TW: Mention of suicide
Rose was confused.
First, her mum had started spouting nonsense about, "I didn't know you were coming home, why didn't you call ahead?" before she'd delved into, "Where are they then?"
Then, she hadn't even been surprised to see the Doctor standing in the doorway.
"Is this himself, then, the mysterious Doctor without a name? Where's Anna?"
The words the Doctor looked like he'd been about to say to explain this whole situation died on his lips, confusion taking their place (which wasn't something she'd yet seen on the Doctor, and it was just bad timing that this had to be the first).
Then Anna (who she hardly knew but had been explained as, while she can fix some things, she can't fix everything) had spoken.
"Right here, Mrs. Tyler!" she said, walking past the Doctor (and if it were any other circumstance, she might've taken a picture of the Doctor's mouth starting to go agape, except that his confusion was rivaling hers).
"Oh, don't start with the Mrs. Tyler's, it's Jackie or nothing," she told her, before she pulled her into a hug like she knew her.
"Do you two know each other?" Rose asked.
"Oh, and there it is, Rose having a laugh at my expense," Jackie said, pulling back from Anna to examine her. "Right, let me have a good look at you. Can't believe I'm finally meeting the people who kept my Rose away for a full year."
There were often times Rose didn't understand something her mum was saying. Now was one of those times.
"Couldn't even visit for a quick kip on the couch, had to swan off and travel the world?"
"We're very sorry for that, Mrs. Tyler-"
"Jackie," she warned, in the same voice that she used when she was about smack Rose upside the head.
"Jackie," Anna agreed. "We had a busy itinerary. Henrik's was a scary thing for all of us, you know?"
"Oh, you're American! Rose didn't mention that!"
"Rose didn't mention a lot of things, Anna, can I have a quick word?"
"I'd like a word as well," Rose put in, feeling lightheaded and confused from the situation. She wasn't normally one to feel faint, but her mum had just said something she couldn't have done and she didn't understand.
"Absolutely not," mum said, putting her foot down. "You three are sitting down and we're having a proper chat. I'd like to actually have a decent conversation with the people my daughter has been traveling with for the past year."
"And I'd love to do that, Mrs. Tyler-"
"What have I just said?" she asked.
"Jackie," the Doctor corrected. Rose was more than annoyed when Anna looked like she wanted to burst out laughing before she tempered it. "Just need to have a quick word with my travel partner. Rose! Why don't you join us, get your, erm, luggage from the... car?" he tried, and the word couldn't have sounded more foreign on his tongue than if he'd tried.
"Love to," Rose said, starting to stalk from the tiny flat she'd only been gone from for twelve hours, the words, a year, repeating in her head in time with her heartbeat.
It was probably the only thing that the Doctor could've said that would've made Jackie Tyler part from her daughter after not seeing her for... well, for however long it had actually been.
"Oh, all right, but be quick about it! I want to hear all the stories- I'll put the kettle on!" she suggested, and Rose nodded, feeling strangely numb.
"Sounds good, mum." she kissed her on the cheek on her way out. "See you in a bit."
"You'd better," she warned. "And you'd better have a good explanation for swanning off in the middle of the night with no note! Didn't even get a text from you until the next morning. The drama of it all, I mean, really, Rose," she said.
Yep. That sounded more like her mum.
She didn't pay attention to this, looking at Anna with thunder in her eyes, even as the Doctor didn't reflect it.
They rushed from the flat in a hurry but he took his time about speaking to Anna, waiting until they made it to the roof (though that was probably for the best, as rows tended to attract Estate residents like flies).
"I'm not blaming you," he infuriatingly started off, holding up his hands as he searched her. "I'm just asking if you did do something to make us a year late and, if so, why."
Surprise crossed Anna's face the same as it crossed through Rose. It hadn't even occurred to her that Anna might've done something to make them a year late, just knew that she'd had something to do with why her mother thought she'd been missing for a year.
"Oh, what, you think-" she looked incredulous when the surprise faded. "Are you joking? That was you, you twat, the only thing-"
"Woah, woah, woah, okay, hey, Anna, I just said-"
"No," she said, fiercely, interrupting him, and he held up his hands.
Rose was surprised by his behavior. She'd seen him stare down Nestene Consciousness, not to mention the look on his face as he'd just watch Cassandra die, but when it came to Anna, he was almost... toned down. As if this was a watered down version of who he was.
She didn't know why he was acting this way, but she didn't like it.
"The only thing I did was make sure that Rose's mum knew she was alive during the year she was supposed to have been missing because your crap driving-"
"Oi!"
"Missed by about a year, don't you oi me," she said, annoyance creeping into her tone. "You missed a whole year!"
"That's not my fault!" he insisted, his true self shining through. Rose glanced between the two of them, trying to decide if she should step between the two of them. She'd no idea how the two of them were when they had a row, but judging by the way they acted, she'd say they'd known each other for a bit of time. In her experience, that's when people really started to show their true colors, not holding back. "The Tardis still needs a bit of calibrating-"
"I healed her-" She was surprised when Anna made a noise of frustration, wiping at her face with her hand. She was starting to back down. "No, okay, look," she started again, looking up at him. "It's not your fault, it's not the Tardis', it's not mine," she quickly added, throwing a look at Rose, who crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow as if to say, Really? She ignored this as she continued. "It was meant to happen, though why that's true, I've still no idea. I did- I wasn't even supposed to do this, okay?"
"How'd you mean?" The Doctor asked.
"I mean that Rose's mum was meant to think that she was missing or worse for an entire year," and here, Anna laughed without any humor. "And I was just supposed to-" she swept her arm out. "-let that happen, and I didn't, so you're welcome."
She turned to walk off and the Doctor reached out a hand to stop her. A look flashed across his face at the last second before he decided against it, quickly pulling his hand back.
"Oi! Where are you off to?"
"All-powerful being business to attend to," she told him with noticeably less malice than she had the first time. She even swiveled on her heel, turning to look back at him. "And just as an aside, I saved you from a pretty nasty slap, so you've still got the record of, in all of your 900 years, you've never been slapped by someone's mother." A look of consideration crossed her face, though there was delight resting there as well. "Can't say that'll hold, but you're welcome."
Before the Doctor could protest, Anna did what Rose had come to know her to do.
She vanished without a trace.
There was a lot that Rose didn't understand about the situation, but she turned back to look at the Doctor.
"How'd she mean, nine hundred years?"
"What? Oh, I'm 903 years old," he said, dismissively, like it was just a normal thing for a person to say.
"Blimey," she said, under her breath, her mind barely touching on that as they walked to the edge of the rooftop. She looked down on the Estate that she'd grown up on and for a second, she had a flash of the same thought that she'd had before, that it looked entirely new despite the fact that it hadn't changed. Sure, there was new voices floating up in argument from the Estate below and new graffiti, bad wolf written in lopsided letters, but even that was still ever the same as it had been when she'd grown up.
It was her that had changed.
She herself had faced down the Nestene Consciousness and had come out the other side, thought she would die in a basement surrounded by the bodies of the dead, but she'd survived that, too. It was probably the only reason she was able to draw a shaky breath in and ask the question that terrified her.
"Has it really been a year?"
The Doctor tensed, looking down at her, any remnant of anything but a flinch and regret falling off of his face. "Yes," he said. "Sorry."
She felt a breath falling from her and an emotion she couldn't name quickly following behind.
"'s all right," she said, and the Doctor looked surprised at that, turning back to look at her from where his stare had landed on the Estate below. She shrugged. "I mean, I guess Anna fixed it, somehow, though I don't really know how," she frowned. "Like, did she introduce herself to my mum and say, 'Don't worry, your daughter'll be traveling for a year and you won't hear a word from her but we'll return her safe and sound'? Oh, hold on," she said, surprise lighting her up from the inside out. "She said she got a text from me."
The Doctor waved her off, leaning against the railing as he surveyed the Estate below. The (apparently) 903 year old alien was looking down at her home and she wondered what it must look like to him. The alien who made a hobby of traveling had seen all of time and space, and there he was, standing on something as ordinary the rooftop of a council estate. It would've been mind-boggling if they weren't busy figuring out the mystery Anna had left behind.
"Probably sent her texts and pictures and the like," he told her.
Rose blinked. "But we never took any pictures," she pointed out.
He looked down at her as if she'd dribbled on her shirt. "Rose, she teleported out in front of us, right then, just now. If she can do that, I doubt doctoring a few photos would be a task."
She held up her hands in mock apology. "Sorry," she said, before he made a noise like her apology wasn't necessary. She rolled her eyes, moving so that she was sitting on the roof.
A thoughtful silence fell over them for a moment before he spoke.
"This was a close call that almost wasn't," he told her.
"How'd you mean?" she asked, frowning.
In the short time she'd known him, she'd seen him swing wildly from jovial to anger in two seconds flat, his ability to swing from one emotion to the next rivaled only by her mother. She had a better understanding about why he did it now, ever since their conversation about his lost planet.
A brief thought came to her, about why Anna hadn't fixed it like she'd fixed this, came to mind, before the Doctor interrupted her, having swung from relaxed to tense in null point two seconds.
"I mean if Anna hadn't've stepped in, you and your mum would've had a very different conversation just then. She would've thought you were missing for a year, dead or worse, and there wouldn't have been anything I could've done to fix that."
He looked out over the Estate. She dropped down from the raised platform she'd been sitting on to stand next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder to comfort him.
"That wasn't your fault."
He looked down at her, a look in his eyes that didn't at all match his words. "I know," he said, and she nodded before she started to step away. "But the point still stands that it could just as easily happen again."
She frowned, surprised by the sudden turn in conversation. "Wha'?" she asked, slightly pulling away from him.
There was a guilt barely there in his eyes, conceal it though he might try.
"The Tardis could do this again, show up a year late, or even ten. I didn't mean for this to happen and I don't want it to happen again, but that doesn't mean it won't, and if Anna can't do something then it means you could miss years of your mum's life." He turned away from her. "Are you sure that's what you want?"
She didn't understand. "How'd you mean?" she asked.
"I mean, are you sure you want to keep doing this? Traveling with me?"
This wasn't the first time that he'd asked if she were sure. Back on the street corner, he'd reminded her again of how dangerous his life was.
She didn't get to answer, couldn't even begin to think of one. In the next moment, she heard a noise that sounded like a cannon before she ducked, turning back to see the smoking ruin of a spaceship, flying through the air directly towards them.
/
Back in the Steward's office, Anna had teleported him away, back to his home and his family and his life. He wouldn't be able to explain anything about what had happened, but at least he was alive.
The person Rose had called a plumber had been saved as well, and she was just about to head back to Rose and the Doctor (because even Sneed couldn't live, and he'd been the only person she might be able to save in The Unquiet Dead).
A fire erupted in her chest.
There was something that happened, when she used too much of her energy. There was a dull pain that turned into a roar.
This wasn't that. This was worse than that.
She didn't even get a chance to do anything except for register the pain before she was forced to black.
Unbeknownst to her, the spiders had already worked their magic so that the sun filter descended.
Still with Anna inside.
Even though she was an all-powerful being, that didn't mean that her body wasn't as fragile as a mortal's. It meant that, while she was passed out, her body burned.
It was how the Doctor found ashes in the Steward's office when he finally got the door open, picking them up and letting them slide through his fingers before he vowed not to let anybody else die. He got up, dusted his hand off on his trousers, turned on his heel, and walked off. All whilst never knowing it was Anna's ashes he'd let slip so carelessly through his fingers.
/
She didn't even wake up until Platform One was being investigated.
She wasn't in any pain, which was nice, but she was also dust, which was less nice. She had to wait until the investigators had already cleared out the room, watching them passively while they did their work, before she reformed herself.
It wasn't until she had a body again that the emotion set in.
The pain was quick to follow.
/
He wasn't having that bad of a day. Rose had pretty much been the star of everyone's attention, people asking how her travels were and where she'd been and what she'd been up to. Rose's mum had tried to engage him in conversation a few times, but he answered her questions with one worded answers, more focused on the alien ship that had crashed into the Thames, and eventually she had given up, drawn away by one of the gossiping women she called friends.
The fact that Anna had saved Jackie the trauma of having her daughter missing for a year was what had really made this a good day, even if Jackie's questions weren't easy to answer. He wasn't sure that this would've been the best solution, but the fact that Anna did anything at all when she'd said she wasn't even supposed to was more than he could've asked for from her.
Besides which, Rose had inadvertently answered the question he'd asked back on the rooftop with an affirmative when she accepted the key, so all in all, not a bad day.
So, imagine his disappointment at hearing someone screaming when he came into the Tardis.
That disappointment quickly turned into work mode before it turned into horror.
Anna was on the floor, writhing on the ground. She was the one screaming in pain.
"What's wrong?" he quickly asked her, pulling out his sonic screwdriver. "Anna, what is it, what's wrong? Talk to me!" he shouted at her as he scanned her.
He waited for about a nanosecond for the results to come back before he shook his head.
"Sod this."
He quickly picked her up, starting to run her to the medbay, making it three steps before she stopped completely, still in his arms. She'd even stopped breathing, he quickly noted, and for a horrifying moment, Anna Monroe looked like a corpse, dead in his arms.
He remembered then, in vivid detail, every soldier that he'd seen the faces of, the dying and the long dead, some eyes closed, others open and unseeing, even regeneration unable to save them.
He didn't notice that his grip had tightened until he felt her right arm crack in his grip.
The moan of pain came a moment later, and it was a war in his chest for which emotion would win out, the grief or the guilt. He didn't pay attention to this, picking up speed as he ran her to the medbay.
"Stop."
He barely heard the word but he jerked himself to a stop, looking down on her.
"Anna?" he questioned.
There was a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead that he wanted to desperately wipe away. He just wanted to fix her, that's all that he wanted to do, in that moment, please, he thought, please, just let me fix you.
He felt an echo then, just a glimmer, of a potential timeline. One where-
It was too much for his time sense and he flinched, gritting his teeth together, though the echoes of intense worry and just as intense joy still resided in his chest. It was something he vowed to himself he'd look at later but, for now, he needed to fix Anna.
"Just... need a minute," she said, with a noticeable effort.
"Anna, hang on, I'm taking you to the medbay."
"Stop," she repeated.
He felt horror running through him when her face crumpled.
"Just stop, please," she begged him.
He felt everything about him simmer with a quiet anger at the realization that, in her most vulnerable moments, she was probably experience a PTSD episode. She probably thought that he was whoever had hurt her.
Rage, (though the majority of it was misplaced) rushed through him, and for a moment, he wanted to exact swift and painful revenge against whoever had hurt Anna.
She made of noise of pain past her sob and it brought him back somewhat to reality, remembering that she didn't need him to exact revenge. Right now, she needed him to help her. She needed him to be the Doctor.
He could do that.
"Anna, it's okay," he started, quietly. "Sh, it's me, the Doctor."
The last thing he expected to happen was for her face to twist in annoyance, nor were the words she uttered at all what he expected.
"I know that, you twat," she snapped at him. "Put me down!"
He felt his hearts plummeting out of his chest but did as she asked him to, quickly putting her down.
"I won't hurt you, Anna," he quickly told her, standing up and back as he held his hands up. Well, besides the broken arm, he thought, guiltily. "I'm sorry for whatever I've done to make you think I will-"
She sucked in a sharp breath, her chest rising from the effort of it.
He was surprised. Color returned to her cheeks and her lips. There was a fullness to her that hadn't been before, a liveliness that her previously prone body had been lacking. He searched her, confusion filling him, before she sat up, nodding as she looked around.
"There we go!" she said. "Dying, that's never fun."
He frowned, deeply.
"Now, what're we doing?"
"You're explaining what you mean by 'dying, that's never fun'."
"I- oh."
She'd started off her sentence with an expression that said it was the most obvious thing in the world. She ended her sentence by realizing what it was that she'd just said.
It told the Doctor everything he needed to know, filling the hearts that had plummeted out of his chest moments ago with ice.
She was suddenly crisp where she hadn't been. "Can we just both agree that I am fine?" she started off. She stood, her hands partially up, and he stood as well, following her lead, crossing his arms over his chest.
"If you let me scan you in the medbay, I'd be more than happy to do that."
The snarl confused him, but he was distracted by the sea of emotions in his chest. Anna had just said she'd died. As in, died and then come back to life.
She stood up straighter and smiled straight on at him.
"Afraid that's not happening," she told him. "Like, ever. However, I will explain my comment, and it's that-"
"Do you think I'm stupid or sommat?" he asked her, crossing his arms over his chest tighter. "I know what it means!"
"You asked for clarification, you twat!" she said, her voice raising but not quite to shouting levels. "You don't get to be mad at me for then giving you said clarification!"
Her use of the word 'mad' in that context threw him enough to help the anger give way to confusion. When he realized what she meant, he found himself calmed enough that he managed to hold up his hands (which he found himself doing a lot around her. He wondered if it would become a pattern with her, her always ten seconds away from bolting and him having to talk her out of it every time).
"Okay. I'm sorry," he said, and she was surprised enough that she backed off immediately, letting her fists unclench. "Now, can we please head to the medbay so I can do a quick examination to make sure that everything's still intact?"
She searched him before she chose her words just as carefully. "Doctor," she started. "Whilst I appreciate both your tone and your concern, we will not be heading to the medbay. We will however, be heading to the console room, where you can catch me up on what you and Rose have been up to." She waved her arm out in front of her, nodding back to the console room. "Shall we?"
He searched her, working his jaw, before he spoke. "So you can come back from the dead, then," he tried, and she let out an exasperated breath before a look stole over her face.
"Oh. Okay. Come on," she said, heading back.
"Where are we going?"
"To the medbay!" she said, in the same style 20th century Earth superheroes spoke.
He raised his eyebrows in question before he furrowed them, barely shaking his head.
"Okay," he said, before he followed after her.
A quick scan revealed that she was fine, and he was more than surprised when she agreed to allow him to do more than a quick scan, running in-depth scans that would be instantaneous but would take him some time to analyze all the data. He was more than thrilled, but he tempered both his words and his tone as he repeated what he'd said earlier, now that she'd had some time and distance away from the event.
"You said you died."
She replied in the affirmative, and he felt his hearts sinking in his chest, though there was confusion prevalent.
"You should feel like a fixed point, but you don't feel like a fixed point," he told her, counting on her to know what that meant.
Surprise rushed across her face. "Oh," she said, stilling in her nervous movements. "Oh, I... guess I don't." She frowned. "Huh. Glad I don't, though, cause I know you can't-" she cleared her throat.
"Cause it would be difficult to be around you, then?" he tried, and she nodded. "Clever of you to work that out," he applauded her, and bewildered surprise crossed her face, looking up at him. She frowned at the look on his face before she looked down at her lap.
"Thanks, I guess," she said.
A thought crossed his mind that hadn't before. "You being an all-powerful being, how much do you know?"
She didn't ask for clarification or what he meant. She answered simply and succinctly. "I know everything," she told him. "Doesn't mean I have to know it all the time."
He didn't understand the look of pain that flashed across her face, or the grief that clung to her posture.
Except, he did. The statement reminded of her of someone that she'd lost.
Being sixty years old, it had to have meant she'd lost her fair share of people. As a being of power, she didn't have to feel that grief or that loss or that pain, easily able to shut it off if she so chose.
But, she didn't, and that was one of the many things he admired about her.
He quickly distracted her from said grief, smiling his wide smile.
"Well, scans are run. Let's head to this hospital where they're holding the supposedly dead alien, shall we?"
/
Neither of them were expecting to hear knocking when they got back to the console room.
It was an incessant knocking, too, the kind that demanded (to be felt, her mind helpfully supplied) to be heard. She frowned, moving to the door, but was surprised when the Doctor was quicker, turning to look at her.
"It's my door, I'm perfectly capable of answering it myself, thanks," he said, pointedly. She held back a smile at that, watching him as he straightened out his jacket before he turned back, answering the door-
"Oh, it's you."
-before he promptly shut it.
She watched him walking up the gangway behind her. "Who was it?" she asked.
"That person Rose was with what called us things," he said, distastefully, before he moved to the console. "Right! We're- no, what're you-" he immediately and loudly protested as she opened the door.
"Where is she? Where's- oi," Mickey said, surprised at the sudden change of face (Just give it a few years time, Mickety Mick Micks, she thought, and then pain flashed so suddenly through her chest once again). Mickey, ever adaptable, looked angry once more. "Where is she? Where's Rose?"
"Up in her mum's flat, bye-"
They both watched Mickey run off.
"-now," he said, his eyebrows raising. "Huh. That was easy."
"You're a twat," she pointed out, sliding past him to get up the gangway.
"Oh, what've I done now?" he said, in a put-upon tone.
She rolled her eyes, turning to look back at him. "The last time he saw his girlfriend alive was when she ran off with some alien and some hot chick, who is me, by the way," she said, surprising both of them with her easy admission.
"I don't know, he seemed easily confused. Probably thought you were the alien and I was the fit bird," he told her, and she found herself rolling her eyes fondly before she turned back to look at him. "Besides which, that's not entirely the truth, considering he'd at least heard from her over the past year?"
She frowned, even as the Tardis shook whilst they flew to the hospital.
"Because of all the texts that you've been sending him?" he tried, and she frowned even deeper before realization crested through her.
She outright laughed at him. "What, you think I sent texts to everyone in Rose's phone and- hold on, how'd you- never mind, I wasn't even supposed to be sending texts or pictures to Rose's mum, why would I have done it for Mickey? Besides, I did it in such a rush, didn't even think about him." Her eyes widened before she spoke. "And his name is Mickey. Mick-ey."
"Oi, Mickey's the idiot, not me," he said, piloting the Tardis. "I heard you fine the first time."
She face palmed, failing and suppressing the urge to laugh. Honestly, she was just glad she'd been allowed to correct him at all, a feeling falling through at the last moment.
The Tardis landed and the smile vanished at the feeling that she wouldn't be able to correct the pig dying.
Oh, boy, she thought. This'll be fun.
/
The sonic was too loud and he shushed it before he glanced back at Anna. For being an all-powerful being and saying that she would help, she really didn't-
He quickly took back the thought, remembering what exactly it was that she'd done for him and for Rose.
That still wouldn't stop this room of soldiers that he'd just unveiled when he opened the door from shooting them, though.
His luck came in the form of a woman screaming.
Everything was a blur of movement and action, then. He shouted an order to the soldiers, something they would recognize, and when he got to the woman on the floor, blood on her forehead and swearing that it was dead, he noted that Anna was still behind him.
He rattled off a few possibilities, quick explanations about why it might've appeared dead before he asked her what it looked like-
A clanging of metal was heard and he turned back on the spot, his hearts racing in excitement.
"It's still here."
He made sure that the woman was protected in the form of motioning a soldier in a red beret to cover her, motioning at Anna to stay behind him (and pointedly ignoring the eyeroll that he got for his efforts), before he moved to the filing cabinet the alien was currently hiding behind.
He got close enough to get a look, running through his internal rolodex of species that resembled Earth pigs. In the meantime, he greeted it. "Hello," he said.
The alien gave a squeal (which sounded suspiciously like a pig squealing) before it ran off.
"Don't shoot!"
But, either they didn't hear him or they didn't listen. He heard gunshots go off a moment later, and he bolted into the corridor-
To find Anna, lying dead on the floor, three close range gunshots clean through her chest, the pig desperately scrabbling at the door as it tried to get out.
Shock was a cold, unwelcome feeling that was thrown over him and he quickly knelt down next to Anna.
"She just-she just dove in front of it, I swear, I didn't-"
"Hush!" he demanded, with more force than the situation warranted.
"She just jumped in front of it, she bloody dove-"
"I said hush."
He turned back to look at the soldier to see how unnerved he looked, and it wasn't just due to the look The Doctor was currently sending to him. Despite being a soldier, he'd obviously never killed anybody a day in his life. It was just his luck that he still hadn't.
At least, he thought that the soldier hadn't. When the Doctor turned back to Anna, he saw that life still hadn't been breathed back into her. He realized suddenly he had no idea how this worked, not having asked questions, some part of him naively hoping it wouldn't be necessary. Although, she had died in his arms and come back instantaneously, so why wasn't it working the same way, now?
He heard the pig squealing desperately and his hearts gave a tug before he turned back to the soldier.
"Watch her," he said. "And try not to shoot at anymore unarmed civilians. Have you got that?" he told the soldier, whose name tag he didn't even bother to read.
"But sir-"
Whatever nonsense excuse he was about to spout off, the Doctor quickly cut him off, the word 'sir' in particular setting him on edge.
"I said, have you got that?"
For a second, he looked hopelessly lost. Despite this, he still saluted. "Yes sir," he replied, ever the good little soldier.
He barely contained the snarl, regarding him with cold eyes, before he moved to the pig.
/
It took some time, but they were back in the morgue, the Doctor putting a comforting hand on the pig's head. It was unnecessary, as he'd already put it to sleep.
He still couldn't wrap his mind around why Anna thought the best solution to save the pig was to dive in front of it. There were literally a thousand other things she could've done before that. Instead, she'd chosen to sacrifice her life so that the pig could live and be ungenetically modified another day.
"I just assume that's what aliens look like, but you're saying it's an ordinary pig from Earth."
"More like a mermaid," he corrected her, looking at the scans. "Victorian showmen used to draw the crowds by taking the skull of a cat, gluing it to a fish and calling it a mermaid." He felt anger drawing through him that had nothing to do with the soldier standing in the hallway, on guard, despite the fact that Anna's body was cooling on an autopsy table. "Now someone's taken a pig, opened up it's brain, stuck bits on, then they've strapped it in that ship and made it dive bomb." Despite the fact that it was asleep, he sent reassurance to it so it might have better dreams. "It must've been terrified. They've taken this animal and turned it into a joke."
"So it's a fake, a pretend, like the mermaid."
It was about that time he grabbed Anna's dead body, throwing it over his shoulder, before he delicately picked up the pig.
He hightailed it out of there, and did what he did best: He didn't look back.
/
His slightly better than a bad day had turned into a not very good one because Anna had died twice and once had been on his watch.
But, at least the pig had survived, and Anna had come back, breathing in a shuddering breath before she groaned, the holes in her chest cleanly disappearing.
He'd berated her about throwing herself in front of guns and she'd given the quick explanation about how it was either her or the pig and she'd come back but the pig wouldn't have done, and his hearts softened at her actions, feeling a warmth filling him at how kind she was and how, even though she didn't have to, she'd sacrificed herself so that the pig might live.
He vowed to ask her more questions, but for now, they had a job to do.
That was how they'd ended up in the console room, the door opening to have Rose entering the console room.
"All right, so I lied. I went and had a look, and Anna did, too, by the way, Anna's back, picked up a pig as well, long story, point is, the whole crash landing's a fake. I thought so. Just too perfect. I mean, hitting Big Ben. Come on. So, thought, let's go and have a look."
"Mickey's here."
He looked up and spotted the person he'd closed the door on not an hour prior. "Oh, that's just what I need! Don't you dare make this place domestic," he warned her, noting the embarrassment that was splayed across her face, though it disappeared some when she looked behind him and saw Anna.
"You! I've a bone to pick with you!" he said, and the Doctor rolled his eyes.
"See what I mean? Domestic," he said, before he gave it the old college try of pointedly ignoring him.
"I thought she was dead for a year! You come in and the next thing I know, she vanishes! Jackie keeps talking about her trips, saying she's with the two of you and, 'who are they, what are they like, Rose doesn't tell me anything', and what am I supposed to say to that? I had no idea if you'd murdered her and were just covering your tracks, and now she's back after a year of hearing nothing from her and that's your fault! I bet you don't even remember my name!"
He turned, opening his mouth.
"It's Mickey," Anna told him.
"No, it's Rickey," the Doctor corrected her, and was promptly surprised when she gave an exasperated gasp, rubbing at her forehead. The annoyance dropped away to be replaced with concern, wondering if headaches were an aftereffect of dying, especially twice in the same two hour period (which couldn't at all be good for her molecular structure, he thought, randomly, an echo from a potential timeline pounding through him, and he rubbed his chest absentmindedly before he focused on the point at hand).
"It's Mickey," she told him, pointedly, looking up at him from below her hand, which was massaging both temples. "Don't start."
He felt genuinely affronted. "Me?" he asked. "He's-"
"19 years old, you're 903. Push through," she told him, tiredly, and he stood up straighter at that.
"No I'm not! And what's it matter how old I am anyway?" Mickey demanded, and the Doctor rolled his eyes up to the Tardis ceiling.
"Mickey, stop it," Rose finally stepped in, and the Doctor felt surprise roll through him when he realized she was still standing there. He'd forgotten about her for a moment. "So, that was a real spaceship?"
"Yep," he said, switching between moods because Mickey was apparently done yelling at him.
"So it's all a pack of lies? What is it, then? Are they invading?"
"Funny way to invade, putting the world on red alert."
"Good point! So, what're they up to?"
/
"So, what're you doing down there?"
"Rickey," he started, waiting for the inevitable correction of his name. When it didn't come, he realized something else was off, too. Time had frozen.
He peeked his head out.
"While I cannot tell you how to treat people, I would like to remind you that not only is he dating Rose-"
"Then she's got rubbish taste in men," he told her, moving back to under the console to finish calibrating what needed to be.
"Not only is he dating Rose, but he's also asking you about your ship. He's a curious mind-"
"He called us things," he said. "And the first chance he got to experience alien life outside of a life or death situation, he chooses to ignore my frankly magnificent ship and chooses to blame me for something that weren't even my fault. And you're really about to tell me to play nice? Again?" he shook his head. "The nerve on you," he shot at her, though that was more a teasing comment than anything else.
"Fine," she said, starting to walk off. "But don't say I didn't try."
"Hold on, where're you off to?" he asked her.
She started to open her mouth before she stopped. In a move that was befitting of the three year old toddler that had tried to steal the remote from him earlier, she actually stomped her foot on the grating.
"Nowhere," she grumbled, moving back as she pointedly leaned against the console, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. "I've just had a feeling."
She said the word so distastefully. It confused him, but especially so when she didn't clarify.
"About?" he asked, searching her.
"What- Oh, for the love of- I hate starting from scratch," she said, under her breath, before she turned to him.
"Which means what?" he asked.
Everything about her froze so fast she probably thought he didn't catch it.
"Nothing," she said. "It's nothing."
She quickly dove into an explanation of what her feelings were, and he frowned.
"That sounds like-"
"I swear to god, if you say time sense, I will happily chuck my shoe at you."
"Fine, I won't say it, but I don't need to, considering you said it for me."
He continued to fiddle around underneath his console, not at all afraid of her actually throwing her shoe at him.
"It's not time sense because I'm not a time lord, it's feelings, so neugh," she said, and he imagined her spitting her tongue out at him.
Pain lanced his chest, and he hardened a little bit.
"Really?" he asked. "Didn't notice."
There was silence between them for a moment as Anna seemed to realize the mistake she'd made.
"Doctor, I'm-"
"Putting time at a normal speed, thanks much," he said, peeking out at her with a wide, fake smile, before it fell as soon as he looked away from her, going back to his tinkering.
There was a moment's hesitation before she did as asked, unfreezing time. A moment later, Mickey started to speak before he didn't.
"He's calibrating some stuff right now, it doesn't matter."
"You wouldn't understand," the Doctor said, looking at Mickey (and some part of him understanding that he was unfairly taking out his anger on him, but just right then, the Doctor wasn't sure that he cared). He once again calibrated stuff, noting that it was taking him longer than it should've done.
"Oh, some friends you've got," Mickey said, and he bit back the scathing retort, knowing that Anna could stand up for herself-
Before remembering her emotional abuse, and decided not to.
"You're one to talk."
"And what's that-"
"Stop it, he's just winding you up."
Annoyance made him shake his head. It switched to an eye roll when he heard Rose and Mickey having a 'private conversation' about whether Mickey had been seeing anybody in the year since she'd vanished off the face of the Earth.
Some days, he wondered why he bothered with humans at all.
His hearts skipped a beat in fear as he wondered whether that would be a problem for much longer when she didn't answer Mickey's question as to whether or not she was back on the Estate for good.
Fortunately for him, he was saved the pain of hearing her answer when he finished what he'd started.
/
He was surprised when Mickey knew that he'd worked for UNIT. That surprise quickly turned to displeasure and anger (and just a bit of guilt at how close he'd hit the nail on the head with his comment) about how his name was followed by a list of the dead.
He couldn't help that he snapped at that. "That's nice. Good boy, Rickey."
All of them were surprised when Anna snapped, "Stop it."
Without thinking about it, he turned his ire to her. "Seriously?" he asked. "You're still defending the person what called you a thing not twelve hours ago and accused us of kidnapping Rose or worse?"
He only paused because of the bare uncertainty what lain on her face, that flash of fear tucked away in the corner of her eyes.
Rose spoke before he had a chance to. "All of you, that's enough! Fighting's not helping anything, just, Doctor," she tried, and he searched Anna before he turned to look at Rose (never knowing the desolation he'd caused to fall through her by basically dismissing her). "If you know them, why don't you go to them for help?"
"They wouldn't recognize me," he quickly excused himself, using a flimsy version of the truth. "I've changed a lot since the old days. Besides, the world's on a knife-edge. There's aliens out there and fake aliens. We want to keep this alien out of the mix. I'm going undercover, and, er, I'd better keep the Tardis out of sight. Anna?" he turned, watching as she flinched for no reason. "Think you could teleport us?"
"Where to?" Rose asked.
He frowned at the look on Anna's face before he looked at Rose. "To the spaceship," he said, before he looked back at Anna. "Well?"
"Well, what?" she shot back at him, and he noted she clenched her hands into fists. He expected anger. He wasn't expecting them to be shaking when she relaxed them out of fists. "I'm not a taxi service."
"Fine," he said, immediately dismissing her as an option for the moment, despite the fact that it meant he had to turn to Mickey. "Rickey, you've got a car. You can do some driving."
/
Things got... weird.
And, if he was saying it, it meant something.
Exiting the Tardis, he remembered it both ways. Walking out to an empty street, only for Anna to shout, "Oh, for the love of-" a moment later.
Walking out onto the street, only to find that they were surrounded by police and such.
Mickey had run off, of course, but he'd only peripherally noticed that because he was too busy thinking about why Anna would step in, wanting them to get escorted to Downing Street when she hadn't even wanted to volunteer to teleport them to the spaceship. Were her... feelings telling her that they weren't supposed to look at the spaceship?
Actually, hang about, were her feelings telling her to remind him to be nice to Mickey?
"This is a bit posh," Rose cut into his thoughts. "If I knew it was going to be like this, being arrested, I would have done it years ago."
"We're not being arrested," Anna jumped in straight away, though she didn't stop from looking out the window. "We're being escorted."
She finally turned to look at them-
Before he realized she wasn't meeting his eyes.
It was strange, then, as he realized her face had transformed. Even when she wasn't smiling, there was something about her face that was smiling. Now, the smile had completely disappeared, to be replaced with a dour look that pointedly wasn't looking at him.
"Where to?" Rose questioned, glancing back and forth between them.
"Where'd you-" she started, before she cut herself off, glancing near him before she looked like she'd done something wrong, looking solely at Rose. "Downing Street," she answered.
Although none of them knew it yet, it would be the place Anna would die for the third time in as many hours.
He wouldn't find that out until they were already locked in the main cabinet room, his eyes naturally trailing to the body on the floor.
"Anna!"
It took his mind a human moment to register that her body wasn't moving, and that was probably partially due to the fact that neither of the human woman in the room were speaking.
"Doctor, I'm-I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I think... The Slitheen, it snapped her neck, there wasn't-"
He kneeled down next to her body, gently taking her wrist in his hand.
"She was very brave," Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North informed him. "Jumped in front of one of the Junior Secretary's. She saved his life."
He shook his head, putting his face in his hand. "Course she did."
He wondered if this would be a pattern with her. Her, jumping in front of those what should've died to save them that fate. He barely shook his head before he let his hand drop.
"Anna, it's all right. Anna, hey," he started.
Harriet Jones was fairly confused. "Doctor, I'm sorry-" she started.
"She's got this sort of trick thing, Anna does," he told her. "Makes her body look dead but she actually isn't." Or rather, he lied to her. He didn't want a repeat of what they'd gone through not a few hours prior, so he told a convenient lie. "Have to coax her awake, tell her she's got the all clear-"
He'd been expecting her to come back from the dead, but this was much more violent than he'd expected.
She screamed, a full bodied scream before she had teleported from his eyeline. The Doctor stood, doing a full body turn before he spotted her in the corner.
"Anna?" Rose tried.
"But how did she-"
"Stay back," he informed them both, ignoring whatever it was that they were about to say. "Anna, hey, it's all right, it's me, the Doctor. You're okay."
He put it together, quickly, that the more she died, or the closer together she died, it must've been more traumatic on her mind, because this? She was shaking, curled in on herself as she tried to desperately reign in her breaths, staring at her hands.
"No, no," she begged, clenching her hands into fists over and over again as she squeezed her eyes shut, shaking. "Not there, here, not there, here, not there- fu-!"
She hit the wall so hard that she left a dent behind, making the two women behind him cry out in surprise from the noise it made, but Anna shouted in pain, curled up for a different reason now.
He watched her for a moment, looking down at where she was half-curled up on her side.
"Doctor?" she tried, looking up at him before she looked back down at her hand. "I think-I think I broke my hand."
He let out a breath of relief that at least she seemed to be back to herself, and that was something.
Of course, the fact that she'd died three times in the past three hours still weighed heavily on his mind.
/
"Exactly, given our past record, and I-"
"The Slitheen want something."
They were all surprised when Anna spoke. It was the first time she'd done so since her declaration that she'd broken her hand, before she'd moved herself to the corner, curled up, looking lost and confused and cradling said hand.
It looked like moving was an effort, as if her whole body was bruised. He frowned, but it was mostly at her comment.
"What do they want?"
"Something, there'll be- Rose, I need you to call Mickey," she said, and she cradled her left hand against her chest before she arduously sat down in a chair, flinching hard as she did so.
"What for?"
Apparently, Anna had no patience for anyone. "Rose, I've just died for the third time in, I don't know, twelve hours?" she tried. "Do I look like I'm in the mood to be questioned?"
Rose looked blank faced and like she didn't know what to say. Harriet was the first one that spoke, though the Doctor was the first one that moved, planting his face into his palm.
"I'm sorry, you've done what?"
There was a brief pause before she looked over at him, condescending as anything. "You didn't tell them?" she asked him.
If she wanted to act like that, he could, too. "Don't I distinctly remember someone yelling at me for doing just that thing?" he asked her.
Blank surprise filled her face at that.
"Oh," she said, barely sitting back in the chair. "Right. Sorry."
"Apology accepted," he said, and she glanced uneasily at him before she nodded.
Rose's phone went off, and, whether out of habit or instinct, she checked it past her shock.
"Looks like Mick's heard you," Rose said.
"I'm sorry, are we really not discussing the fact that this young woman has just proclaimed that she's died, and not only that, but three times?"
"Oi, sweetheart, careful who you're calling young woman. I'm probably older than you by now, though I won't ask because I know it's rude to ask a woman her age. Besides which, I've honestly no idea how old you are because I'm-I'm terrible at judging these things- ow," she hissed.
"It's what happens when you have a broken hand you don't let me heal."
"Well, if you still wanted to heal it, you shouldn't have made such a stupid comment," she told him.
"You are absolutely insufferable today!" he told her.
"Both of you, just shut up a minute!"
The only thing that could've stopped him was the fear in Rose's voice. When he looked over, he saw that there was a picture of a Slitheen on the screen, being electrocuted.
"Looks like we need Mickey after all," she said, her voice shaky.
/
"But don't be daft! You're having me on! Those two people who're with Rose, they're her friends, from Henrik's, they aren't aliens! They aren't all green and they don't have zipper things on their foreheads!"
"I wouldn't put it past them," Mickey told her. "But I'll tell you what, Jacks, they aren't from Henrik's. Whichever one of them told you that was lying."
"Oi, watch it, that's my daughter you're calling a liar!"
"Jackie, I know that this is hard to understand-"
"No, but you're saying Rose has been traveling with aliens!" Jackie objected.
He was saved from having to explain anything else to Rose's mum when her name lit up his screen.
"Hey babe," he said out of habit, before he covered himself. "Took your sweet time calling us back."
He didn't even know what they were anymore. Didn't even know if she would be around tomorrow.
"Us?"
"Yeah, your mum is here with me. Saw the alien and everything- No, no, no, no, no. Not just alien," he corrected himself, "but like, proper alien. All stinking and wet and disgusting- Jackie, what're you doing-"
"Mickey's been saying that you've been traveling with those things, those-those alien green big things!"
"I have not!" his tinny voice denied in the background.
Rose glanced at Anna and wished, for just a single moment, that she had powers like Anna supposedly had so that she could avoid this conversation.
"No, mum, look, it's complicated, but I can't talk about it right now-"
"Oh my god, you have! You've been traveling with those green, disgusting- it tried to kill me just now! I could've died!"
She barely held the phone away from her ear before embarrassment traced through her at the look on the Doctor's face.
"Mum, can you just- no, mum, can you just put Mickey on the phone? Please?"
"So all those texts, all those pictures, they were all just lies?"
She was surprised when the Doctor yanked the phone from her hand.
"Is this Jackie? Don't talk, just-"
He couldn't have made the situation worse if he'd tried. She heard her mum's tinny voice yelling at him over the phone, and he flinched away from it before he brought it back to his ear.
"No, I am not a green thing- oi, I don't- I do not- oi- I. Am. Talking."
Her eyes widened in surprise before nerves coiled tightly in her stomach. He was definitely getting a slap from her mother.
For just a moment, she thought that she understood what the Doctor had it right when he said he didn't do domestics... Even if she did feel a tiny bit guilty at the thought a moment later. Her mum loved her, and she knew that she was just doing her best. She knew it had been hard on her mum, being a single parent, especially since she hadn't been walked out on like most of the single mums on the Estate. Her husband had died, and that had left a deep mark on Jackie that she often tried to hide with bluster and talking to Bev on the phone for hours on end.
Although her mum was a lot to handle oftentimes, she still loved her more than anything, and having her in the middle of this... It was as embarrassing as it was terrifying.
"Thank you," the Doctor said, surprising Rose. "Now, can you hand the phone back to Rickey."
She laughed into her hand when she heard her mum's voice over the phone. "Who's Rickey?"
She startled when Anna spoke, her good cheer from her declaration of being possibly older than Harriet gone to be replaced with the sullen creature who wouldn't let the Doctor heal her hand.
"There's an advert on a website," she told them, before she raised her eyebrows. They were all looking at her as she spoke again. "Yep, that's it. There's an advert on a website."
Without missing a beat or even changing facial expressions, she turned to the Doctor and said something quite alarming.
"I think I just broke time."
The most alarming part was the look on the Doctor's face as he went slightly pale.
"Yep," he agreed. "I think you might've done. Hush up a minute while I fix it," he told her, talking to Mickey at lightning speed as he directed him through a website.
Events unfolded and she thought it might have been all right, except then her mother spoke.
"Well, I've got a question, if you don't mind," her voice rang out over speaker phone. "Since that man walked into our lives, I have been attacked in the streets, I have had creatures from the pits of hell in my own living room, and apparently, my daughter disappeared off the face of the Earth for a whole year and I never even knew."
"Mum-"
"I'm talking to them, because apparently, Anna's part of it, too. Cos I've seen this life of yours, and maybe you both get off on it, and maybe you pair think it's all clever and smart, but you tell me. Just answer me this, is my daughter safe?"
"I'm fine," Rose protested, weakly.
That's all that she wanted to do was reassure her mum that her daughter would be fine, and she was. She trusted the Doctor to keep her safe, even if Anna was a bit of a wild card, but hearing her mum talk like that, so serious in a way she'd only seen her do once or twice...
"Is she safe?" Jackie repeated.
"Nobody is safe," Anna chose to cut in.
Rose's eyes fell shut. "Anna..."
"I'm serious," she said. "Even if that man hadn't walked into your daughter's life, any number of things could've happened to her. The world is not a safe place, Jackie, but the Doctor offers her a life where she gets to see the stars and make a difference, and isn't that better than having her home, wishing-"
The Doctor said something too low for Rose to hear, and Anna snapped at him, as she had been wont to do. Still, she stopped speaking, which was good, because Rose had been very close to snapping at Anna herself.
"We're in," Mickey spoke, saving all of them from the nasty blowout that was no doubt on the way.
/
"They're from Raxacoricofallipatoris," Anna declared.
Rose looked at her confused and agitated and terrified.
"Great, we can write them a letter!" Mickey shouted on the other end of the line, but the Doctor? The look on the Doctor's face would've normally been enough to make her pause. Right now, her mother's and Mickey's lives were on the line, and that trumped everything else.
"So what?" she questioned Anna.
Anna didn't take her eyes off of the Doctor, but she recognized the look on Anna's face from before, the fear that was tucked away in the corner of her eyes. "I've just given him the solution to save your mother," she said, flinching at the word. "Go on, ask him."
A wild hope leapt in her chest. "Well? Has she done? Doctor?"
He stared hard at Anna for a moment longer.
"Doctor? Doctor, please, that's my mother!"
He didn't turn from Anna, but he started to speak into the phone. The entire time he was instructing Mickey and mum, saving their lives, he just stared Anna down like she'd done something wrong. She, in the meantime, sat back in the chair, looking down at the table and very pointedly not looking at him, seemingly unable to move all the while.
/
"You said that you get feelings."
All of the action part of the adventure was done for the day. Rose was with her mum, which left him alone with Anna, who was still refusing to let her hand off of her chest.
"You even likened it to time sense, even if you don't want to call it that," he said to her. "So what the hell were you doing today?"
She looked down at the console, a haunted look on her face that he recognized. "I don't know," she told him, and he thought she'd never been more honest in her entire life. She squinted her eyes. "I think... I just wanted it to be over. Because I'd been triggered, because the way that she killed me, in the final moments, reminded me about a way that I tried to kill myself once and I think-"
His hearts skipped a beat.
"-I think I just wanted to be out of that room." she shook her head, smiling without smiling. "But I had to be there, in that damn room, with the three of you..." she shook her head once more, her smile fading. "And I still have no idea why."
"How'd you mean, you tried to kill yourself?"
She startled at the word 'kill', the haunted expression on her face clearing off. "Sorry, what?"
Understanding reached him, but it was quiet despite the realization.
"Oh, I'm an idiot, aren't I? Because you're not here because you want to help me. You're here to try to throw yourself at every single situation you can that has the potential to kill you, and you're just praying that this'll be the time that it sticks, and when it doesn't..."
He shook his head, everything except for understanding and kindness clearing off of his face.
"You knew about me, before you ever stepped foot on this Tardis, knew how dangerous my life is, and you used me to try to find that permanent end." He shook his head, getting even gentler. "But Anna, it doesn't have to be this way. I can help you. Whatever it is that's put you in so much pain, I can do my very best to fix it. Because I'm the Doctor, and it's what I do."
Panic crossed her face for some unknowable reason. "You don't-you don't understand," she quickly got out. "I'm not suicidal, I don't want to die. I came here because-" she bit her lip, terror crossing her face, before she barely shook her head. Despite the fact that he was so sure she was about to run, she spoke. "In another timeline, I was able to... I was able to fix things for you so that... so that..." she looked lost for a moment before she shook her head. "But a bad thing happened. I got separated from you, and when I woke up, you had died, and I... It was, it was supposed to happen, but I thought if I got- if I got back to the right timeline, I could find you and help you again, but then- but then I was already there, and I-" she bit her lip, looking down and around, trying to find the words she wanted to say.
"Anna, just slow down. Start over."
She shook her head. "I can't! I don't know how to explain it!" she said. "Okay, there..." she closed her eyes before she shook her head. "I came from a timeline where I was able to save Gallifrey."
His hearts stopped clear in his chest. "Stop it," he whispered, quietly, desperately afraid of what her saying this meant.
"But then a bad thing happened and I got separated from that you. When I got back to you, you had died. I tried to get to another version of you, but another version of me was already there, with you, already having helped you in the same way. The other version of me, Original Anna, she directed me to another timeline where I could help you, this version of you. But, there's... a timeline where you keep dying, and it's attached to that timeline. So, when I found another timeline version where I could help you without actually saving Gallifrey-"
"Stop it," he repeated.
"I can't," she said. "Because it's the truth, because in an alternate timeline, I did-"
"Stop it," he said, harshly. "My planet is gone, it's not coming back, so whatever nonsense this is, about alternate timelines and me dying-"
For a long second, his hearts stopped in his chest.
The potential timelines he'd been feeling. They hadn't been potential timelines. They'd been actual timelines. Ones that had actually happened, where she'd... She'd been there, and she'd helped him, and he'd...
He'd felt happiness he thought he didn't deserve, and that was thanks to the woman standing in front of him.
His mind tried to piece together the story that she had told him, moving at a rapid pace.
"Gallifrey... it... and you... went to alternate timelines, to help me," he quickly backtracked, blinking as if the light of a new planet's sun had blinded him. "Only I kept dying, so you... did what?" he asked.
She looked well chastised, her hand firmly behind her back. He flinched when he remembered it wasn't healed. She closed her eyes as she tried to think.
"I ended up creating versions of myself, accidentally, or I guess the timeline that's attached to that alternate version of the timeline, the one where I couldn't help you in the same, kept spawning a version of me that I didn't account for. The Turn Left version of me, if you will. It wasn't until the thirteenth version that I realized that this would keep happening, a version of me that only remembered the version of events where you died, and so, I went back to Anna 1, who is different from Original Anna because she was the version of me that ended up with the first alternate timeline version of you, from her- my perspective, anyway, and she um... Well, he. Told me that I had to get to a version of you where the events that led to the alternate timeline being created didn't exist. So that you would stop dying on me. Which seems pretty obvious when you think about it but-"
"Hold on," he managed to get out with what meager air he had left. The air had been sucked from his lungs and his backup respiratory system was refusing to kick in. The words sounded weak, even to him. "You're saying you've lived through the same version of events, including my death, thirteen times?"
She flinched before she barely nodded, looking down at the grating.
It reminded him of Groundhog Day, having to live the same version of events over and over again. Except, she hadn't had to do anything. She'd exposed herself to the same version of events, over and over again, because she'd wanted to help him.
"Oh, Anna..."
He'd never felt more undeserving of anything in his entire life.
He scrambled for words, but for once, he was at a loss.
"What... did my other versions say, when you told them?" he asked her. "How did I... what did I do?"
She'd started to raise her brows listlessly before she furrowed them, barely shaking her head. She started to look up at him before she paused, everything about her tense.
"I never told any of the other you's," she said.
"So you had to live through my dying, over and over again, carrying this secret?" he asked her.
She didn't answer him. "It's different here, too. Things are different here. I was never able to help Rose like I did, and even in the original timeline, I never told you about-" she closed her eyes, going to put her hands over her mouth slowly. "Oh holy crap I just told you that I tried to kill myself-" she hissed in a pain filled breath, making a noise to the effect.
"Let me," he immediately jumped into action, moving towards her, but she backed up like she were a wounded animal. He stopped where he was, and for a moment, he felt like a child in the barn again, lost and confused and so alone.
"Sorry," she apologized. "Sorry, it's-it's habit." She squeezed her eyes shut. "Not-not from you, from- not from anything, really, just- it's anxiety, that's all," she told him.
He didn't say anything, knowing that sometimes, words made a situation worse. He started for her, gently reaching out for her hand. This time, she merely squeezed her eyes shut tighter, barely facing her face away from him.
Yeah, he thought, examining her hand. That's all that it is. Just anxiety.
He didn't contradict her on it, instead, pulling out the sonic once more. "It's not broken, just bruised," he told her, quietly. "Must've healed up a bit in Downing Street."
"Or maybe I'm just not as breakable as the other humans you travel with."
She said the words so unaffected. Her eyes had fallen open as she stared down at the console, gently toying with it with her hand.
He barely hesitated with his next words. "The fact that you've tried to kill yourself suggests otherwise."
Her eyes went softer at that.
"That part of my past is long over with," she told him. "It was over the moment I traveled to this universe."
He made a quiet hum in the back of his throat, still working, before his mind did that thing it had the ability to so efficiently. She'd specified timelines when she'd talked about where she'd traveled from.
"Hold on, you're from a different dimension?" he asked her. She hissed in pain and he apologized because he'd no doubt prodded her too hard when he'd asked his question.
"It's fine," she said. "And... in answer to your question... Yes, I'm from a different... you know."
"Dimension?" he tried.
"It's possible that it's an alternate timeline or just a different universe or an alternate plane of existence, truth be told, I haven't actually gone back to check and I've no plan on heading back to check anytime soon."
He hummed again. "Bad memories?"
"You could say that."
"Just did," he pointed out, trying to break the tension between them.
"Oh, haha. You think you're so funny. Look at me, I'm the Doctor, and I think I'm hilarious."
"I don't just think it, I know it," he said, rolling down the sleeve on her shirt out of a medical doctor's habit. "I've been told by many reputable sources."
"And did any of those 'reputable sources' happen to be in love with you?"
"Oi!" he said, and she smiled a little bit.
He could feel it, then, how easy it was between them, lending itself to the idea that maybe she had been there, before, in another timeline, helping him to... in whatever capacity she had.
"All right, maybe one or two," he conceded, and she laughed in victory. "But all of the others- I have it on the authority of Charlie Chaplin that I'm hilarious."
She looked like she was starting to laugh before her face creased with worry. She started to rub her forehead with her other hand.
"There's... erm, there's something else."
"There's more?" he asked her, genuinely shocked that there could be more.
She barely nodded. "Where I'm from... Remember how I said I was born and raised and everything?"
"... Yes?" he tried.
"Well, when I was being raised, when I grew up, there was... There's a television show, about your life, where I... and I grew up, watching you and your adventures, and you helped me more than you can know, and I- that's my answer, about why I want to help you, not because I idolize you or think you're perfect or a hero or whatever but because you help to make the universe- I mean, most days, or you- you try anyway- you strive to make the universe a fairer place for other people, and I wanted to be that, for you. I'm sorry I couldn't do that as extensively here, but if you'll have me, then... I mean, the other you's, they seemed... It seemed to help them, that I was there, and that was something that the other you, the- Anna 1's Doctor said, was that I should find that version of the Doctor, of him- of himself, and let him know how lucky he was to have me-" her eyes barely widened. "Which sounds super conceited, I know, but he said it, and I'm just repeating it and you still haven't said anything and I'm... Starting to get a little worried?"
"I was sort of waiting for you to be finished, actually," he told her, raising his eyebrows as he searched her.
"Right," she said, clasping her hands behind her back.
"Not in a bad way or anything, just, you know, if there was more you wanted to tell me, maybe that-" but, he honestly couldn't think of anything to top the information that there was a version of reality where his life was a television show (and there was no way in hell he was thinking about the emotional ramifications of that bloody predicament right now. Bloody humans). "-point being, wanted to make sure you were done dropping impossible bombs on me."
She hesitated, looking up at him. "And?" she asked.
He smiled, the first feelings of fondness tracing through him. "And of course I'll have you," he said to her. "Couldn't imagine you anywhere else."
He was surprised when she threw herself into a hug with him, burying her face into his chest between his hearts. He quickly hugged her back.
She spoke, though her words were partially muffled by his jacket.
"I promise to tone it down on the dying," she said, and he laughed, surprised.
"You know what?" he asked, resting his chin gently on the top of her head. "I would consider it a personal favor. These old hearts-" he started, before he trailed off, putting on a brave face as he spoke. "Would great appreciate it."
She dug herself further into him. "Consider it done."