Chapter Text
A small girl with pale blonde hair wakes to the sound of a fist knocking gently against metal, the sound that heralds the start of every new day.
“Mhmm,” she groans, still groggy with sleep as she is torn from her strange and vivid dreams.
The sleepy six-year-old stretches under her sheets, shaking off the comfort of sleep and her fantastical dreams. Visions of galaxies dancing before her eyes, her small hands always reaching toward them but never quite grasping them.
“Good morning, Miss Peyton,” a friendly voice calls as the heavy door is pushed open. The girl sits up to see the familiar face of Mr Donovan, her favourite adult at the facility holding her breakfast tray. He serves as her primary carer and teacher, and perhaps the only person who truly listens to her.
“Did you get Lucky Charms?” Peyton asks hopefully, quickly scrambling out of the little bed and across the room to sit at the small table under the windowsill, granting a view of the courtyard of the Tower of London with the men and women in suits milling about in the morning light.
“Lucky Charms aren’t good for a growing lady like you,” he smiles as he places the plastic tray of food onto the Winnie the Pooh placemat.
Peyton frowns at the egg and bacon smiley-face beaming up at her accompanied by a glass of orange juice sitting beside the plate. Six years old and never has she tasted the sugary goodness of Lucky Charms despite her frequent requests. Well, she assumes they are good. Anything with that many colours should taste brilliant.
She picks up the fork grumpily and pokes at her meal, careful not to spill any on her new pink pyjamas as Mr Donovan brushes and twists her hair into two straight braids.
As the fork clatters onto the plate, Mr Donovan picks it up and dabs at the girl’s mouth with a cloth. “Alrighty, you get yourself dressed. I’ll be back soon to take you for your lessons.”
Peyton nods obediently and slides of the chair and heads in the direction of her closet as she listens to the sound of the door opening and closing again. Once alone, she pulls out a pale green dress, one of her favourites. She admires the pretty lace collar and swishes the dress in front of her to see the fabric dance.
Just faintly, Peyton can hear the morning bustle of London beyond her stone tower. The cars and busses rumble and honk along the busy streets beyond the perimeters of U.N.I.T headquarters. The sound ignites her imagination. What would it be like to be out there? Going to school with other kids, playing in a real park?
She had asked Mr Donovan once if she could go to a proper school, it was all she had ever wanted. He had shaken his head with a soft smile and told her that she was very special, so much smarter than the other children her age. This place was what was best for her.
Her feet swing, shoes just brushing against the grass as she sits at the wooden desk in the garden, not quite paying attention to the lesson at hand. She is far too busy watching patches of blue sky fight their way through the grey blanket of clouds above.
It’s Saturday. Kids don’t have lessons on Saturdays. Peyton rather thinks that she should be at a park with swings, a climbing wall, and a big curly slide. Not here learning about boring things.
“Peyton? Peyton!”
Mr Donovan’s irritated voice draws her back to reality. She looks down at the textbook he has just placed on the desk in front of her with the incredibly riveting title of ‘A-Level Physics’.
“Look, we are breaking protocol by letting you have lessons outside, but you need to pay attention.”
“Why can’t I just go to a park like a real kid? There’s one not far from here, isn’t there? I saw it when you were showing me the maps on the computer. Just for an hour or two please,” she begs.
The man looks at her and sighs, getting down on one knee to be on her level. Peyton hates when adults do that.
“You’re here so we can keep you safe, you know that right?” He looks into her eyes, dark eyebrows pinching together, his usually cheery attitude melting away. He almost looks… sad.
“But-”
“No buts,” he says sternly. “How about you choose what we learn about for the rest of the morning?”
Peyton turns to perch on the very edge of her seat, her eyes widening. “Can you tell me more about… you know… the secret stuff?”
Mr Donovan looks away for a moment. “You know what Mr Prentiss said. I’m not supposed to tell you-”
She looks at him, pleading with her eyes the way she knows melts his heart and gets him to do almost anything she asks for, or at least compromises.
“I don’t know much anyway,” he concedes.
“Please?”
“Okay,” he sits on both his knees, quickly turning his head back and forth to make sure no one else is nearby.
"Your father wasn't a very nice man." This she knew. Two years ago, the adults began telling her things little by little, mostly because she wouldn't stop asking questions. "And he wasn't human, he was from another world." Again, old news. "He was from the planet Gallifrey, a long, long way away from here. And on this planet lives the Gallifreyans." He pauses, as if waiting for her to respond. She doesn't. "He was one of the last of his kind. He and another man survived."
“Where did everyone else go?”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I don’t know if anyone knows.”
“What about the other man?” She presses on. No one has mentioned someone like her father before. It's always just 'your father's evil' this, and 'your father is gone' that.
“Who is he?”
“His name is the Doctor,” he says quietly, clearly uncomfortable about not following his orders.
“Where is he?” Peyton says excitedly, almost forgetting to be quiet. “He’s like me so he must be very clever, why can’t I live with him?”
“He is but…” he looks at her apologetically. "The Doctor brings violence and danger wherever he goes. It would be cruel to leave a child in his care. The best place for you is boring old, safe Earth."
She nods slowly, processing things. “So, I have to stay here until I am grown?”
“We’re protecting you,” he assures her. “I just hope you know that.”
She walks down the stone halls toward the bathroom with Mr Donovan behind her. She keeps trying to tell him that she doesn’t need an escort, thank you very much, but he keeps insisting.
She purses her lips cynically as U.N.I.T employees smile as they pass her like they’re her friend. No one here is her friend. Donovan maybe, but Peyton wants a real friend. A kid her age. Someone to play with, and not chess or word puzzles. She wants to play hide and seek, she wants to scramble over playgrounds and parks, to be free.
And that's when something snaps in her brain. Her senses sharpen, the thump of her twin hearts in her chest grow louder, and the only impulse running through her body is to turn on her heel and sprint.
And that's what she does.
Adrenaline running through her veins, she sprints through the building, the layout of the compound perfectly mapped in her head from years of walking its halls. She doesn't know where she is running to but there are three exits nearby, unfortunately, all heavily guarded. That could be a problem.
She hears alarms blaring and footsteps behind her. By all logic she should have been snatched up by now, she's barely four feet tall while these guards are all at least six. Even with her special abilities, Mr Donovan keeps telling her about, it is amazing that no one has caught up to her yet.
Nevertheless, she pushes these concerns aside and rounds a corner seeing a set of double doors unguarded. She runs toward them, arms outstretched to push them open.
Without a moment wasted, she dives behind a large object. Her chest heaving, body still surging with chemicals. She looks around at her surroundings and it dawns on her where she is.
The holding stores. A great big garage that U.N.I.T stores all the alien technology that has not yet made its way to the forbidden Black Archives. That's when she sees it, the open black suitcase. Inside it, a Vortex Manipulator. The doors burst open again and a flood of scientists and guards run in, looking around frantically.
"Is there anything in here that is harmful or that could aid her escape?" An angry-looking guard barks at a weedy scientist.
"N-no, but-" she is cut off.
"Right then, she's either hiding or has already run through," he decides. "You lot, sweep the area, the rest of you, onwards with me."
The sound of heavy boots slowly moves away and through an unseen doorway.
Peyton makes herself as small as possible, wishing she wore something a little darker rather than the green dress. She can hear her double pulse in her skull as she listens for footsteps coming closer. She soon realises they all are searching in the same area together instead of spreading out. She almost laughs but knowing the situation she bites her lip.
The footsteps and murmurs soften, and she risks peeking out of her hiding spot. The scientists are tasked with checking the area and currently, they were inspecting some sort of alien quad bike. Peyton glances back to the Vortex Manipulator. It could be her ticket out of here.
Mr Donovan gave her a book that talked about Vortex Manipulators in one chapter. How U.N.I.T acquired it, she has no idea as it was published in the year 5026.
She knows that if that thing still works, if she hits the main button without entering in new coordinates it will reverse the last trip it took. She has no idea where it could be but it has to be better than here. Being cooped up without seeing the outside world for eighteen years and then going out with little to no social skills or awareness of the world around her. She plucks up her courage and races out from her hiding spot toward the table three meters away.
"Hey don't touch that!" One of the scientists yell, causing all of them to turn around and sprint toward her but they are too far away. She wraps it around her wrist, as big as it may be and smiles triumphantly.
"Tell Mr Donovan I'll miss him," Peyton screams and slams the button.
In a flash, she falls ungracefully into a bush, leaves and twigs clawing at her skin. As she scrambles to her feet it takes a second for her to regain her centre, her head spinning and her stomach a little sick.
She looks around with wonder. It worked! She is standing in a play park of all places by a road with real cars and real houses. She's free.
With a deep breath, Peyton smiles. At least she's on Earth.
A man sitting on a nearby bench stands up and throws a newspaper in the bin before adjusting his blue suspenders and walking off. Peyton's watched plenty of movies to know what happens now. She runs over to the bin and fishes it out, scanning for the date.
22/07/1995 it reads. It's written in English, a British newspaper by the looks of the front-page article. She looks around for any signs or shop windows that might give away where exactly she's ended up. She walks down a street adjacent to the park and finds herself in front of a quaint little shop titled LEADWORTH BAKERY.
She pulls the Vortex Manipulator off her wrist and throws it down a nearby drain, hopefully hiding it from the world.
A new life begins here for Peyton Saxon. Never to return to U.N.I.T, only to be free and maybe, just maybe, she'll meet this Doctor and he will take her to see the stars that paint her dreams.
"It's true, I swear," Amelia insists. "It really happened."
“Blue boxes don’t just fall out of the sky,” Rory reasons
“Well, I believe her,” Peyton smiles.
Peyton has lived in the tiny town of Leadworth for little over six months. It had been suspiciously easy integrating herself into this new life.
No social services were called, of course, she didn't technically exist, and a couple, the Barrett's, took her in with way too few questions. She was wary at first, it was all too perfect. For a day or two, she was convinced that this was U.N.I.T's doing but quickly reminded herself that she travelled nineteen years into the past, they couldn't have known. Mr Donovan might even be in high school.
That's a weird thought.
But she loves her family. They watch telly together in the evenings while eating something sweet that her adoptive father, Lawrence bakes, and her mother, Teresa drives her and Amelia Pond to school every morning and plays songs from the eighties on a little, beat-up cassette. It's a perfect life.
She found herself next-door neighbours with the flame-haired Scottish girl who lives only with her aunt and the two young girls quickly became friends. Her friend she always dreamed of. They run around playgrounds on warm summer days and have sleepovers, curled up under the covers together, giggling about nothing in particular.
And it didn't take much longer for Amelia to introduce her to Melody Zucker and Rory Williams, her two best friends and they quickly became Peyton's too.
Amelia, Rory, Melody, and Peyton. The tight-knit band of seven-year-olds telling stories and having fun.
A couple of nights ago a strange man landed in Amelia's garden. As the girl recounts the night, Peyton thinks at first that it is just some fanciful tale she invented, she lives next door and she didn't hear anything, fast asleep by the time a box from outer space landed in her neighbour’s backyard.
"His name is the Doctor, and besides, it's not a box, it's a time machine," she leans over threateningly to Rory.
The Doctor. That name. Peyton's eyes widen. He has to be, it's the only explanation! A real Gallifreyan, just like her father. So close to her, yet so far. She clenches her small fists in her lap, an attempt to remain secretive about her knowledge of the man, as little as it is.
She hasn't told anyone about her being half-alien, and she never will. Doctor's appointments are easy enough to avoid. No one needs to know about the two little hearts beating inside her chest.
"He promised me he'd be five minutes, but he must have got the times wrong. He'll be back soon though," Amelia says confidently.
"When he comes back can I meet him?" Melody asks.
"Me too," Peyton nods, with a large grin.
"Of course," Amelia smiles. "You can come too, I guess," she nudges Rory.