I am sorry it's taken so long to update and finish this chapter, but that's life. Anyway, enjoy. Also, I don't own Doctor Who.

Please let me know what you think.

Damage.

"What?" Yaz whispered. "How can you be the Timeless Child, unless…you said you were two thousand years old? You just lost your memory, right?"

The Doctor sighed; only just in her new life, and already she was dealing with humans who were clueless, but given how she hadn't told her friends anything about Time Lord history then they had no idea just how long the Time Lords had been around. "How would that work, Yaz? No, Time Lord history goes back billions of years. Tecteun left Gallifrey before the Time Lords even appeared."

"Then how can you be the Timeless Child, Doc?" Graham asked confused.

The Doctor sighed again. "I think I'm a clone of the Timeless Child, not the Timeless Child themselves."

"A clone?"

"The Time Lords gave up sexual reproduction a long time ago," the Doctor explained, although she was hesitant about giving this much detail away given how private this was. "We use a form of artificial gestation; Rassilon, the Founder of Time Lord society, determined the best way to keep the universe stable was to link us to it and to ensure we ourselves never evolved. It's a hard thing to explain," she held up her hand while the others looked surprised by this little tip about Time Lord culture which she usually left ambiguous when speaking about her people, "so don't. To keep us the same, Rassilon introduced the Looms, devices which reproduced us."

"But how is that possible, just stopping evolution? You can't, can you?" Yaz looked uncertainly at her.

"Anything is possible, Yaz."

"So how can you be a clone, then?" Ryan asked.

"The Looms are like the transporters from Star Trek; they take the genetic material and form it from there, creating a walking, speaking being instantly. But they can work in reverse. They can disassemble genetic material and reform it later, but whatever came out from that would be a clone, technically speaking," the Doctor looked solemnly down at her hands. "That's the only thing that makes sense in my mind. I don't remember being a child standing underneath some strange wormhole. I don't remember an accident as a child which caused me to regenerate. I remember a different life. I remember the years I spent at the Academy, my time as a student with him," she spat the word with such venom it took her friends by surprise, "and the other members of our little group who were wasted on Gallifrey and wanted it to be dragged out of its complacency and into a new age but we all knew we would never do it since our futures were away from Gallifrey."

The Doctor was silent for a moment. "Being a clone…. it makes sense, really," she said. "A long time ago, I started to wonder about whether I was the product of a Loom Jumper when I saw a number of faces of people I didn't know during a nasty mental battle with another renegade Time Lord. But I never imagined…."

Ryan, Yaz, and Graham

The Doctor looked down sadly as she remembered those days she'd played truant from the Academy, still haunted by the knowledge hers may not be her only existence. She remembered hanging out with a version of the Master who hadn't yet shown himself to be a murderous monster, working with Drax on technical courses, seeing the Rani conduct one experiment after another, and working with the Monk on history. "I miss those days, especially now…," she said, closing her eyes, shaking from the anger at how her life had changed her from going out into the universe as a scholar before she had changed into a troubleshooter.

While she would never give up her life because she knew she was doing some good, a part of her wondered what life would have been like if Clara had never stopped her from taking that Type 53 TARDIS instead of her Type 40, but while she knew her life would have different, she knew she would never give it up.

"I miss some of my friends. I don't even know if the Master killed them all," she whispered. "Everyone of the renegades who'd left Gallifrey knew he was dangerous. Everyone on Gallifrey knew he was dangerous…Please….say some of them survived."

"Maybe they did. There's a chance," Yaz whispered, gently putting a hand on her shoulder.

The Doctor looked up at her with a smile.

"Why the secrecy?" Ryan whispered. "Didn't you trust us?"

"Ryan-."

"No, I wanna know,' Ryan insisted. "What, did you think we were children."

The Doctor was becoming annoyed by the questions. She could understand the anger, but she refused to be spoken to like that. She thought to herself if she in her current life would ever hide secrets the way her previous self had.

The answer was she didn't know.

"No," she said quietly. "I never thought you were a child, Ryan. Looking back I knew I was secretive. From a certain point of view, I could say it comes from everything I had been through in my previous three lives. Two lives ago, as soon as I regenerated, I found myself embroiled in a long temporal war, that was paradoxical in nature. A space church in my future would guard a planet I was protecting as well because my people were trying to return from the pocket universe I'd placed them in although I hadn't known about it at the time."

"What?"

The Doctor sighed. "In the Time War, the version of myself that was fighting the Daleks decided to end it by destroying my own people. I was tired of the fighting, tired of my people and their self-centred attitudes. I'd had enough. So, I stole a device that would end it all, time locking the Time War completely. And then….I found myself in the TARDIS, in a new body, with no memory of what had happened. All I knew was silence. I could not hear a single Time Lord in the universe, so I believed I had killed them all. I all but disowned my wartime self and travelled through time and space.

"But two lives ago, I found myself in a multi-century war with a religious cult who wanted to make sure an event that happened in my life never did happen. They….kidnapped a little girl from her parents, turned her into a psychotic assassin, so then she'd kill me, manipulating events as they went. I tried to save the little girl, but her older self told me after I'd failed I had brought the whole mess on myself, that I had made everyone so afraid, and I just created more monsters."

The Doctor looked away from her friends as that confrontation with River during those dark moments in her eleventh incarnation flooded her mind, which echoed with the way Adric had died which had made her fifth incarnation see their travels was more dangerous than ever when they'd blundered into that mess with the Cybermen because she had been curious after that encounter with the androids, to that later encounter with the Daleks which resulted in Tegan leaving.

"I managed to trick them by faking my own death, and I went into the shadows. I don't think it's worked because I've become big again, but maybe there's still time to change that," she said absently at the end, thinking it would be incredibly appealing for her if she found any record of her and erased it completely. "But when the point is when it was over with, I became more secretive because of the need to remain quiet. For the most part, I succeeded, but it became second nature for me. I think that's why I kept what happened to Gallifrey secret."

"Are you gonna try to find out if there are other Time Lord survivors, Doc?" Graham asked, but not before he sent a chiding look at Ryan. He could understand why his grandson felt this way, but there was no call shoving his feelings down the Doctor's throat when she was clearly hurting.

"Yeah. Trouble is I don't know where to start. I'd like to try to restore Gallifrey if I can," she rubbed her eyes.

Yaz, Ryan, and Graham shared a look of confusion. They had seen the devastation of the Doctor's planet, and there was no way she could repair it all.

"Er, how are you going to do that? I mean, that city was wrecked-," Yaz began.

"True, but there's still Time Lord technology there. There are numerous systems I can use in the Citadel to undo the destruction caused by the Master and the Cybermen. I can see ways of bringing my people back, and if it works, then they can finally track the Master down and deal with him once and for all," the Doctor finished coldly, surprising her friends.

"That…doesn't sound like you, Doctor," Yaz said hesitantly, wincing; she didn't really know the Doctor in this current incarnation, and while she could see the same personality traits between this Doctor and the one they'd known, they had never seen her this vengeful.

The Doctor sighed. "I'm tired, Yaz," she whispered so brokenly. "For centuries I have tried to make him stop, to be the kid I knew on Gallifrey. In my previous life, I tried rehabilitating Missy, the last incarnation of the Master who'd regenerated into a female body. For a time I thought I had succeeded….only she didn't last long because we accidentally ran into one of her past selves, who was creating a new race of Cybermen. She returned to her bad habits when it would have been so easy for her to be the person I'd wanted her to be.

"But now, after being shot and forced to regenerate again because of her successor, seeing what he did to my people, he is irredeemable and he is unstable. He has already shown his evil many times over, and enough is enough. I've had it with fighting him time and time again. In the past, I might have seen it as an enjoyable game of chess, but those days are….oh…..centuries over. The line has to be drawn somewhere. He has got to be stopped! I want the Master out of my lives," the Doctor finished before she looked down. "There comes a time where you get tired of an enemy, and I've reached my limit. He's not going to change, I see that now."

The Doctor looked down in disappointment, not seeing her friends exchange a look of surprise.

"Anyway," the Doctor lifted her head. "If you three don't mind, I'd like to get back to sleep. I'm so tired after being linked to the Matrix and going through a regeneration."

"Of course, Doc," Graham said before anyone said anything as they watched the Doctor settle back down to sleep.

Yaz headed for the kitchen. Her mind was still on the conversation, surprised by what the Doctor had said about the Master. She could see things from the Doctor's point of view, but she hadn't expected her to make a decision that quickly and so seriously.

"Yaz?"

Yaz turned in surprise. "Graham? Don't do that!"

"Sorry, love," Graham tried smiling abashed, but his face settled. "Are you okay?"

"I dunno anymore," Yaz sighed. "I knew she could regenerate, but this Doctor…I don't know how much she has changed. But the Doctor I knew would never have talked like that…."

"I know, how do you think I feel? I was as surprised as you were when she said that, but what did you expect? The Doctor's been through hell, especially if she's just had to deal with all the stuff she's had to cope with. I just wish she'd told us about what had happened with Gallifrey," Graham hissed, looking upset on the Doctor's behalf.

"I know," Yaz looked down, remembering how insensitive she and the others had been shortly after that mess with the Master and the Kasaavin. "But she was borderline merciless just now."

"Don't you think she has the right? Yaz, she's just found out she's the reincarnation of an alien who was used to give the Time Lords their power to change their faces, and she's discovered everything she's ever known is a lie. I think she has the right to be in her current mood."

"But do you remember when she said you'd be kicked out of the TARDIS if you killed Tim Shaw?" Yaz asked, making Graham stiffen at the memory.

"What about it?" he asked guardedly.

"And when she went for that Dalek?" Yaz went on to make her point.

"Yaz, just get to the point."

"She said if you killed Tim Shaw, she would drop you back home, but she thinks that gives her permission to go for a Dalek, and now she's going for the Master. Why would she do that?" Yaz said. She knew she was crossing a line, but she didn't want to travel with someone who was going to be a liar and a hypocrite. Not only had the Doctor warned Graham she would drop him off if he killed or harmed the Stenza warrior who'd caused nothing but misery and pain to so many, but she had then gone after a Dalek.

While she looked up to the Doctor in her own way, Yaz knew the Doctor - well, the one she had known - talked so much and she didn't think of the long-term problems until it was too late. She had been so fixated on the Master she had ignored the Lone Cyberman, and Yaz could not help but wonder if all those needless deaths could have been prevented had the Doctor focused on the Cyberman before going after the Master again. But when she had gone after the Dalek, Yaz had remembered what she had been saying to Graham about revenge. It seemed so holier than thou, and it had always pissed her off.

"I did that because I didn't want anyone else to be what I was," a now-familiar Irish accent said.

Yaz and Graham turned. The Doctor was standing there, looking tired and shaky and not very happy. "I'm trying to get some sleep, and I can't concentrate on a healing coma because you two are talking so loud. I heard you."

"I'm sorry-," Yaz said apologetically, but what else could she say after that.

The Doctor ignored her. "I didn't want any of you to be what I was. After the Time War, do you have any idea of what I went through? I had just believed I had committed genocide on not just the Time Lords, but the Daleks as well. I kept telling myself I had done it because if I hadn't the Time War would have destroyed the universe. Even the Time Lords were dangerous. Yaz, the Time Lords have or had or have the power to rip space and time to shreds, put it all back together, and then do it all over again.

"In the body, I had afterwards, I was suffering from severe survivor's guilt. Whenever I encountered a Dalek, I went mad and they caused more death and destruction whenever I encountered them. Even I was frightened by my anger whenever I saw them, so I am sorry if I appear to you as a hypocrite, Yaz. But you fail to understand something. We are all hypocrites, even you are. So don't you ever stand there and preach to me from a moral high ground that doesn't exist. When I told Graham about what I'd do if he tried to kill Tim Shaw, I did it because I was hoping he would be better than I was when it comes to the Daleks, and yes I know I made mistakes when we met that Dalek. I'm not stupid, Yaz. Don't ever think I am. I know my flaws. I talk too much, especially in my last incarnation and a few others before then, and I am happier talking and yakking until I'm blue in the face without taking notice of everything going on around me until the truth is thrown into my face. I don't need or want you to tell me my flaws."

The Doctor sighed tiredly and rubbed her eyes. "I am tired, I'll speak to you later," she whispered quietly and she turned around and walked out of the room, only this time she grabbed her old coat and pulled out the TARDIS key. She ignored Ryan and just walked inside, pausing over the threshold of the TARDIS she had taken from Gallifrey. It had been a long time since she had walked into a TARDIS console room with the basic white theme, although that time where she had encountered her first incarnation (she had no idea if that was her first life), and that Ruth incarnation came second.

Mm, maybe I should reset the desktop theme in my own TARDIS so it looks neater, she thought to herself before she went to the police box shape of her TARDIS and went inside. She was tired of humans right now. All she wanted was to rest in the Zero room until she was properly healed, and she wasn't going to get that, even if the couch out there was still comfortable. And they didn't know about the Zero room.

As she walked into the TARDIS, adjusting the architectural systems to bring the Zero room closer to where she was. It was cheating a little bit, but she felt more with it than when she had been in her fifth incarnation. Thinking about her previous lives had the Doctor leaning against the console. Knowing her luck now, the Doctor was willing to bet that what she had thought was her fifth incarnation was actually her 90th or something like that. How many lives had she led? Would she ever know for sure?

All she knew was the Master was right.

Everything she had known was nothing more than a pack of lies. And she had no idea what to do next.