Chapter Text
She had yet to settle on her name when she looked into the untempered schism. It didn't bother her, though. She had time, and this rite of passage was meant to be one of the first steps to uncovering who she was, and who she would be.
She looked into the whole of the vortex, and she saw Daleks. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't look away – she didn't want to look away, as she saw their fleets spanning across galaxies and all of time. And she knew, in that moment, with certainty, that she would die in the fight against them. She watched until her tears blurred her vision.
When she wiped them away, she found herself looking at something else now.
A woman, who stood at the edge of a rift on Earth, and gave her life to save a time lord.
She saved her world.
Her name was Gwyneth.
And that was why the name that the Time Lord chose for herself was: Gwen.
The new trend with names was to choose an occupation to master. The Judge. The Augury. Time lord names were already so pumpous, though, she thought. Gwen would do just fine.
She liked it as a reminder of the people who fought to save everyone else, and that a human could save a time lord.
That was where her interest in humans began, although there wasn't much specialised information on humans in the Gallifrey libraries. Gwen visited all of them, spread across the planet, learning what she could about them. Humans were just one of millions of species catalogued by the time lords who watched the universe from their glimmering cities. She was told that even when she graduated and was given a TARDIS, a time lord must never interfere with the important junctures of time.
Gwen didn't want to do that. She wanted to interfere with the little things. Time flowed like the rivers she swam in when the suns burned bright and hot in the summers. She knew that it couldn't be diverted from inevitable events, but no one cared if a few pebbles were disturbed when Gwen kicked off in the water, or if she dove and plucked some out to admire before letting them slip back under to rest in the creekbed again. If certain things had to happen, but everything else was in flux, then why shouldn't she try to make people a little bit happier in their lives from day to day?
Once the idea was in her head, it wouldn't be dislodged. She didn't plan on staying on Gallifrey. She was going to go out into the universe and really live, amongst all of the people out there. With a team who shared her belief in doing good and using their skills to help others. They would fly her TARDIS with her. And she wanted a TARDIS that would be someplace that she could call her home.
She walked into the Academy on TARDIS selection day ready with a very clear picture of just the sort of ship she wanted. One with a cosy and intimately small room for its main console. It would be sleek and dark, all gleaming chrome and leather seats for everyone.
What she found, instead, was Ianto.