Chapter 6: Decouvrir- to discover

AN- Look, quick updates! And long chapters! Cheer! Deep thanks to the few who reviewed last chapter (….., you guys are awesome) and also to those who followed and favorited. This chapter begins the journey to find Kousa's past and identity, it should be, um maybe three long chapters. Or four. I am also debating changing my chapter titles, I was going with a French theme, but I just realized it isn't really, well, logical. Nor does it have a purpose. Opinions? I've actually realized, since writing my other fanfics, reading others, and rereading this one that my writing isn't very well-developed and doesn't flow as much as I'd like. I also feel like there are plot holes despite how much I try to fix them. If you notice any of the above, let me know as I am attempting to improve it for the rest of this story. If you read to the end of this incredibly long author's note, and I'm sorry it's so long really, have a cookie! Sorry, there's only chocolate chip. I can't cook much else. So sit back with your cookies (I swear they aren't singed, they're supposed to be brown on top right?), read, enjoy, and review. (OMG 20 REVIEWS CELEBRATE!)

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. I do own some burnt chocolate chip cookies.

The Doctor woke after a five hour restorative sleep, his mind feeling fully rebuilt, mental shields strong once more, and memories replaced in their proper spots after the Trahesian mind machine's scrambling effect. The one that must've caused him to hear Rose's voice in his head. The same effect that had prompted the visions of the glowing gold. While Kousa was a fierce and loyal companion, she was just a wolf. A telepathic wolf yes, but definitely not special like that. Not like Rose. The glow was the product of his imagination, the Doctor was sure, what else could it be? Wistful thinking and the aftereffects of memory, that's all he'd ever find her in again.

He deliberately moved his thoughts to his newest puzzle-and companion. The telepathic wolf who had no memories of her planet, species, or family, but had lost all of them. At least he knew who he was, even if he'd lost everything. Though he'd often wished he didn't remember Gallifrey burning or Rose's tears as they said good-bye on that Norway beach, there were good memories. Somewhere. Maybe someday he'd be able to think of them without the bad outweighing them. His new companion didn't even have that hope. Kousa didn't deserve the blankness that pained her, and the least he could do for the wolf that had saved his life- and his mind- was to help her rediscover her identity. If she wanted to. And if he was honest with himself, the Doctor was curious about the origins of his new companion.

Kousa was like a challenging riddle, the likes of which he hadn't seen in a long while. It would be good to obsess over something new for awhile, rather than brood over something old. The Doctor quickly cast his mind out into the TARDIS and found Kousa once again in Rose's room. He stalked out of his own with the intent of shooing her out, his face already darkening in anger, but as he approached where he knew the green door usually was, he felt the TARDIS' displeasure and gaped in surprise when she told him she'd moved it.

"But… that's Rose's room. You like Rose, why are you helping Kousa take it…" the Doctor couldn't understand the annoyance and frustration of the TARDIS at his words. She was firmly refusing to give him any more information, but he could tell she was exasperated with him. "Fine. She can have it. It isn't like Rose is coming back." Even as he said the words they were like shards of glass in his hearts and he turned to the console room.

The Doctor stretched dramatically as he stood next to the console. Five hours of sitting in one spot! How did humans do it every night? They wasted so much of their short life in one spot, doing absolutely nothing. He wrinkled his nose in distaste. That was five hours he could've been spending researching Kousa's species. Better get started now.

After asking the TARDIS to compile a list of planets with lupine species- particularly ones that were sentient or telepathic, he propped his feet up on the console, sitting in the jumpseat, the one he'd long ago come to think of as Rose's seat, and watched the Time Rotor pulse up and down. The TARDIS hummed comfortingly in his mind, reassuring him she would have the list done soon. She wanted to help him find Kousa's history too.

"Aha! Thank you old girl, I'll be done in a jiffy. Oh jiffy. Awkward word that. Don't think I'll ever use that again," he muttered distractedly, already scanning the hundreds of images on the monitor, one of which included the werewolf he and Rose had met on Earth- he gave a tight smile at that one. Slowly, he came to the confusing and frustrating conclusion that there were no matches. It was apparently a fact of reality that there was a severe deficiency of species that looked identical to Earth wolves but were smarter and telepathic. Oh, and that scanned human sometimes. He ran a hand through his hair in frustration, fluffing it up and making it look even more electrocuted than usual.

Perhaps she was just some strange experiment by Torchwood, or some other alien nation. He knew of at least 340 species that abducted and experimented on other species. Even though she seemed quite adamant that she had once had a 'pack' there was a gigantic possibility that she was just a strange creature made in some lab. That would certainly explain the lack of memories. Of course, he could easily settle that decision by doing another scan to determine what her species' genetic makeup was. The Judoon reader had been inconclusive, but it was primitive, simple technology anyways- it certainly wasn't the best he could do. If she had a recognizable genetic structure he'd be able to identify it.

-Line Break-

The Doctor rolled out from under the console when he heard the unfamiliar but soothing sound of padded paws on the TARDIS grates. He'd been working on repairs- tinkering Rose would have called it, and his hearts gave a sharp, painful beat at the thought- for nearly an hour, waiting for Kousa to awaken. He opened his mouth to speak, intending to ask her if he could scan her, but she got to his mind first.

I'm hungry, she said, sniffing the air. Is there food anywhere on this ship? Oh, it-she's called a TARDIS, right? The Doctor gave her a funny look, before supposing that her telepathy extended to the TARDIS. Although he found it a little odd that the TARDIS was so instantly taken with his new companion as to form a mental link with her. She'd only ever really shown a preference for Rose. It was certainly strange. Then Kousa's hunger seeped into his mind, and he realized she was trying to convince him to take her to go get food. He felt a pang of guilt, having forgotten completely about Kousa's dependence on him. Usually his companions just wandered around until they found the kitchen themselves and just ate whenever they wanted. Of course his wolfen companion wouldn't know that. Having her rely upon him was new, and it made him uncomfortable.

"Um, yeah. Here, I'll show you to the kitchen. What do you like to eat?" Now that his mental shields were back up, he didn't particularly want to let them down, not even to broadcast his own thoughts. Kousa could contact him. That was it.

I don't know. Definitely not whatever that weird pebbly stuff you gave me before was. That tasted bloody awful, she said pointedly. He gave a sheepish smile.

"That would be dog food. I figured you looked sort of like a dog, and you certainly weren't saying anything to the contrary, so… how about some meat or something?" he asked, trying to recall what wolves ate. Kousa's face lit up.

Chicken would be perfect. The Doctor didn't even question how she knew what chicken was, and pulled a whole rotisserie chicken out of the depths of the TARDIS oven. Kousa's eyes were gleaming, and she was clearly starving, but she eyed it suspiciously. How long has that been in there?

"Why does it matter?" He groaned. Why did companions always ask that?

Kousa fixed him with a glare, Well how long ago did you cook it? I don't fancy eating three hundred year old food. That sounded suspiciously familiar… he shrugged it off, irritation winning out over his perplexing sense of Deja-vu.

"The TARDIS keeps everything inside a type of temporal distortion, frozen in time and it doesn't spoil. So even if I cooked it three centuries ago, it hasn't aged a minute. Certainly comes into handy for situations like this," he said smugly. And then he felt Kousa's famished drive for food and heard her growl in hunger. "Oh. Weelll, here it is then," he set the chicken on a large bowl on the ground, eyes locked onto the starving wolf. As soon as the bowl touched the ground, she lunged at it, only his Time Lord reflexes saving the Doctor from a not-so-nice encounter with Kousa's sharp fangs.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and stood by awkwardly as Kousa tore of strips of meat, paws on either side of the chicken to hold it in place and snout buried in its flesh. He was reminded of how unlike his previous mostly-human companions Kousa was- heck she even out-weirded some of the other species he'd had on board. As she finally slowed her ravenous tearing and chewing and settled down on her haunches to enjoy the rest of her meal like a civilized-er wolf, the Doctor decided to breach the topic that had been nagging at him since this morning.

"Kousa, you have no memories of your planet, don't even know your species, right?"

No need to rub it in, she snapped back. He flinched. Rude. He flinched again.

"Anyways, how would you like to know, if I could find maybe, not your pack, but your planet or at least what species you are?" She stopped eating, all traces of animosity gone, and eyes shining in a way that reminded him painfully of pink-and-yellow and a tongue-in-teeth smile that he'd never see again.

You could do that? Her mental voice, full of wonder, rang through his head like happy laughter, and it brightened his spirits just a bit. He nodded, grinning at her reaction. Oh thank you Doctor! What do I need to do?

"Not anything really. I'll just do a DNA scan, cross-reference your genetic material to the TARDIS database, first comparing helical structure to that of other organisms in nearby galaxies and then expanding outwards and then more onto nucleotide compatibility with certain structures and then-"

Yes, yes, that sounds brilliant, but how will that help, exactly? We'd still have to find my species.

"Oh, um," the Doctor paused, his rambling interrupted. It was so annoying when people did that, made his thoughts go all scrambly and made it a lot harder to come up with brilliant ideas. "Well, we'll just start with the quick scan and blood sample, see if there are any others like you out there- and there must be somewhere. Just gotta find 'em, and we'll take that step when we get there." He gave her a manic grin, bouncing like a little kid waiting to enter a candy shop.

What are we waiting for? She thought challengingly, and with a grin in her eyes, that he met wholeheartedly, they took off towards the med-bay, Kousa following his cry of 'Allons-y' with excited yipping as they ran down the hall.

-Line Break-

The Doctor gently pulled the plunger on the syringe back, feeling Kousa tremble beneath his careful hands. "It's okay girl, we're almost done." She just sat there, remarkably still even though he could sense her bundle of nervous feelings, and he did his best to convey soothing thoughts, though he still wasn't keen on giving her any more mental contact than already. At last he removed the needle, now full of blood, from the skin on her neck and ruffled her ears fondly. "All done." Kousa sighed and leaned into his hand, the tension fading from her body.

I don't like needles, Kousa said, voice very small. The Doctor chuckled.

"Sorry, I had to do it. But now, I can just look at this with the TARDIS magnification multiviewifier, and there we go! DNA sequence front and center," he said cheerfully. The DNA of Kousa's blod was now being projected in a 3D hologram of blue light. He walked around it, and his brown furrowed in confusion. He couldn't figure out why the more he looked at it, the more puzzled he became. "I'll have the TARDIS run a check on it first, compare it to known species. It appears to be double helix, but it seems kind of hazy. Yes, it's rather like Earth species, but plenty of other planets have a double helix. Dellicoptix and Onyriblies both have double-helixed species, and these funny one-celled things on Miami- the planet not the city- even have double helixes. Although this one seems to be quite strange. It's not just the haze, I'm not sure what's wrong, it just looks different and-"

Doctor, enough babbling. Again. Nervous habit I suppose? He stopped talking to meet the playful gaze of his wolf companion, caught red-tongued.

"Er, yes it's going to take a while and I'm very interested to see the results. I hate waiting for important things to happen," He looked morosely at the screen, flashing methodically through species after species and calculating the genetic differences.

Perhaps you could escort me through the TARDIS and show me the locations of some of the other rooms. I can sense far more space, but since you seemed to be under the initial impression that I lacked intelligence, you neglected to show them to me, Kousa said, voice somewhere between affronted and amused. The Doctor sniffed, not one to be outdone.

"Well if you hadn't blocked yourself off mentally, I'd have known we could talk. I rather like having another telepath on board. It's been a while since I communicate with anyone by mind. Not since…" Reneitte, he added silently, thinking back to the stupid, awful mistake he'd made in letting her touch his mind. He'd just missed it so, ached for that touch, to fill up the emptiness in his mind, and his shields had been weak for just a moment, but it was a moment too long and he'd almost lost Rose then, too.

Doctor, are you alright? Kousa asked, concerned, and he realized he'd been staring off, silently and forlornly. He gave her a sad smile.

"'Course, I'm always alright."

You can't fool me you know. I can smell your sadness. He groaned internally at that. He'd forgotten how irritating telepaths could be. Hmm, come to think of that, it explained why he frequently didn't get along with his past selves. Besides the fact that some of them were downright irritating. Doctor, I can tell you're avoiding the question. Busted.

"I was just… remembering something. Someone." Her eyes softened.

Someone you lost? She asked. He nodded. Was it the human whose den I found? The pink room? He blinked in surprise.

"How-"

You have the same aura and feel of desperate loss and loneliness now that you did when you found me there. I am sorry, for whatever happened to her. Was she your mate?

"What? No, we were just friends. Very good friends. Best mates even," the doctor said, nearly blushing, superior Time Lord physiology be damned. He wouldn't even ponder the events of Bad Wolf Bay. Even if he'd wanted them to be something more, that path was closed now.

Hmph. If you claim so. She must have been very special though, for you to remember her so much, so painfully. Her eyes were searching him, and it wasn't a comfortable feeling. He broke eye contact, but could still feel her curiosity in his mind.

"She was."

What was her name? He didn't want to say it, the very word hurt, but what he'd told the Carrionites was true. It kept him fighting, and he liked to think Rose would have been friends with Kousa. They were a lot alike, too compassionate for their own good.

"Rose." Saying it made him wince in physical pain, as his hearts squeezed painfully, despite how well he tried to hide it, and he knew Kousa saw it.

I can leave the room if you want. I did not mean to intrude, only… only it smelled familiar and was warm and close, Kousa whispered, casting her eyes down to the floor, clearly afraid she'd upset him. While it hurt for another to be there, he couldn't begrudge her. And the TARDIS was urging him on, coaching him on what to say as his own mind stopped working.

"No, it's fine. It… it needs someone to keep it lively. She isn't coming back." As soon as he said it, the Doctor recognized the finality, and he almost broke. They stood there in silent for a moment, both mulling over the pain of the past, and then the Doctor leapt towards the door, a forced smile on his face and fake bounce in his step. "Right then, tour! Come on, I've got lots to show you. The TARDIS goes on for miles, I think she's infinite."

You don't know? Kousa sounded amused, as she began to follow him out in the hall, and he was relieved that she accepted his fake enthusiasm.

"Nope! I suppose I couldn't, she tends to keep her secrets to herself. There's a pool, a library, some gardens, even got a ballroom in here somewhere- haven't seen it for centuries though. Oh, and you've seen the kitchens, feel free to help yourself. The TARDIS is pretty good at adapting herself to occupants. She'll probably make wolf-accessible cabinets for you." With that, he took off down the hall, listening to Kousa follow, answering her mental questions eagerly, anything for a distraction, and trying to tell himself he wasn't just running from his problems like always.

-Line Break-

Kousa paddled eagerly through the warm blue water of the pool. She relished the feel of the lapping water, pulling at her fur. It was tiring, swimming, but the burn in her lungs made her feel alive, reminded her of a lifetime ago, traces of the life she couldn't remember. Running from death beside her mate. At least, she thought he was her mate, they'd been a team, and she was pretty sure she loved him, what else could they be?

She couldn't recall any images, but vague emotions and feelings bled into her thoughts, dredged up randomly with various activities. Even though the feelings, the loss, hurt sometimes, it was at least something to know she'd once had them. That she'd once felt alive.

So she kept swimming, kept panting, hoping to catch a glimpse of the one she remembered loving, but couldn't remember.

"Kousa it's done! The scan is complete get out of the bloody pool already, come on!" the Doctor shouted, bursting into the pool room. Heart tingling with something between excitement and terror, Kousa swam for the edge of the pool as fast as she could. The Doctor tapped his foot impatiently, and she growled as she hauled herself, dripping and feeing the weight of the water trying to drag her back into its grasp, over the edge.

I'm hurrying. We've waited this long, an extra seconds won't kill anyone, she said, and then shook herself. As she looked up at him, she sent bubbling, tinkling laughter to the Doctor's mind at his expression. He was drenched in all the water she'd just removed from herself.

"I just wanted to help you find your species. You didn't need to go and drown me. This was my favorite suit," he said petulantly, touching his dripping brown duster. Kousa rolled her eyes.

It's your only suit. And I was just trying to hurry up and dry so I don't soak the halls of the TARDIS. I doubt she'd appreciate that.

"Ah, well, I can fix that!" the Doctor said cheerily, waving his sonic over himself, the blue light skimming his body and instantly evaporating the water. Before she could squirm away, he pointed the sonic at her, and she felt her coat grow pleasantly warm before it was left dry and silky.

Thanks. Show-off, she thought, walking towards the hall with her tail swishing haughtily behind her. Coming? The Doctor grinned and darted ahead of her, and they both ran down the hall, Kousa once again struck by a strange wash of nostalgia and hoping this quest would help her regain her memories. She didn't think she could take much more of this.

AN- Well, this isn't as long as I'd hoped, and it's sort of a cliff hanger, but I need to find the next section that I wrote… It's either on my phone. Or in a notebook somewhere. Or in my email. Or in one of the other 50 notebooks I own. So… review and I'll update faster and the cliffhanger shall be satisfied faster! (probably in the next two days or so. I promise.)