The Doctor

She lied.

After everything we had been through together, how open and honest I had been with her, Galaxy had just spent months lying to my face about this. About the fact that she remembered, that she had done since Skaro.

When I got back into the TARDIS, I just went down to the engine rooms, not wanting to face her just yet. I missed getting to say goodbye to Osgood, but I'd see them again. Her and Megan, while Bonnie tried to take charge. Someone needed to lead the Zygons now Jemima and Claudette were gone.

"Knock knock." I looked up to see Clara stood at the door. Galaxy Kaster's best friend. "She's asleep. I found her passed out in the console room." I made a soft noise, not thinking about it. "Doctor, Galaxy had been crying."

"Probably hormones from her meds." I replied, turning back to look at my work, soldering cables together. "She doesn't cry. You know that."

She shook her head. "That's a total lie. Even after she remembered. Georgia cried. When you scared her, she was inconsolable. When she found out Missy was her mum, and realised that she was literally the daughter of the devil. When she thought that I would hate her for that, because Danny was dead due to her mum. She was crying because she thinks you hate her."

"You heard her Clara. Heard everything that she said in the Archive. If she wasn't ashamed of herself, of things that she did while travelling with her father." I snapped, throwing down the tool to look at her. "Clara, if she wanted to tell me, if she really did, I would understand. The allure of Missy and the Master, I have been there. But the fact that she didn't tell me? No. That's what I can't forgive."

Clara now got angry. She was very quick tempered was Miss Oswald, but luckily I was a seasoned veteran of her shouting. "Oh, like you tell her everything? You knew! You knew that Missy was her biological parent for the entire time, but you never said. Maybe she though that you don't want her because she is tilting on the scales. She admitted that to me, that at times she feels closer to the dark than the light. But you aren't light, Doctor. You can't lie to me, you know full well that I have been in your time stream and I have met previous versions of you. There were times when you did far worse than she did, when you forgot yourself."

The Doctor of War... The first time that I thought I might be the Hybrid. "That was different and you know it. She laughed while the Master tortured people, does that sound like me? To laugh while someone was in pain? Pain that I inflicted? For the last year I have been trying to save her soul, but it turns out they already blackened it."

"No. No, because she said that she never killed. She even managed to stop death some times, save people like she knew that you would have wanted." Clara shouted at me, eyes giant in rage. Unfortunately, she looked about as scary as an angry Spaniel with her glossy hair. "If you think for a minute that she hasn't spent the last however many years fighting her darkness you have another thing coming. That is your daughter, maybe not by blood, but Galaxy Kaster is your daughter through love and experience. You did far more for her than Missy or the Master ever did, because he gave her up. You stuck with her through all of the heart attacks, all of the night terrors and all the times that you thought that she wasn't going to make it..."

There was a shaky pause then, the anger dissipating in Clara to fear and sadness. She was trying not to cry herself. "Doctor, she thinks that she's going to die. That this is her last chance and she asked me to look after you. She was so scared that you were going to be alone and wanted me to stay with you. Does that sound like Missy? Would Missy care enough to want you to stop being alone by asking for help?"

Maybe. Depended on what she wanted out of the bargain. "Are you forgetting that Missy was the one who introduced us in the first place, Clara? Galaxy might have said that, but who knows what her mother was saying in her head."

"That she should come clean. You really think that Missy wants her daughter in constant turmoil internally?" I got asked next as I sat down on my tool box, long legs up around my chin, like a spider in a glass too small. "Even Missy wanted her to tell you. Provably thought that you'd be won over to her side, sure, but GeeK was so worried that you were hate her. Don't you dare make me a liar for all of those times that I told her that you would understand and love her unconditionally."

Oh, Clara... "She was right."

"Don't you dare say that!"

"Clara, she is dying! Do you know for how long I have been watching her die?" I asked her, getting back my feet and walking towards her. "If I don't find a way to give her two Time Lord Hearts instead of her own damaged human one, then she has only months left. It hurts, losing a child. I've already lost her and Tyler once, I've only just got her back again. Do you really think I want to just sit here and watch my daughter, my precious universe, die? Because that's what I've been doing for a very long time and she doesn't even have the decency to tell me the truth, Clara. I told her the truth, no matter the consequences."

Now she was crying, teats rolling down her face. "Don't say that. Please, please, stop talking like you don't care if she lives or if she dies, because even if you've by some mystery managed to stop loving her, I haven't, Doctor. She is like my little and big sister all in one. You will find a way to save her and you will talk to her, or you'll never see either of us again once I ask Missy for help instead."

There was a long moment of silence between us, hanging so thick that even Galaxy Kaster's arm blades couldn't cut it. My precious Universe... There was no way that I could ever stop loving her. "I have been trying to save her for 1000 years, there is no way to manage it without having two new and viable hearts for her. Time Lord Hearts. Without cutting them out of myself or Missy, which I would willing do for her if there was no other option, I really don't know what I can do."

At which point the lights in the TARDIS turned off, only a line of them turning back on in a way to guide us somewhere. "What's she doing? Doctor?"

"I don't-" Then saw where the line was headed, my own two Time Lord Hearts thumping in my chest as I started sprinting down the corridor towards it. "Clara, stay away!"

"Like hell am I doing that!" She yelled back, following after as I burst into Galaxy's room, all monitors flatlining with a single toned beep. "Oh, my Stars. No! No, Galaxy, please!"

"Shut up and get me the syringe of epinephrine and the manual defibrillators." Clara was still only standing there, her fight or flight instinct having not kicked in just yet. "Hey! You wanted me to do something, well right now I am trying to bring her back to life! Every second we waste is another second where she could go brain dead. Clara, you need to do this!"

The girl closed her eyes for a brief moment before doing as I told while I cut up the front of GeeK's top, the bra also so I could see where the machines had failed. There was a build up of scar tissure where her skin had been shocked over and over again and it was now too thick to let the charge reach her heart. "You work on her heart, I'll get her breathing. Doctor?"

"Go. Do it." I told her, throwing her the mask, charging up the large defibrillators, needing to get her back and fast or we'd lose her. We had no idea if she had any regenerations left, it had been a surprise that she had any in the first place. "Come on, Galaxy Kasterborous, you are not bowing out yet, you haven't done the dishes!"

Then zapped her, Clara stepping back for a moment so that we could wait for what felt like millennia to see if her heart started beating again. Nothing. "Ok going again. 300 this time. Clear!" And again, her entire body jumping with the electrical charge going through her before flopping back onto the bed. Stiff as the mattress below her. "No, no, no. Not now, you do not get to leave me like this! Galaxy!"

I shocked her another three time with no difference, but started to just silently cry on the inside as I stepped back. "Doctor, what are you doing?! Shock her again, she is not gone!"

"She's been without oxygen to her brain for 10 minutes, Clara!"

"And?! She was fucking playing Abzu last, where you dont have to breathe, she could still be in there!" She snapped as I tried desperately to think of a way to save her. "Save her!"

"Pass me that scalpel."

Now she stared. "Doctor, you put her on blood thinners."

Well remembered. "The charge isn't working through the scar tissue. I'll have to cut through it and see if her heart will respond then. I know it's a risk, especially with how close to her heart this is, but you are going to help there. My blood type doesn't match hers."

"But Missy does. You need to get Missy to do a transfusion. Will she come?"

"Missy loves her just as much as I do. The moment I start cutting away the tissue, you need to run to the console, the TARDIS should have already found her by now so just start her going and tell her what has happened. She deserves to be here either to save her, or to say goodbye."

Clara shook her head. "No, you're both going to save her. You've both tried alone, it's time to work together."

And set off at a run as I cleaned down the area and put on some gloves. "Come on, love. You are not leaving me yet." Then started to gently cut off the scar tissue built up over her heart, rock solid from her burns before placing gauze over the top. It was still bleeding slightly, her blood warm and thin, so it came through right away before charging up the defibrillators one last time. "Please. You can't die thinking I hate you..."

Then shocked her, the blood flowing faster for a moment as I heard my own two hearts thudding in my chest as I started at the still flatlined monitor. Nothing.

"Please, please, Galaxy I'm sorry, I am so sorry. I should have been faster, I should have found a way to fix you sooner, gotten hearts when you were still just a baby..." I told her, not letting tears fall as I looked at the motionless form that once held my little girl. "This is all my fault..."

"Doctor, where is-" Missy cut out as she saw Gee on the bed, shakily putting her hand over her mouth, stifling a sob. She might have been the craziest bitch in the universe, but there was no doubt that she loved our daughter. "No. No. No, no, No!"

Clara ran in a moment later, a smile on her face as she expected her friend, her sister, to be just bleeding now, but alive. Only to just break as well. "Oh, Stars, Gee... I, is she...?"

But just as I nodded, she shot up in the bed, eyes bright and furious as she grabbed my arm painfully right. "Make it stop. It hurts, why the fuck am I bleeding and where the fuck is my bra?!" She demanded, falling back with how weak she was, but there was a definite, if erratic, heartbeat. "Mummy..."

Missy ran to her side as I started pushing high amounts of vitamin K into her system, trying to rapidly thicken her blood. "I'm here. Hey, Puppy Dog, don't just stand there like a waste of space, get the transfusion kit! She's lost a lot of blood and once you've done that, you keep pressure on the wound. Her father is going to need to help me."

"Her is still conscious you idiots." Gee muttered, her eyes half closed as she started to keep herself calmer. "Ok, ok, ok, just do whatever it is you're doing. My heart is level, I just need blood..."

I nodded and started to set them both up for the transfusion, lying Missy down on a higher bed to have the gravity assistance, before putting the needles into both of them, Gee not flinching like she used to. This was a regular occurrence for her these days, ever since her first heart attack when she was 9. "Ok, and here's the flow. Missy-"

She rolled her eyes, already clenching and unclenching her fist. "This is not my first rodeo, pal. Remember there was a big long time when it was just myself and Galaxy Kasterborous, she needed a transfusion when she impaled herself on a bloody broken carousel horse."

To which GeeK laughed. "Oh, that was not my fault, that was the stupid Sea Devil chasing me! You were the one who grew a beard solely because people didn't believe you were the Master without it."

"You grew another beard? Really?" I asked in bemusement, sitting between them after looking at the wound, nodding to let Clara know she could stop now because the gauze had sealed the wound. Luckily, it was dissolving gauze, made of the same stuff as the stitches so it would disappear as she healed. "What is it with you trying to look like the Devil?"

"Wait, you had a beard? You were a man?"

"Do keep up, Puppy Dog. You surely know that Time Lord's can change gender?" She asked with her another eyeroll. She was very sassy this evening. "Until this regeneration, I was mostly a man with dark hair and a dark beard. I was once a man without a beard who regenerated into your previous Prime Minister, Harold Saxon, and I grew a beard after a while because I was blonde and no one believed I was who I said I was."

To which Clara just started to laugh as I watched my daughter actually get stronger. Oh, God, I almost lost her... I was so close to having to bury her like I buried Tyler and Susan and Libby. My hearts couldn't take burying Galaxy as well, not for a second time.

"Oh, my god. Imagine if you suddenly became a woman, Doctor. Maybe then you'd believe us when you get told that the TARDIS is freezing." Clara laughed, GeeK going under again, but she was stronger at least. "Hey, Is she-"

"She is fine. Leave her to sleep." Missy replied sternly, before detaching herself from the transfusion kit, weak and woozy from blood loss. "If you'll excuse me, I have a Dalek empire to lead, and you have a painful conversation to gave with our daughter."

I grabbed her before she could topple over, very weak now she was upright. "As much as I hate the idea, you need to stay here, at least for the night. For starters, we might need you again, and second, you're going to keel over if you take another step."

She glared at me, but she knew I was right. GeeK was in need of her mother around anyway, especially if she was the one who knew exactly what had taken place in her life. "Fine. But keep the noise down, I'm a wee bit tired. You two have a banging row, then wait till I'm unconscious."

And lay back down, promptly falling asleep on the second bed as Clara made her best friend more comfortable on the first. "Well, that keeps her quiet for a while. So, what did you want to do now? Because the genie is well and truly out of the bottle now, about everything, Doctor. She knows exactly what happened and you know everything that she did when she was with her father before he became Missy. Your daughter adores you, she does everything that she does to make sure that she is someone you can be proud of, to be the daughter you raised her to be."

I felt numb, the idea that I came so close to losing her while she thought that I hated her, hated everything she was because of what she did oh so long ago. That tiny baby that I had thrust at me by a man who just looked scared, and for the first time in half a millennia, sane. The Master had been desperate for me to take in that little half human baby girl in a fit of sanity, so long as Libby and I never left her side, gave her a loving family and cared for her for however long her inadequate human heart supported her Time Lord body.

Then only 14 years later, when war broke out and the world shook with the sobs of a once mighty nation as it crumbled, Libby left her in death and I, thinking that there was no one left for me, tried to destroy the planet and people alike. Oh, oh, was I glad that I hadn't after her graffiti stopped, marking the walls one last time in her honour. No More.

But here she was. Galaxy Kaster Vivienne Minerva Pratchett-Masters, daughter of the man who was seen as a Saint and the woman who wanted nothing more than to go to hell as a Queen from Sin. She was alive, and she was going to stay that way, even if I had to rip out the hearts from my own chest to let her live in my stead.

"She goes on being my daughter. If she wishes to tell me, then so be it. I will listen to her, giving her my full attention and then not passing judgement as she finished the tale. If she doesn't, then what I do not know cannot hurt me." I replied to Clara softly, taking the only chair in the room, at the art desk, to the side of her bed to watch over both the Master's women in my life. Missy was not staying, no matter how much she was going to try to. "Goodnight, Clara. I'll call for you if something happens, but for now, I'd get some sleep. You've not been looking at your best recently."

That made her pause slightly, eyes looking shifty but she was trying to hide it. Please, not another one of them keeping secrets, I hated being kept in the dark, especially when chances were, I could help. "Since when do you noticed when I look my best. Goodnight." Clara paused to kiss my cheek, cast a worrying look at Galaxy Kaster, a nervous one to Missy, before leaving.

"Right, budge up, Dumpling, come on." I told me daughter once the door clicked shut. "You're not asleep, I learned how to tell the difference when you were 7 and you are still not good at it."

"Dammit." My daughter smiled sleepily, chest stiff as she had a lot of gauze and padding over it, and where the live transfusion had gone on from her mother. "I thought my breathing had gotten better."

I rolled my eyes as I lay in the bed next to her, cuddling her close as I used to do on the nights she had nightmares. So many bad dreams in the head of a little girl who had never even seen the true face of the world. Well, we'd done all that we could to keep her from it. "That's the thing, you breathe irregularly, Gee. When you're pretending, you breathe perfectly. Oh, you terrified us all tonight. I haven't seen her cry since he gave you up."

She hid her face under blonde hair that had been dipped blue, though it had now faded to a more icy blue than anything. "I'm so sorry, daddy... After everything that happened, I, I... I almost died without being able to explain myself, why I didn't want to tell you-"

"This isn't your fault. You almost died thinking that I hated you. Love, I could never hate you, you're my daughter and I have loved you since the moment I saw those big silver eyes and white blonde hair." I told her, brushing her platinum hair aside to look into her now deep blue eyes. "I understand, I do, it's my fault for the way that I acted about the whole thing, making you think that it was a bad thing to know that the Master, Missy, does love you. I was more ashamed of myself for leaving you, juts a baby, in the middle of a war zone when I should have hidden you away on Earth. How did you survive?"

GeeK sniffed, holding back tears. "I hid in the tower, my Sanctuary. But, but it fell, and I couldn't get myself or Dagda out in time. Rescuers found us though, but I was scared of them, scared of people in general having only met you, mum, Tyler and Susie. So, I ran. Dagda died not long after, he was an old cat so I'd been expecting it, but it made me feel so, so alone... That was the day before, the day before you moved us all. The next day... He found me."

"The Master?"

"Yeah. Only, he told me to call him Des, like you said he used to be called. He took care of me, I was only 16 and I'd never really had to do anything by myself, because of my heart and the machines. Dad, Des, he taught me how to look after myself, until, until..."

Her silence was accompanied by a tiny, almost inaudible sob that made me hold her as tight as I could without hurting her, or breaking open the scab she had on her chest again. Galaxy Kasterborous' blood was still too thin to survive another attack like that. "Until he told you the truth, that he was your biological father and I'd adopted you. That was where the dream linked in, wasn't it? The one you had as Georgia, the whole reason he couldn't keep you with him and I found you in the hospital."

"I took the poison but it wasn't the Adder..." She sobbed, quietly though, as not to wake her sleeping mother beside us. "I took Linksys, the chemical that others used to try and stop regeneration's. Only... He knew how to reverse it,and all it did was wake up the memories of the year I was Galaxy Kasterborous Solace Serenity Vivienne Minerva. When I was only his daughter and already showed great promise with hypnosis."

Of course he was going to try and take advantage of that, even though he adored his daughter and worshipped the ground that she walked on. "Baby, how long did you spend with him? How old were you when you died to the Adder?"

"100 years. He taught me his way of life, how happy he was to kill people. But I didn't. I promise, that I never killed anyone, at least not that I remember." My daughter told me, looking so scared as to what I was going to think, going to say about what she may have done while living for 100 years with her biological father. "Dad, I'm sorry, I just... I didn't want you to see me differently, to think that I just threw away all that you raised me to be just because it was the easy option. I know that being good isn't easy, its not supposed to be, because anything worth doing is hard and a challenge, but I... I forgot that for a while. I swear, I would never kill anyone."

"I believe you, Love. I swear to you, on Libby, Tyler and Susan's lives, that I will never see you as anything more than you are right now." I told her softly, kissing her head as I hugged her. "My daughter, whether you want to be or not. When I'm an embarrassing old man, the protective father or the angry Doctor, fighting the good fight, I am your father, Galaxy."

Her arms tightened around me, just like when she was 7 years old, silvery skinned, dark silver eyes and silvery blonde hair, happy to see me after I went away for the week. I looked forward to coming home for those hugs, they made the planet I kept running away from bearable. "I love you, daddy..."

Oh, Gee... "I love you too, Baby Girl."

Which was when a pillow hit us both and a groan from the other bed. "I hates the both o' ya! Lemme get some sleep, man!"

Ah, Missy, Missy, Missy. Please tell me that one day you were going to change, to be the mother our daughter deserved.