.
This is not a recommended activity.
OoOoO
Veronica skidded to a stop, tumbled out of the car onto the side of the road, pelted across the field to the blue box waiting there.
Vwoooo… Vwoooo…
The box began to fade in and out of existence, making that beautiful noise that was somehow so familiar…
Veronica then did something that was either the stupidest thing anyone has ever done, or the smartest.
She jumped onto the TARDIS as it went into flight.
OoOoO
Pain.
Screaming through every fiber of her being, stripping her bare, turning her inside-out—
Hand.
Grab it.
Pulled in.
Safe…
OoOoO
Veronica groaned in pain. She frowned as she tried to remember the past day or two… That migraine was very distracting… She wondered if she was hungover.
Then it all came back to her, and she groaned again and hid under the covers.
"Doctor! Doctor, she's awake!"
The redhead's voice. Torchwood files said her name was Amelia Jessica Pond, commonly known as Amy. Married to Rory Williams. Possibly the mother of a different time-traveler, Torchwood was unclear about that. Veronica had the feeling that they simply didn't know.
"Oh, really? Well, that was fast…" Veronica heard the man's shoes clacking down the hall, heard him come in…
"Well, you're in pretty bad shape. Not too bad, though, considering you were exposed to pure radiation inside the Time Vortex for nearly three seconds…"
"And… three seconds is… bad?" Veronica was surprised to find that she had a very hard time talking, and her voice was extremely raspy. Rather like a garbage truck when it's stuffed full of garbage and some idiot tries to sick more in.
(Dear readers, you do not wish to know how she found that particular sound.)
"Well…" The Doctor did a strange thing with his hand, running it over his face. "It does kill some people… Let me just give you a quick look-over, see what the damage is, okay?"
Veronica thought privately to herself that whatever he did, he'd better not try to grope her.
After a rather long-winded speech about how his method for taking blood pressure was quite cool, and most certainly not "weird" at all, as well as being much more technologically advanced that humans' (Veronica assumed that he had picked it up off some sort of planet somewhere, the Torchwood files had not quite covered the fact that he was himself nonhuman), he took out a stethoscope.
After listening for a bit (and fiddling with the different settings on said stethoscope, proving it was probably not a normal stethoscope) he finally spoke up.
"Hearts' a bit over to the left, isn't it? Odd…"
Veronica mentally rolled her eyes in resignation. Here we go again… Why must I explain this to every single doctor I meet… "Yes… they think it was a birth defect." She paused for a second to cough. "Had it since I was born."
"But the thing is," he muttered, half to himself, "the thing is, it's in the exact same place it would be if you had… What's that, then?"
"What, this old thing?" Veronica croaked, fishing her old watch out from where it was peeking out of her pocket. "Was found with it… guess my original parents had given it to me or something. Wouldn't let go of it for anything, so that lady who found me let me keep it."
"Veronica," the Doctor said, grabbing her hands, "I need you to tell me some things, and it's never been more important in your life to tell me the truth. Okay?" The girl nodded, slightly disturbed by this sudden change in mood. "Okay. When were you found? How old?"
"They told me I was two or three… they weren't sure."
"Who's 'they,' Veronica?"
"Oh… the people at the children's home. Some lady found me at the playground without any parents around and took me there."
"Look, Veronica. I need you…" The Doctor closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "You're dying, and I need you to open your watch."
"Doctor!" Amy hissed from the doorway. "How will opening a watch stop her from dying?"
He looked up, suddenly bursting with such excitement that he looked as if he could barely contain it. "You'll see!"
Amy had no choice but to laugh at her Doctor. Her beautiful, mad, crazy, wonderful Doctor.
Veronica took a breath, then opened the watch as if in a daze…
OoOoO
"Go on… we can't keep you here… there's a war, darling, you'd get killed."
"But mummy…"
"I know you'll miss us… but it's for the best, sweetie. We love you…"
And then there was pain.
And darkness.
And when she woke up, her name was Veronica. She was a perfectly normal three-year-old girl with no parents.
OoOoO
Veronica's eyes snapped open, she looked down at her hands. "Regeneration-" she managed to gasp out, before her head snapped back and energy poured through her body like a river…
"Get down!" The Doctor yelled, throwing himself on top of Amy.
Then, suddenly, it all stopped.
Veronica fell to her knees.
She carefully examined her hands.
The thing she was most disturbed about, Veronica realized rather dreamily, was that the mole underneath her right index finger was gone.
This, of course, was a very inconsequential thing to be disturbed about, and Veronica knew this. She was simply going through a Time Lord version of shell-shock, which roughly translates into English as regeneration-shock.
Regeneration-shock has four stages; disbelief, wishing for your old hair/skin/freckles/good eyesight, etc. back, sudden excitement about the new look, and finally, completely changing your taste in clothing. This generally only occurs in first-time regenerators, and the stages usually don't last more than ten minutes.
Being a sensible girl, Veronica got through disbelief very quickly, and all but skipped wishing for her new body back.
She jumped up to her feet, flashed a grin, and dashed off, calling over her shoulder "Where's the nearest mirror?" in a vaguely Northern accent.
She paused abruptly, made a face, and muttered something about her tongue not doing what she wished it to, to which the Doctor nodded sympathetically.
Amy stood there in shock. "Doctor… Is she a-?"
"Explain later. For now, we need a mirror!" Her new look was much more drastic than his first regeneration was, he thought absentmindedly, but at least she still had arms and legs…
There was a shriek from the nearest bathroom, which had mirrors that allowed you to see yourself from both the back and the front (Amy had spent more than her share of time in this bathroom). "Oi! My bum is huge!"
(Dear readers, let it be known that her bum in her previous body was very unnaturally small and bony, and this bum was perfectly normal-sized.)
Veronica admired herself in the mirror, leaned in close, winced at a small pimple at her hairline.
Her hair was now black, cut extremely short in the back and sides, and her bangs were very long.
(Actually, all her hair was long at first, but Veronica was quite good with a pair of scissors.)
Her eyes were now undeniably brown, with a tendency to squint. Luckily, though, she no longer needed her glasses.
Her nose was rounded and slightly turned up. It was almost a cute nose, although she no longer had her freckles.
Her lips were rather pale, but overall they had a nice shape. Veronica wondered whether getting a lip ring would be a bad idea or not.
Her skin was a sort of pale tan color, and she noticed that her clothing fit her in all the wrong ways.
Somehow Veronica came to the conclusion that wandering around until she found the giant wardrobe (Martha Jones had spoken about it in an on-record interview) was a great idea.
After about twenty minutes of wandering (and avoiding the Doctor, who was rushing around looking for her) she finally found it.
She then proceeded to spend an hour looking at clothes, before deciding on the completely impractical outfit of a black skirt, black tanktop, black fishnet shirt, and combat boots.
She quite liked these clothes.
The Doctor felt like it was going to be a very long day.
AN: Lalala... review... favorite... etc... unless you think it's total shit, in which case PLEASE flame me. Flames are good. But also give constructive criticism, because y'all can't be rude 24/7.