The Fate of Persephone (10/OC) (DISCONTINUED)

Chapter 20: Emotional Support

             The Doctor closed the Tardis doors behind him and leaned heavily against one of the tall coral structures, feeling absolutely exhausted. This was so not how he envisioned Persephone's first trip with him! All he wanted was a nice, calm outing to a hospital where they could determine her true biology, not some high-stakes adventure with zombie-people, evil cat nuns, a plague, and a bitchy trampoline who could possess people!

            What was Jackie going to say when she found out about this? She was going to slap him into his next regeneration! He promised to take care of the girl she had grown to love and all he had done was terrify her! 0And what about Percy herself? What was she going to think when she woke up from the after-effects of the psychograft? She was going to hate him!

            "You think I'm going to give this poor girl back to you, the very man that she pleaded for me to help her escape from? No!" The words of Cassandra came into his mind and stabbed his hearts. Of course, he always knew that her mind would repel against his due to her suppressed biology, but he had never envisioned it would be this bad! Over the course of their adventure on New Earth, he got to see, over and over again, the full extent of the damage caused by her separation from any other Time Lords.

            This was bad. This was really, really bad. He needed help and quick. But where could he go? Gallifrey was destroyed, so there was no help coming from the Time Lords. No other species had anything remotely similar, so he couldn't go to any of them. And as far as he knew, there weren't even any books written on the matter because the bond was so sacred!

            The poor alien slowly trudged up to the consul of his beloved spaceship and gave it a soft pat. Immediately, he heard the familiar hum of her silent voice and felt her presence brush up against his mind. "What do I do, old girl?" he asked forlornly, running his hand over a few switches. He knew she was listening and he knew she shared his pain.

            The Tardis hummed back comfortingly. As a craft that was engineered to link with her pilot, she wanted nothing more than for the Doctor to be happy. And since she was programmed on Gallifrey, she knew that this happiness could only come from Persephone, his Amarthin.

            As a Type 40 Tardis, she really was an 'old girl', since her kind had been retired several decades before her pilot had even found her. So she had gone to many places and had seen many things before her 'Thief' stole her. And during that time, she had seen many Time Lords and Ladies meet their bondeds and settle down.

            But she had also seen how the breaking of the bond was deadly. During the Gallifreyan-Sontaran Wars that took place during the presidency of Armallius, she had been assigned to a small platoon to serve as a medical vessel and was forced to watch as hundreds of Time Lords passed through her doors. She quickly realized that there were two types of patients that were being treated: the first were soldiers who had been injured by enemy fire. These usually either recovered relatively quickly or regenerated. But the second were different. These Time Lords and Ladies rarely had any physical wounds on them that were life threatening or proportional to the utter state of agony that they were in.

These patients never made it.

             The Tardis quickly discovered that these latter Time Lords were suffering from the deaths of their Amarthins. In many cases, the person in question was just going about their duties before they collapsed in horrendous pain and an overwhelming feeling of gut-wrenching grief. She could only watch as these otherwise healthy men and women begged and pleaded for the release of death before slowly fading away, never allowing themselves to regenerate in the hopes that they could be reunited with their bondeds in the stars. It was then that the Tardis realized the extent of the impact that this sacred soul-bond had on Time Lords.