A/N: This is my first major project, so please give me lots of helpful reviews. And, don't worry, the Doctor shows up a lot more later on.
My mother always used to tell me a story when I asked her why the other kids had fathers, and I didn't. Most other parents would say something like "Oh, Daddy's in a different place" or "Daddy's not here right now" but Mom never went that route.
She'd fix me a glass of sweet water, and sit down and pat the pillows beside her, and tell me about my father and a very brave man from another world who fell out of the sky one day in a flash of fire and sound. He was a warrior and a man of peace, a defeater of nightmares. The stories were endless. Together, my father and this strange healer outwitted demons, fought monsters, and saved villages. Daddy had only spent a year like this, but the stories were enough to fill decades.
Then I learned from the other kids that really, all that had happened was my father wandered out into the woods and something exploded. But I knew what really happened, and I told them so.
That's why I don't have any friends.
So, I grew up and got bored. I had some dead-end job, a terrible thing for someone like me, someone who grew up on tales of adventure. One day, though, I found the book.
It was a book of legend, badly written and obscure. Most of it was useless, but the key, the scratch of insight, lay in a single footnote, mentioned in passing. So, I began to read.
I visited the great libraries, universities, and centres of knowledge. I sought out book after book, interviewed person after person. Most was useless. I began to run out of money: I took a job dusting shelves and cataloguing books. It was backbreaking and dreary, but it didn't matter. I had to have the information, for knowledge is power.
One day, I found it. Everything about this traveller was variable, which was the key. So, I went back to older works, ones I'd scanned again and again and sometimes I found nothing. But, he was there! It was difficult to discern, but behind a few of the major events I could find traces. And slowly, slowly, I began to piece it together.
This man had abilities and weaknesses. He had mannerisms and methods. He was variable, fluid, erratic, spontaneous, to be sure, but he was, after a fashion, predictable. Oh, I was lucky, I see that now. I had to be at the right place at the right time, and there was so much information that I had likely missed, information that meant the difference between life and death, but given what I had, I began to formulate a plan.
My first rule was "know thine enemy". And, after a fact, I did know him. Or, rather, I knew him about as well as I could. I would have to be careful, oh so very careful. I would have to be meticulous to a fault, and my plan depended heavily on surprise. This man was clearly much, much more intelligent than I, and far more resourceful. I had no hope of outwitting him. However, it is possible to play a very careful game of chess against a better opponent, and win if he doesn't realize he's playing.
But, all through the half-obscure trails and dead-end nonmentions of my quarry, there was a name, always a name, constantly haunting through the trails. And so, I decided that must be my first target. So, I set my sights there. At last, I had a place to start.
Earth.