It became evident that the Doctor didn't have to go about telling her that everything wasn't fine and dandy. His old friend had picked on as much for herself.

Her eyes snapped up to look at him intently. "There's something you're not telling me. The war, is it over?"

He swallowed. "Yes."

"What happened? Who won?" She asked, though what she really meant – and the Doctor knew it – was who lost.

"Everyone lost."

"But what does that mean? The Time Lords… what happened?"

For several seconds, all he could do was stare at her. How could he do it? How could he tell her that he burned her whole world? Their whole world? That he had burned her family and her friends?

In the end, he could only keep it simple. "They died."

Aliya just stared. "What do you mean?" She asked shakily. "You can't just - they can't just be - what the hell do you mean they died? You make it sound like they're all gone!"

He rubbed his face tiredly, feeling his hearts thud. "You said yourself that your head felt empty."

"That's not fucking funny, that's sick," she snapped, "Are you trying to tell me that Gallifrey is sitting up in the sky without a single living person left on it?"

"...Gallifrey's gone."

Her brow furrowed and she shoved him backward. "All I hear is more and more words that don't make any sense." Her voice was cold, but he heard it tremble.

"The Daleks are gone too. They're all dead, all of them, except for a few tiny groups here and there. One couldn't be destroyed without the other, and the Daleks had to be destroyed," the Doctor said, as if the mention of Daleks could somehow soften what she was hearing, even though it was clear that she didn't believe him.

"Why did you say it like that?" She asked, very quietly, eyebrows coming together in a frown.

"They're in a Time Lock, Aliya. There was a weapon, stolen from the Time Vaults, called the Moment. It was activated to end the Time War, to save billions of people. Except that it meant that Gallifrey had to burn."

"You're telling me that someone made that call?" The disbelief and disgust was obvious in her voice. Her eyes met his. "You're really serious? They're all dead? All of them? It's all just...gone?" Her desperate voice broke, and he could see in her eyes the tiny spark of hope that he wouldn't answer in the affirmative, that it was some kind of joke.

He could barely get out the word 'yes' before his head hung.

The noise of grief that escaped her lips was piercing and horrible to have to hear. Raw, loud, ugly sobs ripped through her, and her knees gave out. She half fell to the ground, saved only by his arms as he lowered himself to her level. Now on the floor of the console platform, he gripped her forearms as the tears streaked down her face and she held her head and screamed.

Under her breath she was gasping out words in Gallifreyan. Most of them were about emptiness and silence and death. All of loss, all of grief. As he had been when he realised that his species was gone, she was broken, and the problem was that she didn't even know the worst part yet.

Finally, her head lifted to look at him with wet, reddened eyes. "How did you make it out? I'm not surprised, just curious."

He tried to answer, but the words refused to leave him. He just looked back at her.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?" No sooner had she asked before something flashed through her eyes. "Unless..." She pulled out of his grip. "No." The pleading note in her voice nearly made the shame break him. "No, tell me it wasn't you, tell me you didn't!" When he didn't answer, her face twisted with betrayal and fury that had him flinching.

He couldn't take it, he had to make her see why it was necessary. He hadn't realised just how much he craved forgiveness, forgiveness from someone who could understand the magnitude of the act. But he also knew that he didn't deserve it. "You have to understand-"

"Understand what?" She demanded. "That you burned Gallifrey? That you actually consciously pressed a button that you knew would killed everyone on that planet?" Her voice shook, it was so distraught.

"If I hadn't, the entire universe would have been destroyed, it was them or everyone!" The Doctor said, telling her what he had told himself over and over before he had done the deed, and since.

"Who was still alive? Was Romana? Was Leela?" Aliya moved further back when he tried to come closer.

"Leela wasn't. Romana...she was in the Citadel prison," he said quietly, "Aliya, she's the one who told me to do it. I tried to make her come with me, Aliya, I begged her, but she wouldn't. She refused to abandon her people, even after being deposed."

She didn't answer straight away, merely looked at the floor beneath them as tears ran silently down her cheeks. "Was my mother still alive?"

Say she died early on. Say you don't know, a part of him whispered. But he couldn't lie, he had to tell the complete truth. He looked her right in the eye and said, "Yes."

He got a minuscule nod for an answer, and more tears. Her head turned away from him. "I can't even look at you," she whispered, "It makes me want to be sick."

The Doctor shifted so that his back was leaning against the base of the console, looking over to where she sat dejectedly on the glass floor. "You have to realise that if I hadn't, more would have died and the universe probably still wouldn't be standing. People like Amy and Rory would have never lived."

"Yes," she said, still not looking at him, "But to know that you were the reason that it happened...I look at you and I see them burning and screaming."

"No, I-" He sighed. "I deserve that."

The next thing she said shook him, especially because of how calmly she spoke. "Tell me, if you're the man who makes people better, then why do you seem to be the one who causes the most destruction?" He winced, but said nothing. After half a minute's silence she spoke again. "But Romana? You really tried?"

"Of course I did."

"You should have tried harder," she told him forcefully, "You should have dragged her from that cell kicking and screaming if you had to."

"Do you think I don't regret not doing so every day?"

"You promised me that you'd always protect her, I don't care if she became President, you promised!" Aliya reminded him, the subtle steel back in her voice, "And instead you killed her, she was my cousin and your old companion, and you killed her! You loved her for Rassilon's sake, how could you not save her?!"

"Did you ever try to make her do something she didn't want to do? In that regeneration especially?" He retorted, and it made her pause.

"Yes," she said hesitantly, with a different tone of voice, "I thought she was going to have me thrown from the room." His lips twitched and so did hers, though she covered them the second she realised it. Her body twisted until she was sitting on the floor properly, her knees bent and in front of her and her arms draped over them. "Look, just..." Her eyes shut briefly as she took a deep breath. "Just tell me that even though it was necessary, you regret it."

"Of course I do," He said softly, and she finally looked him in the eye again, only to give him a small smile.

"Okay. That doesn't mean that it's okay, or that I'm okay...but..." She trailed off.

"I know," he said, because he did.

"I'm going to need a while to process."

"Of course."

Now that the worst was over, he hoped, a random memory jolted into him from when she had been pretending to be someone other than herself. "…In your fifth, you kidnapped said old friend after the downfall of Borusa, and dragged her off on your adventures until she finally managed to get home some six months later…"

Perhaps it was time for a change in topic, at least for now. She needed time to learn to cope before they discussed it again.

"Aliya…before, you said I kidnapped you and dragged you off on adventures," he recalled with a frown.

"And?" She sniffed and shrugged.

"That's not what happened!"

Her eyes lightened a little and a tiny smirk graced her lips. "Are you sure? That's the official story, isn't it? Renegade Time Lord known as the Doctor kidnaps past friend and executive mechanic, Aliyanadevoralundar of Arpexia?" Her grin was back, however small, in the haste to temporarily forget the horror of her new reality.

"Yes, that's what we told Flavia, so that you didn't get in trouble!" He protested indignantly. "But I didn't kidnap you, it was your idea!"

That made her almost laugh. "And a damn good one, I thought."

"Yes, but I got the blame for it!"

"Of course you did. I was so honourable, and oh the horrors I saw as I was unwillingly dragged through space and time by the dashingly handsome Doctor…" Aliya narrated the story with a catlike grin on her face.

"I don't think I like this version," he said with a frown. Just then, he was hit with another wave of her excess regeneration energy, which was still emitting from her. It made him stiffen.

She noticed, and seemed to know the reason behind it as well. "Hey, it's okay, you know. You've seen it before." He knew what she meant, that he had seen her regenerate once before, despite the fact that regeneration was supposed to be as private as physical intimacy was to humans. With good reason, too, the Doctor thought as yet another wave of the energy hit him. With the effect it had on bystanders, the rule that only spouses or family should witness regeneration really was quite a good idea.

Romana at least had had the decency to put herself in another room…at least for the actual regeneration, which helped considerably…

Because it was just a perfectly natural biological reaction, but would nonetheless be utterly inappropriate, so he would just keep very still and as long as she kept her distance, in 15 hours, they would be fine. Actually, getting the humans back in would definitely help.


As the Doctor called back in his human friends and they got to their feet, Aliya couldn't help but be a little concerned by the Doctor's behaviour. She understood that the regeneration energy could make things a little different, but why did he look so worried?

"Doctor, look, I didn't think this would bother you so much, but if you like I could just lock myself in a room for 15 hours if you like," she said with a small frown, eyeing his stiff stance. She supposed that with his human friends so close, the effect of the regeneration energy was quite inconvenient.

"No, it's fine, really," he said quickly, just as his friends appeared at the top of the stairs, "We are both mature adults and it is just a bit of regeneration energy! Not a problem!"

"What's regeneration energy?" Rory asked, and having not realised the humans were there, the Doctor jumped.

"Nothing!" The Time Lord half squeaked. "Don't worry about it." Aliya herself flushed pink at having been caught talking about something so private (though at least the humans likely had no idea that it was), and sat on the jump seat. She still had trouble even looking at her old friend, knowing what he had done, knowing all the people that he had killed. It was just so colossally wrong...

"So…do you want to explain what happened now?" Amy eyed the two of them somewhat suspiciously.

"Well, Amy, when we're dying, us Time Lords do a thing."

"A thing?"

"A thing! A rather impressive thing, actually," he said as he straightened his bowtie. "Every cell in our body is rewritten. We survive by becoming a new person. Same memories, same core personality, different body."

"And that's what she did?" Rory eyed Aliya with new interest.

"Yep, that's what she did. Amy, Rory, this is Aliya, who is funnily enough a rather old friend of mine." He clapped Aliya on the shoulder before looking at the Ponds with a grin on his face.

"Bit more than a friend," Aliya put in, offhandedly.

"True, very true," he admitted, looking at her, "Best friend, actually, on several occasions."

She smiled at him and shook her head. "You have a lot of best friends."

He grinned. "Also true."

"But you're not the last one anymore," Amy said, looking at Aliya with a kind of wonder, "And not only that, you actually know her? She's your friend?" When they both nodded, Amy grinned. "That, Doctor, has to be the best luck in the universe."

"Hang on though…if she had to regenerate, then she would have had to have died…" Rory realised, and turned his attention directly to Aliya. "What happened?"

"Well, obviously I can't be sure, but what I think happened is…" The blonde sighed. "When I was first put inside that mountain, from the few seconds I remember, there was something strange about the air. What I think happened, is that there was a chemical or quality in that place which my body adapted to being around, and eventually couldn't do without. Then, when I was taken away from it, my body didn't know how to cope anymore, so it began to shut down, and that's where regeneration came in."

"Oh," Rory said, "Okay then."

"Not bad," the Doctor commented.

"Thanks," Aliya said, back to avoiding his eyes.

"Not bad what?" Amy asked.

"She just simplified an explanation for Rory very nicely. I thought she would be out of practice."

"I'm a very considerate person," Aliya said, smirking despite not looking at him.

"Also somewhat more sarcastic than you've been in a long while," He noted, "It's a bit like your third incarnation again, only with an actual generally pleasant disposition."

"I was fairly awful that time around, wasn't I?" She laughed slightly at herself. But mid-laugh, her hands flew to her abdomen and she let out a groan.

"Aliya?" The Doctor looked to her with concern, but she just waved him away.

"It's just the aftershocks, I'm fine," she assured him as she leant back on the seat.

"What aftershocks?" Rory frowned, looking between the two of them.

"Nasty side-effect of regeneration," Aliya explained, "Can last up to 15 hours, but really it's fine."

"Then why's he looking at you like that?"

"Why do you think he called himself the Doctor?" She asked them, but didn't wait for an answer. "The man who makes people better." She squeezed her eyes shut as another burst of hot, searing pain ran through her. But she managed to continue talking, almost as if nothing has happened. "He hates seeing others in pain. But he knows just as well as I do, if not better, that he can't do anything for me right now."

"He can't do anything?" Naturally, it was Rory who asked that question.

"No, and he doesn't need to, I'm fine," she said, but cringed briefly again.

A bang made them all look at the console, where the Doctor was clutching his hand and glaring while the TARDIS seemed to be protesting.

"Did you just hit her?"

The answer to that became obvious when one of the system alarms began to blare, warning of a failure, and the TARDIS began to hurtle through time and space, while its occupants merely had to hang on for dear life.