Located in a small corner of the Milky Way galaxy in the year 5087 AD was a binary star system called New Tatooine; the colonists had been Star Wars fans, and discovered and named several worlds that they named after planets in the Star Wars franchise; twin worlds Naboo and Alderaan were worlds that were identical to Earth; Tatooine was a blighted desert world, sparsely populated and a haven to criminals and pirates, who moved out of the system; there were three more worlds, with Coruscant being a massive cityscape, and Mandalore and Corellia. The only moon which was nothing more than an ocean with a few islands was known as Kamino, and the only gas giant was called Bespin. On the furthest edge of the system was a planet of ice, which was named Hoth, obviously.
In one of the cantinas near one of the spaceports of Coruscant, the Doctor knocked back her 15th hyper rum and smacked her lips at the taste, already feeling the buzz but not quite. She ordered another one and asked for the android to bring her a bottle so she could drink to her hearts content.
"Put it on my tab," the Doctor instructed the android who brought her her order. She had enough credits to buy out the entire currency of this piffling little system, so she wasn't worried.
The android went away, already calculating how much money the Doctor owed her, but the Time Lady didn't care. She had been in an almost self-destructive mood for months now, ever since she had regenerated. Oh, she'd had one or two adventures, but largely she had been travelling alone.
The Doctor, now in her 14th official incarnation even if technically, it was her sixteenth life - the incarnation who'd been part of the Last Great Time War had truly made the whole process of numbering her regenerations even harder - had spent thousands of years travelling the cosmos, in 16 different bodies, and barring different circumstances, they'd largely lived amazing lives.
At several points, she had been exiled to a world with her amazing Type 40 TARDIS, old and unreliable in the sense it didn't work but for the Doctor, she worked splendidly for getting her to places she needed to be, immobilised or otherwise inoperative to her, but she'd adapted with time, either because there was something meaningful for her to do, or she simply didn't recall the TARDIS to begin with, but largely she bounced back on her feet.
By and large, her incarnations, every one of them, had wonderful lives no matter how dodgy some of their experiences or the lives in question started out originally.
The incarnation she had left Gallifrey as had been more concerned with looking after Susan, her granddaughter before encountering the Daleks on Earth, and coming face to face with a killer who'd committed genocide against an entire race, just to save himself. The next incarnation had been more willing to fight off the evil in the universe before accepting banishment to Earth.
The Doctor knew her third and fourth incarnations had looked to the universe and its wonders with fresh eyes, but it wasn't until her fifth and sixth lives that things became darker as the universe seemed to throw even more terrifying problems for her to deal with, before that Time Lord show trial which brought her face to face with a potential future.
The Doctor grimaced hard as she considered the Valeyard; looking back, especially as she considered how hard some of her later lives had been, how less merciful and moral she had been, the Doctor knew she had adapted some of the Valeyard's habits. But at the time she had been haunted by the spectre the Valeyard represented before her sixth regeneration fouled things up.
The Doctor grimaced, only noticeably less hard than before.
Her seventh self hadn't fouled anything up, no that was unfair; she was older and wiser now, and she knew her 7th incarnation had been a subconscious desire to not be the Valeyard. And her seventh self had been one of the best.
She had become a puppet master at the time, and she had won many battles, using and discarding those around her in complex schemes like a general, so she never had to pick up a weapon. The Doctor hated guns, not only because she'd be tempted to use one, but because, deep down, she felt they didn't solve many problems, as so many people believed but she was prepared to use one.
Unfortunately, her seventh self had been so busy making plans and counter-plans, she had caused so much pain to her companions to the point they resented her and left on their own until she wished just to regenerate to rid herself of that life. She had pleaded with Ace and the Monk, another Time Lord renegade who meddled in history to make things better, to let her die but it never happened.
Her eighth incarnation was a breath of fresh air, a subs-conscious desire to relive 'the good old days' where she'd just travel and explore without travelling anywhere deliberately to fight injustice, and topple dictatorships with a plan.
But her wanderlust had not lasted with the conflict with Faction Paradox which led to the destruction of Gallifrey, and her memory blotted out to house the Matrix of Gallifrey so she forgot her past, beyond knowing her name and title and how to use the TARDIS, which was heavily damaged by the battle with Grandfather Paradox.
For 100 years, she had been stranded on Earth while the TARDIS healed herself, dealing with different crises, and she'd gone out into a universe without the Time Lords, with little awareness of what was happening or what her own role was in creating this new reality, where time travellers fought with each other for dominance before the Council of Eight tried taking control before that last ditch effort to end them. It was after that and encountering another Time Lord, the Doctor got the nerve to get her memories back, and she'd restored Gallifrey to the universe….but because Faction Paradox was erased from history, the timelines changed and the Daleks filled the vacuum, along with memories of the Ravenous, the Doom Coalition, and the Eminence trying to darken the cosmos.
Granted, some of their beginnings started off weirdly or badly; her sixth incarnation had been rough due to the violent nature of the regeneration that birthed her at the time, and she'd thrown a post-regenerative fit which caused her to attack her friend, but that was nothing compared to how she had disowned her wartime self so thoroughly there were no records of her except with the Time Lords, or in her mind. But every Doctor who'd come before she had started out traversing the universe, righting wrongs in their beautiful blue police box TARDIS.
And then the Master had interfered.
The Doctor grimaced at the thought of the deranged Time Lord. They had been friends, once upon a time. Those days were long gone. Dead. Finito. Adieu. It was time for her to accept her old friend was not coming back. No, he would always be gunning for her.
The Master and the Doctor were Time Lords who had once been friends back on Gallifrey before they began splitting apart and their relationship began to sour. Like the Doctor, the Master had stolen a TARDIS and left Gallifrey without looking back once, but unlike the Doctor, who merely wished to see the universe instead of reading about it, the Master just wanted to rule it believing one must rule or serve.
Stupid fool.
While the Doctor was able to understand the nuances behind the Master's philosophy, the universe was simply too vast, and while some Masters had been better than most, largely the Master murdered hundreds of people at a time, so insurrection would be an everyday problem. The Master had a habit of going through so many lives, it was likely he would have died before he could enjoy his new power base.
Thinking of the Master made the Doctor more depressed, especially now.
The Master was responsible for her last two regenerations, and she thought grimly at how both her 12th and 13th lives had been lost because of the evil Time Lord.
And he was evil.
The Doctor didn't want to give him the chance to kill off any more of her lives, never again. Five was more than enough, thank you very much.
"Hey, there beautiful!" A familiar American accent broke through her thoughts and the Doctor turned and grinned when she saw Jack.
"Jack Harkness! What are you doing here?"
For a moment the Doctor wondered if he even knew who was in front of him, but she got her answer a moment later.
"Oh, I was passing through when I detected the artron energy from the TARDIS. It's great to see you, Doctor," he grinned.
"Keep it down, Jack. I just want a quiet drink," the Doctor's happiness faded a little and she turned back to her drink, not seeing her old friend's concern.
"Doctor, is everything okay?" Jack asked.
"No," the Doctor replied. "You'd better sit down Jack. This might take a while."
The former Time Agent did as he was told.
"How long has it been?"
"70,000 years."
The Doctor flinched. "I know the feeling. Jack, do you remember when you told Rose and me you'd lost 2 years of your memories?"
Jack was shocked. He hadn't expected that. "Yeah, why?"
"Something similar happened to me, recently," the Doctor sighed. "I've just lost two of my lives because of the Master, but my last incarnation was being brainwashed by him."
"He did what? Why? How?" Jack growled.
The Doctor took another sip of her hyper run. "He did it when he discovered my 12th self regenerating. While I was shaken by post-regenerative trauma, he hacked the telepathic circuits of my TARDIS and materialised on board. He caused a system malfunction, and pushed me out of the doors, as the TARDIS was travelling over Sheffield. He knew I'd survive it. But the brainwashing began and it left me with memories I was not supposed to have."
Jack looked at her with horror.
The Doctor looked away. "He implanted memories in my head, making me believe there was this big mystery to my past, making me think I was from another universe, who was found by one of Gallifrey's early explorers who stole my power of regeneration and basing the whole of Time Lord civilisation on it and how my later lives were forced to work with a secret organisation which shaped history before my memories were erased, removed and planted in a fob watch. He set up the whole thing, Jack. He brainwashed me into thinking he had destroyed Gallifrey, oh yes he did. He used the Matrix there to make it possible. He brainwashed me so I believed this organisation was wiping out the whole universe with something called the Flux, and resolving it in a way that makes no sense to me, especially with my new perception of things. How could I do it, save the universe? What happened to the organisation? But there were other incidents as well, like an encounter with the Sea Devils. Jack, I've met the Silurians and the Sea Devils a handful of times, and each time I try to open dialogues with them and the humans. They fall apart, yeah, but when I met the Sea Devils in China, I didn't try that. It was not like me."
Jack wanted to know what the Master hoped to gain, but he knew there was more to come. "Go on," he urged.
The Doctor sighed, "I had a relationship. With Yaz."
"Yaz? Oh, that's cool, Doc."
"The Master ruined it."
Jack's smile faded. "How?"
The Doctor closed her eyes. "The Master came up with a sick plan to hijack my life, Jack. He spent years putting the plan in action, hoping to destroy my life and steal my body in the interim."
"The bastard did that."
"He stole my body, forcing me to regenerate and he hijacked my existence…just to get back at me, the disgusting, vengeful little freak of nature!" The alcohol combined with her new loathing for the Master made the Doctor almost scream, startling Jack. "I managed to get back - don't ask how it's too complicated - and he was stopped, but I wish I'd killed him, I won't hesitate now. But I was injured. I regenerated. I said goodbye to Yaz, the idiot I am," she choked, heartbroken at the relationship now gone for good.
Jack stared at her in horror.
But the Doctor was not finished, not yet. "When I regenerated, I realised everything I had experienced…never happened, or was rewritten in my mind; I destroyed the recon scout Dalek the moment I met it, not letting it survive; I hacked Jack Robertson's computer and exposed his crimes to the world. And the Timeless Child, the name the Master thought up for the imaginary me never existed. The Time Lords gained their powers of regeneration from the Time Vortex, as did a proto Time Lord called Melody, who was exposed to the Vortex and was then used as a weapon to kill me to stop the Time Lords from coming back - long story - and I tried negotiating with the Sea Devils but the Master rewrote it so I would destroy them, and I never saw it, never questioned it."
"What will you do now?" Jack whispered, horrified by what he was hearing.
The Doctor was silent for a while, making Jack wonder in fear if the Doctor had finally lost her mind. But she spoke in a whisper. "I don't know. I don't know if I can face Yaz again, or if she'll-," she shook her head, a bitter laugh leaving her mouth, "Do you know how many times I'm asked why I never return to my companions? Every time I meet them in a new life. They can't cope with my new appearance. Is Yaz the same? Has she moved on? I don't know if I can face that, that's why I rarely begin relationships."
Jack closed his eyes and nodded in understanding. His own immortality made him leave his loved ones; he stayed the same while they grew old. Sometimes he cursed Rose for making him immortal.
"But the thing is, deep down I knew the whole Timeless Child thing was utterly wrong; Melody Pond was conceived in the TARDIS, and she absorbed the energy of the Vortex, inheriting regeneration. The Master made it up. I only found out by chance when I regenerated. So it couldn't have been splicing or anything like that. You met Graham and Ryan, yes?" The Doctor said.
Thrown off slightly, Jack nodded.
"Well, I met a version of myself there, a future me. She was stunned to see me; she told me then my next regeneration would be rough, now I know why," the Doctor took a sip from her drink, and she bit her lip as she turned to Jack, and without a word, she suddenly hugged him, and started to sob.
Surprised, Jack wrapped his arms around her.
"I hate him, Jack," she said. "I hate him! I tried so hard to renew my friendship with him, but all he wants to do is to destroy me. Why? What did I do?" She sobbed.
That was the crux of the whole thing, the Doctor had clear memories of her life. She remembered everything, her eighth self's frequent bouts of amnesia notwithstanding, and she had no idea why the Master went out of his way to cause her so much pain, why he was so pathetic to come for her every time when he had the power to travel through time and space and see that his views made no sense.
"I hate him too, but if you meet him again, will you try to excuse his actions and take his side like you did after the Year?"
The Doctor flinched, cursing her tenth self. She had only done that because the Master was the only other Time Lord left, but she hadn't given a thought about how it appeared to everyone else; her tenth self had been so full of himself that he had gotten into so much trouble every week.
