Chapter 2: An empty piece of the Galaxy

The Doctor hadn't expected her to sit there. Of course he wasn't sure what exactly he'd expected, but certainly not that she simply sat there. She looked a little… gone; mentally spoken. Her legs were dangling down from the bed and she sat upright. Her hands on the bed as some kind of prop. Her black hair fell around her face and her dark eyes were focused on some spot of the wall near the door.
"I… uhm, hello…?" the Doctor stuttered, but the woman either hadn't heard him or ignored him.
"Hello, I'm the Doctor…" he tried again but once again didn't receive any answer. He turned around to Jack "what should I do now?" lay in his look, but the captain simply shrugged, obviously highly amused.

Petulant the Doctor turned back. She was a Time Lady - his species! He should be able to communicate with her in some way or another. To calm down he ran his hand through his hair.
"Are you ok? Your injuries were serious, but you can be sure that I can help you, if you just tell me what's wrong."
Silence. The woman still didn't made any noise but finally she moved. She started chewing her lip.
"C-can you hear me?" the Doctor began "if you c…"
"Shhh!" she hushed him and her eyes jumped to his for a brief moment and then back at the wall.
"I'm thinking."
The Doctor felt Jack walking over to his side but was too shocked to say something. The moment she'd looked at him he'd been sure. They really had found another Time Lord. Ok, he'd figured this already, but just on a logical basis; when their eyes had met he had felt it.

"Is she really ok?" Jack whispered and brought the Doctor back to reality.
"M-maybe", he admitted not fully sure.
"Such a big regeneration can cause some confusion."
"But no loss of hearing", the woman said calmly and interrupted their whispering. They looked at each other and the Doctor gave her a friendly smile, which he hoped didn't look as askew as it felt.
"Come a little closer" she suddenly ordered and reached an arm out to the both of them.
Giving each other a bewildered look the Doctor and Jack approach the Time Lady. Just when they stood in front of her she placed one of her hands softly onto the Doctor's cheek, the other one on Jack's.
When Doctor doubted she could confuse him anymore than this, the moony expression on her face gave way to a malign one. Obviously with all her power she banged his and Jack's head against each other and while they were busy with a supernova exploding inside of their heads, she jumped up and kicked their legs away. The Doctor only figured this, because in the next second he found himself on the floor of the med-bay; his head and back aching.
"Ouch" both men growled and when the Doctor opened his eyes, he found himself glaring into the muzzle of a gun. The Time Lady pointed it straight at his head and looked down on him with a look seesawing between pride and anger.

"Uhoh, now the mad one has the gun" she chirped.
"Where…", the Doctor wondered, but Jack interrupted him and answered his question at the same time. "Hey! My gun!"
"Shut up!" she snapped and now pointed the weapon at Jack who'd hit the floor next to the Doctor.
"Now I will be asking the questions, you understand me?" she glared at Jack and back at the Doctor.
"First of all, where are we?"
"On my ship", the Doctor explained and she eyed him over.
"So this is your TARDIS?" she asked and he nodded.
"Pretty old one… Type 40 isn't it?", she mumbled but didn't waited for an answer.
"Now, who are you guys?"
"Captain Jack Harkness", Jack answered and winked at her. The woman frowned.
"Are you sure it's clever to annoy the…" she hesitated, threw a short glance into the mirror hanging over the basin and went on "girl with the gun pointed at your head?"
"And you are?" she pointed the weapon back at the Doctor who was well aware of her current feelings. She'd just regenerated and looked at the face she'd to live with now.
"As I said, I'm the Doctor."
"'The Doctor'", she echoed and finally shrugged.
"I wasn't asking for your title, but your name."
"I'm afraid you'll have to be content with 'the Doctor'", he replied and both locked eyes.
"Suit yourself", she sighed and leaned back against the bed without lowering the weapon.
"Now, let's come to the funny part: Who am I?"
The Doctor knitted his eyebrows but Jack was the first to speak.
"You don't know?"
"No, I just took both of you hostage because I wanted to play a nice quiz with you!" she replied sarcastically and repeated her question.
"So once again: who am I? Better tell me, if you know."
"Sorry, we don't know", the Doctor looked at her and felt what he said; she must be horribly confused.
"The accident you had, or maybe your regeneration, must have cause some kind of amnesia… I'm afraid that's everything we know."
Before the woman could answer Jack asked: "amnesia? If she has no memory then how did she know about the TARDIS?"
"Retrograde amnesia often just erases information bound to emotion, not the logical knowledge, like what a TARDIS looks like", the Doctor explained.
"Or how a gun works, something you'll experience if you don't stop asking trivial stuff!" the Time Lady added, glaring at Jack.
Now that the Doctor looked at her again, she seemed confused and angry, yes, but also scared. She'd just woken up among strangers without knowing her face or her name or anything; just a head full of confusing knowledge.
"Great" she sighed angrily "kidnapped by a weird couple, lost my memory, can this day get any more annoying?"
"We didn't kidnap you!" Jack answered back. "And we're no couple!" the Doctor added, his words followed by an oh, why not this time?-look by Jack.
"What ever!", the Time Lady replied and stood up again. Aiming at Jack and back at the Doctor.
"Get up, both of you – slowly. And keep your hands where I can see them."
They obeyed. This wasn't good; not at all. The Doctor could only imagine what a Time Lord would do while this confused and scared, especially an armed one.
"Show me the control panel", the woman poked the gun into the Doctor's back.

-

With their hands up, Jack and the Doctor walked slowly out of the med-bay and into the control room.
"Sit down at the wall", the woman ordered and Jack and the Doctor sat down. She kneeled down to them and ran her hands into Jack's coat, carefully pointing the gun at the Doctor.
"Not that I wouldn't appreciate this, but don't you think there would have been an easier way into my coat, ma'am?" Jack teased and earned a punch into the stomach for this comment.
"Ah!" the woman rejoiced and held up a pair of handcuffs.
"Not directly my thing, but ok" Jack grinned and the Time Lady threw an angry glare at him. Then she applied the handcuffs to Jack and the to the Doctor's wrist.
"Nicely bound together" she smiled, an all but childlike joy playing about her face.
"Now… I need to fix you here. I hate men running around while I'm flying a ship."
"Where would you want to fly to?" the Doctor asked while the woman had turned around to him and slid her hands now into his coat.
"Make an educated guess" she mumbled. Delicate fingers started feeling his chest for whatever she was searching, pride helped him to suppress a shudder.
"I'll just go home, then I'll release you and you can get lost. Ah, there you are, naughty!" Happily she pulled the sonic screwdriver out of one of the Doctor's pockets.
"Hey!" he protested, but she switched it on and fused the handcuffs to the wall.
"If you say home…" he began, hoping he was wrong.
"Gallifrey, of course", she replied and stood up again.
"I'm sure I can find someone there who can tell me who I am."
Jack and the Doctor exchanged sad looks.
"Listen…" he started and sat up as much as the handcuffs allowed him to.
"Gallifrey is… you can't go home, I am sorry."

She ignored the Doctor and buzzed around the control panel, happily switching levers and pushing buttons. For a moment it knocked him for a loop to see another animate being handling a TARDIS with the same nonchalance as him; it had been so long... Then he remembered why it had been so long.
"Gallifrey is gone! Destroyed during the Time War… I'm so sorry."
For a second the woman seemed frozen; then she glared at him and pulled another handle.
"Nonsense, Gallifrey and gone? Don't make a fool of yourself."
"I'm serious!" but the Doctor knew this wouldn't convince her – it wouldn't convince him.
"Lunatic" she hissed and continued her work on the control panel.
"You have to believe me!" he shouted and jerked his hand against the handcuffs.
"Doctor", Jack tried to calm him.
"Let her go there, she'll see you were right and…"
"No!" he pulled again, but the shackles didn't give in.
"Listen to me, you don't want to see that!" he shouted at her but she ignored him; her face told him she heard him though.
"Doctor...?" Jack sounded truly worried.
"It breaks your hearts", he turned around to the captain and knew he sounded furious.
"Seeing this piece of the galaxy. The place where your home has been once and suddenly it's all empty – I don't want her to see that."
But while the Time Lady flew the TARDIS right to where Gallifrey once had been the shackles were mercilessly keeping them in place.

"There we are", by this time she had convinced herself that this man was nothing but a crackpot – just her luck. Obviously she was a luckless person; one could never be sure after a regeneration, but even if she hadn't just formed a new personality and body she wouldn't remember how she had been before.
"Ladies", she tapped her index finger shortly at her temple and winked at the handcuffed men.
"This means good-bye."
"Don't do it." It was the sudden calmness in the man's voice worrying her the most – if he'd kept shouting it would have been easier to tell herself he had lost his mind.
"Oh, cut it out", she sighed with faked calmness.
"I'll show you that Gallifrey is right where it should be."
She walked over to the TARDIS's door. She wasn't used to this body at all; now that she thought about it she wasn't even sure how exactly she looked like. Her short glance in the mirror had shown her a dark-haired young woman. Not too plump, not too skinny, pretty small though (how she'd recognized while the men stood up; she was nearly a head smaller than the shorter one of the two) – how annoying, she really was luckless.

The woman pushed the door open and the blackness of the galaxy coldly welcomed her. She poked her head out of the TARDIS and looked about; left, right, up, down, but it wasn't like one could accidentally overlook a planet.
"What?!" She got back into the TARDIS and furiously glared at the men on the floor like they were to blame.
"Where are we?!" she jangled, her voice was shaky.
"I'm so sorry", the Time Lord said with a look that showed her that the pain in his voice was no fake, but this was no reason for her to believe his nonsense.
"This daft old ship must have gotten the coordinates wrong!" she ranted and rushed back to the control panel. She scanned the screen for a possible mistake.
"Don't be silly, you know we are right!"
Why didn't he simply shut up?!
"You recognize the surroundings, don't you? We learned the nearest stars by hearts, you know we are here! It's Gallifrey that's go-"
"Shut up!" if she hadn't been shaking all over she'd been fascinated how her new voice skipped a hole octave while screaming. Shivering she propped herself with her hands on the control panel. She had to think. Somehow she'd fallen for a trick, what could it be else?
"It fell victim to the Time War. Daleks and Time Lords, there's only the two of us left."
The woman turned around and looked at the man's dark eyes. Then she shook her head, not able to believe him nor to refute him. Finally she let go of the panel and rushed away from him and these eyes that told her that the horror he told her about was no lie.

She opened a random door and locked herself into the room. Just after she'd done this she recognized it was a library. Good! This was what she needed. Many books meant much information. One of these should tell her what was going on here; luck was back at her side.
The Time Lady wiped her hand over her eyes and settled down to work.
She just sat there for a moment, trying to go through her memory. It was pretty short of course and confusing... She knew that many species and people existed out there, but the only faces she could recall where the faces of the two men. It was like sitting in a dark room and not being able to see more than some inches, though she was aware that there was more, she was just unable to see it properly.

-

She couldn't tell how much time had passed when a knocking interrupted her. She had just found and finished a book called "Famous wars of the universe – years 100'200 until 300'6" when the sudden noise made her wince. Hesitantly she got up and walked over a pile of books to the door she'd carefully locked with a chain.
"Who's there?" she called through the door and since she didn't want to appear stupid because there were only 3 people on this ship she added: "the handsome or the smart guy?"
"…Both!" the voice of the Time Lord answered after a moment of hurt hesitation that made her smile. Since her anger had faded away she started to feel guilty. If they really rescued her she'd stolen their ship and left them back in handcuffs.
Carefully she opened the door until the chain was strained and peeked through the gap. Yup, the dark-eyed Time Lord was there, though his look seemed some brighter by now.
"Liar", she said "you're the tedious guy."
"What are you doing?" his voice was kind. Great! Now she really felt guilty.
"That's a library… I'm reading", she explained and then: "so, you could get out of the handcuffs?"
"It was easy after Jack remembered he had the keys in his pocket." Both exchanged a smile.
"Will you open this door?" the Time Lord asked, his tone didn't sound like a request, more like he was just curious if this was a part of her plan or not.
"I'm not sure", she replied lowly "you were right, but this doesn't mean you're not dangerous."
"I never said I was not", he replied "but you can trust me."
The Time Lady frowned.
"Did you kidnap me?"
"No"
"… would you tell me if you would have kidnapped me?"
"… I'm not sure… depends on the reasons I would have had for kidnapping you."
She knew it was naive and if he should turn out to be a real kidnapper she would hate herself for this later on, but right now she was grateful for his honesty.

"Where are you travelling to?" she asked, suddenly aware of something.
"Uhm, nowhere particular. I'm just travelling around, seeing the galaxy... and stuff. Why?"
Uneasy she fiddled with the door-chain.
"I was just wondering... could you drop me where you found me? Maybe someone on this planet knows who I am – only place I have a connection to now that... now that it's gone."
She avoided his look, saying this out loud meant believing it and she still couldn't do this; not fully.
"Yes, sure", the man assured her and she looked up, beaming.
"Thanks!" Then she closed the door, took the chain away and got out, puzzled she found that he was waiting for her.
The Time Lord reached out his hand.
"My screwdriver."
She grinned.
"Ups, right" and dropped the tool she'd still have in her pocket into his hand.
"Handy thing", she said while they were walking down the corridor, back to the control room.
"Thanks", he smiled.

"The planet you were on while regenerating's called 'Earth', by the way."
She frowned and the man seemed surprised.
"You remember this name?"
"No...", she replied after some moments of silence.
"No, I thought I would but it's just a planet among other planets I remember the names of... no images connected to it though."
"How about Gallifrey?" he seemed hesitant while asking, maybe scared she would cry again, but she went back in her mind and answered truthfully: "Yes. Definitely an image connected to this, but no particular one... I see the landscape but no house I'd call home... I see people, I know their status but not their names; ok Rassilon maybe but... no faces and no personality linked to anyone. One of them could be my own son and I wouldn't remember it."
"It will return, sooner or later" he placed his hand gently on her arm and she glanced bewilderedly at him.
"You can't be sure, why do you say that? And what's this touching?" she didn't want to be rude but this was just odd...
"I... uhm, s-sorry!" he backed-off his eyes wide and apologetic.
"I tried to comfort you, nothing else!" he excused.
"Comfort me? With telling me everything'll be fine... that's odd."
"Right, s-sorry."
She wasn't angry though, just amused, it was just weird. She walked ahead to the control room.

He wanted to bang his head against the wall; hardly. This had been embarrassing beyond belief. Jack had been right, the Doctor hadn't interacted with female Time Lords for far too long.
Gallifreyans didn't comfort each other with trying to gloss things over; they rather appoint ways to deal with an uncomfortable situation. And never with touching! Touching was something that just happened accidentally, or if really really close to each other, but never out of politeness. It would have amused the Doctor to see how he'd adapted himself to human-traditions if he didn't had the wish to hole up and die in embarrassment.
Entering the control room didn't exactly helped to raise the Doctor's mood. Jack was a human, a bloody human! And he apparently had a jaunty chatter with the Time Lady – without embarrassing accidents, he even made her laugh.
"So", the Doctor announced slightly too loud.
"Earth, right?"
"That's what you said", the woman smiled.
"You'll like it there, my home-planet actually. If you've found someone who knows you, I gotta show you around", Jack suggested and before the Time Lady could accept this offer the Doctor kicked the TARDIS alive and they got shaken around.

-

"You still have the breaks on". While he landed the TARDIS in the same street he'd found her in, the woman had stepped behind him.
"Thanks, I'm able to fly my ship alone", he replied grumpy.
"We-ll, doesn't sound like it", she mocked and smiled challenging. He threw an annoyed glance at her and they left the TARDIS.
"Hmm", she eyed the scenery over.
"No memory?" Jack asked caring.
"Uh-uh", the Time Lady shook her head.
"But I didn't expect it. Anyway, I came here to find someone who knows me and that's what I'll do now. Any idea where I could start such a search?"
"I'd suggest we start at a police post, maybe someone already started searching for you and-"
"We?" she'd crossed her arms behind her back and looked surprised at the captain.
"Of course we! We won't leave you alone! We won't, right Doctor?" Jack turned around to the Doctor who'd waited in the entrance of the TARDIS.
"Uhm", he said "congratulation! This really sounded like the well-considered answer she'd expect from a Time Lord, well done" he scolded himself.
"I'll be fine, don't worry", the Time Lady refused. "You've certainly better things to do and you already brought me here. More than I could ask form you, after stealing your ship and attacking you." The woman turned around to walk away.
"Doctor!" Jack called and the Doctor recovered his language.
"Madam, Jack's right we can't just leave you on your own!" The woman turned around and grinned.
"'Madam'? Oh, have I regenerated into a granny? I mean, I don't have a clue how old I am, but I bet I'm at least 200 years away from a 'madam'."

Doctor: 0 – Embarrassment: 2. He blushed, fortunately(?) Jack helped out.
"What should we call you then? Any name you remember?"
"...no. Actually not."
"Oh, I think we can find one. Many nice names I know", Jack smiled suggestively at her.
"And I bet none of them is innocent", the woman replied amused, obviously she slowly got used to Jack's sense of humour.
"Too bad you can't chose your name yourself – people get their names from other people ever since, except you're the Doctor of course." Jack looked at the Doctor.
"Any ideas?"
"I'm not good in giving things names..." The Doctor tried to escape an answer.
"Liar, you churn made-up-names for things out!"
"I'm not making them up!" The Doctor objected and their fight was interrupted by the still nameless woman laughing.
"Maybe we don't need it anyway", she explained amused. "If we find someone who knows me, they'll know my name."
And in a threesome they made their way to the next police post.