Elizabeth struggled to her feet and turned to face the source of the voice. The man's arms and legs looked somehow too big for him, and he was running his fingers through his long brown hair as he looked at her. "That's...not possible. Not even remotely 'oh, 99 times out of a hundred this hatch won't burst open and let a thousand gizka loose on the holo-psycho-graphic manifestation of a planet that's completely ceased to exist' possible." he blurted.
"Where am I?" she panted.
"You don't know? How could you not know? You're the one who came here!" he said, pointing a finger in her face. She slapped it away angrily.
"I didn't mean to come here. I just wanted to go somewhere; ANYwhere, besides that..."
"You don't understand. This place is sealed off from the rest of creation. You need a very special machine to get in here, and there's only one left!" He glared at her. She glared at him. His expression softened. "You don't know. You stand there, completely oblivious to the hundreds, no, thousands, no, MILLIONS of fundamental laws of reality you just broke to come here!"
"Really? And what gives you that idea?" Elizabeth asked sarcastically.
"Okay, yeah, new plan..." he muttered, somewhat taken aback. "Hi, I'm the Doctor!" He held out a hand and beamed. She looked at him in bewilderment. He lowered his hand slightly and explained, "Now you go 'Hi, I'm...' er, whatever your name is, and we shake hands, we talk, we..." She turned and walked away. "Oi! You can't just leave! I mean it; there's nowhere to go! Well, there's lots of places, but you can't get to any of 'em!"
"Want to bet?" she retorted and kept walking.
He ran up from behind and stood in front of her. "All right, look." She folded her arms impatiently. "We may have gotten off on the wrong foot just then, but I mean it. You can't just come in here like that..."
"Why not? It's what I do." She tried to move around him but he blocked her off. "All right, Doctor," she said. "You first. Who are you and where are we?"
"Hey, that's not fair, I asked first." he said.
"I don't care. Where are we?"
"It's...well, it doesn't really exist anymore; this is all from memory. It's my home planet. At least it was, before it-" He made a noise she could only describe as 'boosh' and an equivalent hand gesture.
"Your home planet."
"That's right, yeah."
"You expect me to believe you're some kind of alien?"
"Not if you don't want to. Does make the whole two-hearts thing a bit hard to explain once you take that out of the picture."
"Two hearts?"
"Yup. I'd let you listen, but I left the stethoscope back in the control room."
Elizabeth shook her head. "This is all a bit much to take..."
"Hey, I know. Why don't you answer some of my questions now? I've answered at least thirteen of yours."
She looked for a rock or something to sit on and noticed the dust marks on her dress. She leaned down to brush them away. "Why not? I can already tell we're not in Columbia, so I'm guessing you're not a Comstock man."
"Comstock? Columbia? Who are they?" he asked.
"Not who, what. At least Columbia. Though I'm pretty sure Comstock would qualify as a what too, now I think of it."
"Oi, focus! Rambling's my business. It's my life, actually." the Doctor said.
"Sorry," she apologized, not quite sure if she meant it. "I've had a rough couple days. There's nothing like having a sadistic surgeon treat you to some primitive electroshock therapy to try and make you a better slave, only to have the man you spent five months waiting for come in and rescue you and die several hours later. Not to mention discoveringyour true nature as a reality-hopping bastard, and the man you watched bleed out in front of you was actually your father who sold you to a religious psychopath in order to pay off his gambling debts." She had been pacing back and forth restlessly as she said this, and stopped in front of the now rather awestruck Doctor. "That answer your question?"
"Nnno, actually. Just raises more. Look, do you think you could start at the beginning?"
She sighs. "Not like I have anything else to do..."
Several minutes and explanations later, Elizabeth was now trapped in a hug from the Doctor, who kept muttering 'I'm sorry, I am so sorry' over and over in various permutations. "It's not your fault," she offered weakly. "It's not as though you were there."
"I could've been." he said as he pulled away. "I could've stopped those Luteces from damaging reality like they did."
"What's done is done." she said before mentally kicking herself for quoting them. "Can I ask a question now?"
"Sure. Fine. Whatever you like." he said instantly.
"Where are we?"
"Ah!" He offered his arm, which she took with some trepidation. "It's a partial replication of the planet of the Time Lords, based on my own memory-patterns and sculpted into a semirealistic representation by the TARDIS herself. I say semirealistic, because as big as the TARDIS is, she's not quite up to holding a planet inside her. Not all at once. Least not with all the other stuff running as normal. Basically..." They'd reached the top of a hill and he paused to watch her reaction. "This is Gallifrey."
The Citadel of the Time Lords towered before them, encased in a massive glass bubble (although Elizabeth was sure it was fancier than glass). The burnt-orange sky and the rust-colored soil contrasted harmoniously with the blue of her dress. The fields of red grass stretched for miles upon miles, and the silver-leaved forest caught the morning light just so, so that it looked as though it was ablaze.
Elizabeth was speechless, breathless, gazing in unceasing wonder at the sights of the Doctor's home. He smiled in the way old men smile when remembering times long past, as indeed he was. "Like I said, it doesn't really exist anymore. It burned in the heat of the Moment. I come here to think, you know, to get away from it all. You can stay here if you like, unless there's somewhere you need to be..."
"Not anymore." she murmured.
They stood there, side-by-side, watching his memories, until time was rewritten and she was gone.
