A/N- Okay, if you haven't seen Calapine's YouTube DW tribute to 'What About Everything,' you NEED to. Especially if, like me, you're not a "new series fan" or a "classic series fan" but just a Doctor Who fan- not picking sides in the eternal war between eras, just loving the show for itself. It's everything (and I do mean EVERYTHING) from '63-'07, and it's AWESOME. Best fanvid I have ever seen. (Calapine has also made some really awesome Doctor/Romana videos which I absolutely adore, just FYI.)

Tag this onto the YouTube URL to see it: /watch?v=lxyD9NyfLX8

2. Initiation

The night is cool, and tomorrow she will be eight years old. Idris lies in her flat on her back in her small bed, palms pressed flat against her thighs and heels tucked straight together, and fixates on the ceiling. One year ago today (or rather, it will be one year ago in exactly twenty-three minutes), on her seventh birthday, she entered the Academy.

Since that day, she has been studying a rigorous course in basic mathematics (temporal geometry, mostly, with a smattering of recreational mathematics and some five-dimensional algebra). Her instructors have told her time and time again that other things- physics, biology, temporal engineering and the like- can be learned later, when she has been initiated into the High and Noble Society of Time Lords, and her studies begin in earnest, but mathematics, the root of all sciences, must be learned early and learned well.

Her Time Sense manifested when she was but six, months before any of her peers, and very clearly, even for a natural-born. Or at least, that was what Lord Braxiatel said when he paid a visit to her father after her precocity was discovered. She wasn't supposed to be aware of how unusual she was, but she had been listening outside the library door while her parents and Braxiatel discussed her future.

As she stares at the soft gold ceiling above her, she replays the things he said all those months ago in her mind.

"Your daughter has great potential, my Lord Nasalien. She has quite a gift for handling Time, and she is obviously very intelligent. If she is raised properly, if she is taught and shaped with the utmost care, she could achieve a great deal. As a matter of fact..." Braxiatel hesitated, and it sounded to Idris, crouching in her nightgown outside, like the pause was more for effect than from any need to ponder. "As a matter of fact, I believe she has the makings of a fine president..."

Tomorrow, on the day that marks the end of her eighth year of life, she is to be taken at dawn for her initiation. She knows very well- because her father has told her, again and again- that she is the best hope for her family to achieve greatness. It all hinges on what happens tomorrow.

There are three possibilities about what will happen to her, and she knows them well. For weeks now, she has been reading accounts of various famous (or infamous) initiations in order to prepare herself.

She might go mad. She doesn't think that will happen. Madness is for people with disorderly minds, and she's been trying to keep hers tidy.

Or perhaps she'll be terrified by whatever it is she sees within the Untempered Schism and run away. That one scares her more than madness, because it is a real possibility. The idea that she might throw away all the hope her father has placed on her shoulders because she has no self-control is horrifying. She would still go on, still enter the Academy proper and become a real Time Lady at last, but she would always be just a little... lesser.

The only option, as far as she is concerned, is the preferred option. Inspiration. She wonders what Time itself will look like, if it will at all resemble the faint little wisps of pastpresentfuture she catches out of the corners of her eyes sometimes. She hopes so. She likes that. She could be inspired by that.

.

Dawn comes, and she is there, in the middle of the Blasted Plain- so called because a three-mile radius of ground was shattered into barren rock and heat-fused glass by the opening of the Schism- in the red robes of initiation, and the upper edge of Mila, the larger sun, is just peeping over the horizon, staining everything scarlet to match. Braxiatel is officiating, and she listens as he drones out the ancient speech she has read enough times to murmur it under her breath as he speaks, wishing that he would just hurry up and let her get on with it. She is terrified, but she wants this over with. But, as with everything in her life, nothing comes fast enough.

Finally, though, it is time, and as Mila rises completely over the horizon, she steps forward, and peers in-

and TIME dark eyes, ancient, mysterious deepest RED and what is it everything just MY and the bright timeless with the right calculations we YOU CAN'T! then all nothing will ever I don't MAYBE WHEN and then the Doctor IT ISN'T the rising moons tied in the emeralds everywhere and then TIME fire and burning and screaming within yourself and the Shadow's torture NOTHINGNESS what has been the dark sky filled TIME I should think we NEVER? But what altogether strange DON'T DO my favorite charger SAME and LEELA there was something just there shatterglass and GOLD by the blue on the bay if you can't just stop this TIME no one ever something if you knew what she IT WASN'T but then the bright glittering shining in the dark as no one comes when you're ONE LAST DAY WITH on wings of spun only in my particular favorite it doesn't matter what this won't slightly insane but then there's TIME and somewhere in the light she know what you're up it isn't quite what I no you can't except there's still FIRE AND ICE AND someone might out there TIME AND RELATIVE DIMENSION IN SPACE in the back of the ripping across the don't you that's her no way! I thought it but if the Time LADY PRESIDENT I think maybe TIME

-and falls to her knees, covering her head and burying her face in the soil and stifling a cry as tears run down her face because it hurts...

Pieces sort themselves out in her quaking mind. The Doctor, that mad, impossible Doctor who will change her life, and the Time War, with her a veritable war queen, all pale and cold and triumphant as a bloody angel until those last terrible days and the joy and the life and the laughter and the terror and the wonder and the bad and the good and the complicated things and all the little pieces of her life that Time has shown her...

And then they fade away, because that is what happens. You see your whole future revealed to you, but you never remember it after. Only imprints stay with you, little feelings to tip you off about major turning points in your timeline, and sometimes emotions to accompany them.

As Time leeches out of her mind, her tears of pain turn to tears of joy, because she is still here, and she knows, now, what she has to do. She must be the absolute best she can be, and put her mind to work, so that she can save Gallifrey. She's not sure what she's meant to save it from, but something, at any rate.

Inspiration. It was what she was hoping for, and it was what she got. She is going to be great, and make her family proud.

When she tells her parents, her mother smiles and tells her "that's nice," and her father doesn't even look up from his work to acknowledge her. She feels as though she has been kicked, but she doesn't cry. Instead, she vows that she won't live her life for anyone but herself ever again. She is her own woman (well, girl, but woman sounds more impressive), and she is going to be great.

Now that she has been initiated, she has the right to chose a new name, if she wishes. Most Time Lords don't bother, but most Time Lords have names that are more than nonsense words invented by a 'free spirit' that have no special significance.

Before her initiation, she was already planning on a name change. But now one of the names she was considering comes back to her, a name that derives from the root word for "belonging to oneself." It's pretty enough, she thinks, and certainly unique, which she likes.