Chapter 4

The words of his younger self had stayed with him, even though he was where he needed to be now – far out in space, travelling, just the Doctor and his Tardis and all of time and space.

The Tenth Doctor had told him that he thought he needed his help.

Maybe he did.

Perhaps what ever had happened to put the story of Clara inside his head had caused him so much misery that he was almost hoping for his own future to be wiped out by changing the past :

No future, no Clara.

No Clara, no pain...

He dismissed that thought as the looked at the controls and wondered on his next move – he would have to wait for the Doctor to follow his instructions before he felt any kind of change. And then he would have to pay a visit and explain to him that in the interests of Earth, the timeline had to be kept safe. He would regenerate eventually, and then he needed move on and take up the path his Eleventh self was destined to take in order to keep others safe.

It was starting to worry him that he cared more about others involved than he did about himself – yes, the other Doctor had hit on something truthful. Perhaps it was the way he had walked through the snow, not caring about the cold because he was too numb to feel it. Maybe that had given it away...

He straightened up and turned from the console, looked to the open Tardis doors and watched as space and twinkling starlight passed by.

The Doctor's thoughts were caught in a thorny place between the need to make his past better and a temptation to sit back and hope this would change everything, even if it meant wiping out his own future lives.

He knew he was in a bad place, he had been ever since he had woken up feeling disoriented and confused and with the story of Clara stuck inside his head.

Those memory wiping devices worked fine on humans – they were such primitive creatures. But to use one on a Time Lord? If he had suffered having his memory wiped, it could prove disastrous for one so old whose body was used to retaining memories, all memories stayed, even if they faded out after regeneration, they came back eventually.

A Time Lord's mind was not meant to have a great chunk of recollections burned out. He was well aware if the Tenth Doctor was right and the memory wipe had been real, it could mean he was in a downward spiral of slowly coming mentally undone as his mind struggled to cope with what had happened to it – he could go insane, it was a real possibility...

"Have you remembered my face yet?"

As she asked that question, a gentle hand rested on the sleeve of his jacket and he felt the weight of it, that touch was real..

The Doctor gave a gasp and turned around, but no one was there.

"You're not real," he whispered, his eyes wide as his twin hearts hammered, "You're just a story!"

And the Tardis gave off its usual hum as he stood there alone, waiting for the ghost to return, wondering if this was another sign that perhaps he was right, perhaps he was going insane...

But if he was, that would mean something had caused it, something had affected his mind to bring it about, indicating the memory wipe had actually happened. And if that had happened, it could only mean one thing:

Clara Oswald was not just a story...

Anger burned in his blue eyes as he looked again to the open Tardis doors, as his gaze reflected the depth of star lit space:

If she was not a story, if he all he recalled was true, why had his love for her caused him such pain that he had gone so far as to allow his own memory to be burnt out? That question needed an answer, but for now, all he could do was wait for other memories to fall into place, new memories of what he hoped would be happier times in a former life, when his Tenth self changed his own fate...

On Earth, it was a cold winter's night and the snow had started to fall. As she closed the curtains and turned back to the warmth of the bedroom, for a brief moment, although she was far from the town and the pollution, and this place in the country was perfect to raise a child, she could not help but feel haunted by the memory of the Doctor and his Tardis and how he had saved her from her fate on Mars...

Adelaide wondered how the world could keep on turning day after day, in the way it always had, how life could go on, as if nothing had happened. The Mars base was a memory now, a story she would pass down to Susie, and one day to Steffi, too. That was funny, she had never thought of it that way before, but she did now:

Memories, in the end, became stories...

But her memory of the Doctor and that snowy night when he had landed the Tardis and opened the door and she had found herself back on Earth, was a memory she couldn't ever let go of, not only because of the colleagues she had lost when the Flood attacked, but because the Doctor had left her with a reminder that would last forever...and that reminder was Steffi, her little girl who was five years old and sleeping on her back in her bed, her eyes were closed tightly, leaving her mother to only wonder at the dreams that went on in the mind of the half Time Lord child whose hair was as dark as her eyes - as dark as her father's. She was seeing more of the Doctor in Steffi with every passing day.

Adelaide smiled.

"What ever you're dreaming about," she said softly, "I hope it's wonderful."

And then she dimmed the night light and quietly left the room, leaving her child to sleep peacefully.

Adelaide went back downstairs, it was almost eight o'clock and she was planning to spend a quiet evening by the fire with the TV on low volume, as she tried to find something distracting to watch, anything to keep her mind from drifting back to the past. She thought back to the man who had turned up on her doorstep in the summer, who had given her information about the salvaged space vessel and told her to call Unit when the time was right... He had seemed to know so much, and there was something about him, something that she couldn't quite work out...it was almost as if there had been so much more to that man – he still seemed familiar...

The clock at the end of the hallway chimed the hour just as she passed it and went into the brightly lit kitchen to make some tea. As Adelaide switched on the kettle she glanced out of the window, beyond her reflection the night looked black and the snow seemed stark against it as more snow fell, the flurry growing thicker. Adelaide opened the window and looked out into the garden, watching as the snow fell silently and then turned her eyes skyward. As a child she had looked to the skies and encountered the Dalek, she had thought of that encounter for many years whilst embarking on a career that would lead her to Mars.

But now when she looked to the skies, she thought instead of another alien life form – the man called the Doctor, the man in the blue box. She could still see him in her mind, sharp as yesterday:

Standing there with his back to her as he straightened his tie and then put on his long brown coat, then he had turned around and looked at her and she had taken in every detail of his face, knowing the man who had saved her from the Flood and then from death by her own hand was a man who would be firmly in her heart forever...

She had never stopped loving him, even when the years had gone by and the child she had not expected to have had looked more like him with every passing day. Sometimes she looked at Steffi and felt like a crack in her heart caused by his absence would always be sealed painlessly by the love she felt when she looked into her child's eyes.

She didn't know if the Doctor had been lying when he promised to return – perhaps he had meant what he said, maybe something had happened to prevent his return – after all, he had turned up on Mars on that fateful day and that had been unplanned. Maybe he walked into trouble all the time, he seemed to have a clear head in a crisis as if he was used to dangerous situations, and from what she had learned from Unit, the Doctor had been involved in saving the Earth from alien threat many documented times over the years. So perhaps he did have a habit of causing trouble.

She thought of how he had got her into trouble and then left, and again she recalled his face, his smile, the look in his eyes, and she thought of Steffi and smiled.

The kettle hit boiling point and the button popped up as steam spewed from the spout. The air slipping in through the open window brought a blast of ice with it, and Adelaide closed the window and turned back to the kettle.

And the doorbell rang.

She turned towards the kitchen doorway, listening as the caller rang the bell again and again, the ring was one long press followed by a pause and then another, and another.

"Alright, I'm coming!" she said, wondering who would be calling at this time in the evening – she hadn't made any plans for visitors, and her place was far out in the countryside, and not many people had her address, a precaution she had taken on the advice of Unit, to protect her half alien daughter...

As she left the kitchen, she found she was recalling self defence techniques she had learned many years before – she knew how to deal with hostility. The doorbell rang again, and she hurried to answer it and slipped on the safety chain, then drew back the bolts and finally opened the door a fraction.

"Adelaide..."

She caught her breath at the sight of him, feeling stunned and overwhelmed with emotions that ran from anger at his absence to a wave of love that washed through her heart:

It was the Doctor. It really was him, after five long years, he was leaning against the door frame, he looked exhausted and his dark eyes burned with intensity that took her by surprise...

She reached for the chain, released it and opened up the door, and the Doctor staggered in, then leant against the wall, standing there in the hallway with snowflakes in his dark hair. Then he unbuttoned his long brown coat and opened it up, pausing to loosen his tie as he took a breath, and it was then she noticed he was perspiring, which was odd, because it was snowing outside...

Adelaide couldn't speak. She wanted to, but seeing him standing there after so long, after wondering when he would return and then thinking perhaps he never would, all she could do was stand and stare at the man who stood before her leaning against the wall in the hallway, dark shadows hung under his eyes, perspiration shone on his face, he looked terrible, but at the same time, it was still wonderful simply to see him again after five long years.

"Adelaide..." he said again, and his dark eyes glazed with tears as he looked at her and took in the sight of her standing before him, not in the uniform she had worn as head of the Mars mission, now she wore a soft blue jumper and dark jeans, her hair was tied back and still the same fair shade of soft blonde, and time had been good to her, she still looked as youthful for her age as she had five years before...

And she was the mother of his child.

His twin hearts felt like breaking as he thought of the radiation he had absorbed, something that could only mean the end of him, and now he understood why his future self had told him to visit her now, because he knew he wouldn't last much longer, and all he could think of was the years he had spent alone, running from his fate. Years he could have spent with Adelaide and Steffi...

"I know about the baby, I wanted to come back before but I didn't find out until later on...you have to believe me, I meant to come back sooner. I would have come back..." he reached for her as emotion choked his voice.

"I love you both!" he said, and as she embraced him, the Doctor clung to her and wept.

It was a long while before the Doctor and Adelaide broke off from their embrace. When they finally did, she led him through to the front room where he sat down heavily, resting against the sofa like all his strength was gone. It was then as she looked at him she wondered what exactly had happened – this was an emotional reunion, but he looked physically shattered...

"It's such a long story," he said to her, "But I need to explain, I want to tell you everything..." he paused, felt a flicker of pain shoot through his body and managed not to let it reflect in his eyes as he shifted in his seat and breathed out through the discomfort, "I need to tell you so much -"

"And you need to take your time," she told him, "I'm going to make some tea, then we can sit together and you can tell me everything. I need to know everything, because five years is a long time."

Then Adelaide left the room.

The Doctor's eyes widened as he felt a flash of panic on watching her leave.

"Time?" he whispered, "I don't even know how much of that I've got left!"

When Adelaide returned, she set the tea on the table and sat beside him, then looked at him intently.

"I'm listening, Doctor."

He looked back at her, thought of his travels and the years he had wasted, years he could have spent with her before the end had come...

"It's not as if I had a choice," he began, "I didn't know about the baby until I met another version of me – a future version. He told me to leave the timeline unchanged, to preserve all I was meant to do in this life to protect Earth. So I did. But I didn't realise that would mean I spent years travelling alone, years I could have been with you before it happened..."

He fell silent as he blinked away tears, and the touch of her hand as she reminded him of her closeness with the gesture eased his sadness enough to continue explaining, "This isn't easy, Adelaide...I have to tell you something, it's about what's happened to me...I had this old enemy, the Master. I thought he was dead, but he was resurrected and I had to stop him. It cost me everything and -"

"Mummy?"

As Adelaide looked to the open doorway, so did the Doctor, and his eyes filled with warmth as he smiled and fought back his tears at the sight of five year old Steffi Brooke, standing there in a thick lilac night gown as her long dark hair hung to her shoulders. She looked at him, and the shade of her eyes matched his own.

"Who are you?" she asked as she blinked away sleep.

For once, the usually composed Adelaide found herself struggling to hold back from letting her tears show. She smiled at her daughter.

"Remember we talked about your father? And I showed you pictures of him? Well, this is your father. He's come home at last."

Steffi's eyes widened in surprise, then her face lit up in a smile and she ran over to the sofa with her arms outstretched. As she hugged him, the Doctor felt the damage from the radiation seem to shake his bones as if they were breaking, but nothing could steal his joy at meeting his child for the first time.

He let go of her and she looked at him excitedly.

"Are you going to stay, Daddy?"

Daddy. He hadn't expected that. Clearly, Adelaide had made sure their child knew all about her father, talking of him to make sure she remembered him even though until today, he had just been a story...

"Well..." the Doctor began, "I hope so. I may not be able to stay for long, I need to talk to your Mummy about that. A lot has happened."

And he glanced to Adelaide, who caught the look in his eyes and gave a slight nod, understanding that obviously, the Doctor had much more to say, and it was not to be said in front of Steffi.

"I promise I'll try and stay as long as I can," he added, looking to his daughter, "I definitely need time to get to know you – and to spend time with Mummy. I'll be here as long as I can."

"Will that be a long time?" Steffi asked hopefully.

"I don't know," the Doctor told her honestly, "We'll have wait and see, okay?"

Then Adelaide got up and took her daughter by the hand.

"You need to go back to bed, it's late," she said to her daughter, "You and Daddy can talk in the morning."

The little girl let go of her hand and turned back to the Doctor and gave him a hug and he really didn't mind the pain as she gave him a squeeze, because he had no idea how long he would be able to last out, and every moment was precious.

The Doctor watched as Adelaide led the child out of the room and back upstairs to bed, and while he waited for her to return, he ran his fingers through sweat dampened hair as he fought off another wave of pain as he wondered:

How long would he last like this?

She wanted answers, but now he couldn't bring himself to tell her everything, not yet – he wanted to have at least one night reunited with Adelaide, one night of near normality before the truth made everything come crashing down. It seemed only right that he had that time with her. But how she would feel when he told her the truth was something he could only guess at :

Would she forgive him for coming back now, when she found out that for him, it was already too late?