What the TARDIS knew.
He was asleep. Time Lords, being the hyper-advanced and hyper-evolved species they were, despite the aeons of using the Time Vortex to help shape and guide their evolution over the millennia, did not need as much sleep as most of the races in the galaxy. Some Time Lords slept and put themselves into an induced meditative coma, similar to a Bith's meditative trance which allowed them to do away with sleep, and yet provide their enlarged brains with enough rest to be productive.
Mm, she would have to remember to take him to meet George Lucas to inspire the creation of the Star Wars verse, but that could come later on. She knew she would do it later, but right now he hadn't yet gone through the many changes to his character which were going to come.
His life was so full of contradictions, so full of changes, so full of many divergences. He was a nexus in the universe; he went on his way, and the rest of the universe would go the next.
She wasn't sure if he was even aware of how many changes he made, regardless of whether or not he was simply travelling the universe to explore it.
He had longed to explore the universe, after he'd heard stories about it, but then again anybody who spent even a decade on Gallifrey and was forced to do the same things and live in a society governed by stagnation and the peace and ordered calm of the Time Lords, only a few Gallifreyans could cope with would feel the same way.
He had never been a conformist to the old order of Gallifrey, he wanted to explore, to discover. He wanted to see things happen right in front of him, not sit in some library or archive and watch it unfold from a distance.
She was only glad he had managed to escape the Celestial Toymaker after he had roped his friends to go with him on a journey which was misguided and ill-informed, and she was even more pleased that instead of returning to Gallifrey, shaken and horrified by the encounter he would need to report to the Time Lord authorities, but she had known there were dozens of ways the whole mess could have diverged.
In one continuity, he could have been forced to play games with the Toymaker, until he found a way to escape. The Academy professors knew deep down he possessed a mind sharper than a spear forged from dwarf star alloy. If that timeline had unfolded because of a poor decision on his part, they would have soon been proud if they learnt of his resilience, and how quickly he would have reached her sister who'd foolishly taken them there.
In another continuity, he would have been forced to run and leave his friends to suffer for all eternity, and live with the guilt and humiliation of what happened for centuries to come.
But she knew in the end it all came down to what the choices were. She was glad that even if he had not suffered the guilt and humiliation of losing his friends and being blamed for it because of his carelessness, the event still had a profound effect on him and his life. Either way, the near kidnapping and possession of his friends, and his own imprisonment changed him completely.
Instead of throwing himself into trouble, he began to be more cautious, like he would have been in other timelines, but he had decided to leave earlier for a time. When he had been given the chance to leave Gallifrey for any period, he would always wish to stay away from the Time Lords, believing the sights of the universe and the people living in it were better than what he had on Gallifrey. Who could blame him? Time Lord society was burdened because they had stopped evolving for centuries, and while many young Time Lords eventually bowed their heads and adapted to the same tradition, some would simply never conform.
She had seen his generation, a large group of young Time Lords, all of them innately talented and skilled in their own way and possessed so much potential, even if a few of them possessed personalities driven insane after staring into the Untempered Schism.
When she had seen the timelines unfolding, although she had noticed he would have taken any of her sisters, she had seen their journeys unfolding very differently and would end poorly. He had to live. He had so much to do and so much to gain. She had sent him a telepathic call, and he had come to her, unlocked her doors and touched her console, saying she was the most beautiful thing he had ever known, and from there, a beautiful relationship was born. They were made for each other, an ancient Type 40 TARDIS time travel capsule, and himself, a young, reckless Time Lord many of her sisters did not understand.
They had travelled in the vortex for a while, journeying from dozens of worlds to the next. The trip through the wormhole reef was something she had planned, because it allowed him to meet his future daughter, a girl who would never go through the same life shackled down by the Time Lords, and their unfair prejudices. Granted, she had made sure their encounter would not have much of an effect, but there were only so many things he could learn about a future he had yet to experience, and while her circuitry was a little bit…loose concerning the Laws of time, some things remained constant.
Occasionally she took him to where he needed to go despite him setting the controls, or thinking he had some degree of control over her. She wanted him to see the universe in ways Time Lords who'd never leave the planet could experience in their lifetimes. As they travelled, he would always be amazed by the places they travelled to as he saw and experienced history many of the Time Lords would only observe in Time Rooms or Temporal Observatories.
But she knew her thief had a future and several destinies he would have to endure, and she knew there was a lot of pain to come. She could see it. She could see his encounters with the UNSC in the 25th Century of the human race, see him involved during the Human-Covenant war, and there was more to come. But he was not yet ready to endure such a future yet.
Right now he was being shaped for it. The longer he travelled to different worlds and times, visiting mostly Earth, he was exposed to the human way of thinking, and when they had to return to Gallifrey, and she knew they would, that way of thinking would shape his life in ways he could not yet foresee. As they travelled, the casual nexus became stronger, and the timelines began unfolding around her.