The Orphan in the TARDIS

Chapter Thirty-Five

Sophie starts to nod off, until a loud echoing Yorkshire accent resounds around the room. The Time Lady comes spinning into the room, gesturing with arms. Ryan, Graham, Yaz, and the Brigadier follows her in. She rockets out of the chair, hurrying off the small platform to the TARDIS crew. The Time Lady's face splits open, holding her arms out. Sophie doesn't hesitate to hug the Doctor. "I see the TARDIS took good care of you," she says, as she breaks the embrace.

"Course she did," Sophie replies, waving at the other members if the group. "Did you catch the alien?"

"Not yet, but we will. How do you feel?"

"Right as rain."

"I'm just chuffed to hear that. Alright, gather round fam," she calls to the group behind her, heading for the desks in the centre of the room. "Torchwood should be back soon, when they get here, we need to decipher the ships log. I'm hoping on using the TARDIS, but it's possible that the she's decided to recharge, in which case I'll have to use the tech Torchwood has."

"Right," the Brigadier says, putting his hands behind his back. "We should come up with a foolproof plan, have plenty of contingencies, and be ready to trap this alien bugger."

The Doctor's companions snort, while the Time Lady smiles, "Oh, come now, Brigadier. When have I ever operated with a foolproof plan. I wing it, you should know that."

The Brigadier looks up toward the ceiling, although Sophie suspects he's looking toward heaven. "I had hoped that maybe this face of yours would be a bit more focussed. Clearly I should have known better. Right, do we have a basic idea of what you want to do?"

"Course, I'm not completely resistant to plans. We're gonna use the ship to track where it malfunctioned, contact the planet of Huantido to let them know of the crash. I hope that they can give me some idea of who was piloting and then we just track them down, bring them home, and meet back here for tea. Simple as that."

The Brig sighs and shakes his head, but deigns to comment. At that moment the entirety of Torchwood come traipsing through the doorway. Jack is the first to reach the group, not hesitating to pull Sophie into a hug. While she has only met him once, she happily returns the embrace. "Glad to know you're okay," he whispers into her ear. He releases her as Tosh walks up to the Doctor, handing her the metal box.

The Gallifreyan wastes no time in heading for her big blue box. Upon entering she immediately turns around and exits, "So that's not gonna work. Looks like I'll be cobbling something together that can read this."

"Is she powered down?" Jack asks, leaning against a desk.

"Recharging, yeah. Look, you must have some alien tech lying about, do you mind if I use some of it?"

"I can't reasonably say no, since the universe might be at stake," he sighs. "Yan, take the Doc down to the archives and help her get whatever she needs."

The Welshman nods, turning to a doorway. He disappears through it, the Doctor and Ryan following after him.

Jack watches them walk out. As soon as they walk through the doorway he makes eye contact with Sophie. "The rest of you, search security cameras, check social media, and contact local news stations. See if anyone has heard or seen anything that could hint to this alien. Sophie, you can help me with something."

The woman follows the Captain up the stairs, and he leads her down a small corridor to a small niche in the rafters. There is a large nest made out of metal shavings, straw, sticks, and maybe even pieces of rebar. In the large nest is a pterodactyl. Sophie's eyes widen as she surveys the creature, "Wow!"

"I heard you liked dinosaurs, figured you might be interested in meeting Myfanwy. Ianto and I found her when she accidentally came through the rift."

"Technically, she isn't a dinosaur, but a pterosaur. Pterosaurs don't have the hole in their hip socket, and the crest on the upper arm bone that all dinosaurs did. Pterosaurs were flying reptiles as well. My gosh is she beautiful."

Jack smirks, leaning against the metal wall. "This Doctor, she seems sad, sadder than the last few I knew. What happened?"

Sophie continues to admire the pterodactyl, but begins to answer the captain's question. "A lot has happened to her, especially recently. First off, the Master is back."

"F*ck," Jack swears, he's never met the Master, but he has heard many stories about him from the his time at the Time Agency, and none of them sounded good.

"Yeah. Gallifrey was back, turns out the Doctor managed to save it, until the Master came along and destroyed it...again." Sophie finally tears her eyes from the pterosaur to face the captain, "Oh, and it turns out that the Doctor isn't actually from Gallifrey, or a Time Lady."

"Wait, what?" Jack asks, seeming to still be going over the whole Master, Gallifrey thing, "But she can regenerate, and has all of the signs of being a Time Lord."

"Yeah...she's actually from another universe, came through a portal and this woman, a Gallifreyan by birth, took her in. Then, when the child 'died' and just changed her face, the woman decided to experiment on her and figure out the whole regeneration thing. The Doctor has lived so many more lives than she realized, and now all of the Time Lords, who she thought were her people, are dead, and Cybermen, and gone, and she isn't really sure how to move on from all of that."

"Sh*t, yeah, I don't think I would quite know how to move on either. How do you know all of this?"

"She told me, and I've met her other faces, the ones she doesn't know about. I couldn't tell them, and it has absolutely broken my heart that they weren't aware that there were entire lives that they didn't know about."

Jack doesn't her say anymore, noticing the tears pricking the corners of her eyes. He simply scoops her into his arms, and she feels safe and comfortable.