AN: The cover image depicts the general attire of the protagonist. The face is hidden obviously because she's a time lord.

Again I do not own Doctor Who. Only the OC and the aliens I will undoubtedly invent.


The Solitary Confinement

The Soldier reclined haphazardly on the jump seat of the console room. It had been at least a few years since she'd last even considered posture and decades since she'd outgrown the involuntary rigidity that accompanied her every movement. She gave her head a shake, trying to dispel the useless thought.

Maybe she should visit a planet. No, she shouldn't. She was a Time Lord-no- Lady-after all. Everything about them was considered invaluable and could be harvested, from their regenerative bodies to their near omniscient minds. But she could find trouble! And would maybe, likely create a change in a timeline somewhere that shouldn't happen. Better to stay where she was.

She thumped her head against seat and felt the light brush of the TARDIS consciousness against her nearly solitary mind. The TARDIS was urging her to move towards the rudimentary piloting of primitive ships in the time vortex.

The Soldier paused. Could it be another Time Lord? Another who escaped the Time War perhaps?

Hope sprung her into action, and she pressed her finger against a button on the console and a holographic screen materialized in front of her. Telepathically asking the TARDIS for a keyboard, she scanned the vortex for surrounding technology. As she spotted a ship on the screen, she quickly input the coordinates to identify the species origin of the tech.

It was a Chula ship. A junk ambulance ship speeding through the vortex.

Her stomach sank in familiar disappointment at the Gallifreyan written in front of her. Before the scan could proceed further to identify organisms onboard, she angrily slammed the acceleration lever next to her.

The scan abruptly stopped as the TARDIS shook and zoomed through the vortex. As her TARDIS came to an sudden stop, she wondered if she should finally go outside and find companionship; any kind of companionship, with whatever species she found outside.

It had been decades. Or was it centuries? It didn't feel that long. But she couldn't tell anymore. She hadn't left her TT Capsule since she'd been banished. Her wonderful, beautiful Type 340 TARDIS. They had stopped creating them when she'd joined the Army at eight. When she'd gotten her TARDIS license, it was the only one she could afford. Well, the one she had been assigned due to her plebian status.

When she'd first walked into her TARDIS, it was like she'd made a self-discovery. Her TARDIS had been untouched, common and unwanted and she found more in common with her TARDIS than she ever had with anyone in Arcadia. And now, this TARDIS was the only thing that shared telepathic space with her. The only thing that could.

She fell deeper into despair as she reminisced.


The Soldier had been born in an Outsider family. Born and not loomed like the other Time Lords.

Outsiders were Time Lords that were disillusioned with the Time Lord way of life and left the cities and moved to the wastelands. They lived with less advanced technology, largely due to unavailability of resources but still much more advanced than the rest of the universe. It was a simple life, and sometimes some of the Outsiders rebelled against the corrupt rule of the Cities.

She'd been born into a relatively normal family, the sixth of eight children. Most of her siblings had joined the local schools and occupations and she'd been nothing particularly special. Her father had a deep distrust of the Time Lords in the Cities and had protested her mother's proposal of her joining either the Army or Academy to become a Time Lady. Her mother argued that they needed someone in the family to join to help with the finances.

She should have been in the Academy in Arcadia. The only reason she hadn't, was because the Soldier had been under the impression that Academy Ladies were stuffy pompous women who worried only about status. So she had insisted on the Army because she thought it suited her carefree, tomboyish nature. It wasn't that she was wrong, but she hadn't fully grasped what being in the Army actually meant. While the learning content was essentially the same for the Army and Academy, the Army focused more on how to kill, how to find weaknesses of the opponent, the glory of the Time Lord Presidents and how their orders were absolute gospel. They trained her to body to kill, her mind to work out the quickest ways to destroy enemies. She had been nothing special in her school days too. Her Army name had been Alpha Plebian. The name had been a tool of degradation by the high and mighty, with only the high class receiving the privilege of a name without the class designation. It hadn't helped that she had been trembling in fear at the sight of the Untempered Schism. Apparently, it had been an average reaction.

She had resented being common until she'd heard of the Doctor near her graduation. The Doctor had been exiled to Earth because he had broken the non-interference rule after saving humans from an alien species known as the War Lord, who had sought to conquer a distant galaxy with the aid of the Time Lord War Chief. It was a scandal because the Doctor had been working with the Celestial Intervention Agency and was from a high born family. He'd been coined the Renegade Time Lord for all his anti-Time Lord actions and despite all the negative attention the Doctor had gained, the Soldier had only seen the similarity between him and her father, who'd also protested the non-interference law. However, while her father had retreated to the wastelands, the Doctor had been exiled to the primitive planet of the beings he'd saved, Earth, and forced to lose a regeneration. Those events had destroyed any wishes whatsoever she'd had of being high born.

Then she'd graduated. She'd chosen a common title, 'The Soldier' and swore to do whatever it took to keep those she loved safe, also a common oath. She'd fought in countless skirmishes for two centuries before she was even considered for a promotion. Eventually she was promoted as a Guard in the Citadel to the High Councilor Partisan, who was perhaps the only sane one in the High Council. Romana, highly publicized to have travelled with the Renegade Doctor, became President. She was also the only Time Lord that the Soldier had ever loved. It had been painful and one sided and the leading factor in the Soldier regenerating into the first and only time as a man. Nothing really changed, though Romana listened to the Soldier's pleas of uniting the Outsiders and Time Lords against the turbulent future.

And then the Demon had come to life; the demon claiming to be Rassilion because how could that demon be the holy legendary Rassilion? He'd issued the Final Sanction and killed the Partisan for being the voice of protest. The Time War had already gone on for two centuries by then and the Time Lords were blinded by the War and Rassilion to see reason.

So then, for justice and more importantly, love, the Soldier agreed to help Romana steal the Hand of Omega and Key of Rassilion from Rassilion and destroy it so that the Final Sanction would fail. Romana only managed to damage the Key before they were both caught. Romana was imprisoned but the Soldier, being from the Army, was more gravely punished for disobedience. The High Council completely removed the telepathic presence of the Time Lords from her mind. The trauma of removing billions had fractured her mind and induced the third regeneration that had transformed the Soldier back to a girl.

The Soldier had been sentenced to dematerialization from the Universe into the Void, when The Visionary had stepped forward. The Visionary, the lone time-sensitive Time Lady on the High Council, had managed to subvert the sentence by spouting nonsense about the Soldier's significance in saving the Time Lord race and then suggested banishment so that the Soldier could never return to Gallifrey. The Soldier had left, isolated in mind like never before. Even worse, she was disillusioned with Time Lords, love, and any hope of stopping the War.

Her Captain had been considerate enough to let her take her TARDIS discreetly when she left. And once she'd entered the TARDIS and the vortex, she hadn't left its confines.


A great rumble within the TARDIS jolted her out of her thoughts and the Soldier jumped into action, searching for plausible faults. The shaking persisted and grew worse as she felt the TARDIS fighting a summons somewhere.

The TARDIS sent her images of red grass, orange skies and citadels. Gallifrey.

All of a sudden, the TARDIS door banged open and tilted steeply sideways, making the Soldier fall out of the TARDIS and onto a silicon oxide based ground. The Soldier abruptly turned back to see her TARDIS dematerializing away.

Come back! Please come back! She screamed telepathically, hoping the telepathic programming would override the summons. It didn't.

She was truly alone.


AN: This chapter was hard to write for some reason. Hope you liked it! Review please :)