Author's Note: Last chapter. It's been fun to write this and I hope to try my hand at a full-length 2nd Doctor story some time soon. I already have an idea for something, so it's just a matter of seeing if I can pull it off. We'll see...:)

I do not own Doctor Who or any of its characters.

Thank you to everyone who had read/followed/favorited/reviewed this. It is always appreciated. :)

And to aragonite, who I couldn't respond to directly, thank you for your review. :) Two and Six are my Doctors and one of the many things I adore about Two's time on the show was the wonderful affection that was present all the time between him and his companions. I was hoping to bring some of that atmosphere into my fic, so I am thrilled that you have enjoyed it thus far. I hope you will enjoy this last chapter as well.

Chapter Three

Walking along the silent corridors of the TARDIS, Victoria Waterfield wondered if she was still dreaming.


After Jamie had left her in the guest quarters, she stood still in the middle of the room for a few minutes as if she had forgotten what it was she had come here to do. She looked down to see a dress draped over her hands.

'Yes, that's right, I was going to refresh myself and change,' she thought. 'That's what I was supposed to do.'

She sat the dress down onto the bed and walked into a small room that was attached to the one she was in to discover what looked like a washroom, complete with a tub that was sunken into the floor. She bathed and changed, feeling at least marginally better than she had in days afterwards.

Once she was done, she sat down on the bed and opened her small satchel of belongings she managed to hold onto when she was taken to Skaro. She pulled out her hairbrush and ran it along her scalp. She straightened her hair for a few moments before letting the brush fall to the floor and burying her face in her hands.

'Father….'

Tears dribbled out of her eyes as she laid down onto her side. Memories, disjointed and random, filled her mind and she found it impossible to hold onto any particular one of them. Her heart was awash with grief as her recollections of her father flooded her brain like a tidal wave of emotions and thoughts.

Several minutes later, Victoria's tears wound down, leaving her too exhausted to do anything else other than sleep.


Victoria reached over to touch one of the walls. She could feel warmth and energy coursing through the metal which felt unlike anything she had seen in the laboratories where her father and Maxtible had worked. The more time she spent in the TARDIS, the more it seemed like something out of a fairy tale or a dream.

'I wonder where this ship came from,' she mused. 'I suppose it must be from wherever the Doctor is from.'

'But then…where is that?'

Victoria let her hand fall and shook her head. After she had woken up, she felt groggy, her eyes gummy and sore, but her head was a little clearer. She had thought that she would still feel a crippling sorrow, but was surprised to discover that she felt restless more than anything else. Days of being trapped all alone in a series of rooms made her reluctant to stay in this one by herself. She opened the door and walked out, her steps quiet and cautious.

'This place…it's so big. I must make sure to mind where I go or I could be lost. Who knows if the Doctor or Jamie would ever find me.'

Victoria had left the door slightly open to her room and was now walking along the corridor toward the room Jamie had first brought her to with all the clothes. From there she went over to the room that she remembered the young Scot telling her was a sort of kitchen. She was pleasantly surprised to see a plate with a couple of sandwiches on it and a pitcher of water with some glasses on a counter. She poured herself a glass of water and took the plate over to a table that was wedged into a corner opposite of the door.

As she ate and drank, she thought again of the situation she was currently in. She still missed her father and wondered what she would do without him. However, the larger part of her realized that her grief had not consumed her and was surprised by this. It wasn't until she dared to look back on the whole thing, from the very first moment when she first encountered the Daleks and became their prisoner, that it occurred to her that she had subconsciously prepared herself for this possibility all along. The ruthlessness of the Daleks had been evident from the beginning and Victoria hadn't been able to stop herself from believing that she and her father might not escape their clutches with their lives. Thus, the events that did happen felt like fate playing its hand toward an inevitable end.

'Father, I do miss you,' she said to herself. 'I probably always will. I can't see things ever being as happy as they were before. But just as you learned to carry on after Mother died, I shall learn too. I shall not let your great efforts to save my life be in vain.'

With a trembling hand, she finished the water in her glass and pushed the empty plate away from her. She took a couple of deep breaths before standing up and placing the dishes back where she found them. Then she slowly walked back out into the corridor, continuing to study and memorize her path as she strolled along.

She eventually ended up in the control room. She looked around for the Doctor or Jamie, but couldn't see either of them. She studied the panels of instrumentation in front of her for a few moments, marveling at how simple and yet complex they appeared to her.

'The Doctor and Jamie said that all these instruments control our flight through…what was it he said? "The universe of time"? Does that mean we will be traveling to other worlds as well as other times? Oh, I hope that they won't all be like that terrible Dalek planet.'

Victoria shuddered at the prospect of running into more alien races and hoped that they would stay away from anyone from another world. But then she remembered that she was already in the company of an alien after all.

'The Doctor…yes, he is not from Earth either. He does seem like a nice man though and Jamie seems to trust him.'

'But what kind of man exactly is the Doctor?'

Her brow crinkled as she considered this question. She imagined that the Doctor was much like her father in that they both appeared to be scientists with a passion for discovery. But unlike Maxtible, the Doctor did not appear to be a slave to scientific inquiry. He had a moral sense about him that she detected while they were prisoners on Skaro. Perhaps this was what her father respected about him.

'Still, what brings such a man to a place like our world?' she wondered. 'My father and Maxtible may have been able to make amazing scientific breakthroughs in their laboratories, but I'm sure none of them were as astounding as all this. Their discoveries must have seemed like the playtime of toddlers to someone like the Doctor. So, why would he come here to Earth? What could be here that could compare to the wonders that surely exist on his own planet?'

'And why would he choose to travel with people from Earth instead of his own kind?'

Victoria's face grew even more thoughtful as she contemplated this question. While she had been searching for some clothes to wear, she had asked Jamie as politely as she could if he was from another world too. He had smiled and laughed as he assured her that he was from Earth just like her.

However, she was in for another shock when he told her that he was a survivor of the battle of Culloden, a battle she knew had taken place more than a hundred years before she was born.

Her mind had gone back to her history lessons and she remembered reading about the struggle in a book about the Jacobite rebellions. She vaguely recalled that the book had made Culloden seem like a minor skirmish for England, but it soon sunk in that that was not the case for the Highlanders, many of whom were either killed in battle or hanged shortly thereafter. Her remembrance of what she had learned was very dreary and dry, much like the book she had read. But now it saddened her to think that many brave, young men like Jamie died in that battle.

'And Jamie probably would have joined those lost souls if the Doctor hadn't intervened,' she thought. 'He would have been another nameless death within the pages of a history book. How horrible.'

It was then that she realized that it was probable that Jamie was an orphan with no family just like her, his family having been wiped out a series of battles without even a victory to give their deaths meaning. Despite her own bereavement, she felt sadness at the idea that he had lost so much.

'And yet, he seems content,' she pondered. 'At least, he doesn't seem to be unhappy here. The Doctor must have decided to look after him the same way my father asked him to look after me. It does follow given what I've seen from him thus far.'

'But why do such a thing? Why choose to travel with a Highlander from Culloden? What are people like myself or Jamie to someone like the Doctor?'

For a brief moment, she thought that perhaps Jamie was recruited to be a sort of servant or assistant to the Doctor, but she quickly put that idea aside. When she was with them on Skaro, she did note that Jamie seemed to defer to the Doctor, but she did not sense any trace of subservience in the young Scot's demeanor nor did the Doctor act with an air of rigid authority or detachment toward him. Instead there seemed to be something far more personal that was hidden behind a wall of tension between them. That tension, however, could not completely obscure the affection they appeared to have for each other.

'That moment, when the Doctor went through that doorway and pretended to be like one of those monsters…Jamie was so heartbroken. So crushed and defeated. As if he had lost a dear friend. Then when the Doctor came back and freed us and then when we escaped Skaro together, the both of them seemed so relieved and happy to see each other alive and well.'

Victoria sighed and shook her head. She could still sense some uneasiness between the Doctor and Jamie as they made their way to the TARDIS and left Skaro. She worried about what this would mean for the future if that uneasiness turned into a much more severe atmosphere of dissent. She knew that it was not her place to intrude on such private matters, but she hoped that if she talked to each of them, some headway could be made to a resolution.

She went back to exploring the corridors when a glow from farther down the hallway caught her attention. She walked over toward it and gently nudged the door open to find a study with a fireplace ablaze toward the center of the room. Victoria could see the Doctor sitting on the couch. She slowly stepped into the room and walked off to the side to move in front of him. Once she was there, she smiled at what she saw.

The Doctor was slumped down, his head propped against the edge of the couch and his eyes closed. Jamie was on the couch with him, curled up on his side, his head lying on a pillow in the Doctor's lap. One of the Doctor's hands was resting on Jamie's shoulder and both of them were sleeping peacefully. It was clear to Victoria that whatever had been placing such a strain on their camaraderie had been resolved. Now she was catching a glimpse of how things actually were between them.

As she processed this with everything else she had observed between them, Victoria could not decide if their association was one of a mentor and student, a father and son, or of close and steadfast friends. Then it occurred to her that perhaps all of these possibilities were merely different facets that had been woven together into a complex tapestry by threads of fondness and attachment, a tapestry that could only be appreciated as a whole as opposed to trying to unravel it to find its central structure.

Victoria beamed even more. It was such an impossible and absurd idea: a partnership between this enigmatic genius from another world and a piper from the battlefields of Scotland's distant past. But somehow, it also made a perfect sort of sense.

'They belong here,' she mused. 'It may have been chance or providence or accident, but in the end they belong together. And whoever the Doctor may be, it seems his heart makes no distinction between people from his own world and people from places alien to him. '

Victoria covered her mouth with her hand to muffle the soft laugh that escaped her lips. She was happy to discover that the universe now seemed to be full of promise and possibilities instead of just emptiness and isolation. Knowing that it had had room for this unlikely, yet endearing friendship to develop gave her hope that she would also find something more than what her life in Victorian England had left to offer her.

Additionally, she suddenly felt an unexplainable surge of confidence fill her. Something about the way the Doctor and Jamie cared for each other made her believe that each of them would be just as generous with her. Soon, the trepidation she had felt about traveling with them began to dissipate.

'Yes, it will be all right,' she told herself. 'I know that now. Somehow, I just know I can trust myself with these two…and that our travels will be the beginning of something truly special.'

Victoria nodded her head and carefully crept out of the room. Once she was in the corridor, she yawned and decided that some more sleep was in order so she could be ready for whatever happened when they arrived at their next destination. She walked back to her room with a renewed sense of hope in spite of the heaviness she still felt in her heart.

'Yes, I'm sure it will be quite an adventure. And best of all, we shall experience it together.'