Chapter Text
The old man chafed at the request. That was hardly a surprise, this new body seemed to chafe at everything. It was an odd choice, he decided, the new body. When he’d agreed to regenerate into a warrior he’d expected to be larger or at the very least taller, but if anything this frame felt perhaps an inch shorter than his last and just as narrow. The looking glass reflected back the face of a man who was not so old as he felt with waves of dark hair not so different from his last body’s, though his still soft eyes were a rich brown instead of their previous delicate blue. Could still be considered pretty, he noted, perhaps he drank the wrong elixir…
“Doctor,” The voice startled him out of his thoughts, “You will take the child with you.”
“Don’t call me that.” He snapped, body tensing like an animal in a trap, “If I am to do what you want from me then I am no longer The Doctor. Nor am I a babysitter, Ohila, find someone else to pawn your initiates off onto.”
“You misunderstand me.” Ohila frowned, careful not to use his former name again, “I was not asking. You will take the child, she belongs at your side.”
“Nonsense, my child rearing days are long over. I am too old for that now and this is no time for it.” He grumbled, though even as he spoke, he knew he would concede. Time sense was a bothersome thing and muddled at best in the midst of what had come to be known as The Time War, but even he could see plain as day that there was no version of the timeline where the light gold thread of her future did not join and follow the vibrant blue of his. Seeming to know what he saw, Ohila got a smug look on her face and he couldn’t help but growl in response, “Fine! But if she dies, it’s on you!”
Seeming to know better than to try and have the last word, Ohila let him pass, though perhaps she didn’t feel the need to since the child was already waiting for him when he reached the Tardis. She was quite young, appearing like a human in her mid teens, she couldn’t be more than eighty-five years old and was, even then, small for her age, slightly built, almost seeming to be swallowed up by her red robes. From beneath her headdress long waves of dark hair spilled around her shoulders, framing her round, pale face and he couldn’t help feeling that there was something unsettlingly familiar about some of her features. Much to his annoyance, her sweet face managed to conjure up the memory of his own children, all long since lost. She didn’t look at him the way his children had, however. She stared at him with large dark eyes filled to the brim with curiosity and perhaps a touch of nervousness, which he could hardly fault her for, particularly if she had just witnessed the end of his previous life. Resigning to his fate with a sigh, he moved past her, unlocked the Tardis door and pushed it open, throwing an irritated glance in the child’s direction, “Well? Get in, if you’re coming.”
“- You’re doing it again.”
The girl’s voice startled the old man out of his thoughts of the past, drawing his attention away from the mesmeric circular text and soft blips of the scan he was running, "Doing what again?"
"Looking for trouble." She frowned, the usually beautiful old Gallifreyan words curdled by her disapproving tone.
"I am not." He protested, feeling, not for the first time, that their roles had been momentarily reversed and he was the child caught under the eye of a strict parent. She raised an eyebrow and he struggled to avoid shifting uncomfortably beneath her gaze. The odd greenish under glow of the Tardis console room made her appear older than he generally thought of her as being, casting harsh shadows beneath her usually warm, intelligent, dark eyes. She was older, of course, though how much so he really couldn't say. Not any more than he could hazard a guess about his own age, anyway. Time had been a funny thing during the war, the exact nuance of its passage impossible to decern, making it feel as though she had stepped aboard his ship for the first time just yesterday and yet, at the same time, many millennia ago. And perhaps in their own way, both were true. Brushing that rather complex idea aside, he huffed at her, "I'm just checking. Making sure everything's alright down there."
"Earth?" She guessed, coming to stand by his side so she could see the scan results herself, "When is everything ever alright on Earth?"
"Sometimes." He insisted, "Its not a complete disaster down there all the time."
"But you are fishing." She accused.
"Alright I'm fishing." He admitted reluctantly. As though it was rewarding his honesty, the scanner chirped to life almost as soon as he spoke, causing a manic grin to split his face, "Caught something!"
"I've got half a mind to make you deal with whatever it is on your own." She grumbled, crossing her arms.
"And miss the chance to show me up at every turn?" He raised an eyebrow, "That doesn't sound like you."
She seemed to deliberate for a moment, glaring in return to his pleading look, then relented, "Fine. What have you found us this time?"
"Nestene Consciousness!" He declared with all together too much enthusiasm, "Right smack in the middle of London!"