The first thought I had upon waking up was, God, it's hot. I thought for a moment that I was standing in front of an open fireplace, but when I opened my eyes all I saw was the fading of the night sky into the day. The moon was hanging low in the sky just at the edge of my peripheral vision. As I turned my head to the side to better see my surroundings, I wondered if maybe I'd been whacked in the skull with a hammer because the pain flooding my head was almost unbearable. That was when I noticed the flames.

Lurching forward so I was sitting up, I yelped and looked around frantically to assess the situation. I was on a wooden structure with crackling, yellow flames licking up the side of the structure towards me. I let out a panicked, half strangled scream and scrambled to my feet, then leapt from the structure towards the first patch of not-on-fire ground that my eyes fell upon. The Doctor's frozen figure and horrified face didn't register in my mind until after I barreled into her and sent us both tumbling into the TARDIS doors.

As I fell half on top of the Doctor's body, caught between her and the TARDIS, a memory flashed across my mind's eye: I was running towards the TARDIS and I was scared. I frowned, my eyes absently tracing the lines of the Doctor's face as I replayed the memory. There was no memory of anything after those images, but there was a memory of the events beforehand. I recalled the Time Lords that had chased us, the Daleks that had followed, the raining down of rocks upon our heads, and the pure terror that had gripped my heart.

I didn't realize that the Doctor's hand was trembling against my cheek until the sound of her crying broke my concentration. I blinked and my vision refocused on her puffy, bloodshot eyes and the streaks her tears had left in the dirt caked on her skin. Pulling my head back so her hands were holding empty air, I swiftly moved so that I wasn't spread against the Doctor in an overly familiar manner and was kneeling instead.

"What happened?" I asked. The Doctor sat up and looked as though she might break if the wind blew too hard in her direction. "Doctor, are you okay?"

"No," she croaked. "No, I'm not."

The platform was completely engulfed in flames by that point. "What happened?" I said again, this time more worried about the Doctor than how I had ended up on what looked eerily similar to a funeral pyre.

"You don't remember?"

"I remember the Daleks. I remember that I was terrified and running - you told me to run for the TARDIS. But I don't remember going inside. Why?"

Tears bubbled over the Doctor's eyelids and streaked down her cheeks. "You died," she said with trembling lips.

"What?!" The Doctor sighed and reached for my hand, my name caught in her throat, but I withdrew and stood up. "But how could I be dead? I'm alive now."

"The Daleks killed you before you could reach the TARDIS." She swallowed, her eyes darting away from my insistent gaze. "I took you here to bury you, but decided on honoring you with a pyre instead," she explained gesturing to the roaring fire. "I had no idea-… I didn't know it was possible for you to come back or I never would have-."

Shaking my head firmly, I wrapped my arms around my chest. "It's not possible," I said. "No one can come back from the dead."

The Doctor leaned against the TARDIS as she stood up. "You were dead. I checked your pulse, your breathing. I heard you scream when the Daleks killed you. Diana, no one can survive a Dalek, not even a Time Lord. I know that better than anyone."

"But… But it just feels like I was asleep! Th-There was nothing, no bright light or gently slipping into unconsciousness. It feels like I closed my eyes and then opened them again, like I had a good nap, not… not that."

The Doctor captured one of my hands within hers, her grip firm and strong. "I swear to you, I'm telling the truth. I wish I was lying, but I'm not."

Ripping my hand free with a scowl, I pushed the TARDIS doors open. "I don't believe you," I snapped. "You put me on that thing and almost killed me!" I shouted, pointing angrily at the crackling remains of the funeral pyre and the blaze that had consumed it. "Just stay away from me."

"Diana, you don't understand-"

"Stay away!" I called as I darted inside the ship.

The things the Doctor had said were impossible and their implications terrifying. I knew I couldn't have died because if I had, I would have felt it, I would have remembered it happening. Most of all, I couldn't believe I had died because if I did, then I had to accept the fact that maybe… there was really nothing waiting for us after death. I had felt nothing, neither pain or happiness. That was the opposite of everything I believed in and hoped for, and I refused to accept it.

The flame of the funeral pyre seemed to follow me inside the TARDIS, taunting me and licking at my heels. I wiped the sweat from my brow and wiped my tears away with it.

While it was a relief to be safe and sound inside my room, it was hard to even look at because it was simply another reminder of where I was and where I could never return. With just basic furniture and no decorations or personal touches, it didn't even feel completely mine. I felt like a guest in my own home.

My room, inside a spaceship that can time-travel, with an alien from a T.V. show who doesn't even look the same. My family, gone. My friends wouldn't know me if they saw me. The person I once loved… Well, they're not the same either. And here I am, recently risen from the dead from a Dalek attack like some kind of science fictionalized biblical Lazarus AU which isn't even possible because, if the Doctor can be believed, I was dead and there was nothing. Nothing.

I sat down on the edge of my bed and closed my eyes. How was I supposed to move on from losing everything? How was I supposed to live when the very foundations of my life had been flipped upside-down? Was I just supposed to stay in the TARDIS for the rest of my life? What did my 'fading' and re- and disappearing mean, and how and why did it happen? Was it somehow connected to the Doctor? It seemed the only logical answer since the Doctor always seemed to be nearby, no matter where I went.

It was likely that only the Doctor had the answers to latter half of my questions, but I had just screamed in her face and ran off like a child. Tossing my glasses to the side, I dropped my face into my hands and cried softly.

I wandered into the kitchen some hours later, guided my map and the growling of my stomach. I had heard the TARDIS dematerialize soon after I reached my bedroom, but hadn't heard it rematerialize since, which had to mean that we were adrift in the time vortex. I considered seeking the Doctor out for answers, but I was embarrassed, hesitant, and still reeling from my crying session, so I focused instead on fixing myself a meal.

I hadn't thought much about what I looked (or smelled) like until after I finished eating because I was so hungry, but I certainly noticed afterward. I could feel dirt and soot on my face, and my hair was greasy near the roots; all in all, I needed a shower pronto. Grabbing a denim jacket, dark-colored shirt and jeans from my closet, I hurried into my bathroom and got cleaned up.

Feeling full and squeaky clean, I finally decided to search for the Doctor. I had questions that needed answering if I was going to find any peace of mind. By some miracle, the map that the Doctor's eldest incarnation had drawn for me was in my room and hadn't gotten lost in all the time that I'd been away from it, so I unfolded it and decided that I would stop by the Doctor's room since it was closer than the console room. But when I reached the spot where there should have been a door, there was nothing except an empty stretch of wall that I couldn't bring myself to look at properly, only eyeing it from the corner of my vision as I wondered what the Doctor might have done with her room.

In the end, I found the Time Lady in the console room, one of the roundels braced open like a door and her hands stuck inside. I could faintly hear the sonic screwdriver whirring as I approached the console. A quiet cough to clear my throat was enough to get the Doctor's attention. The whirring inside the roundel stopped and her hands withdrew from the opening as she turned to face me.

"I'm sorry," I said, my eyes falling to the floor, "for yelling at you."

"You don't need to apologize," said the Doctor. She attempted to smile as she added, "I suppose my actions were a little hasty."

"It's okay, I… I understand. Actually, I wanted to talk to you because there are a few things that I don't understand."

"Of course. What do you want to know?"

I refolded the map and stuffed it into my back pocket. Spreading my fingers out and turning my hands over, I inspected every crease and freckle marked on my skin. "You told me before that I fade. I just… slip away like mist. But how?" I asked, finally meeting the Doctor's gaze. "Why?"

Glancing around the room, the Doctor chewed worriedly on the inside of her cheek. "Perhaps you should sit down."

"Why?"

"Because what I have to tell you is a lot of information to take in at once."

I shook my head. "I don't care," I said, not rudely but a little firmly. "What is it, Doctor? What's happening to me? Why is it happening to me?"

"I can't say why," she admitted with a sigh. "I doubt there was ever a reason for it other than chance. What little I do know about what happened to you is this: you were brought here through a disturbance in the time vortex that rippled along the boundaries of this universe and your own. When you were pulled through, your body was severely injured. The chronon particles - time particles - that course through the vortex bled into your body. They completely saturated every inch of your body, inside and out. That is what enables you to time travel whilst remaining unharmed within the vortex itself."

My knees wobbled slightly as I reached for the console in desperate need of something sturdy to hold onto. It wasn't difficult to picture everything as the Doctor had described it: my lifeless, battered, and bruised body floating in an endless current made of time, the gold-tinted rainbow colors of the vortex being sucked into my body through open wounds, nostrils, and lips.

"Your DNA was completely rewritten," the Doctor continued, her voice softer now. I could hear her boots thud softly against the floor as she drew closer. "You're still human," she assured me, "but you're part of the time vortex now, too."

"Is that why it hurts?"

The Doctor stepped around the console slowly, as if she was approaching a frightened, injured animal. I didn't blame her for it, though, because I was scared. "Yes. It's the chronon particles activating. That's not normal for a human, so your body simply does the best it can."

"Then… how do you fit into all of this?" I carefully searched the Doctor's war-hardened face. "It's only happened a few times, but every time I do fade, you're there. That's not just a coincidence, is it?"

The Doctor's gazed rested heavily on me. "Truth be told, I don't know. The evidence surely points to something binding us together, pulling you from one corner of the universe to the other to find me, of all people, but it's only an educated guess on my part."

"Will it ever stop? Can… Can I ever be normal again?"

I could feel my lower lip tremble when the Doctor answered by silently looking away. Fear, confusion, worry, and uncertainty poured down my cheeks in the form of tears, and I turned to the console and shut out the rest of the universe with tightly shut eyelids. I had cried and mourned before seeking the Doctor out and I didn't want to cry any longer; I was already tired of it. I stood braced against the console for a minute or two, contemplating the implications of my strange new life in the Doctor's universe, and then I decided not to cry anymore. I wiped my tears away and told myself to be strong.

"Okay," I said, my eyes fixed on the ragged scarf tied around the Doctor's neck. "Okay."

"Okay?"

I nodded. "I'm okay now."

"Diana, you needn't pretend you're not upset. It's alright to cry."

"But I don't want to." I closed my eyes again and tried very hard not to think about all the reasons why my heart felt as if it had been ripped from my chest. "I don't want to think about it, I don't want to cry about it. I just… want to be happy."

The TARDIS whirred softly, the lights momentarily dimming. The Doctor and I glanced at the ceiling and although I couldn't understand what the ship was saying, I could feel her. With my one hand still grasping the lip of the console, I could feel the TARDIS vibrate softly as a warm, comforting sensation trailed up my arm and radiated throughout my body.

"What did she say?" asked the Doctor.

I shook my head, my eyes trained on my fingers as I spread them out across the console. "I don't know, but I think she's trying to comfort me."

"I think she has the right idea." The Doctor shuffled closer, her hand resting atop the console just beside my hand, as if she was trying to reach for me, but wasn't confident that she should. "Would you like to go somewhere?"

My eyes traced the outline of the Doctor's smile, then flitted up to meet her gaze. "Where?"

"Anywhere you want to go. Perhaps a distraction would be good for both of us-" Before the Doctor could continue, an alarm sounded and a tiny light began flashing just a few inches above my hand. "Oh, no."

"What's wrong?"

The Doctor moved so her right arm was pressed against my left as she inspected the light. "Something's wrong," she said as she darted around me.

"With the TARDIS?" I asked.

"No." She grabbed the scanner and moved it so that we could both see it, typing something out on the keyboard. A brownish, vaguely disc-shaped object appeared onscreen with a single tower stretching out from the center. "It's the Time Lords. They're releasing them."

I examined the scanner, but didn't understand what the Doctor was talking about. "Releasing what? What is that?"

The Doctor, however, didn't answer me and instead piloted the ship to land inside the object. The location appeared on the scanner and blinked on and off after I requested the information on the keyboard.

"What's Time Station Zenobia II?"

The Doctor was already darting towards the doors before the TARDIS had finished materializing. "It's a Gallifreyan post, a station in the Empusa Cluster. The last time I was here, the Valeyard had manipulated me into appearing for that ridiculous trial of his!" She wrenched the doors open and then stepped outside. "Stop this!"

I hurried after the Time Lady and found myself standing in a brightly lit, silver walled room populated with only two people. One woman clad in green, gold trimmed robes stood near the great window opposite the TARDIS, the vast expanse of space and a multitude of Dalek saucers visible through the glass. Her Gallifreyan collar formed an ominous silhouette against the stunning blackness of space, even as she turned to face myself and the Doctor. The other woman stood at a brown control panel, her copper hair falling over her shoulder in a simple braid where a tan cloak was draped.

"This is obscene," said the Doctor, pointing to the woman in green.

"What's obscene is you bringing another of your humans onboard a Gallifreyan station!" the woman snapped.

Although clearly upset by the woman's remark, the Doctor didn't reproach her for it. "Voltrix, you simply cannot do this. We spent millennia fighting back against those creatures and now you're going to unleash their evil upon the universe again?"

Voltrix, a woman with dark skin and hardened eyes, scowled. "We are unleashing their evil upon the Daleks. I think you'll find there's a subtle difference."

"We'll see how subtle it is when they've bled every galaxy dry."

"The rifts are opening, Councilor," announced the copper-haired woman beside me.

The Councilor looked at the Doctor. "Cardinal Ollistra signed the order herself. This is the only way."

The Doctor shook her head, reaching for Voltrix with an outstretched arm to plead with her. "Please. Please, don't do this. Just listen to me-"

"Save your bleeding hearts for the Shobogans, Doctor." A lightning-white rift cracked open beyond the window, not unlike the cracks in time that had stalked the Doctor's eleventh incarnation. An emerald hand larger than the biggest Dalek saucer emerged from the rift, then another, and the rift was pulled apart. Crawling out from inside the blinding whiteness was an obscene, green monster too large for words. "This time, the Great Vampires are on our side."

The Doctor's face suddenly filled my vision, her eyes wide and terrified. I could feel her fingers wrapping around my biceps. "Get inside the TARDIS. Lock the doors. Don't let anyone or anything in. If I tell you to leave me, then go."

"You want me to just abandon you?"

"If I tell you to, yes! Now get inside!"

The station trembled fiercely as the Vampires roared and ripped the Dalek fleet to pieces. I turned and bolted inside the TARDIS, but didn't lock the doors. (I wasn't exactly sure how to lock them, but I like to think I wouldn't have anyways.) The TARDIS shook and jolted, presumably in tandem with the station itself, and I quickly threw my arms around the closest coral support beam.

At some point, I moved to stand at the console and turned the scanner on so I could safely observe the station. The Doctor and the copper-haired woman were standing at the control panel, frantically typing away at buttons and glass display screens. In the distance, I could make out the pixelated figures of two Jolly Green Giant Vampires as they tore at the station with their clawed hands.

Whirling around to face the TARDIS, the Doctor seemed to look directly at me and she ordered me to take off immediately. My eyes flicked to the window behind her and the two other Time Ladies; the window was already cracked and sparking around the edges. Councilor Voltrix shouted something unintelligible and moments later, a large explosion went off that created a brand new rift, slowly sucking the Vampires back inside.

WARNING: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY OF TIME STATION FAILING, read the flashing announcement in the middle of the scanner. It was quickly replaced by a new warning that said, STATION DEMISE INEVITABLE.

"Doctor!" I yelped, flicking on the external speakers so she could hear me. "Doctor, I think the station's going to blow up!"

"I told you to go!"

"But what about you?"

"I don't matter! Just get out of here!"

Frantically trying to figure out a way to save the Doctor's life and maybe even the other two women fighting to save the station at her side, I grabbed at my hair in frustration. Then I looked at the scanner, watching the Doctor paw at the station console. If I could materialize the TARDIS around her and her cloaked companion, then I could convince the Councilor to join us and we could escape before the station was destroyed, as the scanner continued to remind me with a third, more frantic warning. The only problem was that I didn't know how to get the coordinates.

One of the four multicolored keyboards had a square in the lower corner detailed with arrows pointing in several directions and at first, I thought that perhaps I could use that to narrow in on a part of the screen I wanted to transport to. After several infinitely long seconds of achieving nothing, however, I quickly moved on. If I could lock onto the Doctor's bio-signs instead, then I could still get her inside, but I didn't know how to do that either.

"Dammit, why can I fly you but I can't use you?" I shouted with an added smack against the console.

I flew to the doors, yanked them open, and stumbled outside as the station was rocked again by an unseen explosion. The Doctor started to order me back inside, but I grabbed her by the jacket and hauled her towards me, spinning around at the last second and taking her with me, then using the momentum of my turn to push her inside the ship. I reached for the redhead and pulled her away from the control panel, shoving her in the TARDIS' direction, then started for the Councilor.

Through the chaotic din echoing throughout the station, I thought I heard the Doctor scream my name. I felt something close around my hand as time suddenly seemed to slow. I was pulled backward, my head snapping forward as an arm worked its way around my waist. In an effort to regain my balance, my feet danced around awkwardly and stepped on something that was quickly yanked away, and I fell backward with a cry.

The dusty, grey interior of the TARDIS came in and out of focus above me, and something squirmed beneath me. As my eyes drifted towards my feet, where most of the movement was, I saw a leg shoot out and kick the door shut. The TARDIS shuddered as another explosion sounded just outside the doors.

I was pushed to one side and rolled onto my stomach, watching as the Doctor struggled to her feet and raced for the console. She and the copper-haired Time Lady began pacing around the console as the ship dematerialized. I grunted and pushed myself onto my hands and knees, only to notice that a familiar, golden glow had begun to emanate from my trembling fingers.

I cried out painfully as my limbs froze and folded in on themselves, resulting in me collapsing on the floor of the console room. "Doctor!"

Her boots sounded against the metal floor, but I was gone before she could reach me. I closed my eyes against the tears and the nauseating kaleidoscope effect of the time vortex. My muscles spasmed, my vertebrae locked into place, and my mouth fell open in a silent scream as the glow that had fully encompassed my body pulsated like a distant star.

The vortex winds tugged at my arms and toyed with my legs, tilting me forward so that I was standing straight. A hole opened up where the vortex curved and its horizon disappeared. Through the hole was a three-story house, a flower garden, and a woman sitting by an easel. The vortex propelled me forward and threw me throw the opening, my legs windmilling. I stumbled onto even ground, but wasn't able to stop my legs before I fell flat on my face.

Author's Note: So, I have a surprise for everyone! I'm going to add all of the Titan Comics series into this story! I found a website that has almost all of them and I'm really excited for the ones I'm going to be doing over the next few chapters! You're all welcome to take a guess if you've read any of them.

But please leave me a review! I'd really love to know what you guys thought of this chapter, even if it's just to critique. Sorry for the long wait, but I hope it was worth it!