A/N: this is the last chapter, I'm quite sad.

I have to say that I've only ever actually watched the 3 new series of Doctor Who so if I get any of this stuff wrong I'm really sorry and let me know!

Also I'm really sorry it's taken so long for me to upload, I've been busy!

I don't own Doctor Who.

26/12

After Christmas dinner last night everyone slept very soundly. The result, as usual, of eating and drinking much too much. The Doctor stayed up later than I did, a poker game had got going and they were all very focused. Except for Jack who was trying to flirt his way into seeing everyone's cards. I left the Doctor sitting frowning at his cards, one hand thrust into his pocket and his cracker hat at a rakish angle on his head.

When I woke up at about half three he was sound asleep beside me, fully dressed and still wearing his cracker hat.

There seemed to have been another shift in my dream. I now felt strangely detached as I stood in the crowd. I still felt the pain and the fear and the loneliness but there was something preventing me from reacting to it fully. Almost as if I was fainting, slipping into unconsciousness for some reason.

That was why the Doctor hadn't woken up when I did, I wasn't screaming. I was crying but the detachment that I had experienced in the dream stayed with me meaning I could lie down again next to the Doctor, content that he was there, not needing to wake him up.

After I had calmed myself down a bit I began to go over the dream again in my mind. It was then that I realised something I'd been too terrified to realise before. The eyes with which I saw in the dream weren't mine.

This, naturally, was a bit of a shock. I'd never had a dream where I wasn't really in it before. Perhaps that meant that it was more than a dream?

I mulled it over in my mind for a while but I was too knackered to know what it really meant. This subdued version of the dream had left me relatively calm and I was able to fall asleep and stay that way for a couple of hours more.

I was awoken later, at about eight, by an overexcited and energetic Doctor. I believe I told him to bugger off. For the first time in ages I had managed to get back to sleep and here he was bloody waking me up.

He ignored me, of course, and said that the snow had stuck and that after breakfast he and all my family members under twenty-five and Jack were going to build snowmen and have a snowball fight. Apparently he had woken me up so I wouldn't miss it.

There is something about snow that makes all men go a bit funny. They loose any flicker of chivalry they ever might have had and pelt anything within their vicinity with hard, compact snow. Clearly the Doctor was no different.

My big mistake was opening my eyes and meeting his. They were like two big sparkles of excitement. And it was infectious. That's why, an hour or so later, I was running through the garden, laughing and trying to dodge snowballs. Jack was an annoyingly good shot.

On Boxing Day my family has the unfortunate tradition of walking miles and miles to a pub that may or may not be open. Records show that more often than not it is in fact closed.

This year it was supposed to be a sure thing though. And it was open, when it was finally reached, but me and the Doctor didn't make it that far. We missed the opportunity to see almost my entire family being packed into a convoy of taxis having drunk too much (of course) and leaving it until it was pitch black to decide it was time to go home. Luckily, the children hadn't gone on the walk and were in the care of my Grandfather in front of an idyllic wood fire at home.

After a lunch of bubble and squeak and trifle everyone began to get ready to go out on the walk. The Doctor, however, had been looking at me strangely ever since the excitement of the snowball fight had died down. While everyone else was searching for lost gloves he pulled me to one side. I knew what he wanted before he even opened his mouth.

"Your dream. What happened?"

I explained how it had, yet again, changed and how I had finally realised it wasn't me in the dream. His frown grew heavier with every word I spoke and he was looking seriously worried now.

Somehow, I'm not quite sure what happened, within twenty minutes we were packed and saying our goodbyes and thank yous. My mum was seriously upset about our leaving so suddenly and I think it might be a while before she forgives the Doctor. Jack was staying though so that was some compensation for her.

Hurrying me into the TARDIS the Doctor gave a last wave to my watching family, slammed the doors shut and hurled us into the vortex.

Despite the haste with which we had left the house the Doctor didn't immediately address the situation. He just kept fiddling around with the console thought I got the distinct impression he wasn't concentrating on it.

I watched him for a bit trying to work out what was going on before I decided that enough was enough and asked him. He stood stock still for a moment before turning towards me with an intensely serious expression. Finally he took my hand in a light clasp and led me through the TARDIS's twisting corridors to the library.

Despite my love of books I had only been in this room a couple of times, we were usually too busy, and still found it breathtaking. It had two floors, the second a balcony running all the way around the room with winding metal staircases leading up to it. There were shelves and shelves of bound volumes, only a minority of which were in English and the TARDIS didn't translate them all. The particular musty scent belonging to books pervaded the air.

Leaving me to sink into a chair at the large desk, the Doctor climbed to the second level and disappeared behind a fake panel of shelves. He wasn't moving with his usual energetic, bouncing step but slowly and with consideration. The fact that he hadn't actually said anything since we entered the TARDIS was greatly adding to the mystery of the situation and I was more than a little apprehensive as to where it was leading.

When he returned he was carrying an ornately carved wooden box. He placed it in front of him as he sat down and stared at it for a long minute, apparently trying to work up the courage to open it.

He did, however, and with the words "The girl you saw me with…" passed me a picture.

It was of a young girl, about six or seven. She was looking slightly to the left of the camera, a twinkle of laughter in her deep blue eyes though she was fighting the smile on her lips. In her left hand was clutched a very familiar silver pen-like object with a blue end. The Doctor's sonic screwdriver.

When I looked up to tell him this was definitely the girl from my dream I could see by the expression in his eyes that he already knew. Instead I asked who it was. He told me it was his daughter.

Shock was the most overpowering emotion – though looking back now I'm not entirely sure why. It seems to make sense. Though he and the girl didn't physically look alike there was something about them that linked them to each other. We worked out, well the Doctor explained, that my subconscious had probably made the Doctor in my dream appear in this regeneration so I would understand.

I think I probably should have stopped there. I had found out enough, and the Doctor had remembered enough, for one day. Instead of following this probably wise course of action I said that it still didn't explain with whose eyes I was watching the dream.

He didn't react for the longest time. Just sat, looking at the picture of his lost daughter. Finally he said,

"You were looking at the Time War. The fall of Arcadia to be precise." I could tell he was trying to get into he's usual rhythm of explaining things. "But what you saw wasn't actually what happened. My daughter was much older at the time, had children of her own."

Then he stopped again. It was painful to hear him try so hard to be matter of fact and not cry at the same time. He wasn't looking at the photo anymore but staring unblinkingly at me. He opened his mouth, still seeming to debate over which words to use.

"In the dream, you could see through the eyes of - Rietta. My wife."

Shit. Really not what I expected. I didn't, couldn't speak for ages. After a while he wasn't able to meet my eyes any more. I must have looked so completely incredulous he couldn't bare it. He rummaged in the box again and brought out another picture. I do wonder how long they have been there, and how long he has wanted to show them to someone.

The woman in the picture had pale, pale skin, icy blue eyes and fiery red curls tumbling down her back in ringlets as she looked over her shoulder laughing at whoever was behind the camera. The Doctor, it was probably him. She was beautiful, but also slightly withdrawn, unobtainable.

These images of perfect domestic bliss he had shown me were more alien than anything else I had seen. The idea of him having a family and living somewhere all settled down and domestic (there was no other word for it) was completely unbelievable.

That's when it struck me that it was completely unbelievable. Perhaps, again, I should have stopped. However, I decided that as we had got this far…I asked what had happened.

Turns out Rietta did die at Arcadia, along with so many others, but they weren't together then. The poor, poor Doctor. He was banished from Gallifrey for his morals. He objected to the way other races and other planets were viewed and treated. He had travelled more widely than any other Time Lord and he understood and wanted to help while others were content to watch and rule with true high handedness.

The Doctor was banished and Rietta couldn't bring herself to go with him. She didn't have the Doctor's wanderlust but it was more than that – she couldn't bear to be seen as an outlaw and she didn't believe in his reasons, she was too narrow minded. He was left alone with only his battered outdated TARDIS as company and home. She remarried, a rich, influential, arrogant Gallifreian – everything the Doctor wasn't and stood against – and lived in perfect comfort and harmony until she was killed in the Time War. That was why I felt faint in my dream, she'd been injured.

He never saw her again after she left him.

Though he'd been reluctant to start talking, once he began he found it hard to stop. Grateful that there was someone that he could finally tell this all to. When he had said all there was to say I didn't know how to respond. I'd been holding his hand throughout the whole thing and he had talked, staring at our interlinked fingers. After a long, silent pause I squeezed his hand to get his attention and said the only thing I could think of, and felt foolish immediately afterwards.

"Are you hungry?"

Though he looked a bit startled at first, his face soon relaxed into a smile. He nodded and we left the library and the memories the jostled for the place there, ready to move on.

Mum had given us the left over panettone and, when we reached the kitchen, the Doctor cut to generous slices using the "classic" bread knife the instructions decreed as I made us a cup of tea each. Content not to talk we soon settled in front of the television to watch that utter classic "Some Like It Hot".

The Doctor lay out flat on the sofa, his head resting on my side, and quickly fell asleep. Brushing the hair out of his eyes I realised that I had been relying completely on him for weeks and this was the first time he had relied on me. Travelling as the Doctor's companion you do rely on him from day to day – to talk you out of sticky situations, to use his sonic screwdriver on everything and anything, to grin manically in the face of danger, to show you the most amazing things you could never imagine, to make you a better person just by knowing him – but the past few weeks, or was it months, had been different and I couldn't help feeling we had both changed. His change had been more subtle than mine but it had happened. The past few hours had been intensely important for him, and perhaps even sharing a real family Christmas had helped, but I hope that from now on he would be just a little happier after sharing one of his many painful memories with someone who was more than willing to listen and would try hard to understand and help in anyway. In all the time I've travelled with him this had been the first time he'd opened up to such an extent, every now and again I'd had brief glimpses of his past life, things he'd let slip, but this was far and beyond that. As of yet he hadn't tried to take it back and pretend he hadn't actually said anything.

Smiling slightly at his resilience I turned my attention to the trials and tribulations of Josephine, Daphne and Sugar, content to be with this wonderful man for as long as I was given.

A/N: there that's it, the end - 2457 words as the last chapter. Please please review and tell me if you liked it or if it should be edited or if I've made spelling/grammar mistakes – I do.

I've actually had a bit of an idea for some accompanying one shot things that I'll hopefully put up soon.

If you've actually managed to get this far reading this story – thank you. xxxx