A Letter and Running

Rose was about halfway over to the Time Lords when she suddenly stopped in her tracks, frozen at what was happening before her. Virgo had broken out of the hug and started to whack the Doctor with her fists, not hard enough to punch him but hard enough where it would hurt a bit.

"Ow!" the Doctor jumped away from her and got into a defensive position. He was genuinely confused as to why she was hurting him. "What was that for?"

The Time Lady stopped pouncing on him and stared at him in disbelief. She raised an eyebrow that said, 'Seriously?'

"'What was that for?'" she quoted him with a disturbingly calm face. "'What was that for?' You got yourself killed! You sacrificed yourself for me when you didn't have to! I was barely able to hold it in there and I had to save the world without you! And the silence..." She placed her hands on her head with tears in her eyes from remembering how awful it was. "It was silent. You put me through all that, and you ask me what my problem is?"

"I... I didn't want you to get hurt," the Doctor could only tell her that. He really hadn't thought about it like that. When he was standing on the street tugging her along, when he saw that Reaper dive down... something flared inside of him. He didn't even think about it. All he could see was her body lying on the ground with exploding fires all around them, and that was something he refused to have. In all four months of her having onboard the TARDIS he had always felt that way, whether consciously or subconsciously. He just... dove right in.

"And I don't want you to get hurt!" Virgo argued. "For God's sake, it's already bad enough that I'm-" She widened her eyes and clamped her mouth shut with her hand. Oh, that was far too close. She was about to tell him that she was pregnant. Now was an extremely bad time for that, extremely bad.

Unfortunately for her, the Doctor caught on, "You're what?" He waited for her to elaborate but her face flushed and she turned around around with her hand still on her mouth, not trusting herself to talk.

Virgo closed her eyes and could only hope that the Doctor would drop it and her, him, and Rose could all just go back to the TARDIS for some cookies by the fireplace. She could use a little snack right now and adding the fireplace to that sounded even more relaxing.

"She's pregnant," Rose's voice came out from behind them.

The Doctor turned around with an offended look, "Of course she's not. Why're you over here, anyway? What part of 'give me the TARDIS key' didn't you understand?"

"Yeah, Rose, of course I'm not," Virgo agreed with the Doctor with clenched teeth. She was shaking her head 'no' vigorously and using the hand gesture for cutting someone's head off.

The human sighed. She tried being patient, she tried to respect the Time Lady's request for her to keep quiet about it, but she almost died today and Rose would've never been able to forgive herself for that as well as the Doctor's 'death.' It's been a week since her confrontation with her and she saw that Virgo made no move to try and tell the Doctor. Not even a tiny, tiny hint. If the adventures continued the way they were, the baby was gonna end up dead and Virgo would never be able to move on from that.

It was time. Would this ruin Rose's and Virgo's friendship? Most likely. Are the Time Lords gonna fight about this? Of course!

"She told you before, too," Rose continued to talk and looked the Doctor directly in the eye so he knew she was telling the truth. "For some reason you can hardly remember it, but she did tell you at some point in the past. She's been pregnant this entire time - probably even before I joined you - and you've been too oblivious to notice! Why do you think she wears a sweater now? To hide it from you. Why did she panic in Cardiff and the Cabinet Room? Because she didn't want to hurt the baby!"

The Doctor stared at his companion with a dumbfounded expression. Well, that certainly explained... quite a few things, actually. He always did wonder why Virgo had adopted the panda sweater, but had simply thought she wanted a change in style. He never even considered...

He turned back to face Virgo and opened his mouth to ask her if this was true... but she was gone. He searched all around their surroundings to try to find at least the faintest trace of a runaway Time Lady, but there was none to be found.

His first guess was that she was in the TARDIS, but she probably knew that was the first place he'd think to look for her. He'd have to search around the area before checking the old girl out. She couldn't have gone far.

"All right, Rose, go back to the TARDIS," the Doctor told her firmly. "I'm gonna look for her. Don't do anything that'll disrupt the timelines again. This year is fragile." He started to walk away, but Rose's voice stopped him.

"I don't have a key," she said with a smirk.

The Doctor ran back over to Rose, fished out her TARDIS key, put it in her hand, and resumed his running down the street.

.l.l.l.

The sun was setting in the horizon on the sad day, and the Doctor could not find a trace of Virgo. To say he was worried was an understatement. He had asked random people if they had seen a girl in a panda sweater, had hacked into security cameras to try and catch a glimpse of her, and it all ended in the same result: nothing, zip, nadda.

He eventually collapsed onto a bench and put his face in his hands. The TARDIS was really the only place left that he could search through, but at this point he believed that maybe Virgo needed some space. And he would grant her that space, but his curiosity was absolutely killing him; he was also pretty upset that Virgo would hide this information from him. They were friends, weren't they? Friends told each other everything, and what did Rose mean by when she said he couldn't remember Virgo telling him?

"Anything the matter, Doc?" said a voice from right next to the Doctor.

Slowly and in confusion, the Doctor lifted his head away from his hands and turned to his right to find a man. His eyes were light blue, brown hair, a smug look on his rectangle-shaped face, and World War II-like clothes. His arms were crossed and he was casually lounging on the bench's handle, which didn't look at all that comfortable.

"How'd you know my name?" the Doctor narrowed his eyes suspiciously at him.

The mystery man shrugged and his smile only grew, "I get around a bit. I'm assuming that Rose told you that Virgo's pregnant, and now you've given up on the search to find her."

"How do you know that?" the Doctor stood up and clenched his fists. Why did everyone know about Virgo's little secret except for him?!

"I'm from your future," the man informed him calmly. "Not that far away, from the looks of it. I was told to come here on November 7, 1987 at 6:15 p.m by someone I'm sure you know very, very well." He wagged his eyebrows up and down suggestively and the Doctor grimaced, both of them thinking different things.

"If you're from my future, then why are you here?" the Doctor questioned him, not trusting him any more than before. At least now he knew what questions not to ask.

"Simple," the man stood up as well and took out something from his jacket pocket. "I was told to give this to you. I'm a delivery boy now, so to speak." The item in his jacket was a folded up, torn notebook paper and he handed to the Doctor.

The Doctor unfolded the paper and immediately recognized it as a letter from Virgo thanks to her messy handwriting.

Doctor,

This isn't actually an apology letter. No, the me that's with you will take care of that as soon as you find her. I'm writing to you now because I want you to know something. The me that is with you now is scared like you would never believe. She's going through so much and she needs someone to stand by her side, and I hope that someone can be you. I've allowed you to have some time to let everything sink in and process, so maybe that helps. I would've sent this letter to you after you've talked to your Virgo, but you leave 1987 immediately afterwards. And I know you don't trust the man who's in front of you now, but believe me when I say that you will like him when you meet him properly. Saved my life, in fact. Now, you'll find me in my bedroom aboard the TARDIS. The door will be locked, so be sure to knock. In fact, you should be knocking in the first place. I can't tell you how much it annoys me when someone enters my room without knocking. Absolutely horrid.

Please think this over, and I hope that you won't hate me forever.

See you in the future,

~ Virgo

P.S: The man in front of you is already gone, so don't bother to try to find him again.

The Doctor looked up from the note to find that the future Virgo was right; the man was indeed gone. He sighed and glanced back at the letter and read it through once more, then one more time. He slowly put the letter in his leather jacket and stared at the ground, deep in thought.

.l.l.l.

He walked through the halls of the TARDIS slowly, glancing up at the walls every now and then to see if he was passing Virgo's bedroom door. He'd been walking for about ten minutes now and the TARDIS had put him through a corridor maze, the old girl clearly thinking that Virgo needed a bit of time before she could explain to the Doctor about everything.

But at last, the dark, wooden door with a golden plaque with her name on it in their people's language came into sight. The Doctor walked up to it and knocked on the door softly, remembering that the future Virgo had said very specifically that he needed to knock. He could faintly hear a gasp, but that was about it. He didn't hear a click to signal that the door was unlocked and the handle didn't start turning. He didn't push it, so he simply stared at the handle and... waited.

What seemed like hours but really seconds later, he heard a soft click and the door handle slowly opened. The Doctor stood up straighter and watched the door creak open and it eventually revealed half of Virgo's face. He opened his mouth to say something, but she beat him to it.

"I'm sorry!" she apologized quickly in a panic, opening up the door all the way. Her braids had been undone, so her hair was now a complete mess. She held her hands out as if to protect herself from him coming inside. "Believe me, I am so sorry. I wanted to tell you myself, and I was gonna do it... eventually... I didn't exactly tell Rose; she eavesdropped on me talking with Jackie about it, so it wasn't just you that I didn't tell properly. I originally told you on Gallifrey and please don't ask why you can't remember it because I can hardly remember it, too."

The Doctor studied her closely to see if she was genuinely sorry. She was panting, her eyes were wide, and her outstretched arms were shaking a bit; that was about half of what he wanted to hear. Now he wanted to hear the full story, the full story. No more lies, no more avoiding details, and no more secrets.

"Tell me everything," the Doctor made his way in and sat at Virgo's dark, wooden desk and relaxed himself in the black chair. He grabbed the finished Rubix cube from Jackie's flat and tossed it up and down.

Virgo sighed and shut the door, making sure to lock it because she didn't need Rose coming in here now. She made her way to her bed that was in front of the desk and crashed onto it, resting her head on her hands that was on the pillow. She stared at the ceiling and begun her story, the same story she told Rose at Satellite Five but with a lot more details since the Doctor actually knew what she was talking about half the time.

A/N: I know, right? We get Jack one chapter early! Woo! Even I was fangirling a bit when I read through this whole chapter, and I was the one who wrote it! I'm really satisfied at how this turned out, actually. I am a bit nervous since this is almost completely original (I still don't own Doctor Who *sigh*) so please be gentle if you're going to say what's bad about it. I haven't felt this nervous since the first chapter of Aliens in London or Long Game, in fact I'm actually shaking a bit as I'm typing this A/N. I'm so pathetic :P

Also, no idea how to title this chapter without spoiling what is was about. I'm probably gonna come back to this and change the title at some point, but for now it's gonna stay like this. I know, I don't like it very much either.

Thank you for following and favoriting this story, seriously. It honestly makes my day and I wish I could prove that to you on here, but I don't see how I can. Bummer. All I can pretty much say is is that it's very much appreciated :D