I've been sitting on this idea for a while and wrote it out thinking it would be for my enjoyment only… but what the heck, I'll see if anybody else gets a kick out of it. I really liked when the Doctor said, "You look Time Lord. We came first." That got me to thinking if Time Lords looked like anything, and then this idea started, and now here you are, reading this poorly explained author's note and hopefully continuing to read the story that sprung into being.

Summary: When the TARDIS's shields are breached mid-flight, not even the Doctor could have expected who was responsible.

"Textbook Enigmatic"

It was a perfectly ordinary day, as far as days travelling in time and space went. The Doctor had spent it staving off boredom by setting the TARDIS's controls to random and seeing where the old girl took him with every stop. By early afternoon he had made four stops and only one had been remotely dangerous – he'd landed in the middle of a war on the planet Pugna and very nearly taken an arrow to the shoulder in the four seconds he'd spent outside the TARDIS on the battling world. That war would destroy the planet eventually and was a fixed point in time, unfortunately, or he would have tried something to stop it.

Wishing for an adventure that required much thought and a considerable amount of running, the Doctor pulled upon the lever that started the TARDIS once more and held on to a bar attached to the console as it jerked about, spinning through the time vortex to their next destination.

It was then that his spaceship lurched in the most alarming of manners, and the unsuspecting Doctor was thrown off balance and fell over, still clutching onto the stabilization bar. At once, the console room began flashing between the usual bright, yellowish light it was illuminated by and an urgent scarlet color, and an alarm fashioned off of World War II air raid sirens began to howl, making the Doctor grimace from both the noise and concern for his TARDIS. "That can't be good," he muttered under his breath, clambering to his feet with difficulty, as the ship was jerking violently about.

Every monitor he had was flashing the words "Shields breached" in angry red letters, and The Doctor stared at the words in utter shock, his mouth hanging slightly open as different possibilities ran through his mind. The last time the shields had been breached, he'd met his past self, but that hadn't been nearly a violent as breach as this. The sirens hadn't come on the last time. Nor had they come on the time before, when Jack had clung to the side of the TARDIS and the ship had gone to the end of the universe in an attempt to shake him off. Which meant that whatever was attacking his ship was big, and extremely powerful. "Very not good," he said, his concern growing, as he twisted several knobs that would hopefully increase the strength of the shields and identify what it was that was assaulting the TARDIS.

He was appalled to find that whatever it was wasn't trying to destroy the ship. In fact, there were no outside forces working against the TARDIS at all. And yet, the sirens continued to screech, dulling the Doctor's sense of hearing and perplexing him thoroughly. He knew it wasn't a mistake, as there had definitely been something that caused his TARDIS to lurch about wildly the way it was, but he couldn't identify the source of the problem.

Frustrated beyond thought, the Doctor yanked down on a lever and the ship stopped, suspended unmoving in the time vortex. At once, the sirens died and the lights ceased flickering, and the Doctor stepped away from the console and ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it into unimaginable dishevelment, as he looked around in bewilderment. "What in the world…?"

He looked back towards his monitor, hoping for answers, and for once he found them. A map of the TARDIS had been pulled up and there were two orange lights flickering in two separate places: the life forms on the ship. There was one glowing in the console room representing himself. What concerned him was the second light, flickering in the library. "Oh, dear."

Without hesitation, he sprinted for the library, reaching into the inside of his coat pocket for the sonic screwdriver by way of arming himself. What was going on?! What was there in the universe so powerful it could burst through the TARDIS's shields and enter the ship itself without using the front doors, the only way in or out? Fleetingly, he thought of the daleks, but the feeling he usually got around those metal monstrosities wasn't attached to this situation. The feeling he got here was… not dread, but a slight knot in his stomach as well as an overwhelming curiosity to know exactly what it was he was facing.

The library door was a few sharp turns down the ship's intricate network of hallways, and the first obvious difference in the room once he burst inside was that the books were all over the floor. Of course, the TARDIS had been more concerned with stabilizing and strengthening the defense systems rather than manipulating the gravity fields in various rooms. Oh, goodness, the room with the swimming pool was probably doused. And he didn't want to imagine the state of his bedroom… all those glass trinkets...

The library was utterly silent. He had never seen it in such a disastrous state before. Books strewn across the floor in fabulous chaos, some pages torn or ripped having been caught beneath other books as they had flown around the room. Piles rested at the base of some shelves, entirely emptied in the midst of the TARDIS's lurching. The only sound echoing off the walls and in the empty bookcases as he proceeded with extreme caution into the room, screwdriver held at an arm's length in front of him, was that of his own footsteps.

He stopped in the center of the room, next to the pair of overturned armchairs usually set up near the wall by a fireplace. He turned around slowly, looking in every shadow and every corner for something, anything… and saw nothing.

But then he heard it. A soft sound, like a whimper, coming from his left where there was a mountain of books and a toppled bookshelf. The Doctor whirled around, staring at the pile. "Hello?" He took a few steps towards the mound of books. "Is someone there?"

He heard a gasp and a several very ragged and panicked breaths, then another whimper.

The Doctor lowered his screwdriver slowly as he approached, the curiosity growing with every step as well as a sense of concern. Whatever it was, whatever the powerful being that had gotten onto his TARDIS was, it was in a terrible amount of pain. And something new was no fun to him if it died.

"Hello?" he repeated as he came to stop in front of the pile of books. He lowered his eyes and sucked in a harsh breath. There was something there, all right. From beneath the overturned bookshelf there was a pale hand reaching out, caked in blood and trembling. At first the nails looked merely blood-soaked as well, but on second glance he could see that they were brown. "Oh, no."

Without thinking about the possible danger or even taking a moment to consider that he might be hurling himself into some sort of trap, the Doctor gripped the edge of the bookshelf and lifted it, a feat that took tremendous effort and resulted in only a few inches of movement, revealing more of an arm draped in torn and tattered blue… it looked like silk, but the molecular structure wasn't quite right for silk. It was a female hand, he was almost sure of that.

A few more heaves and the bookshelf had been moved away entirely, and the Doctor got his first good look at the intruder.

A girl covered in blood, a child who couldn't have been more than seventeen or eighteen, with deep chocolate colored hair and half-open eyes, cuts and scrapes covering every inch of her skin he could see. Her chest rose and fell too quickly, as though every breath was a desperate fight to take air into her lungs. Her blue dress was torn almost beyond recognition, barely scraps of it left. Her left arm was broken; that was only too easy to see, and running the screwdriver over her body once told him that wasn't the only thing; she had three broken ribs on top of that.

The scan also revealed the most perplexing thing about the strange girl who had apparently materialized in the library on his ship.

She wasn't human.

But the screwdriver didn't have any information on what she might be. Species unknown, it told him. She looked human in every aspect, but his device didn't recognize her as such. So what was she?

The girl groaned and opened her eyes the rest of the way, their color a shocking violet, and awareness slowly took root in her expression. The Doctor watched in shock as, when her eyes locked onto his, her hair transformed in color, taking on black streaks within the brown, and then her nails changed color as well, going black. She whimpered and tried to instinctually recoil, but at once she gasped in pain and tears fell out of her eyes, and she fell back onto the books again with a cry.

Comforts poured from the Doctor's lips at once, never able to bear seeing another creature in such pain. "It's all right. It's going to be fine. I'm the Doctor; I'm going to help you."

"Safe," the girl croaked desperately. "Is it safe here?"

"No safer place," the Doctor assured her, and watched in astonishment as several of the girl's black strands of hair turned as violet as her eyes, though not all the black faded away. Her nails turned back to brown.

"Hurts," the girl whispered. The Doctor could see the awareness fading from her eyes. She was falling back into unconsciousness. "Hurts everywhere."

"I know. I already said, I'm a doctor – well, sort of – and I'm going to help you, all right? It's all going to be all right."

"And safe," the girl sighed, her eyes closing and her mouth going slack. She had passed out, either from pain or blood loss, and if she didn't get medical attention soon, her life would be in serious danger.

Getting her to the med bay without sending her into shock was no small feat, especially since he wasn't certain that her physiology was the same as a human's and her injuries were rather extensive. After a few minutes, though, the girl was laid out upon the exam table in the sterile white room and the Doctor was jamming his glasses up the bridge of his nose and silently pleading for her forgiveness as he cut what little remained of her blue dress away from her broken body and wiped dried blood off her skin to more easily reveal her wounds. He started running more extensive scans on her with 60th century equipment in hopes to identify her species and rummaging through cupboards in search of topical antibiotics and anesthetic, trying to remember what he had done with his 37th century biological reconstruction wand. What he wouldn't give for some nanogenes, which could heal her instantly without pain or scarring, but he had never managed to get his hands on any of those…

A few minutes more and he had everything he needed, seated at the girl's bedside and injecting the only anesthetic stronger than morphine that he had into her broken arm and into her side in hopes to prevent her from feeling the incredible pain that would accompany healing her bones. Even he grimaced and cringed running the wand over her arm and ribcage and heard the bones cracking within as they shifted back into their correct positions. She cried out in her sleep, but even that wasn't enough to start her back into consciousness. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," the Doctor apologized on reflex, though he knew she could not hear him.

The machines began spitting back results, and the Doctor snatched them up eagerly only to find that the results in relation to her species were inconclusive. He ran a hand through his hair in frustration and tossed the results aside as he began screwing the cap off a tube of topical anesthetic. "What are you?" he asked the unconscious girl under his breath, beginning the process of dousing various cotton balls with the medicine and applying it to the girl's endless injuries. Some of them had been caused by being crushed by the bookshelf, but not all, though it was impossible to identify the source of all the others. She looked almost as bad as one of the warriors he had seen earlier on Pugna, coming out of battles scarred and bloody.

He yanked the cap off a tube of cellular regeneration salve and covered her wounds in it, watching in satisfaction as the skin crept close, leaving only faint pink lines to suggest there had ever been any injuries at all.

"There," he sighed, draping a white blanket over her and slouching back in his chair, vigorously rubbing his forehead and temples with his fingertips to stave off the headache he could feel coming on. This girl had broken through the TARDIS's shields. She had come to him injured and in pain. There had never been any threat… but he still had to wonder what made her so powerful that she had quite literally materialized on his ship as he spun through the time vortex.

He watched her almost expectantly, hoping for the strange phenomena of her hair and nails changing color to occur again, but both remained as they were; her hair was still brown and spilling over the side of the table, streaks of black and violet interrupting the solid color. Her nails remained brown, though he did notice it was a much lighter shade.

Biting the inside of his cheek, the Doctor picked up the scan results again and scrutinized them more closely. Her physiology was very similar to a human's, with only a few discrepancies: her brain capacity was much more impressive, and she seemed to be slightly stronger than a human of her size, and…

The Doctor froze. This was impossible; completely impossible. "No," he breathed, overwhelmed by an intense hope as he knelt forward rapidly, unable to sit still upon the incredible discovery. Almost in ecstasy, he tore his stethoscope from his pocket and stuck the prongs in his ears, pressing the circular end against the girl's chest on the left side, listening to her heartbeat. It was steady, which was some comfort.

Holding his breath, the Doctor moved the end of the stethoscope to the right side.

Bum pum. Bum pum. Bum pum. Bum pum.

Steady on the other side. An entirely different heartbeat from the first.

Two hearts.

"Please, oh please," he muttered, pulling the scanner back to her again, looking specifically this time. The few minutes it took to get a reading was far too long for him, and he fidgeted and fisted restless hands in his hair, half-mad by the time the machine spat more results out to him. And his hearts sunk. Not of Gallifreyan Origin.

Not Time Lord. Two hearts and not Time Lord.

The Doctor leaned back in his chair again and sighed heavily before hunching over and burying his face in his hands, the crushing blow to his hope sitting like a pain in his chest. "Damn it," he muttered, curling one hand into a fist, his fingernails digging into his palm as he gazed at the girl. "Well, aren't you an enigma?" he asked in frustration. "Textbook enigmatic."

So close… so close. All he wanted was one other Time Lord, one who wasn't crazy or murderous or power-hungry… just one other who knew the pain he felt.

But as he looked at this girl, this strange child with hair and nails that changed colors, this girl powerful enough to break through his TARDIS's defenses and land in the middle of his library, this girl who, utterly broken and afraid had begged only for safety… he wasn't entirely sure that she didn't feel as he felt too.

Alone in the universe. The last of his kind. There was a sorrow that came with that knowledge, a sorrow he could feel coming from her. He didn't know what she was or who. He had no idea where she'd come from or how she'd gotten so broken, but there was one thing he did know. She needed help.

And, well, he had never been able to resist a cry for help.

Review if you want this continued. ;) See you next time, my darlings!