Professor Chronotis had been teaching at Cambridge University longer than anyone cared to notice, though that wasn't for lack of trying. It was getting more difficult in the new age of digital identification to keep his multi-century tenure under wraps, but he was still quite happy with his situation. The kind of clerks who were sent to untangle the knots in his records were all overworked bureaucrats, and the mental nudge required to put them off his scent was pitifully small. Even at his advanced age, it was no effort at all. He was retired from his days teaching at the Time Lord Academy – and separation from that vast library still stung when he thought on it too long. Still, it was endlessly entertaining to read the developing history of the Human Race in real-time. He did love his books!

The apartment he lived in was actually his TARDIS. An ancient old thing, it was the oldest still running bar none. There was little life left in it, which was how he was able to smuggle it onto this unimportant rock in the first place. He'd been there since the seventeenth century, with the apartment block that was his address built around his TARDIS by workers forced unaware of its existence.

He rather hoped the Doctor never investigated that particular question of how he lived on Earth. The young man had been a fantastic friend, but he held a moral high ground on many issues. He'd expect Chronotis to give some compensation to those whose minds he'd affected, and really what was the point? They hadn't done the work of building his apartment and yet they were paid for doing it. That was certainly enough. As for the clerks chasing red tape, the relaxing side-effects of mind control likely did their overburdened minds some good.

He'd never claimed to be a philanthropist, a hero, or any other do-good busybody. He just wanted a quiet life with his books and time enough to read them. Teaching literature and history to human University students was a fun little hobby that kept him well-funded.

He was to have company today, which was both well-timed and not. The glowing cube in the center of his cluttered coffee table mocked him with its innocent white color. It ought to be black, or red, or flashing multicolor warning signals all over its surface. He had an appointment that would be beyond rude to miss: that was his story and he was sticking to it. If they really wanted a washed up old Librarian that badly they could come down and get him themselves. Then again, that might be the plan, seeing as officially speaking he didn't own a TARDIS. Maybe he'd get extremely lucky and they'd have the Doctor pick him up since the young man was often on Earth. Then the pair of them could beat a quick escape to some long forgotten corner of existence. There was no way this old apartment could out-fly anything, but the Doctor's TARDIS… that was the gold standard of speed. He'd said he'd been to E-Space back in his big scarf days, perhaps the pair of them could finagle their way back that way?

The doorbell broke him away from his thoughts. In a move a man his apparent age shouldn't have been able to make he buried the offending cube under a stack of books. Rassilon could wait, he had an important meeting with a philanthropic woman of learning, and better yet, she'd made a sizable donation of rare books to his beloved University Library!

"Good Afternoon, I'm Donna Temple-Noble. Are you Professor Chronotis?" the woman asked when he opened the door. Her short grey hair clung to the last tint of a red that must have burned a bright fire in the sunlight of her youth. A strong, but lovely bone structure and commanding posture made up a woman who had clearly suffered and blustered through on bravado and an iron will.

"Yes, yes, please come in. I'll just put on some tea and we can begin." He closed the door and pointed her toward a chair on the opposite side of the room from his coffee table. It was a more intimate setting than he'd intended to use, the two chairs next to an end table nestled into a corner near the fireplace in a cozy way he usually reserved for favored students, but he didn't dare bring her into the study when the console was active.

As he busied about the kitchen his mind ran back over the various news articles and biographies he'd read. There was nothing worth knowing that couldn't be researched: Married at age forty and received a winning lottery ticket as a wedding gift, the office temp created a charitable trust with the stated mission of improving the quality of life on Earth. Her dreamer husband had been more of a mind to squander the money promoting a musical career that never went anywhere – and he blamed her for his failure when it was clearly a lack of talent. Shawn seemed like a worthless man who stopped working a proper job after the win even as his wife continued working as a PA, and Chronotis had no sympathy for untalented fools.

Still, she had stood by her husband and raised three children (fraternal twins then one adopted) with the 'struggling artist.' The press was far kinder to the man than Chronotis felt he deserved, painting him as a long-suffering artist whose hardships early in life fueled folksy songs about loss and want. There was far less written about Mrs. Donna Temple-Noble and her frankly startling ability to be in the right place at the right time. She invested the money frightfully well and spent it with equal care. Where most lottery winners were out of cash within five years, she had built an empire. Somehow, it was Mr. Temple that snagged the credit.

There were likely bodyguards outside, keeping a polite distance and giving the impression that she was no one special. That was a thing with her – she was not special. She believed it to her core and would not be shaken in that belief. Perhaps that was how the Temple Charity of London got credited to her husband. The old professor would have to suss that out.

"The manuscripts the Temple Charity sent over are spectacular, Mrs. Temple-Noble," Chronotis said as he set the tea tray down between them. "Such rare texts, we would certainly have lost them altogether if not for your swift work."

"I hardly did a thing, I'm just the purse," she scoffed. "It's all common sense things."

"I don't agree. It takes a quick mind to see the connection between rising sea levels, archeological sites, and third-world coastal villages no one cares about. Rescuing all those manuscripts from the brink of destruction was a stroke of brilliance." He nibbled a biscuit and carefully skirted around the edges of her mind. His insatiable curiosity needed to know how this woman worked – how such an important person the course of human history in the last few decades could be so well hidden.

"Well, I have good people working for me. Never could have done it on my own, after all. I just make a few suggestions and let them work out the details," she demurred. What was that in her mind?

"It is more than this one venture!" he insisted. This was someone he honestly admired – he cursed the short lifespan humans were saddled with. Already in the twilight of her life, but she reminded him so much of his favored students… and what was in her mind? Something so familiar and out of place… "You seem to always have exactly on hand what is needed. The flooding of Tokyo and New York, the great Sandstorm in the Sahara, the Flu outbreak of 2021… I've read too much to be fooled into thinking that poster boy husband of yours is the driving force behind TCL."

"Professor, I am a happily married woman," she said in a tone that wouldn't convince anyone who'd loved and lost for more than a couple decades of life. The battered old Time Lord had over twelve millennia – gathering near thirteen now, truth be told - behind him, and wasn't shy about mind reading besides. However, that was a bit beside the point.

"Oh, no, no, no! I didn't mean to… I simply find you to be an admirable woman. I don't care for those who profit from the actions of others, and many of the press releases credit your husband when I can't see he had any involvement at all. No, you deserve far more recognition than you get, and that is why I asked you to visit me when the opportunity presented."

"We are a team. Any credit he receives is credit to me as well, and vice-versa," she recited. He felt the foul note in her mind as it regurgitated something it believed on the surface, but despised. Still, deeper down, there was something… something so very familiar.

"Tell me, what plans do you have?" he changed the subject. Her defenses were going up, and he didn't want her to feel his intrusion even though humans never realized what the sudden headaches meant.

"Cambridge has always been a fine University. With space exploration making progress in leaps and bounds and talks of a moon colony moving from purely hypothetical into the realm of real experimentation and construction, I think this is the right place to be," she paused for a sip of tea. The light in her mind grew brighter, and it was a brilliant mind to begin with. It spun and sparked in clever leaps of intuition and creativity, but deep in the core there was something even brighter. Something contained… "I have no doubt students from this University will live on the first Human colony. 2040 promises to be a grand year, and in the two years until then I think every British citizen should be pushing for King and Country to make the colony a reality. We will touch the stars!" She winced then, as the brightness in her mind flared in a dangerous arc.

By the seven sisters, she was a Time Lady!

"Do you own a fob watch?"

"You what?"

"I… oh, what a terrible question, and a worse answer. What a terrible state of affairs!" Chronotis blustered, frustrated beyond belief. Here was a victim of the Chameleon Arch, but they'd botched the job. No wonder they wanted him back on Gallifrey 'immediately, to the following coordinates, and with all possessions fit as to never return.'

"Is something wrong?"

"It most certainly is! Have you suffered those headaches long?"

"Ages and ages, it's nothing to worry about."

"Oh, but it is. I'm quite sorry, I've seen this before. All the signs were there; I should have noticed right off."

"Excuse me," Donna shouted, standing.

"Your mind hurts you when you think of traveling in the stars, but you feel that is where you belong. Is that not right? You are searching, endlessly searching, and never finding what you need." As he spoke, he pressed his mind against hers, preventing pain but also preventing her from moving or speaking. He could not fix this mess by his own hand alone. It suddenly dawned on him how long it had been since he'd last seen his most favorite young student. The Doctor used to visit between once every other year to once a decade across the centuries, and suddenly nothing for well neigh eighty!

Fear, real fear, hit Chronotis for the first time since Shada and that ugly business of losing that old law book. The Time Lords had declared war for the first time in millions of years, calling out a draft to every Lord and Lady still living, but here was one they were leaving behind. Oh, the time lines could be crossed up, but he didn't feel this girl – and she was truly a girl with a temporal field so tiny – had been through the war. It was a nexus point, and a clear cut channel. One in and one out per player, and since… Yes, he could see the possible timeline of her coming with him so that meant she hadn't yet answered the draft.

She could be a murderer – the worst kind of killer. Well, so was he, not that anyone other than the Doctor knew of what he'd done in his first lifetime. Even then, the Doctor had only heard rumors in the abstract, bit that escaped his ability to erase from the record, and he'd dulled the thoughts in his young friend enough that he should scarcely think of it. He'd also dulled the knowledge on Gallifrey of where exactly he'd retired to in the hope the larger body of Time Lords would forget about him entirely, and perhaps they had. The message he received was a fully automated form letter with no named addressee, but it did have reverse tracking and they would know where he was if he didn't pack up and leave before sundown.

Perhaps she was the daughter of some self-important stuffed shirt trying to pull a fast one by tucking his beloved little flower away on this unimportant rock for the duration of the war. It would explain her mind's desperate clinging to the idea that she was unimportant despite all evidence to the contrary.

Still, she hadn't led a bad life. Entwined in her mind as he was, and all for her best interests as the binding holding back her true mind was in a terrible state, he could see that she was happy. She believed to her core she was not special and used that as a shield against her mother's spiteful nature. So long as she did better than average she was happy within herself and her marriage – and she'd done spectacular – but she couldn't allow herself to see any of her great works for what they were or it would tear away at the bindings within her mind.

It wasn't intentional. Discovering that was the first relief Chronotis felt since he saw the flare in her mind. 'She's the most important woman in the universe,' a man's thought whispered. It was tangled in the bindings, and filled with adoration. Poor man truly botched the job with the best intentions, doubling down on his mistake by leaving bits of himself behind. With that thought tangled up in the part of her that held back the wall of blinding light, anything that agreed with that thought would have been sucked inside.

Quite a bit was being chucked outside the mental restraints as well, and on a regular basis. Her subconscious had gotten half inside the boundary, no doubt siphoned in due to the natural instinct of self preservation making the self the most important thing in the universe when it came down to base needs. It seemed to be processing the swirling inner mind in a sort of split consciousness that dumbfounded the aged man – and the mental arts were his specialty!

He guided her to sit, and was suddenly glad of the more intimate seating. He didn't normally need physical contact, about a quarter of all Time Lords didn't and he was arguably the most advance practitioner of the mental arts his race had ever produced, but in this case holding her hand would be a help. Everything he knew told him what he was about to do was impossible, but he was good at impossible once upon a time.

If the man who once conquered half a galaxy with the strength of his mind alone couldn't help this poor girl, then what was the point of him?

It would certainly put a bee in someone's bonnet when the pompous hypocrite that dropped his baby girl on Earth to avoid the Time War saw what had become of her. That was more than reward enough for Chronotis.

Slowly, and with great care, he pulled the male thoughts away from the barrier. There were quite a few, now that he had the chance to take a good look, some filled with grief and others near worship for this precious girl. The barrier stabilized. Then he massaged the area where her subconscious mind overlapped her true mind until the two merged. That was a much more stable state of affairs, though it did the young lady no favors. She'd go from dreams of the timelines to no dreams at all with nearly her entire subconscious mind walled off, but that was enough miracle working for one day.

No, Chronotis had a date with the current Castellan, whoever that was, and this young lady needed to rest. With some luck, having her subconscious fully connected to her true mind would quiet the storm that raged in it – and he didn't blame her for the violence of that rage. Regeneration energy battered against the walls, desperate to fix the 'damage' it saw in her human body. It was only natural. She would put some of that swirling energy in order with a nice long nap and bit of who she really was would flow more freely into her waking mind, all of it fully processed and properly ready for her limited human mind to use. She'd been doing that on her own in a horribly haphazard fashion, and the assistance he provided would speed the process greatly.

The only trick would be getting his hands on enough life energy to fuel a proper regeneration. There was no memory of a fob watch – it was possible her father kept it with him – and so all her regenerations' energy was lost. They would need to be replaced. It was the proper thing to do, and it had been some time since he attempted family life. He could not in good conscience return this girl to a family that harmed her, after all, no matter the good intentions, and she would need education! From what he'd seen, she must have been raised human from near birth.

With a few mental commands and a bit of reluctant grinding, his TARDIS replaced her chair with a bed and rained pillows down on her sleeping form. A quick adjustment to ensure she was tucked up safe and sound, and he dug out the message cube from its place on the coffee table. He'd spent the last thirty years re-organizing his aged mind in preparation for his final death. He's thought off little else beside his legacy, both on Earth in the University Library and on Gallifrey when his mind's content was scooped up into the Matrix in his dying moment. All those hours meditating, all those books he didn't read because he wanted to keep his sense of self when he joined the Matrix, had given him a bit more clarity of mind than he'd had in several centuries.

He planned to use that mind in the coming war, and the first battle (for his mind) would be the impending meeting with the Castellan.