~revised~

Chapter VII

Doctor

He had stayed in the console room whilst Mira and Rose had gone to their rooms to get some sleep.

Tending to his ship and spending some time at looking at the stars. The sight of the stars and the beauty of the universe never got old. Eventually he found himself slightly bored so he went to the library, thinking about humans and their silly need for sleep. He was all the more surprised at finding Mira sitting in in of the arm-chairs, reading The Mountains of Madness from H. P. Lovecraft. She looked up as he entered, smiling her Mona-Lisa smile at him.

"Trouble sleeping?" he asked as he sat in a chair opposite to hers.

"No", she answered and put the book on the table next to her. "I have slept, had been almost six hours or so..."

"That's not much for humans," he replied. "Well, at least not for humans from this universe."

She just looked at him for a while, making him wonder once more what was going on in her head.

"You don't sleep that much either, do you?" she broke the silence.

"Nah, have slept recently, must be enough for a while now. Lovecraft then? Met him once. Wasn't half as weird as you would expect from his writings."

"I haven't read it in a while," she answered. "I didn't expect to find his books here. One more thing in common between these two universes. Just as if they had been the same until a certain, rather recent point in time. Recent from Rose's point of view at least."

He waited for her to continue, to explain herself, helping him make sense of all the hints she had dropped so far. But nothing. She just sat there in silence.

"Who are you?" he finally asked. He just couldn't help himself. He loved a good mystery, he really did. But this was different. As if it was staring him right in the face and he was constantly failing to see it. He just had to know. Now.

She looked at him in confusion for a moment, before returning to her usual, inscrutable self, albeit slightly more serious. "I told you. I am Mira Rhodan. Human. Major Rhodan, for you were right about the milita-"

"No", he interrupted her quietly, all airiness gone from his voice. "I want to know who you are."

He looked her up and down, waiting for her to say something. Her hair was falling loose in long, shiny waves. He hadn't realised until now how long it was. She was dressed in black again, but not in her uniform-jacket this time, instead she wore a black cardigan. She sat with her legs folded on the armchair - barefooted, he noticed. She looked utterly out of place and at the same time she didn't. Just as if she did exactly belong in here. He couldn't explain it – it was an utter contradiction, but that was how he felt when looking at her. She would have looked like that no matter what, it suddenly struck him. She looked so oddly distinct, in an out-of-place sense of meaning, that she would have fitted in anywhere, without anyone wondering about it. Which made even less sense the more he thought about.

"You already know, don't you?" she finally replied, her voice soft and gentle.

"Have we met before?" he asked, slightly startled. It was not impossible that she had met him before, but... "I might have looked different. Really different. Like another man, literally," he added.

"No. I would remember, trust me. I have never met anyone of your kind, as I said before." She brushed a strain of hair out of her face. "But you really are a bit blind to the obvious sometimes, aren't you?"

Was she teasing him now?

"Mira, don't." he said, with more seriousness than he had intended to.

"Or what?" she replied, the same seriousness in her voice now. But she still seemed to be a bit nervous as he could see that hands slightly shaking now. "Well, I guess it's your turn this time," she added a moment later, before he could think about an answer.

"What!?" All right, this was going to get really bizarre. Not that he had never been dumbfounded by a human before, but this was absolutely going into the wrong direction.

"Now you tell me what you see. Because I think you also see a lot more than meets the eye when you look at someone, Timelord."

"I-"

"Just one thing: No mind reading."

"What? Why?" he asked, a bit taken aback. He hadn't even planned on doing that, had he? Or had he? All right, maybe it had crossed his mind for a second. But only because she seemed to be so casual about it.

"Because that's cheating," she said, one brow arched, with a lop-sided smile.

"How is that cheating?"

"Because I wasn't in your head."

"Fine. But you asked for it!" he repeated her words from earlier on.

She didn't reply, just looked him straight in the eyes. All right. Somehow he had brought this upon himself, he thought. He slowly started to lower the barriers he had build around some of his senses. He did that to block out a lot of the input he would normally get – knowing too much made things a bit boring. He instead preferred to get surprised occasionally. It was much more exciting this way. First thing he realised was that he still couldn't see much when it came to her timeline. But there was something else now that he focused on her, all his senses open. Something subtle... She was still holding his gaze, and just, all of a sudden, he could see it, as it was forming right in front of his mind's eye.

"I... How...?" he stuttered. Now he was struggling to put his impressions into words. "But that's not possible. Just not possible." He shook his head. There was a hint of eternity about her, of stability in time, but it was not as if she was some sort of... fixed point. Not like Jack. And yet she somehow seemed to be a constant in time. She raised an eyebrow, as if she was inviting him to speak it out. He was still glancing into her eyes. Old eyes. Almost ancient.

"You are...somehow frozen in time," he finally said. "But on the other hand, not a fixed point in time. That's-"

"A very unique way of putting it," she said quietly. "Actually I have never heard it like that before."

"You can't be immortal. That's just not possible."

"You've seen it and yet you still can't believe it?" She smiled sadly.

He stood up, walked a few steps back and turned to her again, running his hand through his hair. "Can't be. You're not a-"

"..fixed point, whatever that means, although I think I know. Got it. Frozen puts it quite right though. I haven't changed for a very long time. And I won't till the day I die. Basically I could stay like that forever. But I still can die, just not of old age."

"How?" he asked flatly. Humans had always searched for a way to trick death, trick the passing of time itself. But it just wasn't meant to be. Everything was changing, and changing also meant death and decay. Making room for something new. How could she exist so outside of all this? And yet, at the same time, she didn't, in all her human vulnerability. He looked down at the strange pendant she was wearing.

She pulled it out from under her shirt. "Superior technology," she answered. "Not human technology, obviously. Emits a higher dimensional radiation, regenerating and repairing cells, neutralizing toxins, viruses, bacteria and so on. So if you ever want to see me dead, you should rather go for a knife than for poison."

"Why would I want that?" he asked, still a bit in shock about what he had just discovered.

"Don't know? Maybe because I can be really annoying sometimes? You wouldn't be the first, actually. People have tried it before."

"Where did you get it from?"

"That is a long story," she sighed. "But, long story short: It's from higher entities, probably as old as the universe itself. If you can put it like that for someone not really being part of my universe. They exist outside of it. I don't know if they have something like time there. But they do have plans of their own. But don't ask me about their motivations. I don't think anyone but them will be able to fully comprehend them."

"And you are the only one being...?" he still found it hard to say it.

"Immortal? There are a few more." She suddenly looked sad. Now he knew why this sadness had seemed so strangely familiar to him, earlier at dinner at the Torchwood Estate. It was the sadness of constant loss. Of not being able to really share your life with someone.

"Don't you people kill each other over these things?" he wondered as he was reaching out with his hand, and after a slight nod from her, he bend down in front of her and touched it. It felt warm from her skin, and there were gentle, pulsating waves floating through his hand. So soft he could hardly feel them at all. He had a closer look, but it was rather unspectacular. Seamless, small, egg-shaped and silver, made of a material he had never seen before. He had already touched it earlier on, he had to admit. Just couldn't resist. Back then the pulses had been a lot stronger. Maybe due to the fact that she was injured.

"They do. But this one is calibrated. There is a certain frequency, specific to ones cells, unique like a fingerprint. Won't work on someone else. At least not in a good way."

He pulled back his hand as if he had burned it, and got back up on his feet.

"Don't worry," she chuckled. "Just touching it won't do you any harm."

He sat down in his chair again, staring at her indecisively, brows furrowed. That was wrong, in so many ways and he knew it, if only from a strictly logical point of view. He expected to feel repulsed by it, repulsed by her, but he didn't, it didn't feel even wrong. She didn't feel wrong.

"So, tell me then, how old are you really?" he finally asked.

"Something between thirteen-hundred and fifteen-hundred years. I'm afraid I lost track a bit."

Despite everything he had heard so far, this really hit him. It was not so much the fact that she was around for longer than he himself. He was a Time Lord. His people were naturally long-lived, so being nine hundred six-years was considered pretty normal. But she was human. They're not supposed to live much longer than maybe hundred fifty-years, at most. And considering that someone had been living through fifteen-hundred years of most likely more than turbulent human history, having literally an indefinite amount of time at her hands, without the constant thread of sickness, weakness and dying, was incredible. (Well, she obviously could still die by accident, but that could happen to anyone at any time and was normally not a thing humans thought about too much)

The implications began to fully dawn on him. The very thing that had driven evolution, not only of humanity but mostly every species, was the drive to avoid suffering, to leave something behind, to make an impact before it was too late. The constant threat looming over every living being to run out of time before they had achieved their goals, whatever they might be. All that had been taken from her. She didn't age, she wouldn't get too old or weak, and there was no real reason to achieve some form of immortality by leaving behind some form of legacy as she could theoretically live forever. What had that done to her? How had it changed her? He didn't envy her. Not for a single second. He didn't know yet if it had all been her choice, or if she had been forced into it, but the price clearly was way to high for him.

"Say something. Or at least, stop staring at me like that," she said in a voice that sounded a bit thin. Was that fear?

"I... Like what?"

"Like.. You're not sure what to make of it? I don't know. That's the problem. I'm not too good at reading facial expressions, I've always relied more on empathy. When that's not working I tend to be a bit lost. And right now, I just can't deal with that," she admitted bluntly and so honest, that he couldn't help but feeling captivated by it.


Mira

To say the situation was intense would have been an understatement. She didn't think she had ever been confronted with who and what she was like that before. It was common knowledge in her universe, everyone knew about their small circle of relatively immortal people. There even had been a galactic paper chase for the twenty-five cell activators scattered by It at some point. Those twenty-five and the three calibrated ones who belonged to her father, Atlan and herself were all there were, at least as far as she knew. Her father had been on the stage of galactic politics for centuries. People just knew it. She had actually never bin in a position to explain herself like this.

And now she was waiting for him to say something as if awaiting judgement. She clutched her hands in an attempt to disguise that they were shaking. She had always started to shake quite badly when she was agitated in any way. Be it nervous, angry, or whatever. And she had always hated to give herself away with it. Of course she had managed to get herself more under control over the years and with all the things she had gone through. But after all, she was still human and in situations like that her nerves still got the better of her. But, besides that, she doubted that she could really hide anything from him at all. He definitely had a tendency to overlook things right in front of him, but probably only because he was always thinking three steps ahead and about at least ten other, totally unrelated things at the same time. And with that much information one simply missed things every now and then. She knew it from her own experience, if not to that extend. Whilst sorting out all that information some possibly important things happened to slip through every now and then, only to be stored away for later. But it wasn't the obvious things that worried her. She got a feeling he very well noticed a lot of not so obvious and not even important things, only to piece them together and then come up with some incredible, in depth conclusion telling her things about herself she hadn't even worked out so far.

He was still just looking at her, leaving her slightly scared. After everything she had seen, his ship, the way he stated that he could see time, she just knew there was a lot about him she didn't know. He seemed to genuinely care about others, but who knew what was lurking beneath the surface. She had just started to grasp the full implications of the things she did know about him. The TARDIS alone, flying through time as it was her everyday business, and built based on a principle she would probably never be able to comprehend, was so way above anything she had encountered so far. Of course they had once had a time machine of their own. But this had been absolutely primitive compared to the TARDIS. At another time they had met a species who was able to calculate up to the seventh dimension just using their brains. It was save to say she had seen her fair share of impossible things, but it obviously hadn't been the end of the line yet. Now she had met him. With a time machine based on principles that definitely required some hire dimensional mathematics and he was talking about it as casually as if it was basic multiplication. How much power did he hold in his hands? How did he deal with it? So far pretty well, but she doubted she had seen more than maybe five percent of him yet.

Finally rescue came from an unexpected direction. Rose. But she also spared the Doctor finally having to give her an answer.

"Morning," the young girl said, the smile slowly fading from her face. She wasn't that happy to see Mira sitting here with the Doctor, that much was obvious.

Another topic she knew she had to deal with sooner or later. Her first evaluation of Rose hadn't changed much, but now she knew about a few more of her personality traits. She had clearly felt the jealousy that had come from Rose several times whilst they had been at the Torchwood Estate. It had been a bit over the top, but on the other hand, she was still young. And everyone had their flaws. Mira of all people knew that, she herself not being an exception at all. So, Rose had a few jealousy-issues, could have been worse, couldn't it?

"Morning!" the Doctor echoed with a smile, but she could clearly see that the recent topic was still on his mind.

"Morning", she fell in.

"What were ya talking about?" Rose asked, still a bit sleepy, whilst letting herself fall onto the couch.

"Books," Mira said almost instantly, even before she herself knew what she was saying, pointing at the book on the table.

"Oh," Rose replied and yawned, before eyeing Mira suspiciously for a few moments. "You said you're psychic. What did you mean? You're not some sort of mind-reader?" she asked with a nervous smile.

"Uhm. No. No mind reading. I'm an empath", Mira answered. Well, that topic had to come up sooner or later. She just wished she had an idea what humans in this universe knew about these things. Probably not much.

"What is that? I mean, empathy is something that everyone has, more or less, isn't it?"

"Yes. But it's a bit different."

"It is a bit like mind reading," the Doctor fell in, clearly in his element now. "You're just not reading actual thoughts, but emotions. The principle is pretty much the same. Instead of hearing thoughts in your head, you feel the emotions. I might almost say that it is more than telepathy. Well, I mean, it is clearly more honest, although less accurate. Hiding your true thoughts is easier than feeling something else. You can think about pink elephants but not force yourself not to be afraid or angry any more. And I'd say it's even more difficult to deal with than telepathy. Well, as long as you're not part of a psychic species. I wonder how you manage not to get crazy amongst a species as emotional as humans are. And even more so if the strength of your abilities is rather on the upper end of the scale. Meaning, for a human. Overall it is still rather low le-"

"Thanks," Mira cut him off with a fake smile. Rose just looked back and forth at them, confusion on her face. "What he meant to say was: When someone near me gets angry, I feel angry myself. I can even say from which direction it is coming. It's a bit like a wave. It even works if I can't actually see the the person. Just like the werewolf in the other room." She looked at Rose, who was far from being reassured. "It's nothing to worry about. I really can't look inside your head. And I give it my best to ignore it most of the times, because it's just none of my business."

"You... You did know about that?" Rose asked the Doctor.

"Well... Actually..," he said, scratching the back of his neck. "Yes. Hard to overlook when you scan someone's head. She took quite a bump to it when her ship blew up."

"So, and when did you plan to tell me? I mean, as long as we travel together now..," Rose asked slightly miffed.

"Rose," Mira said with a sigh. "I'm sorry. I should have told you. I just forgot it, sort of. See, where I come from it's not exactly a secret. And there's something else." She decided to go for total honesty know. It would come out sooner or later anyway as she was kindly allowed to stay here in the TARDIS (At least she hoped that still was the case; the Doctor hadn't really said anything to the latest revelations), Rose had a right to know. Otherwise it would get really awkward really soon. Plus, the young girl seemed quite able to handle a lot of things, like time-travelling aliens, to begin with. So no need in lying just to protect her.

"What?" Rose asked.

Mira caught the look the Doctor gave her, but she didn't care. This was between her and Rose and as for that it was non of his business what she was going to tell her or not.

"Well... I'm old. Much older than I look..."

Rose shook her head, clearly not understanding where this was heading.

"Something over thirteen-hundred years. Where I come from, there are about twenty or so people who live for a really long time. Like, forever. Until we die by accident or someone kills us. I happen to be one of them."

Rose said nothing. For a long moment all three of them were quiet, the Doctor rubbing one of his eyes, whilst Mira was just looking at Rose. The girl went through all kinds of feelings, from disbelief over repulsion and embarrassment to finally something like curiosity.

"But... you're human, aren't you?"

"I am as human as you are. It's just all about this thing," Mira answered, putting a hand on her pendant. "Without it I won't make it for longer than about sixty hours at most." Yeah, go on, expose your weaknesses, she thought. But she couldn't see how Rose could become a threat to her. "So, that is basically all there is to know," she continued. "My 'secrets' and my weak spot. And I really plan to stay only until I'll find a way back or the both of you don't want me here any more. But I really hope we can get along with each other somehow"

That was all she could say to Rose without admitting that she knew exactly what Rose's feelings were and to embarrass her even further. She wanted to tell her that she was no threat to her at all, that she would never get between her and the Doctor. In fact, she had once been in a similar situation. She had had a crush on Atlan, one of her father's oldest friends, pretty much from the moment she had first seen him. She had been around the same age as Rose was now. Atlan was from Arkon, so an alien as well, and so much older and more experienced, and witty, and sarcastic, and charming – and pretty handsome. She definitely could put herself in Rose's shoes. But telling her that now would have gone too far. Rose needed time to digest what she had just heard. Above all telling Rose from her own experiences and giving her unsolicited advice seemed slightly patronising to her.

She herself couldn't stand being treated like that and so she didn't want to behave like that to anyone else. Even though she might see her younger self a little bit in Rose. After all, she wasn't her mother - nor her best friend.

"Oh, why wouldn't we?" the Doctor said. "Of course you can stay!"

A whole bunch of rocks fell from Mira's heart. At least he wasn't so shocked that he would drop er on the nearest planet.

"Yeah. I guess so..," Rose finally said.

"Thank you. Really." Mira said. "And I guess I better make myself useful. What about breakfast? You do have some sort of kitchen or food storage?" She hadn't seen where they had gotten the chips from.

"Yeah, out of the library, left, down the corridor, than right, third corridor left again, right, second door on the left," he answered.

"Uhm, good. If you don't find me there later, be so kind and search for me," she said and outright fled from the library. But at least this topic was done now, or she hoped.


alwaytherereading: I'm glad you like her :-) I had her in my head for a while now, and as soon as i discovered Dr. Who I wanted to "throw" her at him. ;-) I'm not sure if Perry Rhodan is translated into English, but I think it is. It's from Germany, only published as books and there has been a new issue every week since the 60s, so it's quite long running. (There has been a movie once, but it is really not good in my opinion and doesn't do it justice in any way)