A/N: Just a oneshot I felt like writing. It's not Amy Pond or Lorna Bucket or anyone in particular, before anyone asks. I just thought about playing around with the idea a bit more.

I don't know when this is set. Let's just say (in the Doctor's timeline, at least) it's set in between the Wedding of River Song and The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe.

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.

She first hears the strange man's voice when she's eight.

She's in the playground… Well, no, not exactly. Yes, she's running in the playground, but it's not really where she is. She could be anywhere - climbing a mountain or running through fields or diving deep underwater where only the fish can see her by the seaside or flying - but her body remains here.

She's been teased before - having an imagination is something that's started to be phased out of the other children - but at least it's not too bad. She's heard her teacher telling her parents that her imagination is extremely active, and her parents sounded quite pleased.

At least, she thinks they did. She was daydreaming at the time.

But today, her daydreams lead her into the shade of the trees, into what she imagines as a dark, dank tunnel. There are rats, she imagines, rats that will eat her up if she can't find the treasure in time. It's cooler in the shade and in the tunnel, and she imagines she's crawling through. She's a pirate, you see, and she has to find the treasure that Greyface the Great buried before the rats can eat her.

She's pushed to the ground suddenly, by a group of boys running for the football shed. They don't look back. She frowns, tries not to cry out. Her knee hurts a bit, but she stands up shakily. She looks at her knee, because now it really does hurt, and she finds that there's red, red blood dripping down her leg. She wonders, just briefly, if a vampire could swoop down now into the shade and drink it up. She's seen vampires on Buffy. They're always in the dark, but maybe the shade would be dark enough for them. Would it hurt?

"Are you alright?" asks a man's voice. She whirls to see nobody there. She frowns, blinks a bit, and then puts her head to the side.

"Hello?" she calls. "Is there someone there?"

Nobody answers.

Maybe her imagination has become real, she thinks. She tries imagining a Band-Aid for her knee.

Nothing happens.

She first sees the strange man a month or so later.

This time, she's sitting on the swings at the park. Mum and Dad have had a fight again. She's not really all that bothered by it - they fight so much and make up so much that the routine is normal - when she hears them screaming at each other, she creeps out of her room, down to the park where the swings are waiting to help her fly, waits until the air is clear and then goes home.

She's just come down from a flying session, and her shoes are getting a little scuffed from the dirt. She likes flying, but her mum gets frustrated (she learned what that word meant a week ago, and it describes her mother perfectly) when she comes home with scuffed shoes.

She sighs, and looks up from the scuffed shoes. And then she frowns.

There's a man walking towards the swings. A man with a mess of brown hair, wearing brown tweed jacket, rolled up trousers, black boots, and a bow tie. He's young.

It's a bit strange, she thinks, as he gets closer and closer. They're old clothes - she's fairly sure her granddad used to wear something like that. She liked her granddad - he used to tell her stories - and she thinks it's strange that a man like this one is wearing old clothes.

Her mum would tell her to run away right now. This man is a stranger.

He grins at her - it's not a mean grin. His eyes are almost twinkly. She is a little scared, but not enough to run away.

He sits down on the empty swing beside her. "Hello," he says. "Do you remember me?"

It's then that she recognises the voice. "Hello," she says shyly. "You asked me if I was alright."

"'Course I did - that was a nasty fall," he tells her cheerfully, stretching his legs out on the swings. "Happened to me all the time when I was your age - except I wasn't as brave as you. I cried." He fumbles around in one of the pockets of his jacket. "I had a plaster for you. Hang on, hold this." He hands her a banana, a ticket for something that she can't read (she thinks it's in some other language, because it's certainly not English), a handful of coins, and a satsuma (why does he like fruit so much? Her mum makes her eat satsumas all the time, and she hates them). "Aha!"

He pulls out a box, and hands her a plaster. "Here you go."

She trades him the plaster for what he pulled out of his pocket (part of her wonders how there was that much in there - are his pockets magic?), and examines the plaster carefully. It's purple, she thinks at first, but then it's blue and green and yellow and orange and red and pink, and then it's all of the colours all at once.

"I didn't know plasters could do that," she says quietly. "Where did you get them?"

"A very special shop in a very special place," he tells her. "Eretrium."

"Where's that?" She's eager now, desperate to know where he could find such a magical thing as a colour-changing plaster.

He smiles, and taps his nose, saying nothing.

"What's your name?" She knows it's rude (how many times has her mum told her not to be rude?) but she can't help it. She has to know.

He pauses, obviously thinking. "I'm… the Doctor."

"Like the ones in Casualty?" she asks - her mum loves Casualty. She sometimes watches it, but from the stairs outside the living room, because she's not meant to.

"A bit." He smiles, looks up at the darkening sky. "Shouldn't you be going home?"

She shakes her head, and then nods, a little sadly. "Probably. Mum and Dad will have made up by now."

He smiles again, and tousles her hair, before handing her the rest of the box of Band-Aids. "Keep them. You can fix up all your friends now."

She shrugs. She would, probably. If she actually had any.

She's nine when the Doctor comes back.

She's down in the woods this time - the woods are behind her house, and she likes exploring them with the only friend she's got - her imagination.

This time, she's playing at being an astronaut. She likes stars. They're not as real sometimes as being a pirate can be, but she likes them all the same. She likes making up names for the stars and the constellations (her teacher taught them about the solar system last week, and she ran home with a million questions for her dad) - they're "The Car" (for her dad), and "The Pirate" and "The Bottle" (for her mum).

And then there's the smiling face she sees sometimes - the one she's called "The Doctor". She likes "The Doctor" - just as much as she likes the real one. She saw it the other night, and told her dad she was naming it that. Her dad laughed and asked her why.

She didn't know what to say.

She giggles as a "meteor" streaks past her and she dives away from it. She lands her spaceship on an asteroid, and she's just getting out when she hears a funny noise.

She frowns, and then races towards it before she can change her mind.

She trips a little, but regains her balance, and as she keeps running, she thinks she can see something… blue.

It is blue she sees.

For some reason, there is a blue box in the middle of the woods. It's tall - tall enough to fit even her uncle Paul, who has to duck his head on every doorway in her house when he comes to visit, inside with ease. She wonders why it's here. Has it been abandoned?

Then the door opens, and she hides behind a tree quickly. Why is there someone in there?

There's the crunch of footsteps on leaves, and she closes her eyes, sure she's going to be caught - maybe dragged back to her house and told off by her parents.

Then there's a chuckle. "Hello again."

She opens her eyes to see the Doctor smiling down at her. She smiles back.

"Did you use the Band-Aids I gave you?"

She shakes her head. They're too special - she's hidden them under her bed in case her mum finds them. Her mum never goes looking under her bed. "Are you here to stay this time?"

He shakes his head. "But I brought you some shoe polish for those shoes of yours." He pulls a flat, round tin from a pocket in his jacket (he doesn't ask her to hold anything, which is a shame, because she's started eating satsumas just in case he has one), and again, she wonders whether the pockets are magical or not. They've started to drum magic out of her, her teachers and parents, but through very different methods.

She accepts the tin of shoe polish. "Is it magic, like the Band-Aids?"

He nods. "I think so. It'll make sure those shoes of yours never get scuffed ever again."

Her eyes widen. "Really?"

"Really."

"Where did you get this? Ere… Eretrium?"

He shakes his head this time. "Spira."

"Where's that?"

"Way out there in the sky."

"What's it like? How did you get there?"

The Doctor looks over her shoulder at the blue box, and she looks too. "Is that yours?" she asks. "Is that how you got to Spira?"

He nods. The Doctor does a lot of nodding, she's noticed.

"Can I go inside?"

"Maybe," he says. "You could come help people with me."

Her smile widens into a grin. "I'd like that," she says seriously.

She's lonely, but somehow, when he's here, she's not.

She's twelve the next time she sees him.

The shoe polish sits in a box (painted blue like the magic blue box - she made it in class one day back when she was ten) underneath her bed, along with the magic Band-Aids.

Her parents are starting to really enforce the idea that magic doesn't exist. She doesn't like it. They've taken all her books with witches and wizards away, and she isn't allowed to watch Buffy or anything like that any more. Instead, they buy her books about real people (Mum calls them 'teen novels', but they're nothing like what she wants to read) and make her watch reality shows.

She doesn't like that either, so she sneaks down into the cellar sometimes and steals Harry Potter back. She spends the night reading it by torchlight, and her parents wonder why she's started sleeping later. They put it down to her getting older, and for some reason, that makes them more comfortable.

She likes science - she's decided that it's one and the same as magic. It means people can do anything, and isn't that the same thing as magic?

Her parents are a little hesitant to encourage this newfound love of science and fact, but soon enough they're buying her books about science. The teen novels are thrown out, much to her relief. Slowly, she's allowed to watch Buffy again, after they see her watching documentaries and take it that she's throwing herself into the real world.

It's not so much science that she loves, but she wants to find out how a Band-Aid can change colour (do they work on the same principle as mood rings?), how some shoe polish can prevent a pair of shoes from being scuffed ever again (they must create a protective barrier, but how?), how a little blue box can travel in space and keep one man looking fresh and eternally young.

It fuels her desire to learn everything she possibly can.

She's Googled him a few times, but after the first time (she was ten), she can't find anything about him on the Internet. Maybe, she thinks, he's done something to the internet, so that nobody can find him. She's heard of that happening before.

She tries it again anyway, hoping that this time, something will come up.

It doesn't.

She sighs, and leans back from the family computer, before deleting the history - she can't risk her parents finding out that she's searching for a man who travels in a magical blue box - and decides to go down to the park. She's not been there since those two boys from school teased her about daydreaming and she punched them. She got told off for that.

When she reaches the park, she heads straight for the swings, until she sees something that makes her stop.

Two children are swinging on them, laughing as they swing higher and higher. They're only about eight or nine. How can she go flying if they're there?

She can't.

So she heads for the trees behind the swings instead. Maybe she doesn't need to go flying. Maybe she just needs a walk.

She's pushing past the bushes when she hears that funny noise again. Immediately, her face breaks into a smile.

The Doctor is here.

He's just stepping out of the blue box when she crashes into the clearing where it's appeared.

"Hello," she says breathlessly, her eyes bright.

He smiles.

They sit under a tree, and he tells her of how he's just come back from Tartell, a planet where they accused him of being a bit too friendly with the young princess and he only escaped because a friend of his tried to convince the king there that the princess was an impostor.

"And was she?" she asks eagerly.

"She was, but her dad wouldn't budge, and my friend and I only just got into the TARDIS before they started shooting."

"The TARDIS?" She wrinkles her nose slightly, and he taps it.

"Oi, don't be mean to my TARDIS. She's a lovely thing, she is."

"She? I thought it was a blue box."

He grins. "The TARDIS is a lot more than a blue box."

"You said you got to Spira in your TARDIS last time you were here." She pauses for a moment, thinking. "Why do you come back here so often?"

He stretches his long legs out. He reminds her of a giraffe sometimes - all long legs and not much else. "I like Earth. You humans are all so interesting."

She ignores the 'you humans' part - she'll come back to that later. "But why do you always visit me?"

He smiles, and for the first time, she can see a little sadness in his smile and it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "You remind me of another little girl I once met. Pond, she was called."

She takes his hand, her smaller hands almost devoured by his bigger ones. "What happened to her?"

He says nothing, and lets go of her hand, before standing up. "Here, I brought you something."

He reaches into his pocket (oh, those never ending pockets…) and pulls out a bookmark.

"It glows in the dark," he says. "It's a lot brighter than those little glow in the dark stickers that don't do anything."

She takes it, wondering how he can possibly know what problems she's having every time he visits.

She's fourteen when the aliens come and the Earth moves.

Mum's terrified. Dad's being brave, but he's scared too - she can see it.

They don't need to be, she thinks. The Doctor will save them. The Doctor rescues people like that. He told her once, in a wood, long ago.

The aliens have very grating voices - they sound like they have sore throats. They look like giant pepper pots, and they take Reg from school (he sits in the corner with Katie and Lyra and Mike), Mr Singh from the post office (he sometimes gave her an extra 5p worth of sweets in a mix) and their neighbour Lizzie (she used to tousle her hair when she was six) off somewhere. She never sees them again.

For the first time, she's scared of aliens. They're not magical, she realises. There is nothing magical about them taking Lizzie away and when Russell, Lizzie's husband, tries to fight back, there is nothing magical about them shooting him.

They leave her and her parents. She's not sure why, at first.

Maybe they just didn't like her. Not many people do. The kids at school leave her alone - she usually sits in the library, because it's the only place she can daydream without being ridiculed.

There are a lot more people who don't like her even more after the aliens leave. They ask her why people they cared for died and she lived, when nobody likes her.

She knows why, though she'd never tell them.

The Doctor did something. The Doctor must have saved her from whatever it was that took Lizzie and Russell and Reg from school and Mr Singh.

That's enough to make her smile when they can't see her.

She's almost twenty when she sees him again.

She's sitting in her flat (it's not hers, strictly speaking - she lives there with four other people - but she pays the same amount as they do, and calling it "the flat" is odd), typing a piece for her professor.

University isn't quite as appreciative of imagination as she imagined a degree in Creative Writing would be. They do like her imagination, but at the same time, they're a little like her parents. They're always analysing the set texts - rarely do they just enjoy them.

Her professor has assigned her a piece on real life, and she hates it. It isn't for her - it reminds her too much of her parents' attempts to drum imagination out of her. She won that battle, in the end. Her box sets of Buffy are stored in her wardrobe, and the little blue box sits proudly on top of her wardrobe, instead of hiding under her bed like stolen goods.

For the first time in her life, she has friends. It's strange - a couple of them are into conspiracy theories, another loves technology, and one of them loves aliens.

Somehow it doesn't surprise her that she's made friends with them.

She's just finishing her piece when she hears that magical grinding noise, and she's off like a shot, pulling the bag from her wardrobe that she's always kept packed (just in case) and down the stairs. One of her flatmates calls out to her, but she doesn't listen, and keeps running out into the street. She skids to a halt when she sees him standing in the alley across the road, and she grins.

"You've grown."

She smiles. After almost eight years, it's a wonder she hasn't given up on him. "You haven't. How old are you? I don't think I've ever asked."

He sniffs, almost childlike. "1056. What about you? How old are you these days?"

She should be surprised by the age, but it's the Doctor. He's magical - who knows how he's managed to stay looking this young? (Her mum would have killed for an anti-ageing cream that worked that well) "Nearly twenty."

"Blimey, time flies. Eight years, then?"

She nods, then shifts from one foot to the other. "I never did get to go for a ride in the magic blue box."

He grins.

She spends one night with him - at least, that's what her friends think. The truth? She spends an entire year with him.

It's the best year of her life. She sees planets, meets strange people, and helps them, just as the Doctor promised she could all those years ago. She fights terrible creatures, sees the pepper pot aliens from when she was fourteen, and saves people. She meets a woman with curly blonde hair who calls the Doctor 'sweetie' and makes him blush, she meets a man who tries to come on to her (and to almost everyone in the room), and she meets a boy who tells her that she has nice hair, just before one of the pepper pot aliens kills him.

She laughs, she cries, she considers staying, but in the end, she leaves. She goes back to university, back to normality, back to a life without the Doctor and his magical blue blox.

Just before she leaves, he hands her a handkerchief and her key to the magic blue box, and she wonders once more at how he always knows what problems she's having.

She's an old woman when she sees the strange man for the final time in her life.

She's sitting in a nursing home, entertaining her grandchildren with tales of "the Doctor" - the mysterious twinkly-eyed young man who turns up out of the blue, giving Band-Aids and shoe polish and sometimes even friendship. He goes on adventures, she tells them. Adventures that span this galaxy and the universe beyond it. Sometimes, if you're very very lucky, you can hear his magical blue box (the TARDIS, she remembers) as it appears and disappears.

She looks up then, and out of the window, standing across the street, is a big blue box, the very one she's just described (the magic blue box, she thinks). There's a man standing in front of it, with a mess of brown hair, wearing a brown tweed jacket, rolled up trousers, black boots, and a bow tie. He's still young.

She smiles at him, and he smiles at her. He still has twinkly eyes.

Eretrium - Ehr-ret-ri-um

Spira - Spy-ra

Tartella - Tar-tell-uh.