She watched him with mixed feelings. Dr. Emmett Brown had been her family for two years and here he had replaced her with a whole new one.

Oh, make no mistake, Lisa was happy for him. He was at a level of elation she’d never seen in him before. However, she couldn’t help feeling…well, betrayed.

She waved at Clara, Jules and Verne with Marty and Jennifer, but the gesture held no mirth. She was carefully keeping her thoughts and feelings hidden from Doc. She didn’t want to put a damper on his happiness.

“Doc, I thought I’d never see you again!” Marty shouted to the scientist up on the Time Train.

Doc smiled. “Can’t keep a good scientist down. After all, I had to come back for Einstein.” The mutt had appeared at the family’s – Lisa’s hearts twisted painfully – side. “And I didn’t want you to be worried about me.”

Lisa sighed to herself. She knew he was going to leave with his new family. Chalk up another on the list of people who’d she’d been separated from over the years: Her own biological family, Jamie, Erik, Doc…and the Doctor.

Her hearts twisted again. It was all because of her definite feeling that her Time Lord best friend was still out there that she hadn’t allowed herself to get too close to anyone. Until she met Doc, that is.

A mistake, she realized now. Here he had his own family and no longer needed her.

Lisa watched as Clara disappeared within the train, slowly backing away. She looked down at the ground, leaving first and foremost on her mind.

She didn’t have much more time to contemplate her next action. Unbeknownst to Doc, Marty, Clara or the kids, an odd sound rang in her ears. A shaft of light appeared behind her and she turned to see a human-sized container shaped a little too much like a coffin for comfort.

Regardless, Lisa found herself drawn to the object, the sound whining in her ears. With almost robot-like automation, she approached and entered the container. It, the sound and light all vanished with Lisa inside.

Had she lingered a few moments longer, she would have realized Doc had no intention of leaving Lisa behind and wasn’t replacing her. He had a souvenir – the photo taken of himself, Lisa and Marty in front of the clock from the clock tower – for Marty and for Lisa but he never got the chance to give it to her. Not at this time, anyway. She would have known she was being silly about feeling jealous of Clara and the boys. It would be centuries before she would be shown the error in her judgment.

Lisa’s container ship spun and spiraled in the tractor beam towards a huge, magnificent space station, twirling and tumbling before finally coming to rest.

She was in a grand hallway, a door and staircase on one end and in the other two other containers much like her own. Near the stairs was…the Doctor’s TARDIS.

Lisa’s hearts leapt as she heard voices coming from the room behind the door. Most of them were unfamiliar with the exception of the Doctor himself.

Wings twitching, she hurried to the door, desperate to see her long lost friend again.

“I was sent, wasn’t I?” said a male voice. “Not my idea, mind.”

“Same here,” said a female voice. “What have you been up to?”

All eyes turned to Lisa as she entered. The room was large with robed Time Lords on a raised dais, a Time Lady in white seated below them, Chancellery guards on watch near the doors, a black-cowled man standing across the room giving Lisa a very odd stare, a human female in blue and a human male half in armor and half in rags on this side of the room. A large screen was on the wall and there beside a seat in his multicolored coat was the Doctor.

Their eyes locked and the Doctor’s went wide. “Lisa…?” he breathed, disbelieving.

She wasn’t in the dark about what was going on any longer. Even in all the years they’d been separated, what was left of their link was still very much in tact.

The Doctor was on trial for his life. He, up until then, had no way of refuting the evidence presented by the black-cowled prosecutor, the Valeyard. He was also under the impression that his once-companion Peri had been killed on Thoros-Beta, the planet they’d been on when they were separated.

It was this chain of events coupled with the previous sense that the Doctor would never see Lisa again either that caused a tidal wave of emotion that washed over him and to her through the link.

“Doctor…” she whispered and, ignoring the many eyes on them, she made her way to the Doctor’s side and threw her arms around his neck in a tight embrace.

The action surprised but didn’t go unreciprocated by the Doctor. He held her tightly, very much aware that this was the first display of affection towards him since the regeneration.

When the embrace broke, Lisa stayed beside him during his examination of the witnesses – Melanie Bush, a future companion of the Doctor’s and Sabalom Glitz, whom the Doctor and Lisa had met before on a past adventure – witnesses, it turns out, that had been sent to the trial ship by the Doctor’s old enemy the Master. Lisa, apparently, included, though she didn’t know it.

When it was revealed that the Valeyard was an amalgam – interim stage – between the Doctor’s Twelfth and final regeneration, much like the Watcher had been an interim stage between his Fourth and Fifth incarnations, she realized that was why the Valeyard was boring his piercing eyes into her, there standing within touching distance of the Doctor, he making simple gestures like brushing her hand with his or placing his hand on her shoulder.

Surely though the Valeyard, who had been made by the infusion of the Doctor’s darker side of his personality, was the total opposite of the Watcher, who had held what would turn out to be the eventual Fifth Doctor’s love for Lisa.

The Dark Side of the Doctor couldn’t love, could he?

She hadn’t had time to dwell, however. The Doctor and the Valeyard had fought an epic battle within the Matrix, the largest information net in the universe. The Doctor had won, of course. He always did. And fleeing yet another offer of the Presidency, he, Lisa and Mel left in the TARDIS.

Mel couldn’t stay, however. She was from a point in the future. She had to be returned to her proper place in time and space. Though unhappy about the fact, she left without incident, leaving Lisa and the Doctor alone in the TARDIS.

The Doctor may have been under the impression that Lisa had to be returned as well, but she shook her head.

“I have no where to go and there’s no place I’d rather be,” she said. Doc didn’t need her. What better place to end up than back with the man she trusted and loved and who most definitely would always need her at his side?

Her words caused the Doctor to smile. He remembered how rocky their relationship had gotten after the regeneration. Now her time away had evidently given her a change of hearts.

“How long?” he asked her.

She frowned a moment before understanding. Since their link wasn’t as strong as it could have been and once was, some information couldn’t be communicated instantaneously.

“Long,” was her reply. “Too long. Every time I tried to find you, I wound up somewhere and somewhen else.”

He had to speak honestly. “I’m surprised you’d want to come back.”

Lisa blinked. “Huh?” Then it dawned. “Oh. Yeah…well…” She shrugged.

“You hugged me,” he said, coming to stand beside her, placing a hand on her shoulder. It had been a long time since she’d let him do that. “You haven’t done anything like that since…”

“The regeneration. I know. I guess…being apart really made me realize just how much you still mean to me. How much I still care about you.”

The Doctor smiled wider and brought her into his arms for another hug. I’ve missed this… he thought and, hearing, Lisa squeezed tighter. Telepathy was their most intimate way of communicating. It was another thing they haven’t done since the regeneration.

I’ve missed you.

It was rather sad, in a way. Lisa had just gotten over the qualms she’d had with the Doctor’s personality and, though they didn’t know it, it was only to be a matter of time before it would shift again when an attack by the renegade Time Lady the Rani would cause the Doctor to regenerate again.

But if her time away had taught Lisa once thing it was this: No matter what personality her friend wound up with, she wasn’t going to let such a dramatic change – if there was one – upset her as it had before. She knew better now and she was a better person because of it.

The End

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