Dropping Blon Fel Fotch (not longer Passameer-Day Slitheen) at a nursery on her planet was surprisingly easy and less surprisingly very stealthy. We had to drop her off without anyone noticing, and we had to register her in the nursery's computing system so as not to arise suspicion. It took a while, meaning it had been about 18 hours since the last time I or Rose or Jack had slept. As such, the Doctor allowed us humans a night of rest after our romp around Raxacoricofallapatorius, and then it was off into time and space again. Team TARDIS, always on the run.
The next morning, even though it was still technically my turn, Rose insisted on making us breakfast alone as thanks to me for saving her life. Of course, I told her she didn't need to bribe me with food to want to keep her alive, which made her roll her eyes. My protest was more for show than anything else, of course. It was nice to be thanked, plus Rose was a pretty good cook.
The Doctor didn't come in for breakfast, which wasn't too unusual. He rarely, if ever, slept at night, so we just assumed most mornings he ate before we humans had even woken up.
Jack didn't seem to think the Doctor's absence was as completely benign as I did. He sat a bit closer to me than he usually did, and seemed kind of tense the whole meal. Rose did not. She seemed to think by now that the Doctor randomly dumping me in 2018 had been temporary insanity, or something similar, on his part. As far as I was concerned, Rose had it right. In my mind, the Doctor was forgiven, and my abandonment didn't warrant thinking about anymore.
Because the Doctor never even came in to the galley, we all gathered in the now wireless control room. The Doctor must have cleaned up while we were sleeping, which made sense. Floating in the Vortex, what else was a bored Time Lord to do?
Speaking of, the Last of the Time Lords was circling around the console in what was obviously a pace. I tried to have a silent debate with the others over why this definitely weird behavior was happening, but seeing as I was the only telepath, and no one was looking at me, I really just ended up debating myself.
After almost a full minute of the Doctor pacing and us humans standing in awkward silence, the Doctor stopped pacing and sighed. The TARDIS hum in my head spiked, almost excited. It occured to me the Time Lord and the Time Ship might have been having a mental debate of their own, and that the ship had just won.
After another few seconds of silence, Rose gave in. "What the plan then? Where're we going?"
"Well, I was thinking Japan, Kyoto, maybe sometime in the 14th century, but-" The Doctor crossed the space between us in in two steps. I could feel Jack bristle protectively behind me, but I knew the Doctor wasn't mad. I'd been on the receiving end of his glares before, and he was not wearing one now. "-I owe you an apology. Where do you want to go?" I pointed to myself, since my brain seemed to forget every word in every language. "Yes, you."
"I… um…" My brain apparently short-circuited. "You don't need to apologize," I said. The Doctor crossed his arms, and leaned back against the console. He expression would have been exasperated if his eyes weren't so soft. Woah. What the hell had been in that message Thirteen gave me? Or was this just because I'd saved Rose yesterday? I hadn't even really saved her. She would have been fine, just bruised.
"Yes, he does," Jack argued from behind me.
"I already-" I started.
"I for one want to see where our mystery girl will take us," Rose teased, sliding her arm over my shoulders and beaming. Even the TARDIS buzzed reproach and insistence in my head.
I looked around the console room, completely taken aback. I… This was what I had wanted at the beginning. This was what I had wanted when I thought about this as a kid. This was what I had wanted when I'd first started watching Doctor Who. It was nothing short of surreal that it was happening now. I was stunned, to say the least.
The Doctor huffed impatiently after about two seconds. "Hey!" I protested. "Cut me some slack here. All of time and space I've got to choose from. You could've given me a warning last night! That's a lot of opt-" No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I knew exactly where I wanted to go.
The Doctor saw the exact moment I made my decision, and made a face. I understood the warning easily. Any place you remember from your world might not exist here.
"Um… It's not anything fancy or exotic, but there's this one place…"
...
Katelyn was up and out the TARDIS doors before the Doctor even had a chance to check that he'd gotten the flight right (not that he would have), or before any of the rest of them had gotten the chance to stand up. When he heard her scream on the other side of the doors, he was terrified that he'd gotten them very, very wrong, but then Katelyn came running back in, and he knew he'd gotten it right for once.
Katelyn was beaming, smiling wider than he'd ever seen her smile. She ran toward and then threw her arms around the Doctor. He hugged her back. "It looks exactly the same," Katelyn whispered, so the others wouldn't hear. "Thank you. Thank you so much."
"You're welcome," the Doctor whispered back. He admitted to himself that the TARDIS had been in the right in their argument. It was better having Katelyn pick their destination. Kyoto would have been fine, but it wouldn't have gotten this reaction out of her.
Katelyn pulled back from the hug with wild eyes, excitement quickly taking over her entire person. "We-we need-" Katelyn all but threw herself at the nearest coral strut and climbed up to the raised pathway above. The Doctor watched, completely bemused, as she pulled three blankets out from god only knows where and tossed them down to the main console room floor.
"Wh-where did you hide those?" the Doctor sputtered. "I was up there yesterday!" He was up there last night too, and there had been no blankets.
"Yep!" Katelyn said cheerfully, climbing down from the pathway. The TARDIS tinkled a laugh in the back of his head. "Good luck finding the ones I hid in the galley." Katelyn's face lit up even more. "We should have a picnic!" she declared, before dashing down the hallway.
"Wh-why would she have blankets in the galley?" the Doctor asked the room, genuinely astonished, once again, at how humans worked. Both the other humans shrugged. OK, apparently that was just how Katelyn Laurin worked. He needed to start paying attention to that.
...
Bigger-on-the-inside backpack loaded with all the supplies I could think we could need for the day, I stepped out of the TARDIS doors and out into a blast of hot, heavy air.
Camp Willow Brook was exactly the same in this world as it was in the one I had left. The TARDIS was parked next to the giant, gnarled Black Willow tree that gave the camp it's Romantic name, the one campers stood in front of to sing when all we really wanted to do was eat, the one I had gotten yelled at for climbing when I was eight. I ran my hand along the bark fondly. How many years had I stood by this tree?
Across the meadow from the Willow tree was the Lodge, the place where campers finally got to sit down and eat, where we would congregates on rainy days, where we would watch a movie lying on the dirty hardwood. The bathrooms hadn't been renovated since 70s and the kitchen was new in the 90s. The foundation was iffy and years of campers had probably caused structural damage jamming to Bohemian Rhapsody. The outside hadn't been painted in years and the doors didn't really close anymore. But so many of my treasured memories had been made in that place.
Behind the Lodge would be the annoyingly steep hill up to the cabins. The cabins were in much the same shape as the Lodge, except with slightly newer shower heads in the showers and much better fans. Sleeping in the Lodge was torture, but sleeping in the cabin was actually pretty nice. I wasn't sure I could convince myself to sleep in them tonight though. Perhaps in the cabins there were too many memories.
Down the worn dirt path to our left was the first lake I ever fished in, overstuffed with seaweed (which was absolutely disgusting to land on when you jumped in) and lilypads (which were too dense to swim or paddle through). Although, it was fairly easy to avoid the patches, as the lake water was very clear most of the time. It also made fishing easy, if you weren't too much of a soft soul to refuse to even bait a hook, like I was.
"Why June, 2007?" Jack asked, snapping me back to the present. He'd left his coat behind and generally looked very relaxed. It made my smile even wider to know that my friend was just as happy to be here as I was. In fact, my cheeks were starting to hurt and tears were prickling in the edges of my eyes, but I just couldn't bring myself to care. I was here.
"It's a summer camp," I explained slowly, as if Jack were very stupid. "If we're going to do today right, we had to come during the summer." I turned in a circle again, still scarcely able to believe I was here. "But we don't want to run across any children-" I paused, very nearly letting the secret slip. "Especially me. Timelines and what not." I looked back at the group. "Camp was closed for 2007. Temporary budget cuts. We couldn't even hire a caretaker. We've got the whole place to the four of us. No chance of being caught trespassing"
"I was expecting you to pick Disney World," Rose mused, cheeky as always. "It's beautiful here."
"I know. Wait 'til you see the sunset over the lake tonight," I sighed. "Also, I'm picking Disney next time," I shot back, only barely remembering to be cheeky right back. There was a moment of silence, so I turned to look at the others. Rose was smiling at me in that knowing way of hers; Jack was just smiling; the Doctor looked a bit confused. I mirrored the Time Lord's expression. "What is it?"
"Who is this new confident woman and what has she done with our Katelyn Laurin?" Jack teased. I felt my face scrunch up in even more confusion.
"This is what I'm always like?" I said, my voice spiking at the end. Rose shook her head.
"This is what you're like on the TARDIS," Rose corrected. I locked eyes with the Doctor.
"Why do you look as confused as I feel? Am I not always like this?" I asked. The Doctor shook his head.
"Katelyn, I've never seen you this comfortable," he responded. I paused for a moment, then shrugged. This was, is, and had always been my happy place. Maybe I was more confident here than anywhere else in public. Or maybe it was just that I knew the day was only going to involve me and three people that I knew well, two of which I was very comfortable around already. As far as I was concerned, it didn't matter why, only that I was feeling very comfortable.
"Let's not waste my good mood then!" I announced to the others.
...
We started off with a hike around camp, in which I got to show off that I do actually have a good sense of direction when I'm at least a little familiar with my surroundings.
"Careful, there's poison ivy everywhere," I mumbled, stepping to avoid a third patch in twice as many steps. Earlier, I had opted for shorts, to counteract the fact that it was 80 fucking degrees fahrenheit. It had turned out to be a Mistake™, as I now had to watch every step, instead of just remembering to wash the pants I would have worn.
"How do you what's poison ivy?" Rose asked. "Also, why don't we want to touch the poison ivy?"
I simply pointed to a patch and told her "If the leaves are three, let it be" as I had been taught as a child. The Doctor immediately launched into a much longer and more complicated explanation that I completely ignored. I hadn't gotten poison ivy in the first 18 years of my life with little more to go on than what I'd told Rose, so I certainly wasn't going to bother learning now. Not when I could devote so much more attention the the world around me.
I'd forgotten how much I loved the simple, standard beauty of the American midwest. I'd grown up here, after all. This place was my normal. Just like the down day in London with Thirteen, I hadn't realized how much I had needed this day. The whole morning, I kept trailing off mid-sentence, because I was so re-captivated by the world around me. I honest to God nearly cried when I heard a chickadee call, which was embarrassing to explain to the others.
"I hadn't realized how much I'd missed all this," I said, wiping at my misty eyes. Jack came over and hugged me. "And if I don't stop crying I'm gonna miss more of it." I felt more than heard Jack's chuckle, but I heard Rose and the Doctor's laughs.
I also learned (although I'd always sort of expected) the Ninth Doctor had trouble with a down day when he couldn't also just whisk Rose away. It was his usual move on days where the running was minimum and voluntary. He would leave me and Jack behind, and the two of us would giggle at the not-couple together. All through the morning the Doctor was figgity and constantly blurting out information about whatever plant or animal we were standing closest to.
Around noon, we humans decided we'd have enough sweating and swatting at mosquitoes (the one thing I had not missed) and wanted to go swimming. The Doctor retreated to the TARDIS almost immediately, probably not wanting to wear anything less than two layers.
...
Katelyn shrieked and swam to the other side of the lily pad free area. Rose sat upright on the dock just in time to see Jack pop up from underwater and immediately start cracking up.
"JACK HARKNESS, YOU CLASS A MOTHERFUCKING!" Katelyn screamed so loud it almost echoed across the lake. Rose covered her mouth to hide her laugh. Jack was doing no such thing, laughing as hard as Rose had ever seen him. "DON'T LAUGH AT ME YOU JACKASS!" Katelyn kept screaming.
Jack was laughing so hard that he didn't notice Katelyn swim over and sweep her arms through the water. For his prank, Jack got a mouth and noseful of lake water. It was Katelyn's turn to laugh and Jack's turn to fling indignant curses, the loudest of which was 'tiny Murondian gremlin'.
It struck Rose that this might be what having siblings was like. She rather liked it, like she loved most of the things life with the Doctor had introduced her to.
"What happened here?" the Doctor asked. Rose looked over her shoulder to see the Time Lord coming up the dock to where she was sitting and smiled.
"Jack swam under and grabbed Katelyn's ankle. Katelyn splashed him back." Rose looked back out to the water where it looked liked the shorter, smaller Katelyn was now trying to dunk the taller, stronger Jack. She was not having much luck, but damn if that meant she would stop trying. "I think they're at war now."
The Doctor smiled his 'silly little apes' smile and sat down next to Rose. "And why have you chosen neutrality?" Rose scowled.
"Seaweed," she said darkly. "Is the worst." It was a shame too. Rose was fairly baking on the dock. The lake's water had been cool and clear and absolutely wonderful. Clear enough, in fact, that she really should have seen the patch of seaweed her feet had had the misfortune of landing on. Clear enough that she'd been able to watch Jack's entire underwater approach on Katelyn. Clear enough that Katelyn should have seen it too, had she not been explaining the difference between water snakes (not deadly) and water moccasins (also snakes, but very deadly) to Rose.
The Doctor laughed. "So I've heard."
"VICTORY!" Katelyn cried. The two on the dock turned back toward the water. Katelyn had managed, somehow, to get Jack's legs out from under him and shoved him under the water. He popped back up, sputtering and coughing, cursing Katelyn everytime he managed to get an actual breath in.
Still laughing her victory, Katelyn swam over to the dock and climbed out of the lake. Rose passed her her towel, trying very hard not to show how she was laughing. Before Katelyn could grab it, Jack climbed on the dock right behind her, grabbed her, and threw her back into the lake.
"REVENGE!" Jack declared.
Rose finally let loose the laughter she'd been trying to hide. She laughed so hard she fell on her back on the dock and completely missed Katelyn's outraged expression when she popped back out of the water and shouted some very creative obscenities at Jack.
"That was just cruel, Captain," the Doctor said, smiling. "I think I'm on Katelyn's side on this one."
"Well, you can't always be right," Jack responded. When Katelyn pulled herself out of the lake this time, she immediately ran to the shore end of the dock. "I could still get you over there," Jack warned.
"And I know where you sleep, Harkness," Katelyn shot back. The two people with American accents glared at each other for a minute before bursting into laughter. Everyone walked over to where Katelyn was standing. Rose handed Katelyn her towel, for real this time, and the young woman wrapped herself in it.
"So," Rose began. "Lunch?"
...
Well into the evening, after lunch and running all around camp like I was a toddler again and then dinner and my favorite sunset in the entire universe (in any universe), we were finally setting up to spend the night. I'd wanted to camp. Properly camp, not return to the TARDIS or go to the cabins to sleep. Jack, as he usually was, was all in to camp with me, and Rose was always up for new experiences, so she was camping too.
In the last, fading lights of the day, we started setting up our camp on a hill overlooking the lake. I was already crying internally at the thought of all the mosquitos. The Doctor claimed the sleeping tents we were using were completely bug resistance, but I knew those buzzy little fuckers better than him, and I was sure I'd end up with at least five bites by morning.
Jack was lighting a fire in the premade fire pit, while Rose, the Doctor, and I were setting up the tents we humans would be sleeping in that night. The team of Rose and the Doctor had managed to put up two whole tents in the time it had taken me to get the main supports up for mine.
After everything was sent up and the fire was roaring, I started digging around in my backpack. "What's in the bag of activities now?" Rose acked, tongue in her teeth. I made a show of yanking out a bag of marshmallows so fast I nearly threw them behind me.
"S'mores, bitches!" I cheered. I tossed the bag onto the picnic table next to the campfire and dug around for the other two ingredients of the classic American camping snack/dessert. My favorite childhood snack, in fact. I'd even learned how to make them in a microwave during the winter months.
Rose picked up the bag of marshmallows and grinned. "I've always wanted to try s'mores."
"One of the things we got better on this side of the Atlantic," I cheered. Rose's eyes sparkled with mischief across the fire. I fought down a smile.
"Unlike your spelling," Rose teased. "Or your slang."
"I'll give you the 'u' in favorite, but I draw a line at 'centre'," I responded. "It makes no sense."
"It comes from French originally," the Doctor informed us. "Centre is pronounced 'San-Truh', while in english you pronounce it 'Sen-Ter'. It's all about origins of words." I paused in my marshmallow preparation and scowled.
"God damn it," I sighed, scrunching my face in annoyance. "I hate that that was a logical argument. That means I can't dispute it." Out of the corner if my eye, I caught Jack and Rose exchange a look.
I could guess what they were thinking. They were probably nearly as glad as I was that the Doctor and I were getting along now. Or maybe they were just waiting for something to happen and for us to snap right back to where we'd been two days ago.
They had nothing to fear from my end. My day with Thirteen had finally shown me that I had also been part of the problem. I hadn't considered the situation from the Doctor's side. The Doctor hadn't trusted me, and I'd always resented him for it. I thought he'd trust me if he'd just get to know me.
But of course I trusted me. I had the benefit of existing in my own head. I knew I was a good person; I knewI was about as stubborn as a human being could be; I knew there was nothing that would ever cause me to betray the Doctor. The Doctor had not been in my head, and for good reason. My head held dangerous information, dangerous for good and bad people to find. At least I knew how to protect it now.
Jack made a confused face. For a brief, somewhat terrifying, second, I thought I'd said some of my musings out loud, but then he spoke.
"Aren't you supposed to get sticks for these?" he asked, holding up a marshmallow between two fingers and squishing it.
"If you want." I pulled a marshmallow fork out of the backpack. "I, for one, am going to enjoy the wonders of modern technology. Or" I paused, having a thought I somehow hadn't had before. "I guess ancient technology for you. God, that's weird to think about."
I speared a marshmallow and squatted next to the fire. I tucked the marshmallow end of the stick in at the bottom and rotated it very slowly. I had a well developed, methodical approach to roasting my marshmallows. Unlike Jack, who just stuck his stick right into the flames. The marshmallow almost immediately burst into flames and fell off the stick.
"Good to know there's at least one thing I'm certifiably better at than all of you," I said, not looking away from my marshmallow. I had a method, thank you, and I was not going to stray from it.
Halfway through our second s'more each, mostly made by me, Rose perked up again. "Wait! Aren't we supposed to tell scary stories or something right now." .
"If you want," I offered. I shrugged, trying to not to show how much I didn't want. I think I failed trying not to look nervous as I started cleaning up what was left of the s'mores supplies.
"Katelyn, are you afraid of ghost stories?" the Doctor asked, highly amused and not bothering to hide it. I felt my face flush red, and didn't respond, which was probably not the best response.
"What?!" Jack cried. "No way! Our Katelyn, afraid of ghost stories?"
"Shut up!" I cried reflexively, apparently reverting to being in Middle School.
"You weren't afraid of a raging Slitheen yesterday," Jack said.
"You ran at her," the Doctor said like he still couldn't believe it.
"I'm not scared," I lied. "I just don't like them." The Doctor's expression shifted, taking on that spark of mischief that Rose and Jack had been wearing all day. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.
"I've got a good one," the Doctor started. I shrunk back down to where I'd been sitting before. I was sure it was a good story, which meant it would be very scary, which meant I didn't want to hear it.
"Go on then," Rose prompted.
The Doctor launched into his story which I did my very best to ignore, and failed entirely. I checked out into my tent after the Doctor's story, frankly too scared to have my back exposed to the darkness of camp a moment longer.
Jack and Rose told a story each, that I was slightly more successful in ignoring, then the Doctor checked out to. I heard him say he was going on a walk, then heard his footsteps retreat toward the forest. I wasn't really that surprised that the Doctor wasn't going to sleep tonight. Although, I had been rooting for him to end up sharing a tent with Rose. God only knows the two of them deserved some alone time before the shit that was about to go down tomorrow.
Oh, brilliant. That thought definitely wasn't going to help me go to sleep.
...
By the time the Doctor came back from his walk around the property of Camp Willow Brook, the fire had been put out, and at least two of the humans had tucked themselves into their tents. When he went over to check, it was the purple tent that was empty.
Katelyn was down at the lake. The Doctor found her sitting curled up on the end of the dock, her knees pulled up to her chest, just staring out at the dark water. He paused for a moment to observe her. Even sitting, alone, well into the night and in a forest of all places, she looked more at peace than he'd ever seen her. Her posture was relaxed, even as she grabbed a rock from what he realized was a pile next to her. She threw it sideways, and the Doctor watched the rock skip once before sinking.
He watched Katelyn fail to skip two more rocks before speaking. "You should be sleeping," he said just loud enough that she would hear. Not loud enough that he might wake up the others sleeping on the hill. Katelyn started, which made the Doctor smile a smile he probably shouldn't have smiled.
"Tried that," she said quietly. "Didn't work." She didn't move, beside relaxing back to her peaceful posture, and didn't turn around, even as the Doctor walked over the creaking wood and sat next to her. "I can't stop thinking."
The Doctor huffed a laugh. "Trust me, I know. What are you thinking about?"
"Yes," Katelyn laughed. "But mainly how long it's been since I was here." She stretched and fell back so she was laying down on the dock. "It's 2007. Last time I was here was August 2018 in a different universe. It's been -11 years, Earth time. But for me it's been…"
Katelyn was silent for long enough that the Doctor looked over at her. She was staring at the stars, clearly trying to blink back tears, but definitely failing. "Katelyn?"
"How long ago did we celebrate Rose's birthday?" she asked, so quietly the Doctor was sure he wouldn't have heard it if he'd been human.
"A week," the Doctor answered immediately. Katelyn fished around in her pocket for a while, before pulling out the lighter she'd used to light the fire earlier in the night. She flicked it on, then blew the fire out. "What was that for?"
"Today was my birthday. I'm 19 now." She paused, and he could see all the conflicting emotions dancing across her face. "Always thought it would be nice to spend my birthday here." She rolled over and fixed her eyes on where the TARDIS was almost visible. "I wonder if she knew."
"I wouldn't doubt it," the Doctor admitted. The old girl had been insistent that Katelyn choose the destinations of this trip. He hadn't wanted to let her choose, just in case wherever she decided to go was a place that didn't exist in this universe. He'd had several plans, Kyoto had just been the one he'd settled on.
"I'd put money on it," Katelyn said. "She made me Willow Brook as a room." Surprised, the Doctor looked over to the TARDIS as well.
"She dotes on you," the Doctor said. It wasn't a new revelation of his, but knowing that his TARDIS had made Katelyn her own, special, non-bedroom room certainly confirmed it. He had a guess as to why, and it was one of the reasons he'd been so terrible to her.
"I know she does." Katelyn turned back around on the dock and sat up. "But no more than she dotes on you." Katelyn's eyes sparkled with mischief, like she knew she was laying bait, and really wanted him to take it.
The Doctor was struck, not for the first time, by how well this little human knew him. He was saddened, for the first time, that he practically didn't know her at all. That was his fault, through and through. He hadn't wanted to get to know her, hadn't wanted to start treating her like a companion, because he was… afraid. Always the coward, him. Running whenever it was an option.
He must have taken too long to respond, because Katelyn dropped her eyes and picked up another stone and flicked it out over the water. It skipped twice and then sunk.
"Why are you throwing rocks at the lake?" the Doctor asked. Katelyn sighed.
"They're not supposed to sink," Katelyn mumbled. "I just can't get the trajectory right for them to skip." The Doctor grabbed a stone from the stop of the pile. He studied for a few seconds, running some very quick, very simple calculations, then flicked the rock out over the surface of the lake. It skipped about ten times, making it almost all the way to the other side of the lake.
"Oh, fuck you," Katelyn said empathically. The Doctor smile turned smug.
"It's not that hard."
"You show off."
"That's me!" the Doctor cheered.
The two laughed together for minute, which felt really nice, until Katelyn's laugh was interrupted with a yawn. "Finally tired, are you?" the Doctor asked, slightly cheeky.
"I've been tired the whole time, Doc," she said. "I just can't relax enough to fall asleep." The two fell silent, and just listened. They were silent long enough that the Doctor thought maybe Katelyn had fallen asleep, but then she spoke.
"Doctor?" she asked.
"Yeah?"
Tell me a story?" She asked it quietly, gently even, as if she were completely convinced he would say no. He looked over at her. Katelyn was curled up on her side, looking like she was fighting to keep her eyes open. It was clearly a losing battle.
"You probably know them all already," the Doctor said, fighting his own internal battle against the fear that thought brought him. Katelyn shook her head.
"Not all of them," Katelyn slurred. Even if he started speaking, it was hard to say whether or not Katelyn would even make it through a sentence before passing out. "I barely know anything from before the war." Oh, she had said that before, hadn't she? She knew his future, not his past. He had a lot of stories he could tell. "Not that I wouldn't mind hearing a story I know." Her eyes blinked open for a second. "Is that how you English?"
"Mostly, yeah." Katelyn's eyes slid back closed. "Katelyn you can't sleep on the dock."
"Don't tell me what to do," she mumbled. The Doctor sighed. Humans.
"Will you move if I tell you a story?" he asked. Katelyn hummed a yes. The Doctor looked back out over the water. "Once, I got stuck in 1911 with lethal Egyptian mummies, and an Egyptian god. No, the god was an alien actually. One of the Osirians. The last of the Osirians, actually. Sutekh was trying to escape his entombment and kill every living thing in existence." The Doctor paused. "Seems quite a lot of people want to do that, for some reason."
Now that was exactly the kind of random thought that always got a comment out of Katelyn (if not all his companions), so when it was meet with silence, the Doctor looked back over at Katelyn.
She was completely asleep, curled into a ball on the wood of the dock. She looked so young. Well, she was, he supposed, even by human standards. She was only a year younger than Rose, after all. Even though she was technically 13 years younger than Rose.
Katelyn also slept like the dead, the Doctor noted. Asleep on the dock, Katelyn barely looked like she was breathing, and even his superior Time Lord hearing could barely make out the sound of her breaths. Humans were so fragile, so transient. Do one thing wrong and they were gone in the blink of an eye. Even if you did, if they did, everything right, it was still practically only an instant and they were gone.
Maybe that's why the humans that traveled with him were so often so forgiving. They saw how precious little time they had and didn't waste it by holding a grudge. If only, the Doctor thought to himself, he could have learned that little lesson a few months ago. Then, Katelyn Laurin wouldn't have had to prove how forgiving she was, because he would have had nothing to apologize for.
Well, other than putting her and Rose's and Jack's lives on the line about every other day, but that was pretty well out of his control at this point, if he was being honest with himself.
...
I swam back to consciousness slowly the next morning. The air was damp and warm, a reminder to me of why I'd never chosen to slept in tents when camping. Wait, I was in my tent? I could distinctly remember falling asleep on the dock the night before, halfway through some story about a mummy that was actually an alien or some such.
I smiled to myself. The Doctor must have moved me, the giant softie. People back home had always said the ninth Doctor was edgy. But he was the same Doctor that cheered 'everybody lives', that same Doctor that made shitty puns at the worst times, the same Doctor that would smile with his whole face every time something was even slightly amusing. The 'edgy' Doctor was the same Doctor that was incapable of saying no to one Rose Tyler, the same Doctor that saved Jack despite his initial dislike for him, the same Doctor that hadn't let me sleep on sketchy hardwood over a lake.
The smile dropped off my face. That's why I had wanted to give him more time in that body. I knew, I'd always known, the Doctor is always the Doctor, regardless of face, deposition, or even biological sex. But I'd wanted more time for this Doctor. And now there was nothing I could do. Unless…
I sat up so quickly I bumped my head on the top of the tent. It would be tricky. My window of time to save not just this Doctor, but possibly a hundred other lives would be tiny. I had no proof it would even work, and it would almost certainly cause my death whether it worked or not, but there was a chance. And that chance was all I needed.
Wow, when did I get so brave?
I tried not to show that I expected this to be my last sunrise when I walked down to the dock to watch the thing that gave Earth life rise over the lake where I first learned how to swim. I tried not to show that I'd just made an incredibly dangerous decision as Team TARDIS gathered around a fire in the morning to make breakfast. I tried not to show that I was already mourning the life I didn't think I would get to live when the Doctor came out of the TARDIS to join us, and we all joked that there were other hobbies than tinkering under the console.
I think I succeeded, because no one questioned me about my mood the whole morning. Well, I guess it might just have been that it was a well established fact that I was not a morning person. The others could have just chalked my mood up to the fact that it was the morning, and I didn't want to leave this place that I loved so much and so clearly.
But when we got into the TARDIS and took off, I nearly broke.
This was it.
This was the end.
(A/N: Guys I am so sorry how late this chapter was. I really have no excise other than I got lazy when school got out. I promise it won't happen again, since this story only has two chapters left until it's done!
Thank you for sticking with me, and see you in the next one!)