MORE TIME WITH YOU... - PROLOGUE: ORBITING EARTH (G)

«Are you two seeing each other?» The question had come out of nowhere and both the Doctor and Yaz had been a little embarrassed by what Najia Khan had implied with that, so the two women had tried to handle it as best they could, denying it and pointing out how they were 'just friends'. But, with hindsight, it was obvious even then how it was more than ‘just a friendship’ and Najia Khan had seen it through from the beginning, unlike them.

The Doctor was, once again, alone in his TARDIS. He had taken off, after saying goodbye to Ruby and her family, and had left his trusted time machine orbiting Earth for a while. The memory had occurred to him without any apparent reason, a past life returning to the surface. What had happened with Sutekh had left a mark on him, especially due to the memory TARDIS and its console room cramped with mementos of his past lives, adventures, friends, family, people he had loved.

Something had stirred inside him, something that explained why he now was looking down to Earth from his vantage point in orbit. It was a memory from years back, when he was another person, with someone dear to him at that time. Someone he was forced to leave behind a little before the regeneration would’ve changed him into someone completely different from who he had been back then, a painful decision that he had thought right to take at the time.

He had never thought of going back, ‘till a few hours before, after the situation with Sutekh was again under control and all the lives returned from their premature death at the hands of the Deity of Death itself. He wondered why. Something was different, he could feel it, but he couldn’t understand what was different and, as always, he disliked not understanding what was happening.

«I’ve loved being with you, Yaz.»
The two women are sitting on the roof of the TARDIS, ice creams finished and gazes lost in the admiration of the planet they are now orbiting, an oxygen bubble from the TARDIS itself around them, to protect them from the vacuum of space. Neither of them is able to say goodbye, so Yaz says, as farewell, «Let’s not say goodbye,» and the two of them remain to admire for a few more moments the planet below them, unwilling to go. Until they are forced to do just that.

He himself was now sitting on the roof of the TARDIS, the green and blue Earth below him, wondering what was disturbing him. Why his past was stirring to the point he was rethinking about it and was sort of disturbed by it. Why did he - no, he was a she back then - had abandoned the possibility to be happy with someone who loved back the person he was back then? Not a simple person with whom having to deal with, by what he remembered from that time and of… herself?

Watch it, Doctor. Your pronouns are shifting. Again, he chided himself. And yet again, it was something he hadn’t done in decades, so… why now? And why again? he wondered, bemused and baffled. He remained for some more time looking down to Earth, while all the people, all the humans and Zygons down there were living their lives, mostly unaware about what was happening in the whole universe around them, even with what had been happening with the Flux unleashed by Tecteun, destroying a galaxy only with the final objective of eliminating the Doctor themselves.

When his thoughts began wandering towards Rogue and his sacrifice so that the Doctor would not be forced to sacrifice Ruby, the Time Lord decided it was finally the time to return onto the TARDIS and throw himself in a new adventure, on a new planet or people or moment to save. It took him a moment or two to notice that the interior of the TARDIS was glowing with a different illumination than the one he was used to, a faint orange gleam that seemed reinvigorating not only the console room but the Doctor himself. The Time Lord stopped immediately on his tracks, looking ‘round him with suspicion: normally his console room (and the interior of its TARDIS) was utilitaristic, a return to the past that seemed notifying a new beginning from the origins of his adventures in time and space, with a simplicity that was important to him.

The faint, orange glow that was now spreading from all over ‘round him was a bit strange, all things considered, but not as strange as the woman who was now in front of him, appeared apparently out of nowhere and right now looking around her with a confused expression on her face. Her dress sense surely needed some doing, but he remembered those times and surely couldn’t quite blame himself back then, considering what he was wearing in his current incarnation. Not much of a good dress sense with this face too, after all, so who’s he complaining about his recent past choices in that sense?

«You’ve redecorated,» a childish smile danced on her lips, and the Doctor remembered when he had said the same things, centuries back. «I really like it,» she had said, back then, a playful smile on her lips and then, when she had spotted her three companions impressed by what they were seeing, she had added, opening her arms wide: «This is my TARDIS.»
«Yeah,» he answered, taken aback by his former self, «it’s a long story.»
«I bet it is,» the other Doctor replied, before asking, «Do you mind telling me what the hell is going on? Why am I here? A moment ago, I was on a seaside cliff, regenerating.»