Archive of Our Own

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He'd lost count of his regenerations when he finally managed ginger. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen? He was definitely into his second helping of lives. He knew that much.

It was important that he be ginger. At least once. So he focused really hard. Really, really, really hard. And perhaps too much, because he lost track of his legs in the process and they ended up not matching. His right leg was a lovely healthy shade; one would be tempted to call it "tan" if the sun had been involved at all, which it hadn't. His left leg, like most of the rest of him, ended up a sickly pale scattered with freckles of varying sizes.

He wasn't quite sure how he'd died—or nearly died—and he was only dimly aware that there was still a lot of shouting going on around him. He was so distracted by his beautiful, beautiful hair. It was long enough that he could pull the tips into view and confirm without a mirror that it was ginger. Not strawberry blonde or reddish brown. It was ginger, proper ginger.

"Look at me! I'm beautiful!" he announced breathlessly.

"Uh …" A man whose name he didn't recall, because he wasn't important, gaped at him and seemed inclined to argue.

"Yes, dear," River said. "You're lovely, but we've got to go. Up on your feet. Good boy."

That was when he noticed his legs. They were too long, sticking out of his trouser legs, which was how he could see they didn't match, several inches of bare shins exposed to view. His shoes were ripping apart from the strain of overly large feet. The tingling regeneration energy masked the pain that he knew he would otherwise be feeling, so he quickly took off his shoes before any damage was done.

"Look at my feet! They're huge!"

"Very promising," River agreed. "We'll explore that later. It's time for running now."

So they ran.

It was really a good thing that River had been with him at the time. It was one of his rougher regeneration crises and it was so much easier to not have to be the one explaining it to the Humans. He let River deal with that and he just sort of went along with things.

It was ages before he chanced upon a mirror and could fully appreciate his new features. He had one really large freckle, almost the size of his iris, just under the right side of his bottom lip and he couldn't resist the urge to try and wipe it away like a smudge, but it was a freckle all right and it was staying. He would later discover a larger freckle on his arm and one nearly a decimetre across on his right flank and he would eventually come to view his right leg as one extra large freckle.

The new legs made trousers a problem, but he lucked onto a pair of khaki shorts and a pith helmet that he thought striking.

River had said, "No," firmly, but the previous owner wasn't using them what with being unconscious by the side of the road and all. The shirt had eagle patches on the shoulders which he thought were rather smart. River disagreed, but said she didn't have time to argue and that they'd get him something more suitable later.

There was also a Jeep that the unconscious man wasn't using and it had the steering wheel on the proper side which seemed rare in these parts. River objected to him driving in his "condition" but there was gunfire and lasers and no time to discuss it, so they'd all piled in—himself, River, and at least three other people he hadn't been introduced to, probably because he would remember them in a bit when his mind was less squishy.

It turned out that they were in the swamps of North America. One of those states where people say y'all frequently and when he jokingly addressed one of the locals as "Bubba" the man had recoiled wide-eyed and demanded to know how he knew his name.

There were alligators which were rather brilliant and mosquitoes which were decidedly less brilliant and they were briefly under siege in a big red barn. River said something about backup arriving and he took a nap in the hay for a bit.

It was night when he awoke again. Based on the stars outside the hayloft window, it was just past midnight in autumn, definitely Earth, northern hemisphere. Based on the large black car that was now parked in the middle of the barn next to the Jeep, it was the mid-20th century.

"Hey," a tall Human said, "You okay?"

He stood a bit uncertainly and was delighted to see that the tall Human was tall but not as tall as he was with his new mismatched legs. Lovely. Long legs were good for running. They would come in useful, he was sure.

"Fine. Fine, " he answered, not bothering to think about whether he was lying or not. His mouth always seemed to have a mind of its own, especially in a state of regeneration crisis. Often he found himself saying things that came as a complete surprise. A complete surprise in the sense of Really? Is that true? I didn't know that. How could I not know that? Then again, if I just said that without knowing that how did I know that? A freshly-regenerated Time Lord brain was a complicated thing.

Another head popped up into the hayloft. "Is that really Doctor Who?" the new arrival asked.

"Who?" he repeated, feeling a bit dizzy again.

"Shhhh," the tall one shushed, "that's not his name." He apologetically added, "Sorry, my brother's an idiot."

"What is your name?" the one on the ladder asked.

And because he was still a little fuzzy around the edges, he didn't hesitate before answering, "Fred."

"Glad to see you up and at 'em, Fred, because we have tentacle monsters to fight and we need all the help we can get."

So they fought tentacle monsters. Or rather the Humans fought tentacle monsters. He made it down the hayloft ladder just in time to give a nice speech. He couldn't really remember any of it later after he'd had another nap, but he was sure it had been quite moving because the last of the tentacle monsters popped off to their own dimension peacefully after that. The redneck brothers and their 20th-century car disappeared shortly after with a departing mumble of, "Better than herpes." He was just as glad to see them go and only later realized that they'd stolen his spare sonic screwdriver and three of his books. Ass-hats.

River went off to whatever timeline she was more comfortable in and the Doctor gradually settled into himself at a music concert in the 27th century on a luxury airship high above the Amazon.

It happened that way sometimes. Everything just sort of calmed and the memories crystallized and he suddenly was aware of and understood more of his adventures driving stolen government property through the swamplands of the rural USA than he had when he'd been actually doing it.

He listened to the rest of the concert politely even though he was bored silly halfway through. He started to worry about the bag of undelivered mail in the TARDIS which was not only a federal offence, but it would be very distressing if it meant someone was going to miss out on a birthday card or love letter. He'd have to take care of that. Luckily he still had his pith helmet and the TARDIS would make a better mail truck than a Jeep anyway.

He had a few adventures on his own. Never really on his own. There were loads of people along the way, but never the same people from adventure to adventure and hardly any of them ever commented on the lovely hair that he'd strived so hard for.

He'd picked up a pair of dungarees that were long enough in the leg and had lots of useful pockets and he had found an oversized cotton jumper that reminded him of the Brigadier, except it was blue instead of green so he wasn't sure why it made him nostalgic, but it definitely reminded him of Earth.

It always came back to Earth, didn't it? England, often. London frequently. The Plastic Age usually. Oh, sometimes he missed and ended up in the Bronze Age or the Second Silicon Age or wound up in Wales or Louisiana or orbiting Titan, but, in the greater scheme of time and space, that was still like splitting the arrow on a bulls-eye five times running. Even the Doctor thought it was odd.

But the key to dealing with anomalies while keeping your sanity was to not think about them any longer than was necessary and so he set off very deliberately for the farthest away he could get in time and space and then was only mildly surprised when five minutes after arriving he coincidentally bumped into Jack Harkness.

The TARDIS sometimes made steering corrections of her own. Often made steering corrections of her own. Okay, probably always did most of the steering entirely on her own. The Doctor told her where he wanted to go and—like an indulgent parent who sometimes took her child to Disneyland but more often took it to school and sometimes the dentist—the TARDIS took him where she thought he was meant to be. Coincidences were more the norm than the exception.

The surprising part wasn't bumping into Jack. Being introduced to Professor Beauregard and having to blink through a few moments of Where've I seen that face? before recognizing Jack, that was the surprising bit. Jack was older than … well, not older than he'd ever seen him, obviously, but … older than he usually saw him.

They both were awful at keeping notes and so it was hard to compare specific details, but the greying man who still favoured suspenders was clearly the elder of the two now. Such an odd shift. Jack had been so young and brash when they'd first met and now he was settling into a quasi-immortal middle age. The Doctor himself could perhaps be described as having hit the mid-life crisis point and was actually the more prone to teenage shenanigans, leaving Professor Beauregard to shake his head and make tsking noises.

He only tried calling him Jack twice. Once upon their first re-acquaintance, which Beauregard had ignored, and a second time on the TARDIS—as there was no question that he would travel with him—in the middle of a tiny situation when the control column was starting to overheat and he had his hands (and one foot) occupied maintaining the structural integrity of … pretty much the universe … and he just needed his travelling companion to flip that one switch right there that was slightly out of reach.

Yet calling, "Jack!" hadn't even gotten his attention and it was only "Beau! The yellow lever!" that snapped him to action.

The Doctor's suspicions were confirmed later when they popped back to 21st century Wales for a refuel. They were wandering along the waterfront, Professor Beauregard more contemplative than normal, when they were accosted by a young Welsh woman.

"Jack! Jack!" She called the name several times, running to catch up with them. The Doctor noticed her before "Jack" did.

"Oh, my goodness!" Beauregard said pulling Gwen Cooper into a hug. "Doctor, you remember … Jen."

"Gwen," she corrected him, giving the professor an odd look like she didn't quite understand why he would joke about her name. She was also eyeing his lined face and grey hair, but she seemed too shocked at seeing him to worry too much about the extra crow's feet around his eyes.

"Right, right. Gwen … Jones."

"Cooper!"

"Sorry. We're in Wales. Jones seemed like a good guess." His eyes went unfocused and then suddenly snapped back to her face. "Ianto! Is Ianto here?!"

"Ianto's dead, Jack," she said flatly. She was no longer indulging him in his little joke. She was angry now. "Ianto's been dead for two years. And where the hell have you been?" she added, roughly shoving away his arm as he tried to calm her.

He groaned faintly and turned a wan smile to the Doctor. "We missed him by only two years. It would have been so nice to see him again. I've forgotten what he smells like. I think his hair was … brown," he said uncertainly.

The Doctor was pretty sure that Beauregard was just guessing again based on Wales, but he said nothing.

Gwen sputtered an indignant, "Jack!"

Beauregard only smiled again and said, not unkindly, "Oh, Gwen, I don't think anyone has called me Jack in over ten thousand years."

The Doctor didn't correct him. Instead, he announced that they needed to get back to the TARDIS before she overcharged—which he didn't think was actually possible even if they'd stayed parked on the rift for another hundred years—and the time travellers left the Human standing gaping behind them. He made a mental note to find alternatives to Cardiff when he needed rift energy in the future.

"Why don't you travel to Cardiff more often?" Beauregard asked just as he'd silently made that decision. "You seem to spend more time in London. What's in London?"

"What's not in London?" he asked in return and dialled in coordinates to take them as far from Earth as they could get.

There were androids and snake people and a planet of werewolves. They picked up a woman named June somewhere along the way. (Okay, somewhere was London again, 2019 that time.) Not his usual sort of companion—not young and clever and good at running—but a bit on the elderly side and prone to being condescending despite the fact that she was the youngest of the three of them by at least a millennium. After the water planet—a planet of literally nothing but water, no solid core at the centre at all—but before the space station that turned out to be a dog park, they'd spent an interminable week on what they all labelled The Planet of Pretentious Princes.

The sun was Regis Alexander and the planets had all been similarly and unoriginally named. Only Alexander III and Alexander IV were habitable, but the civilization had also spread to the moons of Alexander V, namely Charles V and Charles VI. It was Charles V that they labelled The Planet of Pretentious Princes even though it was technically a moon. There was no need for astronomical fact to get in the way of good alliteration.

Everyone on the bloody world was a lord or a baron at the very least. Most were princes and princesses and even a few claiming king or queen though none were the ruling monarch. It was, ironically, not a monarchy at all, ruled instead by a conglomeration which operated via closed-door board meetings. The titles were all about ancestry and who had ruled which little islands on the original homeworlds, worlds that were now occupied only by the lowly peasants that had been left behind.

Charles V was home only to the elite. And it was awful. Awful in every conceivable way. Goods had to be shipped in from worlds where people deigned to work. Tasks that couldn't be automated fell to the lowly viscounts and barons who still considered themselves above such things and attempted to delegate tasks to one another in polite, passive-aggressive machinations. It gave the Doctor a headache.

"How can you have a world where everyone is a lord?" he stammered just after they left, only to have June cast him one of her condescending looks over her knitting.

"Aren't the people on your planet all Time Lords?" she asked.

"What? No. Don't be silly. Can you imagine the trouble we'd cause if everyone on Gallifrey was a Time Lord?"

"Are there ranks?" Beauregard asked. "Are there Time Dukes and Time Earls?"

"No. There are no ranks. Well, there's a President and also Chancellor and Castellan. But those are jobs, not hereditary titles."

"Is Time Lord a hereditary title?" June asked.

"No, well, yes, sort of, but not really. I mean, you inherit it from yourself in a way," he said, aware he was failing to explain anything at all.

June kept knitting, but stared at him fixedly until he went on.

"It's all circles, you see," he said. "That's the best way to understand Time Lords. It all comes back around without a beginning or an end."

"Like your stories," June muttered.

"I'll put the kettle on," Beauregard said, which was how the Doctor knew he wasn't getting out of this conversation. They drank a lot more tea lately. They had comfortable furniture. There were doilies on said furniture. June had had a far greater influence on the décor of the TARDIS control room than any other travelling companion that the Doctor had ever had and he still wasn't quite sure why. She claimed he was in need of a maternal influence.

"When Humans talk about genealogy, they talk of trees, branches, roots," he said, taking a seat in an overstuffed wing-back chair that reminded him strongly of the formal attire of the Time Lords despite the fact that June had found it in an antique shop in Chiswick. "It's because you have so many babies. Your lifespans are short so you breed like rabbits."

"Time Lords lay eggs then?" June said with a smirk. "Is that it? It's all circles?"

It's amazing what old biddies can get away with because the jibe didn't even bother him.

"Gallifreyans reproduce in exactly the same way Humans do. Humans and Gallifreyans are improbably compatible as regards reproduction. Time Lords," he stressed the words to make the distinction clear, "also reproduce the same way eventually. However, Gallifreyans have significantly longer lifespans than Humans. And Time Lords have more lifespans than a non-Time Lord Gallifreyan. So there's not that same urgency to repopulate."

"Lower sex drive?" Beauregard asked as he poured the tea. A few millennia ago that idea would have horrified Jack Harkness, but Beauregard had matured and seemed to ask out of curiosity only.

"Oh, they have pills for that now," June said.

"Shall we pop round the chemists?" Beauregard asked. He had perhaps not matured as much as the Doctor gave him credit for.

"When Humans talk about genealogy, they talk of trees, branches, roots," he repeated. "When Gallifreyans talk about genealogy, they talk about weaving threads, braiding family lines together."

"Like macramé?" June asked. "Haven't done macramé in ages."

June was now eyeing the ceiling of the control room as she knitted and he had a strong feeling the place was going to be full of macramé plant hangers before much longer.

"When Time Lords talk about genealogy, those braids become loops. Trace it back far enough and your great-great-great-grandmother is your great-great-great-great-granddaughter. Or niece. It's complicated." He trailed off when even he started to get a little confused about the details. "The point is, if you're a Time Lord, you inherited that. Not the title, the skill. My own father was working class, a constable."

"Time Cop," June said and he recognized that he was being mocked even if he didn't quite get the reference.

"My mother on the other hand was a very important Time Lady," he continued attempting to ignore her.

"Aren't Lord and Lady rather old-fashioned terms?" Beauregard asked.

"It's all to do with the translation. Some days the TARDIS is more heteronormative than others. Though she translates herself as she more often than it and I don't think I've ever once heard it said as he."

"A time ship with preferred pronouns," Beauregard observed. "Progressive."

"The point is, high born or not, woven into a Time Lord's DNA is the ability to sense paradoxes, to sniff out important tangles and un-knot them before things go too wrong, to know the difference between a fixed point in time and a flux point where anything can happen. It's a gift. All Gallifreyans have the potential to be Time Lords, but very few are. It takes that extra little something."

It was one of many wasted conversations. June wasn't really listening any longer and they did, in fact, end up with a lot of macramé plant hangers as a result and Beauregard had some pointed questions about the compatibility of Humans and Gallifreyans reproduction-wise and recreation-wise proving he had matured even less than the Doctor's recently lowered opinion of him.

They ran out of milk a few days later so he made no attempt to avoid it and entered the coordinates for London 2016 and the TARDIS made an unscheduled right turn at Albuquerque and took them to E-space instead. The Doctor wasn't even surprised when they stumbled upon Romanadvoratrelundar despite knowing that the Time Lady had long-since returned from E-space and been lost along with the rest of Gallifrey.

They all returned to N-space with only one or two minor detours. She was only in her second body. He opted not to mention what he'd thought of her third. Spoilers. That meant she was still young, younger than all of them, except June, of course. Not that she was un-aged. She had her own crow's feet around her eyes when she smiled, which was often, bless her.

June wanted to know about Romanadvoratrelundar's name and the Doctor vetoed it when she'd said they could just call her Fred.

"That's an old joke. You wouldn't understand. Romana. Her name is Romana."

"But is Romanadvoratrelundar your real name?" Beauregard asked.

When she nodded, June added, "It's just that the Doctor is so mysterious about his name. I thought it was a Time Lord thing, that you never reveal your true names."

"He's just pretentious," Romana said. "His name's a bit odd, but I've heard worse."

"Wait, you actually know the Doctor's real name?" Beauregard asked.

"Oh, yes."

"I never told you that!" the Doctor insisted.

"I read it in your file," Romana said. "Public records."

Ah, the Doctor realized, snooping in my files before she boarded the TARDIS for the first time. That would be the only explanation.

"So, what is it then?" June asked.

"Imperious Bastard," Romana answered and then clapped her hand over her mouth. "I didn't say that! That wasn't me! What I said was Uppity Stubborn Peacenik." Romana burst into laughter then.

"It's the TARDIS," he said with a weary sigh. "She won't translate it properly. She's never once gotten it right."

"You programmed the TARDIS to miss-translate your name?" Romana asked, still laughing.

"I did no such thing. She just won't translate it properly. Once you've been inside the TARDIS and exposed to the telepathic field from the translation circuit, I couldn't tell you my name if I tried. Only if the TARDIS let me and she's never let it happen yet."

"Say it, Doctor," Beauregard urged. "Go on. Even if the TARDIS translates it wrong. I want to hear you say it."

He took a deep breath, silently begging the TARDIS to not insult him too badly with his own words. In a solemn voice, he proclaimed, "Aristocratic Good Intentions."

"Well," Romana said, "she's not wrong."

"Yes, speaking of …"

After he caught Romana up on the Time War—being careful to make it clear that Gallifrey survived before admitting how he'd thought for many years that it hadn't—she only tsked at him and sent Beauregard to put the kettle on. They found Gallifrey the following Thursday, which only led to more tsking.

"How hard did you actually try to find Gallifrey?" she asked with an arched eyebrow.

"I did try," he insisted. "Of course, I tried!"

"Mmmm," she murmured non-committally and observed, "You never actually liked the place."

"Nonsense. I love Gallifrey. I hate bureaucracy and politics and authority and people telling me what to do and what not to do and trying to get me to attend meetings. Hate the meetings."

Gallifrey was retrieved with only minor incident and no loss of life, but his favourite blue jumper was a total loss. June knitted him a new one that was sort of rust coloured and told him it complimented his lovely ginger hair and he remembered why he liked June.

They had to go to a meeting, technically a reception, to thank them for saving the planet and to discuss the future of Gallifrey and the reception was hosted by a very important Time Lady, namely the High Chancellor … "Mum?"

His mother was younger than any of the holovids he'd ever seen of her and a regeneration too early and, besides which, she'd been killed in a laboratory accident millennia before the Time War. She gave no indication of recognizing him as kin.

His mind was understandably wandering when he caught something about suturing the history of Gallifrey back together.

"Excuse me? What?"

"This whole pocket universe, while an honourable effort as befits a man of your name, has destabilized the temporal integrity of Gallifrey. Our future needs to be reconnected to our past. The world before and the world after must be reunified into one. As a means to this ends, select Time Lords will travel back into our own history to act as anchor points."

"Ah," he said. "So that's how that happened. Could you do me a favour and …" And not die before I can I even remember you properly, he thought to himself. At the very least, name me something less stupid and untranslatable next time.

"What was that?"

He trailed off, realizing it was pointless to explain. He could blame it on spoilers, but mainly he didn't think it would do any good. His mother was something of a fixed point all her own.

Instead, he asked about her husband, assuming she had one already. It was possible his father was born to the same timeline that he'd lived and died in. Confused, and slightly annoyed, by the interruption, she explained that her husband worked in security and was not a Time Lord himself, but that he would accompany her on her journey to the past, and was, in fact, in the process of doing so now.

The Doctor was crestfallen and very nearly took off on a race to see his late sire one last time. Before he could even ask which way to run, a nervous-looking man approached and hesitantly informed her Ladyship that there had been … a bit of … a problem.

Her husband had been part of a six-man crew piloting an older model TARDIS into the distant past. The coordinates for an undisturbed patch of ground had been agreed upon and, as soon as the team left, archaeologists dug up the ancient tablets which chronicled the arrival of the five-man team in the past.

The missing man was, of course, the High Chancellor's non-Time Lord husband who had somehow vanished in the midst of the temporal storm just before landing. The time rift was worse than expected.

The High Council of Time Lords were of the somewhat callous opinion that accidents happen and so be it, but the Doctor obviously had a personal stake in the matter. For reasons that even he was unclear on, he wasn't inclined to bring this to the Council's attention however. Just something about the entire High Council getting that mixed up in his personal history gave him the heebie-jeebies.

With the assistance of the High Chancellor, they tracked the particle stream and projected the temporal trajectory which suggested that the good constable had ended up … in London, England, Great Britain, Earth, the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, Virgo Supercluster. Sometime round about 2010 give or take.

Ah.

"What are the odds?" June wondered.

"Incalculable," Beauregard answered.

Bloody predictable, the Doctor thought.

With the High Chancellor's blessing and the Council's reservations, they set off. Romana wished them luck, but she stayed behind to monitor the situation with the time rift.

"A small strategical strike team," Beauregard called themselves as they walked into the TARDIS.

"We're a strike team?" June asked, following behind.

"We are not," the Doctor answered, flicking the TARDIS's switches with unnecessary firmness.

"What does your name mean?" June asked

"What?" he asked, brought up short by the change in subject.

"That woman said, 'an honourable effort as befits a man of your name' so she knows your name. But you said she was your mum even though she doesn't know that yet. So obviously your name isn't important for being an old family name or she would have realized you were related. Ergo, she was referring to the meaning of your name. What's it mean?"

"The TARDIS won't …"

"… won't translate your name as such," Beauregard said, "but the TARDIS ought to be able to give us the basic meaning."

June ticked the translations off on her fingers. "So far we've got 'Imperious Bastard', 'Uppity Stubborn Peacenik', 'Aristocratic Good Intentions' and if we include the High Chancellor's comment, I think there's an 'honourable' in there somewhere."

Beauregard found a chalkboard that the Doctor didn't even remember was in the TARDIS. It had a solid wood frame balanced on casters and he rolled it right up next to their tea trolley in the main control room.

"Okay, Doctor, start talking."

By the time they'd landed in London—a journey of only a few minutes, most of which were taken up by adjusting the dials—they had a list made up of three categories. The first was the most crowded: uppity, imperious, aristocratic, patrician, blue-blooded, high-born, titled, righteous, virtuous, good, honourable, upright, decent, worthy, moral, ethical, reputable, lord.

The next was a bit simpler: intention, intend, desire, want, wish, yearn, strive, hanker, will, choosing.

And finally: peace, quiet, tranquillity, calm, restfulness, lawfulness, order, peacefulness, peaceableness, harmony, non-violence, concord.

In the corner, the word bastard was chalked in followed by a question mark. The TARDIS was obviously just being saucy there.

June nodded at the list and said aloud, "If anyone thinks your name is Tranquillity, they obviously don't know you very well. Lord Hankering for Peace and Quiet?"

The Doctor flinched. He heard what she said, but he also heard the TARDIS very nearly translate the words back into his Gallifreyan name and it echoed a bit.

Beauregard agreed. "I'll say the same for lawfulness and order. Not quite you, are they?"

"I'm going to call you Hank," June announced.

"Please don't. At least scratch out 'uppity' and 'imperious'?" the Doctor pleaded. "Those were the TARDIS's idea of a joke, I assure you."

Beauregard set down the chalk. "Come on, let's go get your dad before he gets into trouble."

It was night in London and they found themselves in a quiet residential street, not the busy city that one normally thinks of.

"How do we find one Time Lord in a city of eight and a half million?" June wondered.

"Gallifreyan," he corrected. "Not a Time Lord. I inherited my temporal senses from my mother's side of the family."

"How does that work again?" Beauregard asked. "I mean the whole time-is-a-circle thing sounds very poetic, but if you actually believe that your descendants are your ancestors and you've inherited your DNA from yourself … where did it actually originate?"

"Bootstrap paradox," the Doctor muttered, following his nose around the corner. "And it's not as though the origin of creation isn't the greatest mystery regardless of your view of time. Even civilizations founded in an entirely linear timestream still wonder what came before and what came before that and what came before that."

"A big enough circle looks like a straight line when you're standing on it," June said and he remembered again why he liked June. Didn't run as fast as the young ones, but she was clever.

"Yes, exactly," the Doctor agreed. "Big enough time loop and you're quite stable—unremarkable, but stable—and still quite skilled at manipulating time. Now a small loop, things get a bit wobbly. Picture spinning hoops, the little ones have to go faster."

"Exactly how small is your loop?" Beauregard asked with a smirk.

"Never been entirely sure. My mother died when I was young. Laboratory accident. All her regenerations gone in a quick series of flashes. My father died of natural causes when I was still relatively young. I don't remember much about him. Just his eyes. I liked his eyes. Used them once in one of my regenerations. Very soothing." He picked up his pace when he scented a hint of does not belong now down another street. "At any rate, never had a chance to ask about the family history. Did always wonder if I might have a Great-Aunt Susan."

June was falling behind now, but she'd catch up. He wasn't worried about that. He had his sonic screwdriver in hand and he kept expecting to use it to echolocate the time ripples which would help him find his father. But he never looked at it. Never needed to. He just knew. Every atom in his body was saying that way until he was dizzy with it.

Speaking of dizzy …

He was vomiting in someone's flower pot only half a second after he realized he didn't feel well.

"Doctor!"

Beauregard ran to his side and he could even hear the patter of June's feet as she dashed to join them.

"What's wrong?!" they both asked, Beauregard's voice actually ringing slightly more panicked than June's.

June might attribute it to something he ate or a touch of Jovian flu, but Jack Harkness knew that Time Lords weren't generally susceptible to such trivialities. An ill Time Lord meant something serious.

The Doctor sat back on the pavement and caught his breath. "I'm fine really. I'm just … blech!" He shuddered. "Hard to put words to the feeling. It's just this level of disgust and wrongness. It's like walking in on your parents having sex."

"That wouldn't be an example of wrongness, Doctor," June said. "Your parents having sex is how you got here after all."

"Ugh. Still not meant to witness it though, are you?"

"Can you stand?" Beauregard asked.

He was fairly sure that he could, but at just this particular moment he didn't want to. "Let's give it a minute or two. They're not quite done yet."

"Earth still spinning?" June asked.

"At over a thousand miles an hour as usual," he answered.

He crawled away from the flower pot of sick and the three of them sat down on the front step of a house with a door that was a calming shade of blue.

"Something was a bit off on the calculations," he admitted when he finally used his sonic. "There's too much degradation. The TARDIS nudged the settings again. We missed our target."

"He's not here?" June asked.

"We got the right where," he said, checking the area with the sonic screwdriver one more time to be sure. "We're at the wrong when."

"So he's not here now?"

"He is here. He's just been here for quite some time. Well," he said, glancing over his shoulder at the door, "not here for very long, but Earth, yes, for quite a very long time."

"Oh, that poor man. He must have thought the Time Lords forgot all about him."

"A valid assumption given the Council's lack of interest in the plebeian classes." Without standing up, he reached over his shoulder and knocked on the door behind him. When there was no response, he knocked louder repeatedly.

"Oi!" a woman screamed shrilly from inside, "The hell is wrong with people?! It's the bloody middle of the night!"

"I'll get it. I'll get it," a man responded.

The Doctor popped to his feet just before the door opened, Beauregard and June scrambling awkwardly to do the same. A barefoot man in a vest and dirty work trousers glared at them, sleep tugging at his already droopy eyes—his familiar droopy eyes.

"What's so bleeding important?" his father demanded.

"What year is this?" the Doctor asked.

"Shove off!"

He caught the door before it could slam shut. "I'm a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey and I'm here to rescue you," he said quickly.

The door opened back up, but his attitude did not improve. "A bit bloody late, aren't you?"

"Apparently. How late exactly? What year is this? How long have you been here?"

His father blinked at him wearily. "It's 2015. I've been here nearly five years local time. I had to get a bloody job and everything."

"Who the fuck is at the fucking door at fuck o'clock in the fucking morning?!" the woman shrieked again from inside.

"Oh, blimey, and you've re-married," the Doctor said, wondering how this could possibly get any worse. Even Marty McFly didn't have to deal with this.

"Her? Nah, she's just a bit of fun."

"Oi! What did you call me?" The woman's voice became clearer as she approached and the Doctor slumped against the door frame in shock before she even came into view. He'd recognize that voice anywhere. It was unnecessary to see the familiar body wrapped up in a fluffy robe, familiar face topped with flaming red hair.

"Fun's a compliment, Deena," his father insisted.

"Donna!" Donna Noble barked. Rounding on their guests, she demanded, "Who are you? Is he drunk?"

Beauregard and June introduced themselves hastily and made excuses for their ill friend and his father made vague claims of them being people he knew, but no one could come up with a good explanation for why they were ringing the doorbell at fuck o'clock in the morning.

To everyone's surprise, Donna softened a bit and let them in, personally ushering the Doctor to the sofa and offering to put the kettle on. (Though with an imperious jerk of her head she told his father where to find the kettle so he could put it on.)

"Do I know her?" Beauregard asked. An old memory of Jack's was tugging at his forehead, wrinkling it with the effort of placing the face.

The Doctor nodded and whispered. "You met her once, a long time ago. But she doesn't remember. Don't mention it."

"Rough one?" Donna asked kindly, patting his shoulder.

"I'm not drunk, I swear," he said. "Just, yeah, it's been a rough day. Not over yet, either. Still swimming."

"What's your name?" she asked. "Everyone else has said except you."

He couldn't say the Doctor. He meant to say John Smith. But he hesitated that fraction of a second too long and she knew he was about to lie.

"The truth," she insisted. "I don't want your street name. No DJ McCool or Grand Master Flash, yeah? Just tell me your name."

"Fred."

She smiled. "You look like a Fred. Good name for you."

His father had found a proper shirt before he came back out to pour the tea. "So, um, sorry about my friends following me here. A quick cuppa and then we'll all be off."

"Why'd you lot come round in the middle of the night?" Donna asked, "Has something important happened?"

"Not yet," the Doctor answered. "Soon. Still swimming."

"Do you think your friend needs a doctor?" she asked, but there was no urgency in her voice. She seemed distracted, something at the edge of her awareness niggling at her.

He wasn't worried. Had been worried. Had been very worried. He wasn't worried anymore. There were fixed points in time and there were flux points in time and the Doctor had always been … both.

"Just having a tiny existential crisis," he explained. "But it's sorting itself out now. And she's known. All this time, she's bloody known. There's no way to keep the spoilers from her. It's why she always comes back like a homing pigeon. She knew."

"Who's known what?" June asked.

He tapped Beauregard's knee.

"Did you ever imagine you'd be here for this moment, Jack?" he asked and then leaned back as the dizziness hit him again.

"What moment is that?" Beauregard asked.

"My conception."

"You're what?" Donna demanded and then blinked repeatedly. "Oi! Doctor, what have you done?!"

"Done swimming," he said. "And I didn't do anything. That was all you lot." He waggled a finger at his parents.

The explanation had to be put on hold momentarily while Donna heaved her dinner from her stomach into the toilet. Weeks too soon for morning sickness—probably, not a lot of data on Human/Gallifreyan/Time Lord gestation—but there was a pretty crucial temporal anomaly in her left fallopian tube that made vomiting perfectly understandable.

Explaining the situation to his father actually proved the most difficult. "You're my son? With a Human?"

"Half-Human on my mother's side," the Doctor agreed, wondering again how he knew that before he knew it.

"But you're a Time Lord," he protested. "I'm not a Time Lord. No one in my family has ever been a Time Lord. You can't have got that from me."

"Got it from her," the Doctor said.

"But … she's Human."

"And a bit of a Time Lord," Donna said. "I got that from him."

"You remember now?" the Doctor asked her.

"Oh, aye, everything. And I'm not going to die if that's what you're worried about."

"Well, I figure this gives you a window of a few months since I'm fairly sure that I was born and we'll find a cure in the meantime."

"No need. I'm good. My cells will adjust during the pregnancy and then I'll be fine. I don't do nappies though. Let's be absolutely clear on that."

"Taken care of. I was raised far in Gallifrey's past. This one's wife will forgive him the lapse—five years is a long time to keep your zip done—and they'll raise me as their own." He didn't mention their early deaths. Donna would know anyway, but she'd also know it couldn't be changed or he wouldn't be who he was.

His father sat heavily in a straight-back chair and stared at the wall. "The missus had been talking about wanting a little one."

"I think Donna has some say in that," June protested, but Donna only waved off her concern and pointed at the Doctor.

"Never was keen on babies. I'll take the housebroken version. Only now that I'm your mother, I get a larger bedroom with an en suite. You're not leaving me behind this time."

The Doctor sipped his tea with a sense of resignation. June probably hadn't realized yet that she'd been demoted.

"You sure you're all right?" Beauregard asked Donna.

She nodded. "I'll stabilize over the next nine months and … no, damn it! That's not right. How long does Time Lord gestation normally take?! Sod this, I'm not going to be pregnant for as long as a bloody elephant."

"Might even be less than nine months," the Doctor soothed. "Probably more, but possibly less. It's an unpredictable thing even among Gallifreyans. Generally, your first clue you have a bouncing baby Time Lord on your hands is if it pops out after a few days or lingers for a few years."

"I'll bloody strangle you if you take years. And it will be easy because you'll be tiny."

"But I'll be so much cuter then."

"Oh, God, I kissed you once. I might need to vomit again."

"What are you going to name the baby?" June asked.

Beauregard shook his head. "Even if she knows, you'll just have the same problem with the translation circuit."

"Or not," the Doctor mused. "I don't think it matters now. No need for the TARDIS to keep it a secret any longer. The TARDIS knew about this. Knew it and was hiding it. Even from me. I could think my name in Gallifreyan, but I was inside the TARDIS before I'd ever learned English. Never once heard my whole name in English."

"Shall I tell them then?" Donna asked.

He shrugged.

"Fred. I'm going to name him Fred. It's a nice name. Suits him."

"But … Imperious Bastard?" June said. "Uppity Stubborn Peacenik?"

"Fred means peace," the Doctor said. "From the old Anglo Saxon frid."

"Bastard's self-explanatory," Donna added.

"Uppity?" Beauregard asked.

"Noble," Donna answered.

"Stubborn?"

"Intending, desiring, wilful," the Doctor said. It was all so obvious in hindsight. "She's going to name her baby Wilfred."

"Not one single nappy," Donna repeated.

"Wilfred means desiring peace," the Doctor said. "Did you know that?"

Donna nodded. "Yeah, I did," she said with a smile. "I know a lot of things, Wilfred Noble."

"If it's all the same to you," he said. "I still prefer Doctor."

♦ ♦ ♦