Author's Note: Writing has not come as easily to me as I thought it would being stuck at home in the middle of a pandemic. Too may outside worries and concerns that have kept these characters from talking to me. And Jenny... She played coy for a long time. She wouldn't talk to me and I couldn't quite get a read on her until she finally opened up and started talking. Her story is a sad tale, but at least she's found Alec now!

I hope this chapter finds each and every one of you safe and healthy wherever you may call home and brings a little smile to your face during these troubling times. And BMG, as always my beta hero! Much love sweetie!

Part 3

The world was spinning lazily beneath Alec as he felt himself floating in a haze of pain and confusion. He knew that he needed to pull himself out of this pain induced trance, but he wanted to stay and rest for just a moment longer.

He hadn't taken any time to allow himself to come to terms with his regeneration since he had been in the midst of a crisis and now that the world had finally stopped screaming around him, he found that he just wanted to sink deeper into the blackness. Maybe he could sleep for a thousand years. Maybe that would finally still the tiny voice that was whimpering in his mind.

Wait a minute, I'm not the one who's whimpering. Alec felt himself jerked towards consciousness as he followed the thread of that frightened voice and the world suddenly exploded into awareness around him.

He looked up at the dying corals over his head and felt the soft cry of relief from the infant Tardis as he regained consciousness. He vaguely remembered a woman coming to help him, but he didn't see or hear her anywhere in the control room. He tried to move but cried out when the movement reminded him very quickly of the ordeal that he had just been through.

The control room was a total disaster, but it looked like she had managed to move the pieces of equipment off his body and wrap his leg up with a crude splint. The room spun dangerously when he moved his head from side to side, and he could see that she had managed to clear a small area around where he had fallen but that she hadn't done much more than that.

He tried to ask the Tardis if she was still close, but the effort caused pain to stab through his head and consciousness to dance through his fingers.

The ship clung to him in the only way that she could as she lay battered and broken around him, her circuits were bleeding energy but now that they weren't in actual flight some of the energy loss had been stabilized. He knew though that he would have to complete repairs and soon, or he may well still lose her because of the damage.

"Try not to move too much, I've managed to tend to the worst of your injuries but there's some that only time will heal."

Alec hissed when he heard that soft voice echo through the room, his head jerked towards the entrance to the Tardis where he saw the woman, whose name danced just at the edge of his recollection, step back into the craft.

"Who are you? What planet is this?" Alec asked, though the sound of his voice was weak even to his own ears.

The woman smiled softly as she hurried to his side, her arms were filled with odd shaped packages that she set down next to what looked like a makeshift travel stove before she turned back to him and began to check on his various bandages. "You're hardly in any shape to be asking all those questions, and besides I doubt you'll remember the answers yet. You've already asked them about a half a dozen times before, but my name is Jenny"

Alec's eyes opened wide when she said that, trying in vain to remember having any conversations with this woman after he had landed on this planet. "I don't remember having any conversations, how do I know you're telling me the truth?"

She paused in her ministrations, her dark eyes rising to lock with his before she just shook her head and turned to begin unwrapping some of the packages that she had set down. "I've no reason to lie to you. You've been drifting in and out of consciousness for about 3 days now and every time you wake up, you ask who I am and where you are. Once I answer those questions to your satisfaction, you then tell me to look after your ship and explain to me that she's alive and that she's dying and needs to be patched up."

The woman who had called herself Jenny looked up at the walls with a strange look on her face, her eyes growing distant before she looked back to him with a small smile. "I didn't believe you at first, but then I felt something begin to talk to me and tell me places that I needed to make some minor repairs in order to keep the power on." She gnawed on her lip before she looked back to Alec and blurted, "You called me a Time Lord when I first found you. How can you know that name? I've never met anyone else who knew that name."

Alec winced when he heard her question, his hand trying to rise to his forehead when he felt the pain stab through his temples once more. "How can you not know what a Time Lord is? I can see the timelines dancing around you right now. Are you playing some sort of trick? Am I even in the correct reality?"

He tried to push off the ground, belatedly realizing that he was laying on a soft pile of blankets before he felt himself easily pushed back to rest against the blankets.

"Rest now. You're not nearly as healed as you think you are. The questions can wait until later, please just rest and I'll make you something to eat. You need your strength if you're going to pull yourself out of the wasting sickness."

Alec felt himself being sucked back down into the darkness of exhaustion, his mind quickly fading once more into oblivion.

Alec swam upwards through the layers of consciousness, feeling himself rising easier through the pain and back into his body. He blinked his eyes open and quickly lay back as he let his senses flare out to take in his surroundings.

He didn't dare use his telepathy yet, when he even thought of trying to reach out telepathically he felt a pain stab through his head that reminded him he was still very much injured and struggling to heal.

The corals over his head were dim, but not the sickly hue that he had remembered seeing earlier, this was more of a soft hue that reminded him more of a night time sky. There was a faint flicker of flames on the walls around him and the scent of something cooking, though he couldn't identify what the strange aromas were. He grunted when he felt his stomach growl in response to the delicious smells, his mouth watering in anticipation of food.

Once more a shadowy shape leaned over him, the smile on her face was brilliant as she saw that he'd regained consciousness once more. "I thought you were going to be out for another whole day, it's starting to get a little lonely here though your ship has been keeping me company."

Alec looked up at the woman leaning over him, his gaze rising to trace the lines that were flaring off her body to dance up towards the ceiling above before they vanished. He held his breath when he saw each gossamer strand flicker and flare before it would undulate in a sultry dance towards the pulse of the Tardis walls around them. It had been so long since he'd felt the energy of another Time Lord that he found himself nearly drunk with giddiness, his mind swimming chaotically through the last remnants of his regeneration sickness.

"You can talk to her?" he asked stupidly.

She laughed softly and nodded, "Yes, I can. Although she started talking to me first." The woman frowned softly before she continued. "She's in rough shape and I can't make sense of half of the things she says, but we've managed to figure things out over the last few days while you were sleeping."

Alec tried to shift on the blankets and was surprised when the woman helped him into a better position, though his body still protested at the movement and his leg seemed to scream in agony. "I'm sorry, but I can't remember much of the last few days, everything feels like a dream. Can we start again?"

She nodded and settled down cross legged beside him. "My name's Jenny, I heard your cry for help or maybe it was your ship's cry, I'm not entirely sure." She paused for a moment before she took a deep breath and continued, "I've never felt a ship speak to me in the way yours did. The only time I've ever felt anyone in my mind it was because…." her voice faltered for a moment before she swallowed hard and continued, "They wanted to hurt me. I've been looking across the galaxy for anyone else like me for years, and I had come to the conclusion that I was all alone."

Alec looked at her, his mind sluggishly trying to place where he knew the name Jenny from, but the strands wouldn't connect and he finally gave up in frustration. Her words though were almost too fantastic to believe, especially when he allowed himself to really look at her and he saw the dance of a dozen lifetimes in her aura. Many of those lifetimes were still to come, but she had already lived a few lives, of that he was certain.

"Hello Jenny, I'm Alec. I've got to say that I'm surprised to meet you here. I thought that there was only one Time Lord left in this reality but suddenly there's another, one that I've never met but more surprisingly doesn't seem to know much about being a Time Lord. Why is that?"

Jenny leaned back at his question, her eyes growing distant as she thought about her past and the road that had led her to this strange planet and this strange man. She turned his name over and over in her mind, wondering why she felt this intense connection almost as if her destiny and her past were all somehow tied to him. "I… I don't know, Alec. So much has happened to me in the past few years, so much that I don't understand but somehow I feel like you'd understand it all if I told you all of it."

Alec noticed the nervous tension that suddenly filled her body, her motions were jerky as she turned to the small cooking stove he had seen earlier and she began to ladle out a warm stew into two metal bowls.

Jenny turned back to Alec and offered him one of the bowls, her hands lingering close to his so that she made sure he had a firm grip on the bowl before she pulled away and lifted her own bowl in her hands.

Alec took the dish, letting her use the movements to provide a bit of a distraction from what were obviously painful memories while he deeply inhaled the aroma of the stew. The spices were strange to him as were the pieces of meat floating in the thick broth, but the overall combination was pleasing to the senses. He lifted it to his lips and carefully took a sip, pausing when the heat surprised him before he swallowed and quickly began to devour the rest of the bowl's contents.

"Be careful eating too fast, I haven't been able to get much food into you and supplies can be pretty hard to come by on this planet. We've got to make them last for as long as possible before I have to go out again."

Alec forced himself to slow down even though his stomach felt like he could eat a dozen helpings with ease, but he nodded in response to her words and paused between swallows to ask. "Is there some sort of famine on this planet? Is that why supplies are so hard to come by?"

Jenny shrugged as she lifted her spoon to her lips, her eyes closing for a moment while she blew on the spoon's contents to cool them before her lips parted and she slipped the spoon into her mouth. She remained silent for a moment more before she opened her eyes once more and turned to look at him.

"I'm not sure, Alec. It's strange out there, almost like there's something wrong with the atmosphere though no one else seems to be aware of the difference. I feel like there's this pressure on me every time I step outside your ship, like I'm on fire even though the relative temperature of the planet is cooler than other planets I've visited. Ships don't come here often and I was robbed shortly after I got to this planet, so I haven't been able to buy a ticket on an outbound flight for a long time."

Alec listened to her words, his mind reaching out to the Tardis in order to immerse himself in the sensation of the planet's atmosphere against her shell. It was just as Jenny had described, like the skin of the Tardis was on fire even though there was no discernible reason for the heat. The twin suns seemed to move in a strange sequence across the sky and there were times when only one sun was visible, but that didn't seem to have any effect on the overall temperature of the planet. He blew out a frustrated breath before he swallowed another mouthful of soup, his eyes locking with Jenny's when she looked at him in surprise.

"How long have you been here, Jenny?"

Jenny set her bowl down and blew her breath out, directing it up to the fringe that hung messily over her forehead while she thought. "I don't really know, it's been several of this planet's months at least. Long enough for me to see that there's something very wrong and the powers that are in charge are trying to keep the population from getting out of control."

Alec nodded softly at her response, not at all surprised by it when he had felt the strange sensations that were buffeting the hull of the Tardis. There was some sort of temporal anomaly nearby, something that was distorting the atmosphere around them in such a way that it was affecting the planet as well.

"Do you know how long this 'something' has been going on?"

She shrugged, her eyes focusing once more on her stew before she replied, "About twenty or so years, or so some of the locals seem to think."

Alec fumbled the bowl in his grasp, his eyes widening as her words sank in. "Twenty YEARS?"

Jenny nodded, finishing the last of her stew and setting the bowl aside to clean later before she returned her gaze back to Alec. "That's what I've been told, but the locals get very close mouthed when I try to ask them any more questions about why or how the disturbances started. I've had to dodge the authorities a few times and move to different districts to avoid too much notice, but it's getting harder to stay hidden because fewer offworlders are staying for any length of time."

Alec cocked his head at her choice of words, his gaze turning thoughtful. "Why have you been asking so many questions, Jenny? Why aren't you just focusing on trying to get off-planet as soon as you can?"

Jenny stiffened at Alec's question, her gaze suddenly looking hunted before she muttered, "I don't know why. Maybe I could try to help them or something. You got a problem with that?"

Alec shook his head, though that strange sensation of knowing Jenny was back stronger than ever. He suddenly felt that he had to hear her story completely, but he was reluctant as well to continue because he could tell that it would be painful in the retelling.

"Jenny, how many times have you regenerated?"

Jenny looked at him strangely, her hand rising to touch her throat before dropping into her lap once more. "I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean."

Alec leaned carefully forward, the shift in position reminding him that his leg wasn't healing like it should have been if he'd been in the after stages of a regeneration but he couldn't think of a reason for that now. He'd hit a nerve with his question and he could tell that even though the word was strange to her, she knew exactly what he was talking about.

"How many times have you died, Jenny?"

Jenny gasped and jumped to her feet, her frantic steps scattering the bowl and several other utensils as she rushed towards the exit in the side of the Tardis.

"Don't run, Jenny! I can help you make sense of it all." He cursed his injuries and his inability to follow after her when she clearly looked ready to bolt. "Please, Jenny, let me help you!"

Jenny stood at the opening in the wall of the Tardis, her eyes peeking out through the thin line towards the washed out landscape outside, still marveling at the fact that this ship blended so well into the field of salt pillars that stood just outside of the large town where she had been staying. If she hadn't been guided to the pillar with the opening in its side, she would never have even known this wondrous ship was here.

Alec's words promising some sort of sense in the insanity of her life were so tempting, but she was frightened to trust again. She knew her father had thought her dead when he'd left Messaline, but she'd been hopeful that he would maybe circle back for her. Maybe he would have felt some sort of connection to her when she'd woken up once more after she'd taken a bullet for him, but her mind had stayed empty and she knew that he wasn't anywhere close enough to feel her again.

She'd wandered the galaxy, year after year, doing what she'd felt he would have done and lending a helping hand when she'd found herself on a planet where there were innocents who were suffering. Her military imprinting had come in handy many times, and she'd managed to gain somewhat of a reputation as a soldier for hire though she cringed when she thought of how her father would react if he'd ever found out what she was doing.

But what did she care? He'd left her and moved on, and he hadn't even told her everything she needed to know about what it meant to be a Time Lord, whatever that was, and so she'd been completely unprepared for the first time she'd changed after dying.

This man, though, was promising to teach her more about herself, promising to help her make sense of all the chaos that had chased her through the galaxy for more years than she cared to count. She was sick and tired of looking over her shoulder, like she'd had to do for years after that first death and strange rebirth. Now she was much more cautious about her strange abilities, but she needed to know just how many lives she did have and what exactly her limits were, if any.

Jenny looked back to Alec, the man was a mess but in his eyes was all the promise of understanding that she had never been able to find anywhere else in the universe. All she had to do was trust him.

"I've died three times, Alec, at least three times that I can remember. But I only changed with the last two deaths. Why is that, Alec? Why didn't I change after the first time I died?"

Alec let out the breath that he hadn't realized he was holding when she answered his question, her response ridding him of the final doubt he had that she might not be a Time Lord. If she was on her fourth regeneration, then he needed to find out how long she'd been wandering the galaxy and also how old this particular body was just in case she was burning regenerations at a reckless pace.

"Please come and sit back down, Jenny. Unfortunately, I can't sit up like this for long still. Please, tell me what happened?"

Jenny looked back towards Alec before she looked out the thin crack into the strange world beyond where night was finally beginning to fall. Taking a deep breath and her courage in hand, Jenny turned around to make her way back to his side.

She settled down on her own pile of blankets that were close to his side just in case he'd needed tending to in the middle of the night and suddenly she was filled with nerves. She fiddled with her hands, not sure what she should do with them before she felt his hands reach out to grasp hers.

"It's alright, Jenny. Just take your time, it's your story to tell when you're ready."

Jenny felt herself falling into his icy blue gaze, the soft lilt to his voice was soothing to her and so she found herself suddenly remembering her strange birth and the stranger man from which she had been born.

"It all started in the middle of a war. A war that no one could remember how it began…"