Notes: I like this bit. Trifle experimental, like the fic at large, but I think it works very well (better than the fic as a whole). Clearly I could be wrong. But even if I am, I think I'll still like it.

Also, I apologize for the fact that there are four epilogues. It is probably excessive. You can skip the second one if you like.

-

Her mind is Tiffany-twisted

The most hideous aspect of the Time War, she thought, was its uneven devastation. Some planets had been burned. Some wiped from history. Some blown up, some left entirely alone.

Hers was one of the ones that had been burned manually. Which was how she was able to find one of her family's accountants on Carpathia VII and use a portion of the meagre funds left to the Ynn'ai royal house to buy herself a timeship, black and sleek.

It didn't have the space of the TARDIS, she had to admit, but it was understandable, far less tempernmental, and, most pivotal of all, didn't come with its occupants. And it could take her anywhere she could ever want to go.

Even her planet's past-- but she couldn't think about that yet.

The Time War had decreased her family's financial reserve dramatically, but she still had enough to make a few wise and temporally illegal investments, and enough soon after that to buy all the trappings of nobility. The newsfeeds snapped up her story the second she covertly leaked it, and it was as easy as that-- lost princess of the mysteriously-vanished Ynn'ai empire, launched into the social circles of the entire galaxy.

In an "exclusive" interview, she explained that she didn't know what had happened to her planet-- just knew that she'd woken up in a small capsule, flying away from all she'd ever known. She'd been picked up by strangers, and had finally been able to get back on her feet, just wanting to live her life as normally as she could.

Oh, how the media loved it. She'd become their darling in an instant, the tragic poor-little-rich-girl story that everyone so loved to hear.

She reminded herself that this was what she had wanted. Some mornings, she couldn't quite remember why.

Everywhere she went, she asked about the Doctor. Oh, not at first-- sometimes it would be on the second or fifth visit, always slipped casually into a long list of polite topics so that most people didn't even remember she'd asked.

And oh, did she hear stories. Meddler, saviour, jester, ruination, simply a catalyst that walked into a situation, turned it upside-down and shook it, then walked right back out while the pieces settled.

She still wasn't sure what to think, but one thing had been made painfully clear: the Doctor did not create the cataclysms he walked into. Most of the time, he even averted them-- or ameliorated them, more usually. That was the same in every story; it was impossible to deny.

One night at a cocktail party, she met a drunken grad student who was going on and on about his dissertation. She was about to walk away-- what the hell did she care about a Great and Bountiful Human Empire, especially as it patently wasn't either?-- when she heard another word she couldn't ignore.

"--then the bloody Daleks came and brainwashed--"

"Wait. Daleks?" she said, grabbing the grad student's sleeve to steady him. "They say the Daleks are a myth."

"They are," said the grad student. "They couldn't have been real Daleks, of course. Those never existed. These just called themselves Daleks."

"How d'you know they weren't Daleks if they said they were?"

"Same as if they said they were vampires. I'm not that stupid."

She could've pointed out a dozen flaws in his logic, but it would be counterproductive. "What did they do?"

"Well, first, they subjugated our entire planet through television for like, five hundred years."

"How can a planet be subjugated through television?"

"Well, where else d'you get the news? Every household was required by law to buy a television and keep it on; the punishment was death. There wasn't any news, 'cept what they gave us: they told us we couldn't go outside, 'cos most days, it'd kill us. Maybe that was partly true, but what they did was make us all completely dependent on it. An' then they made the Gamestation."

"Gamestation?"

"Where they shot the programmes. All parodies of earlier stuff, 'cept when you lost, you died. Except you didn't die, not really; they just took you an' stole your genetic material an' such and then you were dead. Nobody knew that, of course. They didn't think they were prisoners. If they did, they never knew it was an alien race behind it. Until they came to Earth."

"And then?"

"They burned the whole planet," he said, bleakly. "From orbit. Changed the very continents. Killed ninety-five percent of the world's population in one swoop. Ghastly, it was. And it's never in the textbooks! It has to be recognized that--"

"But what happened?" she asked, before he could go off on another damned tangent about his dissertation.

"Bah. The only witnesses are the same idiots who said there were Daleks." He waved a hand dismissively. "Something stopped them. They said it was the Doctor. That old myth. Gets blamed for everything. What I can tell you is, no one knows. No one knows! No one even does research on it! They're all, 'oh, it's too terracentric, it's passe, it's not multicultural enough, why don't you write your paper on the Klaxiar Invasion?' But it's important! Our civilization nearly died, an' they just want to ignore it 'cos it was our planet and not someone else's!"

"But-- why would the Daleks destroy the whole planet?" she said. "There has to be a reason. There has to be something you-- they thought you did."

"Oh, you mean besides sit peacefully an' be enslaved by 'em for half a millenium? Nothing. We didn't do a damned thing to 'em. Never met 'em before, never declared a war, never encroached on their territory, never did anything. That's probably why the survivors insisted they were Daleks. Still clinging to myth after a traumatic experience. The Doctor, the ultimate intercessor, as their saviour; the Daleks, the ultimate senseless evil, as their enemy. Quite understandable, really."

"What do you mean, about the Daleks?" she asked. "No race could really be so violent without any provocation, could they?"

"Of course not. That's how we know they're a myth." He waved a hand dismissively. "An entire race, bent on destroying every other living thing in the universe... odd how the myth has developed on so many different planets. I suppose it's an instinct, a universal nightmare of evil..."

"The Daleks were... evil, then?" she asked.

"In all the legends, yes. Every single one. Exterminators, without mercy or compassion. Lucky for us they're not real."

"But it's... impossible. Impossible for anyone to be so..."

"An entire race? No. But you know individuals can become abberant like that. It's happened many times before. Don't you remember?"

"...Of course," she said, and let him prattle on.

He didn't notice she wasn't paying attention anymore. No one ever did.

Because in the places she was living, other people didn't matter. All that mattered was your title, was your name.

Be a pretty little automaton; attend this ball; wear this dress; when you're ruler you can let the judges do this for you. The system's there to take care of the people. You're there to uphold our planet's reputation and pride.

"Tradition's been slowly strangling you all your life, but you don't know what else you have."

"And if taking the blame would help you..."

She wasn't sure she could hate him anymore.

But she was starting to realize she kind of hated herself.

And the evidence was piling up on the Doctor's side, wasn't it? All the stories about him and the myths about the Daleks and the fact that he had escaped the final judgment of her people--

--which was impossible-- unless--

--it actually happened-- not to be his fault.

She saw the more speculative stories the tabloid-channels ran about her link to the fate of Ynn'ai when the ratings dropped. She had learned the last one standing got the blame.

And maybe-- maybe that wasn't fair.

Maybe she'd been a fool, a fool of fools.

She visited the king's nephew (and heir; her standards weren't that low) on Lyria; he was much more professorial than she'd expected. She'd been sitting in his office and siping some juice when he'd asked her, "What's your name?"

And she realized she didn't know quite what to answer. S'minia, 'Preserver of light'. K'arta, 'heir'. A'mini thi Kara thi Allana-Ynn'ai, 'Protector and Grand Leader of the Great-Destinied Ynn'ai'. Fury and Avenger. By Allana thrice-sainted, even Reinette meant 'Little Queen'.

She'd never had a name, she realized. All she'd ever had were titles.

She didn't want that anymore.

When the salesman had told her she didn't really need the transdimensional stabilization system if she was only going to be jumping between planets, she'd inisted on having it installed anyway. "Just in case," she'd said. "You never know what might happen. Better to be safe."

A vile lie. She cared nothing about safety.

And truthfully? She didn't care about society, either. She'd tried to recreate her old life, her old role-- the rich it-girl who knew all the right people, went to all the right parties, took all the right pills-- but her old life was dead and gone, and if it was time for her to face the truth, she'd never liked her old life in the first place.

And she was free of tradition.

It was terrifying and painful and felt like a betrayal, but she was free.

And she wanted to go somewhere where nobody knew her name. She wanted to see the universe, see what life was really like, learn the truth the hard way, by going out with the people who were living it.

Sweet Alanna Intercessor, she wanted to be like the Doctor. Except perhaps with fewer catastrophes and less running down corridors. Allana all-holy, the cosmic catalyst had changed her like he changed every single thing else.

And impossibility of impossibilities, she liked it.

She sat down in the pilot's seat, and it felt rather like hope. To be the representative and reputation and pride of our whole planet, a more solemn responsibility now there's no one else to speak for us... I don't know if I can do that, but I have to try. And to be popular in the parties of the pampered-- that's no memorial. That's not something our people would be proud of. They would want more from us. They probably always did.

I failed them then, but I won't fail them now. I'm older and wiser, and I shall represent the dead with honor, by doing the best I can. By doing something even vaguely important... Something even vaguely worthwhile.

"Destination?" the computer asked politely, in its deep, warm voice.

She hesitated once more, then plugged in the randomizer. "Out to find a name."

"Very good, ma'am," said the computer.

The engines hummed--

Not too late to stop this, to come to your senses--

And she made her leap of faith.

Ynn'ai is dead. Long live Ynn'ai!

(-)