Reflection

She curled up in the chair, drawing the silvery blanket to her as tightly as was possible. Still, she shivered. She was cold, despite the gentle comforting warmth of her room. The cold was inside her, chilling her bones. The bath hadn't warmed it away, neither was the blanket providing the heat she required. It occurred to Julie that she was scared.

This, she noted to herself, made very little sense. She did not get scared. She had not been scared since, well, since her parents died and she had been terrified about what would happen next. How could she grow up without her parents? Where would she live? What would happen next? Why did her parents have to die?

Frustrated, sad, and frightened, she buried her head into the blanket, listening to it crinkle as she rubbed her face in it, seeking solace therein. She felt twelve again, finding out once again that she wasn't as grownup as she thought. Had she made a mistake in coming with the Doctor? Maybe she wasn't cut out for this sort of traveling, especially if she couldn't deal with a few demons from her past. What was she going to do? Ask the Doctor to take her home? Could he if she did? She gripped the blanket even tighter and wished she had something, someone, to hold right now.

--

The Doctor was pleasantly oblivious to all this. Whistling a jaunty tune, he strolled down a hallway in the TARDIS near the console room. He had decided it was time for a bit of cleaning. This incarnation was youthful in frame and appearance, granting him more energy and drive than some of his earlier bodies. While he had the energy, time, and ability, he might as well accomplish something.

He opened the door and stepped inside the storeroom. Spare parts, items of clothing, relics of past adventures and the occasional piece of art were stacked haphazardly about the room, a small path winding around the piles. It had been an incarnation or three since hid spend any time in this room, apart from restacking the piles after the TARDIS had encountered some turbulence and spilt everything over. This could be like an archeological dig into his past, he thought positively. Then again, he could just rearrange a lot of junk. He smiled, cracked his knuckles, and decided where to start.

--

Julie inhaled deeply. She held the breath for a moment, trying to calm down, and then slowly released it. Perhaps she was just a bit homesick. That would make sense, it would only be right to be a bit homesick, missing her friends and such. She couldn't get the idea to stick. She knew what the problem was, she just didn't want to face it. She had been forced to relive her parents' death and it had opened the old wound again, making it hurt more than ever. Shouldn't she be over this by now? Her parents had died years ago, almost ten years ago. Shouldn't she be over this? Or was this one of those things you never truly get over? She groaned and wondered where all her strength had gone.

Still holding the blanket to her, she dragged herself to her feet and plodded out of her room. She headed for the console room, hoping the Doctor would be there. She wasn't sure what he could do to help, or what she might say to him, but spending time with him was more likely to improve her situation than sitting here wallowing in self pity and fear would. She heard whistling. She followed it to the storeroom where the Doctor sat, surrounded by piles of books and paper and things which he was busily organizing into piles. She stood in the doorway for a moment, just watching him, noting how much better she felt just being near him, how relaxed and confident he was, how attached she felt towards him despite knowing so little about him.

"I didn't wake you, did I?"

The Doctor's question snapped Julie from her thoughts. She blinked twice, realized she had heard what he'd said, and responded. "No, I wasn't asleep."

"Good," he noted happily. "I didn't think I whistled all that loudly." He continued sorting, while keeping an eye on Julie. "Are you cold? The TARDIS should have adjusted your room temperature to be comfortable for humans. I prefer it a bit on the cooler side myself."

She smiled slightly, more to reassure him than out of any feelings of happiness on her part. "No, I'm fine."

"Then, may I ask, why the blanket?"

"Dunno. It's kind of comforting at the moment."

"It is a comforter. At least it's doing its job." It was a poor joke to be sure, and it garnered little reaction from his companion. He began to wonder if something was wrong with her. She didn't even criticize the poorness of the joke. She had been rather subdued upon leaving Kanithous, was she still suffering affects from what had happened there? He examined the aged piece of paper before him. "Hmm, according to this, I own Manhattan Island. Not that I'd have any idea what to do with it." Still no reaction. Perhaps there was a problem. Despite all the time he'd spent with humans, he still felt he knew very little about them. Female humans were even harder to understand, so this could be a lot of things.

Julie leaned against the doorframe and looked around the room. The Doctor was trying to cheer her up, but it just wasn't working. Her gaze froze on an item half covered up in the far corner of the room. "Doctor, is that the Mona Lisa?"

He looked up, but didn't know where to direct his gaze. "Where?" She gestured with her head, and he looked into the corner she indicated. "Yes and no."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"If you examine the canvas it would note 'This is a fake'."

"Oh."

"Now that I think about it, it's not really true though, is it? I wrote that on the canvases Leonardo was being forced to paint on . . ."

"Leonardo?" Julie interrupted. Her mind swam briefly. The Doctor had met Leonardo Da Vinci? He could, he was a time traveler afterall, but still, the mere concept was so unbelievably cool. "You do mean the painter and not the Ninja Turtle, right?"

"The what?" There was genuine confusion in his voice. "Leonardo the artist I met. He was a good friend of mine a few incarnations back."

"And Leonardo painted that."

"Yes."

"But it's not the Mona Lisa?"

"It's not the original Mona Lisa. It's one of a small number of copies he was forced to paint. I wrote on the canvases of the copies to distinguish between the copies and the original. Later, I collected one of those copies and there it is in the corner."

"Still, if he painted it, it must be worth millions."

"I suppose it might be. It would be worth whatever someone would pay for it. It's worth memories to me, I'm not likely to sell it."

The word 'memories' brought Julie's mind back to the reason she felt the way she did and a wave of sadness flooded over her again. "With all the traveling you've done, you must have a lot of memories."

"So many I unfortunately forget things."

"How long have you been traveling in time?"

The Doctor paused his work to look at her while he thought. "Well, I suppose that depends. You could count it from my first trip in time or from when I left home and started traveling full time."

"Do you remember your first trip?"

A gentle smile grew on his face. "Bits of it. I was young, still in school and my father took me for a short trip. It was a present for something Iid done well, I can't remember what anymore. He didn't tell me we were going until we arrived at the TARDIS depot and said we were taking a trip. We came to Earth, during the French Revolution, and we walked around France for a few hours. I was fascinated by everything, it was all so different. The smells, the buildings, the people, just everything. We looked around and then left. I wasn't allowed to talk to anyone, but I wanted to so badly. I wanted to understand these people, I was curious about them and how they lived, but my father said I was too young. We could only observe, not influence. And then we were home again."

Julie smiled at hearing this happy memory. "What was your father like?"

"Warm, friendly in a polite sort of way, a bit strict, little sense of humour."

"What did he look like?"

The Doctor's smile faded. "I . . I can't remember," he responded hesitantly. For a moment, Julie forgot her own reasons for sadness and felt for the Doctor, as this loss of memory obviously bothered him. He fought a grin back to his face. "I suppose that's old age catching up to me, hmm?" Julie knew that, despite the fact that the Doctor looked like he was about twenty-five, he was really well over a thousand years old, more than ancient by her standards. She found it hard to reconcile the two concepts in her head. "What about you?" he asked. "What about your father?"

"What about him?"

"Well, tell me something about him. I told you a happy story about my father, now it's your turn."

She found herself drawing a blank suddenly. She knew she had happy memories of her father, but nothing in particular sprung to mind now that she needed it. "I can't think of one," she responded lamely.

The Doctor gave her an odd look. "I rather think you had better think of one. Did he ever take you anywhere?"

"Probably. I can't think of anything now." Her heart sank further. Here she was mourning her parents passing again and she couldn't remember anything her father had ever done for her. Hadn't her father ever done anything for her? He must have done, why else would she miss him so?

"What about your music? Did he have anything to do with that?"

Relief washed over her like a wave. How could she have forgotten? "My mother had been musically inclined when she was a child, but hadn't persisted at it, and forgotten much of what she knew. When I showed signs of musical talent, she pushed me to take classes and practice, so I did. After about four years of piano, I got bored with it, and wanted something new. I wanted to learn guitar. All the bands I was interested in had guitar players and guitar seemed so much cooler and exciting. Mom encouraged me to keep up my piano lessons, and she wouldn't get me a guitar. I continued to insist I wanted one. After about a year of this, my Dad talked her into it and they got me my first guitar and lessons in that." She was smiling, the happiness of the memory warming her.

"And the rest is history," the Doctor concluded, "so to speak."

"I suppose. It's because of them buying me that guitar that I learned to play it, formed the bands I was in, met all those people I did. One act, and it did so much for me. I suppose that's why I miss them so much. They did so much for me, without even knowing it, and I didn't get a chance to tell them how. . how much I . . ." Her words broke off and she started to cry.

The Doctor immediately became very uncomfortable. He knew how to defeat Daleks, reprogramme the TARDIS computer when it went awry, and how to phrase his sentences on Draconia so that he wouldn't get executed, but he was never particularly clear on how to deal with a crying woman. Time Ladies did not cry much, apparently being more chemically stable than human females, and therefore less prone to mood swings and the like. Despite all the time spent with humans over the course of his existence, and how much of that time was spent with the female of the species, he still felt uncomfortable around a crying female, as well as a bit unclear as to what to do. Maybe it was just this incarnation and his memories playing up, not offering him the solution to the situation. He just knew he'd been uncomfortable when Julie had started sobbing on Kanithous, and he was uncomfortable now. He tossed aside a signed first edition of "The Sign of the Four" ('To the Doctor, best wishes for all Time, yours faithfully, A Conan Doyle') and got to his feet, weaving through the collected stuff to get to Julie's side. Once there, he cleared his throat and began gently patting Julie on the back. "There there," he murmured, hoping this would accomplish something positive. Suddenly, Julie wrapped herself around him and sobbed into his lapel. He tensed up for a moment, surprised by this response, despite the fact that it was the same thing she'd done on Kanithous when she started crying, and then sighed, resigning himself to his situation while patting her on the back reassuringly.

Slowly, her sobs died away and she rested herself in the arms of the Doctor, comfortable there in his grasp. The Doctor was less than comfortable however, wishing she'd break away from him, especially now that she'd stopped crying, but was concerned than, if he let go of her, she'd just start crying again. So there he stood, looking moderately pained, politely hugging Julie. "You know," he finally noted, "your circumstances do remind me of someone else. There was once a man, who had loving, encouraging parents who lost them at a relatively early age. It pained him for a long time, but it also shaped him into a determined man, a man that always strived to accomplish his goals, and eager to help others. I see much of the same in you, the determination, the inner strength, the desire to help others. There's nothing to be ashamed of in missing your parents, but please don't let it cripple you. I don't think it's in your nature."

She smiled up at him. Her smile was genuine now. It wasn't the smile of humour, but a genuine warm smile born from happiness, from the encouragement she'd received from her friend. "That man."

"Hmm?"

"It was you, wasn't it?"

He frowned down at her, puzzlement displaying itself on his face. "No. I was thinking of Robert Chesterton. He's the great-grandson of some friends of mine, actually, I don't think he'd been born yet when you left Earth. He's the inventor of the antigravity lift, amongst other things. Very charming man, very charming. We'll have to visit him some day, he puts on an excellent lunch." Julie laughed. "Feeling any better?"

"Yes."

He finally felt it was safe to release her and did. "Good," he enthused. "Then you can help me sort through some of this."

She laughed a bit more. "I suppose." Afterall, what else did she have to do at the moment? "What would so like me to do?"

"Choose a pile and sort the papers and books and such into separate piles so I can organize them properly."

She chose a pile near the Doctor and starting sorting as the Doctor sat down, returning to his work. However, the material she was going through tended to distract her. "Doctor, why do you have the Constitution?"

"I was asked to keep it safe for awhile. I really should return that someday soon."

Julie's eyes grew wide. "This is the original?"

He nodded. "There's a tobacco stain on the back from Thomas Jefferson."

"What were you keeping it safe from?"

"I'd rather not tell you now. As far as you're concerned, it hasn't happened yet."

"Oh, tell me."

"That'll have to remain a story for another day."