Arcadia's Love (Book TWO)

The Unknown Girl

The girl was fine, I could see she was, and she had no marks, or clothes, and I couldn't help but look her up and down, seeing her curves. It was too dark to see, but her hair was looking to be long and in a deep shade of blue, that was impossibly natural. She had no ring, no necklace or any form of identification.

"Well, my new naked friend, I think that you have my attention. Looks like I'm not fully retired after all. Let's find out who you are."

DW

After getting her back to the TARDIS, very difficult with the ladder and spiral staircase, I lay her down on the cool grey floor, throwing a large black blanket over her. Her hair really was blue, and I wondered if maybe she was another species, having fallen to Earth during the meteor storm, and that maybe Madam Vastra had half been right when it came to the risk.

A quick scan told me that she wasn't alien at all. It said that she had a slight heart problem, something that made my sigh, my slight hope that she could be my Phi, regenerated, but it was just over working, so I gave her some medicine.

"Well, Dear, I've done everything I can until you wake up." I sighed, sitting down and composing myself to wait. "So hurry up and do so before I get bored."

It wasn't too much longer, only about 10 minutes before she started stirring, her blue haired head tossing before big, white eyes opened sleepily. And then she shot up, looking around in panic before her eyes saw me. "It's alright, I promise." I told her, kneeling down. "I found you in the middle of a fire. You're not hurt but you were naked, so I brought you back here to wake up."

Her eyes were still on me, and she tilted her head to the side, as though she was trying to understand me. Strange. "I'm the Doctor. And you are?"

"I... I don't know.." She frowned, looking down a moment. "I remember... Someone attacking me, and then I hit the ground. After that... I, I don't know..." That scared her, and she hugged her knees to her chest, hiding her pretty face in her thighs. "I don't know who I am..." Well, she was Scottish. Not overly, but there was a mellow Scottish accent in there.

Stupid bandits. They were such foul creatures, hurting a poor girl like this. "Hey, hey, it's alright. You could have just temporarily lost it, I don't know. Let me try something, I may be able to tell if it is or not." Fumbling with the sonic, I scanned her carefully.

The results were surprising, and it took me a moment to understand it fully. She was a blank slate, there was nothing. Her mind was as fresh and clear as a newborns, apart from the words and muscle memory of walking. "I'm sorry. You have no identity, you're no one. But it doesn't have to stay that way."

The girl looked dead at me in her colourless eyes, brimming with tears she didn't let fall. "W, w, what does that mean? I don't understand, Doctor." Oh, this poor, poor girl. What had happened to her... "What do you mean I am no one?"

"Your memory has been wiped, there are no memories in your head, nothing. You have no identity left, because the human database I have doesn't recognise you. And that means, you can be who you want to be." I smiled a little, knowing that it would probably be a godsend to Phi, to lose the memories of the dead and hurting that she'd seen. "You have a great dictionary in your mind, pick a name. Just chose words in your head that sound good to you."

Her eyes closed for a moment, and her long blue hair fell over her face, covering freckles and smooth milky skin. "Sarah. Sarah Lake."

Sarah:

The Doctor stared at me in shock when I told him the two names that sounded the best in my head, and I frowned, not sure as to why he was doing so. "Doctor? I, is that not a good name? Do you want me to pick something else?"

"N, no. No, it's fine." He stammered, before getting to his feet and pulling me with him, the blanket falling away and showing bare skin. "OK... Let's not do that and we should definitely cover you back up, Sera, I mean Sarah." He was suddenly so much clumsier than before, more like a child than a man with uncertain and jerking movements as he pulled the blanket back up around my shoulders, covering me back up.

"I'm sorry, I, I've startled you in some way, I didn't mean to do so..." I muttered, looking away from the man and pulling the thick black fleece around myself. It was so strange, knowing what things were called, and what they were for, but not knowing myself. Sarah Lake, that wasn't me, that was a name that I liked and felt fitted, but my real name? My real name was out there somewhere, somewhere that I couldn't see, along with all of my memories. "D, do you have any clothes that I can wear?"

He nodded, wrapping an arm around me and leading me through the corridors of his home to a large wardrobe, where there were mannequins everywhere, both with a man's and woman's outfit, including a knee length white wedding dress. "You're married?"

"I... Yes, I am. She. I think, she died. But I don't know." He admitted sadly, looking at the photo next to it, of him and a tall brunette with deep brown eyes and long slender limbs. There was something.... I don't know, feral, about her. Wild and untameable, like a big cat, a panther. "My Seraphina, my Princess."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. I feel like I'm doing that a lot." I sighed, lowering my head and turning around to walk away from the photo. He didn't say anything further about it, but he was a lot quieter as he pulled me out a long red dress along with under skirts and high ivory boots. "That's far too grand for me."

That made him smile a little, but he shook his head. "No, its not. There's a bathroom through there, if you want to have a shower first, wash the ash away."

I had no clue how to work the shower at first, but I quickly worked it out, getting the water to the right temperature and then I dropped the blanket from around myself, stepping into the water and watching the grime from wherever the Doctor had found me wash away down the small plug hole in the floor before turning it off and drying my face on the fluffy blue towel that had appeared on the toilet seat in the time it had taken me to wash my body and hair.

Wrapping it around myself, it reached below my knees, meaning that I must be fairly small, and then walked back out to find the Doctor still looking at the photo on the wall sadly, the woman, Seraphina, still wearing a frozen smile, eternally young and happy as she stared out of the paper at him. Sera. He called me that instead of Sarah. That's why, the names were so similar, and the plaque of the frame read, The Long Awaited Ceremony of The Doctor and High Priestess Seraphina Alanah Pond. Pond. Another body of water.

"She's beautiful."

"Yes, she is." He sighed, looking away once he knew I was there. "Or was. I don't know." Then the Doctor pulled a small piece of quartz out of his pocket, and looked at it hard. "It's been like this for about a month. Clear. It was brown before. Either, either she's changed, or..." He looked away, hiding the tears that had started welling up in his eyes. "Sorry, you have enough problems, I shouldn't moan to you."

I smiled a little sadly. "I don't know my problems. I can't remember them, can I? It my head, I'm just a girl with blue hair, freckles and a slightly Scottish accent. So if you want to talk to me, you can. Something tells me that I'm a good listener."

He smiled back at me, but didn't say anything, just helping me to dress in the long red gown and pulling the corset so tight I could only just breathe, but he put a small gem around my neck, a blue one to match my hair that suddenly opened up my airways further. "Here, this should help, corsets are nasty, my... She always hated them."

"Thank you, Doctor." I muttered, staring at the reflection in front of me, of a girl with long hair in an unnatural shade of blue, and white eyes surrounded in thick black lashes, making them stand out on my freckled face. But when did i smile enough to gain the laughter lines I had around my eyes? How old was I when I reached the height I am now?

Who was I really and where was I from? Was there anyone out there missing me like the Doctor missed his Seraphina?