Okay, now for the actual story.

Part 1- A New Story

I better get going. Things to do. Worlds to save. Swings to... swing on.
~The Doctor (The Power of Three, Season 7, Episode 4)

The day didn't look any different. The sun was shining. There was a breeze, but it wasn't cold. It was a day of rare beauty in the gloomy gray city. Everyone would be outside today, enjoying the sun, but not Lyn.

This day, the 14th of July, didn't look any different from any other day, but that couldn't be a more incorrect observation. Everything about today was different. Everything about today seemed wrong to Lyn. She tried to go through my routine, tried to make everything feel normal, but how could she? She got her morning coffee from the same cafe on the corner, just like she had every day since she met him. But today, the empty chair across from her just made her feel even emptier inside. Her throat burned from holding back tears as she left the cafe. She had to fight the urge to slam the door and managed to make it to the playground across the street before she collapsed and cried. With her head in between her knees on a swing in the middle of a public park, Lyn cried. She realized that this was the first time she had cried. Not ever, obviously, but since he died. Died. The word finally joined in the turmoil coursing through her soul. Died. Such a simple word. Only four letters. Why did it cause her so much pain?

That's what's different about this day, she thought, Yesterday, he died. Yesterday, he died, so today he's gone. He'll be gone tomorrow and the next. He'll be gone forever.

She took a deep breath and sat up. There weren't any children at the park this early, but there were people on the streets. For some reason, she found herself angry at them. There they were, just going about their lives like nothing's wrong. Everything's wrong, she wanted to shout at them. Everything's wrong and you don't even care. You don't even know. If only attacking these innocent people would bring him back.

Lyn felt someone sit in the swing next to hers. She turned her head, ready to tell the kid to go away, but when she saw who it was the words caught in her throat. He wasn't a kid. He was a man probably a few years older than Lyn. He was dressed like her grandfather though, wearing a brown suit and red suspenders. His jacket had patches on the elbows and his pants ended just above his ankles, making his legs look awkwardly long. Topping off his goofy ensemble was a bright red bowtie. His face matched his clothes. He had a large chin and a strange nose, and his hair was long, dark, and flippy. He was smiling like he was about to say something incredibly clever.

"Hello," he said, "you look sad."

He spoke with a British accent. Of course, Lyn thought to herself.

She had suddenly no clue what she was supposed to say to this strange man in the bowtie. she found her mouth forming words that she didn't think she would ever be able to say. She hadn't been able to tell herself something she was about to tell to a stranger who was probably psychologically disturbed.

"My best friend is dead," she said.

The man nodded, looked down, and said, "Mine too." They sat there for a while, silently brooding over their different problems. Then he asked simply, "What's your name, Sad Girl?"

"Lyn Tharen," she answered. Then she added out of habit, "Only one n. What's yours?"

"The Doctor," he stated.

"The Doctor?" Lyn asked, puzzled, "Doctor who?"

"Yes. I mean, no. It's just the Doctor. No anything else, just the Doctor." His voice was assisted by his hands waving in little circles.

"Okay," Lyn replied. Yep, definitely disturbed. She didn't want to leave him though. The way he reacted after he mentioned his friends had made her realize that she wasn't alone. "Tell me about them," she urged.

The sadness in his face went away as if he flipped a switch. "It was a long time ago. It's fine now. What about you?"

She had hardly ever talked about him when he was alive. She didn't know how it would affect her, but she might as well find out now. Nice call Lyn, talk about him to a total stranger who is most definitely either high or insane or possibly both.

"Well," she began, "he was English."

"'He'?" the Doctor said, raising his eyebrows, "Are we talking about more than a friend?"

"No," she said, "we were just friends." And it was true. They were just friends. Maybe in a few years she might have been able to picture something, but as of that moment, they were just friends. "His name was Alex. He came here to Denver once in school, fell in love, and decided to move here on his twentieth birthday. We met in that cafe," Lyn pointed across the street, "We started hanging out more, and eventually he became like my brother. I probably spent more time at his apartment than my house." After she started talking, she couldn't stop. Lyn told the Doctor everything about Alex. She told him about his funny hair that he prided himself in getting to stick up in just the right way. She told him about his bright sky blue eyes framed by dark lashes and boxy hipster glasses. She told him about his hilarious personality that always managed to put a smile on her face and about the times when his genius almost matched up to hers. When he spent hours trying to cook and they just ended up going out anyway.

Lyn found it comforting to talk about him, and, surprisingly, easy, until she got to the part where he died.

"Last night," she continued, "we weren't really on the best of terms. He had been really unresponsive lately and just not himself, but whenever I tried to talk to him, he would get so angry. He never used to be angry, ever. A few days ago, he hit me. Not hard, it didn't hurt. But he was so night he stormed out of his apartment," she started having to talk through tears, "I heard a noise. It didn't sound like gunfire, but I opened the door and he was lying in the hall. He made it maybe ten feet before they shot him. The cameras weren't working so they don't know who did it," she could hardly talk now she was crying so much, "I watched him die. I called an ambulance, but they took too long. He was already gone."

She had to stop there. The Doctor got up from his swing and hugged hugged her. She fell into his arms and cried into his shirt. They both slid to the ground. She had almost forgotten about him, lost in her thoughts. They sat there for a few minutes, then he took her hand and walked her back home where she lived with her parents. His exit from her life was surprisingly anticlimactic.

Lyn spent the rest of that day and the next few at home in seclusion. She'd met the Doctor on Monday and it was now Thursday. Both of her parents had left for work. She was awakened from a fitful, barely sleep-like trance by a frantic knocking at the door.

"Okay! Sheesh. Settle down! I'm coming!" she yelled as she uncoordinatedly fumbled around the mess in her living room to answer the door. It was the Doctor dressed in a bright red plastic coat and drenched like he'd been out in the rain. The moment Lyn opened the door he ran up to her, grabbed her shoulders and started yelling.

"You said you didn't hear gunshots! Why wouldn't you hear gunshots after someone fired a gun? Granted, there are different types of silencers, but then you wouldn't have heard anything. But you said you heard something. What did you hear?"

Lyn had just woken up and was very disoriented, so it took her a few seconds to filter through everything he said. "I don't know," she answered, horribly confused, "a noise."

"A noise?" he said accusingly.

"Yeah, a noise," Lyn defended, "like a noise. I don't know!"

"What kind of noise? What did it sound like?" he shouted.

"Like a whoosh-y sound," she said.

"Whoosh-y?" He made a face like he was disgusted by her answer. "Whoosh-y? Is that really the best you can do?"

"Well I don't know how to describe it!" She was shouting now too as she racked her brain for a decent analogy. "It was kind of like a lightsaber, when it opens. Like whoosh." She used her hands for emphasis on the last woosh.

"A lightsaber!" the Doctor said, the disgusted look on his face becoming more prominent. "A lightsaber! You know you humans can be very un-helpful," he turned, threw his hands up and once more mumbled, "A lightsaber." He was halfway out the door before he turned around and grabbed her again. "A lightsaber!" he shouted and kissed Lyn on the cheek, "Oh, you are clever, aren't you? Come along now." He pulled her toward the door.

She wrenched away. "No," she demanded, "not until you explain you madman."

He couldn't wipe the look of childish excitement off his face as he announced, "Do you know what this means, Lyn-With-One-N Tharen?" he paused for a moment, "It means that your friend is still very much alive." And with that he bolted from the room.

Lyn stood stunned for a moment before she realized what he'd said and chased after the madman in the raincoat through her yard in her night clothes. She was calling after him the whole time, but he didn't look. He stopped at the end of her driveway.

"Hey!" she shouted, "I'm not going anywhere with you until you answer some questions!"

He was wandering around with his hands out like he was afraid of bumping into something. "Well, go ahead then," he said calmly.

"Okay. I will." She paused, not knowing where to start. "You said human. You said, 'you humans can be very unhelpful.' Why did you say human?"

He turned to Lyn and raised an eyebrow. "Really? That's where you want to start?" She nodded. "Alright then. Well, if you're as clever as you said you are, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out." He went back to his looking for invisible walls.

He was right. It wasn't. "So you're not then?" Lyn asked, "Not human?"

"There you go," he replied.

"Okay." Lyn was trying to keep her mind focused and her emotions removed so she could process more clearly. "Then what are you?"

"Time Lord," he said staying intent on whatever it was he was doing.

She paused for another moment, waiting for him to elaborate, but realizing he wouldn't, continued with the more pressing question. "How do you figure Alex is alive? I watched him die. I held him while he died."

"That man wasn't your friend."

"What?"

"I will explain everything in a moment, but it's not safe to talk here. I think I've already said too much." He stopped looking and froze with his hand in the air, palm flat. "There you are!" he said. He put his other hand up and, looking an awful lot to Lyn like a mime trapped in a box, muttered something along the lines of, "Now where is your door, you tricky box you?"

She felt like a total lunatic standing next to this madman, shivering outside in her tank top and sweatpants. That is, until he found the door, pulled it open and she finally saw it. The bright blue box seemed to materialize out of thin air. The logical side of Lyn said that it had been there the whole time, just invisible, but she still found herself staring dumbly at the Police Public Call Box.

"There we are!" the Doctor announced, "I can never remember where I leave it when it's invisible."

Lyn was still speechless as he gestured inside.

"In there?" she asked, "Just the two of us?" She became all of a sudden more conscious of her choice of apparel. She grew uncomfortable at his suggestion, forcing down memories long repressed.

"You'll understand in a minute," he promised.

She gazed intently into his eyes, searching for a reason to trust him. Somewhere, she must have found it, because a moment later she followed him into the Police Box- and immediately ran back outside, completely dumbfounded. She circled around it, trying to find some sort of sense. Running back inside, she gasped, "It's-it's. Bigger. On. The inside."

He smiled his goofy smile as he said, "Yeah, yeah it is."

"But-but," she stammered, trying to formulate an intelligent sentence, "How?" That plan failed.

"Time Lord technology. It's really just a simple spatial displacement field. Basically another dimension attached to a physical, exterior shell."

"But what is it?"

"It's my TARDIS."

"TARDIS?"

"Yeah, TARDIS. Time and relative dimension in space."

"What is it though?"

"It's a spaceship," he said, "and a time machine."

The science geek in Lyn was about to have a meltdown of pure excitement. "Really?" she asked, not even trying to hold back the grin plastered on her face.

The Doctor met her smile and raised his eyebrows a bit as he agreed, "Yeah."

The TARDIS, as the Doctor called it, was much, much bigger on the inside. The center sported a large, polygonal structure covered in buttons and switches and lights and other things that Lyn couldn't pinpoint a purpose for. The room itself had a metallic floor that became transparent as it approached the center. Weird spacey-coral-looking things looked like they were holding up the vast ceiling. There were a few doors and other entrances that made Lyn wonder just how vastly larger the inside was.

The Doctor ended her moment of silent fascination by shooting off to the large setup in the middle of the box which Lyn could only assume was some sort of control panel. The Doctor began flipping switches and pushing buttons that she didn't even bother trying to figure out the purpose of all while going off on another rant. "So," he exclaimed, "Your friend dies of a mysterious bullet that wasn't a bullet, and now a crazy man shows up out of the rain and tells you he's alive. Not only that, but that madman isn't a man at all, but an alien who shows you his time-travelling phone box," he paused and met her eyes, "What do you say, Lyn? Let's go find your friend. Unless you have any more questions?"

She was still standing by the door, dumbstruck, at this mad stranger. With all of the crazy thoughts already spinning through her head, one question stood out.

"Yeah," she said, finally re-acquiring her usual confidence, "What on Earth are you wearing?"

He glanced down at his rain clothes then stated defensively, "It's a rain poncho. I wear a rain poncho now. Rain ponchos are cool."

Lyn broke out laughing at the serious look on his face, "Okay, Madman."

Love to know what you think so far!