I wrote this AGES ago, but this seemed like the right time to rewrite/edit/publish it. It's an AU oneshot set in my Halfway Out of the Dark universe, based around the idea of just what would happen if the Doctor had died near the beginning of the events of IBTS. This is the result.

If you want a faceclaim for AliyaIX who doesn't yet exist in the HOotD canon, I imagine Olivia Williams, particularly like her role Adelle Dewitt in Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. :)

She remembers the magnitude and potency of the blinding light. She remembers him being already far too close to the rift that has gone over the brink with haywire energy and Time Fire.

"Aliya, do not move, do not even think of doing anything other than staying in that doorway! You're safe as long as you're within the TARDIS shields!"

"But you can't absorb that much Time Fire, Doctor, it'll kill you!"

"Someone has to or it'll cause total chaos!"

Standing in the doorway of the police box is the hardest thing she's ever had to do. But he had cruelly invaded her mind, forcing her to obey him for a short time and making it impossible to move even an inch. It had taken a lot of his strength, and it kills her because she knows what he is going to do and that he's weaker than he should be because of her.

And then he does it, steps into the reaches of the Time Fire, and lets the tendrils of light and destruction embrace him, and she feels his mind open to let it in, and tears stream down her face but she's petrified.

As she sees his resilience being peeled away, his mental hold on her drops. It's that moment she realises it's because he's dying. So she runs to him and ignores his yelling because she could never let him die without trying to save him.

"If there is a chance we can both get out of here half alive rather than you fully dead then I'll take it!"

The light scorches when she lets it envelope her. But she has to try and keep some of it from him.

It's not enough. She can see him dying before her eyes, his skin draining of colour and his mind only feebly holding on.

"Doctor," she manages to say through the tears and the pain of the Time Fire ripping through her very essence, and he looks at her with wet and bloodshot eyes of his own, blood leaking from his nose.

"Aliya," he miraculously gets out.

"You should know that I still love you," she tells him desperately, "Maybe you think I stopped but I didn't, I don't know how to. Don't feel like you have to love me back because I know you don't and that's okay. But you deserve to know that at least one person in the universe loves you, and always will."His face contorts with what is clearly confusion amongst the unbearable pain. He winces as the Time Fire claws at him but keeps his eyes locked with hers and smiles minutely.

"Of course-"

His voice cuts off, as the fire furls around his body and he lets out an anguished sob as it takes him and his eyes slowly slide shut. It isn't until his body turns limp and broken that she finds herself screaming as it absorbs an abundance of the Time Fire around it.

Because then he's just gone and she can do nothing but leap into the heart of the inferno itself, letting the remaining Time Fire pour into every inch of her skin and mind. Because as he said, someone has to and he no longer can. His sacrifice cannot be in vain.

Time falls away as pain reigns instead, and she is sure that she is going to explode with all the fire in her, until the Time Fire is just gone and she's absorbed it all. She can feel it in her blood and bone and soul and it's too much.

Death is to be expected and she lets the fire burn everything out of her. But when she is a moment away from passing through the veil and being consumed, the sensation of being near bursting point changes. When her eyes open a crack, the light around her isn't white.

It's gold.

She doesn't know whether to be happy that it means she will live, or crushed because it means she'll have to go on without him and for a moment it had seemed so much simpler to die with him.

But then it takes her over and compared to the Time Fire the pain of the regeneration energy might as well be someone pricking her with a needle. But then it gets hotter and hotter and she feels stupid, because of course the Time Fire would make it ten times more explosive.

And then it's gone, and she's standing on a rocky landscape next to a blue box, and she's a new person…and she doesn't care. Her new body has already remembered how to cry and she blinks through the tears and walks into the police box.

It's his TARDIS, his box, it always had been.

The ship sings to her, a heartbreaking melody of sorrow and grief. Aliya walks up to the console platform to stroke the ship comfortingly. But it doesn't work, the raw song and emotion coming from the ship break down the thin walls the regeneration had put up.

She sinks to the ground and sobs violently, lying on the cold glass and letting everything wash over her in a suffocating tsunami of grief and loss. It isn't for some hours that the emotional and mental pain is interrupted by something far more physical.

The regeneration is going wrong. Her body convulses and her head spins and she can't bring herself to care enough to move. She knows the Zero Room would fix her, but she doesn't want to be fixed. No matter how whole her body is, it will never mean that her heart and soul haven't just been ripped apart.

A new flash of light makes her look up. The plain white room around her now is unmistakably the Zero Room and she knows that the TARDIS is trying to help her by teleporting her there.

A very small part of her wants to be grateful. The rest just boils in anger. She screams and yells and wails. Somewhere along the line she ends up floating, thrashing in the supreme centre of the room. In any other situation she might have found her current physical position amusing.

He would have too.

The blind fury and hopelessness lasts for fifteen hours. As the last of the excess regeneration energy seeps from her, her head clears a little and she can actually think. She drops from her spot in the air and lingers an inch from the floor before dropping onto it.

Slowly, across several minutes, she stretches out, stands up, and looks properly at her new body. She is a similar height, and the body feels older, a little weaker and softer but not enough for it to be a problem. Paler skin and darker, longer hair with even stronger waves.

Exiting the Zero Room should be easy. But she's forgotten something very important. The Zero Room shields from certain aspects of the universe. Certain telepathic distractions. But she's the last Time Lord left in the universe now and without the Zero Room the emptiness is there and screaming and it's a hole in her head she had forgotten to expect.

Just like that, the screams begin again.

Aliyanadevoralundar woke up. Her eyes were wet and her throat was dry and raw from screaming in her sleep, but it was normal to her. It was the same dream every night, the same memory. The worst day of her lives. No wonder she only slept about every two weeks even if it should be twice as often.

Sliding out of bed, she crossed to the mirror and took a look at the only body she'd ever had that the Doctor hadn't known. The only one he'd never touched, talked to, looked at, smiled at.

Her hair was a dark and rich brown, and fell a bit past her collarbone. The eyes were the same colour for the first time in all her lives, something that might have once been a triumph she could have shared with the Doctor. She looked around forty by human standards, and this time there was a spark missing, a spark of vibrance and life that had nothing to do with physical age.

Perhaps she'd got it from him.

She was in his bedroom, like she always was. The TARDIS had guided her to it after his death, and every night since, she'd slept in his bed, as if having his scent around her would bring him back or let her pretend for a moment that he was still with her (she didn't want to think about the fact that the scent would eventually fade because the thought was too much for her habitual and fragile state of mind).

She went to the console room. She'd changed it almost immediately after regenerating, because the old one reminded her too much of him. The new one was smaller, darker, blue and slightly cold, which was how she often felt.

Five years. A long five years, that really in the scale of her lengthy life were nothing compared to what had passed before them, and what was still to come. How five years could seem like both an eternity and a blink of an eye was beyond her, but that was one of the curses of being a Time Lord, she supposed.

Whenever he had talked of 'the curse of the Time Lords', she'd always scoffed and teased him. But now in his place, as the only one left in the universe, as the only soul amongst the expanse of mental emptiness…she understood it all. All of it except how he had managed to bear it for as long as he did and not go mad.

Eccentric, certainly, but mad was something he had never been. She wasn't so certain she could say the same for herself any more. She felt insane. But then, weren't the truly mad unable to see that they were?

Psychology and philosophy had never been her strong points.

She spent her days in orbit of planets, ones from hundreds of diverse galaxies. But never Earth. It made her think about him too much. And even though their friends were surely worried about their absence, she still couldn't bring herself to go back there. To tell them the terrible truth.

Since she almost never actually left the TARDIS, she rarely had a need to speak aloud. When she had first done so she had found that her voice was still English but far more refined and sophisticated. That in itself had been a reason to keep speaking at a minimum.

Most of the time when her thoughts got too idle she ended up thinking about the last thing the Doctor had said to her. Of course. It shouldn't have surprised her, really. Egotistical bastard must have known the whole time just how much she had loved him. It wasn't as if it hadn't been clear as day. But the way he'd said it, as if it were so obvious, as if there was no doubt in his mind that she loved him, as if the possibility of her not doing so was ridiculous.

He'd been going to say something else, she was sure of that. Probably something along the lines of: Of course, how could you not?

Though when she thought back, it had sounded like the next word he had been trying to say was 'I'. So perhaps: Of course, I love me too. Or: Of course, I am very lovable, you know. And cool.

"Egotistical bastard," she whispered furiously. His last words had made her hate him, in a way. Nothing could stop her loving him with every last bit of her hearts, but somehow there was still plenty of room for hate too.

Twenty years down the track, she had just entered the console room after throwing her hair up into a messy bun and getting dressed – in dark jeans, a navy shirt, and the leather jacket from the one body of his she'd never met – when the TARDIS suddenly jerked into erratic flight. She raced to the console, trying to figure out what was going on while hanging on for dear life.

"What are you doing?" She demanded, looking up at the Time Rotor. After checking the screen, her expression turned to one of frustration. "Why the hell are we landing? I don't want to land anywhere! Just let us float through space, it's got to be simpler for the both of us!" The ship hummed with what was clearly disagreement. "Stop it you damned machine!"

But then the ship landed, with the wheezing noise that reminded her so painfully of the Doctor with its every breath.

"Where are we?" She asked while keeping her fearful gaze fixed on the wooden doors, her voice like a child's. When she got no answer, she slowly crossed to the door and opened it. She saw a backyard full of grass, and an urge to stand on the soft green ground overwhelmed her so she stepped out of the TARDIS and onto the earth. Within a second, the police box doors slammed shut and she whirled around to find them locked. Once she turned back around, she sniffed the air and realised with sinking hearts that she was in England, the one place she had been trying to avoid.

And just when she thought it couldn't get any worse, it did.

"Doctor?" A familiar Scottish voice that Aliya hadn't heard in a very long time made the Time Lady panic and turn back to the spaceship.

"No, please," she pleaded, "Don't make me do this, I can't see them, I can't tell them, don't make me tell them, please." Her sobbing was ignored by the ship, but not by the two people who had joined her in the backyard.

Amy and Rory looked at her with expression of confusion.

"Aliya, is that you?" The former asked, frowning. The brunette looked over her shoulder at the ginger and nodded ever so slightly. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, just peachy," Aliya retorted with thick sarcasm, glaring at the other woman. "I thought you'd learnt not to ask stupid questions."

"Where's the Doctor?" Rory inquired, looking curious, and noticed when Aliya visibly flinched.

"You said 'don't make me tell them'," Amy said suspiciously, "Tell us what?"

Aliya stood frozen, like a deer in headlights, having forgotten a little how to interact with...well...anyone. They were the first people this regeneration had seen.

"I've regenerated, meaning I was in some sort of danger, I'm pleading with a spaceship to not have to tell you something, I'm crying, I'm wearing an old article of his clothing, and as you might have noticed, I can't even hear his name without flinching, because it hurts. You might be stupid apes but you're not idiots, so be good ex-companions and work it out," she snapped. Then she just hesitated again, unable to do anything but stand and stare as the married couple in front of her glanced at each other with what was clearly trepidation.

Amy slowly shook her head, not believing the implications. "No, you can't mean what I think you mean, that's not possible…"

"The Doctor is dead," Aliya said harshly, and even just saying the sentence aloud brought tears back into her eyes, "He's dead and I'm now the only Time Lord left in this bloody universe, and every day is hell because he's not here."

"How did it happen?" Rory sounded as though he had a lump in his throat.

"Someone messed with a rift in time and it was bleeding Time Fire which could have killed millions of people," Aliya muttered, averting her gaze from Amy's horrified face that was already sparkling in tears, "He absorbed most of it, but it burnt him out within minutes. I got the rest, but managed to regenerate. Lucky me."

"Why are you so different?" Amy looked at her, mildly horrified. "The Aliya we knew would have broken the news to us nicely, she would have been glad to be alive no matter what. It's like you're a whole different person."

"Regeneration tends to have that effect," Aliya sniffed haughtily, "Don't get me started on grief. But perhaps you're right, perhaps I should be more cheerful after my best friend's death, especially after he left me with such comforting parting words."

Hearing the sarcasm in her voice again, Rory looked at her oddly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that even in his last seconds, he could only think about how amazing he was and be unsurprised and ungrateful when someone agreed with him." When the two humans exchanged looks of disbelief, Aliya looked at the ground, feeling something close to guilt at how she had broken the news to them. "I'm going to go now before I completely destroy your happiness," she said quietly, and moved back to the TARDIS to find it now unlocked, "Not everyone needs to end up like me."

"I don't think you should be alone like this," Amy said, looking at her suddenly. "I mean, we were friends. Kind of friends. Or doesn't that mean anything without him?"

"Don't," the Time Lady said tiredly, shaking her head and trying hard not to sneer at her old fellow companion, "Don't try and appeal to a better side I no longer have."

"What about that bloke you were friendly with at the wedding? Weren't you staying with him and the Doctor's daughter? That's what he told us," Rory suggested, and Aliya realised with a strange jolt that he meant Jack and Jenny.

"An immortal human flirt machine is not the solution to my problems, nor is someone who embodies almost everything I grieve for." With that she went into the TARDIS and quickly dematerialised so that she was in the Snaketongue Nebula on the other side of the universe.

But the thought of seeing Jack and Jenny stuck with her. As easy as it had been to dismiss him as 'an immortal human flirt machine' in front of Amy and Rory and Jenny as pure pain, Jack Harkness was definitely one of her best friends. Or had been.

It took her two months to admit to herself that she couldn't continue going on the way she had, and another three to realise that she did want to see Jack, and that he might just be able to help her.

After all, in the past he had always cheered her up whenever she was sad. As she'd once said to him: It's like I can't be sad around you.So...slowly, hesitantly, and half-expecting herself to reverse the process before it finished…she materialised the TARDIS in the middle of the Torchwood hub in the dead of night when hopefully only Jack would be there or she could force John to piss off for a few minutes.

When she came out of the doors, sure enough he was standing there, bold and handsome and expectant. Her appearance seemed to take him by surprise though. Whether it was the new face or the Doctor's jacket, she couldn't tell. Probably both, now that she thought about it.

"Aliya?" She nodded. "What the hell happened?"

"Hell pretty much covers it," was all she could say, and he looked at her more closely before his entire body stiffened a little.

"How bad?" He asked slowly.

Aliya felt her expression crumble. "He's gone, Jack," she whispered, and felt the tears start to fall from her eyes. Jack's face turned ashen and pale.

"I never thought it would actually happen."

"Well it did and now I don't know what to do." Her voice came out like a child's, and he was quick to hug her, for both of their sakes.

"How are you holding up?"

"I'm not. It's been twenty five years. Of just...me. You're the third person I've spoken to in all those years, more or less."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"Are you gonna tell Jenny?"

She slowly shook her head. "I know I owe it to her…but I just can't. I'm so angry with him."

"For dying?" Jack lifted an eyebrow, acting as though his eyes weren't watery.

"For how he died. For being an arrogant arse even in his final moments. I hate him. So much."

"But you love him too. How bad could he have been?"

Aliya scowled. "I poured my heart out to him and he stamped on it by saying 'of course', as if it were impossible for me to not love him! I hate him for that, so much that it hurts."

"But you still love him too." Jack looked at her knowingly and she remembered just how well he knew her.

"It's not really optional for me, you of all people know that. Look, I'm going to go, I'm not really good at…people, anymore. Not even you." She walked back to the TARDIS.

"You need to find someone, Ali. Companions helped him, maybe one could help you too," Jack said, but she immediately dismissed the idea and shook her head.

"Picking up strays was never my thing, it was his." With that she stepped into the TARDIS, and as she shut the door she saw Jenny enter the room. Guilt tugged at her but she shut the door anyway and was quick to pilot herself out into space so that she orbited the Earth.

Despite her denials, Aliya's encounters with Amy, Rory and Jack had left her with the realisation that she did in fact need to stop living in isolation. The Doctor wouldn't have wanted her to stop living her life, and even if she was never going to forgive him, she couldn't help but still inherently value his opinion.

So every week she would go down to Earth and try and get some experience out of it as he so often had. But nothing screamed out to her with any great joy or meaning. She had never quite been able to grasp why he had loved the place so much.

But it had been humans that saved him in his dark hour. It had been Rose. Maybe…maybe she need a Rose.

It was six months before she ended up socialising with someone in a playground. The cheerful brunette human struck up a conversation while keeping her eye on two children, the younger of whom was a boy on the monkey bars, while the older, a girl, boredly sat on a swing with a phone in her hand.

"So, is one of these kids yours?" The young woman asked casually, her head nodding towards the multitude of other children running around them.

"No," Aliya replied. She had just found herself nearby and had been intrigued by the children playing. They were so different from Gallifreyan children and it never ceased to amaze her, even though this body of hers was the least maternal yet by a wide margin.

"Just passing through, then?"

"Er, yeah." The Time Lady more closely examined the children the other woman was watching. "I'm assuming those two aren't yours."

"No, I'm just a family friend, I agreed to watch them. Their mum's sick, just trying to ease the load a bit. Do you have kids?"

Aliya shook her head. "No."

"Do you want any?"

"I think it's a bit late for me."

The human eyed her kindly and was quick to say, "No it's not! People these days much older than you are having kids, no reason you couldn't." The girl's smile was borderline annoying.

"You wouldn't understand."

She frowned. "No, maybe not. I'm sorry, I was just-"

Aliya shot her an unfeeling glance. "Don't worry about it. I don't do the 'talking to people' thing very well. I knew this was a stupid idea." With that she walked away, not bothering to say goodbye to the stranger.

For a few weeks she avoided Earth after that and got into a bit of trouble in a few places across the galaxy. It would seem that as opposed to the Doctor being a magnet for trouble, the TARDIS would take her to places where trouble already was.

She ended up on a pirate ship with a siren that was actually a holographic doctor in an echo universe. Then a little boy's bedroom, and it turned out the little boy was a Tesla.

Another visit to London found her outside of a shopping centre, which she entered out of curiosity rather than anything else. The sheer quantity of everything available astounded her, and funnily enough she saw Amy and Rory go past, Rory laden with shopping bags, but she didn't say hello and instead hid behind a clothes rack. But she figured it might be progress that she did for one moment consider it.

After running into a large man with a pram and offhandedly apologising, she noticed that there were power fluctuations every ten minutes. It was probably something perfectly normal but something in her head – probably the nagging voice that sounded a lot like the Doctor – made her want to check.

With his spare sonic screwdriver which she had begun to carry with her in the pocket of the leather jacket, she scanned around. The results were surprisingly intriguing and proved that whatever was interfering with the lighting was either a very high human technology or something else altogether. Perhaps…what had the Doctor always done? Talked to people. Urgh. She didn't like talking to people. But she approached the older lady at the counter despite the urge that told her to bolt in the opposite direction.

"Has anything strange happened around here recently?" She asked, probably too suddenly, but she couldn't be sure. The woman's momentary bewilderment faded after a second and turned into casual cheer.

"Other than the power? Well, there are those people who have gone missing, as you probably know. And one of our workers here hasn't shown up today," she said, helpfully enough.

Aliya lifted an eyebrow. "Missing people? Are there any connections between them?"

"Nothing except they're all from this area."

"Would they all have been in this centre?"

"Oh yes, everyone uses this place for one thing or the other," the woman said amiably. "Why?"

"Just curious." It wasn't really a lie. "Nothing else?"

"Well, there was that silver rat thing."

The image rang a bell in her head. Cybermats, she recalled. I'm dealing with cybermen. Shit. "Where was it?"

"Over in the toys area. Wanted to get one for my nephew, but stock says there's no such item."

Aliya nodded. "Thank you." With that she left, but she couldn't find the cybermat anywhere. She let herself wander to a different part of the store, not paying attention to her surroundings, just fiddling with the sonic screwdriver once she was done. Her hand absently scratched at her head and tugged on a strand of her hair. She wasn't good at plans, not this regeneration.

It seemed like a failure. Like she'd failed him somehow. He had been so good at this, figuring out what the hostile aliens wanted, how they operated, how to defeat them. She just came up blank every time. She had often thought of herself as his equal but she came to the impaling conclusion that she was so far from that, so far from being anywhere near as brilliant, or as brave. Or as stupid, she thought wryly. The thought surprised her, but it was a strangely welcome surprise. It felt good to insult him in that way. It was almost…funny.

Still, she realised that her eyes were getting wet at the thought of him so she wiped at them quickly.

"Are you alright?" A voice nearby asked, and Aliya abruptly looked up to see a young human woman staring at her with concern. It occurred to her that she had seen this woman before, she was the one who had spoken to her at the playground. "Hang on, it's you."

"I'm fine," Aliya said, and tried to walk away, but she was followed.

"You don't look fine to me. Can I help at all?"

"Unless you've seen a little silver rat, no."

"Silver rat? Metal with red eyes?"

That made the Time Lady pause and turn back around. "Yes. You saw it?"

"Yeah, it was headed towards the stilettos when it went past a few minutes ago," The woman pointed towards the high heeled monstrosities, and Aliya very belatedly realised she'd ended up in the shoe section.

"Er, thank you – ?" She faltered when she realised she still didn't know the woman's name.

"Clara," the cute brunette supplied with a small smile. "And you are?"

"No one important," Aliya said offhandedly before dashing off in the direction she had been pointed to. Sure enough, the cybermat was there, lurking under a shelf. Although it had clearly been lying low, it seemed to recognise her as a threat because it leapt at her, knocking her back onto the floor with a thud. She wrestled with it, trying to keep its horrid mouth of real teeth away from her face. It was powerful, and she was not, but she managed to grab the sonic and hit it with a pulse that sent it scurrying in the opposite direction.

"What the hell was that?" Clara's voice made Aliya jump, and scramble to her feet.

"Nothing, don't worry about it."

"Don't worry about it? It was attacking you! It had teeth!"

"I'll sort it, don't you worry." Aliya began to walk back the way she had come, hoping that if she was unsociable enough, the human would go away.

"No, explain, because you obviously know what it is because you were able to make it go away with that thing in your hand," Clara reasoned as she followed. Aliya tore the sign across the lift which stated it was out of order and used the sonic to ensure it was again working. She hoped inside and pressed one of the buttons, hoping it would get her away from all the questions. But the brunette girl slipped through the doors at the last second. "Stop trying to lose me, I'm not going away until you tell me what that was! It was dangerous, and three aisles away from me and Artie!"

"Oh for sanity's sake, can't you leave me alone? This is absolutely none of your-" Aliya trailed off as she saw that they were no longer in the lift but in what appeared to be a cybership. "-concern."

"What?" The human frowned. "What's wrong?"

"Don't turn around."

Clara did exactly that and understandably began to panic. "Where are we?! What happened?!" She demanded, and Aliya winced, fiddling with the sonic to try and reverse it, noticing how the cybermen had picked up on their presence and were beginning to approach.

"I told you not to worry, but no, you had to follow me, and distract me!" She cursed, but then found the right setting, and the teleport reversed. With the next setting, she deactivated it with enough force for it to take them a significant amount of time to repair. Where their ship was up orbit, they wouldn't be able to get back down again for a while.

The two women left the lift abruptly, and Aliya bit her lip as she tried to think of what to do next. But Clara apparently still had some plans to interrupt.

"First there is a silver rat that tries to kill people, and then a bloody Star Trek teleport in the lift that took us to a place that looked like a spaceship!"

Aliya sighed exasperatedly. "It didn't look like a spaceship, it was a spaceship. It must be in orbit."

"Wait, so we were just in space?" Clara's brown eyes lit up at that. "Whoa. Seriously though, you need to explain. Who are you? You seem to know about all this stuff, but how?"

"My name is Aliya," Aliya answered quietly, "And as I said, I'm no one important. Go back to Archie or whatever his name was. You don't want to get mixed up in this."

"I already am! We were on a spaceship! Were those silver things robots?"

"They're cybermen, human parts plus technology, and very bad news."

"So they're not aliens?"

"On a semantic level, it's up for debate. I wish they were, most aliens are easier to deal with," Aliya muttered, but that answer didn't help any.

"So aliens are real? Like, actually properly real?" When she got an annoyed nod for an answer, Clara's eyes got wide but also filled with a strange excitement. "See, I'm definitely mixed up in this now, you can't tell me that aliens exist and expect me to just walk away!"

"Yes, actually, I can, go back to Artie and take him home, go watch TV and have a nice dinner or something."

The frown on the girl's face made it clear that Clara had realised that she did need to take Artie home. "Well, what are you going to do?"

"Catch myself a cybermat by waiting until after hours. Goodbye, Clara."

As it happened, just as the store was about to close and Aliya was about to settle in her hiding spot, a bubbly brunette appeared. One who was definitely not supposed to be there.

"So, where are we hiding, then?"

The Time Lady jumped a mile. "Clara, what the hell are you doing here?"

"You were right, Artie did need to go home, but that didn't mean I couldn't come back afterwards and help."

"I don't need help."

Clara sat down next to her, smiling in an infuriating way. "I think you do. So here I am."

Just then, the lights began to go out, and the slight darkness made Aliya edgy, but she tried to ignore it. They watched and waited until it was all clear, and got up. The cybermat didn't take long to appear, and between Clara wrestling with it and Aliya stunning it with the sonic, the two of them had it subdued within a minute.

They snuck out of the shopping centre, and Aliya saw the TARDIS down the street at the edge of an alley. "Alright," she told Clara, "Now you really can go home."

Clara crossed her arms stubbornly and gave a strange grin. "Yeah, that really isn't going to happen. I'm seeing this through to the end."

Aliya rolled her eyes but couldn't find the energy to argue anymore. "Fine! But do try to keep up and not ask stupid questions." They crossed the street and headed towards the blue box. Aliya got out the key – the ship didn't open for her with a click of her fingers like it had for the Doctor – and unlocked it with her cybermat free hand. She pushed in the door and entered the console room, and as she got to the console she heard Clara's gasp of surprise at the larger interior.

"It's smaller on the outside!" She exclaimed, and that made Aliya turn around to look at her strangely, and an unexpected laugh left the older woman's lips. "What?"

"Er, nothing," Aliya said offhandedly, "It's just that I'm fairly sure that no one's ever said that before. It was always 'bigger on the inside'."

"Well that works too, I suppose." Clara took in Aliya's unusual expression. "What's wrong?"

"I just…I think that was the first time I've laughed in – a very long time."

"Oh. Why?"

That one was harder to answer. "Because I've been alone for a very long time."

Clara let it go and focused on something far more prominent. "So, is this ship alien? Bigger on the inside and all."

"Yes."

The human regarded her with excited curiosity, her head tilted slightly to the side. "Are you an alien too?"

"Yes." Aliya briefly glanced up from where she was tinkering with the cybermat, trying to reprogram it. It had been 'playing possum' so it had taken another few pulses to properly reset. "Problem?"

"I suppose not."

After that they lapsed into a silence while the tinkering got done, and then Aliya took them straight to the next morning, much to Clara's amazement. They re-entered the store and Aliya began to scan so as to locate the next way they could get back to the cybership.

"It's going to be dangerous, Clara."

"So you keep saying." Clara said, unimpressed as she followed Aliya into the woman's changing area. The last stall was giving off strange signals, but was empty when they pulled back the curtain. But when they yanked on the mirror, it swung open to reveal a hole in the wall, and a tunnel leading down. "Wait, I thought you said they were in orbit?"

"Clearly, I was wrong. They're buried in the Earth, they've climbed up…used spare people to create new cybermen. Luckily, this cybermat is now a very powerful bomb, programmed to locate the most reactive piece of equipment and detonate next to it. It can blow the whole thing up while we're safe up here." Aliya let it loose down the tunnel and watched it zoom out of sight. "Job done, hopefully. Come on, we can check by scanning for the technology from the TARDIS."

As they headed back to the street, Clara frowned a little. "Isn't blowing them up a bit harsh? I mean, they are part human."

"They've killed people, and if this didn't happen, they would kill more. I don't have time for more ethical solutions, he's not around to tell me off now."

"Who?"

Aliya winced, realising she'd brought the Doctor up, however indirectly. "Someone who used to be in charge of this sort of thing. Just me now."

They got into the TARDIS and watched the readings on the scanner fluctuate and then disappear. The explosive cybermat had blown the whole thing up, as she had hoped.

"Nice job!" Clara beamed. "Do you do this sort of thing a lot?"

"I used to," Aliya admitted. "It's only started happening again recently. But I'm not used to doing it alone."

"Why?"

"He used to do it with me, or rather, he would do it and I would join him. But then he…" Her voice shook but she was determined to finish the sentence. "…died. He died. And now it's just me, it's been that way for years but I can never get accustomed to it."

Clara raised her eyebrows at the number, but then looked sympathetic. "Wow, I'm sorry. My mum died some years back, I know what it's like."

"My family died quite a while ago, he was something more…my best friend, my whole world, really," Aliya bit her lip and forced herself to keep it together, "And now he's gone. And I'm just lost. I can't…see it anymore."

"See what?"

"The point. Of anything. The beauty of the universe. He would take people with him because he had trouble seeing it, but when they saw it, he could. I never understood that, because I could always see it. But now, I can't and I wish I could more than anything." Aliya suddenly looked up as a wild and impossible idea occurred to her. "Clara, do you…do you want to come with me?"

Clara seemed very taken aback. "With you? In this thing?" Aliya nodded. "Where can it go, exactly?"

"Anywhere in time and space," the Time Lady said, with a small hint of the passion that the Doctor had always had. The words were so romantic, so full of wondrous possibilities. And it was clear that Clara understood that. Her brown eyes were full of excitement, but then worry.

"I would love to. But I've got the kids to look after."

"It's a time machine, you can go away for weeks or months and visit a thousand different places, and be back in five minutes."

Clara then grinned, her smile making her ten times prettier than she already was. "Yeah, alright then. Show me the stars, space girl."

"I'm far from a girl."

"Yeah, but spacewoman sounded lame."

"Or, you know, Aliya works fine too."

Clara smirked. "Yeah, it'll do, I suppose."

With an excited anticipation that she never thought she would feel again, Aliya grinned back at her and began working the controls. "Alright then, Clara, prepare to be impressed."

They saw the Rings of Akhaten, then got stuck on a Soviet submarine with an Ice Warrior, and then had to get a ride all the way back to the South Pole to get the TARDIS. They helped a scientist and a psychic rescue one of their descendants from a pocket universe, and stopped a mad woman from destroying the world from Victorian Yorkshire.

Then when Clara's kids worked out that she had been travelling in time, the four of them went to the best theme park in the universe only to encounter the cybermen for the second time.

But these cybermen were incredibly powerful and nowhere near as easily defeated. The cyber-planner latched onto Aliya, and they were in the middle of a game of chess with very high stakes.

This Doctor you think of…he was the Doctor who defeated the Cybermen so many times centuries ago, wasn't he ? The Cyber-planner taunted her. What a shame that you parted on such bad terms, but I suppose the two of you were always doomed in some way or another, with you so infatuated and him so indifferent. You hate him so much now, but you know that he would be so much better at fighting these battles than you. So much more clever.

Aliya did not answer, and tried to not let the words sting. Luckily, Clara then came in.

"Hey, is that you right now?"

"Yeah, it is."

"Prove it. Tell me something only Aliya knows."

"Well, only I know just how I feel about the Doctor, even if he is dead." Clara had learnt about the Doctor, of course, she and Aliya had shared a lot with each other during their travels. So, curiously, she listened. "I'm the only one who knows how much I hate him. I claim to care for him so, but I hate him intensely for how indifferent he was just before he died."

The brunette human slapped her friend across the face, and Aliya, now dominant, clutched her cheek and eyed her companion with surprise.

"How did you know?"

"Because I know that you hate him, but you love him too, even if you can never forgive him for what he said," Clara said in her know-it-all voice.

Things were good for a few minutes but again went bad. But they eventually succeeded in blowing up the Cybermen yet again, and got through a slightly awkward proposal from the Emperor to Clara. Once the kids were home, Aliya and Clara were ready to head off again.

It was about six months later that they ended up in World War Four. With all the gunfire around and the sheer amount of deadly projectiles dominating the place, it was surprising that they had managed to survive one day there. But on the way back to the TARDIS, the platoon that was escorting them was targeted by a high power grenade. Aliya shoved them all out of the way, and – ignoring Clara's protests – curled herself around the grenade. It went off and the spike of radiation, contained by her body, hit her full force. Instantly, she puked up a large amount of blood. The pain was dizzying, but with Clara's help, she got up.

"Come on, let's get you back to the TARDIS, something in the med bay will be able to help," Clara assured her, and Aliya smiled sadly at her.

"Clara, that blast was definitely fatal. Do you remember what I told you about face changing?"

The girl's face fell as they got into the blue box. "Oh. Is that going to happen now? I don't want you to change."

Aliya stumbled to the console platform and fell to her knees just in time to cough up more blood. "Shit, this one hurts." But something felt different, wrong…and that was when she realised that there was no gold glow coming from anywhere on her body. With a slight panic, she quickly said, "Activate Emergency Program One."

The TARDIS began to pilot itself back to Clara's house. Meanwhile, Clara knelt by Aliya's side as the Time Lady lay down on the console floor.

"Hey, it'll be alright, you told me about this, remember?" She said with a nervous smile, but Aliya shook her head.

"Clara, I'm so sorry, but it's not working. There's no sign of regeneration, I can't feel it. Whatever that was…it's too fatal, too fast." Aliya felt tears welling up in her eyes just as Clara got teary as well.

"No, you can't die, that's not fair," she said, clutching Aliya's arm. "You promised that you would just change."

"It's alright, the TARDIS has brought us back to your home."

"That's not important!"

"Well, I didn't want you to be stranded on a random planet, so yes, it is."

"But you're dying!"

Aliya shrugged, and winced at the pain still searing through her. Oh, radiation burned. "Clara, listen, I need you to do something for me. In Cardiff, there's an organisation called Torchwood. I need you to find it. The man you're looking for is called Captain Jack Harkness. He's a friend of the mine and of the Doctor's. And there's a girl there. Jenny. She's the Doctor's daughter. Bring her to the TARDIS, it's rightfully hers now. Tell her I'm sorry. The TARDIS will teach her how to fly it."

"Don't you dare talk like that, I won't let you die on me!" Clara said forcefully, almost yelling, and it made Aliya laugh.

"I love how determined you are. How feisty. How brilliant. Clara, do you even realise what you've done for me?" She looked up at the human girl and gently touched her cheek. "You made me laugh for the first time in decades. You got me to see again. You fixed me. I wanted to be alive, travelling with you. I'm sorry it couldn't have been for longer. But you see? Because of you, I'm not happy to be dying, I want to live. That's because of you. Thank you, Clara Oswald."

"Please don't," Clara whispered, and Aliya gave her a brave smile.

"It's alright, Clara. I've lived long enough, and it's mostly been a good life, especially thanks to you. And who knows? Maybe I'll see him again."

"And you can slap him across the face and give him a piece of your mind," Clara giggled before sobering. Aliya laughed before coughing again.

"You know I will. I'll be able to find out exactly what arrogant thing he was going to say. But at least I might be with him."

"I'm gonna miss you so much."

"Maybe you could travel with Jenny. You'll like her, I know you will."

"It wouldn't be the same."

"Maybe not, and maybe it would be better." A harsher coughing fit hit her. "I think it's here. Time to go."

"No," Clara sobbed, but Aliya just kissed her hand, leaving a smear of blood on it accidentally.

"It's okay," she said gently, and with only a hint of strength left. "Goodbye, Clara. Thank you."

With those words, Aliyanadevoralundar died.

When she became aware of being conscious, her first thoughts were wordless ones of surprise and relief. It was a strange white place that she was in, and not exactly a place at all. She didn't know what it was.

When she looked down, she was very surprised to see that she had her old body, the blonde one, the one she had had for so long and been so attached to. Why it was that she had it now, she also didn't know. Out of random interest, she looked down to see what she was wearing. It was a simple and pretty white dress, though not one she could recall wearing before. Strange.

"How do you feel?"

Aliya spun around upon hearing the voice, the oh so familiar voice. Sure enough, there he stood, bold as brass. The Doctor. Her Doctor. He even had his usual outfit on; trousers, suspenders, tweed jacket, bowtie, plus the ridiculous hair.

For a moment she just stared, unsure of how to react. Was this real? It took all of one second for her to realise that she didn't care.

"I don't know," she answered, "I thought I was dead."

"You are. We both are."

"Then how are we here?"

"Does it matter?"

That was enough to remind her just how mad she was at him, and she slapped him forcefully. The sound of it was very satisfying, but less so was his look of complete understanding. As if he thought that he…deserved it? Well, he did, she didn't want him to just accept it either…where was the fun in that?

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to leave you alone. But I had to stop the Time Fire."

"I know."

"I missed you."

"I missed you too."

Then they were hugging tightly and Aliya knew that this moment was how it was meant to be, the two of them together, him with his floppy hair and gangly limbs, and her with her short hair and eyes that followed a Time Lord biological mutation instead of a human norm.

"Wait, no, I'm mad at you!" She suddenly recalled, and pushed away from him. "You arsehole!" He flinched a bit at that. "Are you serious? 'Of course'? Do you have no sense of decency? How dare you say that to me, how dare you leave me with nothing but your damn ego and confidence that everyone loves you, that any other notion would be absurd!" She hit him, on the chest, and it felt so good that she did it with both hands, repeatedly. "I know that you never loved me that way after the Time War but you didn't need to be so horrid about it! I poured my heart out to you and you stomped on it like it was shit!" By that point, she was crying. "All I wanted was a smile! Or a thank you! Just something so I knew you appreciated me telling you! But no, you couldn't. Even. Give. Me. That!" With one last hit, she shoved him back and slumped dejectedly. "I hated you so much for so long. Give me one good reason why I still shouldn't."

He watched her sadly, a strange guilt in his eyes. "Because you don't know what I was doing to say."

"I don't need to," She snapped, "It would have been something like of course, I am very lovable. Or of course, I love me too."

"You're wrong."

"Oh, go on then, tell me what it was that I missed. What the exact egotistical statement was, let's hear it!" She yelled.

The Doctor took a step closer to her. "You're an idiot, you have no idea. You're so busy being angry that you didn't take the time to consider the alternatives."

"What alternatives?" She asked bitterly, but without moving away from him. Gently, he took her face in his hands.

"You told me that you loved me, that you never stopped, and that you knew I didn't love you, and that that was okay." His eyes were so intense, she had forgotten what it was like to look into them, torture and bliss simultaneously. "But you never knew. What I was going to say was, of course I love you, Aliya. I never stopped either. As if I would know how."

A rush of bemusement flooded through Aliya upon hearing the completed sentence that was almost the exact opposite of what she had expected. "But-"

She never got a chance to finish the phrase because at that moment, he pulled her closer and kissed her deeply, properly, and without any ulterior motive, for the first time since the Time War. She went still and was unable to move, only able to think about the fact that the Doctor was kissing her. The Doctor loved her. Apparently he had never stopped. The thought made her feel giddy and impossibly light. And his lips felt so right against hers, his hands so gentle yet so assured and firm as he held her close. As she kissed him back with all that she had, her only thought was that finally, she was truly, truly happy.

When they finally broke apart, they smiled almost shyly at each other before their smiles evolved into full grins, and let their hands join, fingers interlocking.

"So what is this place, exactly? Considering that we're dead but somehow…existing," Aliya asked him curiously, and he smiled again.

"Come on, I'll explain it to you. But I assure you, it's quite nice. I was a bit lonely, but I have a good feeling that won't be a problem anymore." The Doctor led her by the hand as they began to walk. Finally, after over a thousand years, the two Time Lords were at peace.

So, kind of sad but with a happy ending, right? And just imagine that Jenny and Clara got up to lovely shenanigans back on the TARDIS. Thanks to a fab bit of fanart on tumblr I actually kind of ship them and it's funny that this old oneshot actually left that window open way before I saw the fanart.

Reviews are much appreciated, thanks!

-MayFairy :)

p.s. I'm getting there with the IBTS update. Slowly.