You know what the funniest thing is about traveling to all those different planets is? If you can get over the people with the weird skin and hair it's just like being back on Earth in most ways. Bunch of people that live and work together, families, friends. The TARDIS makes it all sound English and what's there to say it's not just a part of home?

The first time I was away from home it wasn't the aliens or the big bloody space station sort of thing that made it alien to me. It was looking out on the ice planet and seeing three moons in the sky. That was when I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

And, yes, I can make fun of my name but you can't.

Every time I'm in a new place I have to count the moons. Like some people have to collect pins from every new country they go to I keep a catalog of the moons to remember it all by.

"So that's it then?"

Ace wasn't looking at David she was busy fiddling with the controls of the TARDIS so she'd have an excuse not to face him. Which was ridiculous, Ace, warrior who made her own explosives and flew the prototype combat TARDIS and she was afraid to look up.

"Yeah that's it. You're back home, looks like a few hours after I picked you up." Which had been six months ago when she had landed on earth around 2013 to deal with alien drug runners leaving their goods with humans who had no idea what it would do to them. There was several new groves of trees that needed looking after now.

"Ace aren't you even going to say goodbye?"

Her shoulders slumped and fists banged on the control panel before she finally looked up at David. He was one of those thin technical guys who looked more comfortable at the controls of a computer than standing with a packed bag in his hands. "You wanted to go home David, you're home. What good is saying goodbye?"

"I'm sorry." She wasn't sure if he was apologizing for wanting to be brought home or for asking her to say goodbye. "It's just, I did want to stay Ace, but my family needs me. I have to go." Just before he went through the open door of the TARDIS he turned to look back. "I'll miss you."

And like that he was gone.

It was the first time Ace had picked up someone to travel with her since Gallifrey had been destroyed. She didn't know how the Professor had done it. The travelling to save people and the way he picked people up and left them behind. Maybe in a few centuries she'd get the knack of it.

But right now it just hurt like hell.

"Goodbye David. Good luck." Ace flipped a lever and the familiar wheezing thump of the TARDIS' motors began. She didn't look back.

What Ace Means

A is for Abstract C is for Confused E is for Excellent

1 question...
1 chance...
1 honest answer...

That's all you get. Ask me one question. Any one question, anything, no matter how crazy it is. An honest answer. No catch.

Well, okay, there's just one. All comments will be screened so your question stays private between you and me, and only you will get to see my answer to your question. But I dare you to repost this and see what people ask you.

Current Mood: curious

Used to be I was terrified of this mansion back in Perivale. I could feel something in it you know? Something horrible that sucked all the light out of the whole area.

Then I found out there was so many other things to be afraid of out there in the universe.

I never looked afraid but the Professor saw right through me. I was afraid of everything. I just learned to chin the bastards that made me scared. It definitely helped.

After all the stuff on Galifrey I was afraid I was going to be alone.

I've decided to try and find the Professor somewhere in time. I don't know what will happen when I do. If I find him what he'll say or if I'll screw up time. I don't even know if you can find another Timelord out in the universe of time after they're gone but I'm still going to try.

Now I'm afraid I'm not the last, and if I'm not what will happen.

( My Daemon meme )

( Lyrics )

I wish we could talk Professor. I have so many questions and I don't know what to do. It's not like I can just lay down and pack it in. You know I don't do that no matter how scared I am.

Remember that time we had to deal with the Chase mansion back in Perivale? I don't mind saying I was that half scared of it. I was so angry with you for making me go there. I think the only person I'd ever been that angry with before that was my Mum. I thought I knew what evil was back then That house, something in it was evil and I knew it. That's why I burned it down but you made me go back to when the evil was real and I found out what I thought was evil was just kids games wasn't it Professor?

Manisha's flat being firebombed and her being killed, that was just petty evil. Sad little people stuck in their fear and trying to burn it out.

The mansion was just the old left over breath of something evil that we'd stopped decades before. Fenric was my first experience with what evil really could be and I still thought that we could win. I loved you back then, thought you needed me to watch your back for you.

I didn't understand the Daleks the first time, didn't realize they were exactly what evil can be. Never caring about anything at all they were just there to kill. No mercy, no hate, no love, nothing inside at all except the mission to kill anything that wasn't them. When we killed them half of the galaxy burned with them and the rest of the Time Lords.

I'm not sure I can pay the price for what you gave me Professor. I know that somewhere you're still travelling in time with your other selves, the ones I never met. I hope we can get together and talk sometime even if you won't know me or know how I feel.

I want to walk with you on these alien worlds. I want you to know I hate you sometimes.

I don't want to be alone.

My name used to be Dorothy Gale McShane, I used to make fun of it you know? Dorothy Gale, caught up in a time storm and thrown to a planet half-way round the galaxy. I suppose it's only a laugh if you've read the Wizard of Oz.

Now my name is just Ace.

I was born human on the planet earth in the town of Perivale. All that was before I got swept away to other planets and went travelling with the Professor. I thought he was helping me when he got me off of Iceworld in his TARDIS but it turns out he was just nursing some potential along. All those places we went to see were all to get me further on the path to being what I am now.

A few years after we met up he dropped me on his home planet of Gallifrey and got me into the Time Lord Academy. Turns out there was this old fossil name Fenric who was my ancestor meant I was tainted with the DNA filled with all these instructions to free him. That left me open to things most humans aren't. After we'd beat Fenric at his game I didn't stop changing it just got worse.

They could have changed me back. All that DNA manipulation they can do and instead of making me human again I got stuck back in school and made into a Time Lord instead.

I fought in the Time war, the last time war against the Daleks. We were losing and the entire universe was going to be destroyed so we did something stupid. Which I guess if you look up Time Lord that word does crop up a lot. Anyway, we came up with a plan to use the Hand of Omega to take them out. The only problem was that meant the lot of us needed to be in the middle to make them all come in at once.

There was a few of us that were on the outside to keep stragglers from getting away but the Hand was more destructive than anyone thought. Used to be there was only one black hole the size of a few galaxies out there, now there's two.

I still don't know how my ship escaped it.

When I woke up I found out they'd done a good job re-writing me to be one of them. I can feel two hearts beating in my chest now, just like a Time Lord after their first change, and my hair...well the Professor'd be jealous I know he's always wanted to be ginger.

But the unforgiveable thing is that the Professor made them make me one of them and now they're all dead. Hundreds, or thousands maybe even millions of years ahead of me and I'm the last.

Ace, last of the Time Lords.

-
Ever since she'd met the Professor and started travelling with him she'd never had any choice in her future. Ace had thought they were partners on a grand adventure but in reality there had been plans for her from the very beginning. She wouldn't even put it past the old Professor that he'd known she was a descendant of Fenric from the moment they met. At the very least she'd suddenly become the focus of his attention right then knowing about the time storm that had stolen her from earth.

It had all been years of travelling and saving people, making things better. To Ace it had been something fun and sometimes terrifying as she learned to put the past behind her. To the Professor it had been tutoring for his idea of a grand plan.

The day they landed on Gallifrey she learned everything they had done together was to prepare her for the Time Lord Academy. The Professor wouldn't tell her why he wanted her to go there. All he'd ever done was tell stories about how he'd barely passed the place and run away, how the Time Lord were an enormously pompous people and overly fond of making speeches. (Ace of course had retaliated by remarking that must be why he kept so many secrets - for revenge...it had been funny at the time)

She hadn't been given a choice.

Dropped at the academy and left in the hands of people who made the 100 year old vicar back in Perivale look like the most flexible person in the universe she had been thrown into developing the skills she'd inherited as a descendant of Fenric for the Gallifrey people. Taunted by people who had grown up playing with bricks of radiation for her frailties she faught back with every skill she'd learned travelling with the Professor for an ounce of respect. They'd all started at age eight, here she was being dropped off practically an ancient by someone scorned by the entire race and expected to thrive.

And as she learned to sense time as it flowed and stand on the face of the planet and feel it spin through millions of miles of empty space she learned to hate the Professor as well.

She wore the scarlet and orange of a Prydonian when she stood before the Untempered Schism and peered into the heart of the time vortex, but she did not wear it willingly. The colors of the Professors own academy fellows were not something she would have taken, but they were the only ones that would take her. When to everyone's dissapointment she neither went mad staring into the abyss or ran away to never return they had to decide what to do with her.

She had the skills of a Time Lord but she was not. She had passed the tests but the things she would be called on to work with would destroy her human body. Therefore, she had to change.

And once more she wasn't given a choice.

Gallifreyans had been barren ever since the great mother Pythia had been killed. Reproduction was accomplished through a genetic spinner that used the DNA of those who had come before to create new life and keep Gallifrey from dying. From time to time they had also been used to change the species of a Time Lord to avoid detection as they went among the alien to police time itself. Now they used this technology to take away what remained of her humanity and make her one of their own.

They even told her that they used a small bit of the Professor's material as a guide for her change as if it would please her.

Dorothy Gale McShane was dead, now there was only Ace, the Doctor's daughter.

Her TARDIS was still being grown when the war started. The last great time war against the Dalek's and every Time Lord was being recalled to fight. Even the Professor would be there but Ace wasn't about to allow a reunion of any sort. After all they were supposed to be killing Dalek's not blacking each other's eyes over what had been taken away. She was one of the first to join the front lines. Back home she'd been a rebel and an anarchist. Here in a society full of people who hadn't faced change in millions of years she was an innovative fighter and a general.

This time she had a choice.

And Ace chose to fight.