Chances Are

Chances Are

Chapter Three: We’ve Lost It All

“Oh, come on TARDIS, start for me baby!” Phim wailed, trying to get the TARDIS out of indigestion mode. Her English accent faltered again like it had been for the past hour since they returned to the police box to discover that the TARDIS had not yet recovered. Her accent kept flipping between English and flat American as she begged, pleaded, and cajoled the unresponsive time machine. Finally she hung her head as the Doctor watched unsympathetically, hands shoved in his pockets and sneakered feet crossed. She shot him a glare that startled him enough to knock him off balance. “You could help, you know!”

“It’s going to take at least a day for her to stop feeling ill, you know that,” he grumbled, taking out his sonic screwdriver from his jacket pocket the same time she pulled hers out from her coat. He glanced at her as she scanned the controls and then did a ridiculous double-take. “Wait a tic, you have one? Where did you get one? I thought only I had one!”

“Yes, the same place you did, no, and this part is just for me, I used it earlier and you didn’t notice? So much for the great Doctor, eh?” She held it up, smiling as it extended, tip glowing purple, ornate etchings decorating the silver sides. “And, no surprise, mine is significantly more fabulous than yours.”

“Oh, never mind. Seems we’re here for a day,” he shoved his hands in his pockets again, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. She was mad, that one, and part of that intrigued him, more than the fact that she was a Time Lord (she had already snapped at him about using the “sexist” term of Time Lady in her presence) and the only female one. She didn’t know anything about Earth culture (besides Harry Potter and M&Ms) but was very knowledgeable about other worlds, and had seemed cautious in the shop about her wording. She truly didn’t want to leave a footprint that could potentially start a chain of events that this planet wasn’t destined for. He respected that.

And a part of him wondered what it would be like to have a companion who was truly his equal. Emotionally Rose surpassed him on all levels, and she was truly one of the most intelligent and sensible humans he’d ever known, but still, she couldn’t see the past, present, and future, hear the cries of birth and the screams of death, didn’t have to be responsible and careful of every single move she made. This woman did, just like him, and like him she had to choose carefully whether to intervene in any particular timeline or if she had to stand back and simply watch. It was an odd sort of freeing feeling, knowing that somebody else had to share the burdens that always kept a wall up between him and his companions.

With that thought came another, a guilty one; he’d had countless companions, family, people who he’d cared about and who care about him on his journeys, she had no one. She’d been living in fear for over a century, running alone from world to world not for pleasure, but for survival, until being stranded on a war-stricken planet and being forced to fight. For all he’d seen, never had the Doctor been so helpless. He (begrudgingly) had to give her credit, she did what was necessary to survive and didn’t make one complaint about it.

“So, what’s wrong with your TARDIS? We can at least get some tools together to get it up and running for you,” he flung his coat on the console, kneeling next to a grate. Phim’s smirk fell, causing the Doctor to look up when he felt her emotions shift. “What’s wrong?”

“You can’t fix my TARDIS,” she said softly, eyes downcast. The Doctor stood up, something unpleasant in the pit of his stomach making both his hearts pound uncomfortable. “When I arrived at Parlou, the chameleon circuit operated perfectly, the TARDIS became a tree and I went to scout the area and decide if it was a fixed or flux timeline. I’ve honestly only been to three different worlds while I was ‘traveling’, didn’t seem necessary to move constantly if you wouldn’t be there. Anyways, while I was out, I felt a warm swelling in my hearts, pain in my chest, and when I ran back, the TARDIS was... it was dead,” Here the Doctor winced in sympathy. “I don’t know if the heart died or if it was stolen, but the only power left was in the chameleon circuit to keep it hidden. I tried to find it over the next three years before the war broke out, but if it was stolen, it was way off planet before I came back from scouting.”

The Doctor was silent, sympathy in his eyes for the first time since he’d grabbed her from Parlou. When the heart of a Time Lord’s TARDIS died, at least the heart of a TARDIS that was truly one with it’s Time Lord, the Time Lord became disoriented and their awareness of time and space were severely diminished, along with their telepathy. It drove even the most powerful Time Lord completely mad. These things were what made Time Lords so powerful and effective in their prime; to lose them made them only a step above human. All dying TARDISes ended up in a special graveyard, with their interiors jettisoned into the space-time continuum or the space-time vortex.

“I’m amazed you didn’t go mad,” he said honestly, “I’ve seen what happens to Time Lords when their TARDISes are destroyed, it’s not pretty. Some could care less, only want the poshest, newest models. But those like you and me, who actually give a damn about time and space and our machines, to us it’s exactly like having both our hearts ripped out.” He approached her, shoving his hands into his pockets. He peered into her eyes, and when he saw what he was looking for, his dark eyes softened. “How long have you been holding it back?”

She averted her eyes. “Since it happened, years now.”

“Without a TARDIS, as connected as you were to it, you won’t survive much longer.”

Phim flushed and stepped back, rubbing her arms. “There’s more important things to worry about,” she said quietly, her English accent back, “like what are we going to do now?”

“Well I know this area and time a bit, nice place London, friendly people the British, we could sightsee for a bit. You’ve already managed to find the scariest shop in London, let’s take a look at some actual culture, shall we?” He sprinted to the doors of the TARDIS, snatching his coat. “Winter of the year two thousand nine, a little nippy, near Christmastime, lots of... food, but still spirited. Well, nice anyway. Well, actually more like drunk, but still, friendly people the British.”

Phim stared at him, eyes blinking rapidly, jaw slack. The Doctor’s prattling slowed to a halt, choosing to blink right back at her. “Um, right then, what’s wrong now?”

She shook her head, thick hair falling over her shoulders. “I’ve just never seen a grown man talk so fast. Teenage girls yeah, but never a six-foot-one lord of time and space. It’s almost... cute,” she grinned.

You could practically see his proverbial feathers getting ruffled at her unintentional shot at his manhood. “Cute? Really, you couldn’t come up with something tougher, less... cute than ‘cute’? What am I, an otherworld puppy?”

“Basically, but you were going to show me London at... Chrissystine?”

“Christmastime, a human winter holiday, it might take a little while to explain.”

“Explain aw- AGH!” Suddenly Phim crumpled, falling to her knees and holding her stomach. The Doctor sprinted to her, kneeling next to her and rubbing her back. She panted and hissed, glowing particles floating out of her mouth and swirling into the air. The air around her crackled and sizzled, making the Doctor snatch his hand back when the hand-to-skin contact resulted in a nasty shock.

“I’ve never seen post-regenerative sickness like this,” he whispered, cautiously touching her arm before trying to pull her long hair off her neck, since her body temperature had skyrocketed, sweat dripping off her jaw.

“It’s...” she gasped, trying to take in air, “It was this bad the last time. I was in a coma for three weeks in my TARDIS, almost starved to death. Oh by Gallifrey, it hurts!” Phim was trying valiantly to keep the tears at bay, but it felt like all her blood had been replaced with the fires of Pyrovillia, under her skin and in her heart so she felt like clawing it all off. Now she was grateful she only had to deal with severe malnutrition and dehydration before, anything had to be better than this hell.

The Doctor knew she was keeping something from him, something vitally important, but he kept secrets from everyone as well, so he had no room to demand anything from her. “Hold on a tick, I’ll get you something that should calm it down.” In typical Doctor fashion, he ran to the galley and shuffled through cupboards before finding a bottle and dumping three pills in his hand. He filled a small cup with water and ran back, sliding with a loud squeak across the floor and dropping dramatically to his knees.

“Damn drama queen,” Phim muttered, swallowing the pills, grimacing at the taste of free radicals.

“Wait, what was that?”

“I said ‘Dang, papa swing’. Nice floor sliding action.” She took a few deep breaths, sighing as the pills, super-concentrated forms of the free radicals in a cup of tea, helped ease the burning. In a few moments the pain stopped, and with help from the Doctor she got to her feet shakily. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” he smiled, and she turned away from it sharply. For years no one had ever seen her vulnerable, not once, she wouldn’t allow it. Now this infamous Time Lord had to rub her back and bring her pain killers like she was an ailing child. She took a deep breath through her nose and let it out through her mouth. No reason to snap at him for it, these were her issues.

The Doctor looked hurt at her cold response to him smiling. Everyone liked his smile, they all said so. Rose even... wait, don’t go on that road again. Too much pain.

Phim felt the Doctor’s sudden sadness, pain, and saw only one word: Rose. Not a flower, but a girl. She prodded ever so slightly and was flooded by memories, making both her and the Doctor clutch their heads. A blonde girl, with sweet brown eyes, laughing, crying, screaming, eating chips, running... there were alot of chips and running. Phim gasped, millions of emotions flooding into her head and directly to her two hearts, making them ache and break repeatedly. The Doctor gritted his teeth, forcing the open door closed in his mind.

“How did you do that?” he spat out, backing away from her. “You shouldn’t be able to do that, I can’t do that, how are you doing that?!”

“I don’t know!” Phim stumbled back from him, clutching one of the numerous smooth split tree trunks in the control room.

“When did you go to the Academy, they didn’t teach this there!”

“I didn’t, I wasn’t allowed to go! My father kept me in a bubble until the Time War, no one taught me anything! I’m a Time Lord technically, but I don’t have any training, no special knowledge, I shelved books! That’s all I have, books!” Phim ran out the door before he could see her tears. The Doctor was this great, talented, always loved, respected, feared thing, always right, never wrong, so great and powerful. She’d never met him on Gallifrey, just heard stories from her father who had met him a few times.

She kept running. She was a failure, just like everyone said. Nothing going for her, no one to go home to, no home to find someone to go home to. There was nothing left for her, not that she had anything to start off with. That’s what she had liked about the war on Parlou; she had some knowledge from a few books she’d read while shelving the huge library on Gallifrey. Her knowledge had helped the peaceful Parlixa, helped creatures who had no other defense against their blood-thirsty enemies.

For those few years, she’d felt... strong, powerful, capable. That odd but exhilarating feeling of landing on a new place and knowing everything about it, one of the greatest assets of a Time Lord, it started coming in. And the longer she fought the Vervoid and Sycorax, the more she would “remember” about them, that familiarity as if she’d spent lifetimes with them already. She didn’t make any friends, not really, she was too afraid of being found out, of becoming someone others would follow simply because of who she was. She kept running.

Seraphima, daughter of Salyavin, the most useless Time Lord in existence. And getting taken to task by a skinny nerd, who was apparently better at running than her. He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her into an alley. “Woah, woah, woah, wait a second before you fly off the handle!”

“Let go of me!” She pulled herself away from him, keeping ten paces between them, red hair flying in the strong breeze. She looked much like a Gorgon intemperate, her anger manifested so everyone could see. The Doctor hated to admit it, but she looked fantastic, powerful, and-

“What the-” She threw a rock at him! Albeit a really small rock, more like a large pebble, but still, what?! “What was that for?”

“At every single turn since you’ve met me,” she panted softly, “You’ve made every assumption possible about me and my life. I can understand being angry at me for running, I can understand you being angry because for over a century you believed you were alone. I can understand all of this, and... and I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it, but that doesn’t excuse you! I know you, Doctor, I’ve seen your childhood, your family, both on Gallifrey and across time.” She wrapped her arms around herself, clutching the black coat, green eyes meeting dark brown. “You wallow in the darkness but bring the light. You preach of peace but it seems that death and destruction follow you. You bleed but leave no scars anyone can see. You’ve had centuries of emotions and experiences and people and Slitheen and whatever, you’ve had it all. For six hundred years I was kept hidden from the universe, hidden from everything by my father. I don’t know anything-” she choked, trying not to cry again. Apparently this person made five times as many tears as an ordinary person would, “I don’t know how to control myself, I don’t know how I normally feel after regeneration, I don’t know this person, I don’t know!” She pounded on the brick wall in the alley, beating into it all the frustration she’d kept hidden inside all her life.

The Doctor stayed silent through this, the haunted look of time in his eyes. He could see everything, feel the Earth move beneath his feet, hurtling thousands of miles a second. He could hone in on a man and see his entire history, from birth to death. His childhood had been one of the worst, but at least he had not been left to roam the universe unprepared; how terrifying would it have been to have to learn as he went along, instead of having even the most basic knowledge?

“It’s not as simple as all that, Seraphima,” he replied quietly. “There’s so much more that you can’t even imagine. For a full century I’ve had to live with... never mind.”

“That you had to kill the Time Lords and the Daleks to keep them from taking the universe with them?” she whispered, and the Doctor’s eyes widened. “That’s why I was sent away. My father knew that if you didn’t intervene, the Time Lords and the Daleks would at least slaughter each other and anyone who got in their way; he wanted me safe for however long he could.” She watched the Doctor’s head tilt down, as if in shame. “You have no one to answer to for it, Doctor, least of all me. I knew what they were planning, too, and while it hurts, you chose the only open path that didn’t lead to universal destruction.” She pulled away from the wall, wincing when she flexed her hand. “Pretty sure I broke it.”

“You’re in the first fifteen hours of your regeneration, give it a second-” her hand began to glow, the cuts and bruises fading with the light. Phim flexed her hand again, twisting it and folding it in wonder. “-and it fixes itself. Had my hand cut off last Christmas, lot of fun that. Grew back in about four seconds.” The Doctor grinned at her, and for the first time she smiled back, a genuine smile.

Phim stepped over to him, eyes downcast, rubbing the wrist of her formerly bad hand. “Maybe... maybe we could start over? We’ve both been unreasonable, it’s been a pretty bad shock, all of it.” She looked up at him and smiled, holding out her newly regenerated hand.

Smiling, the Doctor took it. “The Doctor.”

“I’m- wait, hold on,” she pulled her hand away and whistled, three long, mournful notes. Immediately a lavender mist poured out of her nose and mouth, twisting and twirling into a snakelike cloud of energy, rising higher and higher into the sky until it couldn’t be seen anymore, becoming absorbed by Orion’s Belt.

“What’d you do that for then?” The Doctor whispered, knowing the consequences of what the female Time Lord had just done. “You do know what you just did, don’t you? You have no ties anymore, nothing that defines you.”

“And that’s what I needed, Doctor,” she said softly, smiling serenely up at the night sky. “I’ve written my name in the stars, never to hear it again, except maybe from you, although I’d hope you’d try to refrain from doing it in public. And now Doctor,” she took his hand again in the universal sign of a first meeting, “It’s nice to meet you. I’m the Gypsy.”

A/N: Ok, so last of my revisions! I finally made an outline for this story, expect a lot of science stuff that make no sense, because science is not my strength. But I guarantee it's going to be pretty epic, about 12 chapters, and the big stuff starts in chapter 5.