Picture it:

Sicily, 1918.

A young woman climbs aboard a ship destined for a new and distant land. A land of hope, freedom, and low paying jobs…

Oh all right, no more Golden Girls references. Probably wasted on the anglos anyway.

Picture it:

1991, Middle East, Earth.

Monster of the Day: the Glaudennaise.

The name sounded like some sort of creame sauce, but it was actually a time-active fungus that fed off decaying timelines. According to the Doc, they hung around key nexus points in history where other time options fractured and frizzled away and fed off that energy as the timelines sublimated away from actually possible probabilities into nothing more than dreams.

Which, I really didn't have a problem with. I'm all about niche filling. Go underdog, go and all that.

But apparently it was festering and attempting to 'choke off' as the Doctor put it, the existing timeline completely.

It sounded a bit like cutting your head off to breathe better, but I guess even fungi get crazy sometime.

The thing was we needed to sneak up on it. It was able to sense our stink (time travel residue I guess, the Doc was a bit vague about that bit) and it was definitely not TARDIS friendly.

The nexus that the Glaudennaise was choking was in the middle of some battle. So Mark went undercover with a marine unit and I went in with an UNIT observation squad. We spent a few weeks undercover, scouting around and generally building up trust and getting the lay of the land. Usual stuff. Then the Doc rang us both up to tell us that February 26th, the next day was when the 'event' would go down. The Doc was… I can't really remember what he was doing, but I guess the idea was he'd tackle the thing when it manifested and improvise something per usual.

I didn't know that when the Doc called Mark he mentioned me.

I didn't know that someone in the base camp overheard the 'unimportant bit' of the converstation.

The Doctor didn't tell me until much, much later.

There was, after all, a whopping great monster to fight.

The next morning, Mark was dead.

Why do I get to face fungus and incorporeal spirits?

Ben Browder (Farscape fame folks). Why can't I face down a team of leather pants wearing, hunky, evil, sexy Ben Browders? Just once. That's all I'm asking for.

No?

Sigh.

Anyway, back to her:

At first I thought the female figure before me was Hedwig. I think it was the hair-style. Very retro. Very camp. Somehow I doubt that the Doctor ever had a drag queen as a companion, although that Kamelion certainly had some gender confusion issues.

It was Barbara Wright.

I suppose I should have expected a history teacher in here. But like a policeman, you never get one when you need one.

At least it looked like Barbara. Beneath her glowing white skin shifted the faces of a thousand other companions, all looking outward through her eyes. Another visage that repeatedly skimmed across the surface was one with all freckles and red hair. But from the stern look in Barbara's eyes, I could see no sign of Compassion within.

I suppose it made sense that it was Barbara. It was only right.

Har har har.

You can tell how bad the situation is by how bad my puns are.

Barbara was the first to really know the true Doctor, to see the darkness that lay within the old man. And the peculiar kindness. He was the first incarnation to attempt to kill his companions - or at least lethally misplace them, in order to get rid of them.

Barabara was never under any delusions about her traveling companion.

She knew more about him than even he would like to know.

Barbara's eyes locked with mine and begged the question. Not with words, just with a haughty raised eyebrow.

You know I'm almost (cough) (cough) twenty-nine now and a schoolteacher can still make me feel about six years old. Daleks are easier. They're not as very good at making you feel guilty.

I suppose I am guilty. After all, I am playing for the other team (watch it)…

I probably reeked of evil. More of a musk. Guilt by association. I still hadn't done anything wrong really. Nor had the Master. Not for a very long time. But the scent lingers.

I knew though that Barbara was just the face. Inside all that swirling body was what I came for. What I was sent here to release, if even just for a moment.

There was no mention of Mark in the mission brief either. His body was prostrate behind Barbara and his face was still obscured by the glowing light but I could just hear his cry for help.

I didn't really care any more. Mark was in pain, imprisoned. All I wanted to do was release him. Screw the Doctor, screw the Master and their stupid games. I didn't want to be a part of their stratagems anymore. I just wanted Mark back.

The Doctor's cunning plan had gone horribly wrong.

Obviously.

The thought of sex never entered the Doctor's head.

The thought of sexual orientation, while he was aware of the concept, never featured into his any of his plans.

Mark was killed by his own troops.

The Good Guys.

Not that any such guys ever exist, really. Everyone's an ass sometimes, if you hang around long enough.

The Doctor's plans went down the tubes. Final tally: Aliens 30, Timelord Nil. Whatever timeline the Doctor was hoping to protect, it was well and truly fried now.

I almost died that day. I was stuck in a bus on the road out of Basra. I was getting the hell out of the city as fast as I could, trying to get back to the TARDIS (and I thought, Mark) when the Doctor had been a no-show. Amid the thousands of Iraqi troops withdrawing from the city according to the cease-fire agreement were hundred of civilians who were fleeing with me.

Only four hundred and fifty of us got out alive.

The American planes (my peeps) bombed the front and the back of the convoy first, trapping us in. Then they went to town with every single bomb they could lay their hands on. There were so many planes killing us, they almost had aerial traffic accidents. No one was fighting back. No one could. They were too busy dying on the highway of Death.

Operation Desert Sabre: Shooting fish in a barrel.

I did my research later: apparently, rather than accept a In short, rather than accept the offer of Iraq to surrender and leave the field of battle, Bush decided simply to kill as many Iraqis as possible while the chance lasted, rather than accept a Soviet proposed peace agreement.

I lived through it. I watched the news, read the lies and accepted.

Somewhere in this world is the truth of what really happened. Somewhere in here is the truth about how Mark died.

I was one of the few that survived. Tens of thousands were exterminated. I was lucky that I wasn't on the sixty miles of coastal road that got annihilated. I was one of the fortunate ones.

I'd never seen tens of thousands of corpses before. Or smelled them.

When we got back, we couldn't get an answer out of the military about Mark. They claimed there was never a marine in the regiment with that name (which, admittedly was true).

The Doctor said he found his body and buried him. He took me to the spot, but I didn't believe him any more. Not again.

I spent most of my time talking with the Master in the TARDIS library.

It was the first time that the Doctor's plan failed, but it was not the last by any means.

The Doctor wasn't the man he once was. At least not the guy(s) I've been watching in the TARDIScam footage.

And I didn't really care. I wanted out. And the Master gave me a chance.

But the Master had gotten it horribly wrong.

I was the wrong Companion.

I didn't care. I couldn't 'free the Truth' with my own will or whatever rubbish thing I needed to do. I didn't like him. I hated him. In that only kind of rational, deep hatred that you're entitled to in a wrongful death when faced with a man who can change time so that he can have warm breakfast sausages. Get there before the toast burns.

And yet he doesn't. He won't.

And Barbara's face, all reason and understanding, the most compassionate and rational companion that the Doctor had ever had was silently asking me, empathizing, waiting for me to sacrifice myself to join with her and surrender my truth, my history to free the Doctor.

I'm the wrong one.

I don't care.

There must be a way out of this place. Have to be smart enough to figure it out. I thought about metaphors and symbolisms and great minds and deep thoughts and all the clever and witty ways and maneuvers that I knew I wasn't capable of in this wondrous and thaumaturgical place. I thought of what the Doctor would do…

Just beyond her, only two feet away was the figure of Mark, still trapped in eternal torment, writhed and twisted in agony.

Screw this shit.

I want my husband back.

I looked long and deep into the eyes of this fantastic creature that held all of the lives of all of the companions that had ever lived and saw all of their experiences before they met the Doctor, all the lives they lived after they left the TARDIS and every breath from the moment of their birth to their last gasping, sighing breaths all contained within this young and intelligent, proper woman and…

And I hit her in the face.

Hard.