Chapter 6

The days had passed, and Tina had waited.

And waited some more, and there had been no sign of the Doctor.

The space where the Tardis had once stood half hidden in the woodland near the house remained empty, and no sound of the time machine landing filled the air, the only sound that could be heard now was the wind stirring leaves of heavy boughs on trees where branches had once shook and leaves had been torn off and whipped about as the blue box had once landed. Now that place stood empty, and every day Tina looked out to that spot, and saw it was still empty.

"Mum, are you okay?" Lucinda asked as she entered the room and saw her mother standing by the window, the curtain was pulled aside and she was standing there looking out, down to that place where the blue box had once stood, it was something she had done every single day since the Doctor's departure.

"He said he was coming back," she said, and she turned her head as sadness reflected in her eyes.

"Did he lie to me again, do you think he lied?"

"No," Lucinda replied, "I think maybe he was held up. Look what happened last time – it looks like his travels can be dangerous. That's why he asked you to wait here. He must love you a lot to want to keep you safe."

"I hope he does," Tina replied quietly, and then she looked back to the empty spot beneath the trees as she thought back to a time long ago when she had been nineteen years old and spellbound by the Time Lord who she had lay beside as she took that polaroid picture...

Far off in time and space:

Time had passed for the Doctor.

He had gone on through many adventures, and regenerated twice since his Twelfth life, and now, after running into yet more trouble and being held prisoner by an enemy cyber fleet ship and surviving torture that had seen him regenerate into his Fourteenth life, the Doctor didn't bother watching the Tardis monitor as the Cyber fleet ship exploded in a ball of blinding light, instead he leant against the console for a moment, then he walked out of the room, down the corridor and opened up a door and went into his bedroom, where the lights were dim because the Tardis understood regeneration had been painful, and always would be, no matter how many times he went through it.

The Doctor thought of the many faces he had worn, and wondered what this one was like. He ached all over and his vision was slightly blurred as he opened up an old wardrobe of carved ebony wood, and looked into the mirror on the inside of the door:

Dark eyes looked back at him, and he reached up and ran his fingers through hair that hadn't been this perfect since his tenth regeneration. Then he blinked, and his vision cleared.

"Not bad at all..." he said quietly, "I like it, I actually like it this time..."

Then he ran a hand over the clothing that hung in the wardrobe, replaced by the Tardis, meant for his new regeneration, and took out a change of clothing, reflecting that he hadn't worn so much black since his Twelfth life...

A short while later, wearing a white shirt and a patterned tie and a leather jacket and dark jeans, the Doctor was back in the console room. He looked about the place, noticing the control room was smaller but the ceiling was higher, and the shade of light that filtered through the place was neon blue.

"You redecorated for me,"he said aloud, "Thank you, old girl."

Then he reached out to touch the controls, and his fingertips brushed an old, faded note that had been stuck to the console for so long he had forgotten to ever pay it any attention.

He took the note from the console and read it:

"Open the panel?" he wondered aloud, and then he looked to the console where the note had been placed, and saw the panel it had been concealing. He struggled to recall why he had ever placed the note there, but it was all hazy, and not just because he had recently regenerated:
It had been two thousand years since he had written that reminder to himself...

He pressed a button and the panel opened up, and he took out a polaroid picture. It was preserved perfectly and looked as new as the day he had placed it there...back in his Twelfth life.

"Tina!" he said in surprise, "It's been two thousand years!"

And then he looked to the controls, and back to the picture.

"I don't know...timeline..." he muttered, looking again to the picture, "I'm sorry I forgot...Oh, what am I saying, that was in the past...I can't just go back, I can't, not after all this time..."

And he turned to the control panel and placed the picture on it, then leant heavily on the console as he thought about time and how it had ripped him away from a promise.

"I've regenerated," he said as he looked at the girl in the polaroid picture, "I'm nothing like my Twelfth life. Nothing like him at all. You probably wouldn't fancy me now anyway...I'm not him. Well, I am, but I look so different to him... you wouldn't know me and if I went back for you...maybe I shouldn't even think about it, not now, not two lifetimes later..."

And he turned his dark gaze to the controls.

Then he looked again to the girl in the picture.

Suddenly the Doctor was smiling as enthusiasm shone in his eyes.

"Why not?" he said excitedly, "I'm coming to find you, Tina!"

He grabbed a lever and pushed it, then ran around the console and turned some dials – this time taking care to make sure he ended up exactly where he had promised he would be, back on earth, at the house in 2016, just over two weeks after he had last said goodbye to her two lifetimes ago...

Earth, 2016:

Lucinda had just started up the car and was about to take a drive into town when she thought she heard a strange sound, like a wheeze and a groan and rushing wind. She turned off the engine, sat there with the window open as the late summer breeze shifted through the car and then she shook her head, dismissing the sound, and started up the car again and drove away from the house.

Tina had been in the front room and as she crossed it and headed for the open doors that led to the garden, she had missed the sound of the landing Tardis as her daughter's car had started up. Her thoughts were on the Doctor as she went out to the patio and sat down at the table and watched as ice cubes began to melt in a tall glass of lemonade, she thought about time and how she had spent so much of it waiting, and decided maybe she would always be waiting for him, because who could forget an encounter with a man from another world, a time travelling man who was unlike any other man she could ever hope to meet on earth?

He had promised he would return.

But he had said that before...

She gave a sigh.

"Don't make me wait another thirty years," she whispered, and then she looked to the blue skies and thought of space beyond it, and wondered where he was, and when he was – she was sure he was a million miles and perhaps as many years away. Maybe he would never return...

The Doctor had left the Tardis and opened the gate and hurried up the path towards the house. He glanced over at the garage, saw one car was there but remembered there had been two – he was sure the other car was red, and that one was Lucinda's. That car was missing.

"Where are you?" he said, looking left and right but seeing no sign of Tina.

Then he looked to the front door, and remembered long ago - to him, two thousand years before in another lifetime - when she had met him at the door and angrily slapped him for making her wait twenty seven years...

To a Time Lord less than thirty years was no time at all, but to a human? Yes, he understood her anger on that day. It seemed so long ago to the time traveller, but to Tina, only two weeks had passed. The Doctor headed for the gate that led to the garden at the back of the house, and as he passed a window he glanced at his new reflection and guessed she wouldn't even recognise him in this new regeneration, at least, not at first...

Tina was sitting at the table on the patio. She was looking to the back of the garden and didn't see him approach her. He stopped for a moment and stood there and looked at her, she was still shapely and the short, light summer dress she wore showed off a tan he wished she didn't have because the human need to worship the sun was a dangerous past time in summer, but her skin was glowing with it and her hair fell past her shoulders in soft waves, she was still as beautiful as the girl he recalled meeting for the first time back in the '80s when he had been in his Twelfth lifetime.

"Excuse me, Tina?" he said, and she looked around.

"Yes? Oh, sorry, you're a friend of Lucinda's? She just left, she went into town."

"No."

He smiled and took a step closer as she got up from the table and looked to him in confusion.

"I don't understand," she told him, "If you're not here for Lucinda, who are you?"

He was standing in front of her now. His dark gaze fixed on her and as she looked at him she got the oddest feeling, as if he was as old as time itself...

"Who are you?" she said again.

"It's me, the Doctor," he replied, "It's a long story, very long...after I left you – to you that was two weeks ago – things happened. Time can have a way of dragging me from place to place and into situations...basically, I meant to come back but then I regenerated and my life went on and I forgot much of the past for a while. Then I regenerated again, after I escaped the Cybermen - I was captured by a war ship that had fallen through a rip in time and I was held prisoner for quite a while. It took me three hundred years to escape and destroy their ship."

She stared at him.

"Three hundred years?"

"Actually it's been two thousand years in total but it's complicated," he replied, "But after I regenerated, I found a note I'd left for myself centuries before – reminding me to come back for you, no matter what. So in the end I did, and here I am. I know I've changed. I'm not him, I'm not the man with the grey hair and the ice blue eyes but I am still the Doctor. And I came back through time to keep my promise to you."

Tina looked at him as she blinked back tears.

"But the man I fell in love with - the one I first met – are you telling me he's dead?"

"Not exactly," he replied, "time travel is complicated. There are many versions of me out there somewhere in another time and place but in this timeline, he regenerated and became someone else. Then he regenerated again, and here I am. I'm still the Doctor. And I'm sorry I made you wait the first time around. That's why I came back through time to find you again. If you want to come with me, the offer still stands."

And he waited. Tina looked back at him and blinked away tears, then she shook her head.

"You can't be him – you look nothing like the man I knew!"

"I am!" he insisted, "I can show you my Tardis -"

"I have an old polariod picture," she said as her voice cracked with emotion, "Of a man who I knew as the Doctor. And he's not you!"

The Doctor's hearts felt heavy as he wished he didn't have to have this conversation – change was something humans always found so hard to accept when it came to regeneration, and this was not the first time he had gone through a conversation like this one with a human he cared for...

"Look at me!" he said to her, and he looked into her eyes and as she got that familiar feeling that he was older than time, she shook her head.

"You're not even Scottish!" she said, "He was. And he was older. And I loved him!"

Then she turned away sharply and hurried back inside the house.

"Tina, wait!" the Doctor called, and he hurried after her.

She crossed through the room and out into the hallway, and the Doctor caught up with her.

"Wait – listen to me – two things, just two..."

She looked into his eyes, and felt the truth was there, that this man was the Doctor, but her thoughts still lie with the man she had first met - the one who she had waited for.

"Make it quick," she snapped, "Because I wasn't planning for this to happen. I miss him!"

The room briefly shifted sideways as his vision blurred and he leant against the wall and started to explain:

"Firstly," he said, sounding breathless, "I shouldn't have run after you just now -"

"Too right you shouldn't," she exclaimed,"I was walking away, do you have any idea what kind of a shock you've given me by changing like this?"

"...And secondly..." he said weakly, "I've had no rest since it happened. I need rest, its post regenerative exhaustion."

Then he slid to the floor in a dead faint.

It was late afternoon when Lucinda parked the car in the garage and went back inside the house. She took some bags upstairs, went into her bedroom and put away her new clothes and then left the room, and as she headed for the stairs she stopped, noticing her mother's bedroom door was open. When she looked inside she stared in surprise at the sight of her mother sitting on the edge of her bed, looking down at the man who was in her bed...

"There's a man in your bed!" she said in surprise

Tina turned her head.

"Yes, and he's sleeping. He needs to rest," she replied in a hushed voice.

Lucinda entered the room quietly and looked down at the man who was in her mother's bed. She looked at his sleeping face, watched as his chest rose and fell, and then she smiled.

"He's good looking."

"Yes I know."

"So what happened, he just turned up and asked for a bed?"

"Sort of," Tina replied.

Lucinda looked to a nearby chair where clothing was draped over it.

"He wasn't too exhausted to get undressed, then."

"I took his shoes off and his jacket and his tie," Tina replied, "Then I thought I'd better take his shirt off.. just to...um...make him comfortable."

Her daughter laughed softly.

"More like you wanted to take a closer look."

Tina shot her a glance and seeing her mother's face flush made her giggle.

"Admit it, Mum! You got his shirt off to get a better look!"

Tina briefly smiled and then resisted the urge to agree.

"He's okay, he just needs to rest," then her smile faded, "It's him, Lucinda. It's the Doctor. He's regenerated. He said he's been gone for two thousand years and lived two lifetimes since he last saw me. He used the Tardis to travel back to keep the promise he made in his Twelfth life. He meant to come back sooner but things happened, he got caught up in some trouble. But he's back now, and he's still the Doctor...He doesn't look like the man I knew, but it's still him."

And she reached out and swept her hand over his hair as he continued to sleep.

"I've been watching him sleep," she said, "And the more I look at him, the more I feel it – I know he's the same man."

"And he's good looking," added her daughter.

"Yes, I've noticed that too," Tina replied, and now she was smiling again, "I couldn't miss that, could I?"

Then as she touched his cheek and the Doctor gave no response, a look of worry clouded her eyes and she looked to her daughter again.

"He's sleeping really deeply. I can't wake him. I know he said he was exhausted but I'm getting worried... what if this regeneration thing can go wrong? What if -"

"Don't, Mum," her daughter said as she stepped closer and placed a hand on her shoulder, "Don't think the worst. You said he's done this many times, changed his face and body. It can't be easy on him. He probably just needs a rest. I bet he'll be fine in the morning."

She nodded, desperately clinging to her daughters words because she needed her to be right.

"I hope so," she said as she looked back at the sleeping Time Lord, "He's waited a long time to come back here, he took lifetimes to find me again. I'm scared something went wrong when he regenerated. What if he's come back here to die? He has to be okay, because I don't think I can handle it if he's not. I really don't think I can take losing him after everything that's happened."