TW: brief mentions of emotional abuse

"You're not serious, are you?"

"Genuinely, have you a got a better idea?" he asked his sort of past self. This version of him was so... different. He couldn't describe why this version of the Janis Joplin jacket was so different to the actual past him, but he just... was. Especially because they couldn't seem to agree on any one course of action when it came to a mental health plan for this Anna.

Once Anna One had been teleported out with some random blonde woman (who wasn't Rose), he'd expected to be brought home shortly thereafter. He hadn't been, but luckily for him, this version of himself and Anna were both still mucking about here. He thought perhaps he could lend a hand. After all, two Doctors in this instance would more than likely be better than one, for the simple fact that she was an all-powerful being and didn't seem to be functioning within the right state of mind.

"You have got to be kidding me."

He immediately whirled around, excitement filling his hearts at the prospect of Anna teleporting back to him. When he noticed the lack of the Olympic necklace she'd worn after he'd bought it for her as a souvenir on a whim during the 2012 Olympics, he felt himself deflating a little bit.

"Anna," he said, not doubting in the least that his strained smile would've looked anything but if it had been anybody but Anna. "What a pleasant surprise." He clapped his hands together. "See you've got your powers back on, that's marvelous." He raised his eyebrows, putting his hand down on the console, trying to make it look natural. "Come to help us out, then?"

He'd no idea what she was doing here, but judging by the less than happy look on her face, he was sure that he was about to have to use the new precaution they'd put in place. They'd managed to puzzle together a way to shut Anna's powers off. Course, if he pressed this button, the other Anna would know as well, but it was a small sacrifice to pay if it meant that he wasn't fighting Anna One, when the only thing he even wanted to do was help her. Besides, the other Anna would only know if she tried to use her many abilities, and last he'd checked, she'd been fast asleep. Or, so the brand new vitals reading sensors they'd installed from the console room into her new room said.

Annoyance crossed her face as she crossed her arms. "I'm not, actually," she told him. "What I'm-"

"Sorry about this, then," he said, even though he was only slightly sorry.

He pressed the button.

She felt it immediately, he could see the look on her face. It was more than annoyance, almost bordering on anger.

"What. The-" she let out a noise of frustration.

A moment later, a noise blared through the console room. It was the alarm that they'd installed to let them know if Anna's powers suddenly came back on, through the unlikely event that that might occur somehow.

He quickly pressed the button again, and it had the same effect.

What it did was complicated, but basically, it created a sort of block between her and her energy. Sort of like creating a dam so that water couldn't flood the valley.

Except it was nothing like that.

Anger once again crossed her face, except this time, it was fury. It was radiating out of her pores. He had a vague memory of her looking close to this angry floating about in his time sense. The only reason he was able to access it in the midst of the storm that had been created when time had been rewritten several times was because= he'd never seen her look that angry before and he'd never seen it since.

Except, right now, she was angrier. It was startling. Her eyes widened before she folded her hands in front of her face, tightening her lips into a thin line. After a moment, she pointed at him, and spoke in a small, very controlled voice. "I will. Hurt. You. Stop it."

If it hadn't been Anna One, he could confidently say that she was bluffing. As it stood, Anne One seemed more prone to anger than other versions of herself. Well, from what he'd seen, anyway.

Still, he wouldn't be the Doctor if he didn't do something incredibly reckless like call an all-powerful being's bluff.

When the alarms blared again, he stared directly at her as he pressed the button, before he raised his eyebrows.

"I'd like to see you try," he challenged her.

This was Anna. At her heart, she was a good, non-violent person. She didn't hurt people. She helped them.

But, he realized much too late that something had happened to Anna One. At the issuance of his challenge, she smiled widely, though anger flew through her eyes. Consideration crossed her face after a moment as she put her hand under her chin.

"Well, I mean, I could always just tell Anna that you were planning on trapping her," she told him. "Because I might not be willing to hurt you, but that version of me created a self-defense mechanism that nearly killed me, so."

He frowned, searching her. "But that wouldn't be hurting me, would it? It would be hurting Anna, because you would be hurting her chances at trusting someone, possibly for the first time in her life."

She shrugged. "Then maybe that goes to show that you aren't someone who's trustworthy, in which case-"

She started towards the hallway and he quickly stepped in front of her, blocking her path. He was almost startled by the snarl that appeared on her face, and despite the comment that had managed to hurt him more than she would, or possibly could, ever know, he still softened.

"Something's happened," he said, and she frowned as if he were stupid. "To you, I mean," he clarified.

He knew he'd hit the mark when her whole body flinched and she looked down and away.

"Okay," he said. "Then, how about instead of threatening me, or Anna's progress, why don't you and I talk it out, eh? Sit down in the kitchen, have a cuppa-"

She looked up at him, anger and disbelief and resentment all pooling together in her eyes.

"You're manipulative, and you're cruel, and I cannot believe I ever liked this version of you."

Because she was Anna, it took his brain a moment to process what she'd, and even longer for him to fully understand the implications of what she'd meant.

He felt his hearts ache at the fact that whatever had happened to Anna had turned her this cruel (even as the hurt pulsed within him at what she'd said).

Which was why he transformed, standing up taller.

"I am sorry, for whatever has happened to make you so utterly cruel, but that does not-"

She scoffed at him. "Cruel?" she asked him. "What, because I said I can't understand how I ever liked this version of you, and that's hurt your feelings?"

Seriously?

He clasped his hands behind his back, searching her as he attempted to get the hurt under control. "You realize that the only difference between that version of me and me is the fact that he didn't press a button and wipe out his own kind?" he asked.

Surprise and disbelief rushed over her own face. "That's not-"

"And furthermore," he continued. "I'll have you know that he fully intended to do it, to press that button, he absolutely would've done it if you hadn't've come and messed about in affairs you had absolutely no business messing about in."

Anger flew across her face at his comment. "For the record, that's not at all what I was talking about, but no, please, keep telling me all about how my saving Gallifrey was a bad. Thing!"

He shrugged. "I have no idea how else you could've meant it."

"Um, oh, I don't know, how about taking away a girl's choices who hasn't had a choice in her entire life-"

He laughed, but nothing about this was humorous. He walked past her a few steps, speaking to the room as opposed to the woman who'd hurt him more than he'd been hurt in a long time. "That's a bit rich coming from you, isn't it?"

"And how's that?" she asked him.

Anna was exceptional and bright, so he had no idea how she didn't already know. He turned back to her, and, because they were so close, she had to tilt her head to look up at him. "What exactly did you think that you were doing when you stopped him from pressing that button?" he asked her. "You took away the choice that he could've had." He searched her eyes, waiting for her to understand. "Do you have any idea what kind of change occurs when you do something like that, when you have to make that hard choice? He will never become the person that he is meant to, and that is on you, Anna."

She was so angry that it took her a moment to speak. "I have apologized for many things in my life, but I will not apologize for not allowing you to go through the worst tragedy of your life-"

He faux frowned. "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I was speaking with Anna. Not God."

The disbelief rested on her face, and it was even worse than it had been last time.

"You're a-you're a hypocrite," she said. "How've I- how've I never, not once, seen this? Or, maybe I have, and maybe I just turned a blind eye to it because it's you, the Doctor, incredible and wonderful."

He felt his hearts sink. How long had he traveled with this version of her and never seen this side of her, the one that simply thought that he was good, and more than that, that it was okay to take away a choice that had changed him on such a deep level? "If that's all that you think I am then you-"

"Then I'm even more simple than you thought I was?" she waved her hand out. "Go on, say it."

His hearts nearly broke as he spoke. "Before this, I never would've thought you were anything less than completely magnificent. But now?" he shook his head. "I have no idea who you are, Anna. Not a single clue."

She stared at him for a long moment before she nodded.

"Okay," she said, quietly. "Okay. Good." She nodded and smiled. "Have a wonderful life, Doctor," she told him, before she teleported away.

He opened and closed his mouth, agony filling him before he looked away. He startled when he realized the other him was still in the room, and he ran a hand down his face, sitting down on the jumpseat.

"Really appreciated the back up, there," he said, sarcasm dripping from every part of him.

But, he sighed. They still had a lot of work to do.

#####

One second, he was alone in the console room and trying to trace the signal back to her. The next, he was turning to find her walking across the console room.

"Anna!" he said, relief filling him. "Good, you're all right! What happened?"

"Doesn't matter," she told him, gruffly, before she started towards the hallway.

He frowned before he followed after her.

"Okay. Well... is everything sorted, then?" he asked. "With whatever it was that did happen?"

"Oh, yeah," she said, in an almost sarcastic voice. "Everything's sorted, everything's peachy freakin keen."

He frowned even deeper. He searched her, trying to understand (and low key looking for injuries, but he didn't find any). "Okay," he said, slowly. "Then, did you want to talk about, what did you say, about what happened in Vegas?" he tried.

She stopped outside of a room, her hand on the doorknob. He was startled to realize that it was the room she'd slept in during the brief times they weren't together.

It was even more startling to see the almost hollow look on her face. "It doesn't matter," she told him. She bit her lip, her eyes still on the floor. "Maybe it never did," she said, quietly.

It was strange, because alarm was filling him for reasons he didn't understand. He raised his eyebrows, watching her open the door.

"Anna, hold on, just-" he said, but surprise filled him, pairing nicely with the alarm already in his system, when she closed the door. "Anna!" he called, knocking on her door.

But, she didn't respond.

#####

Anna became strangely despondent after that.

He gave her space for a few days before he knocked on her door, trying to coax her out for adventures. These days, she tended towards declining. Even when she joined him, there was a sadness in her eyes and she barely spoke, her answers one worded.

She didn't partake in the human ritual of eating, though he could only guess that she was still sleeping. When she was in her bed, anyway. She still partook in a different human ritual when they shared their bed, but he would find her extracting herself from his arms; all too soon, she was back in her room, locked up tight and unavailable to him in every sense of the word.

The only way that he could describe it was that there was a joy that had been lost from her, and the only thing he wanted to know was why.

He spent time trying to ascertain where she'd ended up, trying to pull readings from the Tardis, but that didn't prove very fruitful. He even went back to the catacombs to ascertain if he could see any kind of energy reading that would lead to a magical trail he could follow and get answers from, but he never did.

They even did the rare thing of celebrating Easter (though he was against the idea of it on principle, simply for the horror stories Anna had shared about her experiences when she was younger), but she was no more excited holding and eating chocolate that she hadn't scrounged around for hours than she had been the past month or so on the Tardis. Even the adventure with Lady Christina de Souza couldn't cheer her up. He only thought about inviting the thief for a short time before he dismissed that idea. He could barely talk to Anna now. There was no doubt another person would just scare her deeper into her depression.

That's what it was. Whatever it was had thrown her into a depression, and the only thing he could hope to do was let her work through her process and that she would eventually come and talk to him.

He put his foot down during the adventure where they saved Christmas.

"But it's a happy ending!" he tried to tell her, after the Cybermen had fallen. "All those children, saved-"

"He lost his wife," she told him, and he fell silent at that. "He was so despondent that he had to become somebody else. All those children are going to live on the streets for the rest of their lives and become miserable adults and they're just going to end up working in factories and what is the goddamn point of any of it?"

There was so much pain laced in her voice that he flinched at it, before he shook his head.

"Okay, Anna," he said, quietly. "I want you to know that I love you and that nothing will change that. Now, you've been fairly despondent these past few months, and I have given you your space. I haven't even commented on the fact that the connection is practically closed down, and that's fine. Whatever reason you've got for doing so, it must be important. But Anna, you love Christmas, and we've just saved it, and right now, you're acting as if we've made the situation a thousand times worse, and this is the last straw. I need you to tell me what's wrong. Not for my sake, but for yours."

She curled in on herself the more he spoke, though it was only because she was trying to hide the fact that she was crying. When he finished, she shook her head.

"I can't," she said, quietly, sadly.

"Why not?" he asked, quietly, reassuringly.

She finally broke open, bursting forth with movement. She raked her fingers through her long hair before she threw her arms out. "Because I'm so ashamed!" she told him, looking up at him, and he barely frowned, trying to keep an understanding look on his face. "Because I did something truly awful and it's my fault and I can't- I can't fix it, and I'm- I'm ashamed, Doctor!" she told him. "Oh my god, I'm so ashamed..."

She wasn't lying. He could feel the first thing he'd felt from her in months, that shame washing through her as fiercely as a river as she sobbed, the tears finally releasing from her.

He slowly reached out for her, encasing her in a hug. He sent as much reassurance at her as he could, and he was shocked when she not only accepted the reassurance, she clung to him and it, like a dying man to water.

Mostly though, he was grateful that she was finally letting him in.

When she calmed down a little bit, he gently cupped her face in his hands. "Whatever it is that you've done, there will be absolutely no judgment from me. Do you understand? I will not, in any sense of the word, judge you for whatever it is that you've done. I am here for you, and whatever I can do, I will. I promise," he told her, searching her.

She opened and closed her mouth, though there was little emotion when she spoke. "I told Harold Saxon how to kill me."

He frowned at that, the picture of what she was saying not at all fitting with what he'd thought she'd done (which had included but wasn't limited to accidentally destroying a planet, though why she wouldn't be able to fix that, he didn't know).

Besides which, what was she talking about, how to kill her? She couldn't die. That was one of the great things about Anna. She would always come back.

So, he started with the obvious, frowning all the while. "Who's Harold Saxon?"

"The Master," she quickly corrected herself.

He felt everything in him go cold at that.

His oldest friend, the man who had been driven insane by a drum beat only he could hear. Some part of him was relieved to find out that he'd survived the war, though there hadn't really been a doubt in his mind that he ever would. He was The Master. When hadn't he survived whatever the universe had deemed fit to throw at him?

But, that insanity meant that he was a wild card on the best of days. Why, on Earth, would Anna do something like tell him how to-

He frowned.

"Hold on, how'd you mean 'kill you'?"

Her shame from before came back, her eyes going glassy as she swallowed, looking to the left of him as she bit her lip.

"I'm sorry," she said, quietly, before she started to sob again. "I'm so, so sorry, I'm so so sorry, I'm just- I'm so sorry-"

She broke down again.

The puzzle pieces clicked.

He opened and closed his mouth, frowning as he barely shook his head.

It was something that she was ashamed of. Something that she couldn't take back.

Had Anna just killed his oldest friend, because she'd accidentally let slip the only thing that would kill her... because she was scared of dying?

His hearts were beating so fast in his chest, grief filling him. Even if that was what had happened, it was more complicated than her simply killing him. Knowing the ways Anna had been broken in the past and how much the Master liked toying with people, it was easy to see the damage he'd done before he'd...

He swallowed, before he barely smiled, placing his hands on either of Anna's shoulders.

"Anna," he said, quietly, and she barely shook her head. He glanced around before he spotted the armchairs. "Here, come on," he said, and he gently maneuvered her to the chairs. Surprisingly, she went, sitting down before she collapsed on herself, folding over herself as she put her head in her hands.

"What did I do, oh my god, what did I do, what did I do, what did I- fuck!" she shouted, stomping the floor before she breathed hard.

She wiped at the tears on her face before she barely shook her head, looking at him.

"I didn't mean to," she said, and he searched her, unable to contain the look on his face completely but nodding, because some part of him did understand, even if he was grieving the best friend he'd never gotten to save. "I just- I had a feeling-"

She'd had a what?

"-I had a feeling that I-that I should tell him and then-and then I did, and I..." she sobbed.

She got herself together moments later, and he took this moment to interject.

"Can you start from the beginning?" he asked her, quietly. "How did you- I mean, obviously he was the one what teleported you out against your will."

He couldn't help it, thinking about all the times they'd run through the fields of Gallifrey as children, flashes of memory running through his mind. He'd left Gallifrey and never looked back, and now he wanted to shake himself and call himself an idiot.

He'd left his best friend behind to suffer the insanity on his own, to deal with the drums.

Perhaps that had been when he'd become a creature of war.

She raised her eyebrows. "No," she said, startling him. "What did happen... Oh, damn it," she said, quietly, and he frowned.

"What?"

She huffed out a breath before she shook her head. "Doesn't matter, we'll... get to that later. Anyway, he met up with me in the street and said we hadn't finished our conversation from earlier, and things-"

He frowned. "What conversation?" he asked.

She waved him off. "We met once, when you were in your last body."

He frowned even deeper. "I would've remembered that," he said.

"No, he- when I was still low on power, he approached me, said he wanted to rule the universe with me- or, become a pet more like," she said, obviously imitating an accent (and obviously, it was his). "It doesn't matter-"

Something clicked for him then, though he would never guess why. Because she'd thought that a meeting with someone who would do anything for her power, including hurt her beyond repair, didn't matter, but it did.

It mean that what happened in Vegas mattered, no matter how much she'd insisted it hadn't, and he felt like a complete idiot for not seeing that.

"Did he hurt you?" he asked her, getting back to the topic at hand.

She shrugged. "A little," she replied. "But it doesn't matter, because it wasn't permanent or anything, and he only knocked me about a little bit-"

Something about saying that triggered her, forcing her to descend once more into sobs.

He held her face in his hands and wiped her tears away and spoke to her gently. "Of course it matters," he said. "Because he hurt you and that matters."

Agony and panic erupted over her face at that. "Oh my god, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I can't-"

Confusion filled him. If the only other person who knew how she could die was already dead, then why was she so afraid of that?

"I spent so long thinking that I didn't-" she started, before a startled look crossed her face, and she shook her head, looking away, though she didn't remove his hands on her face.

He gently guided her face back to his. "I promise you, Anna, that as long as I live, there's no possibility of that ever even slightly occurring," he told her. She looked at him, both terribly afraid and terribly hopeful, all in the same measure. "I swear. You are protected." he searched her. "Okay?"

She looked like she so badly wanted to believe him for a long moment. A moment later, she allowed herself to.

"Okay," she said, though there was still some fear on her face. "I... The second time we met, I got angry. Got myself back up to full power, because I'd been drained again and I didn't want to deal with his bullcrap, and then he..." she hesitated, searching him, and his hearts clenched as he prepared himself to hear about how his best friend had tried to kill his wife before she'd killed him, instead. "There was some blustering and threats, and he basically told me that if he could exterminate me, he promised, he would."

She shook her head.

"And I just got this feeling," she told him. "That I was supposed to tell him that he could. He just had to drain my energy to do it."

Hold on, that would kill her? Permanently? Since when? He thought the angels had only almost killed her in the sense that she would've died but come back to life, but he didn't think-

He shook his head, trying to focus on the problem at hand. One life-changing revelation at a time.

"And I almost didn't," she told him, that hollow look in her eyes once more. "Why the frick would I do that, give him that much power over me? Why the hell would I do something like that?" she shook her head. "There are very few times that I actually get a feeling that if I don't do something, everything will change. And, this was one of those times. Before I knew it, I'd told him."

Nausea passed over her face.

"He looked delighted. He looked like I'd given him every Christmas present he would ever get in his entire life. And he said, of course I'll help you, Anna, to die, because- because he thought that that meant that I was suicidal, and well... But, he said that he would help me, just not in the way I probably wanted him to." She shook her head. "I teleported out about a second before he was about to incapacitate me, but before that, I just had to stand there, and I was so afraid. I was so scared of dying, and what kind of hypocrite is that? What kind of coward am I? The second things get scary and I can't even function, let alone do something like be brave. What good am I?" she asked him.

He was still waiting for the part where she told him that she had killed his best friend. So far, it looked like it wasn't coming.

At her admission, he grabbed her face in his hands.

"You are every kind of good that I know, Anna. I'm sorry that this happened. I'm so, so sorry that this happened. But I'm telling you now that this, not wanting to die, being afraid because of it, that doesn't make you a coward. That makes you a living being. That's the most basic instinct, to be afraid of your life ending."

He was confused when he felt the shame come roaring to life, but he kept this off of his face and spoke.

"The fear doesn't matter. It's how you react to the fear that does." he searched her eyes. "Did you hurt him?"

"No," she said, as if that was a ridiculous notion.

"Did you kill him?"

"No, god, no, of course not, who do you think I am?"

He couldn't help that relief fell through him. Maybe that meant he was a threat, but a Master who was alive and a threat was better than a dead one any day.

Even if that threat was against the person he currently loved most in the universe.

But, this was a problem that they could deal with. They might not be able to fix it, but they could deal with it, together.

He told her as much.

"I think you're Anna Monroe," he told her. "The woman who embodies everything that I want to be. Kind and brave, even in the face of fear. You didn't hurt him, and you didn't give into that fear, and that's nothing to be ashamed of, Anna. That fear is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of."

She shook her head, speaking quietly. "You don't understand," she told him, quietly. "I had a choice, to not tell him how to hurt me, to not give him that power over me, and I chose wrong. I chose to allow a monster like him to hurt him like that again." She shook her head. "What if that makes her right about me?"

"Who?"

She shook her head again, that nausea once again overtaking her. "My mother."

With those two words, that shame came back full force. He finally understood what this was about, and he barely sat back on his heels, a different kind of anger bleeding through him.

"And how would that make her right about you, Anna?"

She shook her head, looking down and away, the grief nearly choking her with it's intensity. "Because this is exactly what she accused me of, pulling this type of crap, and what if, what if she never did abuse me, but instead, she just said some things that I didn't like so I twisted it around and called it abuse?" she ran her hands through her hair, clutching at the roots. "Oh my god, what am I doing here?"

He gently put his hands on her knees. "You're here because you want to help people. Because you want to protect people from the kind of cruelty that your mother pushed onto you. Because it was cruelty, some of the worst kind. She was abusive, she did abuse you, and I'm sorry that she did. I'm sorry that she said those things about you, but that in no way makes her right about you. This doesn't either. You didn't follow that feeling because you wanted to be hurt. The fact that you felt that fear, the fact that you're still feeling it, proves that," he told her. She was hanging onto every word he said, like he would finally tell her the thing she needed to hear. "You followed that feeling because the very fabric of the universe would be changed if you didn't. You put the universe first, and yourself at risk, because you were proving, once again, that even in the face of the worst kind of fear, bravery can be found." He cupped her face in his hands. "And I am so incredibly proud of you, and you should be incredibly proud of yourself too, because not only did you not prove her right, but you proved her wrong. You are more incredible than a person like her could ever conceive of being, and I'm sorry that was your life before, but this is your life now, and you are protected, and loved, and no matter what, Anna, no matter what, I am here for you." He searched her eyes. "I promise you. I swear."

"Doctor," she sobbed, and she fell into his open arms, gladly, as she broke apart once more.

The Doctor thought that that was the end of it, resolved with Anna finally realizing that her monster of a mother was completely inaccurate in her assessment of her.

He had no idea that it was only the beginning.

But, he wouldn't know that until it was much too late.