A/N: Just in case you're wondering ... This fic is set in Donna's timeline ... there is no Tentoo. So don't be expecting him to show up in this parallel world. :)
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He stumbled out of the TARDIS with little to none of the usual graceful airs that were typical inside this incarnation. His stumble became a stagger as he twisted in his walk to look back at his angry blue box as she slammed her doors closed with an echoing bang of petrified wood against petrified wood.
He shook his head with disbelief at the sharp manner by which the TARDIS had kicked him out of her console room. Filling it with acrid smoke and then blaring her cloisters had been bad enough, but did she have to have to drop one of her beams close enough to him that it swiped him across his backside, too?
His head was still shaking as he finally turned around to gaze across the landscape that spanned out lazily ahead of them. Although it really made no difference to him right at this moment, he did have to figure out just where they had escaped to. It would be incredibly foolish of him not to take stock of where they were and determine whether or not they would be at any risk, but he was somewhat loathe to care about it. There was nothing in the entire universe that would present more danger to him than the horrors that he had just fled from.
Quite frankly, finding himself in mortal peril right now perhaps wouldn't be so unwelcome. Perhaps he could meet a rather swift end and the nightmare of his planet at war could end once and for all. He had no will left inside him now to continue to fight. Everything he ever held dear was gone; lost in the battles across Kasterborous as the Daleks waged their rampage the Lords of Time.
His Family was gone. His home destroyed. His closest friends were either deceased or driven mad by the toils of the war. What did he have left to fight for when everything he ever held within his hearts had already been taken from him?
A small bird fluttered noisily past his head and the Doctor spun with surprise. He watched the tiny flapping wings beat a hasty escape into a large tree and smiled as the small bird found perch atop one of the thinner branches.
"Cyanistes caeruleus," he recited with a smile upon noting the bright lemon underbelly plumage and the blue helmet and black mask across his eyes. "Otherwise known as a Blue Tit." His brows pinched centre and he nodded his head slowly as he let his eyes shift to the ground at his feet. "So I'm on Earth, then?"
Freshly cut green grasses and small purple flowers at the base of the tree confirmed that conclusion.
"Round-headed rampion," he breathed with a smile as he lifted his head and thrust one hand into his trouser pocket. "England. How lovely." He swallowed and toyed with the chain of a fob watch attached to his belt. He closed his eyes and listened to the soft sounds of life that surrounded him and found a smile.
"My home away from home," he breathed out longingly. He opened his mouth to finish the thought, but had the words lodged in his throat at a loud mechanical humming coming from above. He lifted his grey eyes to the skies and raked his hand through his flyaway chestnut curls to hold them free of his face as he looked for the source of the unusual sound.
He half gagged at what he saw: Zeppelins. Not just one, but an entire sky full of them flying overhead.
The sight had him staggering backward somewhat in shock. Earth was never known throughout any of its history to have a sky full of whirring zeppelins. One or two maybe as an exhibition item, but not so many that it could cause congestion in the skies above London.
"By the staff of Rassilon, what is happening here?"
What was happening, indeed? Had the repercussions of the battles of the Time War already made their impact across the universe? Had there been irreparable damage done to the timelines of the planets across all of space and time? Had his beloved planet Earth suffered from the spoils of war?
"No," he breathed out worriedly. "Please not Earth. Don't take this from me as well." He stamped his foot into the ground and lifted a fist toward the zeppelin filled sky above. "I won't let you. Do you hear me? Earth is protected, and I will find a way to reverse any damage you've caused."
He turned sharply in a way that fanned out his velvet jacket around his hips and then fled toward the TARDIS. He roughly shoved his key into the lock and twisted the tumbler hard in an attempt to get inside the ship to begin researching ways to return Earth to the way it was supposed to be.
It wouldn't turn.
The TARDIS had kicked him out. She wasn't going to let him back in any time soon.
"No," he breathed out despondently. "No. Please don't shut me out like this." He braced a hand against the door and gently tried to turn the key again. His breath shuddered out of him when it still refused to turn at his command. Anger took hold of him and he drew back one elbow and slammed his palm forward against the door. "Don't you dare shut me out and ignore me, TARDIS." He gave the door another firm hit and added a hard hit with his knee. His breath hissed out through his teeth both in anger and in pain at the strike in his knee. He leaned in close enough to the blue wooden door to squash his nose up against it.
"I'm not letting this war do any more damage than it already has," he snarled against the door, his voice hot and his lips wet with spittle. "I won't let them take Earth away from me like it has everything else. Do you hear me? Do you?"
The TARDIS remained stoic and silent at his rant. There was no movement of her doors, no click in the lock, and no whine of her engines. There was barely even a hum in her standby systems. She remained resolutely silent.
Her silence became his, and slowly the Doctor calmed himself out of anger. His voice lowered to a saddened whisper
"I have to save them, old friend. Don't you see that?" He sniffed wetly and closed his watering eyes. "I've lost everything else. I've got no solace left in this universe except here." He stroked both palms along the wood as he lowered his forehead against it. "Don't you understand. If I lose Earth to this war as well, then I've lost it all." He exhaled a shuddered breath. "Gallifrey's not going to survive this war. I know that. There's no way that our forces can defeat an entire battle fleet of Daleks." He let out a strangled sob, which dragged the lips of his gaping mouth drag wetly against the doors. His hot and damp breath hissed a wet spot on the wood, a spot that grew and contracted in time with several inhales and exhales against it.
"I've got nothing left," he whined finally as his knees finally gave out and he fell slowly, yet hard onto the ground beside the tired old timeship. "Nothing at all."
He fell to his knees, and then to his hip, and finally the Doctor turned and shifted onto his backside. He pressed his back into the TARDIS doors and lifted his knees into his chest. With defeat, the Doctor lay one arm across his knees and clutched a fistful of his hair with the other. His breath rattled inside his chest and his shoulders heaved as he let himself wallow in the agony of his losses, and of the request made to him by his last remaining old friend.
Romana wanted him to wholly join the fight; to lead a platoon of weary soldiers in the battles against all that were attacking Gallifrey right now. Their battle forces had been swiftly depleted against the Daleks battle fleet. Romana and the council were scraping the very bottom of the barrel if they were asking him to take part in it as a commanding officer.
He was an unwilling soldier at the very best of times. How could he possibly be expected to lead a team into battle when he had nothing left in the universe to battle for? She didn't understand his protests. She didn't want to understand his protests. She couldn't comprehend why he didn't immediately take up arms and defend mother Gallifrey from the attacking armies.
And why should he? Gallifrey and her sons never stood up for him. At every avenue they'd abandoned and disowned him. Why should he be expected to turn his beloved time ship into a battle craft and lead what was left of the Gallifreyan armed forces toward their deaths?
What was the point?
"Tell me my old friend," he asked in a hoarse whisper. "What do I have left to even fight for?"
His ship remained silent against his back. The silence made him chuckle ruefully. "Perhaps we should fly in, you and me. Take a suicide mission from Romana's office and end this war…" He exhaled wetly. "And destroy the lineage of Lungbarrow in its entirety. I'm sure the council will embrace that idea, don't you?"
There was a tickle at the very edge of his consciousness that he took to be a gentle contact from his otherwise silent TARDIS. It made him crack the very smallest of smiles. "Is that something you agree with then? The Doctor and his TARDIS, flying one last and no doubt very explosive final adventure together."
The tentative tickle in his mind became a more urgent tapping; like tiny fingertips against glass; and he found himself trying to shake his head to relieve the annoyance.
"Is that you?" he queried his ship softly. "Are you finally deciding to talk to me now?" He snorted out a breath through his nose. "You know you don't have to knock. I'm always open to you."
He felt her hum inside his mind, but it was separate from the tapping that continued, and then increased with urgency in a rhythm that made his eyes widen with quiet hope.
He cautiously let down his mental shields to allow the presence into his mind, and found the sadness in his subconscious immediately engulfed in a warm familial wash. It was an infantile and clumsy contact that stumbled aimlessly into his consciousness and struggled to maintain the connection. There was urgency and desperation inside the contact and it made the Doctor rise quickly to his feet to seek out the owner of this familial telepathic signature.
The Doctor's mind spun wildly as he shot to a stand, and for the briefest of moments he stumbled backward against the doors of the TARDIS. He quickly regained his balance and schooled his expression into a façade of curious cautiousness as he strode forward slowly. The TARDIS' presence in his mind hummed excitedly, and he petted his hand in the air behind him in a request for her to just settle down and quiet a little.
"I'm looking into it," he assured her gently. "Just give me one moment, please."
The Doctor pressed forward, using the fluctuating strength of the contact in his mind as his compass. He could feel the presence grow inside his mind until the sunshine warmth of it engulfed him completely. It was a feeling of hope, of happiness and of unconditional love, and it drove him forward through the thicket and trees until he emerged into an open field.
He looked around him expectantly, desperately searching for the source of this contact, but found the park that had opened up before him empty. There were no children at play and no milling adults in conversation. All he could see was freshly cut lawn surrounding a quiet playground nestled inside a large sandy pit.
His hope and excitement fell at the silence ahead of him. Whatever the source of this brilliant light within him, he wasn't going to find it here. The realization made him slump. He dropped his head and let out a defeated breath of disappointment. Of course it wouldn't be so easy. Nothing ever was.
A shrill sound suddenly shattered the silence; a hollow and metallic double chime. He twisted his head to investigate, and gasped at the image that sat on a park bench a mere twenty feet away at the very edge of the park.
Angels were a myth that the Doctor never really bought into. There were far too many logical – and sometimes quite terrifying – answers to the questions of whether or not angels did truly exist. He wasn't a religious soul. He called out to the deity of the Time Lords only when he wished to exclaim and blaspheme against Rassilon's name. At the vision he saw ahead of him, however, the Doctor would quite easily have fallen to his knees and offered worship to whatever deity created this most magnificent of creatures.
It was for sure a trick of the light that made her look so ethereal to him. Her beautifully flowing blonde hair caught the rays of the sun shining overhead in such a manner that it haloed her head in magnificent yellow light that kissed against her cheeks and settled brightly down on her shoulders. She was seated in an elegant position, with her legs delicately crossed at the knee, over which sat the glossy pages of a magazine open to a page that was now forgotten about as she looked down at the face of an electronic device that he assumed with a cellphone.
Whatever the message on the phone, it was one that gave her amusement, as a brilliant white-tooth smile stretched across her cheeks. He was mesmerized by the image as she scrolled down the phone with her thumb and she brought a take-out coffee cup to her lips to draw back a short sip.
He knew immediately that this vision before him wasn't a Time Lord – or Lady – and could not be the source of the telepathic contact, but was no less captivated by her. His search for his telepathic partner could wait. He just wanted to take a moment to appreciate the beauty that existed before him. Too long had he seen only the terror and ugliness of war. He had forgotten that beauty existed, and wanted to commit each and every part of her to memory.
He took his eyes from her pursed lips and let them fall to study the rest of her. She was seated comfortably, he could see that. But he could also see an underlying guardedness to her. Her back was rigid and straight, and her legs taut and ready to run if needed, yet her posture had a feminine softness to it. Her rigid shoulders had a roundness to them that flawlessly curved down to meet with the gentle swell of her breast. A prominent and generous swell was perhaps a far more apt description for her bosom, which seemed to stand sentinel for the rounded swell beneath them. A swollen shape that quite obviously held within it new life. The obviousness of this was far more pronounced when she set the phone down on the bench beside her and she moved that hand to settle protectively at the very top of her womb.
A womb, he realized startlingly, that was projecting the telepathic signature he'd been seeking. It was the telltale familial contact of a growing Gallifreyan child reaching out for her father…
…and she was desperately reaching out for him.
The Doctor shook his head and took a startled step backward.
"Impossible," he breathed to himself as his eyes locked tight on the swell of child that was hidden underneath the floral patterns of a cotton sundress. His head shook with disbelief. "It's absolutely impossible." He inhaled. "Magnificent, of course, but so very impossible."
There was a sensation of a tug from the woman's womb that drew the Doctor out of the shadow of the trees and had him walking slowly toward her. His hands moved out ahead of him and opened in welcome as he drew closer to who he was quickly starting to believe was his unborn daughter.
Ancient and lyrical words of assurance fell from his lips as he moved closer and he spared no glace toward the startled woman as he fell to his knees at her feet and pressed his hands either side of her womb.
"My precious child," he sang in a whisper. "Don't fret or fear. Your father's here."
