A/N: I have a terrible addiction to procrastination... and pie. I am incredibly sorry about the wait, I had a bad case of writers block but I should be over it now. I won't keep you for too long, sorry if this chapter's not the best, but I will do my best to keep the others more interesting. Enjoy!
Chapter 18
Rose carefully looked at Luna, trying to stare her down enough to possibly find any faults or impressions that she could be lying. Finding none, she cautiously agreed.
"Alright...I'll listen, but what have you done to the Doctor? He's okay, right?"
Luna waved her hand in the air to calm her down, "He's fine, I just had the TARDIS send him back to the console room and keep him there." She paused for a moment as a thought came to her, "Although I didn't leave him anything, can you give him a snack for me?" She yelled out.
"Who are you talking to?" Rose was then met with a harmonious hum from the TARDIS.
"Thank you!" Luna yelled back, "Sorry, I just thought I'd leave him a little something since he can't go anywhere until we get back."
"When will we get back?" Rose rushed, she really didn't want to stay in Luna's company for long after seeing what she could do.
"However long it takes for you to hear me out."
She smirked at her panicky demeanor and calmly walked further into the depths of the garden, with Rose begrudgingly trailing behind her.
Rose eventually caught sight of her sitting on a skillfully carved marble bench that overlooked a peaceful blue pond with alien-like trees of bright red bark and purple blossoms drooping over. Heavenly scented bushes bearing flowers surrounded the tranquil enclosure. Luna's feet dangled over the edge of her seat as she swung them carelessly back and forth. Looking over her shoulders, she motioned for her to come over and sit beside her.
Rose sat next to her, still staring at the picturesque view in front of her. Words seemed to evade her as she kept looking over the blossoming colors.
"I know. Alli absolutely adores this place and I can see why." Luna eventually said, breaking through her speechless revere.
When she mentioned Alli's name, Rose felt a twinge of fear of what could have happened to her, "Where is Alli? Is she, still in there somewhere?"
Luna chuckled, "Oh she's definitely still in here, frankly she won't shut up."
Crack
"Hey! I'm testing all this stuff out, I can't help it if I make some noises. Besides, I had to listen to you going through all of that energy for a year! Just give me a couple of hours, I'll figure it out."
Alli Rose turned to her side to see Rose looking at her terrified. "What?" Rose mumbled.
Alli didn't even try to hold her smile back, "Hi again! What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Crack
"I wonder why, maybe you jumping in before I can even explain what happened." Luna sarcastically chided.
"What the?" Rose commented slightly louder, but no one seemed to hear.
Crack
"Sorry, but technically it's your fault. You were the one saying I wouldn't shut up."
Crack
"Hardly a surprise when you aren't shutting up!" Luna shouted, eventually earning no response back. "Thank you."
"What is goin' on?!" Rose shouted at the young blonde arguing with herself.
"Yeaaah, I should probably start from the beginning. This might take a while." Luna groaned before she began their story.
"Before I tell you, can you just promise me one thing?"
Rose nodded fervently being as intrigued as she was to what happened.
"I'm not going to the Doctor just yet, he might do something reckless and ruin everything. I need you to explain this to him before I go, that's all."
Luna breathed in deep and sighed. "Right, let's start from the beginning."
The Doctor had successfully stood still by the coral column for five minutes before he started jumping around and began fiddling with the center console vigorously. He didn't no how long he could wait before going mad, there was absolutely nothing he could do, he didn't know if he would last.
His anxious thoughts took a temporary break when he heard his stomach grumble. He realized he hadn't eaten in a while, not since dinner with Queen Victoria. The Doctor rummaged through his cavernous pockets finding Alli's freshly picked green apples she got them upon their arrival.
He thought back to the bitter-sweet memories. She was just a little girl without a care in the world, if he hadn't been curious, she would have lived her life out with her friends and family. Now she was basically a fixed point in time and couldn't ever go back, there was no fixing his mistake.
He bit into one of the tiny apples to feed his rumbling stomach and puckered immediately at its pungent flavor. And he could've sweared that he tasted a bit of pear on it. He shoved the rest of them back in his pocket and sighed. Chances were that she was too short to reach high enough for the riper fruits.
They better hurry up, I can't go anywhere and I'm starving. His thoughts were interrupted at the bright flash that came from the jumpseat. He looked over and saw the most appealing sight.
An illustrious bunch of large, bright yellow bananas sat enticingly on the seat next to a large stack of files and papers. The Doctor didn't pay any mind to those as he jumped over to the miraculous snack that appeared. He shoved a large mouthful in his mouth and nearly groaned at the satisfyingly sweet taste.
"Thank you old girl." He said to the TARDIS mouthful, but she gave a purr that was the equivalent of saying 'wasn't me'.
"Well if it wasn't you who was it?" He questioned before taking another bite.
She flashed a picture of Luna and Rose sitting on a bench in one of the many gardens in the Doctor's mind. It didn't help much as he couldn't tell which one it was.
That didn't make any sense, why would Luna even do that? And Rose doesn't know how to teleport items in the TARDIS. He thought quietly to himself, he looked at the heap of files and decided to go through them, he raised his eyebrows at the much more extensive psychological research of Alli Rose than last time.
He had to hand it to Phil, he would have made an excellent psychiatrist, he looked into every single detail and had written endless notes on the dream journal that would have taken others hours to read, but the Doctor was able to read through everything in just ten minutes.
She seemed to have some type of personality disorder and that's usually common, but her level of mental problems was borderline insane with the amount of dopamine feeding the fire, how could nobody have noticed this before? Children were generally very social at this age and with dreams like these, why on Earth would she keep it to herself?
He thought back to when they first met her, she seemed charming and quirky and he liked her immediately. But written down on some of the possible disorders Phil had assumed were associated with things like a mild form of MPD of histrionic personality disorder.
Realization suddenly hit him, of course he liked her, that was what she did, she unconsciously changed her own personality to fit to others. The first time someone with histrionic disorder meets someone, they basically observe their personality and adapt to it. It was a perfect defence mechanism if he was honest, she would never have an enemy, and even if she did, she had plenty of friends to protect her. The proof in the papers was enough to support his theory.
It still didn't help with the fact that there was an unknown entity taking over her he thought to himself, the voice interface had shown that she was still in there somewhere if she was able to get that message to him. Guilt ate away at him for that, she seemed to be more calm than he was about this.
After going through all of the files a second time and feeding to his self-loathing thoughts, he heard a set of footsteps coming from the halls ebb closer. Soon he saw Rose enter through the doorway looking around for him before lighting up with a smile as her eyes fell on him.
"Well it's about time! As much as I appreciate the bananas I was bored out of my mind." He jokingly complained as he jumped up from his seat and ran over to Rose. He gave her a reassuring embrace to make sure she was okay.
"Are you alright?" He concerningly asked her when he pulled back out of their hug.
"'M fine, so's Alli." She added, earning an intrigued look from him.
"You've seen her? How'd she get through to you? Did she tell you what happened?" He began shooting questions at her a million miles per hour before Rose could finally put her hand up to demand silence. When he eventually ceased, she spoke very calmly to him.
"I have, I spoke to both Alli and Luna and they wanted me to tell you what happened."
"Why are they making you tell me, why not just tell me themselves?"
"You can ask them later when she comes back, but first Doctor I need to tell you something." Rose said this in an attempt to get the Doctor to stop long enough for her to explain, but to no avail.
The Doctor rambled on quickly, "Hold on Rose I need to show you something!" He ran enthusiastically back to the jumpseat and scooped up some of the papers to show it to Rose.
"I went through all these notes on the dream journal from Phil and it turns out, Alli has a certain histrionic personality disorder. She would change her personality around other people to make her more likeable to them, isn't that brilliant? For instance, did you ask any of her classmates about her?"
"Well, yeah they all talked about her like she was a different person, but Doctor-"
"Exactly!" He shouted, once again cutting her off. "It's the perfect defence, anything that could be considered a threat, she befriends them. So this Luna Erythro could be something that took over her body because Alli willingly let it, so she had some control instead of just being crushed in her own mind. Either that or she had a severe reaction to all of the information or energy pounded in her head, I just have to remove the time vortex from her and cancel out the download with that-"
"DOCTOR!" Rose shouted to ultimately quiet him down enough for her to continue talking. "Thank you. Now, one, Alli is completely fine. Two, Luna is helping her. And three, you really can't try to do anything else to her head or you'll just make it worse."
"Rose, you can't trust what Luna said, she'll do or say anything to stay in that body and who knows how much time Alli has left ."
"You have to trust me on this." She said with certainty. Knowing that it would make him listen to her, and it did. No matter what, he just couldn't seem to say no to her, especially this regeneration. He just sighed in defeat and consented.
"I trust you. I'll listen to her, but if she did anything to her I won't let her stay, not while I'm here."
Knowing this was as far Rose was going to get, she accepted it, chuckling. "Thank you Doctor, trust me, she's going to be fine."
Running footsteps interrupted them as they came close to the console room. Immediately after, a blur of blonde and blue entered. A bright smile that light up at them was sported on her flushed face after running. It was nearly obvious that her elated expression was that of Alli Rose.
"Hello! Did you like the bananas?" She said excitingly, letting her usual giggle erupt from her lips.
A/N: Okay, I will get started on the next chapter right now. I will get back to my usual schedule of one every two days, that way I don't get anymore writers block, that was awful!