Text Key

"Audible speech."

'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'

The Christmas Invasion

Chapter 3 – The Duel

The Doctor eyed the alien woman that was sitting cross-legged on a low stalagmite. He'd been hopping around the universe for over two millennia, no matter what made up and rounded down number he threw out when asked his age, and he'd never seen anything exactly like her.

Oh, there were the odd humanoids with pointed ears and multi-colored skin and nigh-luminous hair, but all those features at once… no. Not in his experience. Given, he could hardly go everywhere or know everything there ever was, but usually he had some guess as to what he was dealing with.

Maybe she was a permutation of some other more familiar species, a hybrid, or perhaps even a living piece of artwork. He'd seen that before… though they tended to be a bit more ostentatious and a tad more delicate than the average pane of stained glass, a hard contrast to this girl that only seemed to exist in three particular shades and was capable of going hand to hand with a warrior easily twice her size.

There was also the problem of why she was here. Why get involved with 21st century Earth? What was there to gain?

"Sword?" she asked, pulling a bright Earth-style blade from thin air. It seemed crafted from electrum and pure silver, with bright rubies inlaid in the ornately decorated hilt. There was a name of some sort inscribed into the blade, though the Doctor couldn't quite make it out from his current angle.

"Showpiece like that, I don't think I'd get very far," the Doctor replied. "Besides, I wouldn't want the Sycorax to accuse me of foul play, not when they've oh so generously given me the use of one of their own swords."

He jerked his head to where the heavy hand-and-a-half sword rested against the wall. Compared the silvery bright blade the alien woman was offering, the Sycorax blade was a crude piece; fashioned from bones, sinew, and a long bit of meteoric iron likely pulled from the very asteroid they were standing in, the finished product stood almost half as high as the Doctor did.

"Your funeral. Figuratively speaking of course," she said, and the blade dissolved into black pixels that shot straight into the air before vanishing completely. Another curiosity, but it did bring to mind some ideas of what she could be.

"So what are you?" the Doctor asked, "Shadow Kin? Elemental shade?"

"Good kennings, but if you were floating ideas for my species, entirely wrong."

The Doctor eyed her. If he was taking her at her word, then that ruled out anything that might have matched what he'd seen from her so far. "Then what are you?"

She smiled, not the threat display of earlier but a playful, almost puckish expression that fit her face all too well. "Creature of Twilight, thief of the night, trickster perched in evening eaves, trouble-dweller, and a pretty good dancer, if I might say so myself. Like everyone else in this universe, I am many things. If you must have a name, call me Angrir."

"I was asking about species."

"Ah. Well, let's just leave it at 'not something you're liable to run into again in this universe or the next'," she quipped, twisting around gymnastically to hang upside-down from the stalagmite, her black kilt doing an excellent job of defying gravity in its quest to maintain its owner's modesty.

Oh. There was something sad about that, discovering another last of a kind, even if he knew near nothing about the kind itself. "Imagine if I ever do run into another mane like that, I'll develop some sort of complex," the Doctor said with false flippancy.

She grinned. "Ah, still sore about not being ginger?"

"You caught that?"

"These big pointy ears aren't just for show, you know," the alien replied, wiggling said appendages before looking off to the side with a serious expression. The Doctor followed her gaze to where the Sycorax crowd had parted, their leader waiting in the middle of the 'arena'.

"His left hand is injured from our little 'spat' earlier," she said, dropping the playful tone for something low and serious. "I can't say how fast a Sycorax might recover from chemical burns, but it's something to keep in mind, if you find yourself a pragmatic man."

"Cheating?" the Doctor asked, picking up the heavy sword to balance the flat against his shoulder. He flashed her a bright smile bought secondhand from his Fifth incarnation. "Wouldn't be cricket."

"Good, because this isn't a game."

He took one last look at her, searching for some answer as to why she was doing this in her eyes. Why was she here for a planet that wasn't even hers...? The Doctor cut off the thought as he stepped into the arena and turned around to face his opponent.

Fadros' left hand was as badly injured as described, almost entirely covered over by thick red scabbing. Despite the small sign of recovery, that hand would remain a weak point for the warrior, one that would necessitate stiff swordsmanship and careful handling if the Sycorax planned to keep it in any functional use. No showy twists of the wrist or powerful reverses from that side, at least not today.

Twisting his borrowed blade around and planting its tip in the floor, the Doctor knelt, meeting his opponents gaze. "For the fate of the planet."

The Sycorax snarled softly before repeating the same line. "For the fate of the planet."

With that, the duel officially began, both participants quickly standing to swing their blades at each other, the rough edged blades scraping off of each other with each clumsy swing. For now, the match was barely even, though it was clear that the first fighter to find his tempo would have the advantage.

Unfortunately, a Time Lord fresh off a regeneration tends to be off beat for a day or so.

'Any help?' the Doctor asked the depths of his mind. 'Three? Four? I'll settle for Six!'

Nothing. It was still too early on for this model, his psyche too unsteady for his past selves to be of any use, even as sources of vague advice. And right when he could have used them the most.

Fantastic.

He pulled up his blade, deflecting a strike that might have ended the duel right there. Still, the force of it drove him back, stumbling over the non-existent heels of his slippers.

"Next time I have to fight a duel, I'm wearing shoes with proper soles," the Doctor murmured before twisting out of the way of another strike.

The Doctor slashed at his opponent again, trying not to overextend on the action and receiving nothing but an elbow to the ribs for his trouble. That was the trouble with regeneration, he thought as he just barely ducked under what could have been a beheading. Getting used to the new limbs and their limits.

The Sycorax around all were roaring, pleased with their champion's apparent superiority over Earth's defender. It was too loud in here, too close. He needed air.

The Doctor ran back down a path, one that he instinctively knew led out onto the outside of the craft. "Bit of fresh air?" he asked as he opened a minor airlock, escaping out into the darkness of a barely illuminated night.

It was dark, save for the slash of a scimitar moon casting silver shadows over the outer contours of the asteroid ship and the sweeping path of searchlights below casting a phantom glow from beneath the bottom of the Sycorax ship. Most species would call this 'inoperable conditions', only a fraction better than absolute darkness to navigate. To any creature that could see in the dark – say, for example, a Time Lord – the only cost was a bit of color perception.

The Doctor grinned. He could work with this.

This new Doctor was an idiot.

That was the only conclusion Rose could come to. He was a talkative, excitable, distractible, brilliant idiot that occasionally lost track of his feet and his words. And they had given him a sword, pointed him at a duel, and said 'for the fate of the planet'.

Maybe that just made the rest of them bigger idiots.

"He knows what he's doing," the alien girl had assured them as the Doctor moved the fight into a nearly pitch black night that was only occasionally interrupted by sweeps of light, before adding an incredibly unhelpful. "…probably."

'Probably' was probably one of the last words Rose Tyler wanted anywhere near the sentences 'he knows what he's doing', 'we're going to save the world', and 'it's perfectly safe', because it was nearly as good as shoving an absolute negative somewhere into the mix.

Now, all they could do is watch for the glint of moonlight on iron and the sparks of clashing blades as the two champions dueled in the dark.

"What's happening?" Rose asked.

"The tide has shifted," the alien girl said, her red eyes glowing slightly in the dark as they shifted slightly, following the movements of the fight. Of course, she'd be able to see in the dark. Why wouldn't the creepy half-shadow alien wearing a crop top and kilt at Christmas be able to see in the dark? "The Doctor's coordination and control has improved, while Fadros' is swinging around blindly–"

The world turned white as a searchlight hit just the right angle to throw the duel into sharp silhouette, and the alien girl threw her arm up over her face with a sharp shriek of pain before she dropped to the ground. Harriet Jones was immediately at her side.

That scream was followed by another one, one that Rose recognized as the Doctor's.

The Sycorax leader raised his sword, bellowing out some sort of victory roar.

The Doctor was still there, she saw, just barely visible from the glow of one of the searchlights down below and still alive from the way he was moving to get back up again, but something was wrong with his right arm. Like… like it was too short. Like his hand…

"You… you cut my hand off," the Doctor ground out as he cradled his arm to his chest. "You cut it off. Do you know what kind of man this makes me?"

"The Sycorax claim vic–"

"A very lucky one."

The Doctor stretched out his arm, the golden flames that Rose remembered from the TARDIS – the regeneration – dancing out of the stump, at first slowly but then picking up speed as they began to trace the shape of bones and muscles, the actual stuff following closely behind.

"Witchcraft," the Sycorax hissed.

"Bit rich, coming from you," the Doctor replied. "No, it's not witchcraft. I'm just lucky… because, quite by chance and in the event you haven't been paying attention, I'm a Time Lord within the first fifteen hours of his regeneration cycle," he said as he flexed his new hand, the last few golden sparks dancing off into the night like fireflies as he waggled his fingers. "All that extra regeneration energy bouncing around my body... sometimes it goes to good use. Too bad for you, this one feels like a fighting hand!"

Somehow, that was a cue and one that Rose jumped on immediately, pulling the sword out of a nearby Sycorax's hands and throwing it towards the Time Lord. "Doctor!"

He snatched it out of the air easily, twisting around to batter at his opponent. The Sycorax seemed suddenly swamped by the onslaught, barely raising his sword back up each time as the Doctor's blows hammered down. Soon, it was the Sycorax that was lying on the edge of the asteroid, sword thrown off of the edge as the Doctor held the point of his weapon at the alien's throat, his other foot braced on the Sycorax's chest.

"I win," he said.

"Then end it," the Sycorax spat. "Kill me."

"No. I'll let you live. I'll spare your life and you'll leave this place forever, full of warnings to anyone who crosses your path that the Earth – is – protected! That is this champion's command; leave, and never return. Not with your brothers, not with your sisters, not with all the mercenaries you could ever buy. The Earth is forbidden to you and your race from now until the end of time."

The Doctor tilted his head to the side, as if reading the Sycorax's mind through his eyes alone. "What do you say to that?"

"Fine."

He leaned down, pressing the sword tip closer. "Do you swear it on the blood of your species?"

"Yes!" the Sycorax yelled back. "I swear it!"

As if a switch flipped, the friendly Doctor was back, stepping away from the alien and tilting the sword over his shoulder like an unorthodox sort of cricket bat. "Ah, well then, thanks for that, big fella. Best bit of exercise I've had all day." With that, he twisted the blade around and planted it in the stone before walking back towards her with a smile.

"You won!" Rose yelled as she threw herself into his arms.

"Done giving up on me then?" he asked playfully.

"Never doubted you for a minute," she replied.

"Saved the day, got my best girl, and…" the Doctor paused, reaching down to rifle through the pocket of his borrowed dressing gown. "…a satsuma. Well, wouldn't be Christmas without them." He turned to look at the alien girl, who had just gotten up from the ground, supported by Harriet Jones. "What happened to your face?" he asked.

There was an odd look in his eyes. Like that alien girl had become the absolute center of his universe the moment he noticed her injury.

Rose wasn't entirely sure she liked that.

The alien grinned, a bit of grey skin peeling away to show burnt looking flesh beneath. The skin on the arm that she'd thrown up to shield her face didn't look much better, already blistering horribly. "Forgot my sunscreen," she said, wincing as a section peeled off in a way that recalled wallpaper rather than skin. "Wouldn't think that I'd have to worry about that sort of thing in the middle of the night, but I – ah! – stand corrected."

The Doctor started to reach out a hand to her. "Do you need–"

She held up a hand to stop him as the skin on her face quickly began regaining its natural black and grey color, the blisters slowly but visibly fading before their very eyes while the parts that were apparently too damaged to recover simply sloughed off. "Don't worry about it; I've always been a fast healer."

There was a yell from behind as the Sycorax leader picked up the Doctor's discarded sword and began to run towards them–

The Doctor took the satsuma and threw it at a button near the door they'd come out through and suddenly the battle cry turned into a scream that fell away from the ship. How far down was the drop? Rose wondered. Far enough to kill, probably.

"No second chances," the Doctor said, his voice cold and serious once again. "That's the sort of man I am."

I ignored the sensation of burning as we appeared on Earth again, only opening my eyes once I was sure I wasn't going to burn out my retina. Crazy fast healing factor aside, regrowing the eyes was never a fun experience.

We were outside the Tower of London, the TARDIS sitting nearby and almost invisible for all the ambient Britishness. Somewhere between the landing and now, UNIT soldiers had surrounded us, most of their weapons pointed at me. A bit overkill for something that barely broke five feet in height, if you asked me. While there were some lights outside, it wasn't anything strong enough to cause anything more than mild discomfort and slow down the healing process.

I looked up, ignoring the sounds of Major Blake telling his men to stand down and the ensuing clatter of automatic rifles being shifted to an uneasy rest, and made out the outline of the Sycorax ship. It was just visible against the night sky's backdrop of stars, the bright dots of searchlights fixed on its belly shifting out of place as it slowly started to climb up and away from the Earth, the red glow of its internal engine gradually becoming little different than the other stars above.

How far would they get before the order to shoot them down was given? Past the moon or close enough for the ash to mingle with the atmosphere and become the base for fresh snow?

Either way was good riddance, I thought, even as Mickey and Rose started jumping around and celebrating their victory.

"Thank you for your help," Harriet Jones said, taking my hand gently.

I smiled, wincing a little as the expression tested raw muscles. "Wasn't much trouble. Never cared for bullies."

"Neither have I," the Doctor said as he walked up to us, smiling down at Harriet Jones. "Prime Minister Harriet Jones."

She released my hand as she turned to him. "Doctor. My Doctor."

"I'm sure you two require a moment," I murmured, extricating myself from the immediate vicinity. I wasn't going to go far though. There was still one more event for me to push off the rails this morning, one more mistake that needed to be corrected.

It wasn't one without risk either. What did it cost to get in a Time Lord's way? The Family of Blood certainly provided an idea of what the Doctor could do. What could he do to a being that was already immortal? And how much worse would that fate be if he ever found out exactly what I was behind the mask?

"Thank you."

Shaken out of that dark train of thought, I turned to look at Llewellyn. The balding scientist would have died if I hadn't been there, executed for the crime of asking for basic decency. Instead, because I told him to hold back, he'd lived. "What for?" I asked.

"For… not being like them. You're evidence that… the universe isn't a cruel or lonely place. It isn't as ideal as I had hoped, but it…" he swallowed, as if trying to find the exact words he wanted to say. "It isn't as dark a place as it might have been."

Oh, it rarely was. Little could exist in such extremes; the grittiest worlds having their bright points while the nicest 'verses had their darkness. Of course, there were exceptions, stories that I never ever wanted to visit, no matter how smart, tricky, or powerful I could become. I could shift a genre, but some texts were unforgiving.

"I should be the one thanking you, Mister Llewellyn," I said as I turned my eyes to the night sky, much more beautiful for the lack of alien ship hanging between it and the Earth. "For proving that Earth's dreams of distant stars are not dead."

The silence stretched for a moment before I coughed awkwardly.

"Well, I'm certain that you have better things to do on Christmas than trade sappy sentiments with a pointy-eared bastard," I said, quickly turning away. "Go open presents, make merry… or whatever else you had planned for the day."

I'm so good at social interaction.

Llewellyn nodded. "Yes," he agreed. "It's been a rather… long night and I imagine my daughter would rather I be at home when she opens her presents. Five year olds are rather insistent on those sorts of things."

Giving Harriet Jones a Merry Christmas and a goodbye, he was escorted to a car which drove silently off into the night. The Doctor had joined Rose and Mickey, the two jumping and turning all around him while the Time Lord simply basked in the glow of victory.

I sighed, moving to tuck my hands into my pockets only to be reminded that the Twili Mask's transformation didn't come with them. A logical problem for a race with subspace storage capabilities. Barely an issue, I thought as I corrected the movement to hooking my thumbs into the waistband of the kilt that came with the borrowed body.

Movement drew my attention closer. "Prime Minister," I said, dipping my head in deference.

"What do you think of the Sycorax?" Harriet Jones asked, her assistant standing nearby with his fingers pressed up to his ear.

"In what context?" I asked. So we were here now, on the cusp of the moment that could bring the whole chain of dominos falling down. The weight of an entire timeline was on my shoulders.

"Retaliation," she said. "Do you think the Sycorax will come back with the armada they spoke of or do you think they will honor the terms of our… agreement?"

I closed my eyes as I took a deep breath. "In my honest opinion? I think they proved the worth of their word when their leader attempted to stab the man he surrendered to in the back about a minute after the fact. But in the end, the choice is yours to take the shot or not," I opened my eyes to look at her through my eyelashes. "And the responsibility –"

"–will lie on my shoulders alone," Harriet Jones finished. "Yes, I knew that the moment the offer came through from Torchwood. But I cannot rely on the word of slavers that they will not return. Not when that word has been proven hollow and worthless."

I bowed my head. "So let it be done." As she turned to her assistant, I spoke again. "I will intercede should things get out of hand, but beyond the initial encounter, I can only give this advice: if anyone asks if you look tired, it has been a very long night and that you hope for a quiet Christmas. Six words can topple an empire, but only if you give them the power to."

Harriet Jones turned around. "What?"

"Don't get paranoid, even for a moment. Take each step in stride and take your rest where you can get it," I finished, before sighing. "This conversation might make more sense later. If not… well, the world will be happier for it."

There was a faint frown of confusion, but it was soon swept away as Harriet Jones, Prime Minister of Britain and current representative of Earth, turned to her assistant and uttered the fateful words, "Then we take the shot."

Alex nodded, before relaying the order. "The Prime Minister has confirmed action," he said. "Fire at will."

Somehow, the sound had carried across the distance between the two groups, because the Doctor's head spun around, his eyes wide–

And green beams of energy shot up from different parts of London, coming up to converge into a ball almost as bright as the sun before shooting off into space. Soon after that, another explosion of light, this one distant and fiery as the Sycorax ship suddenly failed to exist just past the moon.

There was no sound from the destruction of the Sycorax ship. There was no sound in space because there was no air for it to travel through, but there was a sound in the imagination and across more than a few telepathic bandwidths; the sound of many minds jumping up in surprise before being abruptly silenced, either by the initial blast or the airlessness of the environment they'd just been thrown out into.

That silence was as good as a scream.

"You… you killed them," the Doctor murmured before anger took over, turning the whisper into a yell. "That was murder! Cold-blooded –"

"That was defense," Harriet Jones said quietly. "Adapted from salvaged alien technology, as I understand it, from a ship that fell to Earth about ten years ago."

There was no pride in her voice, no defiance of the charge leveled against her. Harriet Jones knew what she had done and on some level, she agreed with what the Doctor said. It was cold-blooded, but the facts were cold as well.

The Sycorax could not be trusted.

"I don't care where you got it," the Doctor snarled. "What I care about is that they were leaving and you shot them in the back!"

Harriet Jones looked up to lock eyes with the Time Lord. "Would you have me gamble the lives of every human on Earth on the word of the Sycorax, Doctor? On a people whose leader attempted to kill you the moment your back was turned, immediately after he'd made his surrender?"

The Doctor stepped back, rage pulling at the lines of his face, but never quite crawling past the naked disgust in his voice. "They vowed never to return," he said. "As vowed to me by the ancient rites of combat and on the blood of their species. And you shot them in the back anyway. Britain's Golden Age."

That was it. I was going to interfere in the worst sort of way: by stepping into the line of fire.

"'By the ancient rites of combat'; that duel was done the moment you gave Fadros his life," I said as I put myself between the two, staring down the Time Lord. Quite a trick considering I was on the wrong end of twelve inches of height difference. "And he proved the worth of his word, as sworn on the blood of his race, when he picked up that sword to attack you after you'd won the fight."

I looked around at the people who'd witnessed it. "Everyone was paying attention, yes? To how the Sycorax equated the human race with cattle, to how they refuse to dirty their tongues with the languages of 'lesser' races?"

I turned back to the Doctor. "Honor only counts among equals and those that would hold themselves to it. To slavers that treat every other race as cattle… it means nothing but the chance to buy time so they can stab someone in the back when they're ready. So you protected the Earth this once… what was to stop them from coming back?"

The Doctor opened his mouth. "I –"

I cut him off. "You're not always here, Doctor. This time, you were almost too late. What happens when you can't get here in time? Hmm? A hundred and fifty years from now, some squid things riding around in giant pepper pots show up while you aren't looking and take over the Earth? What are they supposed to do, twiddle their thumbs while they wait for you to show up?"

I shook my head.

"Don't pretend they don't have the right to protect themselves," I said. "Not when they have trouble knocking on their door and only one name to call on. I won't pretend that Torchwood doesn't disgust me with their methods and their mentality and that violence shouldn't be the first answer to something outside your understanding, but do not fucking deny what desperate and frightened people are capable of or decry it as bare-faced cruelty when they have very real reasons to fear for their lives."

The Doctor stared through me, as if all the shine of curiosity had worn off and been replaced by something familiarly horrible in the blink of an eye. "What's your investment in this?" he asked. "What do you get out of letting humans become the new Daleks?"

I pulled myself up to my full height, not even coming close to being level with the Doctor's chin. If the eyes ever made up for the height issue in intimidation department, I'd never noticed it. "They are nothing of the sort and you know it," I snarled. "They won't become the sort of race that exterminates everything that isn't exactly like them just because their first official contact with aliens happened to be with some of the worst the universe has to offer."

I stepped back a little, unclenching my fists. "Of course they will stumble and occasionally they will fall. Everybody does at some point. But they will get back up again and learn from their mistakes. They will step forward, not back, so don't use this situation as some excuse to hamstring their chances at the future. It wasn't black-and-white and you know it, Doctor."

He stared at me for a moment, analyzing.

"And I thought I was the one for grand speeches," the Doctor finally said, still not looking overly impressed or convinced.

"And I thought you knew better than to paint slavers as sheep. Very easy, I suppose, now that they are dead and incapable of hurting anyone else," I spat back. "Do not twist history to suit your arguments, Time Lord. One Rassilon was enough."

With that, I spun on my heel and started walking quickly along the riverfront. I needed an alley, somewhere where I could get my bearings and then start the long, complicated dance that would end with me back in my own skin and somewhere close to cooling off.

Damn cities with all their damn security cameras, I thought as I finally found an alley and made the sharp turn to disappear into the dark –

Only to have a hand lock around my wrist.

"What is Torchwood?" the Doctor asked.

So he'd followed me. Damn. Unfortunately for him, if he was planning on holding onto me, he would have had more luck where there was light.

"Somewhere old and cold where no alien should ever go," I said as I turned to shadow and slipped out of his grip. "Regardless of what they may or may not have done to deserve such a fate."

He stared after me as I properly became one with the ambient darkness and no longer visible to the eye and probably for a while after I'd left the alley entirely.

The Doctor stared into the TARDIS wardrobe, thumbing through the different articles of clothing without any real mind to what he was looking at.

Usually, he enjoyed this step more. It was like a rite of passage for each regeneration; finding his new signature look out of the nearly literal galaxy of options at his fingertips. But somehow, it didn't have that Christmas morning feel to it like it usually did. A bit ironic, seeing as it was actually Christmas morning, but that wasn't important.

What was important was why his mind couldn't seem to escape that strange shadow girl. It had been an over two hours since she'd quite literally slipped out of his grasp and the Doctor was still turning over every single one of his interactions with her over in his head.

Her species was inconsequential compared to most of the other questions. Why was she there? Why was she helping the humans? And how did she know him so well, while he didn't know her at all?

The last, the Doctor might have been able to chalk up to the fact that he was a time traveler. Meeting people out of order was hardly out of the question, but usually when he met aliens, it was in alien places. Sometimes on Earth, true, but they were usually exiles or invaders, almost never on the side of the humans.

So why? What did the Earth mean to her? She wasn't born here –

'Neither were you, if you care to recall such a sundry detail,' his First sniffed.

Ah, finally.

'It's about time you lot showed up,' the Doctor snapped at his past selves. 'I could have used you a few hours ago.'

'Oh, I thought you had it handled quite tidily,' his Fourth said, putting a pair of imaginary feet on a similarly imaginary desk. 'Hardly anyone in the immediate vicinity died, the Earth hasn't been prematurely destroyed…'

'Or perhaps you are referring to when you attempted to depose of a woman whose political career was a fixed point in history,' his Sixth added.

"The Sycorax were retreating!" the Doctor said aloud as he pushed another rack of clothes aside.

'The Sycorax don't retreat,' his Seventh said darkly. 'They regroup and wait until their enemy's guard is down and come swooping–'

"Fine, fine, swooping is bad," the Doctor muttered. "I may have overreacted –"

'That's an understatement.'

And now he remembered why his other incarnations tended to keep the older ones tuned out unless absolutely necessary. "Alright. Enough about that. It was a mistake. I want your opinions on something else –"

'Red really isn't your color.'

The Doctor looked down at the rust red military coat his hands had settled on and shoved it away. 'Not that! The girl!'

'Mmm, she's not bad,' his Fifth said. 'I question her common sense, especially when she caused that paradox despite the clear warnings not to do that, but I'm hardly in a position to–'

"Not Rose. The alien one."

'Ah. Well –'

'Likely an Earth resident, from the terminology and the fact the TARDIS wasn't translating anything from her,' his Third noted.

He hadn't quite caught that himself, but that did explain why she was so invested in the situation. Anything that affected the Earth affected her in turn.

'She's an interesting puzzle and she was a help in the crisis, though that reference to Rassilon was somewhat… troubling, considering how little the general universe knows about the culture of Gallifrey,' his Seventh cut in. 'Beyond that, she did give us some good information on 'Torchwood'.'

"Barely," the Doctor said as he pushed aside a rack full of fur. Definitely not him this time around.

'Still better than nothing, considering that you hadn't heard anything about it bar the odd reference in the far future of Earth.'

The Doctor had to concede the point. Instead of being dimly aware of there being an organization called 'Torchwood', he actually knew something about them. Nothing good and nothing concrete, but it was something rather than the previous nothing.

His hand brushed past something that immediately seized his attention. Ah, that was it. That was what he was looking for, but it needed – the Doctor's small smile widened into a grin as he saw the coat. Perfect!

'That is a veritable overabundance of brown,' his Sixth noted with a wave of mental cringe.

'Oh, shut up, Rainbow Brite,' the current model thought before he shut out his other selves and started changing into his new suit. So what if it was all brown? The tie wouldn't be brown and he'd pick out a nice pair of trainers. Maybe in red, maybe white… or perhaps beige.

Then, instead of worrying about an alien girl that he may never run into again, the Doctor was going to have a nice Christmas dinner with Rose, Jackie, and Mickey.

The Doctor checked himself in the mirror, running his tongue over his new teeth before flashing an experimental grin. Not bad, he decided as he made for the control room and the door behind that.

Not bad at all.

Author's Notes

Chapter 3 rewrite, beta'd by littleditto.

Revised 9/2/2017 to patch up quality and plot holes created by future chapters.

Yes, that was the Sword of Gryffindor that Ten turned down. Even in an anti-magic universe, it would still be fairly durable... and possibly poisoned, so maybe it's better he said no.

Shadow Kin and Elemental Shadows are both from Doctor Who (well, Doctor Who and its expanded universe), though the last have but one appearance and reference in the show proper (Love and Monsters) and the Shadow Kin appear just about exclusively in the Class spin-off.

Kenning: noun – a compound expression in Old English and Old Norse poetry with metaphorical meaning, e.g., oar-steed = ship. From 'kenna' to know or perceive. Usually consists of two words, often hyphenated.

Classical examples would be 'wave-horse' for ship, 'bane of wood' for fire, or 'wolf's joint' for wrist, referencing Tyr losing his hand to Fenrir. You could think of a kenning as a sort of verbal puzzle or riddle name, not unlike Bilbo's 'Barrel-Rider', 'Ringwinner', and 'Luckwearer' in his exchange with Smaug.

'Kin of Shadows' and 'Elemental Shade' would be accurate kennings for a Twili, but not accurate in the sense of species title.

Angrir is a reference to something that hasn't been written yet. It is being meticulously planned though and is partially the source of the 'trouble-dweller' epithet.

Time Lord senses – like pretty much everything else Time Lord – are way more powerful than a humans, and at least one source credits Gallifreyans with tapeta lucida, a reflective layer of tissue on the back of the eye that reflects the light that enters the eye and provides superior night vision.

Too long, didn't read version; it's the thing that makes cats eyes glow in the dark. Humans, along with most other primates, don't have them. This will be important.

Yes, the reference to Daleks showing up 150 years from 2006 is a reference to the Dalek Invasion of Earth, the 1964 serial / Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., the 1966 film adaptation of the same serial, where in the Doctor wasn't all that big into the universe saving business yet and the Daleks did come out of nowhere to take everything over.

The similarities between the Doctor's and Delaine's communications with their former/alternate selves are deliberate.