The Time of Change

The Past

The Doctor stands at the control panel, pondering, as he taps his fingers against the metal. Why were the Angels trying to kill her? he wonders. Nothing about the ordeal makes any sense to him, especially not the part about her name. He has never, in all his lives, seen anything like that happen before, and that is disconcerting. If his enemies are evolving in such a way, how can he ever hope to keep Annalise safe?

He is having a hard time doing that anyway. Her words play in his head like a broken record. "I've never been brave before I met you." In the literal context of the word, he knows that is true: when he first met the very young Annalise Song, she was a frightened, beaten-down child who was too afraid to even crack a smile. Now she is strong and fierce. Whether or not that has anything to do with him is unimportant. Her style of bravery, however, is flawed in the most beautifully human way possible. In order for her to feel brave, she must be protecting those she loves. And that terrifies the Doctor.

Around and around these thoughts swirl in his busy, brilliant head as he stares at the cylinder rising tall above him. Suddenly he remembers that he did not give her directions to her old bedroom, and he mentally slaps himself. A split second of hesitation ensues, but certain she is probably wandering aimlessly in the hallway, he ends up walking over the grated ramp and up the stairs. At the fourth intersecting hallway in the infinitely long passage, he pauses, struck with a sudden memory.

In his recent lives, Annalise had been prone to nightmares. She would awaken at night and feel smothered by the solitude of her room, so she would walk to his, knowing he would always allow her to curl up beside him.

With a slight smile, he changes his course, and in thirty seconds he has arrived at his own bedroom door. When he pushes it open, it creaks, but nothing inside stirs. The wood protesting at all the movement, the Doctor steps in his room to see Annalise fast asleep on the bed. She is hugging her legs tight to her chest, like she is either cold or afraid. Slowly he strides to her side and watches her eyes twitch under their eyelids, suggesting she is dreaming. He strokes her arm tenderly, and an idea pops into his brain.

I could erase Daniel's family from her memory, he thinks. If she can't remember them, she can't blame herself for their deaths. Immediately upon thinking this he chastises himself. He could never bring himself to do such a thing. While he abhors seeing her so guilty, he knows this is a lesson she must relearn. Everyone who travels with him eventually has to come to terms with seeing death and moving on from it. That is the only way they will grow.

The Doctor leans down and presses his lips to Annalise's temple, and the world abruptly fades away.

(A/N: insert cheesy dream-sequence ripple effect oooOOOOooh)

"Yeah, no, I understand. It's just—uh-huh. Uh-huh. Mmm. Yes. But what about—? Yeah, okay. Fine. Thanks for the call."

The elderly woman irritably slammed the phone back into its receiver. Her chocolate face was lined with annoyance. She wrung her hands together and sat down in a nearby armchair, thinking. She did not notice the man in the bowtie who appeared behind her without a sound.

With a click, the front door opened, and in stepped a tentative girl. Her dark brown hair hung in lose curls past her shoulders and half-obscured one bespectacled eye. She had soft features and a small buttonlike nose. The eyes above it were shockingly clear blue.

"Hi, Miss Diamond," she said quietly.

The lady rose and took a step forward. The bad news sat at the tip of her tongue, waiting to be released to wreak havoc on the future. In the split second between the greeting and the subject of the phone call, Diamond wondered how this conversation would play out. In all her years as a foster mother, she had never had anything like this happen before.