As the Doctor stared at this young child, he'd wondered why he hadn't seen it before. The red, traditional Gallifreyan robe draped over her. Her beautiful-coloured locks tugged back into a falling-apart Seal of Rassilon hairdo. Even the strange symbols on his psychic paper- a girl's attempt at writing Circular Gallifreyan, a language she had probably just only been taught.

The young girl had to be- was- a Time Lady.

"Please, are you here to help me?" the child cried out again.

Immediately, the man walked towards her, crouching down to her level. It took him a few seconds, but soon his mother tongue floated out of his mouth like it had hardly been much time since he'd spoken it last. "Yes, I have come to help." He took her hand and glanced into that blue again. "What's your name?" he asked. Feeling a two-heart pulse on her wrist, his own hearts raced.

"Laea," the girl choked back at him. "My name's Laea." Her tears thankfully had stopped. "What's yours?" she questioned.

The Time Lord hesitated. If he told her 'the Doctor' she might become frightened of such an old stuffy man who had already claimed his title in the universe. He knew he'd been afraid of such people in his society at her age. And then there was the worst prospect of all, that this girl could know the legends about him and refuse the help she so needed in terror. But then again, he couldn't just tell a young Time Lady is true name. "I'm Theta," the man settled on saying, using the title he'd used back in his Academy days. "Theta Sigma."

The girl sniffled, squeezing his hand tighter. "I like that name," she whispered hesitantly.

"And I like yours," he replied. "How old are you, Laea?" he added in a soothing tone.

The young child held up six fingers. "I'm six years old now," she stammered.

"Ah, six years old. That's a marvellous age. I loved being six." The alien squeezed her hand even tighter, as the girl still seemed to doubt that someone to help her was actually there in front of her. "Tell me, how long have you been here?"

"Three months, fourteen days, seven minutes, two seconds," the child responded proudly. The Doctor was taken aback. He forgot how well all his people, even the youngest, held on to their time sense.

Laea had just kept on talking through this realisation however, and the Time Lord had to tune again into what this young girl was saying. "…The TARDIS crashed here, and I've been sneaking some food off of some of the cook's counters to feed myself, but I could even try to fly off and go back to mum and dad because our TARDIS died…" The sobs that he'd been glad had stopped returned again, and Laea erupted into tears. "The sky was burning, and there was so much blood, you couldn't tell if the grass was just red… or… or covered in blood... And then mama and papa sent me off, and…" Without warning, the girl leaned forward into his arms, here forehead and fingers touching his forehead, her cries shattering his hearts in two…

And then somehow, impossibly, he was back on Gallifrey,

The Mountain of Solitude rose in the background, the two suns in the east. The red grass swayed around him, and the silver-leaved trees in this meadow indeed looked on fire in the light of the soon to be setting suns. It was all real, it felt so real, the man almost forgot it was just a young girl overloading her immense psychic trauma on him in the way of a memory.

The Doctor caught sight of a house then, and a pair of people near it crying over what he could tell was a fancy Type 400 TARDIS, the latest model at the time of Gallifrey's fall.

He walked forward towards the scene, soon, to his surprise, seeing Laea in the threshold of the time machine, hugging what had to be her mother tightly. "But why can't you and dad go?" the child sniffled, trying to wipe away her tears.

"We have to keep fighting, sweetie. But we'll come back and find you, we promise." The mother said, she too crying and affectionately pulling her daughter's red hair behind her ear.

"Promise?" Laea whispered.

"Promise," what had to be her father echoed.

And then the parents shut the door of the time machine, the girl reluctantly stepping back in it… the TARDIS dematerialised…

The man wanted to scream. Couldn't this couple see that it was all ending? That their planet would soon burn? They had lied to her. They would never come back, never see their daughter again, oh Rassilon, because he killed them.

It was only after again catching sound of Laea's sobs that he broke out of his reverie. Tearing up himself now, the Time Lord patted her back and pulled her shaking body towards hi in what he hoped was a comforting embrace. "It's okay, Laea. You're safe now. I'm going to take care of you," he promised, this time for all eternity.

The little girl continued to cry into his shoulder, and all the Doctor could think to do was keep rubbing her back in comforting circles, occasionally whispering choice Gallifreyan words and phrases that he hoped would lure her to sleep. Though he doubted she knew them, some of the circles turned into words in his- no, wait- their tongue. The words for love, peace, stop crying, hush, safe now.

Gradually, the man's work paid off and Laea's breath was calm and quiet in her much-deserved rest. The Time Lord sighed, glad that the child had calmed down.

Now he just had to figure out how to get her back to the TARDIS without waking her again.

Amy was worried.

She and Rory had been stepping in every single store this place had to offer, it seemed, and they still had forty million credits left. They'd even had a few guilty massages and mani-pedis- but the best part of it all was that they hadn't had to run away from any hostile alien once.

So when they'd gone back to the TARDIS to wait for their Raggedy Man, and he still hadn't turned up after an hour of grumbling, it looked as if maybe there would be some adventure involved on this trip.

But just as the couple had been prepared to search for that bow-tied alien, they caught sight of him just a few metres away with… was that a little girl in his arms?

"Doctor?" Amelia called out at the figure approaching her. Indeed, the young woman noticed, there was a child in some red exotic-looking robes. The most confusing thing to the pair though was that the man almost seemed to be… whispering to the girl in a language that was so free and floating, and yet fit perfectly together like pieces of a puzzle. A language that for some reason, the TARDIS wasn't translating.

"Ponds!" their friend suddenly broke free of his unintelligible whispering, looking up from the young child and at the pair. "Would mind holding Laea for a second? I just need to open the doors," he asked.

"Who?" Amy sputtered, bewildered at the question, but Rory obediently held out his arms and walked towards the Time Lord, who obliged to the gesture and gently laid the girl- Laea, apparently- into his embrace.

Mouthing a quick "thank you" to the Roman, the Doctor pushed open the doors and gestured for his Ponds to make an entrance. As soon as they entered the time machine however, the alien quickly took the young child back into his arms again. "I just have to take her up to bed; I'll be right back," the man spoke in a hushed tone. And then, hardly waiting for an answer, he took off up the stairs of the console room with his precious cargo.

Amy and Rory just quietly blinked into space for a few moments, their brains filling with so many questions about who this girl was, why she was here, and how their time-travelling friend had even come across this child.

"Who is she?" Amy finally found herself murmuring to her husband.

"I have no idea. How did he even find her?" Rory asked in reply, confused as his wife.

"Don't ask me," the ginger woman responded, still as perplexed as ever.

The couple sat in silence again for a while until Rory decided to speak up. "Amy, when I held her, I- I checked her pulse, just to make sure she was alright."

"So?" Amy shot back, clearly confused on all levels. "What does that have to do with anything?"

The man sighed. "It wasn't regular-sounding, it- it almost-" Rory knew his wife would probably just mock him for what he was about to say, but he went ahead with it anyway. "It almost sounded like she had two hearts."

"That's because she does." The two humans jumped as they heard the voice of the Doctor behind them, the Time Lord bounding down the steps. "Gallifreyans do tend to have a binary vascular system, after all."

The woman's eyes widened. "Gallifreyans… you mean… Gallifrey? Your planet?" she managed to stammer.

"The one and only," the bow-tied man answered.

"But I thought… I thought you said your people died in that… in that war," Amy continued to press, still trying to wrap her head around the idea that this young girl could be a member of the Doctor's people.

"That's what I thought too, until I received a call on this handy thing-" He held up his psychic paper. "And went to investigate." The alien let out a tired huff as he laid himself down on the captain's seat, looking up at the couple. "But apparently some poor child's parents sent her off-planet before I Time-Locked it."

The trio let that information seep in for a few minutes before Amelia spoke up again. "When you were holding her, you were whispering something to- Laea," the woman finally remembered the young girl's name. "And the TARDIS didn't translate it."

"Gallifreyan," the Doctor muttered, looking somehow both so young and so old at the same time. "The one language the TARDIS doesn't translate. It's kind of hoped that in a time machine from your own planet you know your own first tongue."

"What are you planning to do with her?" Rory spoke up as well. "Surely you can't just leave her somewhere."

The bow-tied alien looked shocked. "Of course not. I was never thinking about such a thing. She's my responsibility now." His voice shook with sorrow and deep-hidden anger. "She's the last of my species. I killed her parents, for goodness' sake. And you think I would just drop her off somewhere to be forgotten again? Not owing her a favour? Don't you get it? I'm all that she has now. So I'm going to take care of her."

"Another silently crying child you have to save," Amy echoed back.

And to her alarm, the Time Lord looked up at his magnificent Pond, slight tears in his eyes. "So she is," he muttered, glancing back down at his lap. "So she is."

The trio sat in an uncomfortable silence for a while until the Doctor stood back up again. "I'm going to make sure Laea's settled. Now you two, go rest. It's been a long day." With that command, he smiled softly at the couple. "Don't get into too much trouble," he called as he walked up the stairs of the console room.

And as Amy and Rory obeyed and went to go to sleep, they knew there was one thing they could agree on.

It had been a long day.

First, I'd like to thank you guys for all the feedback on this. I'm glad you seem to like it so much! I promise I'll be trying my best to update more regularly (as with all of my stories) but you know how school can get, ugh.

And then, a few notes on the story in general. I know there's the whole "Time Lord is a rank, Gallifreyan is a species" thing, but just for the sake of this fic let's pretend Time Lady is synonymous with Gallifreyan, alright?

Oh, and Laea's name is pronounced "lah-ey-ah" if you wanted to know that for some reason.

Overall I hope you guys liked this and everything's accurate and such. Please, please, please leave me a review so I know what you all think of this! Thanks again!