Wow. Over fifty reviews... wow. You guys are truly awesome.

Anyway, this is a bit more serious than usual. You don't really need to know the Gallifrey audio plays to get this, but you should probably know that Neeloc is this Time Lord kid who's obsessed with the Doctor, and that President Romana opened the Academy up to alien students, and Neeloc had a friend who was an Earth student who died.

This was inspired by a really good story on Teaspoon, Looked Up In Perfect Silence at the Stars. Go check it out immediately. Well, not immediately. Read my story first.

"That was a good speech you gave just now."

He looked up into the eyes of a red-haired woman with eyes holding tragedy and strength in equal measure. "Oh," he said. "You're Taylor's mum. He talked a lot about you."

She smiled. "Did he?" She blinked. "I just wanted to say thank you. Coming here... it means a lot to us. Nilock, you said your name was?"

"Neeloc, ma'am," he corrected. "And you really don't have to thank me. I was just doing what Taylor would have wanted me to do."

A young girl with great masses of strawberry blond hair ran up to them. "Mommy, I'm tired! Can we go now?"

"Soon, my darling," the woman soothed, picking her up. To Neeloc, she asked, "Have you a place to stay?"

"Yes, I'm quite all right," he replied.

"Well, you'll always be welcome in our home," she told him. "Will you be on Earth long?"

He didn't really want to answer that question, but she deserved a truthful answer, so he said slowly, "I think so. There's nothing for me back home, anyway. And I'd like to show people Time Lords aren't all bad."

He walked with them out of the cemetery, making light conversation. It surprised him that none of Taylor's family had the same lilting accent he had. "It's because we moved to America, after Taylor went to an offworld university," she explained. "We haven't- hadn't seen him in five years. If you were more familiar with humans, you could hear the accent still, I'm sure."

"I'm sorry," he said softly.

They walked quietly through the streets of the peaceful suburb. Neeloc looked around in frank fascination. Earth was so... so alive, so varied, compared to Gallifrey. No wonder Taylor had hated it at the Academy. Oh, Taylor. I'm here, on Earth, at last. I thought it would make me feel closer to you. But all it does is make me realize... what idiots we Time Lords really are.

Neeloc started.

He could feel something he hadn't expected... the faint but subtle electric buzz of the Blinovitch Limitation. There were time travelers near, and they were doing something they weren't supposed to.

He didn't say anything to Taylor's mother. She was human. She'd think he was mad.

The buzzing was getting stronger.

They rounded the corner, at the same time as two other people came out of a shop.

Neeloc stared.

One of them was a human adolescent female, with the same strawberry blond hair as the little girl, braided demurely. It was the little girl. Only perhaps ten years older. That was what had been causing the buzzing. She was telling her companion, "This is the day of my brother's funeral." Her companion... was a Time Lord. Neeloc could feel him, his shock, radiating out like ripples in a lake. He knewthis Time Lord's biosignature. It was the Doctor, and that would normally be enough to leave him flabbergasted, but... it wasn't the right Doctor, the eighth one, nor was it any of the others, it was a future one, tall, skinny, and brown, and all his barriers were down, and the way he was staring at Neeloc, in shock and pain...

Neeloc tried to ignore the truth, but that was his brain, wasn't it, a Time Lord brain, and a damn bright one at that, busy busy busy, putting together the pieces, presenting him with the truth, shouting it out to the world...

But there's so much left to do, he whispered to whatever might be listening. I was going to walk the Earth, see sunsets and forests and rainbows and robins, I was going to make a difference, maybe even stop a few alien invasions or so, save some lives, and at the end, I was going to find the Doctor, and we'd go to some human food place- they're called cafes, aren't they- and we'd have hot caffeinated drinks and let the drugs work on our systems, and just talk and talk, and I'd tell him about Taylor, and he'd understand...

The world was spinning so fast beneath his feet, and the Doctor's eyes were dark with compassion. Goodbye. And thanks.

I'm sorry.

"Doctor?" Aideen said. She snapped her fingers. "Dude, snap out of it!"

Her alien best friend was staring at a patch of air, that appeared, to her mortal eyes, exactly the same as every other patch. He was also standing in the middle of the road, right where a car, speeding round the turn, could hit him, forcing Aideen to deal with a whole new exasperating personality, if what he'd told her was true.

She sighed. She wasn't even sure why they were still here. She'd just wanted to pop down to the shops for some milk, and not weird alien milk, cow milk, from the place she'd gotten it as a kid. But then the Doc had insisted on traipsing around the place. Beat her why. Boredom capitol of the universe. But he better snap out of it soon, or he'd feel the heat of her Irish temper. "Doctor!"

He turned to look at her, an unreadable expression in his wide brown eyes. "Aidan," he asked, with unusual solemnity, "do you have a brother?"

She frowned. What alien rubbish was this now? "Yeah," she said, "but who cares about him? He's just some idiot who hangs around in pubs, arguin' about how the world sucks but never doin' a thing about it. Went to offworld university for a few months, didn't like it. Now we're stuck with the useless lump."

"Ah," he said mysteriously.

"C'mon, dude, let's quit this dump!"

"Yes," he said, to himself, "yes, that would be a good idea."

He glanced backwards only once.