After that day, the Doctor started to travel again. He hopped through time and space, adventuring on distant planets and taking Alice with him as his companion. He had decided that it was time for her to see the universe; he tried to protect her from all the horrors that lay within it, but Alice was no mere child. While she stubbornly maintained that she was human, she had powers beyond any mere mortal. She could sense the thoughts and feelings of others, and she could hear the heartbeat of any living organism. Not only that, she could see the innermost desires of any person and capture them in drawings she called "heart pictures." She also possessed an understanding of the world that matched or even surpassed the Doctor's, and yet she'd seen barely a fraction of the universe. The Doctor was mystified. He had traveled the universe for hundreds of years and yet he'd never encountered anything like her.
As the years passed, the Doctor began to worry. He wasn't getting any closer to solving the mystery of Alice, and to make matters worse, she was starting to get recognized. People across the universe were beginning to talk about the man with the blue box and the strange, white-haired girl who seemed to carry wisdom and knowledge beyond her years. The Doctor didn't want rumors of Alice flying across the stars; it made him uneasy. Someone like Alice could easily be turned into a weapon or manipulated to serve a selfish being. In spite of himself, the Doctor had grown to care for Alice. For the first time, he began to question the very nature of his lifestyle and the effect it had on those he took with him. Though Alice was very alien, she was still a child, and the Doctor's nomadic jaunt through space was not fit for children. With Alice fast approaching what would be adulthood for humans, the Doctor wondered if he had made the right decision when he had given her a name and whisked her away through space.
###
"Alice?"
"Come in."
The Doctor pushed Alice's bedroom door open and wondered at his feeling of trepidation. He had kicked down countless doors before without a second thought, and had no problem parking his TARDIS in the middle of various girls' bedrooms, yet the thought of entering Alice's room made him nervous. She was a strange, solitary creature; her room was where she went for absolute privacy, and the Doctor knew not to violate that unless it was an emergency.
The Doctor tried not to gasp as he entered the room. Alice's walls were covered with her heart pictures. Some of her musings were tacked alongside them. The wall above her bed was nearly covered by a giant drawing of a star whale, scribbled in a rainbow of colors and spanning dozens of sheets of paper. Bits of paper and broken pencils were scattered across her floor.
Alice was sitting up in bed, book in hand.
"Is something wrong?" she asked. The Doctor sighed and scratched his head, unsure of where to begin.
"Alice...do you like traveling with me?"
"Of course! It's wonderful. There's so many places to go and cultures to learn about…I could do it forever."
"I just…I don't know if it's right for you." The Doctor pulled up a chair from Alice's desk and sat down. "I mean, we don't know what you are…and people could use that. They could hurt you and manipulate you for their own ends." He stopped, realizing that he was confessing his fears to her. He was supposed to be the authority figure, and yet he was talking to her like an equal. She had the appearance of a child, but her presence and manner of speaking made him forget how young she was. This unnerved him, but he pushed it aside and continued speaking.
"Alice, this is a dangerous life…and I think it would be better for you if you stopped traveling with me. There are people I know, on Earth, who could keep you safe and help you find out who you are. You should stay with them."
"Doctor, I am safe."
"Alice…"
"I am. You keep me safe."
The Doctor sighed. They all think I'm safe, he thought bitterly. They all want to travel with me forever and nothing I say can make them see that I'm not…I'm just not.
"I can try. I can try to keep all the aliens in the universe from tearing you apart but I can't keep you safe. Not from this box…not from myself."
Alice's eyes narrowed and the Doctor felt her gaze burning into him.
"You've done terrible things. You've destroyed races, taken lives…broken hearts. You change the course of every life you touch forever, and not always for the best. You are dangerous, but you're a good man, and I wouldn't feel as safe with anyone else. I know, Doctor. But I trust you with my life."
The Doctor looked down and rubbed his hands across his face.
"I don't want anything to happen to you," he said in a low voice. "Not because of me. I can't…"
"Doctor, I want to stay with you. I don't belong anywhere else."
At that moment, the Doctor looked up and caught sight of a picture on the table next to Alice's bed. It was a drawing of him, but it wasn't a heart picture. It was the crude artwork of a five-year-old; the Doctor stood on grass that was little more than a jagged green line, holding his sonic screwdriver and wearing a confident smile. Underneath in blue crayon, Alice had printed "Dad."
The Doctor stared in shock for a few moments and swallowed. It hurt so badly. He stood up.
"Alice," he said, trying to keep his voice steady, "You have until you turn twenty-one. Then I'm taking you to Earth."
"Of course," Alice said matter-of-factly. "But why twenty-one?"
"My—the people I know on Earth are a bit…hard-edged," the Doctor said carefully. "I want you be more mature before you stay with them." His eyes fell on the drawing of him, and he wondered if he was making the right choice.
"Doctor—"
"Just trust me." With that, he left her and went back to the TARDIS's front room.
The Doctor ran his hands over the TARDIS's controls. He felt the familiar knobs and switches under his fingers and tried to convince himself he was right. The Torchwood team might not be the friendliest people, but they're safe, he told himself. That's all that matters. Jack will take care of her. He has to. The Doctor closed his eyes and bowed his head as he rubbed a switch between his fingers.
It's not going to happen to her.
