Theta Sigma Smith. That was my name. Daughter of John and Rose Smith. I used to live a rather boring life. As normal as any other kid, despite the fact that I was named after a math term. Don't get me wrong, I am pretty smart, but a math term? Really Dad?
I loved my parents. Still do actually, but after a while I started realizing that something didn't fit. Like I didn't belong where I was, and I didn't.
The reason why I said that Theta was my name, is because I go by something far different now. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
It started early January, just last year. For weeks I had been having these strange dreams. It started exactly 3 months before my 18th birthday. This is what I dreamt.
The first dream my mum was in. She was younger, and worked at a clothing store. The dream had to do with her and this man that called himself The Doctor. She was helping him defeat an alien that had planned an invasion on Earth. Far-fetched, I know. But the dreams kept getting weirder.
The next one still had my mum in it, but also my dad, again younger. He called himself The Doctor too though. They were on this weird alien planet. Again with the aliens. I thought I was going crazy.
The other dreams were a lot like the first two. Just a man who called himself The Doctor, but sometimes he looked different, or had a different companion. But he was always fighting aliens, or helping them.
It was the night before my birthday that I had the strangest dream ever. This time I was in it. I was falling. Only I was falling through a purple vortex, that seemed to contain all the knowledge in the universe, and it wasn't me that was falling, it was my spirit. And then I stopped. It was as if I was looking for a home somewhere, and then the vortex started to disappear and was replaced by my mum and dad holding me as a baby in a hospital room. Then the spirit that was me rushed into the baby's body. Then it ended.
The next day was average at first. I woke up from the dream, startled as usual, to my mums rustling. I lived my life like normal, and for a few weeks it was. I stopped having the dreams and actually felt like I belonged. But I didn't. February something happened.
I didn't have a dream, I had a vision. It was of a planet. A golden planet that looked like something from a fairy tale. There were towers and castles, and one thing specific. An academy. It was training children, though for what wasn't clear. Then it flashed forward to the Doctor, much younger then he was in my dreams, but he looked different. He had a wife, and children. Two to be exact. A boy and a girl. I didn't take it as anything but another dream, until his wife called him Theta, not the Doctor.
When the vision faded it was all I could think about. I decided I had to talk to somebody about this, so I called my dad.
I told him everything in my dreams, but instead of telling me I was crazy, or telling me not to worry about it, he told me to stay put. Told me not to go anywhere till he got there, and that it was extremely important that I did what he said.
But when he hung up all I could hear was a heart beat. But one with four beats. Bum-bum-bum-bum. Over and over again. Bum-bum-bum-bum. Then, as if I never noticed it before, I sensed something around my neck. It was a locket. Golden, with intricate designs of moons and stars on it. Bum-bum-bum-bum, again I heard the heart beat, and picked up the locket. It was like a small fob watch. Even though every fiber of my being told me it didn't exist, there it was, right in front of me.
Right when my father's car pulled up I popped the locket open. Suddenly a bright golden glow engulfed me and I could see my father's eyes widen in shock and worry.
As if all my life it had been hidden, memories flooded into my mind, memories of the golden planet that I now knew was Galifrey. Memories of a family I never knew I had. Memories of the man who was The Doctor. But I now knew him as my father.
"Theta!" my dad's voice pulled me from my haze. "Theta, are you alright? Talk to me, what was that, what did you see?" He hounded me with questions, but again all I could hear was the heart beat. Only this time it was my own. Two hearts, synchronized and beating. I knew what I was now, and why I had always felt so restless.
"Galifrey," was all I said. I saw my father's eyes widen even more and continued, "it was destroyed. But I escaped. You were my father then too, but you were different." I was confused but I remembered everything.
"Theta what are you talking about?" my father said slowly, as if talking to a child. "What just happened?"
"You know what happened, you're just afraid to admit it," my voice shook, as if I hadn't spoken for years. And technically, that me hadn't.
His face sobered and his brow furrowed. "I know. I've known all your life, I just don't know how it's possible.
This time my face was the one with shock written across it. "You knew? This whole time you knew and you didn't say anything?"
"You weren't meant to know yet. Your mother and I wanted you to be normal for as long as possible," his eyes were full of love, but also of sadness. As if it was the last time he would see me.
"I remember everything. Who I was before this, and who you were, but it wasn't you," I knew exactly what I was talking about, but I was still confused.
My father sighed slowly and helped me up and to the car. I could tell he was confused, but the whole ride home nothing was said between the two of us. I was busy swimming in the memories of my past life.
I suppose you're wondering what I'm talking about, all this past life nonsense. I don't remember much, even still, but I remember who I was. I was the doctor's daughter. In his first generation. Me and him, we were as close as can be. I spent as much time as I could with my dear old dad. He was pretty old, but that's just the human in me talking. He was really quite young for Time Lord standards. Anyway, we were happy, my dad, my mum, my brother, and I. The cliché family if you will. Then came the time war.
For years I had been studying the time vortex. I knew it inside out and backwards. I was 29 the time the war started. Just a baby. I guess now I could consider myself quite old since I wandered through time as a spirit for thousands of years. But there I go again, getting ahead of myself.
I was practically obsessed with my work. Hell, my dad was the only one who could drag me from it. I just found it so interesting that nobody had bothered to try and understand the vortex. Everyone just accepted it, and never asked questions. I asked questions all the time though. But since no one new the answers I found out for myself.
One of the most amazing things I discovered was that young Time Lords (within their first five decades) could become one with the vortex. They could, with the right technology, fuse themselves with it. I was of course my own test subject, and those are the means I used to escape the war.
Just teleporting away wouldn't have been enough though. I had to hide from all of time and space, so into a parallel dimension I went. I wouldn't have worked had it not been a parallel dimension. The energy in the vortex would have been too weak in the regular time stream to sustain my 'spirit' (it was actually just a mass of energy and memories held together by the vortex). I had a plan.
My plan was to basically turn myself human, but to do it in a parallel dimension far away from this timeline. I would send my 'spirit' into a still born human baby, and become that child. But I had to be able to escape. When a Time Lord turns human they can only escape if they open the fob watch, but you only notice that fob watch if you get a taste of time travel or something to do with you're old life.
That is why I chose The Doctor's duplicate, John Smith. His and Rose's child was still born. Although John Smith was human, he was still too Time Lord to produce a living child. I found them by pure luck, and how fitting that my dad's tenth regeneration's duplicate be my human father. So into the silent babe I went.
The reason why I had to be able to escape my human body is because I was needed. I wasn't being selfish, sending myself to hide. I was preserving the Time Lords. I had sent many, many other young Time Lords into the vortex. At least two hundred. Some of them willing, but most unknowing of my plans. But it had to be done to save Galifrey. To save my people. I accessed their 'spirits' when they were about to die, and fused them with the vortex. It was painful, for I had done it to myself, but it had to be done. I sent them through the vortex, informing their aware 'spirits' of what I had done, and made it so that they would enter into a still born babe.
I was needed to wake all these people up from their human existence. The Time Lords would not be lost forever.