CHAPTER 51
I do not own Doctor Who and I am making no profit off of this story.
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Hello again, readers! It's me, Lily, back once more to narrate another episode of my life for you. I really liked being here last time so I decided to give this narrator gig another shot. I may just decide to take over the narration of this title from now on if I like doing it enough.
This time I'm going to tell you another story that's close to my heart. That's the main reason that I'm here again. This story is about what happened right after my wedding.
Who said that? No, it's not about my honeymoon. What are you people, relatives of Jack Harkness?
Get to the story, Lily.
Good old Prime. He's always barking out the orders. He gets so testy when someone else narrates other than him. If I didn't need him around to chronicle my adventures, I'd probably just chuck him out of an airlock somewhere. Just kidding, Prime. You know I'd never do that. I'd throw you into the heart of the Sun instead!
Lily!
Alright, alright! That fellow has absolutely no sense of humor. Now where was I? Oh, yeah. I was about to tell you all what happened next after the wedding when one of Harkness' cronies so rudely interrupted me.
Robin and I had just come back from our honeymoon in Ancient Rome, which was wonderful by the way, and I was immediately greeted by Allison as soon as I materialized the TARDIS in UNIT's parking lot. Allison it seemed had been brought there by Rose in her TARDIS to wait on me until I appeared. They weren't the only ones either. With Rose and Allison were Jenny, Susan, Nicolas, Ron, Isabella, and Marina.
They were all clearly here for a specific reason. I wondered if one of them was getting married. Maybe it was Jenny. I liked that guy of hers, Patrick, and I hoped that he had finally had the sense to propose at last.
I was so glad to see little Marina there. I hadn't seen her in ages it seemed like. She's Rose's adopted human daughter in case you don't remember her. She hasn't really been up to too much of any importance lately. She's too busy to take part in any of her parents' adventures to be honest. She's mostly just been doing the things that all normal kids do. She's been going to school on Gallifrey, doing homework, doing chores to help out around the TARDIS, and all of that other fun stuff that all kids throughout time and space have always liked to moan and groan about since time began.
Trust me I know. I used to be a kid once too as hard as that is to believe, and things really haven't changed that much for children in a billion years. That's actually related to what this story is about by the way, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. I'll get to more of that later.
"What's going on? Is someone getting married? I hope," I said to my family.
"No. No one is getting married anytime soon except for Jack and Penny. We're here because of something that Allison asked me about the other day. I had no idea what to tell her because I didn't know myself," Rose said.
"What are you talking about?" I asked her even though I was sure that I knew. Naturally Allison was going to have questions about me once we both found out that I was her mother.
Allison came forward and asked, "I don't know anything about your life before you met Dad. Can you tell me about it? What was your family like? What happened to them? Why were you all by yourself when Dad first met you? Why was creating the first TARDIS so important to you? Can you tell me something about your past so that I know a little more about where you came from?"
I sighed and hesitated. I didn't want to talk about my life before the War with the Great Vampires. It wasn't something that I liked to remember. I had to admit that lately it seemed as though the universe wanted me to remember it whether I wanted to or not. It was like it was forcing me to face that long buried side of myself because I had been thinking of those days a lot now ever since the wedding. Seeing the King there had brought all of those repressed memories back to me all at once with a vengeance.
"It's okay if you don't want to tell me," Allison said in a disappointed voice.
"No, it's not. I'd like to know too and so would the rest of your family. That's what we all came here to hear. We want to know about what kind of a person that you were in the past," Rose said defiantly.
I smiled at her with pride. She was as stubborn now as she had always been. Once she got it in her head that she was going to do something there was no getting it back out again. She would do whatever it was that she was determined to do or die trying. She never gave up. She was just like her mother that way.
"Alright, I'll tell you all a little story from my past. Maybe this will help you to understand just who Sekhmet was a little better," I said.
"You are Sekhmet. Don't talk about yourself in the third person, Mum. It's weird," Rose said.
"Sekhmet is dead, Rose. I like Lily. Lily is much more fun," I said with a grin.
"Stop that, Mum. You're making yourself sound like you're a nutter," Rose said with a frown.
"I don't know if you've noticed it or not, but I've never been sane. Not in any of my incarnations. I'm quite proud of that actually. Sane is boring," I said happily.
"Stop it, Mum. You're not crazy. Stop with the wacky Lily thing and just talk to us, okay?" Allison said in an upset voice.
I felt bad because I never liked seeing one of my babies upset especially because of me so I immediately dropped my usual persona and become more serious. That shows you exactly how much that I don't like it when one of my children is unhappy because I hate to be serious. I hate being serious with a passion.
"I'm going to be completely serious from now on I promise. I'm going to tell you a story, Allison. Do you want to know who I am? Sit back and listen then," I said to her.
All of them got inside of Rose's TARDIS which was luckily still in its pink sports car form and started to listen intently as I started speaking. I noticed that Robin was listening with great interest too from where he stood in the doorway of our TARDIS, and I realized that he wanted to hear this just as much as Allison and Rose did. I knew now that this story was a long time coming. Despite what it was going to do to me personally, I had to tell it now for their sake.
I stood in front of them now as I let my mind drift back to a time long ago and far away. A time that would never be again and that was forever lost now except in my memories.
"I was born over a billion years ago in the wild lands of Gallifrey. My family lived there along with the other Outsiders for several years while I was growing up," I began.
"Maybe that explains why I always preferred being outside of the Capitol so much. I always liked it better out there than on the inside. I used to take long walks in the wild lands late at night when everyone else was sleeping back when I was at the Academy," Rose said.
"You never told me that," I said to her.
It didn't surprise me that I didn't know that about her unfortunately. We were so distant from each other at that point in our lives that I knew little to nothing about her. I'm still ashamed of that to this day. I'm so glad that Rose and I are so close now, and I won't ever let that happen to us again.
"I'll tell you about those days sometime. Right now, I want you to finish your story first," Rose promised.
"What are the Outsiders?" Allison asked in confusion.
That question made me realize just how little that she knew about her home planet in general. The Earth was the only home that she had ever known up until now. I vowed to myself to change that. I was going to show her Gallifrey soon and make sure that she knew where she came from.
"The Outsiders are Gallifreyans who live in the wild lands. They live off of the land, wear animal skins, and use a bow to hunt. They live a much simpler life than the Time Lords in the Capitol," I explained.
"I loved those people. They reminded me of my Merry Men. I fit in perfectly among them," Robin said.
"Of course you did. They're very much like you in their culture and their outlook on life. Maybe that's one of the things that first attracted me to you," I admitted.
"So how did you go from that to working on developing time travel?" Allison asked.
"Have patience, little one. All will be explained soon," I said in my best impersonation of a wise man from a Kung Fu movie.
"Someone's been watching too many movies," Rose commented with a grin.
"I got addicted to them back on Pete's World. So what?" I said smiling.
"You like those kinds of movies too? I love them," Allison said with joy.
"You must have inherited that from me," I admitted.
"I'm glad that skipped me," Rose commented.
"You'd rather watch bad horror movies instead," I teased her as I recalled her love of old black and white monster movies back when we were best friends on Pete's World.
"Hey, those are classics!" Rose said with a fake pout.
"Can we get back to the story now?" Ron said impatiently as he rolled his eyes at all of us.
"Fine. I suppose I can't mention how you like those low-budget action movies then?" I said grinning at him.
Ron glared at me, and I laughed at him. Then I made myself become serious again just like I had promised Allison earlier. Like I said before, being serious is not my natural default.
"I lived in the wild lands for most of my childhood. I would run and play in the red grass that covered our home while I laughed and screamed just like any ordinary Earth child would. Unfortunately, I still had to attend a makeshift school, but it was in no way as stiff and formal as the Academy would someday be. My upbringing was very different from the cold and sterile surroundings that the children inside of the Capitol would have grown up in. Maybe that's one reason why I always liked humans so much more than my own people," I speculated.
"Why did your family live there instead of the Capitol?" Rose asked.
"My father moved us out of the Capitol and into the wild lands because he could see the people on the inside changing. They were becoming cold and unemotional, and he didn't like that. He preferred to live a simpler life in the wild with people that he felt that he could trust. So that's what we did. We lived there in the wild lands for a long time, and I grew up learning to live off of the land just like my family did. I can still hunt and shoot a bow with the best of them. I just prefer not to," I said.
"You never told me this. We should have an archery contest together and find out which of us is the best shot," Robin said eagerly.
"I'd beat the pants off of you," I said grinning.
"We shall see, my lady. We shall see," Robin said as he looked at me with an expression of wounded pride.
I tried very hard not to laugh at him. He was so cute when he was all full of himself like that. I found out early on that you never told Robin that you were better than him at archery. His ego just couldn't take it.
"I look forward to it. Care to make a wager about it?" I asked with a smug grin.
"Don't do it, Dad. She's trying to trick you," Allison said.
"Traitor," I said to her with a warm smile so that she would know that I was kidding.
"I will win in the archery contest against her. Don't worry about that," Robin said confidently.
"What happens if you don't?" I asked.
"If by some miracle I lose, then I will eat my hat," Robin proclaimed.
"Do you like your hat with ketchup or barbecue sauce?" I teased him.
"I will win, my lady. When I do, you must dress as one of the women of my time for one day. I would love to see you in one of the fancy ornate dresses that the ladies of my age wore," Robin said eagerly.
"I bet you would. It's not going to happen though. You'll be eating that hat long before I ever wear one of those horrible looking dresses," I said with confidence.
"Can we please get back to the story? You're deliberately trying to get out of telling us the rest of it, aren't you?" Rose asked.
She knew me so well because that was exactly what I was doing. I really didn't want to tell them the rest of my story. I'd rather wear that horrible dress of Robin's for the rest of eternity than to go through that again.
I began to shake a little as I said, "I had a happy childhood until the day that my father was wrongfully accused of being one of the Shobogans. The Shobogans were the cast offs of the Outsiders who committed crimes and acts of vandalism inside of the Capitol. Instead of living in peace like most of us did, they seemed to exist only to cause trouble and unrest among people. My father never associated with them, but one day he was accused of being one and implicated in an attack on one of the nobility. I later found out that he was being singled out because he was a former member of the nobility who still had a claim to the property of his House despite having left the Capitol behind. One of the members of his family had it in for him because he was next in line to inherit control over his family's estates instead of them. He didn't even care about that, but to this person it didn't matter. They still wanted to eliminate any and all potential rivals to their power. So they made sure to frame my father of this crime and sent the Capitol Guards after him to get him out of the way. He was then . . ."
My voice broke up at this point, and I couldn't continue. I had to struggle to compose myself as I tried to finish my story of that horrible day that my life was ruined forever.
"I'm sorry, Mum. I didn't know. We don't need to hear anymore," Rose said in a gentle voice as she put her arms around me to comfort me.
"He was shot by a staser and killed permanently with no possibility of regeneration. Then my mother and brother were shot as well. I was standing next to my mother when she was hit so I pretended that the same shot had hit me too, or none of us would be here right now. When I was sure that the Guards were gone, I woke up and soon found out that I was the only survivor," I said in tears.
"I'm so sorry," Robin said as he hugged me tightly.
"You wouldn't think that it would still hurt so badly, but it does even after so much time," I admitted in a choked voice.
"You don't need to say anymore," Rose said.
"That's right, Mum. I don't want to hear anymore. It's just too sad," Allison admitted as she struggled not to cry herself.
"That's why I wanted to create a way to travel in time. I thought that if I could do that I could go back in time and prevent my family from being killed. So I created a new life for myself back inside of the Capitol by joining the military and using it to work my way into the good graces of the leaders of Gallifrey, who I impressed with my intelligence. Luckily, no one recognized me or my name since I had been born in the wild lands and never lived in the Capitol. Also the military wasn't so picky about who they let join them in those days so they didn't look into my background too closely," I admitted.
"You couldn't change the past though. You would be creating a paradox because if that hadn't happened in the first place then you never would have been inspired to invent a time machine to go back in time to prevent it. I understand what you went through though. I tried to do a similar thing myself," Rose said.
"Yes, I remember you telling me about your father. I understood why you did that more than you thought back then. I know now that I couldn't change my own past without their being horrible consequences, but I didn't back then. None of us knew about the limitations of time travel back then. Once I realized the potential damages that could be done to the timestream by creating a paradox, I decided to still keep working on creating the TT Capsule in order to help Robin go back home. That didn't work out either though of course since Rassilon made sure that things turned out quite differently for us. That was just as well though, or you would have never been born, Freya. That was the one good thing that man ever did was to give me you," I said as I hugged Allison tightly.
"Mum, I told you not to call me that," Allison said in a soft voice as she hugged me back. She could tell that I was still very upset so she didn't complain too much.
Everyone become silent. Way too silent for me. I hated it. I had made everyone depressed and that just would not do. I had caused this so now it was up to me to bring everyone out of the depression that I had created.
"So, Mr. Wright, are you still willing to try to beat me in that archery contest?" I asked with a smile.
Robin looked at me in surprise at my sudden change in spirits, but he realized what I was trying to do and quickly nodded as he went along with my idea. I soon had everyone's spirits lifted and raised once again as Robin and I used UNIT's archery range in our contest. Everyone cheered us on as we competed against each other with no holds barred.
In the end, there could only be one victor though. It was inevitable. I really hated it to do it, but I had to abide by the agreement that we had made together.
I had to make him eat that hat.
"So, how would you like your hat served? You never did say what you preferred on it," I asked Robin with a triumphant grin.
As he sulked in the corner and started to take a bite out of his hat, I said, "Oh, come on. Don't be that way. I'll buy you a new hat. I never liked that horrible looking thing anyway."
He looked up at me and said, "I have heard of a new kind of hat that I would like to try."
"Okay. I'll get you that. What kind of hat is it?" I asked without thinking as I heard Rose groan. She obviously knew something that I didn't.
"I believe that it is called a Stetson," Robin said with an evil grin on his face.
As I glared at him, he said, "I wear a Stetson now. Stetsons are cool."
"I'm going to kill you, Doctor!" I said in anger.
The next day the Doctor woke up to go to the closet where he kept his hats on the TARDIS only to find that someone who shall remain nameless had broken into that area during the night and burned all of them including his favorite fez.
I can only imagine the look on his face as he found the note which read "I have a flamethrower now. Flamethrowers are cool."
He made sure to stay away from Robin for a good long while after that. I can't imagine why.
Next: Lily returns to 1890 to teach again as Diana Ceres only to find that the entire area has been seemingly overwhelmed by vampires. It's up to Lily to investigate what's really going on and put a stop to it. This of course is the moment that Koschei picks to show up and have a talk with her. He may get more than he bargained for! Let's hope that he brought plenty of stakes with him.