War Revelation (4th jump, 4th – 9th)

Ivy blinked, and in one second she went from standing in the open air hall of the dance rooms of the Tardis (the fourth Doctor insisted he teach her how to dance some kind of seven-legged waltz) to facing a wall with… Dalek design?

Ivy jumped back like the wall had just morphed into an actual Dalek and banged into a coral strut.

"Oi! What're you making all that noise for?" yelled someone. Ivy stumbled around and saw a man with short-cropped hair wearing a leather jacket leaning over the console. He had his back to her, but there was a pile of wires at his feet and he seemed to have opened part of the console to fix. "Hand me that spanner Rose, the one with the yellow handle."

He held out one hand expectantly, nose still buried in the console.

"Doctor?" Ivy asked. If he was fixing the Tardis than it must be him, but she'd never met this regeneration before.

"Spanner," he repeated.

"…Doctor?"

"Yes? What?" He whirled around and a huge grin burst across his face, transforming an otherwise serious face into a startlingly happy one. "Ivy! Well I fixed that mobile you liked, the one with the ships that zoom off it. Now you won't be complaining about Platius III's moon banging on your head at night." He grinned at her, but Ivy just stared at him.

"Right," she said slowly.

"It's me, the Doctor," he said, getting up and walking over to her. "Don't recognize me then?"

Ivy shook her head.

"Well where've you come from? How many o' me have you met?"

"Your fourth, I think he said. And I guess I've met… three of you?"

"Ah," he said, realizing where her hesitation was coming from. This was early on for her. She hadn't bought and tried to fix a broken mobile yet. Or met many of his regenerations. He remembered meeting her at several points like this before, when she was still easily upset about the prospect of her life as a nomad in time. "What'd you think of him? Or rather me? Fourth me, that is. I was Lord President of Gallifrey in that body you know."

"President of Gallifrey?" Ivy gaped at him.

"Actually," he added, seeming to bounce in place proudly. "I was the 409th Lord President in my fifth regeneration too. Never took office, but they still counted me."

"Your fourth was president?" Ivy repeated. She was trying to square in her head the Doctor, who'd just taught her a seven-legged waltz and rewarded each good turn with a Jelly Baby, with the most powerful man in Gallifrey. "But he's a bit…" she hesitated, "I mean, you were a bit…" Ivy stopped though, not sure how to describe the Doctor when he wore a scarf twice as long as he was tall with an old-fashioned fedora and tapped his nose like it conveyed some wisdom and not his own bizarreness. In fact, this Doctor was plain compared to him so far.

"Yeah, I was a bit—Well I used to like scarves. Can't stand them now." He shrugged and picked up the yellow-tipped spanner. "Help me would you? Hold this." He handed her what looked like a surge protector where large and oblong plugs were connected, except that there were no outlets but suckers like an octopus instead. He sonicked it for a moment before rearranging some wires inside the console, then sonicked it again. He looked perfectly happy to leave her standing there like a piece of furniture.

"How come you've got Dalek patterns on your walls?" Ivy blurted out when the silence went on for too long. It felt very weird to just chat with a man that looked like a total stranger even if he wasn't. It was making her awkward.

"They're not Dalek patterned!" he said hotly. "They're not globes and they don't stick out. Get your facts straight!"

"Sorry!" Ivy apologized, abashed and shocked at how quickly he'd gotten angry. "I didn't mean to offend, it's just with the colors…"

"What's a Dalek?" asked a blonde woman, wearing baggie jeans and a zip-up pink hoodie. She stepped gingerly over a loose pile of wiring as she crossed the room.

"Creature made of nothing but hate," the Doctor said summarily. "You're lucky you'll never see one."

Ivy glanced confused at the Doctor. She'd had one run-in with a Dalek, and she knew from that first meeting with the Eleventh Doctor that he'd had several more experiences with them. "What do you mean never see one?" Ivy asked.

"Because they're gone. All gone," he said shortly, crossing his arms and glowering for a second. Then he relaxed and the anger slipped away back to wherever it came from, but never far from the surface. "Ivy, this is Rose. She's traveling with me. Rose, this is Ivy. She's been popping in for a long time."

"Oh, um, hi," Rose said confusedly.

"I'm Ivy." She shifted the surge protector thing into her arms so she could offer her hand. The Doctor didn't seem inclined to explain any more than that. He had turned back to the wiring. "I traveled with the Doctor a long time ago and then there was an accident, and now I just sort of jump around in time. You might see me again but it might have been awhile for me." Ivy was getting pretty succinct at explaining her situation.

"Well, that sounds kind of fun, if exhausting," Rose said, clearly not sure how to respond to that. "You joining us then?"

"Yup, for a turn," Ivy replied, but she still had a question. "Doctor, what do you mean the Daleks are all gone?"

The sonic stopped making noise, but he didn't immediately turn around. "This really the first time you met me after the war?"

"The war?" Rose asked quietly, sitting in the jumpseat, her eyes wide. The Doctor stood up and leaned against the console, eyes hard as stone and shoulders heavy.

"Yeah. Between the Time Lords and the Daleks." He glanced at Ivy, nodding for just a second, but she didn't know why. "Eh, guess you haven't met… nevermind." He shook his head, crossed his legs and leaned against the Tardis, head bowed.

The expression on his face… It was a different face, but she'd seen that look before on the first Doctor. Then this was the same war. The one she'd seen in that awful, mistaken jump. And it had happened.

"I killed them. All of them. Gallifrey burned and the Daleks with them." He said it flatly, like every ounce of emotion had been drained out of him by the sheer horror of what he'd done. And Ivy knew that was true, but she didn't know that all that had been left afterwards would be anger.

"I'm sorry," she said, because that's what the only thing she could think to say. Sorry it had happened. Sorry it had been him. Sorry for a lot of things.

"Me too." Then with a breath he turned around and started sonicking wires with a vengeance. Ivy and Rose watched him do this for several seconds before realizing he was not going to turn around and talk again.

"Um, Rose? Have you seen the, uh, pool?"

Rose was watching the Doctor with a jumble of emotions on her face, but she seemed to know better than to push. She glanced up and in a second she knew what Ivy was thinking. "Nah, I haven't yet. Is there a hot tub too?"

"Oh yeah," Ivy said immediately. "Pretty sure I can still find it, if the Tardis hasn't moved it. Keeps getting bigger inside, I swear." She and Rose quickly left to give the Doctor some space.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Rose said as soon as they were in the corridor.

"Well, it's like that every time I meet a new Doctor," she said. "Now hush, he can still hear us."

"A new Doctor?" Rose asked, but Ivy led them down several corridors and peeked into two doors before opening one with a tropical themed hot tub, complete with ferns, invisible jets, and four squawking parrots Ivy was never sure were actually alive or not.

"Let's leave him be, huh?" Ivy suggested. Rose shot her a look, but Ivy was far too lost in memories from the first Doctor and everything that had happened since. It had been barely two weeks ago, even though it felt like a lifetime with all this jumping. No wonder this Doctor was so stark compared to the older ones. Who could be fantastical and eccentric after destroying two races?

"He had to do it, right?" Rose asked quietly, pulling on a conveniently placed bathing suit behind a screen and slipping into the water. "In the… the war?"

"If you'd ever met a Dalek you'd know he did," Ivy knew that was what the Doctor thought. Considering how much it had hurt him to do it, then and now, Ivy wasn't sure if that was the right answer.