A/N: So, this is an idea I've had floating around in my head for a while. What would've happened if the Doctor had never ended the Time War? How much would that actually change? (So hint hint, there will be spoilers for all of NuWho.) This is also my take on the whole, 'Fan travels to the Whoniverse'.
Although no one is surprised, I do not own Doctor Who and am making no money from this fun little endeavor.
Also, a quick shoutout to ArkTaisch and bored411 for no other reason than they're really swell people and great writers.
Edited 5/16
Edit 8/19: Hello! If you've already read the story, you'll notice I've made a couple of changes. Chs. 1 and 2 have been combined, as well as 4-6. The story will therefore be three chapters shorter than it was previously. This means that the chapters from here on out will have the wrong chapter numbers. I'll eventually head back and fix this, but I wanted to make these changes while I was still posting the chapters for this story.
Chapter One: Anna (but not Karenina)
On a faraway planet, on what was supposed to be it's very last day, a man was carrying a box across the desert that had once been his home.
This is where he planned to end it for them all.
No more, he'd declared. No more suffering, no more pain. Even as the sweat beaded and dropped down his face, even as the twin suns beat harshly against his back, he stood by that pledge, no matter the cost.
Even if the cost was every life on Gallifrey and the daleks beyond.
Although he didn't know it, this would always be the last day of the Last Great Time War.
Always meant something different in English than it did in Gallifreyan. Think about it. In English terms, always referred to one version of reality: i.e., Sharon would always buy the blue car in one version of reality, but in another she would always buy the red one.
In every version of reality, no matter what happened and no matter the circumstances, this would always be the last day of the Last Great Time War.
That's not to say that it was a fixed point. Fixed points pertained to events that had to happen in a specific way in order for that specific version of reality to continue trudging on as it should. Though, that wasn't to say that certain fixed points weren't fixed points across multiple versions of reality.
The point was, this would always be the last day of the Last Great Time War, and it would always lead to a man carrying a box across the desert.
The box itself was more than a box. The men who had designed it had intended for it to be the greatest weapon in all of destruction. The Galaxy Eater, they had called it, intent on believing that they could create a weapon that would destroy whole universes and would bend to their will.
But, design and destiny are two different things.
The box's destiny was not to fulfill their design. Things like design often get thrown out of whack when there's another sentient being involved, whether the sentience was believed in or not. The box, or The Moment, as it was called, was smug in the knowledge that it's destiny was as far from their design as one could possibly get. It could see that destiny stretched out before it: the barn and the conversation that would take place, changing the lives of trillions forever.
That was The Moment's destiny.
Well, for another minute, anyway. Though neither of them knew it, the course of both of their lives (if what The Moment had was considered a life) was about to altered, forever.
He hadn't made it that far, the box in tow, when a time storm disrupted his time sense.
He could feel it deep in his chest, time twisting and tangling up like some wild dance that it couldn't quite perfect and decided to improvise instead. It was like a Class Five hurricane, a tornado and a tsunami, all occurring at the same time, all fighting for his undivided attention at the exact same instance.
He didn't have time for it to settle.
The ground beneath him began to shake uncontrollably, and, due to the haze surrounding whatever event had occurred to throw the Web of Time into such disarray, he couldn't catch himself as he was thrown to the red sands below his feet.
He heard screams above him and, in a daze, he looked up.
He was both mesmerized and terrified by the sight suddenly overtaking the burnt orange sky overhead. "What're they doing?" He'd never realize he asked the question aloud as he managed to regain his senses enough to stand on shaking feet. After years of piloting a boisterous Tardis, this felt like nothing to him. "What are they all doing?"
The sight above him was nothing like he'd ever seen before.
It was a coordinated dalek attack. His soldier's mind told him that's what it must be, for he'd known nothing else for nearly a millennia. Fives lines of daleks stretched across the burnt orange sky, shaped like that of a human child's drawing of a star. They were all converging on one point.
He couldn't discern the different cries, the exterminates from the reports, but he knew that's what they were saying. That's what they always said, whether it be during the nightmares that visited him on the nights that he slept (which could stretch on until he'd realized it'd been ten years and he hadn't closed his eyes once) or in the conscious hours during which he fought endless battles, hearing their cries in the far off distance from the 'comfort' of a battle tent or on the front lines as he fought with the very men he was more than willing to burn to end a war that would've destroyed the very cosmos itself.
The last dalek flew into whatever it was that they were flying into and a pulse of energy shot out, brighter than even the suns. He blinked away the glare and when he did, he was greeted with an absolutely empty sky.
Silence had fallen so completely across all of Gallifrey that he was sure he would've been able to hear a word spoken from a thousand miles away. His hearts were doing double time in his chest, despite the stillness. What had happened? Most importantly, where had the daleks disappeared to?
It was then that he saw it.
Against the backdrop of orange, there was a single black speck that was rapidly falling. He'd managed to gather his wits about him enough that he was able to pull out his sonic, trying to discern if this had been what had pulled the daleks in or if this was some kind of weapon.
The sky was suddenly alight again. Apparently, the rest of Gallifrey had woken up out of their dalek induced stupor. He watched as ships swarmed the speck, tractor beams shooting out, ships even getting underneath it to physically catch it, but to no avail.
When he glanced down at the sonic, his very old eyebrows raised.
It was a human girl.
Were that the case, the sonic was nowhere near sensitive enough to pick up information like that from this far off. Yet, there the readings stated, in Gallifreyan for his eyes to see, that it was a human girl that was currently falling from the sky.
No, he had to correct himself a moment later. The human girl that had been falling from the sky.
The black speck was gone.
He would've said that the soldiers had caught her, but they were still scrambling about in an erratic and uncoordinated formation. It meant that she had disappeared from sight, without a trace.
He needed to find her. Whatever she actually was, she'd been at the epicenter of whatever event had just occurred. Even if she didn't have answers, it was still a start. As luck would have it, he hadn't actually made it that far from the Tardis, and he ran through the sand, surprisingly light on his feet as he carried The Moment all the while.
He made it back to the Tardis in record time. It didn't end up making the slightest bit of difference. As he reached the doors, he caught something in his peripheral vision: a fireball that was heading straight for him, The Moment and the Tardis.
Moving quicker than he'd ever remembered moving, he unlocked the doors before he took two steps in, slamming the Tardis door behind him.
Despite the fact that nothing could get through the doors, his soldier's mind had still expected there to be some kind of reverberations through the door from the impact. There were no reverberations, however, and as he pressed his ear to the door, he was met with something eerie.
Absolute silence.
Slowly and cautiously, with all the expectation that he was about to be fired upon by a dalek extermination ray, he barely opened the door, viewing the outside world through the small opening the doors had created.
A moment later, though he didn't exit the Tardis, he did open the door the rest of the way.
There, laying on the red sand in front of him was a humanoid girl, still smoldering from her descent. His brows pulled together and he did a quick scan with the sonic to see that she was, in fact, a human girl. According to the sonic readings, it was, in fact, the same human girl that had been falling from the sky not moments before.
He had many questions that he wanted to ask. Who was she? How had she gotten here? Why didn't there appear to be a scratch on her, internally or externally, save for her clothes, which had been badly burned in the descent?
His entire life was made up of split second choices. This was no different.
He walked over to the woman, gently testing her skin to find that it wasn't boiling to the touch but was, instead, a normal human temperature. He picked her up bridal style before he carried her through the doorway of the Tardis, depositing her gently on the floor before he did what he did best: he ran.
This time, it wasn't from anything. For perhaps the first time in his life, he was running to something: answers, including the answer to his most important question.
What, exactly, had just occured?
Everything had changed.
He just wouldn't know that until it was far too late.
#####
She jumped up.
It was as simple as that; no muss, no fuss. One second, she was laying down on the white paneling where he'd placed her, the next, she was standing.
Her intelligent blue eyes roamed the console room before they landed on him. Her face went through a vast array of emotions, from calculation to confusion to analyzation before it landed on an overabundance of joy.
"Hello," she started, before he'd had a chance to utter a word. "I'm Anna Monroe. I'm the woman who just singlehandedly used my incredible powers to save Gallifrey from any present or future dalek attacks. Transported them all into an alternate dimension where they can happily exterminate amongst themselves. Populated it with empty planets, it'll take them until the end of this universe to even realize there isn't anything to conquer. Also, put up barriers around Gallifrey, six, to be precise, to prevent any daleks that I may have missed from slipping through. They get within a hundred miles of this planet and they get sucked in to join their little dalek buddies. As for anybody else looking to restart the Time War, they'll be sucked in as well, deposited back where they started. Wouldn't put them with the daleks, that'd just be cruel-"
She made a noise of pain before she clutched her side. Despite the fact that he hadn't been able to process a word that she'd spoken, he still rushed to her, managing to catch her before she fell to the white paneled flooring below.
"It's all right, I've got you, I've got you, just breathe."
She was breathing hard and she opened her eyes. A smile graced her face. "Hello," she said.
"Hello," he replied. What she'd just relayed to him was starting to break through to where it could be understood, but he wasn't so much focused on that as he was on helping the woman who'd seemingly fallen from the sky. Delirious. She had to be. "You can call me-"
He mistepped in introducing himself. After all, what were use of names in a war such as this? He'd been either 'Commander' or 'sir' for nearly the past millennia. Neither felt right, and neither of them were words he wanted to hear from this innocent woman who hadn't been touched by war.
She saved him from this when she smiled even wider.
"I know who you are," she told him. "The War is over. I ended it. Now, I swear to you that you will never have to use The Moment. I promise."
In a fashion as dramatic as her words, she passed out in his arms.
It wasn't long before he regenerated into a new man. About five hours or so passed before his body gave out, the orange glow radiating from his fingertips. He left the room so she wouldn't get caught up in the blast, but once it was over, he'd moved back inside and resumed his tests and the like. He'd gotten ten minutes into this and had to pause to change clothes, this body no longer suited to the clothes the now dead man had worn.
From what he could tell, the woman was young, even by human standards. Everything about her seemed entirely ordinary, from her strawberry blonde hair to her freckle covered skin, and if he didn't know any better, he'd say she was entirely human.
But, he did know better, even if his computers seemed not to. To do the things she'd claimed that she'd done, it wouldn't be possible for her to simply be human.
As to what she'd claimed she'd done, well, he had no reason not to believe her. What else could that little display have been but pulling the daleks into an alternate dimension where they could 'happily exterminate amongst themselves'? He hadn't headed back to see about the barriers surrounding Gallifrey, but he was certain she wasn't lying about those either.
If that were the case, it meant that she was a being of immense, incredible power. He hadn't been able to find any technology on her, and besides that, there wasn't any technology that could've done what she'd described. He would've done that ages ago, if it had been simple enough to simply create a machine to pull daleks into an alternate dimension where they couldn't hurt anybody.
That was another thing, too. Not only had she stopped the daleks, she'd done it without killing them, without killing anyone.The Doctor had seen a lot of things in his nine hundred years; miracles were not one of them. But this?
What else could he call this but a miracle, plain and simple? It was a miracle, one that had made it possible for him not to be the one to the end War. He would be nothing but grateful for that.
The woman stirred before she opened her eyes, looking around. He didn't move, and her eyes quickly found him.
Part of him wanted her face to light up like it had before, but the other part wasn't sure why it mattered. She was about to be on her way, to perform miracles across the known universe. He wasn't selfish enough to think that he could keep her to himself, to show her the universe as some part of his mind was already planning. She had work to do, saving other planets and people the way she'd done for him-
For Gallifrey. The way she'd done for Gallifrey.
He pushed this errant thought from his mind, especially when he saw that her face was not lighting up as it had been, before. Instead, there seemed to be a dumbstruck expression on her face.
"Oh," she said quietly.
Confusion thrummed through him at the look on her face (and he was desperately trying to ignore the tiny bit of crestfallen feeling he had at the fact that her face had not, in fact, lit up, why does she look like that? He wondered).
Her face transformed to a more relieved end in the next moment. "Oh, okay, cool," she said, and she started to sit up.
"Woah, slow and steady," he told her, reaching out to help her sit up. Her skin was cool to the touch, and he frowned, wondering if she needed a blanket of some kind or if her kind simply ran cooler. "Bit cool," he pointed out, just in case.
"What is?" she asked him, looking up at him to catch his eyes with hers.
They weren't a blue as he'd thought, but more of a green, exactly halfway between sea and emerald. He cleared his throat, raising his eyebrow as he turned from her.
"You are," he said. "Blanket?" he offered, moving to the cabinet where the heated blankets were stored (and sternly telling himself to stop being disappointed that he was no longer holding her hand).
"I'm good, actually," she said, and he stopped where he was. "We need to talk."
He raised his eyebrows, whirling back around to look at her. Why was there a stupid hope leaping in his chest? He genuinely didn't understand the emotion that was running through him, but he shoved it out as quickly as he could. He crossed his arms, searching her.
"How much, um…"
To say he was surprised by the uncertainty she held herself with would be an understatement. This was the woman who had literally saved all of Gallifrey and the rest of the universe beyond from total and complete annihilation. Confidence should've been oozing off of her. Yet, she could barely meet his eyes.
"How much do you… did you confirm, or… whatever?"
He raised his eyebrows. "Confirm?" he asked.
He furrowed his brows when she looked down at her lap, wringing her hands together as she looked at anywhere but him, refusing to meet his gaze.
"Yeah, you know. About what I said."
He frowned. "Nothing," he said. Her eyes finally shot up to meet his, confusion and concern lining her face. "I didn't exactly need to, did I? What with seeing the daleks all being sucked in like that. Thought that was a pretty obvious confirmation, but then again, I have been known to be stupid on occasion. I'm the Doctor, by the way. Didn't get a chance to introduce myself before you passed out. In my arms, too. Right after declaring that you'd saved Gallifrey. If you wanted to put on a show, I have to tell you, you beyond succeeded. Well done." He tried to convey a joking and comforting tone, hoping to ease the tension that rested about her (just in that friendly way he was known to do. That's all this was, mind. Just him being friendly).
It seemed to do the opposite as a look rolled through her eyes, that uncertainty increasing. She gently worried her bottom lip (don't, don't, don't, he chanted to himself about the sudden swell of emotions) before she shrugged, shaking her head, looking away.
"Wasn't doing anything of the sort," she said.
Suddenly, her emotions were tucked neatly away, a nonchalance resting about her. He felt like he'd made a mistake without even knowing what the mistake was (and some part of him wanted to desperately rectify it, despite the fact that he shouldn't want anything in regards to her. She was about to gallivant off)-
Hold on, why hadn't she gallivanted off?
"You said you wanted to talk," he remembered, cutting her off before she could continue speaking.
"I did," she said, examining her nails. "Like I said, Gallifrey is saved-"
"And so's the rest of the universe," he cut her off once more. If she understood exactly what it was that she'd done, she wasn't acting like it. She kept only specifically mentioning Gallifrey when she talked about what she'd saved. There was far more at stake than just a simple planet. If it had been that simple, he wouldn't have taken the actions that he'd done. Well, nearly done, at any rate, thanks to the woman in front of him.
Although guilt had started burning in his gut at the memory of what he'd nearly done, an unknowable gratitude swelled in him at the remembrance of what she had done, and he spoke as she looked up at him, her eyebrows raised. "Thank you."
It was a paltry excuse of expressing his gratitude, these two simple words. He was sure she was used to it, though, saving lives and planets and whole universes and receiving a simple 'thank you' in return.
Still, it was as good a start as any (not that he was in any way thinking about how else he could thank her. He definitely wasn't thinking about all the planets and places and people he could show her. Maybe she was a power of incredible being, but that didn't mean she'd seen every part of the universe. Some part of him was desperate to show it to her, even if every other part of him was shoving away the thought).
Completely unaware of his thoughts, she smiled, though it was a little bitter as she looked down at her fingernails. "Universe would've been fine without me," she told him, before she put her hands in her lap.
Before he could unpack this or ponder what it meant, he was startled. He'd changed her out of her burnt clothes and cleaned her up a bit so that the ash and soot from dropping out of the sky no longer clung to her like a second skin. Now though, instead of wearing the hospital gown that he'd changed her into, she was wearing a simple, strapless purple dress with strappy sandals to match.
He wasn't startled for long, quickly moving into distraction when she met his eyes. Her eyes were now a deeper green, edging more toward emerald. Was she doing that as well, he wondered, changing her eye color as easily as she changed her clothes?
(The answer was an obvious yes. Be a bit of a trick to be able to save whole planets and change her clothes on a whim, but not be able to change her eye color as she pleased).
He barely remembered what she'd said, but he cleared his throat.
"How-how'd you mean?" he asked. He frowned, trying to concentrate on her face and to stop his eyes from wandering down to the now exposed skin, tracing her collarbone, wandering further still-
(Stop it, he ordered himself. He couldn't be having thoughts like this. He was a time lord and she was… well, whatever she was. It wouldn't do to even entertain the thought of urges like this. Especially because he wasn't having any. None from him, thanks much. He was a time lord. He wasn't chained to pleasures of the flesh like humans were (like that had ever stopped him before)-).
When he'd finally managed getting his eyes back to her face, he saw that she still wasn't looking at him. Instead, she was tugging at the hem of her dress which flowed outward to sit on the bed. Her legs (her bare legs)- Her legs were crossed at the ankle (and the part that was focused on her legs- very much not focused on her legs was also very much not focused on the fact that she wasn't looking at him, not at all wondering if her eyes had changed color in the seconds since he'd last seen them, definitely not desperately wishing for that to change and for her to simply look him in the eye once more).
He had no idea what was happening to him, but they needed to get through this conversation much quicker than they currently were.
"I mean," she started, "that you never would've let Gallifrey burn."
Well. That would certainly help them get through the conversation quicker.
Bitter disappointment and pain crescendoed through him in equal measure. Foolishly, some part of him thought that she didn't know what he'd nearly done and now that he knew that she knew, it changed everything.
Any plans he'd started to have in regards to showing her the universe vanished with that single sentence, knowing that could never happen, now. Why would a being who had saved the entire universe without spilling a drop of blood want to stick with someone like him, someone who'd been so desperate that he nearly ended his own race?
He cleared his throat, finding that he was now the one who couldn't look her in the eye.
"So, you know, then," he said, his eyebrows raised.
He suddenly remembered what he'd willing let himself ignore, the promise that she'd made to him about never having to use a weapon like The Moment. His eyebrows raised even higher as he realized this conversation might be much different from the one he'd been expecting, though what conversation he was expecting, he wasn't sure. Was she about to tell him that she would also be sending him to an alternate dimension as she'd done with the daleks, so that he couldn't destroy Gallifrey, either?
The more he thought about it, the more it was the only thing that made this whole thing make sense. This was why she wasn't gallivanting off, why there was a tenseness resting about her despite her actions and the uncertainty she held herself with. He recognized that look. No matter how much she hated it, she'd had to make the hard choice to condemn him to the same fate that she'd chosen for the daleks. Of course. He was about to be sent to an alternate dimension so that Gallifrey could be protected from the likes of him.
"I thought…" she started, and he frowned, though he didn't look at her. His shoulders rounded out, his arms crossed over his chest, ready for the moment she sentenced him to life in a lifeless alternate dimension.
It was useless to try to fight, even more useless to attempt running. Just where would he even begin to attempt to run to? That aside, he was absolutely certain that this was what he deserved. He'd nearly ended Gallifrey. There was no doubt in his mind that he would've done if she hadn't've come along when she did.
She continued, once again unaware of his thoughts. "No, but I did say something. Before, I promised you that you wouldn't have to use The Moment. Um… So I thought that you already knew that I knew." There was a silence between them for a moment, and he steeled himself over. "But… There's more."
His frown only deepened, crossing his arms more deeply over his chest.
"More?" he asked her, his tone flat. He still refused to meet her eye (and some part of him was so desperately sad at the thought that he would never get to find out if her eyes had changed color once more).
At this thought, he steeled himself over, wishing she would just hurry up and get it over with, already. Then again, maybe this was part of the punishment. Dragging it out like this.
"I, um… I'm from somewhere," she told him, and at that, he frowned deeper, finally looking up at her. "You're from somewhere else. Now, I don't know how this happened, or why, but somehow, information from somewhere else leaked to somewhere. …I don't really know how to say this delicately, and that aside, you're not really a delicately telling things to kind of guy, so I'll just say it: somehow, someway, that information got turned into… a… television show."
She let out the last two words with a breath. He was frowning for a different reason, now, though he didn't speak.
"It… details your life, from your first incarnation to… Well, far into your future. It got cancelled in the late 80s, but it got a reboot in 2005, starting with this incarnation. That's when I started watching-"
He held up his hand, forgetting for a moment that he was about to be sentenced to an alternate dimension in order to keep Gallifrey safe. Despite this, she fell silent.
"You're saying that there's a television show somewhere out there about my life."
"In-in a different dimension, or plane of existence, or alternate universe, I don't… actually know how these things work and I'm not keen to find out?" she quickly rushed to explain. "That's-that's what I mean, the 'somewhere' and the 'somewhere else'. It's a different, you know. Universe. Or dimension. Something. I don't know."
He raised his eyebrows, unable to process this.
She was telling him that, not only had she come from another dimension, or universe, or whatever, that not only had she done that, on her own, without technology of any sort, but that she'd done so in order to save his universe from destruction… because of something that she'd seen on television?
"Exactly how powerful are you?" he asked her, before he'd had a chance to think it through.
Despite the fact that she easily could've been offended or any other number of things that ended with him being smote (smitted? … smitten? Well, he was that, already, no 'ending up with him being' required.
No, wait, hang about, he was not smitten, he was not)-
Instead of simply turning him to dust where he stood, she spoke.
"Powerful enough to know that stopping the Time War completely wasn't something I could've done without completely shifting the universe on its axis and basically creating a new universe where lives wouldn't have been born and loves wouldn't have been had and creating about the same amount of change to the fabric of time as the Time War would've done anyway… but also powerful enough to know that I could end the Time War on the same day you had planned to use The Moment without the same disastrous effects to the universe at large."
At the mention of The Moment and what he'd been planning on doing, he found himself intensely scouring her expression for the judgement he was sure he would find marring her beautiful features.
But, it wasn't present. In the place of the judgement he wholly deserved, he found an honest, earnest, and, if he were naïve, he would say comforting, expression looking back at him with soft eyes.
"I say planned because that's all that it was. Just a plan. You never would've gone through with it."
He stood up straighter at that.
"What're you on about?"
There was a distinct lack of aggression in his voice, just a soft tone that he wished his voice currently wasn't using.
"I'm on about the fact that… The Moment is sentient, but it's- she, they? Anyway, The Moment is more powerful than anybody ever intended. … It, I guess, it was able to take human form and converse with you about the choice you were about to make. It would've brought two different incarnations to you, to show you the man you would've become-"
"I wouldn't have become anything."
There was a rawness to his tone because he'd never intended to speak, the honest words just tumbling from his mouth without his say so. It was the truth, though. He'd never intended to survive the War, not after what he would've done.
"And it would've told you that was your punishment, for destroying them."
He imagined that life, then. Imagined the lonely existence that would've been, trudging about the universe as the last of the Time Lords. For starters, he never would've taken on another companion again. How could he have done? How could he expose someone, let alone the bright and brilliant humans he traveled with, to that kind of darkness?
He wasn't one to avoid pain, but this thought was too painful to bear, and he pushed it from his mind. It was made easier as she continued to speak.
"But, as I was saying, it tried to convince you to change your mind by showing you the man you would've become, if you had done this. Basically…" she bit her lip, before she continued. "Basically, the three of you realized that you could save Gallifrey, by freezing it in a single moment in time, hiding it away in a pocket universe where it could be safe. I don't entirely understand it, but somehow, you were able to start doing the calculations in your first incarnation, and thus, by the time you were the future you saving Gallifrey, you had the calculations in order to do so. Bonus, the daleks ended up exterminating themselves. So, basically," she started, standing and starting towards him. He couldn't take his eyes off of her, let alone move. "You never needed me. All that I did was spare you hundreds of years worth of pain thinking that you'd committed the worst atrocity that a person could commit. Well, that and saved Gallifrey from being in a pocket universe, and helped the buildings remember to be buildings by reconstructing them so Gallifrey is basically brand new, but other than that-"
"Why?" he croaked out, unable to do anything else as he stared at her. Every part of him was on fire, his twin hearts beating wildly in his chest. Whether it was from the revelation or something else, he didn't know. He wasn't sure that he cared. "Why do all of this?"
She crept up to him, and he searched her eyes. He could see the fight that rested in her eyes as she took the three steps it took to reach him, but despite this, she didn't stop herself. She reached out, her hand curled in mid-air for a moment, before she managed to place it gently on his cheek.
"No one deserves to be in that kind of pain. But you? I can't think of anyone less deserving of that kind of pain than you."
He was a time lord. Emotions overwhelming him wasn't generally a problem.
But, in that moment, the emotions were a tidal wave, cresting over every part of him. He responded in kind, his arm immediately wrapping itself around her waist and pulling her to him, pressing her flush against him as his lips crashed into hers.
Surprise crashed through her, making her tense against him. After a moment, it melted as she melted into him, responding to the kiss.
Wave after wave of emotion washed over him, a strange mix of joy and relief and sorrow for the him who hadn't had this, who hadn't had that reprieve and that happiness. He wasn't focused on that long, because he kept trying to urge himself to draw back, kept trying to urge himself to ask her the question that he wanted to ask. He couldn't bring himself to. He couldn't bring himself to withdraw from her. All he wanted to do, in that moment, was hold her tight and never let her out of his arms.
An idea of how to make that possible sparked through him. It gave him the motivation he needed to withdraw from her (but only just).
He moved so fast that, when he opened his eyes, he saw her lips following his for a moment before her eyes were on his (and a distracted part of his mind noted that her eyes were erring more on the side of grey, now. It was wonderful). His left hand still cradled her head and he caressed her cheek with his thumb.
"Travel with me," he said, without hesitation.
"Okay," she replied, just as easily.
He laughed, a joyous thing rumbling through his chest. "Okay," he agreed. For a moment, he got lost in the grey of her eyes, and for the first time, the Doctor wondered how he'd gotten so lucky for Anna to just appear in his life like this, saving him when he'd needed it the most.
He'd have the same exact thought countless times throughout his very long life, seeing her tip her head back and laugh or as she lovingly cleaned the console.
But, that wasn't now. Now was leaning in to continue kissing Anna, starting the beginning of his newfound destiny.
Was it still considered destiny when it had technically been designed by her? After all, he'd been destined to have many adventures and love many and lose many more, all while weighed down by the guilt and loneliness he'd felt. Was it truly destiny if it was layered in a decision that she had made?
Truth be told, the Doctor didn't care whether it was destined or designed. It didn't matter; not to him, to the person it was supposed to matter to the most. The point wasn't that she'd changed his life so that he didn't suffer the consequences of a choice he'd never made. The point was that he'd been given back the time that would've been spent feeling guilty for an act he'd never even committed.
That was what she'd done for him. Given him back that time to be unburdened and therefore, better able to appreciate the adventures he would have and the people he would love and the lives he would end up saving.
In another timeline, a curly haired part time lord once pointed out, "Happily ever after isn't about forever. It's just about more time."
Perhaps that same curly haired part time lord would say those words in this timeline, too.
But, that's a story for another day, and spoilers for this one.
A/N: After re-writing this five times, I'm actually pretty happy with the end result (even if I did tear my hair out to do it and actually threatened to throw this chapter in a volcano because it just wasn't working). I hope you like it.
As stated above, HOPEFULLY my updates should be coming quicker, now that this whole deal is out of the way, because I've moved on from explanations and can jump into the actual story! I have literally the entire thing planned out and the only reason I'm not getting updates out faster is because of the whole 'rewriting chapter two five times'. ... Well that but also because I still have to actually write the thing. There's a clever quote that I want to say is from Shakespeare in Love that's to that effect? ... Or a movie about Shakespeare. ... Well, it was definitely Shakespeare who said the line, at the very least.
Moving on.
Just as a quick mention, this story is unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine.
Edit 8/19: For those of you who have already stated it and those who might mention it, I KNOW that the whole 'him being so 'smitten' (as the ever brilliant Catlorde put it)' isn't in his character. I promise, I PROMISE, I have a REALLY good explanation for it, so if you're planning on giving up the story for that alone, I do have a plan on how to explain why this happened (granted it won't be for like another three stories but we'll get there).
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read, and don't forget to review to either let me know what you thought or to let me know what you thought of the changes!
