"You're sure?"

"Positive."

"We'll have to be really careful," he cautions her as he sets the TARDIS coordinates. "Aliens generally aren't allowed there."

"I am not an alien!"

"Hey, fine by me," he shrugs. "I rather like being the alien. It gives me an aura of mystery, don't you think?" Something beeped, and he hit the console with a hammer. "Okay, we're on our way!"

She still can't quite believe she's actually going there. Another miracle. "Thank you, Doctor," she says. "You can't imagine how much this means to me."

A rueful smile crosses his face and for a moment he could be her Doctor, old and tired. "Oh, I probably can."

Suddenly there's a jarring screech and the TARDIS rocks like an airplane in turbulence. The Doctor and Rose are thrown against different walls. "What's wrong?" Rose cries over the mounting noise.

"Just the temporal barriers," he shouts back assuringly. "Nothing to worry about."

"Right, well, if I had a penny for each time you've said that..."

Then it stops. They're there. He strides to the the TARDIS doors and opens them. Beautiful golden sunlight streams in, illuminating the Time Lord's face with a fierce joy. "Never really appreciated it that much till now," he said ruefully. "Rassilon, it's so beautiful, Rose. Come and see."

Blinking, filled with excitement, Rose Tyler walked out into the Gallifreyan afternoon.

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"Oh my god."

"Gorgeous, isn't it?"

She looks about her, stunned, taking in the waving silver-leafed trees and towering red mountains capped with shimmering blankets of snow. A pale copper moon glimmers in the burnt orange sky. "God," she whispers, "this has to be the most beautiful place in the universe."

He feels a deep pang of sympathy for his other self, losing this amazing world. "Turn around," he tells her.

She turns, and gasps. Before her is the might of the Capitol, the majestic domes and towers of golden light. In the center is the Citadel of the Time Lords, containing the Panopticon, Home of the Eye of Harmony. He tells her this softly in a hushed voice bordering on reverence. "Welcome to Gallifrey," he informs her, "the Shining World of the Seven Systems."

"Very impressive." She walks over to the nearest grove of silver trees and plucks a leaf, a delicate lacy thing with veins of gold tracery. "If only I could give him this," she says, tears coming to her eyes. "He missed this place so much."

"I can imagine," he says. "Funny, really, seeing as I've spent more time on your backwater planet than this place."

She looks at him curiously. "How come? How could you ever leave here?"

"Well, let's see," he says bitterly, ticking off reasons on his fingers, "one, my people are pompous bureaucrats. Two, my people let aliens die while they stay aloof and recite their mantra of 'non-interference'. Three, I was exiled for being a total pain. Four, being an alien is much more impressive on your planet than on mine. Five," he smiles at her, " I absolutely love you guys. 'Specially the sixties. Rassilon, you apes make good music. Six, Lord President Romanadvoratrelundar. Don't ask."

She grins. "You goof."

He grins back. "Yup, that's me. One thousand, one hundred and thirty-six-year-old goof."

Rose blinks. "You told me... before... that you were only nine hundred."

"Oh. Well, I lie about my age a lot. Or this could be an older me. Whatever."

She shakes her head, amused. "Why on earth would you think an extra two hundred and thirty-six years would matter?"

"Dunno. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity."

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Lord President Romanadvoratrelundar smiles when she hears the news.

"So, the infamous Doctor has dared to return at last? Arrest him and bring him before me."

"Yes Lord President."

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"One more thing—-your name."

"What about my name?"

"It's too long. By the time I've called out, 'Look out'—what's your name?"

"Romanadvoratrelundar."

"By the time I've called that out, you could be dead! I'll call you Romana."

"I don't like Romana."

"It's either Romana or Fred."

"All right, call me Fred!"

"Good. Come on, Romana!"

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"So inside the Panopticon is the Eye of Harmony, which is basically this enormous black hole which Rassilon (founder of Time Lord Society; remind me to tell you about him later) put there to give us enough power to travel in time. Also supplies all energy Gallifrey needs. My people practically invented black holes. Well... as a matter of fact they did," the Doctor ends sheepishly. "There aren't many of us Time Lords, only a couple hundred thousand in fact, the Capitol is pretty much the only city on the planet and all of us live there."

" 'Cept for you," Rose reminds him.

"Yeah, well, I've been informed I'm no longer officially a member of Time Lord society, being classed 'renegade', 'heathen', and, by the charming Councilor Borusa, 'disgustingly sentimental, idealistic and sanctimonious, in short, utterly unbearable'." He grins.

She laughs. "Seems to sum you up perfectly."

"Oy!" he cries, mock-offended, and elbows her.

"Well go on with the history lesson, I know you're dying to," she teases.

"Okay then! Now that-" he points- "is the Time Lord Academy. Where Gallifreyan children are taken to study to become Time Lords, with TARDISes."

"Did you get good grades?"

"Well..." he shifts uncomfortably. "If you must know, I got fifty-one percent on my final. On my second try."

"Ha!" she crows. "Knew it! Not quite the smarty-pants you act like, eh?" Something occurs to her. "So then why'd they give you a TARDIS?"

"Didn't," he tells her, grinning madly. "Stole it."

"Oh, you," she says affectionately. "The poor girl."

"Not really," he says darkly.

"What?"

"The 'poor girl' is over nine hundred years old. Type 40 TARDISes are decommissioned at half that age. She'd have been scrapped if it wasn't for me."

"Oh... but I thought you said she was alive!"

"Yeah," he says tightly, his good mood vanished. "Another reason to leave this idiotic planet."

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"Well, if one has godlike powers, one ought to be able to use them, oughtn't one?"

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Suddenly the Doctor starts. "OK, tourism over, back into the TARDIS!"

"What? Why?"

"Because I see some of my fellow citizens and they don't look too happy."

"Well what's the worst they can do to us? We haven't done any harm."

"Oh they'll probably just wipe your memory and dump you back on Earth. Me, though... unauthorized use of a TARDIS is a capitol offense. In the past they've been content with just forcing me to regenerate and exiling me to Earth. I might not be so lucky this time, though..."

"What!" Rose practically shrieked. She thought about this as they ran back to the police public call box. "But they let you fight in the war, y'know, the one that never happened!"

"Yes, well, my standing waxes and wanes!" he shouted back, grabbing her hand as they ran through the shining forest. "Once I was even elected President, you know! 'Course I squeezed out of that one, but they got kind of annoyed at me after that... that was in my fifth regeneration, you know."

"You mean you regenerate a lot? Is it like, some kind of hobby?"

"Nope, but I'm sure you know my life style's kind of high-risk," he replies as they jump over a fallen gray-brown trunk and land softly among the drifting leaves that make up the forest floor. "To date, I've died of old age, been forced to regenerate by my fellow Time Lords, died of radiation poisoning, fallen from a radio control tower, died of spectrox toxemia, been fatally injured by another renegade Time Lord, been killed by exploratory heart surgery in 1999 San Francisco (they didn't realize I had a binary vascular system) and the last time, I got shot by anti-alien protesters in fortieth century New York."

"This is, what, your ninth life?!!" she says, incredulous. "My god, you really do like risking your life, don't you?"

"Is that a rhetorical question, or what?"

They make it to the TARDIS and run inside, the Doctor fumbling at the lock. Lights are flashing and instruments are beeping all over the time ship, and Rose supposes the ship is just as anxious to be gone as its driver. The Doctor strokes one of the blue pillars, murmuring, "Steady, old girl." He pulls levers and twists dials all over, and finally the blue column starts to flash. The familiar dematerializing noise is heard, and the two intrepid time travelers relax.

Not for long, though. The grinding sound is cut off in a long screech of strained metal and the pillar stops flashing. The Doctor grabs his hammer (some things never change) and bangs the console furiously in his frustration. "No no no nonono noooooooo!" he wails. "Please Rassilon no!"

"What's wrong?" Rose asks nervously.

"The blasted Time Lords have done the equivalent of putting a parking clamp on the TARDIS," he moaned.

"Oh..."

There was a sudden pounding on the blue wooden doors. "Renegade!" came the angry sound of many voices, and Rose realized with a start that she was actually hearing Gallifreyan, a language she'd long thought to be dead. "Let us in under Statute 77! We arrest you and your companion in the name of Lord High President Romanadvoratrelundar!"

"Don't worry," the Doctor told Rose, relaxing in his chair and putting his feet up on the console. "They can't get in. The Hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get in, and-"

"-believe me they tried," Rose chorused along. "Yeah, I know. So now what?"

"Wait for them to take off the clamp, of course," the Doctor explained, as if it were obvious.

"Of course," she mutters.