Disclaimer: I don't own the TARDIS. Only a cookie jar of the same design.

To a New World

(Between S5, Ep. 2 and 3)

-o0O0o-

Amy and the Doctor ponder their new possibilities.

-o0O0o-

Amy Pond felt unsure. She had signed up for a mad adventure but she never thought it would be like this. The adventure on Starship UK had been fun despite it being scary and nerve-tingling. Those people were still human. She knew how to handle them and what to expect of them.

The Starship Leviathan was a different story.

Everything Amy ever knew was completely useless. Hell, even the Doctor had been useless. A disease turning a body against itself, allowing a person to die while remaining fully conscious an in terrible pain. Desperate alien scientists trying to find a cure so complex that not even the Doctor could understand it and doing everything for it, those black eyes still haunted her. The well-kept secret of their Commander—who turned out to be the same species as the Doctor— Lord Kelliox. All the deaths from the disease, from the attack of the pirates as they realized the dead ship floating helplessly in space held one of the biggest medical wonders aboard. The friends she found dying for her and the last Time Lord, seeing it as an honor because this was what the Time Lords created them for. Then, the only survivor with them suddenly bursting into golden light while opening a pocket watch, just to turn into another Time Lord. And the TARDIS desperately trying to get rid of her?

Amy needed a break.

It was absolutely amazing. Amy had asked to see the universe, to see things she had never seen before, and she did. It was wonderful in a cruel way. That was why she felt unsure. Unsure about the tangled knot of wonder, horror, amazement, and mourning in her stomach. Unsure about the stone-faced woman with the cool demeanor and those old eyes the curious-yet-shy little alien she had come to see as a friend had turned into.

Amy gulped and smiled.
"Hi?"
The Time Lady stopped looking around in the TARDIS control room and turned, the gaze of her strange eyes settling onto Amy.
"I beg your pardon?"
Strange eyes indeed. Amy had heard of that phenomenon but she never met anyone with it. Something about having all four colours in the eyes.

"Hello," she tried again.
The Time Lady nodded but said nothing.
"I'm—"
"Amelia Pond. I remember."
"You do?"
"Of course. While it was not me taking this… adventure with you, Sheela did. The Chameleon Arch still uses the same brain, it just rewrites biology."
There was a spark of hope. "So it's still you?"
"Of course not. She is just a Kapoaka."

Just a Kapoaka.
"She was a friend."
"My condolences," said the Time Lady nonchalantly, already examining the TARDIS again.
Amy gulped and eyed her warily, feeling unsure about the new world that had opened to her.

-o0O0o-

The Doctor felt a morbid curiosity.

This regeneration was born from loss. He lost everything, everyone he trusted in his last regeneration. He lost all of them.

Of course, it did't stopp.

One day, he will lose Amy, just as he lost Kelliox only a few minutes after he found him. Just as he lost the whole colony where the Leviathan's survivors came from.

He had been wrong all this time. He 's sure now that at least some Kapoaka on that ship had been Time Lords, sacrificing themselves for him because of the identity the Chameleon Arch created for them. But of course, this realization came too late to save any of them. So the second the TARDIS began to dematerialise—leaving the Time Lord's motionless body behind—he did everything he could to get back to her. The time machine hadn't made such a fuss since his third regeneration, and she had been grounded on Earth then! Only after he met the Storyteller and told her his title did he know why.

His old companion only wanted the best for him, and meeting another one of his kind whose mind wasn't clouded by illness or artificial memories was not. All those years, he hoped and feared to find another one. Hoped to ease his burden, or sometimes even just out of the selfish notion to talk and be understood again. At the same time he feared their reaction to his crime, feared to find but lose them again because they couldn't forgive him or have anything to do with him.

He met another Time Lord. The Master had not known. He also hadn't cared, but then the Doctor wasn't sure about that. There had been silence on the phone, after all. And he had used it as punishment, his ultimate triumph over the Doctor: dying in his arms and refusing to regenerate, leaving the Doctor as the last.

Kelliox, on the other hand, knew, somehow. Still, he begged him, even used it in an unfair desperate move to save as many as possible, to get them down from the dying ship before he, too, died in his arms. Too occupied, too desperate to hate him. And he in his hurt pride had only taken Sheela. He could have saved more of them, he knew now.
She knew.

It was foolish to think the Storyteller would react similarly, but the flash of loathing and pure wrath in her eyes the second he uttered his title still hurt.

Hurt, pah. It left him howling in agony on the inside, as did the polite yet empty smile on her face that every Time Lord perfected. The ideal mask for the snake pit their rotten society had been. The one where anyone was able to and would without a second thought stab you in the back before stepping over your cold body and continuing with whatever occupied their time before. He had romanticised the image of his race for 900 years—had them remembered as he wanted them to be—but the same mannerisms reappeared instantly, never forgotten. He never behaved like a proper Time Lord. They were ludicrous with their rules, rituals, and hubris, but he always made sure he knew how to handle them.

But there was still hope. The Chameleon Arch used the very basic traits of a personality, of ones ideal self -unclouded by the events that shaped the life and personality of that person. Despite the Storyteller being cold with the typical arrogance of his species, Sheela had been silent yet extremely curious and deeply caring. Maybe the brainwashing of the academy hadn't erased those traits.

And then he rose his eyebrows because Lady Storyteller entered the control room again. There was a reason why the Doctor spent so much time searching for an ideal outfit after regenerating: clothing always told so many things about an individual. Surprisingly, she didn't choose one of the many robes that the TARDIS still processed. In fact, it wasn't even a Gallifreyan cut. It was just a white blouse with a closed collar; black gloves; a silver-black belt; a long, grey skirt; and button-up boots. An interesting choice because she still upheld the tradition of showing as little skin as possible. So who was this woman?

"A tasteful choice," he complimented carefully.

She nodded curtly, yet there was a spark of… joy in her eyes, "Thank you. The collection of your TARDIS is quite impressive."
"Well, she loves to travel everywhere, so it kind of grew over the years."
"She? I see. The legendary spitfire of this model." She patted the console and the TARDIS made an annoyed yet proud noise. For some strange reason, the time machine despised the Storyteller, and definitely for another reason than simply the fact that the Lady obviously hated him. Both of them had needed a very long time to convince the stubborn time machine to let her in, with Tella showing a surprising amount of empathy for the machine that the Doctor didn't expect from a Time Lord.

Tella. Hey, that's a good name, he thought. From now on, he was going to call her that. Storyteller was a mouthful, but not as bad as Romanadvoratrelundar for sure… He froze. Lady Storyteller hated him. To even think of her as a companion just like Romana was nothing more than wishful thinking. But then, she hadn't liked him either until she did.

"You have no idea," he grinned.

She started sauntering around the console.
"I had to take my final exams in one. My instructor was convinced it would be a privilege to drive one of the first ever grown of a new model. It was… an experience. I personally prefer the 52, but as I said, the Type 40 is legendary."

Oh. He gulped. His TARDIS was an exhibition piece stolen out of a museum, and the last one of her type. The model was revised and slowly taken out of order approximately a thousand years before his birth. Tella basically flew a prototype of it.

She was old, perhaps even older than him. Or not.
He didn't really know how old he truly was, far older than the 903 years that he pretended to be.

Still, the debate of whether a TARDIS had a consciousness or was only an intelligent machine was as old as the TARDIS technology itself, and few Time Lords actually stood with the former idea. Lady Storyteller, Tella, apparently did.

Yes, there was still hope.

The Doctor eyed her warily, feeling a morbid curiosity for the new world that had opened to him.


AN:
A slow short start, before we dive in into the deepest pits. At first I wanted to include the TARDIS' POV too, but I have no idea how to write her properly. I also have no idea if the Doctor or Tella is older than the other.

Tella's 'condition' is called central heterochromia and causes you to have at least two eye colours, mostly grey-green and brown, in your iris. Google search it if you want. She has that special trait as a nod to very important person to me.
I started to post the standalone sequel to this fic a while ago, and finally finished it. So if this chapter is too confusing, check out Leviathan. It is not necessarily needed to be read to understand this story but recommended.

Greetings,
alkatie

05062017
Betaed:03072018
Edid:190420