TARDIS Disclaimer: I am the Doctor's shining shadow, his blue forever friend. I was there when this began, will be there when it ends. I keep my secrets deep within and sing to light the stars. My soul contains forever and I change it from afar. So grace our world with gifted pen but never once forget, I'm always with the Doctor and he hasn't lost me yet. Change the words and change the world and dance around with prose, but when she looked into my heart, then I looked into Rose. The story's a long history, it's spun across all time: the Doctor and his secrets and his shining love are mine.

As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. June Challenges will be available as of June 3rd, but feel free to tackle May's if you'd rather. The new set will run through the end of June. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review.

Requiem: Aftermath of Apocalypse

Jackie Tyler watched with enormous trepidation as Borusa and that skinny, snooty friend of his lifted the two boys onto beds on either side of Rose. Even in sleep, the Doctor's hand stretched toward her daughter's and Jackie experienced yet another moment of self-doubt. She knew she should be relieved. No telling what those two had got up to, but if everything that had happened in this room was right, they'd definitely got up to mischief. She should be feeling an enormous sense of gratitude and happiness that this alien boy had not managed to snatch her only child away from her.

So why did the sight of her daughter's red and tear-streaked face twist inside her like a knife in her guts? Why did the Doctor's expression of utter devastation make her wish to God she'd hid them while she had the chance? Why was her heart breaking, if her daughter would never remember the heart-break these days should bring her?

The proud-faced cow with Borusa turned to look at him with an expression of admiration and wonder, the only person aware of this situation who seemed to feel absolutely no shame. Even Borusa, whose machinations had brought them all to this point, seemed rattled and defeated. He'd destroyed something that wasn't meant to be, but it brought him nothing but remorse and pain.

Jackie was just a little bit glad of that.

"Koschei can be administered the amnesia drug," Borusa told his guiltless accomplice. "The Doctor... Thete, I will have to see to personally."

"This is a secret it will be difficult to bear, my Lord Borusa," simpered the little woman. Jackie decided that she hated her more than any of them.

Borusa nodded, and left her side, let her bend over Koschei's still body to administer whatever drug she was supposed to give him. That boy, what he had done, what he had been forced to do...

She saw the Time Lord pick up something from the table, watched him return to his friend's side. "The burden will be difficult," he said. "And I think I must bear it myself."

As casually as that, he drugged her and then dragged her limp body across the Medical room. "Could you give me a hand here?" he asked.

Jackie snorted and went over to help him hoist the woman up onto a free bed. "You're a right bastard when it suits you, aren't you?" she asked as they dropped the unconscious woman onto the bed. Jackie showed neither ceremony nor sympathy, but neither did Borusa.

"I think I'll have to add it to my name, so many people have called me one," he agreed. He then turned and gestured her out of the room. "Can we get a cup of tea?" he asked.

"You sure every one in there will sleep?"

"Rose will sleep as long as the Doc... Thete does, at least until I sever that connection. I gave him a strong enough dose to keep him out for a week."

"So you say," Jackie replied caustically. "You'll be lucky if he doesn't turn up to knock you down in ten minutes."

Borusa smiled at her warmly and led her into a small kitchen. "It will keep even him out for three days. He used up everything he had to tell me what he's going to do to me."

Jackie reached over and turned the electric kettle on. This space ship had to be the strangest thing she had ever seen in her life, and not just because it was from outer space or even because it was bigger on the inside. It had equipment even science fiction never dreamed of, and then it also had cheap tin pots she wouldn't have allowed in her kitchen on the Council Estates.

Borusa scared up some tea from a cupboard. Apparently, there was a vast selection available, and Borusa muttered something about the pilot being a lunatic. Jackie reached up and pulled down two mugs. One had a bright blue square on it and read "The Angels have the Blue Box". The other, she almost dropped. Uncommonly beautiful for a simple mug, it was softly shining in the light and delicately painted with a large red rose. Nervously, she poured the water and Borusa dropped two tea balls into the mugs.

"Well?" Jackie ventured when the tea had finally steeped and they took seats.

"I will have to extract him from your daughter's mind." He shook his head ruefully and gulped at his tea, making a strange face, as if he'd said he would have to uproot a mountain or move the moon. "He's bound them up so thoroughly, even removing his memories, even removing hers, will be impossible without doing so."

"Is she going to be okay?"

Borusa sighed. "There may be some behavioral implications of severing such a link. I've no idea. The loss of the kind of intimacy they've shared... either one of them may suffer some changes, Jackie, it can't be helped. She may become infatuated with the first person to offer her some shadow of such. He may do the same. There's no way to know, and I can't watch her without muddling time even further than it already is around her. She'll be safe, with you, where you want her to be. It will have to do." Then he fell to silence, sipping at his tea.

"We're horrible," Jackie ventured after awhile.

"I'm horrible. You are a mother doing what you think best for your child."

"I don't know how I'm gonna live with myself. I didn't want her to run off with an alien, but God, it feels like I'm letting her be murdered. She loves him so much, even though she's so young. If she knew, she'd never forgive me, and I wouldn't want her to." She hated herself, just a little bit, for the lengths fear had driven her to. "Her father would never have done this. Pete could be such an idiot, but he believed in love, even when I didn't."

"I have never had cause to believe in it, before," Borusa admitted. "But then, I've never seen anything like this, before. His very nature should have driven her away. Her simple human mind should have repelled him. It is utterly impossible, and yet it exists, and I am going to destroy it."

She frowned into her mug and wished for something stronger. To her surprise, and possibly to Borusa's as well, a large golden bottle appeared next to her hand. "Thought you said it was a time machine, not magic," she accused.

"Apparently, it has acquired an affinity for you," he replied thoughtfully. "Or possibly your DNA," he added, apparently as it occurred to him. "Yes, that's more likely. There is a Time child on board with a derivative structure."

"Don't like that at all," Jackie added and poured a large measure of whatever was in the golden bottle into her mug with the rest of her tea. It was strong and sweet, but blended nicely.

"I am sorry. Verity, even Rassilon himself could never have predicted. It has to do with the boy's nature, though, so it isn't subject to prediction. He is a child of the most elemental sort of chaos, and the unexpected is the only thing you can guarantee about him."

"Are you... you're not going to destroy the baby, are you? I... I don't think that's fair."

"I thought you didn't want to think about your alien grandchild."

"She's my grandchild, though," Jackie countered, sadly. "Yeah, so my first reaction was stupid, but I'd've got used to her by the time she got here. Too many girls Rose's age, and even a lot of grown women, seem to think having a baby is all life's about, you know. And it's hard to raise a child, alone or with someone. They never realize until it's too late. I didn't want that for her, that's all." Jackie sighed and drank deep from the mug. "You are going to keep your word about her, aren't you?"

He smiled. "I'd never dream of doing otherwise. She'll even keep her name, as it's the only thing of her biological parents she'll ever have."

"It's so funny to think my daughter has a little girl who'll grow up on another world. Who will outlive us both by ages."

"Then think of the legacy you will leave behind in her. You humans are always worried about what you pass on to the future. Your daughter has gifted us Verity and that may yet become a great gift indeed. If she's anything like her father, though, I don't envy her teachers in the slightest." Borusa shook his head and sipped morosely at his tea. "Tell me, has your daughter always been so passionate about the things that don't really concern her?"

"Rose is forever bringing home strays, if that's what you mean, has done all her life. She just loves people and things, and I s'pose even aliens from outer space was a given." Jackie brushed at her face and was surprised to discover tears there on her cheeks. She let her head drop into her hands. "I just wish it didn't have to be like this. Will she remember anything? Ever?"

"Probably not."

"I... can you let her remember that she had love? Just a little bit? It's important to us humans. I'd like her to know that her first love was worth it."

Borusa considered her closely, his dark, hollow eyes peering deeply into her own. "I can try," he offered at last. "But I make you no promises about this, Jackie. It will be difficult enough."

"And no one will ever even know that this happened, except you and me?"

"Just me," he corrected. "I can't allow you to suffer this sort of knowledge. You've been very kind, Jackie."

"Kind of stupid," she replied. She took a long swig of her new, strange drink, then shrugged. "Pity. You were a decent shag."

His face broke into a charmed smile and his eyes twinkled at her with amusement. "You are simply delightful, woman. I can easily see what Thete sees in your daughter, because of what I see in you. I could love you, just a little, were it not so wrong. Yet, I should apologize for the false pretenses. You are attractive, and I was curious."

"I've had worse reasons," Jackie replied with another shrug. "Don't apologize to me. But you'll spend your life making all this up to the Doctor."

"Probably," Borusa admitted. His face looked resigned. "Otherwise, he'll keep his promise."

"Can't you wipe out your own memories?"

"Yes, but I won't. Someone should remain aware of this, in case there are unforeseen repercussions. It will be my burden to bear alone and my silence alone to keep."

Jackie considered him closely. "You deserve it," she told him coldly.

"Yes, I know," he admitted sadly. "One should always remember what one has destroyed."

"Promise me this," she requested intently, letting her eyes bore into his, demanding, compelling. "You can't promise anything else, but you can promise me one thing, and I'll have it or you'll never get rid of me."

He tilted his head to consider her. "What is it?" he asked, unwilling to promise without knowing what she wanted.

"Never let them remember. For as long as you live, make sure the memory stays gone."

He thought about it. "On one condition. If it will save his life, I will return the memories. Otherwise, they die with me."

She thought about it, and finished her drink. "Yes, that's fair. Because they're never gonna see each other again, and he's been hurt enough." She pushed away from the table and walked back toward the Med Lab, not entirely sure what she was thinking, really.

She moved over to the Doctor's side and pushed his dark curls out of his face. He really was an astonishingly beautiful boy, even if he did look so very like a human child lying there. Even now, his face looked solemn and injured. She worried, really worried, that she had done something very, very wrong this time.

Borusa came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. She turned to him suddenly, as she realized what, exactly, was wrong with this whole scenario. "Who is he?"

"An orphaned child. Someone has to look after him."

"That's not no ordinary orphan, no matter what you let him think," Jackie replied hotly. "So tell me, who is he? I'll forget all about him, we both will, and that's not half wrong. I'm letting you do this to my daughter and I'm helping you break two kids' hearts. So you owe me that much, dammit. You tell me what my daughter took to bed with her and lost her heart to, and you'd best tell me now!"

"Jackie, it isn't important."

"It is! If he was just some half-mad little kid, some well-spoilt little orphaned genius, you'd've let him take her off, or left him with her. What you told him, what you said, it makes no sense. You people time travel, you can track him down any time. It wouldn't have mattered one damn bit to you. But you don't treat him like even a gifted kid. You act like he's a bomb about to go off, or a storm about to erupt in your living room."

"A storm," Borusa mused thoughtfully. "Yes, that's very appropriate."

She glowered at him balefully and he flinched. He backed away from her, apparently remembering how very hard she could slap. She rolled her eyes. "Siddown, you daft old coward, and tell me."

Borusa nodded, his eyes haunted, and pulled up a chair between the young couple. When he spoke, it was in the tone of a man who'd been keeping difficult secrets for a very long time. "He was brought to me by a friend of mine, who has secluded himself in the Mountain of Solitude, above the Citadel. The boy was approximately six years old, completely healthy, and utterly inexplicable. I ran every possible test to determine his origin and I failed to find any answers. My research assistant at the time, a Postulant called Flavia, suggested, and you must understand that she was joking, that he might be a certain child mentioned in our oldest legends."

Jackie realized now that Borusa wasn't actually talking to her. He was telling the story, yes, but it was with the air of one confessing a myriad of sins to something that would neither comprehend nor remember what he said. Well, that was her, in this instance, anyway, and it was her own fault really. Her impulsive demand had turned her into a Wailing Wall for an alien.

"I chose, in a moment of pique, to give her suggestion serious consideration. I say pique because it seemed to me that circumstances were consciously acting against me in my search for the boy's identity. After I gave it some thought, I began tracking his history as if he were this child, and the answers that began to surface were terrible indeed. I found things... dark things, dangerous things. Bits of Gallifreyan history that have been lost, deliberately. The Harp of Rassilon, the Great Key, the Black Scrolls."

He looked up at her, but he wasn't really seeing her at all. His face was blank with shadows and horror and she wondered that, whatever he had found, it hadn't driven him completely raving mad. It might yet, never could tell.

"That last... awful. They contain such knowledge, such information as should be lost. And, damn me for a fool, but I don't dare destroy them, because what is contained in them may become precious or necessary some day. The Key is very nearly as bad. It is the operational device of the rest of the Legacy. Any single item in the Legacy can kill worlds or heal them, and the Key makes it possible. I presented the vile thing to the President, knowing full well that to do so would mean both its purpose and its meaning would be lost. In fact, given a few generations, the Key itself will vanish again, and that can only be a relief."

Jackie didn't understand any of that, but she found she didn't want to know. "Did you ever find his parents?" she ventured, because she was sure he'd get lost in discussing artifacts and she'd miss the point.

"Have you ever wondered at the children of great star-crossed love affairs? Children born from partnerships that are all fire and passion, children who are conceived in tempests, whose parents seem both insane and insanely in love? Even our stories tell of such couples. Have you ever wondered that the children who grow to become legends tend to have back stories such as these?"

She shrugged, because she hadn't thought about it. She was more interested in Coronation Street than Romeo and Juliet, anyway, and they'd never had kids.

"His parents are such two. He is born of great, doomed passion, and as a result, his inheritance is the stuff of legends."

"So this makes him special, does it?" she wondered, as that began to sink in.

"You have the concept of sacred persons, do you not?"

"Sacred... oh, you mean like vicars and nuns and priests, or do you mean like angels?"

"A bit of both," Borusa said with a shrug. "Special beings, set aside. Your people, you humans, are all so emotional, wild and energetic and full of life and death. Your sacred persons, therefore, are quiet and contemplative and given to order and gentle calm. You cling to anger and sensuality and you expect those among you who are holy to eschew these things."

"Yeah, all right," she agreed.

"My people are the opposite. We are quiet and orderly, we live lives of learning and study, we disregard our emotions, we eschew experiences of the flesh for experiences of the mind."

She shot him a look at that.

"Mostly," he conceded. "But if we are these things, then among us, persons who are holy, which means so unique as to be precious, would again be the opposite. Given completely unto joy, in love with life and with passion." He reached over then, and stroked a lock of Rose's hair away from her face. "And maybe even an ordinary blonde girl from another planet."

"But..." Jackie jumped up from her chair and glowered at him. "I hardly think that shagging my daughter makes him anything but a randy teenager."

Borusa's face looked fond and distant at once, as if he despaired of her understanding him, ever, which, she supposed, was very likely. "It's loving her, being able to love her, giving so much of himself to her. More, it is her loving him in return. You must understand, this emotion is much more than it seems on the surface. It has strength that can transcend even the power of space and time. His ability to love and to find joy, when most of his kind are emotionally absent at best, is something that sets him apart from the rest of us. He can use that ability to find love and find those who will have faith in him to make him very strong indeed. Rose's love for him and faith in him have driven him to incredible acts already, things that should be impossible for him, or at least too difficult for any of his classmates, separately or collectively, to engineer. With a Time Lord's training and ability, this one emotion can make him greater than any of our kind have ever been."

She felt the blood drain from her face as all this started to connect up in her head. "So, if him being loved gives him power, and we've just taken his first love away from him..."

"Then I have either prepared the way for him to become like a god in his own right," he said, and Jackie felt like she was watching a man read out his own death sentence, "or I have nailed a young Messiah to a cross of my own devising."

The air was getting stagnant and strange and her hands were trembling as her small human mind tried to come to terms with her part in this. Borusa reached for her hand then, and she accepted it, and he dropped a small white tablet into it. He helped her to her feet then, and led her to another bed. She sat down, her head swimming, thanking anybody who might be listening for the pill and the forgetfulness it would bring. "I... I hope you never live to find out," she said.

He handed her a glass of water and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. "Take it," he said.

She did as he bade her, too afraid of what she had learned to do anything else. She didn't want to know this, had never wanted to know.

As her eyes drifted closed, she heard the Time Lord speak, one last time, a benediction. "May whatever gods there are have mercy."