Chapter Text
Professor Chronotis had been teaching at Cambridge University longer than anyone cared to notice, though that wasn't for lack of trying. It was getting more difficult in the new age of digital identification to keep his multi-century tenure under wraps, but he was still quite happy with his situation. The kind of clerks who were sent to untangle the knots in his records were all overworked bureaucrats, and the mental nudge required to put them off his scent was pitifully small. Even at his advanced age, it was no effort at all. He was long retired from his days teaching at the Time Lord Academy – and separation from that vast library still stung when he thought on it too long. Still, it was endlessly entertaining to read the developing history of the Human Race in real-time. He did love his books!
The apartment he lived in was actually his TARDIS. An ancient old thing, it was the oldest still running bar none. There was little life left in it, which was how he was able to smuggle it onto this unimportant rock in the first place. He'd been there since the seventeenth century, with the apartment block that was his current address built around his TARDIS by workers forced unaware of its existence.
He rather hoped the Doctor never investigated that particular practicality of how he came to live on Earth. The young man had been a wonderful student and a fantastic friend, but he held a moral high ground on many issues. He'd expect Chronotis to give some compensation to those whose minds he'd affected, and really what was the point? They hadn't done the work of building his apartment and yet they were paid for doing it. That was certainly enough. As for the clerks chasing red tape, the relaxing side-effects of mind control likely did their overburdened minds some good.
He'd never claimed to be a philanthropist, a hero, or any other do-good busybody. He just wanted a quiet life with his books and time enough to read them. Teaching literature and history to human University students was a fun little hobby that kept him well-funded.
He was to have company today, which was both well-timed and not. The glowing cube in the center of his cluttered coffee table mocked him with its innocent white color. It ought to be black, or red, or flashing multicolor warning signals all over its surface. He had an appointment that would be beyond rude to miss: that was his story and he was sticking to it. If they really wanted a washed up old librarian that badly they could come down and get him themselves. Then again, that might be the plan, seeing as officially speaking he didn't own a TARDIS. Maybe he'd get extremely lucky and they'd have the Doctor pick him up since the young man was often on Earth. Then the pair of them could beat a quick escape to some long-forgotten corner of existence. There was no way this old apartment could out-fly anything, but the Doctor's TARDIS... that was the gold standard of speed. He'd said he'd been to E-Space back in his big scarf days, perhaps the pair of them could finagle their way back that way?
The doorbell broke him away from his thoughts. In a move a man his apparent age shouldn't have been able to make, he buried the offending cube under a stack of books. Gallifrey could wait. He had an important meeting with a philanthropic woman of learning, and better yet, she'd made a sizable donation of rare books to his beloved University Library!
"Good Afternoon, I'm Donna Temple-Noble. Are you Professor Chronotis?" the woman asked when he opened the door. Her short gray hair clung to the last tint of a red that must have burned a bright fire in the sunlight of her youth. A strong, but lovely bone structure and commanding posture made up a woman who had clearly suffered and blustered through on bravado and an iron will.
"Yes, yes, please come in. I'll just put on some tea and we can begin." He closed the door and pointed her toward a chair on the opposite side of the room from his coffee table. It was a more intimate setting than he'd intended to use, the two chairs next to an end table nestled into a corner near the fireplace in a cozy way he usually reserved for favored students, but he didn't dare bring her into the study when the console was active.
As he busied about the kitchen his mind ran back over the various news articles and biographies he'd read. There was nothing worth knowing that couldn't be researched: Married at age forty and received a winning lottery ticket as a wedding gift, the office temp created a charitable trust with the stated mission of improving the quality of life on Earth. Her dreamer husband had been more of a mind to squander the money promoting a musical career that never went anywhere – and he blamed her for his failure when it was clearly a lack of talent. Shawn seemed like a worthless man who stopped working a proper job after the win even as his wife continued working as a PA until the charity took off, and Chronotis had no sympathy for untalented fools.
Still, she had stood by her husband and raised three children (fraternal twins then one adopted) with the 'struggling artist.' The press was far kinder to the man than Chronotis felt he deserved, painting him as a long-suffering artist whose hardships early in life fueled folksy songs about loss and want. There was far less written about Mrs. Donna Temple-Noble and her frankly startling ability to be in the right place at the right time. She invested the money frightfully well and spent it with equal care. Where most lottery winners were out of cash within five years, she had built an empire. Somehow, it was Mr. Temple that snagged the credit.
There were likely bodyguards outside, keeping a polite distance and giving the impression that she was no one special. That was a thing with her – she was not special. She believed it to her core and would not be shaken in that belief. Perhaps that was how the Temple Charity of London got credited to her husband. The old professor would have to suss that out.
"The manuscripts the Temple Charity sent over are spectacular, Mrs. Temple-Noble," Chronotis said as he set the tea tray down between them. "Such rare texts, we would certainly have lost them altogether if not for your swift work."
"I hardly did a thing, I'm just the purse," she scoffed.
"I don't agree. It takes a quick mind to see the connection between rising sea levels, archaeological sites, and third-world coastal villages no one cares about. Rescuing all those manuscripts from the brink of destruction was a stroke of brilliance." He nibbled a biscuit and carefully skirted around the edges of her mind. His insatiable curiosity needed to know how this woman worked – how such an important person the course of human history in the last few decades could be so well hidden.
"Well, I have good people working for me. Never could have done it on my own, after all. I just make a few suggestions and let them work out the details. It's all common sense things," she demurred. What was that in her mind?
"It is more than this one venture!" he insisted. This was someone he honestly admired – he cursed the short lifespan humans were saddled with. Already in the twilight of her life, but she reminded him so much of his favored students... and what was in her mind? Something so familiar and out of place... "You seem to always have exactly on hand what is needed. The flooding of Tokyo and New York, the great Sandstorm in the Sahara, the Flu outbreak of 2021... I've read too much to be fooled into thinking that poster boy husband of yours is the driving force behind T.C.L."
"Professor, I am a happily married woman," she said in a tone that wouldn't convince anyone who'd loved and lost for more than a couple decades of life. The battered old Time Lord had over twelve millennia – gathering near thirteen now, truth be told - behind him, and wasn't shy about mind reading besides. However, that was a bit beside the point.
"Oh, no, no, no! I didn't mean to... I simply find you to be an admirable woman. I don't care for those who profit from the actions of others, and many of the press releases credit your husband when I can't see he had any involvement at all. No, you deserve far more recognition than you get, and that is why I asked you to visit me when the opportunity presented."
"We are a team. Any credit he receives is credit to me as well, and vice-versa," she recited. He felt the foul note in her mind as it regurgitated something it believed on the surface, but despised. Still, deeper down, there was something... something so very familiar.
"Tell me, what plans do you have?" he changed the subject. Her defenses were going up, and he didn't want her to feel his intrusion even though humans never realized what the sudden headaches meant.
"Cambridge has always been a fine University. With space exploration making progress in leaps and bounds and talks of a moon colony moving from purely hypothetical into the realm of real experimentation and construction, I think this is the right place to be," she paused for a sip of tea. The light in her mind grew brighter, and it was a brilliant mind to begin with. It spun and sparked in clever leaps of intuition and creativity, but deep in the core there was something even brighter. Something contained... "I have no doubt students from this University will live on the first Human colony. 2040 promises to be a grand year, and in the two years until then I think every British citizen should be pushing for King and Country to make the colony a reality. We will touch the stars!" She winced then, as the brightness in her mind flared in a dangerous arc. By the seven sisters, she was a Time Lady!
"Do you own a fob watch?"
"You what?"
"I... oh, what a terrible question, and a worse answer. What a terrible state of affairs!" Chronotis blustered, frustrated beyond belief. Here was a victim of the Chameleon Arch, but they'd botched the job. No wonder they wanted him back on Gallifrey 'immediately, to the following coordinates, and with all possessions fit as to never return.'
"Is something wrong?"
"It most certainly is! Have you suffered those headaches long?"
"Ages and ages, it's nothing to worry about."
"Oh, but it is. I'm quite sorry, I've seen this before. All the signs were there; I should have noticed right off."
"Excuse me," Donna shouted, standing.
"Your mind hurts you when you think of traveling in the stars, but you feel that is where you belong. Is that not right? You are searching, endlessly searching, and never finding what you need." As he spoke, he pressed his mind against hers, preventing pain but also preventing her from moving or speaking. He could not fix this mess by his own hand alone. It suddenly dawned on him how long it had been since he'd last seen his most favorite young student. The Doctor used to visit between once every other year to once a decade across the centuries, and suddenly nothing for well neigh eighty!
Fear, real fear, hit Chronotis for the first time since Shada and that ugly business of losing that old law book. The Time Lords had declared war for the first time in millions of years, calling out a draft to every Lord and Lady still living, but here was one they were leaving behind. Oh, the timelines could be crossed up, but he didn't feel this girl – and she was truly a girl with a temporal field so tiny – had been through the war. It was a nexus point and a clear-cut channel. One in and one out per player, no other way out but the one once you were in, and since... Yes, he could see the possible timeline of her coming with him so that meant she hadn't yet answered the draft.
She could be a murderer -- the worst kind of killer. Well, so was he, not that anyone other than the Doctor knew of what he'd done in his first lifetime. Even then, the Doctor had only heard rumors in the abstract, bits that escaped his ability to erase from the record, and he'd dulled the thoughts in his young friend enough that he should scarcely think of it. He'd also dulled the knowledge on Gallifrey of where exactly he'd retired to in the hope the larger body of Time Lords would forget about him entirely, and perhaps they had. The message he received was a fully automated form letter with no named addressee, but it did have reverse tracking and they would know where he was if he didn't pack up and leave before sundown.
Perhaps she was the daughter of some self-important stuffed shirt trying to pull a fast one by tucking his beloved little flower away on this unimportant rock for the duration of the war. It would explain her mind's desperate clinging to the idea that she was unimportant despite all evidence to the contrary.
Still, she hadn't led a bad life. Entwined in her mind as he was, and all for her best interests as the binding holding back her true mind was in a terrible state, he could see that she was happy. She believed to her core she was not special and used that as a shield against her mother's spiteful nature and later against the jealousy of her former friends. So long as she did better than average she was happy within herself and her marriage – and she'd done spectacular – but she couldn't allow herself to see any of her great works for what they were or it would tear away at the bindings within her mind.
It wasn't intentional. Discovering that was the first relief Chronotis felt since he saw the flare in her mind. 'She's the most important woman in the universe,' a man's thought whispered. It was tangled in the bindings and filled with adoration. The poor man truly botched the job with the best intentions, doubling down on his mistake by leaving bits of himself behind. With that thought tangled up in the part of her that held back the wall of blinding light, anything that agreed with that thought would have been sucked inside.
Quite a bit was being chucked outside the mental restraints as well, and on a regular basis. Her subconscious had gotten half inside the boundary, no doubt siphoned in due to the natural instinct of self-preservation making the self the most important thing in the universe when it came down to base needs. It seemed to be processing the swirling inner mind in a sort of split consciousness that dumbfounded the aged man – and the mental arts were his specialty!
He guided her to sit and was suddenly glad of the more intimate seating. He didn't normally need physical contact, about a quarter of all Time Lords didn't and he was arguably the most advanced practitioner of the mental arts his race had ever produced, but in this case holding her hand would be a help. Everything he knew told him what he was about to do was impossible, but he was good at impossible once upon a time.
If the man who once conquered whole galaxies with the strength of his mind alone couldn't help this poor girl, then what was the point of him?
It would certainly put a bee in someone's bonnet when the pompous hypocrite that dropped his baby girl on Earth to avoid the Time War saw what had become of her. That was more than reward enough for Chronotis.
Slowly, and with great care, he pulled the stray thoughts away from the barrier. There were quite a few, now that he had the chance to take a good look, some filled with grief and others near worship for this precious girl. The barrier stabilized. Then, he massaged the area where her subconscious mind overlapped her true mind until the two merged properly. That was a much more stable state of affairs, though it did the young lady no favors. She'd go from dreams of the timelines to no dreams at all with nearly her entire subconscious mind walled off and filtered, but that was enough miracle working for one day.
No, Chronotis had a date with the current Castellan, whoever that was, and this young lady needed to rest for a time before he let anyone less skilled see to her. With some luck, having her subconscious fully connected to her true mind would quiet the storm that raged in it – and he didn't blame her for the violence of that rage. Regeneration energy battered against the walls, desperate to fix the 'damage' it saw in her human body. It was only natural. She would put some of that swirling energy in order with a nice long nap and bit of who she really was would flow more freely into her waking mind, all of it fully processed and properly ready for her limited human mind to use. She'd been doing that naturally in her own fashion, and the assistance he provided would speed the process greatly.
The only trick would be getting his hands on enough life energy to fuel a proper regeneration. There was no memory of a fob watch – it was possible her father kept it with him – and so all her regenerations' energy was lost. They would need to be replaced. It was the proper thing to do, and it had been some time since he attempted family life. He could not in good conscience return this girl to a family that harmed her, after all, no matter the good intentions, and she would need education! From what he'd seen, she must have been raised human from near birth.
With a few mental commands and a bit of reluctant grinding, his TARDIS replaced her chair with a bed and rained pillows down on her sleeping form. A quick adjustment to ensure she was tucked up safe and sound, and he dug out the message cube from its place on the coffee table. He'd spent the last thirty years re-organizing his aged mind in preparation for his final death. He'd thought of little else besides his legacy, both on Earth in the University Library and on Gallifrey when his mind's content was scooped up into the Matrix in his dying moment. All those hours meditating, all those books he didn't read because he wanted to keep his sense of self when he joined the Matrix, had given him a bit more clarity of mind than he'd had in several centuries.
He planned to use that mind in the coming war, and the first battle (in his mind) would be the impending meeting with the Castellan.
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Donna blinked up at the white ceiling, the unnatural stillness in the room making her afraid to move. Her head felt stuffed with cotton. The sterile air told her where she was: a hospital room. Where had she been? The last thing she remembered was going to sleep in her own bed in London. She had to get up early to make it to a meeting at Cambridge over tea.
"Oh, are you awake?" a voice asked. It wasn't any language she recognized but she understood it. That was a rather disconcerting sensation. Donna decided to lie still and quiet in the hope the woman would keep talking. She didn't feel she had the strength to move. "Can you understand me? I'd rather not turn on the translation circuits; the less your mind is exposed to at the moment the better." The woman walked up to her bed. She was blond and looked too young to be a doctor. He outfit looked a bit outlandish, all mauve and well-tailored. Donna's mind immediately jumped to the reports of alien activity that had become more and more frequent as the Space Projects had progressed. She'd always brushed them aside as unimportant with a brusqueness that was her trademark, but the nurse had unusually lavender eyes and a very odd device in her hand. Somehow it was all familiar, like a half-forgotten dream.
"Oi, Blondie, get your what-zit away from me," Donna shouted, or tried to. It came out as a bit of a croak. "I speak several languages, so if you can use one I'm more familiar with that would be helpful." The pronged thing was waved around her head and shoulders.
"I believe this is the only language we have in common," the woman said. It was a beautiful language, Donna had to give them that. It reminded her of Old English or Norwegian, but had a round quality she couldn't place. It bubbled with layers of inflection and meaning, and Donna somehow knew that there were different ways to pronounce the words to show emotion. The harsh static rasp of sarcasm and mistrust had been clear in her own voice, while concern chimed like a bell in the nurse's voice.
"You are in the Central Hospital, and I am Fallaner. Do you know how long you have been asleep?" the nurse, apparently Fallaner, asked while swapping the odd pronged device for a tablet and stylus.
"No. The last thing I remember is going to bed," Donna admitted. Maybe the thick feeling in her head was blurring things. Why would she assume she wasn't on Earth so quickly otherwise? No, she was delirious and it was best to cooperate so the medical professionals could fix her head. It was probably another seizure. Well, it hadn't killed her yet!
"Where and when was that?" Fallaner asked. Donna blinked. 'Where-and-when' was one word in this imaginary language. Weird.
"I... I was at home," Donna started. Fallaner nodded, holding her stylus to the tablet waiting for her to elaborate. "London, England, Earth, The Solar System. You must know where I live." She wasn't at all in a charitable mood.
"London, England, Earth..." the nurse pronounced the names slowly, with unsure inflection. "When?" she prompted, using a word specific to date this time.
"April ninth, two thousand and thirty-eight," Donna said. "I'd gone to bed early because I had a long drive to an early meeting. It was maybe nine or ten at night."
"You aren't sure of the time?" Fallaner sounded alarmed.
"No, not really; I wasn't paying that much attention."
"You normally have to pay attention or risk losing track of the time?" she asked, scribbling furiously. The inflections were odd. Donna couldn't place the secondary meanings, but she felt the nurse was asking several things.
"I'm pretty heavily scheduled most days, so no. One thing after another, one hour at a time, that sort of thing."
"Just to be clear: you have not been losing track of time chronically."
"No, no... heavens... how long have I been asleep?"
"Can you tell me?"
"I don't know! You asked me the date, seems I must have been out for ages!" Donna said in alarm.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to alarm you. This is all standard procedure. I am trying to determine how much mental damage has been done. Please try to tell me how long you feel you have been asleep."
"How much WHAT?" Donna snapped, properly shouting. Fallaner radiated concern while Donna got her breath back. "Alright then, I feel like... a day. At least a day, maybe a bit longer." Donna knew it was the wrong answer as soon as it left her mouth. "That was a bit too optimistic, I take it."
"You have been here at the Central Hospital for eight days seven hours and twenty-nine minutes at... mark. Prior to that you were in the care and custody of Chronotis for three days, I am sorry I do not know the exact timing."
"That's alright," Donna didn't know what else she could say to that. The inflection sounded like the exact measure of time would be a great comfort.
"Do you know why you are here?"
"No," Donna sighed. "but I can guess I had another seizure. My head feels like it's stuffed with cotton, my back is stiff, and my arms and legs feel like they've got lead weights tied to them."
"Can you tell me anything else?"
"I can name all the major streets in Chiswick, but I don't think that's what you mean. You've got to be more specific."
"Are there noticeable gaps in your memory, other than the last eleven days?"
"I don't think so... not more than I should be missing, anyway. I lost about two years after my first seizure, but that was thirty years ago. I've had a few since, the specifics should be in my medical records, but I didn't lose more than a few hours for them."
"Your records... oh, yes, Chronotis gave us some paperwork. I haven't read them myself, but we have a specialist in xeno-pharmacology going over them. He should be able to translate out what we need." Donna blinked as Fallaner tucked the oblong tablet into the breast pocket of her mauve coat. The pocket was square and looked at least a third the size of the tablet.
"I think I might be hallucinating," Donna breathed, her fear at admitting what she'd just seen coming out in the stilted pronunciation of the alien words. Why did she keep thinking about aliens, anyway? She didn't hold with that nonsense. If aliens existed, they wouldn't bother with some underdeveloped planet like Earth anyway. It wasn't as if Humans had anything to offer a super-advanced space-traveling society.
"What do you think you see?"
"You were writing on a tablet, and instead of seeing you put it away it just disappeared," Donna whispered. "It just shrunk down to nothing."
"I was writing on a tablet a moment ago and put it away in front of you, so the hallucination was in missing a moment of time. I'm afraid I know nearly nothing about how the Human brain works. I'll see if the specialist has any more information about your current condition. I am specialist in regeneration and emotional therapy. We are working to reverse the effects of the Chameleon Arch on your mind and body, but it hasn't been smooth. We may..."
"The Chameleon..." Donna interrupted, but couldn't finish her thought.
"Do you remember the Arch?"
"Pain... it hurts and burns and steals..." she didn't know what she was saying, "It's like something I dreamt once and can't remember."
"That is an accurate enough description of the sensation; it overwrites memories. The Chameleon Arch was developed as a way to punish criminals, but has found less distasteful use in certain undercover missions. Someone apparently used it on you very early in your childhood. I have studied its effects in-depth, and that is my primary concern in your treatment and recovery. Luxor, your general practitioner, has put out a call for a special consultation with The Doctor. We are unsure if we can get in contact with The Doctor, however, because he is on the front lines of the war."
"Someone used a torture device on me?" Donna squeaked, acutely aware that her natural outrage affected the language in a way that broadcast the entire spectrum of her emotions.
"I'm sorry, this must be so traumatic for you, and I'm afraid the prognosis isn't optimistic. The lost memories of your childhood are unlikely to resurface without locating the receptacle used in overwriting your biology. There seems to be no sign of the receptacle. We can restore you, and the process will possibly reclaim some of the information you have lost, but the memories associated with that knowledge will be consumed. Chronotis re-awakened your knowledge of our language and gave the process a strong head start." Fallaner offered Donna a cup with a long straw. "I was shocked to find out how much he knew about the mind. I remember him from my Academy days, I don't know anyone that doesn't, but I never considered what sort of profession he trained for in his youth."
"Chronotis... I remember something. He is a friend?" she asked, sipping something fruity from the straw.
"He calls you his granddaughter, though that is obviously an adoptive title as he never married." Fallaner waved the last half of the sentence away.
"He feels like an old friend. You said it overwrites memories. What exactly is a Chameleon Arch and how does it work?" Donna struggled to sit up as she talked. Fallaner adjusted her pillows.
"There are many settings and types of Chameleon Arch. Some are used only for removing or reworking certain memories, those are used for covert missions. They also have the ability to overwrite biology, which is sometimes used in scientific investigations of more primitive cultures. Both functions were used on you, and by a truly powerful device. Yet, even on the highest settings, the true nature of the subject remains. I can assure you that your true personality has not been affected; however, your perceptions and reactions have been altered by the change to your biology. When all the changes have been reversed and your natural biochemistry is restored, you may find that your tastes change."
"So I might hate my favorite foods or decide purple is ugly?" Donna asked.
"It is a little more fundamental than that, but essentially yes. If it is comforting to think of it as a particularly powerful regeneration then, by all means, do so. In the first phase of operation, memories are dulled with the Arch by 'removing' them into a suitable container. A fob watch is the most common choice. It doesn't actually destroy the memory in and of itself, just disassociates it. I would compare a mind after the first phase to a whitewashed painting. The wash is not strong enough to completely cover the image, but the details and colors are so obscured that we are left with only an impression of the original image. Without the data inside the container, there is no way to recover those lost details."
"Ok, I've got that," Donna acknowledged, sipping the drink slowly. "It's more like amnesia than brain damage, and when everything comes back my preferences might be a bit different."
"Quite. In the second phase, the dulled memories are overwritten. The new memories use the outlines and knowledge still present in the subject's mind, and become the connections between what would otherwise be unusable and incoherent facts, allowing them to be used. Anything that does not fit into the new patterns is suppressed. At the same time, the biology of the person is altered to appear more like whatever society the subject is trying to assimilate into. Finally, in the most thorough processes, a perception filter is inserted that masks whatever cannot be altered."
"I think I followed that all the way through," Donna said.
"It is a good sign that you can. It has gone rather wrong for you due to it being improperly done and left unchecked for so many years, but we'll have you back to your old strength. Chronotis has secured full regeneration therapy for you. Unfortunately, that is necessary, because it will be the only way to restore you," Fallaner informed her with regret. Donna wasn't sure what she was apologizing for, it sounded like a nice time at the spa to her ears. Then again, she was clearly not right just now and would have a second go at understanding it all when she wasn't so exhausted. She yawned and Fallaner helped her settle back down into the pillows.
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Donna was in the most beautiful garden she'd ever seen. It was a narrow, winding strip of land that looped impossibly inside of the Central Hospital with doors and gates that branched off to every floor without ever going up or downhill. She had been in the hospital for a month trying to convince her caretakers that she was a human. She was failing so spectacularly that she was starting to believe their wild theories about who and what she was. Donna had already caved to the insistence that first names are to be kept secret except in the most intimate relationships, and it was only her offhand comment about the five middle names she was Christened with that a horrible scandal was averted. To the public, she was now simply "Red." Apparently, the first public name is always a simple one, followed by the School-age name chosen after initiation, and finally the title of adulthood chosen at graduation. It should be "Red of such-and-such house," but no one knew what family she came from and her humanized DNA made their computers malfunction when they tried to test it.
Currently, she was under the watchful gaze of Chronotis, who was apparently five years and one day shy of thirteen thousand years old, and the 'savior' who prevented her mind from going up like a dry match in an oven. He had just presented her with adoption papers, which she could read even though they were written in a neat mechanical circular text known as 'simple round modern Gallifreyan,' or 'simple round' for short. It was better than the formal 'old round' script, which looked like the ripples in a puddle during a drizzle. She had some trouble with script, but like everything else, the missing sections of her mind would fill in eventually. Either she'd remember it, or she'd learn it over again.
"I don't need to be adopted," Donna insisted. "What's the big deal about what family I belong to, anyway? They abandoned me, I grew up with a human family, and now I'm an adult capable of making my own decisions. That should be the end of it."
"We adore our children. Most peoples do, but for Time Lords it is possibly our last true instinct. We've evolved and civilized ourselves past the base emotions for the most part, but when it comes to our children we are fiercely protective. The stated punishment for the intentional and malicious harm of a child is the destruction of the house responsible. An entire family is dissolved: remaining children adopted into other families, adults forced to regenerate and either given work for penance or exiled, and the party directly responsible possibly executed." The older man was every inch the stereotypical University Professor: tweed jacket, fluffy white hair, button-down white oxford, bow tie, brown pants that don't quite match the rest, and blue bracers. Considering he'd been teaching at Cambridge for roughly three centuries it was a fun mental exercise to wonder if he looked so stereotypical because he was trying to blend in or if he was the original template for the stereotype. "In the case where an outsider harmed a time tot, the extinction of the species of the responsible party is not out of the question."
"I'm hardly a child, and all this regeneration talk has me in knots," she huffed.
"We can say you have lived at least as long as you can remember, but not likely much longer as we have found no personal memories of Gallifrey. Also, every time tot is initiated at eight years and taken to the Academy and there is no one unaccounted for there, so you would have to be less than eight at the time you were made human. That means about seventy years. Given our nature, what is to humans eighteen years of age is for us one century. You are a child by law, and need an advocate, though you have matured mentally far beyond that because of the life you have been forced to live. I only wish I had taken more time before I let the Central Hospital look at you. They may have mistaken what I did to heal your battered mind as something you mostly did for yourself if I'd kept you longer, but I was worried about your physical needs. I do not pretend to be an expert in that area."
"What does that matter? I'd have thought you'd like them to know how you helped me. The nurse said I'm assimilating my former memories ten times faster since you healed the rift in my subconscious mind, at the cost of my time awareness. I probably wouldn't have understood that a couple days ago. A fair trade, that, since the dreams were mostly horrible nightmares."
"Any skill, talent, or device used to nurture or preserve life can be misused to twist or end it. We are entering into a war. While a retired old librarian might slip quietly into the background, a true master of the mental arts capable of rebuilding the safeguards of a mind on the brink of self-destruction can not. The High Council had me over for lunch and all but demanded I figure out a way to weaponize my ability, either by developing a taste for death and despair or by teaching others to do what I do so they can do so themselves." One thing she had noticed about her protector: he seemed to always sound mildly curious no matter what he was talking about, rarely expressing any emotion at all. For her own part, she'd figured out how to talk without betraying her every emotion just three days ago. Unfortunately, she spoke 'with the bare honesty of a child' so much in the beginning that she condemned herself to being treated as an overgrown infant.
"Oh, well, I suppose that is a bit of a wrench in the works for you."
"Having a child in my care takes me off the front lines somewhat," Chronotis said with a nod in her direction.
"So I become the solution to a problem I created?"
"Precisely, my dear granddaughter." He gave her a little mocking bow and settled onto a bench. She sat next to him, for lack of a better choice. The dress she wore puffed out around her. She knew full well it was a scaled-up version of a tot's dress, the four different layers of fine silk and cotton fabrics left white rather than dyed the traditional colors of family and rank. It was so light it nearly floated around her. Her human mind offered up a criticism of the patronizing idea that a girl under age twenty would have skin so sensitive and pure she would need such a garment and warred with newer protective instincts that insisted even the irritation of scratchy fabric was too much to expect a child to deal with if it was avoidable. Boys wore an outfit that was identical except for the shape of the collar, which amused her human side.
"What happens to me, anyway? I don't have anything here. On Earth I have a family, a home, friends..."
"The regeneration will change your appearance, and therefore make going back to your life on Earth impossible in the short term. Some of us are better at it than others, with about ten percent able to change to a specific desired form at will and roughly sixty percent can choose to retain the same general look while turning back the clock to a more youthful body. As this is your first and your mind is in a delicate state, precision in your physical form will likely be sacrificed in order to better preserve your personality and salvage whatever is usable in the maelstrom behind the barrier in your mind. It's all about what you are most focused on when you change, but it is random at the heart of it all and there is only so much control that can be gained over the process. It is universally an unpleasant experience, but again that varies"
"Babble all you like, it's euthanasia. You kill the old and..." Donna started in on the same argument she'd been trying to make to the staff for the past few days.
"No! Very rarely does one choose to regenerate for vanity alone, and it is only forced on criminals or under extreme circumstance. When the body breaks down and is in constant pain, then that individual may choose to stop taking their medications and let death come. That person might also come to the hospital to have the process monitored, particularly if there is something seriously wrong. Suicide is not common or encouraged; regeneration is a natural process for us," Chronotis insisted.
"I don't get a choice," Donna pointed out.
"Yes, you do. Nothing forces you to do this now, but it will be more difficult for you if you plan to live out the remainder of this life as a human. You would likely not be able to find employment as you are since you don't have a properly documented education, and entry into the Academy is out of the question for an alien." Chronotis shifted uncomfortably. He clearly found her arguments ridiculous, but was willing to explain them to his new 'child' the same way he would to a student who'd just failed a test. "When the time comes, you can simply die – choose not to take a new form and let the burst of energy consume you. It would be a horrible waste, considering they are set to give you a full set of thirteen. They have a full set for me as well, so I can fight in the war without too much worry about losing the valuable asset my mind has become," Chronotis said, with no small amount of bitterness about his sudden worth. "I also get to choose to live out this life to the end or not."
"It's death or death!" Donna huffed.
"It's death or a new life. Granddaughter, you will not live much longer in this body. You had perhaps three years before the barrier in your mind broke of its own accord, and there is not half enough life energy within to fuel a full regeneration. You would either burn and not reform or come through half-cooked in a horrible mess of undeveloped genetic vomit. Even without that, you wouldn't live longer than three more decades under the best circumstance. I'd say it is much better this way: the headaches have not become debilitating yet and your body, while well used, has not started to rot around you. Think of the long life you will have here, with your own people. Start visualizing exactly how you want to be every night before you sleep, and you won't be badly disappointed by what you become."
"Is that what you are doing?" Donna asked in a small voice.
"Quite right. I'm hoping for something a little taller for my fourteenth. I am part of the unlucky group that must take what we get when we regenerate. Even so, I can be reasonably certain I will remain male, trim, and blond, as I have always been so. The treatment to 'recharge' my regenerative ability won't automatically trigger a regeneration in me because I am relatively healthy and not imminently in danger of dying. It is an honor to be granted another full go around at my age, so I suppose letting it slip how talented I am in the mental arts isn't a total loss. I plan on living out whatever I have left in this life because if I can make it to thirteen millennia on my own steam I will be in rare company. Very few can claim to have averaged a thousand years to a lifetime, the normal rate is around five hundred."
"I could really live six thousand years, then?"
"Easily, barring accidents. If you do well and take care, you could live much longer. If you do exceptionally well you can earn additional lifetimes, as I have."
"I don't... I..." Donna's mind was a battlefield of conflicting emotions. Confusion painted her face with lines, as that was the dominant feeling. "It's like I have two minds. Like I literally have two people in my head, the human I've always thought I was and this newly-awakened something that doesn't belong. It feels like I'm going to die and this thing I don't know gets to take my body."
"Quite the opposite, child, I assure you. The body dies and the mind survives."
"But I have two minds!" She shouted in exasperation.
"You have one mind operating on two separate tracks, and have done for most of your life. The key here is that before you were completely unaware of the workings of half your mind unless you were dreaming."
"So the part of my mind that's bugging me is also responsible for all those nightmares?"
"Time Lords can see the future and the past echoing around them. That is all those dreams were."
"Then what I saw was real? No tricks, no fancy framing, I saw real things in my dreams," she demanded to know, panicking.
"Potential timelines, probable futures, and the most likely outcomes, yes, you saw real things. You acted and reacted through your charity work to change what you could about those futures or to be prepared for the bits you couldn't effect. You used it quite admirably."
"Over and over again, I had horrific nightmares about... about impossible creatures," Donna admitted. "Nothing on Earth looked like them. Giant pepper pots that turned the whole universe to dust."
"May I see?" Chronotis asked, concern clear in his voice and face. "I will not pry unneeded into your mind without permission." She believed him. Lots of people had been poking around and none of them seemed to read her thoughts: they just looked at mental shapes without decoding them. Apparently, since every mind works slightly differently it takes an effort to decode the mental pictures into clear thoughts without permission. Even so, she didn't want to think about her nightmares if she didn't have to.
"I hate those dreams. Over and over again, so many people dying," Donna shivered.
"Red Moff, recurring dreams are the most important visions Time Lords have," he said, using her new name with his family's house. Her family house too, now, she supposed.
"Oh, alright, have a look." almost before she finished talking he was in her mind. He shot through her like an arrow, so unlike the healers with their warm comforting blankets of thought. Driven, that was a good word for it, more directed and sure. The images of her dream played out in her mind at hyper-speed. War, death, pepper-pots, EXTERMINATE, a madman in red and gold robes, a madman in a blue box with a light on top, and a disfigured madman in a motorized wheelchair...
"Dear sweet mercy," Chronotis sobbed when it was over, bent double on the bench. Donna realized he was trying not to vomit and rubbed circles on his lower back.
"I hate those dreams," she said again to cover the sounds coming from the back of the poor man's throat.
You have every right to. Red, you are a natural visionary! The words echoed in her mind. Normally Time Lords avoided direct telepathy as a means of communication outside of families and certain long-distance recordings, since the emotions attached to the words of their language were impossible to fake or filter when expressed telepathically (or that was how she understood the long explanation she'd been read out of a child's picture book when she'd asked about it.) She could clearly 'hear' her new grandfather's shock and pride, which was all the more intense for how reserved he always seemed.
"I thought all Time Lords and Ladies could...?" a hand clamped onto her knee hard.
The time war is... Fixed isn't quite the proper term, as it is a very complex group of intricate temporal phenomena. To put it in simple terms there is a channel in time that is narrow and rigid. A single event can be a 'nexus point' where many timelines converge and the outcome affects the larger fabric of time, but this is a series of nexus points linked together in a proper order that is held absolute. Donna clearly did not understand, so he continued. Everything is subjective, but the events of this war so greatly affect the whole of the universe that any one individual can only experience them once. To try and loop back through the channel would tear at the very fabric of reality. That makes it fixed, in the sense that it cannot be directly altered by anyone who has actually experienced it.
"OK, got that, how does it make my nightmares...?" the hand shook her silent.
Nexus points are unknowable until they are experienced. By their very nature, you cannot experience them in whole or part by observation or vision more than once. A Time Lord can feel them coming as their time-related senses are bent away from the key moments and shortened to only the next few minutes. That you can dream of this war repeatedly means you have a natural ability beyond the standard ones we are all born with. As for the content of those dreams... Chronotis straightened up and met Donna's eyes. You must never speak of this. You have been through enough with the Chameleon Arch and regeneration therapy, you do not need what being a visionary will mean for you. They are taken away and driven mad by the constant demands of their minders, all for their own good and the good of our great race. Most parents who would ask this of their children do not have the chance to warn them of this in a way that is remembered and heeded. Others consider it pride of place to raise such a child. It is a controversy among us and I think I am clear as to what side I endorse.
"So it's this way because I'm still thinking like a human?" Donna asked because it was the first thing her brain kicked up.
"You are a brilliant young lady, Red," Chronotis rasped, finally getting his breathing under control. "We'll have you sorted out and properly educated. Your dreams will make more sense to you as your mind heals and your time senses are fully integrated with your waking mind. You are not alone in this."
For the first time in decades, Donna didn't feel lonely.
-------------------------
Donna trembled as golden light filled the small glass-walled booth. It hurt. Not anywhere in particular, but it built as an all-over itch that sharpened and burned until she was screaming. She just wanted to stay herself. She'd spent every spare moment this past week going through mental exercises to prepare for this. Chronotis had somehow produced a photograph of her from her twenties to try and help visualize what she wanted and guided her along as best he could. She wanted to be Donna Noble, citizen of Earth. She didn't want her life stood on its head... no, focus only on what is wanted: negatives don't work.
She breathed, and it was the first breath. She wobbled, leaning against the glass in a slump. Her legs weren't right, too short. Her arms felt too light and her clothes fit wrong. Nurses rushed in to help her into a chair. Fallaner was there, all concern and soothing words. It was over, it was a success, the hair was quite a statement, and everything was in its proper place. A mirror appeared in the hands of a young man, angled so Donna could see her own face.
It wasn't the face in the old photograph; it was even younger by quite a jump. She could be her own sister: same hair, same bone structure, a bit thinner than she had been as a preteen (but rather as she was an hour ago,) same eye shape but with more golden/hazel flecks in the blue. Her chest felt oddly full, but Fallaner's monologue informed her she had grown back her second heart and all the internal scans were coming up Time Lady perfection. Donna started to cry.
That stupid Spaceman. He just had to save her life when she'd been happy to die as she was, and now look where it got her! Snatched away from her family just after her daughter got married, no chance of seeing her grandbabies anytime soon, twisted into another species like what the Ood did to that horrible slave driver... Chronotis insisted she'd been a Time Lord all along, though. Had she always been this, just hidden away? Had her stupid Spaceman just not noticed? She could remember him, now: pinstripes and sad eyes. It was faded by time, jumbled by the meta-crisis and regeneration. Her big dumbo. Her Doctor.
God, she missed him. She always had. She went to all those places, helped all those people, and deep in the back of the darkest corners of her mind she'd been looking for him. She bought Shawn pinstriped suits and had her front hall painted bold blue. She traveled more days out of the year than she was home. She always had a jar of mushy bananas in her purse, as an emergency snack.
She didn't have all his thoughts, but she remembered what it had been like. Two minds spinning in one head, which wasn't healthy even for a Time Lady. It would have been more than fatal for a human if he hadn't squashed the twin consciousness, essentially committing either suicide or filicide depending on how you parsed the details. It was the filicide angle that hurt the most: the 'duplicate' had truly been their son, a blend of the two of them mentally and genetically. The mind burning inside her had arguably been its twin, not the Doctor's, and now it was gone forever. Her mind had cannibalized as much as it could over the past decades and the regeneration burned off the rest. Random facts and figures remained, but all the personal knowledge and context burnt away. She didn't even understand how she'd saved the Universe, she just remembered doing it and how amazing it felt.
Chronotis gripped her chin hard and pulled her sobbing face up to see his own. The whole crew of nurses, healers, and curious researchers where crowded around telepathically radiating concern.
"It's just... I'm myself again," she said. They completely misunderstood, naturally, and started welcoming her home in earnest. Someone suggested a party, someone else insisted their cousin made the best clothing in the world, and the whole lot of them babbled on like a flock of birds.
"You remember Gallifrey?" Chronotis asked.
"Like something I read in a book, it's all facts and unconnected thoughts," she replied honestly. "I don't remember ever standing outside."
The babble changed pitch, an orderly brought her another white dress in her new size, and within half an hour she was standing on a balcony properly outside the Hospital under the Gallifreyan sky for the first time in her lives (and wasn't it a trip and a half to have multiple lives!)
The Central Hospital was located low in the citadel, with many of the buildings stretching up and over it. The Time Lords had always lived in coral, going back to the dawn of their species, so all the buildings were alive and sentient. They shielded the hospital with a lattice of walkways and supportive struts. She knew that, in the abstract 'I might have read that somewhere' way she knew a lot of things, but it was no match for actually looking up at the city above them. It was gorgeous; the slightly cinnamon scent she'd thought was the Doctor's cologne once upon a time filled her lungs. It was the fresh air that smelled of cinnamon, the smell of home!
"How are you feeling?" Fallaner asked.
"I want to bake so many muffins, for all of you!" she shouted, thinking of the 'space cake' the Doctor loved with its bananas and spice. Given how the city smelled, she figured Time Lords would probably like Space Cake as a rule. There weren't a lot of people out and about, and her shouting caught attention immediately among such a somber people. Time Lords who walked rather than take a teleport came in three types: those who enjoy exercise, those who don't want a teleport log of where they've been, and hopeless gossips who keep an eye out for the second category. Those who were out walking when Donna shouted saw a girl wearing unmarked clothing in the style of a very young child shouting happily in the care of a large number of healers and high-level specialists, immediately starting several rumors. Distantly, Donna felt the telepathic well wishes from several of them: a wordless cheering for the successful recovery of whatever had required so many medical professionals.
"To be a part of bringing you home is reward enough," Luxor, a great wall of a man and her general practice doctor, supplied. "The energy deficit will need to be addressed, even if you feel energetic now. You should eat and rest a while to let the endorphin rush fade. We don't want you unintentionally overexerting yourself, the process isn't properly complete for fifteen hours. When you are feeling up to it again your guardian is free to take you out to get new clothing and set up your position at home and at the Academy, but we want to keep you for observation during the night hours at least until you have settled into your new self." With a start, Donna realized they would only expect her to sleep an hour tonight. They'd been at their wits end about how much she slept until Chronotis explained about Human sleep schedules.
"Alright, lunch and then the garden?" she asked.
"That would be fine," Luxor agreed, taking her hand and passing it to Chronotis who tucked her arm in his to walk her back inside. Everyone was smiling and the air was buzzing with happy telepathy. She hadn't been able to feel the wordless bits of emotion well before the change. Now they were obvious: Chronotis was reserved, but shimmered with pride; the researchers all radiated pride with bits of celebratory sparkles; Fallaner whooshed with relief under the happy pride; and Luxor was a fierce storm of protective instinct, happiness, and caution. It went along with the language, and Donna thought that maybe some of the inflections she'd heard in the beginning were her human brain trying to make sense of the telepathic input. She also wondered what she looked like telepathically.
"You are wide open, partially because of the regeneration and partially because you've only just thought about it. You are already closing down and regaining control. I'd wager you've hit just about every emotion at some point in the last hour," Chronotis murmured just loud enough for her to hear. "We call you red because that is the primary 'color' associated with your mind and core personality. It has not changed shade, and I congratulate you for successfully maintaining the part of yourself you most wanted to keep."
"You heard all my thoughts?!" she gasped, alarmed.
"No, no, but all of the emotions, yes. You weren't broadcasting thought, just leaking emotion. I made an educated guess as to what your sudden flash of embarrassment meant," Chronotis soothed.
"I understand that a lot better now that I can really feel it for myself."
"I should hope many things will be easier for you now. Welcome home, Red. I am happy to call you my Granddaughter. The Moff family is small and virtually all married off into other houses, but that merely means you are a cousin to a very large extended group who will likely leave you alone unless you get along well enough to become friends. I rather enjoy not being so closely related to people that I am required to socialize with them even if I don't want to."
"My mother's father on Earth was named Mott. Wilfred Mott. He was a good man."
"Does the similarity in the name bother you?"
"No, if anything it's a comfort. I can remember them and be happy, you know?"
"Yes, child, I do. I know very well. I never had a big family, not like some with their crowds of siblings, and never married, but I can remember my parents and elder cousins fondly."
"It's strange. Before regenerating, the idea of starting over and never seeing my family again was terrible, but now I'm ready to go," Donna admitted. "It sounds cold, but I can just... walk away."
"That's natural," Fallaner answered. "It's called regenerative emotional detachment. The new self can re-forge the connections with family and it will feel as if the detachment never happened. However, in cases where the subject's personality changed beyond compatibility, the detachment allows friendships to end without much pain. In a case where loved ones have predeceased the subject or are otherwise unavailable, as yours are, the pain of that loss is dulled. It is not forgetting, it is moving on, and you should not feel it is disrespectful."
"Thank you," Donna said. No, that wasn't right. She wasn't Donna anymore. "I'm Red Moff, nice to meet you."
-------------------------
The Academy tests were brutal. Two days of rest and negotiation landed her in a testing room with the scariest proctor she'd ever seen for two three-hour sessions a day every weekday for three weeks. The official word was the man who abandoned her on Earth left an impression of his mind behind and her own had assimilated the information. No one mentioned the Doctor, and Red sure wasn't going to get him in any trouble by bringing him up. Only Chronotis knew how big the gap was between an Academy degree and her University degree from Earth, and he wasn't talking for fear of exposing her as a prophet. Being the private, reserved people they were, no one pried into her mind to really take a look since they had no reason to doubt her story. They granted her the opportunity to test past as many classes as she was able to, but they didn't start easy and build up to harder topics. The questions were all jumbled up, with color names alongside quantum physics. It made it impossible to tell how she was doing.
The Doctor's head was full of such random stuff! She could track no area of particular expertise or ignorance, but every available synapse of her brain was focused on passing the tests with the highest possible marks. Only at night when she was resting in the hospital garden could she think about the content of the knowledge she kept from the meta-crisis. She remembered his evasive answers when pressed 'Doctor of what?' and was starting to expect the true answer was Liberal Arts, or whatever the Time Lord equivalent was. Jack of all trades, master of none: that was the Doctor. In her first life, she'd started as a Liberal Arts major herself, but had switched to math and eventually dropped out due to mediocre grades and a need to get a proper job. She'd always been good with numbers and filing systems.
Chronotis was set to spoil her rotten. When she visited their home in the upper levels of the Citadel she was presented with a large white space that would become her room. Windows that were only the size of her hand outside filled the room with light as they stretched from floor to ceiling like arrow slits. She'd only just thought that it looked like the worst sterile hospital room on Earth and the walls started bleeding color, tinting green starting from where she stood. The windows shifted to largish squares and grew slat blinds. The floor softened and puffed into something like a carpet.
"Moff house can't do fabrics well, but he's good with stone, metals, wood grain, and the like. He favors his natural green coral if you don't specify, polished to a high gloss," Chronotis explained, pointing to the now gently swirled glossy green walls. "Remember always that the coral can replicate, but not fabricate. You must give it the designs, or be happy with what approximation he can provide from those who lived here before you. They don't have long memories for detail and harbor no creativity to speak of, so don't be frustrated if his first attempts are a bit off. It will likely start with duplications of furniture from elsewhere in the house until he gains enough of a psychic link with you. He'll have it right in a couple of visits."
Then there were the shopping trips for her new wardrobe, all of it tailor made. Gallifrey didn't do 'off the rack' boutiques: everything on display was a sample design that could be cut to order for the customer in any fabric or color. Clothing was an odd point in their culture, a dual tradition frozen in time from before they called themselves Time Lords. One half was the traditional robes showing age, house, job, and social rank that pretty much everyone not in the high counsel hated. Everyone had a set, and the robes were used in all official proceedings.
The other half of the tradition was more complex. The temporal anomalies around Gallifrey meant time travel happened like rain happened on other planets. Back in prehistory, they lived in the coral because it resisted and absorbed the time energy, preventing them from waking up in a puddle of tomorrow after an overnight storm. As a not-always-on-purpose time-traveling race it was common to meet one another out of order way back before Gallifrey Standard Time was enforced and controlled with TARDIS technology and other protections. Rather than simply relying on eyeballing the other person's age, Gallifreyans had gotten into the habit of changing their color or style of dress drastically only after major life events. Some alternated colors by week or month, but in general each had their own little uniform they chose to express their personality that only changed when something fundamental changed in their life.
It was a huge decision. Red was at her wit's end to pick something and they came home with only her traditional robes their first outing. The multi-layered child's dress with green piping for Moff house had a bronze layer to match her hair and name, a red one for their upper-class caste, and an orange one for her rank as firstborn. The fourth layer was left white because neither she nor Chronotis had officially stated her intended career or focus of study. It was hideous and excellent motivation to make up her mind.
Back on Earth, she'd gotten a dress as a gift from some high-fashion designer to wear while she was pregnant to a charity ball. The stretchy, sheer mesh was draped and bunched in such a way as to make her look as wide as a house, but the judicious application of a seam ripper by an experienced tailor had turned it into the most comfortable thing she'd ever had on her skin during a formal event. The poor designer pitched a fit when he saw the alterations, but the toga-style it ended up as was a lot better than the tight gathered bands across her belly. The fabric was a dream to wear and would keep her cool while running around while still looking very proper. With a little help from her emerging telepathic skills, she managed to describe the fabric well enough for Buren, a Time Lady seamstress, to pull out a roll of something close enough that Red couldn't tell the difference.
She had tried on quite a lot of clothes. Chronotis really was spoiling her with how patient he remained about the whole business. Red had to keep reminding herself not to just take the first thing that came to hand out of politeness because she wouldn't get a chance to pick out clothes again for ages. It was expected and acceptable for her to have a hard time picking out her first outfit, and other children would have thought it over for ages before they were allowed to wear their own style at age twenty. She rather liked the vaguely Victorian looks, or what her mind classified as Victorian, and picked out an under-bust corset as her first decision. She still loved hats, and she'd managed to specify a wide-brimmed design as flattering. There were no final decisions on color or shape of the rest yet, but Buren assured her that they would come up with some lovely ideas using the fabric, corset, and hat during the week. She braced herself that night for the second week of testing.
On her second Friday in the Citadel, Red had a violent dream. Chronotis was at her bedside like a worried parent when she finally tore herself away from sleep. She cried without knowing why. At dawn, the news reported a skirmish with the Dalek army that resulted in the destruction of a world called Logopolis very early in the timelines. The report also said the Time Lords were led to victory by the former outlaw known as The Master with assistance from the Castellan's special force, but suffered many casualties. The Master was to be posthumously honored for his bravery in battle. Most everyone she saw that day as they walked to the testing room was a little ill. When she asked for a banana from the snack bar in the waiting area Red got a bit of static.
"We don't sell The Doctor's homeopathic alien crap here," the teenage-looking attendant spat. "If you want alien fruit and brown water you can take your business elsewhere."
"I have a thermos of tea right here, Granddaughter," Chronotis suddenly said from behind her shoulder. She was shorter than she was used to by about a foot, but everyone assured her she had a growth spurt due to start in the next year. "It is a shame so many at the Academy have such closed minds that they slander the Castellan himself without a thought." Red blinked as the clerk stumbled over his own tongue.
"The Castellan? The Doctor? I mean... of course I know who the current Castellan is! It's just not medically proven science that those... those brown water things are safe. It's best not to serve such things to children."
"My old student has written several theses on the effects of tea on Galifreyan physiology, and I have used it myself these last few hundred years. It is truly a panacea: a cure for everything and nothing, stimulating the natural healing and regeneration processes. Perhaps you should read some of my own publications on the topic?" Chronotis asked, in that slightly curious tone he always used. Red sipped her tea, shocked beyond words to hear about the Doctor from this viewpoint. She never thought about how he made money before his people were destroyed or even if he ever had any; he'd just seemed like an awesome sort of outer space hobo who lived in his car, except the car in question had a palatial estate in the back seat. If I can't get through school and off this planet fast, I'll just be one of the billions of casualties in this war, she thought to herself. Preferably with means to re-enter my timeline when I'm aged enough to look like myself to my kids. It was a pity she couldn't remember many facts about it, but the Doctor told her point-blank that this part of his memory was murky. If he couldn't remember how the war went, her reconstituted knowledge wasn't going to be much help either. At least she knew it was a very, very long war.
"Oh, um, I'm sorry Professor. I don't believe I've taken any of your classes. What was your name, sir?" the clerk asked, looking ready to shit a brick. Teachers at the Academy were well within their rights to dock points from students for bad behavior outside the classroom, even on a recommendation from a member of the staff not assigned to the student.
"I am Chronotis, and I was the head librarian for twelve thousand years before my retirement." The poor clerk visibly relaxed, assured his grade point average couldn't be sabotaged by a retired teacher.
"Do you have a banana, Grandfather? Those are good for time shifts, aren't they?" Red asked, all innocence and childhood curiosity. "Lots of potassium in bananas."
"No, but there should be... yes. We'll take two of the purple supplement bars," he asked the clerk, "and you are to suggest them to anyone asking for a banana. It is a poor substitution, really. Bananas have such a great natural balance of chemicals and these supplement bars are all mineral based with a bare minimum of fats and starches to hold them together..." Red listened as her Grandfather broke into a long explanation. The others in the waiting area were all eavesdropping, Red's childlike appearance and large 'entrance exam' nametag making the situation all the more shaming for the clerk whenever she piped up with her own comments. A bit of discussion about where one might buy a banana or tea started up among some of the parents just before Red was called in to start her tests.
Chronotis and a few other guardians brought bananas to go with lunch during the two-hour break, and she noticed several of the other kid were warily investigating the yellow fruit. She peeled it with dramatically over-exaggerated flair after watching one boy smash his open with a spoon and another bite right through the peel, a look of extreme regret on his face. It wasn't often she felt like the smartest person in a room, even if it was only an expertise in banana peeling. The boy who bit his banana came over and asked her to peel it for him. That evening as Red trudged out of the testing room feeling like her brain had been put in a vice and squeezed, the sandy-haired boy walked up to her again.
"I'm Blue," he said, "of house Lungbarrow. It was rude of me not to say before."
"I'm Red Moff," she answered automatically. The red in the fabric of his dress shimmered gold (she didn't care that the collar was different and should be called a tunic. She thought boys on Gallifrey wore dresses, full stop.) That meant that the Lungbarrow family wasn't just part of the upper class, they currently had members in the highest office. They were nobles among nobles. Well, she'd been born a Noble, so she wouldn't be intimidated. He was also marked as the absolute youngest of a large family by the patterns on his collar. Red could swear she knew his name from somewhere... "Do you have any family that work in the Central Hospital?"
"No, why?" Blue had vibrant blue eyes, about the color of the Doctor's police box, and was half a head shorter than Red. His badge read 'retest examination.'
"I was there a while and your family name sounds familiar. I met a lot of people, some for only a few hours," she explained.
"I hope you weren't very sick," Blue said, in a way that sounded rehearsed. It was a forced politeness, the product of a good many swats to the behind by an attentive parent.
"I had to regenerate," Red answered. "I'd rather not talk about it."
"I'm sorry to hear that," he sounded sincere now, "maybe you heard the name because the new Castellan is my Grandfather," Blue chirped proudly. "That's why I'm here. I missed my midterm exams to go to the ceremony. He took me in his TARDIS. We didn't go anywhere in it, of course, just to look around. He's got a swimming pool in the library!" Blue boasted. Clearly having seen the inside of a TARDIS was major social capital among Time Tots.
"Wow," Red said, and didn't have to fake her pleased surprise. "I... well, Grandfather brought me to the hospital in his TARDIS, but I wasn't awake. What was it like?"
Blue was more than impressed that Red had actually flown in a TARDIS, even if she wasn't awake for it. They sat down on a bench near a window with a view of the city. Blue waxed poetic about the carved wood in the console room, his Grandfather's many experiments bubbling away in their beakers, the corridors that seemed to go on forever, a music room where they all sat down to harmonize with the TARDIS humming along, and a room full of alien toys he and his older cousins got to run around in. Red remembered how broken-down and rusted bits of the Doctor's TARDIS was when she traveled with him and realized it must have been all but destroyed at some point, with only his own two hands to put it back together and no garage where he could pick up spare parts or hired help.
She pumped the kid for information about what Time Tots were supposed to be like: What kind of games do you play? What else do you do for fun? What music is cool? He seemed to be a bit of a loner, but he knew what was cool for their peer group. When she was a temp she'd learned how to blend into any office's social structure. She'd used that chameleon ability over and over again, both with the Doctor on alien worlds and in her life running her charity. The hospital was a great blanket excuse for her isolation from other kids, and when she stumbled over her words to explain why she was taking an entrance exam at her apparent age he stopped her in a voice that sounded so much like the Doctor he could only be a blood relative.
"It's alright, it doesn't matter how long you were sick. You regenerated, so you're healthy now. You don't have to tell me about it if it bothers you. I wouldn't want to talk about how I died so young, either." Bless him; it was the same compassion in miniature. Red noticed the suns had set sometime during their long talk and looked over her shoulder to find Chronotis talking to a tall woman with rather familiar if longer anti-gravity brownish hair. "Um..." Blue was looking down at his black slippers. "If you don't mind... it's kind of rude, but... Why's your name in English?"
"What do you mean?" Red asked defensively.
"I'm sorry. I picked Blue because that's the name of my Grandfather's favorite color in English. It's my favorite too, and the color of my eyes. English is an Earth language..."
"I can speak English," Red replied in English. Blue's jaw dropped.
"I can... too," he said with what sounded like a thick Scottish accent. "Grandfather... teaching... me."
"My Grandfather retired to Earth," Red said fluently, but not as fast as she could do. "He lived there a long time. He came back to Gallifrey to raise me."
"That is early... really... awesome!" Blue stumbled, smiling brightly.
"Thank you," Red said in Gallifreyan. "I think they are waiting for us." She pointed behind them.
"Yeah, that's my mom." Blue bounced to his feet. "I'll be here next week too, but after Wednesday I'm going back to my regular classes."
"I've got a full week here next week, and then I have to wait for my results. I've been sort of homeschooled."
"I'll see you on Monday," Blue said, sticking out his hand for a handshake. Red grabbed it and skipped over to where Chronotis was talking to what was obviously the Doctor's daughter, Blue jogging along to keep up with her.
"Grandfather, this is Blue."
"Hello Blue, I am Chronotis," the elderly Time Lord patted the young boy on the head. "I remember when the Doctor was your age. Oh, how he'd run around the library... it drove the other librarians crazy, but I didn't mind him. Ecrire, this is my granddaughter Red."
"Pleased to meet you, Ecrire," Red dropped Blue's hand to shake his mothers.
"Pleased to meet you as well, Red," she said without looking at Red. "Have you been keeping the young lady company, Blue?"
"Yes, mother," Blue said. "She can speak English!"
"How nice," Ecrire replied, a strained edge to her voice. She looked Red up and down like she had some horrible disease. "You are also a fan of my father's then?"
"No, I'm a fan of my grandfather's," Red sniped back.
"I lived on Earth as part of my retirement," Chronotis explained, "and the dominant language where I lived was English."
"Oh," was all Ecrire said before turning to leave. Red was quite sure she didn't like this woman at all.
"Have a nice night, Ecrire and Blue," Red called, determined to be polite no matter how far this snob had a pole stuck up her rear.
"I'm glad you made a friend, even if I can't possibly approve of his mother," Chronotis said when they were back at Moff house. Red was still sleeping three hours every night, and it worried everyone. She'd been released from the hospital with orders to report her sleeping habits and come back for testing if she didn't get down to the 'normal' sleep cycle after the strain of the tests was past. The idea that the tests were considered grueling enough that sleeping twice the regular amount wasn't enough to keep her in the hospital was rather frightening.