-8-
The Timeless Child's Arrival.
The Fugitive Doctor had been to many planets in the universe, during her time as a member of Division, and before when she had been a renegade from Gallifrey. Sometimes, there were times when she had visited a planet, she had a nagging feeling she had been there before, but as she and Taslo had tracked down her temporal signature through the universe, narrowing down the factors to before the Age of the Time Lords, she had not expected to find a world that was practically barren with a wormhole leading off to another universe right above a collection of ruins.
"This is where the signatures' originate?" Taslo asked.
"As near as I can trace it," the Fugitive Doctor replied.
Taslo turned back to study the wormhole on the screen and nodded at it. "Any idea where that wormhole leads to?"
The Fugitive Doctor shook her head as she studied it, and she checked the console. "No," she sighed, "it goes beyond the vortex, maybe even further out, to another universe."
Taslo bit her lip, studying the wormhole thoughtfully for a minute. "You know, I don't understand all of this. All of those men were you, but what happened? What happened between you and that old you who left Gallifrey with that young girl?"
The Fugitive Doctor and Taslo had both backtracked through the timelines. They had seen an ancient-looking man with swept-back white hair wearing Edwardian-style clothes, facing down blocky machines in 1966, but three years before the same man had spent months in Shoreditch, London with the signature of a powerful piece of Time Lord technology - what that piece of tech was, neither Taslo nor the Fugitive Doctor could work out, not without going closer and leaving, but if they did that then the other Doctor would have realised they were there - before they discerned that Doctor had been the one to only just leave Gallifrey; a quick telepathic check with the surveillance drone and a quick upload to the telepathic circuits had told the Fugitive Doctor and Taslo that Doctor did not know anything about Division or anything else.
The Fugitive Doctor frowned, clenching her jaw. "I've been asking myself that ever since I met that blonde me, Taslo," she replied, "and then I took that look at that me's timeline, seeing those thirteen incarnations. Thirteen! And then, there's everything we found out in the library."
A dark look passed over Taslo's face. "All of those stories of a war…a war Gallifrey is destined to lose."
"Yes."
"You know we can't change that, right?"
"I know. But what worries me is why Division didn't get involved. Part of the Division's mandate is to protect Gallifrey, regardless of the cost. They're not gonna frown on a little bit of time meddling; in fact, they'd probably rewrite history to favour Gallifrey," the Fugitive Doctor shook her head, wondering what had gone through the brains of Division when this time war was being waged. Why hadn't they done anything? Usually, whenever there was a threat levelled against Gallifrey, Division would track down the problem to the root, and then burn it out atom by atom. So what changed?
"Mm, that's true," Taslo frowned thoughtfully, running through her mind as to why Division hadn't intervened. And she wasn't liking the possibilities.
The console hummed.
"What's that?" Taslo asked.
The Fugitive Doctor checked the console. "There's a biodata reading. There's someone here."
"How? I thought you'd checked the planet for any signs of sentient life?"
"I did, there wasn't anyone else here," the Fugitive Doctor shook her head in confusion. "I can't tell if they've come out of the wormhole or if they've just appeared out of nowhere. They have appeared out of nowhere." She set the scanner and the drone to zoom in.
On the screen was a small figure wearing golden robes.
"A child?" Taslo blinked in surprise.
"A Child," the Fugitive Doctor nodded before she adopted a thoughtful and worried look. "The Timeless Child. But what does that mean?"
Taslo's hands ran over the controls. She nodded, but there was still a look of disbelief crossing her face. "Doctor, I've just checked the biodata of that child. She's you."
The Fugitive Doctor took the news well, but she was still shaken. "I was kind of expecting that, but it's still hard to take it in."
A short time later, the two Time Lords saw something else. The console chirped again.
"What now?"
"There's a spaceship - a primitive spaceship - it's coming in to land."
Hours seemed to fly by as a woman wearing rough clothes approached the Child and the ruins. Thanks to the surveillance drone and the translation circuits, the Fugitive Doctor and Taslo could overhear what the woman was saying. They were shocked when the woman introduced herself.
"Tecteun?" The Fugitive Doctor hissed.
"Are we looking at our Tecteun or her namesake?" Taslo asked, just as shocked.
"I…think we're looking at our Tecteun, Taslo," the Fugitive Doctor whispered, "I don't know how, but I've always felt…something whenever I'm with Tecteun, the one we've known. I can't explain it, but I've always felt as if I've known her. And I'm starting to have this feeling that whatever this mystery is about, its because of her."
Thanks to the drone, they could hear the conversation. The Child told Tecteun she didn't remember anything about herself. She didn't remember the wormhole if she came through it. She didn't remember her world, her people, or her family.
"Do you think that's true?" Taslo's face was full of pity for her hero.
There was a look of pain on the Fugitive Doctor's face, even as they both overheard Tecteun offer to take the girl with her on her travels before they returned home. Tecteun's offer was instantly accepted because the poor child didn't have anywhere else to go. The Child was named 'Thasia,' as she seemed to have forgotten her memories. It meant a gift in Gallifreyan.
"It's possible," the Fugitive Doctor replied.
The Fugitive Doctor and Taslo later used the drone to track Tecteun and the newly named Thasia as they travelled through space. They watched as they landed on dozens of worlds, and explored galaxies as their ship slid sideways through the dimensional barrier which made it clear it was Gallifreyan; the Time Lords had long since been masters of time and space because they had always known the impracticalities of travelling faster than light or time travelling with their own universe's laws. By slipping sideways, they took advantage of the physical and temporal laws of other universes without worrying about finding some complex method of changing their reality.
Hyperspace and underspace, and slip space existed but this was traditional and practical for Time Lords; their philosophy of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' was as eternal as the blackness of the universe.
"Why is she experimenting on the child?" Taslo asked when they saw Tecteun examining the child who lay on a surgical bed in her ship. The good thing was the procedure was extremely gentle, and the child didn't seem hurt or scared.
"Tecteun wants to learn more about her, and she likely told the child - me - about how she thinks it might help discover more about who she is."
"That child is you," Taslo reminded her. "How do you feel about that?"
"If I was in her position, I would want to know more about myself, too," the Fugitive Doctor replied without giving a hint about the churning emotions swirling away in her.
After years of space travel, Tecteun and Thasia arrived on Gallifrey. The Fugitive Doctor watched as Thasia - her former self - settled down happily on Gallifrey, even if one or two people raised concerns about her alien nature. It seemed even in the past, Gallifreyans still thought highly of themselves and had a touch of xenophobia.
But then it all changed.
One day, Thasia was playing a game with one of her friends….and she suddenly fell off the cliff in an accident.
"NO!" Taslo screamed.
The Fugitive Doctor gasped as she watched, almost in slow motion, as Thasia, fell to her death. Tecteun had seen her fall, but she was too late. She exchanged a few tearful words, and then suddenly…
Thasia's body glowed golden orange, and before the astonished eyes of Tecteun, the Fugitive Doctor, and Taslo, Thasia regenerated.
"She…regenerated," Taslo whispered, unable to tear her eyes away. "How could she regenerate? We could only regenerate after billions of centuries of exposure to the Time Vortex."
The Fugitive Doctor said nothing for a moment. And then an ugly expression crossed her dark skin. "I'm beginning to think it was all a lie, Taslo," she growled, "a massive lie."