Anna drank.
She drank more than she had in her entire life, to the point that, if she'd still been human, she would've died.
As it was, she allowed the pleasant feeling of being nearly blackout drunk consume her, using that and sex with men and women alike that she picked up at a bar night after night to both dull the pain and garner the courage of what she knew she had to do.
She was saying goodbye.
He'd never wanted her there, and when he'd suggested finding him in an alternate dimension or timeline, he'd accidentally made it happen. Anna 1 hadn't been Anna 1 at all, but an alternative Anna that only existed because the Doctor had blithely suggested she not do something and her powers responded in kind.
It was complicated to explain why that might make something happen (or in this case, why it had), but it didn't matter. Not to Anna. The only thing that mattered to Anna was giving herself some time to be less of a coward than she currently was, or to somehow lessen the pain, she wasn't quite sure. When she returned to the Tardis, she would say goodbye. She hadn't yet decided where she was off to, though the 13th timeline of the Magician's didn't seem a bad place to start. Lots of alcohol and magic to toy with, to numb the pain.
She just couldn't find it in herself to head back to the Tardis.
But, even these actions were bound to have consequences, and on the seventh night of returning to the same bar, she met some dude named Michael, brought him back to her hotel, and promptly blacked out.
/
Mik'ael was a Xinxari.
He was the last of his kind, which the time lords had seen to. Not directly, of course. The Xinxari had always been regarded by most of the universe as bottom feeding scum. It wasn't exactly the Xinxari's fault that their main source of nourishment came from draining emotions to the point of death, now was it?
But, no, that wasn't what had caused the time lords to wipe them out. It was, in fact, the time war.
Truth was, the only reason Mik'ael had survived was because he'd been off-world at the time. Earth during the 21st century became something of a regular haunt for his kind. The emotions the humans felt were particularly potent, especially during the 21st century as they had started to evolve and be more free about their emotions. Although Earth was considered a Level 5 planet during that time, nobody with any real intergalatic authority came back to check on it's occupants and to make sure that intergalatic laws were being followed.
Well, there was the renegade time lord known only as The Doctor, but he dealt more in alien invasions. The Xinxari were careful not to let it get to that point.
The point being that it was the perfect hunting ground, as long as they were quiet.
When whispers of a war reached the Xinxari, many fled back home, wanting to be with their loved ones, but Mik'ael had shrugged them off and stayed behind, until only he remained.
It was within the span of a week that everyone had departed, and by the end of that week, nothing of the planet remained. It had burned, along with the occupants of the planet. All because the Time Lords and the daleks had decided to make the universe their dumping ground.
He wasn't clear on the details of it, exactly. Just knew that the time lords had made a weapon, something about Meanwhile and Neverweres, and had lost control of it. It decimated three systems before they were finally able to get it under control. It was second hand information, learned from a Bengarian in the black markets of Tarsel that he quickly sucked dry before dumping the body, the three telltale rings on the back of the neck the only sign that the now last of the Xinxari had struck.
He returned to Earth and he continued to hunt.
Mik'ael knew somewhere in the recesses of his grief stricken mind that he was being careless, taking more than he should and leaving more traces than was acceptable. But, he didn't care. Who would stop him? The interplanetary authorities? They didn't care about this backwater planet. The Doctor? He was still fighting the war that had decimated the Xinxari and millions other species.
Mik'ael, for the first time in his life, was well and truly alone.
His victim tonight was a young woman who had frequented the bar for the past week. No friends, always on the verge of being pass-out drunk, going home with whomever she pleased. In days of old, it was customary to pick out the ones alone in the crowd, the ones who didn't have friends who no one would miss until the next morning, when the Xinxari would already be long gone.
Mik'ael had stopped caring about the old ways, but something in him must've been still ingrained to notice because, when the opportunity presented itself, it was there, his to grab.
It was easy work to get her back to the hotel, though he felt something that could've been excitement. Human emotions weren't just contained within the body itself; they tended to leak out into the air around them, something that was unique to only a few thousand species. It was why the Xinxari had originally liked this planet so much. Emotions just floating in the air, which wasn't something they could eat but it did give them an indication of what a meal might be like.
The girl had guilt rolling off of her in waves. It was any wonder that he hadn't spotted her the first night she'd walked into the bar, but the first moment he'd gotten a whiff of her guilt, it was like he couldn't see anything but her.
Amenable enough to be quickly led back to the hotel room with minimal kissing or pawing or groping as the humans tended to do. Kissing was a unique way for humans to trade emotions, to feel what the other person was feeling, but humans of this time hadn't yet discovered that. So, he was left to deal with the emotions that blared from them, though it was usually just one.
Hers was a full palette of them, grief, anger, and that guilt, that delicious guilt.
When they entered the hotel room, he spun her around, pushing her face down on the bed, before he struck.
The way the Xinxari fed was three black lines that resided between their knuckles. They were pliable, flexible, and quite long, which allowed him to catch prey from miles away. But, he had no use of that tonight. Not when she was laying face down on the bed in front of him, laughing because she'd no idea what was about to befall her.
Anna Monroe, she'd told him. That was her name. Anna Monroe.
Or, rather, it would still be for another ten minutes before he ended her pitiful, guilt ridden existence.
It wasn't painful for her as it wasn't for the others. In fact, there wasn't any pain until near towards the end. They wanted to struggle during that time, he could feel that in their emotions, but by that time, they were too weak to do anything.
Except, for her, that pain never came.
The guilt was so much more delicious than he could've ever pictured, and he'd damn near gorged himself on her before he looked up at the clock on the bedside table, entirely accidentally, to note that it had been nearly twenty minutes.
In his hazy, almost drunken state, he checked the incoming emotions to see that they felt entirely human, but she obviously wasn't. No human had ever lasted this long. Ten minutes was as much as they could take before their bodies simply gave out.
He felt better. For the first time in a long time, he felt like he was going to be okay.
Pain set in and for the first time, he felt panic at the prospect of a perfectly good catch dying. He quickly released her, pushing her further up on the bed and arranging her in a more comfortable position.
The hunter in him had already made a plan. He was going to follow her home, and then make this look like a clean disappearance. Nobody would follow after her, no mess would be made, no police (which he despised because pride tasted bitter and that's what they were usually full of, even if there were the occasional cops that had guilt in droves).
He was more than surprised and elated when she stumbled up into a standing position as soon as she had been released, groaning as she'd done so. She stumbled her way out of the hotel room, and Mik'ael followed behind, watching as someone who could feed him a good meal for the next ten years would lead him to just that.
/
They walked for three miles before they found their way to a random plaza.
It didn't interest him, but the blue police box sitting in the middle of it did.
"Time lord."
Anger flared through him so fiercely that he ached from it. He moved past the girl, starting towards the police box with no intention or plan, before he stopped, looking back at her to realize that she was doing much the same.
She wasn't a time lord, his mind already supplied. She was heading for the police box, but she wasn't a time lord, so she wasn't The Doctor. Perhaps she was one of his friends? One of the Xinxari that had been positioned in UNIT talked about his friends, the people he called 'assistants' or sometimes 'companions'.
His mouth curved into a smile. This was perfect. He'd obviously augmented his companion to survive more than the average human, which explained how she'd survived more than they normally did, but that didn't matter. He would get his revenge in the form of torturing his companion in front of him before he killed them both.
It was a meager vengeance, compared to what had been done to him, but it would do all the same.
/
Something was pulling the Tardis off-course.
It was a few minutes after he and Rose rescued Captain Jack Harkness from the ship that had been about to blow.
"Always this bumpy?" Jack asked, holding onto whatever he could find.
"Got a problem with it?" the Doctor asked, still trying to find a way to make the ride nicer.
"Not at all! Usually like them a little wild."
The Doctor was only able to hold back the eye roll because this was a particularly tumultuous ride. Even he was struggling to hang on (though he knew he probably shouldn't be annoyed that Jack had managed to find a way to hang on with ease, simply contorting himself until he was wrapped around the railings, secure. Why did Rose keep picking out the pretty ones, anyway? First Adam, now Captain of the Sexcapade. Anna would never do something like this (even as his mind whispered that there was another reason for that, because who travels to thirteen different timelines to save someone they don't-)).
They landed with a thump that rattled his teeth, throwing Rose to the ground with a yell.
"All right?" he called out.
"Fine, yeah, good- Thanks," she said, and he frowned before he popped up to find that Jack was already standing, looking perfectly coifed and not at all like he'd been inside of a Tardis that had been flinging all of them wildly about not a moment before.
"Not a problem-"
Surprise and not a small amount of alarm filled him when the door slammed open.
He quickly moved, running down the gangway before he'd even registered that his feet were moving. Anything opening the doors was impossible, completely and utterly so. Now, they had been slammed open, as if the Tardis doors had been blasted apart.
"What-"
"Stay back!" he shouted, before he threw his hand back, not glancing back to see if the good captain would follow his warning.
He relaxed entirely when he saw that it was just Anna, but that relaxation turned to alarm quickly.
Anna wasn't just crying. She was sobbing like her life depended on it. She managed to stumble into the door, catching hold of it just before she pitched herself into the Tardis.
"Anna, what- No!"
It was only because he was a time lord that he saw the three cables wrap around her neck before she was yanked back, a choked sob following her.
The Xinxari.
He immediately rushed out after her. The Xinxari were lowlives, feeding on the emotions of other species as a way to survive. They'd never been a danger to the Time Lords, as any attempt at feeding on their emotions was met with the Xinxari, well, their heads exploding, but to the rest of the universe? There was no way to stop a Xinxari, not without killing their prey as well. As soon as those black cables sunk into a person, they were finished. Anything interrupted the feeding process (minus the head exploding, of course) and a poison would automatically be emitted through the cables into the emotional center of the body, wherever that resided. For humans, it was the brain, and it was an instant and painful death.
He wouldn't let that happen to Anna.
He exited the Tardis before he closed the door behind him, searching for Anna across the darkened plaza. It wasn't hard to find her. They were standing some thirty meters away, the Xinxari still with his black cables loped around her throat, no doubt already sunk into her neck.
The Xinxari himself was classically handsome, which probably made it easier to lure his victims in.
It looked like Anna had been one of those victims. Now that the Xinxari had her, she looked barely there, though pain made her eyes squint around the corners, the only sign that she was even still alive.
It clicked for him, suddenly, harshly, that that's why she'd been sobbing. The Xinxari had probably taken her emotions and now she was in pain because she still had a human body but it wouldn't have died like a human body would've done-
"Let her go!" he bellowed out, taking a step towards her.
The Xinxari pulled her back, though Anna's echoing cry of pain was what stopped him, his hearts stopping in his chest as her whole body surged with it for one long note. He stopped where he was, his entire body tense as he held his hands up.
"You don't call the shots here, time lord," the Xinxari spit at him.
His eyes flicked back and forth between the Xinxari and Anna.
Anna, who looked barely there. He couldn't count on her to rescue herself, not with a Dues Ex Machina trick. Not right now.
Which meant that he would have to do something extremely stupid. He just wasn't sure what, yet.
"I'm giving you a chance-" he started, his hearts thundering in his chest.
Anna cried out again, for longer this time. "What did I just say?"
He hadn't noticed it before, but the Xinxari was angry. Furious, even. He looked about ready to tear down this entire world with his bare fists.
"He heard you the first time."
Now he wanted to tear something down with his bare fists. The Tardis was safe. Why the hell had Captain Idiot stepped foot outside of it? Whatever this Xinxari's anger, he didn't need more people to take!
"He's just not the time lord. I am. The Doctor, at your service."
The Doctor, in the meantime, felt anger choke him as he turned to look at Captain Idiot (having a spare thought that he and Mickey the Idiot would get on famously), raising his eyebrows in a, Oh, really, now? Fashion.
The Xinxari looked between them suspiciously before he seemed to accept it. He was so angry that it didn't appear to matter.
"Do you have any idea what your people did to mine?"
"No idea, why don't you enlighten me?"
He barely raised his eyebrows, realizing what Captain Idiot had done. Okay. He knew what the Xinxari were, knew that he wouldn't touch the time lords. The question was, how had he put that together so fast?
He'd already known there was more than met the eye with him, but this was above and beyond.
Anna started to whimper again, and he watched as her knees started to buckle. He grit his teeth before he started to reach for the sonic. Maybe if he could be discreet about this...
"Your war decimated the Xinxari. That weapon, the meanwhile and neverweres?" He barely frowned, though guilt lanced his hearts. Anna had saved Gallifrey, but she still hadn't saved the rest of the universe that had suffered the consequences of the Time War. What did he mean, though, the 'weapon'? He'd known about the army, but-
"Do I look like I care?"
He was just in the middle of realizing that the Xinxari had probably gotten secondhand information when Jack spouted that nonsense and ludicrous statement.
Anna screamed before she fell, both silent and almost limp, though she was sobbing and whimpering in equal measure. She was no longer supporting herself, the Xinxari holding her completely against his chest.
"Do you want me to kill her faster?!" he screamed at him. "Because I can do that, I can-"
A sharp look crossed his face, just as the Doctor was able to pull out the sonic, quietly calibrating it to disrupt the lines of the feeding cables, as the rest of the universe had taken to calling them in their nightmare stories about the Xinxari.
"No," he said, realization and a smug sort of satisfaction crossing his face. "No, you think you can bait me into taking you instead." He laughed as he hoisted Anna up, who just frowned, her head tilted up and back because of the cables around her neck. "I'm not stupid, time lord. But, apparently, you are. Because there you are, leaving your friend entirely... unguarded."
"No-"
The alarm in Jack's voice was all that he heard before a blinding pain took him and he fell to his knees.
There was a burning sensation in the back of his neck, a fire ripping through from the tips of his fingers down through to his toes, covering his whole body in fire. When it passed, it took him a moment to get him his bearings, breathing hard.
That was what Anna had felt, and that had only been for a fraction of a second. He couldn't imagine the agony that the Xinxari must've put her under. But, how had he known where to find them-
Anna must've brought the Tardis here. That's why she was piloting so boisterously before, throwing them around the console room. Anna had been tortured by that thing and had given in.
There was no use in wishing the Xinxari dead. His head was already blown open, the moment that he'd touched the Time Lord's emotions.
By the time the Doctor got his bearings back, Jack was knelt down above him, fretting uselessly over him.
"Check on Anna-"
"You shouldn't even be alive-"
Pain pulsed through him and brought with him anger. "Check. On. Anna," he got out, through gritted teeth.
He could hear Anna's ragged breathing, even from here, but Jack reached her just as it turned into pained sobs.
It was like the pain couldn't be contained, a wild fire ripping through her chest, coming out in short bursts in the form of half-sobs, half choked noises of pain.
Anna needed him.
Anna needed him, and the thought of it gave him strength to stand, moving with muscles that still ached from the Xinxari attack to wobble his way over to her, collapsing on his knees.
Jack was trying some nonsense reassurances but she was shaking her head. It only got worse when she looked over at him, and her eyes barely widened before she cried out in agony.
"No, please," she said, squeezing her eyes shut. "Please, I'm sorry, I can't- I didn't- I didn't know, I didn't know-"
"Anna, Anna, hey," he said, his hearts hardening at the fact that perhaps the Xinxari, whose body was still oozing blood and leftover emotions that hadn't been processed, had done more than simply take her emotions.
Her eyes suddenly opened wide as she looked up at the sky, realization drawing through them.
"I can fix it," she whispered, determined, and, in a move that surprised all of them, she looked at Jack next. "I can save you."
Something happened then, something that was too fast for Jack's human eyes. He watched as she... shifted. It wasn't into anything, or out of her human form. For a single second, she'd been outlined in every color that his time lord eyes could see, but her eyes... The color of her eyes hardened into those some colors, becoming a jewel for a long moment.
For a moment, it reminded him of looking into the Untempered Schism, that unfathomable, unknowable thing. All the universe in one person.
How much that must burn her.
It terrified him and he stumbled back, still fresh from the Xinxari attack that wouldn't have affected him so if he hadn't been so close to the War. It was over before it began, but not before Anna dropped off to the side, falling into a deep sleep.
"Hey, hey, can you- what the-"
Jack was the one stumbling back next, and the Doctor didn't understand why until he saw Anna's face.
Her skin had slid from her cheekbone, clean off, as if nothing had been holding it.
"Doc, what-"
"I don't know," he quickly said, moving to her side and clenching his teeth against the pain it brought him. He scanned her with the sonic before he hit the thing against his palms, frustrated with the readings.
It said that there was barely any signal there, like Anna was a thing that only sort of existed in this universe. Maybe that was normal, he didn't know. He hadn't had a chance to look at the deeper scans (hadn't bothered, really, too horrified by what had happened before to take a deep dive into her health. He didn't want to think about her dying. It was too hard).
But now, he had to, considering that she barely looked on the edge of life. "Anna, hey, can you hear me?" he asked, half-wishing that she would answer him, half-hoping that she would continue to be unconscious so that she would continue to not be in pain.
"Doc, I think-"
"Shut up, Jack," he said, already recognizing the tone of voice. He quickly but gently picked her up, disgusted when the feeling he got when he picked her up was the feeling of her skin sliding off of her arms. He expected her blood to start pouring from underneath her jacket, but it never came.
"What about the Xinxari?" he asked.
He wanted to tell him to leave the Xinxari there, even started to, before he groaned at the thought of humans finding something like a Xinxari. "Grab him," he said. "We'll-"
But what? What exactly was his-
"Doctor, what-"
-plan here? Great. Just great.
"Rose, need you to-"
"Oh my god, is that- Anna, what's-"
"Don't touch her," he told the blonde, who looked like she was about two centimeters from doing just that thing. She startled, looking up at him, and he could see the clear worry resting in her eyes.
"We need to figure out what's wrong with her, so we're going to head to the medbay, now," the Doctor told her in calm, even tones, not betraying any of the fury or the worry that he felt, though both words were too soft to describe what he was feeling.
"What about- what is that?" Rose asked, and he glanced down at her to see that she had her nose scrunched up in disgust, though he could imagine her look of disgust would've been tinged with horror if it had been because she'd gotten full view of what Jack was presumably kneeling over.
"Don't look at it, it's a body what's head just exploded, come on."
"How'd it do that, then?" Rose asked, before he bumped her with his shoulder, gently guiding her into the Tardis. "What happened?"
"You didn't see?"
"Jack told me to stay in the Tardis," she said.
"And that made a difference?" he asked, irritation and amusement folding through him.
"Well, no," she said. "But the Tardis door locked behind him and wouldn't open till just now."
He managed to huff out a laugh before he felt Anna's skin sliding further off of her bones and he moved faster.
It wouldn't do to drop her in the middle of the hallway just because her skin had slid clean off.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Later," he replied.
Only later never came.
/
Anna dreamt, then.
She dreamt of Doctor's who yelled at her to undo it, of Doctor's who kissed her and then told her that he loved her. She dreamt of her mother, who yelled at her and told her that she was worthless before she shifted into a nicer tone to tell her but it didn't matter because she would love her, no matter how worthless she was, and that she was the only one who would.
Her mother raised her arm to hit her, but the tenth Doctor was the one to deliver the blow.
She immediately sat up, curled up into a ball as she shook.
"Woah, woah, hey, it's okay," she heard a familiar voice say.
She started to beg before she remembered who she was and what she could do. "I'm not afraid of you," she insisted.
There was a faint tinge of confusion in the air and she grit her teeth, knowing that it was because she wasn't afraid of the familiar voice.
"I'm not afraid of you!" she insisted, and then realized that it must've been her mother standing in the room.
But, it didn't feel like her mother. She looked over tentatively to see, and let out a breath of relief when it wasn't her mother, but a familiar face that she associated with safety.
Too tired to try to figure out who it was, she let out a breath and immediately snuggled back under the covers, though she wasn't reticent to ask.
"Is she still here?"
The confusion increased.
"Who?"
"My mom."
There was a fluctuation in the air, something like a small amount of grief filling it, before it straightened out. "No, can't say there were any mothers here, though I can't say I'd mind if there were-"
Her hackles raised at the second part of his sentence and she immediately turned back to look at him, trying to convey the fury on her face. If he was a friend of her mom's, then...
"Who are you?" she asked, trying all the world to hide how desperately afraid she was, now that the thought of the familiar voice who had been friendly might be anything but.
He held his hands up in a placating manner before he spoke. "It's just-"
"Jack," she heard somebody say, annoyance flitting through their voice. He looked back at the doorway. "You were supposed to call when she woke up, Anna, hey, how're you-"
She felt her hackles rising and she pushed herself further into the corner. She tried to appear as threatening as possible before she remembered there wasn't a need but also she was exhausted and sick and she couldn't take that chance-
"Woah," another familiar voice said, and this one seemed even more familiar and safe than the last one did but she wasn't sure that was a good metric, now, considering she'd thought the friend of her mother's was familiar, too. He looked over accusingly at the male that was beside him, though he didn't seem to see that.
"Yeah, best not," he said, starting to back away slowly.
"Jack, what did you-"
It was a rare day when Anna tried to make herself appear as threatening as an all-powerful being should. Right now, the emotions in Anna were grief and disparaging and longing to be safe, and everything screamed so wrong that she had no choice but to act on the defensive.
"Where. Am. I?" she asked, through gritted teeth.
She was surprised when he put a hand on his friend's chest, pushing him back in the chair that apparently had wheels. There was a business-like intent as he kneeled down where he was in the same movement, nodding as he looked at her. There was that reassurance as well, and she barely shied away from it.
"It's all right, Anna, you're safe, you're-"
She put her fist down in front of her, actual anger unfolding through her.
"Where. Am." She was so angry that tears were gathering at the corner of her eyes and she sucked in a breath, trying to make her words and her actions sound more steady than they did. Despite this, her next word came out in a whisper. "I."
"The Tardis," he quickly cut in. "You're in the-"
"The Tardis?"
Her whole body strangely relaxed at that, feeling herself almost waver. She let out an unsteady breath as she looked down at her hands.
"Yes, the-"
"The Tardis," she repeated, clenching and unclenching her hands into a fist. Her hands and her actions felt clunky and wrong. "The Tardis," she repeated, trying the name out on her tongue.
"Anna, hey," he said, quietly, but she barely shook her head. "Yes, it's okay. It's me, the Doctor. You're on the-"
He had no idea what a mistake he'd been saying in saying that name. Her brows furrowed and she looked up at him, terrified as she shot her hand out, trying to throw him across the room. He shook his head, but that was all she was able to catch before pain scorched her chest and she curled up into a tiny little ball.
Had she undone it, she wondered? Had she undone it and ended up in a timeline where he didn't know who she was, again?
The wedding ring.
She felt everything in her still and she stared down at the floor, trying to search her memory. He didn't have the wedding ring, she was absolutely sure of it when he'd talked to her.
But that didn't make sense, because if he'd wanted her to undo it then why would he have-
Her eyes widened as wide as saucers and her eyes shot up.
"No," she hissed out.
Because what if Original Anna had been so desperate for love that she'd done the one thing she'd promised herself she'd never do and brainwash him into loving her?
"What did I do?" she whispered, desperately.
There was only one way to find out.
Anna didn't do this often, for the sole reason that doing it too often would set a precedent that she didn't want to set. She found herself doing it now, though, because it was an emergency, and she had to know what she'd done.
It was time to find Original Anna.
It was unfortunate that, at the exact same time that Original Anna was standing in the Paris Catacombs, about to be set upon by something she didn't understand, Anna 13 thought that it didn't take any energy to get to her.
And, it didn't.
Just like it didn't take any energy to also be attacked by whatever darkness had attacked Original Anna.
She was out before she hit the bottom (which felt and smelled strangely like chlorine).
/
The Doctor was currently sitting in his study, staring at the blueprints of his latest design. He knew that he could make the blender more efficient if he just added an extra switch... somewhere. That was a bit hard, considering the designs were already covered in more switches than was reasonably possible, and he sighed, frustrated, before he grabbed the plans and crumpled them up.
"Useless," he muttered to himself.
It was. It was easy to distract himself when he hadn't been stuck in a fragile human body, away from his Tardis, the one constant in his life since he'd left Gallifrey. He longed to get back there, feeling bitterness and resentment at his time lord self, though deep down, knowing he'd made the right choice. He had killed the daleks. If nothing else, he'd committed a genocide that couldn't be taken back, not that he would've done. They were daleks. Although there was a heavy guilt weighing on his hearts-
... Heart. The point was, he wasn't losing sleep over it.
He was losing sleep over the fact that Anna was also a whole parallel world away, living the life with her husband. It should've been him and Anna. It was supposed to be. And, with Rose-
He regretted the moment the words, "If it'll make you feel better, we can take Rose along as well," flew out of his mouth, the one thing he was grateful that Rose hadn't heard. Rose was more than just a secondhand bargain, a second place trophy. Anna had been right. She was Rose Tyler. There was still a place for her in his hearts-
Heart, there was still a place for her in his heart, even now.
But he'd married Anna. He remembered the day so clearly, so joyously, so full of happiness...
And she'd just left him behind, run like the coward he'd never pictured her to be.
He understood that there were some things she could not do, but she was also all-powerful. It wasn't like it would've destroyed the universe if she broke her rules, just this one time, just so that they could all be together and happy.
He was broken from his thoughts of the what-if's, something he'd been engaging in more and more frequently since he'd landed at the Tyler residence, by the sounds of alarms.
He looked down at the wrist-watch he'd designed the first week he'd been here, hands moving slower without his time lord speed. Rose had watched him from the doorway, and those days, she'd hover without actually entering, tiptoeing around him. Jackie was the one who'd invited him to stay with them, citing that although he might've been useless, he was one of them, now.
One of the ones that got left behind, the sentiment went without saying.
It had been a month since he'd been stranded (though stranded with Rose wasn't such a bad thought, even if Anna was worlds away) and the wristwatch he'd designed to go off when disturbances of the dimensional wall variety came a-calling.
The house alarm went off nearly moments later, and his heart leapt in his chest. He got up, less disoriented at the fact that only one heart was leaping in his chest than he had been before, running to the sound instead of away from it.
It was what he did, after all. He was still The Doctor.
/
When she awoke, everything felt wrong, different. She barely opened her eyes, groaning, when she realized that she hadn't opened her eyes at all and darkness was still prevalent.
"Hey, hey, it's okay, go slow, you're all right."
She groaned again when the urge to sit up wasn't fulfilled only because the sudden urge to puke was much more prevalent.
"You're all right, go slow."
"Happened?" she asked.
"Dunno," he said, sounding ever Pinstripes.
Other Pinstripes' flashed through her head, the ones she couldn't save despite the fact that she'd saved every other being in every other timeline of Turn Left she'd invaded; they'd only died because she'd been stupid enough to think that it had to happen. But, even putting the Doctor's in the alternate dimensions she'd placed the occupants that could be saved from the Turn Left timelines wasn't an option. Those Doctor's had never been meant to live.
Maybe, if she wasn't what she was, she could take solace in that fact.
"Popped up about three weeks back, half-dead. Nearly- woah, Anna, no, I was understating it, you almost died, just sit back, there we are, you're okay..."
Three weeks? It had been three weeks? Why hadn't the other Anna saved her? What the-
"I need to talk to her," she said, though her voice sounded like gravel.
"Who?" he asked.
"Anna, your wife, I need to talk to Anna," she reiterated, agitated beyond all measure.
She felt the flare of emotion coming from him, much stronger than she ever had before. Caution, as sharp as a knife's edge, wafted between them.
"I thought I was," he told her.
She felt impatience flowing through her, though she still didn't manage to get her eyes open.
"I'm from- Turn Left, the timeline, I'm from a different-different timeline- the one you met in the Shan Shen marketplace-"
"Okay, okay, okay, calm down, let's just start over-"
"No!" she said, insistent, before pain sent a spasm racing through her. She quickly sat back down on the bed, barely shaking her head. "Where is Anna?"
"If you're talking about my wife," he started, carefully. "She's with the Doctor. The time lord one, at any rate."
She frowned, tilting her head, but still not opening her eyes to look at him.
She felt him watching her, careful consideration in the air between them.
"Which means what?" she asked him.
"You tell me," he said. "You're still a version of Anna-" he started, barely wavering as understanding came to him, before he stayed true to the course. "-correct?" he asked.
She grit her teeth. "Just let me talk to her," she tried again, too tired and too low on energy and too much of a headache to want to even deal with whatever nonsense he was spouting.
She felt a flick in the air, a switch of emotion, and she groaned at the realization he was about to lie to her.
"Yeah, yeah, sure," he said, getting up. She managed to open her eyes and look at him, finally-
She stopped at what she saw.
He was no longer in a Pinstripe suit. Instead, it was shorts and a polo t-shirt. She'd never seen anything more ridiculous in her entire life, and it stopped her in her tracks.
"What're you wearing?" she asked, barely tilting her head once more.
"What?" he asked, his hands in his pockets.
"Where's your suit?" she asked, her words almost slurred.
"Told you, the time lord Doctor's got it," he said, and she watched the way he watched her critically, but she didn't care. She was just frustrated at that point.
"What the hell does that even mean?" she cried.
Besides the barely flinch and the feeling coming from him that he wanted to fix her pain, he didn't back down, merely shrugging. "If you're really Anna, then you should-"
"For goodness-" she started, putting a hand to her forehead as she closed her eyes. Her tears felt hot against her skin as she started crying. "I'm not a threat to you, besides which, Anna is an all-powerful being, so even if-"
"No, but, I thought you were Anna," he pointed out, and she could envision the frown on his face long before she ever opened her eyes to see it.
She wasn't beyond begging at this point.
"Let me talk to her. Please," she tried.
It was weird, because he both hardened and softened in the same measure.
"She's not here," he finally relented.
Desolation fell through her. "What?" she asked, and her voice cracked. She'd come all this way... She shook her head, turning to look at the ceiling. "No, I can't- I can't do that again, I can't, I need- I need- please."
She realized, abruptly, looking over at him, that she was full on begging. It had never helped her in the past and she finally found the wherewithal to gather a semblance of herself...
... Before she promptly burst out sobbing.
Her display softened him to the point that he sat back down.
"Okay, okay," he said, quietly, putting a gentle hand to her forehead and smoothing her hair back. "Sh, it's all right. Just tell me who you are and I'll-"
"I'm-" she started, the words bursting forth from her, before she managed to get herself more under control, sucking in a breath.
"Sh, it's all right," he started once more.
"I'm Anna," she said, her tone starting to sound more reasonable now that she had something to ground her into reality. The gentle touch on her forehead reminded her that she could do this, she just had to breathe, first. "I... was born from a different timeline than the woman that you know as your wife."
Interest piqued, he spoke. "What does that mean?" he asked.
"It means..." she worried her bottom lip.
And, Anna made a decision, one she'd never done in her entire life.
"When you told her to undo it, I... Something happened, something-"
"Undo..."
Too many emotions to catch raced through the air. A moment later, she identified the anger as the strongest one of them all. It nearly choked him and she continued in the absence of his speech.
"Because you told her not to find you in another timeline, and... because of the weakened state, because of the trauma that she'd undergone, her powers responded to the suggestion and I was... created," she explained.
All of his fury, which had been slowly moving towards her, vanished with those words.
"You're... Anna," he finally got it.
"Yes," she told him. "But I'm not your wife, I'm... different. I didn't... I thought I was made from the Turn Left timeline, that the angels had gotten me, too, in that timeline, and that I woke up in... but anyway, that didn't make any sense, because the angels never would've existed in the Turn Left timeline."
Confusion drifted through the air for a moment before it disappeared.
"It wasn't until I lived through... what happened with-" she struggled to remember his name for a moment, knowing that calling it Dalek wouldn't make any sense to him, and might make his anger return, that aside, "-Van Statten that I- that I remembered, and it-it came back to me, the fact that you'd... you'd told her to undo it. And I... the wedding ring, I don't understand, I thought..."
She quickly interrupted herself, realizing that he wouldn't understand that either, and that she needed to talk to Original Anna.
A thought occurred to her that hadn't, though. Because if Original Anna was so far off the rails that she was willing to brainwash someone into marrying her, then what exactly was she, as a person who had come to threaten that happiness, supposed to do to defend herself?
"Shit," she said, quietly, before she started to struggle backwards.
Confusion and concern drifted between them, just as she groaned and put her head back to the pillow.
"Anna isn't here because- well, she abandoned us. Me and Rose, on the beach. I'm- I don't know how much you know, but I'm-I'm the metacrisis version of himself," he said. "I'm still- it's still me, Anna, the Doctor, but I'm just- I'm human, now, so, you know. There's that."
She raised her eyebrows before she barely let out a groan... and then realization of a different kind wafted through her.
"We have to get to her."
"Who?"
"Original Anna, we need to- she brainwashed you, she brainwashed you, we need to-"
Because how else could she have ended up here, in so much pain, if not for the fact that Original Anna had bounced her here as a warning not to trespass on affairs that she ought not to?
"Okay, okay, Anna, let's slow down, let's take a few deep breaths-"
"I can't," she said, sounding so pathetic and so small in that moment as she sobbed. "Oh my goodness, what did I do?"
/
It took nearly twenty minutes for her to stop crying and, by that time, she was already mumbling as she fought sleep. It wasn't long after that she'd drifted into a deep slumber, though it wasn't exactly peaceful.
The Doctor sat back and watched her, trying to take in the words that she'd said, trying to make sense of any of it-
"Doctor."
He turned back to see Rose standing in the doorway.
"Torchwood called." He couldn't help that his heart skipped a beat at that every time she said it, even nearly two months after they'd come here. "They said there's a major disturbance middle of Cardiff, need you on it."
"Anna's still too sick-"
"Anna's an all-powerful being, she can take care of herself," Rose said. "Managing just fine on her own, still sleeping and all. Coming or what?"
The bitterness in Rose wasn't entirely her fault, and the Doctor knew that some part of it was due to the fact that she was concerned. Anna had come in in a state when she'd landed in the pool nearly three weeks prior. They'd found bits of her skin for nearly a week in the pool, despite the fact that it had been cleaned five times.
"Rose-"
"She's asleep, she's gonna stay asleep, and people are dyin'," she stressed. "Comin' or wha'?"
"She woke up," he revealed.
Surprise flitted across her face. "What?" she started, just the same as she started into the room that she'd ventured into when she thought everyone else was asleep. "When?"
"Been awake for the past hour," he told her. "Cried herself to sleep."
"Over what?"
"Whatever brought her here, I think. She's not-" he started, watching as Rose started to sit down next to her. She looked like she wanted to reach out and take her hand, but drew back at the last second. Didn't sit down either, instead, pursed her lips. "-the same Anna. Sort of..." he rubbed his hand over the back of his head as he looked away. "Like your dad," he started, realizing he had the perfect example. "She's just a different timeline version of Anna."
Rose looked confused. "Why?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Dunno," he said. "Couldn't really get a coherent answer out of her. The fact that she's even awake and talking at all is a miracle, though. Last time this happened..." he worried his bottom lip before he shook his head, looking up at Rose, a smile out of habit forming on his face before he dropped it, looking back down at her. "Still. Might wake up any moment, though. Can't be off gallivanting about London if she comes to."
"I'll stay with her."
He was surprised by the offer, looking at Rose.
He didn't comment on this, just watched as she looked down at him, crossing her arms.
"They need you more than they need me," she said.
He snorted as he looked at Anna. "That's just not true," he said.
"'Cept it is, cause I'm still rubbish with the science stuff. Good at the field work-"
"Great at it," he corrected her, and he felt satisfaction at the fact that he was able to pull a dusting of color to her cheeks.
"-but this is looking more like a meeting of the minds."
Her blush reminded him of the early days with her, when he'd been skirting around his feelings, when they both had. It gave him hope that maybe they could be something again.
Anna arriving had changed everything. Past the worry and the terror for what it meant, he had hope that maybe Anna had changed her mind and was hoping to stay. Maybe she'd come back for them, and the three of them, her, him, and Rose, could start traveling again, seeing the universe and all.
It made him more relaxed, more willing to be open with both himself and Rose (even if Rose was not of the same mind).
"I don't want to leave her," he reiterated. "There's no telling that she won't wake up again-"
Rose took a step closer to him. He could smell her perfume, and it took a lot of self-control not to soak it in by leaning in closer to her. Human senses were so dull. It was hard not to want to grasp onto the ones he did get, accidentally or otherwise, with both hands.
"Or, she might've just woken up for a minute and won't wake for another week. You said this might happen, remember?" she asked. She flicked her head towards the doorway, even as his hearts-
Heart.
Was annoyed that she was right.
He searched her, a small crease to his brow. "People are dying?" he asked.
"By the truckloads," she reassured him, and he glanced over at Anna once more before he looked back up at Rose.
"All right," he said, and he stood up, making her take a step back so that he could reclaim the height that had been lost between them. "But, if there are any changes, and I mean so much as a twitch of her finger, you call me."
"Her finger twitched just then," Rose pointed out, and he frowned deeper before he relented once more.
"Fine, if she wakes up, call me," he said, before he moved from the room.
"Will do," Rose said.
At the sound of her voice, he turned back to look at her. "Oh, and Rose?" he asked.
"What?"
"Thanks."
"For what?" she asked, barely smiling.
He shrugged. "For being so brilliantly you."
She smiled a smile from the days of old, the tongue kissed ones he so adored. "Yeah, well, you're not too bad yourself," she told him.
He couldn't help that he winked at her before he moved on.
Even if thoughts of Anna were still lingering in his mind.
/
He was cursing as he raced back into the bedroom.
Anna's awake.
He hadn't gotten the message until nearly three hours later, and now she'd been up for about four hours and he hadn't been there as he'd so wanted to be. Even if this was a different timeline version, this was still Anna. He would be damned if he wasn't about to be there for her.
When he ran into the room, he found that all was well. Rose was looking at Anna, though when she turned back, standing in the same measure, she was worrying her bottom lip.
Anna, in the meantime, was looking at him seriously, the bowl of soup sitting in front of her taking away none of the effect.
"We need to talk."
He swallowed but he nodded.
/
"But how do you know that that's actually what happened?"
He shook his head, covering her hand with his. His heart had leapt into his chest when she hadn't pulled away, but he focused valiantly at the topic at hand. "Because I know you, and I know you would never do something like that. You are..."
"A different Anna, and just because-"
"Because I married her," he told her, bluntly, despite the fact that he barely felt Rose flinch. "I remember every single bit of it, and I know that you could never do something like what you're suggesting."
If she noticed that he'd switched back to speaking about her, she didn't comment. "Okay, but I also did this," she told him, new tears in her eyes. "I also went back to a point in your timeline when you didn't-"
"Your powers did that. You weren't aware of it, and I promise you, I swear, you wouldn't have consciously done it. The moment that you stepped off the Tardis, you tried to undo it, and the only reason that you didn't... Well, you've told me it's because a future me said that you shouldn't've done. You listened to my wishes and you respected them and you never would've done this otherwise, I promise you."
She sucked in a harsh breath, pre-emptive to her sobbing once more. "So-so it's-it's okay if I-if I go back to my Doctor?" she asked him. "The- thirteen times, thirteen, I failed you and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"
"Anna-"
His heart broke.
"Oh."
He sat back, searching her.
She had no intention of sticking around. She had absolutely no intention of it, and she was just planning on... walking away. Yet again.
"You don't have to."
Both of them were surprised when Rose spoke, though it was quietly.
"I mean, if you want, you could... stay here, with us. I mean, you're gonna have to, cause you're low on energy and you almost died anyway, but... But I mean, even after that, if you wanted to, you could."
"I can't- I can't just abandon him, I already-already scared him half to death with this stunt and now- I just want to go home."
His heart broke even further, more than he'd thought possible. Now, it was more than one version of his wife that had clearly stated she'd wanted nothing to do with him.
But, he was the Doctor. He wouldn't let this defeat him.
"Rose is right," he told her, quietly. "You're low on energy-"
Maybe he could convince her during the time it took her to get her strength back. He was nothing if not a hoper of impossible hopes.
She shook her head, wiping her eyes. "Doesn't matter," she said. "Thank you both for everything. Have great lives, yeah?"
And, just like that, she was gone.
Once again leaving them to clean up the pieces she'd left behind when she'd torn open old wounds.
/
"Okay, but she just disappeared."
"Yeah, she does that sometimes! Do us a favor and be somewhere else."
"But she was dying! You-"
"What did I just-"
"Enough!" Rose said, and they both looked back at her to see she had her arms crossed. "What're we doing about Anna?"
"Umph."
All of them were a mix of surprised and relieved when they turned back to see that Anna was holding onto the console, in the process of falling to the flooring below. Her body shuddered before she nodded.
"Yeah, sorry, I'm-I'm dying now."
He watched, surprised, as everything slid off of her, leaving her skeleton hanging in mid-air for a second before it too went crashing to the ground.
The good captain let out a surprised shout, though the Doctor stood motionless, just trying to think for a second. What the hell-
"Okay. What the hell was that?" Jack asked.
He let out a breath, letting his head hang down for a second before he got to work.
/
In total, it took Anna about a week to completely heal. By that time, she'd explained the whole story. How she'd remembered that she'd come from a different point in her timeline than she'd originally thought, and what it meant, or what she thought it must mean. Her quest for answers, as well as saving all of those people in the process, but she couldn't save any of the versions of himself what had suffered and died.
He shook his head as he grabbed her hand, speaking in a low, reassuring murmur (sort of like the reassuring low murmur in the back of his head that was there as a product of Anna saving his people). "That doesn't matter now, Anna. What's in the past is in the past. But, now, here, you've got Rose, and Captain Flash, I suppose, but most importantly, you've got me. And I'm not going anywhere."
She erupted into a sob before she got herself together, shaking her head. "I've watched you die so many times." She shook her head. "I don't want to do that anymore."
He leaned back. "Well, you've already said that you're in the right timeline, right?"
She nodded (though she couldn't help that she checked).
He smiled. "Well, then," he said. "You don't have to worry about that anymore, do you?"
She raised her eyebrows before she barely shook her head, looking down.
"Guess not," she said, quietly.
"Hey," he said, quietly, and she looked up at him. "I can't promise that I won't ever die. But, that's just a part of life. And that's okay. Sometimes, things have to end so other things can get started. Fantastic, wonderful things. It's how the universe keeps turning and, you know what?"
"What?"
"I think that's quite beautiful."
She smiled.
"Now, what do you say?" he asked, putting his hands on his knees. "Feeling up for an adventure?"