A quick Note before you begin reading: Yes, I am BSing a little bit of it, but I do consider it within the realm of the suspension of disbelief...maybe more on the outskirts. Either way, don't go off and cite episodes or books where this does or doesn't happen; just enjoy the story.

Captain's log, Stardate 1730.6

We were on our way to Starbase 337 to pick up new crewmembers and enjoy some shore leave when we picked up a distress call. We followed the call to its source but found no evidence of any ships or remains of ships, yet there was indeed a call waiting for us.

"Um, hi."

The girl on the screen was about twenty years of age with red hair and most outlandish clothing. She wore heavy make-up and did not appear to be in any sort of distress. The most peculiar part was that she was fully and undeniably human.

"Hello. I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise. To whom am I speaking?"

"Um, Amy. Amy Pond of the TARDIS."

"Well, Miss Pond, we picked up on a distress call and followed it here. Did you send it?"

"No. Well, yes. Well, not yet, actually, but I will."

"You don't appear to be in any sort of distress."

"Right, well, it's not any sort of ship damage. Actually, see, it's a friend of mine who is in distress, quite a bit of distress. See, he has a problem and we got wind that you encountered a similar problem and might be able to help."

"A medical emergency, then?"

"You might say that."

"We 'might' say that?" Commander Riker, who had been listening thus far, stood now and went to be beside his captain. "Is it an emergency or not?"

"Well, it is for him."

The commander and captain glanced at each other. Picard motioned to Lieutenant Commander Worf, chief of security and a Klingon to boot, to cut audio.

"Counselor?" Picard asked.

Deanna Troi, counselor, half-Betazoid, and empathic to boot, sighed. "Well, she is hardly hostile. I sense no deception, only a sense of incredible loyalty to her friend, definitely some confusion, and well, a great sense of being tongue-tied."

"Tongue-tied?"

"She knows what is wrong, but doesn't know how to relay it. But whatever is troubling her, them, it is nothing we need to arm ourselves against."

"As far as we know," Riker pointed out. "It sounds like a medical thing to me."

"Yes, but we don't use phasers against medical emergencies," Picard told him. He nodded once to Worf and audio was restored. Putting on a smile, he turned back to Amy. "Well now, if you could just tell us the nature of the emergency, we will have our sick bay prepare for your arrival."

"Well, it's not for me, exactly. And the nature of the emergency is one like…um…"

From off-screen came another voice and the camera started shaking. "Oh, for goodness' sake, Pond, let me do the talking."

The camera settled on a boy about ten years of age. His hair was short, wispy, and brown, his skin terribly pallid, and face looking hardly past that of a four-year-old. He was dressed in an antique suit with yellow-brown tweed blazer and a remarkable maroon bow tie. He studied the camera, putting one eye to the lens and then the other before being satisfied of it working.

"Hello there, Captain Picard," he said in a pre-pubescent voice.

"Um, hello. Are you Miss Pond's friend in distress?" Picard inquired, growing rather bored and irritated with this game.

"Yes, as a matter of fact I am. I'm the Doctor. Now then, I have a problem and you may have a solution. And every moment Amy stalls is another moment my crisis continues! So then, Captain, if you will just stay where you are, we'll come aboard."

"Aboard from where? Is your ship cloaked?"

"In a manner of speaking. Just stay where you are and we should materialize…" He suddenly left the camera but there was rattling off-screen. "…in one of your cargo bays. If you could meet us there, we can talk more on the way."

With that, the feed was cut.

The captain tapped his comm. badge. "Picard to Crusher, send a medical team to the cargo bays; we're having a guest come aboard."

"Aye, sir. What is the nature of the medical emergency?"

He sighed. "I don't know."

A combination of medical and security personnel watched as a large blue box slowly materialized in a corner of the cargo bay. From it stepped the same young ginger followed by a little boy of ten. Two of the medical staff started scanning them while the security team kept their phasers armed.

"Hello," the lead doctor said. "I'm Beverly Crusher, Chief Medical Officer."

"And I am the Doctor," said the Doctor.

"Hello, I'm Amy," Amy said shyly.

"Well then, why don't we get you to sick bay for a thorough examination, hm?" Crusher suggested.

"Examination? What for?" the Doctor wondered as they all headed out into the slate gray corridors.

"To determine what's wrong with your son."

"What?" Amy wondered. "Oh, he's not my son."

"I most certainly am not her son! My goodness, I've got almost nine hundred years on her!"

Crusher glanced at him but did not say another word until they entered sick bay. She gestured to a bed which the Doctor hopped onto.

"So then, you know what's wrong, do you? All right, then, that should make everything easier," Crusher said.

"Oh, for an ordinary being, it would," the Doctor acknowledged. "But in my case, it doesn't help at all." He frowned. "You see, I'm a child."

The Head Doctor blinked. "Yes."

"See, that's the problem," Amy told her from behind.

"Madam," the Doctor began slowly, "I am a Time Lord."

"You wanted to see me, Doctor Crusher?" Picard said upon entry. The boy sat on a bed while Crusher and the red-haired woman stood around it. "Have you diagnosed this medical emergency? Can it be cured?"

"I think you should hear what he has to say," was all Crusher would say.

"Captain, I am a Time Lord," the Doctor began, "of the planet Gallifrey in the constellation Kasterborous."

"A…Time Lord?" Picard was absolutely breathless suddenly. "But, the legends say Gallifrey was destroyed thousands of years ago, all the Time Lords killed."

"All but one. And for the record, I am nine hundred seven years old." The Doctor grinned. "Now then, your first instinct may be to tell me to prove myself by regenerating. But, you see, we were on our way to watch the New Year festivities on Gardon 4, when we ran into a bit of trouble. I was turned into a child, some sort of molecular reversion field. You experienced something similar, didn't you, Captain?"

"Yes, not long ago. But it did not do any permanent damage. As a Time Lord, surely-"

"That's what I am getting to. See, I would surely regenerate if I could. However, I've been turned into a child too young."

"Too young?"

"Of course. Imagine the chaos if all the children of Gallifrey could change form at will!" He shuddered. "Utter chaos, little regenerating children running amok, no one knowing who was whose." Shaking his head, he went on. "For a child to be able to regenerate, he must look into the Untempered Schism and reach the Age of Regeneration – quite uncreative, I know. Fortunately, I have looked into the Untempered Schism. Unfortunately, I am not the required age."

"And what is the required age?" Crusher asked.

"Let me rephrase so there is no confusion; we must reach a certain bodily age. Regeneration is absolutely exhausting and takes quite a bit of power; young bodies could never handle it. The bodily age must be at least fourteen years, three months, and seventeen days. As you can see, I am nowhere near that age."

"And let me guess, your body now won't just age the normal way."

The Doctor gave them a look. "What is normal?" He hopped off the bed. "But you are, actually, wrong."

"If your body didn't age, how would you ever get to the Age of Regeneration?" Amy offered mildly.

"Exactly. But more than that, we are bound by the Laws of Time to never regenerate until we are five hundred years old."

Crusher folded her arms. "When that happened here, there were no adverse effects. Why not just age normally? I mean, you do have time to spare, don't you?"

"That is an old joke, Doctor Crusher," the Doctor told her blandly as he walked across the room. "And my medical emergency, my call of distress, it is, in fact, more one of vanity." He whirled on them. "Just how am I supposed to travel throughout all time and space, saving entire planets and doing incredible heroic efforts, looking like this?!"

Amy stifled a giggle.

Picard took a step forward. "Well, Doctor, this ought to be a problem easily fixed."

"How did you solve it?"

Crusher went to a panel and brought up files from the incident. "When it happened on the Enterprise, it was because certain pieces of DNA, the ones controlling physical puberty, had been removed or reversed. What we did was take a sample of the adult DNA, run it through the transporter, and have it add in the missing sequences."

"Oh, teleporters!" The Doctor clapped his hands together. "I love teleporters!" He walked quickly over to the panel to study the readings. As he did, his smile faded, then turned to frown. "Doctor Crusher, do you think it would really work on me?"

"Why not?"

He snickered. "I have two hearts, Doctor Crusher, and my dissimilarities to humans don't stop there. Time Lord DNA is slightly different than human DNA. This is my eleventh regeneration, but all my past lives are forever encoded in my DNA. Could you age me without destroying my past lives? And could you age me into this regeneration and not an old one or even a new one? I've grown rather fond of this body lately, and I don't want to lose it."

"He's had it for a year," Amy put in.

He gave her a look. "Quiet, Pond." He looked up at Crusher. "What do you think?"

Crusher sighed and glanced at Picard who glanced back. Finally she looked down again. "I don't know. I know absolutely nothing of Time Lord anatomy."

"Wrong! What did I just tell you? I have two hearts."

"All right, I don't know anything about Time Lord anatomy that is useful."

"Oh!" The Doctor crawled up onto the bed again. "So let the medical examination begin!"

"Doctor!" Amy hissed.

"Come now, Pond, you don't want me coming back as my sixth self, do you? Even worse, you don't want me coming back thinking it's my first regeneration, or even my original self, do you? Besides, it's been a long time since I've had a complete physical."

"You ran away from the Schism, Doctor," Amy told him. "And you haven't stopped running since. I would say you're in pretty good physical shape."

"Miss Pond," Picard interrupted before the Doctor could speak, "perhaps you would like to be shown to your quarters? Afterwards, I could arrange for someone to show you around. The Doctor is in very capable hands."

"Thank you, Captain," Amy said pleasantly. "I'm sure he is."

"Tea, earl grey, hot."

Picard took the cup from the replicator and sat down at his desk. Personnel reviews, reports, requests, so much paperwork to do.

"Computer, music. Beethoven's Third."

If he was going to sit here for hours to work, he could just as well be comfortable doing it.

"Yes, Captain, do get comfortable."

He knew that voice. He stood abruptly and looked around. There, in the corner, pretending to play a violin alongside the symphony.

"Computer, end music."

The music stopped.

"Aw, you wound me so, Captain."

"Q."

"She's not a Time Lord, is she?" Crusher guessed as she reviewed the results of the general scans.

"No, she's not. I crashed in her backyard after my last regeneration and she's been travelling with me ever since." The Doctor grinned. "Actually, she was only a little girl then, and she waited twelve years for me."

"She loves you."

"In the same way a captive loves her captor I suppose. And, no, I am not holding her against her will. Figure of speech and all that."

"Of course. She's the jealous sort, though."

"Yes, she is."

"What are you doing here?" Picard demanded.

"Such hostility," Q said, furrowing his brows. "I'm merely in the area. When I heard you were, too, I thought to myself, I must go visit my old friend, Picard. So here I am."

"And why are you here in the first place? What mess of yours do we have to clean up now?"

"I'm here visiting family."

"Family?"

"Yes, Captain, family. I bet you didn't think me capable of such a thing."

"The thought never would have crossed my mind."

"Well, they're not exactly the wife-and-children family you may be thinking of, more like distant cousins. Either way, they're here, you're here, I'm here. Now it can be one big party!"

"Oh, I can't wait."

"I know; you're absolutely thrilled. And wait until you see the family reunion."