I don't own Doctor Who.
Please let me know what you think.
The Newest Regeneration Prophecy.
The Doctor looked around the TARDIS console room after she had dealt with the fob watch that Tecteun had so thoughtfully and kindly kept in that bell jar in Division's headquarters, grimacing and sighing at the residual damage caused by the Flux; the TARDIS was a Block Transfer construct, the structure of the interior dimensions and the exterior dimensions were made from a very advanced mathematical formula and several replicated materials and ordinary pieces of matter to help the structure grow, but the majority of the computations which helped the TARDIS evolve from a basic space-time event into a TT capsule, its structure was dependent on the universe's existence being constant.
The Flux had corrupted and damaged the universe and damaged the Time Vortex, like a computer virus corrupting a simple Earth computer. It would take the Doctor a while, but she was sure she could restore her beloved ship and long-term companion. She already had a few ideas on how to do it, but the Doctor was aware that when she was finished she would need to find out just how much damage the universe had taken from the Flux; thanks to the TARDIS, the Doctor had reversed time with the help of the Mouri, so as far as the universe was concerned the Flux had been a possibility but the damage was still there, embedded into the universe's structures like scar tissue.
But the Doctor's eyes were drawn to the hatchway in the console where she had just dropped the fob watch containing her memories. It had been so tempting. Just open the watch, get the memories she had been hunting down for so long ever since the day Jack had freed her from that stinking asteroid prison after she had accepted the fact the Master had been telling the truth about the Timeless Child. She might not trust the Master anymore considering what he had done over the centuries since the fallout between them during their time on Gallifrey (it galled her that she could no longer think of the old buzzard, the incarnation who had travelled with Susan and believed that all they needed to do was to look after the girl without thinking about what she might want, or what she would find on her travels as her first life), but there was no way she could dismiss the woman who claimed she was the Doctor in Gloucester, and that encounter with her in the Matrix and then on Atropos when she'd thrown herself into the time stream only confirmed it.
But she felt she wasn't ready. There were still so many things she didn't know, but while she knew opening up the watch would restore her memories, the Doctor just wanted to rest. She had been fighting the Flux for a long time and trying to uncover the mystery of the Ravagers while finding Division, but she knew in time she would ask the TARDIS to give her the watch so she could restore the memories that bitch Tecteun had taken from her.
The memories…
For a long time, the Doctor had been wondering, especially in prison where she had been alone and had nothing else to do except think and reflect on her lives and the latest discoveries of the Timeless Child and that encounter with that version of herself who'd tricked Gat. When she had been in prison, the Doctor had reflected on the lives she didn't remember.
Who were they?
What did they do, if they were a part of the Division what did those lives see and do?
How many lives had she lived?
Would she remember the torture Tecteun had subjected her to, all for the greedy bitch who had left Gallifrey to explore the cosmos only to treat the universe as a giant petri dish and had been manipulating events through Division for Rassilon and Omega and Gallifrey knew how long if she opened the watch?
Karvanistra had known her during his own time in the Division. He had been resentful when he had told her he had something in his head, and if he discussed his time with that organisation it would kill him. But the Doctor was still reeling from the way Tecteun had told her she was no better than she was, bringing in companions to travel with her in the TARDIS.
"What do you do, Doctor? Pick people up, take them with you? You adopt them, use them, for reassurance, for company. They're your experiments, just as you were mine."
But what frightened the Doctor the most was how accurate Tecteun's accusations were. Look at the way she had erased Donna's mind of the memories she had accumulated over their time together, leaving her with a handy defence mechanism in case she was threatened in some sense. That was something that haunted her even now, especially after the way Tecteun had confessed to being the one responsible for ordering her memories removed and placed in that damn watch.
What about Ace, Hex, Benny when they had travelled with her seventh incarnation (she didn't know what else to call the little umbrella man now) and the stuff that she had done? Hadn't she manipulated them so many times, turned them into weapons for her masterplans? How many times had she openly said about Ace, "She's no good to me like this" without caring about the long-term damage, and taking a more active interest in the 'immediate matters.'
What about Amy, Rory, and River?
If she had simply fixed the crack in time and left Amy alone, then the girl wouldn't have lost so much of her life, and she could have become so much more, Rory would never have been inspired to be a nurse and their daughter wouldn't have been kidnapped by Kovarian's sick splinter group in the Church of the Silence and tried to kill her!
But no.
She had continuously popped in and out of the lives of the Ponds, and while she loved them a part of her had come to accept she caused more pain and grief for them, and perhaps she should just stay away. But… she couldn't, and the end result was telling Brian Williams that his son and daughter-in-law had been thrown back in time because of Weeping Angels.
If she had used her common sense, it would never have happened.
And then, of course, there were her current companions. How many times recently had she just thrown Yaz's kindness in her face? How many times had she walked off and left her and Dan, to say nothing of Graham and Ryan in the lurch? Hadn't that mess with the Master, that version of her in Gloucester or her return from Gallifrey and the prison taught her any lessons? But every single time the Doctor thought about telling them about what was happening, her instinct to keep them safe and ignorant kicked in again and, in her arrogance, the Doctor believed only she had the right to know anything. She might have promised Yaz the full story, but the Doctor wondered if she would even tell her anything.
But now she had something else on her mind.
She had been told soon she would regenerate, by the entity of Time. The Doctor wasn't sure about what to think of the idea of time being a living thing instead of a concept, a dimension made whole by the Time Vortex, the Maelstrom or the Very Fabric of Time and Space that Iris Wildthyme used with that Celestial Omnibus of hers.
The Doctor closed her eyes as she remembered the conversation, shortly after Storm and Azure disappeared after being consumed by time (she wished she knew more about the whole thing, but like so many other things since the Flux took place, so many things did not make sense. She remembered how Time mirrored her appearance, barring the darker coat, much like it had done with Storm, and it made her wonder if the entity was a multidimensional waveform that projected illusions if anyone saw it.
"Nice look. Quite fancy that coat. Oh, I get how that ego appeal thing works now," the Doctor had said to the entity, who had just stood there, gazing at her cooly before she got back to business. "My turn now, is it? My reckoning?"
"No," the entity said simply.
The simplicity of the entity's statement had taken her by surprise; from what she had discovered about Time lately, the entity was hardly benign, and after the Division's plan to destroy the universe and with the Ravagers, she had expected the entity to kill her outright; as the last and first Time Lord in the universe, she had been sure she would have made a great sacrifice. "Oh. Really?"
The entity had smiled at her in a teasing manner - did she smile in the same way to her friends? "You can leave here, but you won't outrun me. Your time is heading to its end."
The Doctor remembered the sinking feeling in her chest, knowing what this was. It was a prophecy, similar to the ones her tenth and eleventh selves had received, of how her song was ending, how the Silence had made it their mission into trying to stop her from reaching Trenzalore to release the pocket universe locked Gallifrey… "No, it's not. You're wrong."
The entity had to be wrong.
She had barely lived in this body, only a few decades but close to a century. She couldn't be on her way to regeneration. She just couldn't…!
"Nothing is forever. No regeneration, no life," the entity had gone on to say, looking at her with cool sympathy, making the Doctor realise that Time seemed to reflect those whose minds it was facing; in Storms' case, the entity was hostile, evil, focused on destruction. But with her, the entity was mellow and non-destructive. "Beware of the forces that mass against you. And their Master."
Master.
Oh, no.
Did that mean-?
Somehow the Doctor imagined that the entry was referring to the Master. He had survived. He was going to come back, he was going to unleash another one of his sick schemes on the universe again, and she would die again. How many times was she going to let the Master kill her lives before she found a more permanent way of stopping him, instead of yearning for the little boy whom she had befriended so many lifetimes ago? That boy was gone, for good. Why couldn't she see that?
"What do you mean?" The Doctor had asked desperately, determined to find out more, but fed up with being given only the smallest amount of warning before it actually happened. "What do you mean, their Master?"
But the entity refused to say anymore - whether it was because it felt it had said enough, or if it obeyed the Laws imposed on it by the Time Lords, she couldn't tell - and said, "I restore you, Doctor. Reunify you. But for how long?"
A prophecy.
The Doctor was unsure what to make of what she had just heard and what the entity said, but beyond the implications, she wondered how long she would have to wait before she regenerated again. She despised regeneration, despite knowing that because of it she had been shaped by the events and the personalities of her past lives, but ever since that painful regeneration after Mondas was destroyed, she had not wanted to go through with it again. Furthermore, she sometimes wondered what her life would have been like had she hadn't taken in the Time Vortex away from Rose, how her post-war ninth incarnation would have developed. Would she have met Donna and Martha, or what about Amy and Rory?
On top of that, she wanted to find a moment to make some kind of peace with Yaz. Would she have time to do that before the slate was wiped clean?
Only time would tell.
Author's note - I've recently seen on Screenrant an article about why Thasmin simply won't work, and after remembering what Tecteun said about the Doctor's companions and how the Doctor actually treats Yaz, I agree with it.