Someday he would learn not to ask what Rose was thinking. The problem wasn't that he didn't want to know, because he did. The problem was that she always told him, and he was rarely ready to deal with the consequences. Rose thinking seemed to get him into more trouble than anything he could do himself.

To be fair, he didn't usually ask in so many words. He hadn't asked last time, and this time was no different. They had just stopped off for a bit of shopping and sights--that is, Rose had insisted on a drugstore and Jack had wanted to see the city, so they'd parked under the trees of twenty-third century Earth and gone for a stroll. In opposite directions.

Rose was sitting on a bench on the tree-lined walk when they came wandering back, only a few steps from the TARDIS and two shopping bags at her feet. She wasn't sprawled against the back of the bench, though, and she wasn't watching the people pass by. She had her elbows braced on her knees, hunched over, playing with something in her hand. She didn't seem to notice them coming.

"What could you possibly need in a drugstore that wouldn't fit into one bag?" the Doctor asked, giving her a quizzical look when she lifted her head. And either she'd been aware of their approach after all, or she just wasn't as distracted as she looked, because she stuck her tongue out at him without a moment's hesitation.

"Wouldn't you like to know," she teased. She didn't move from where she was sitting, though, and she was spinning something around her fingers.

"A gentleman never inquires about shopping habits," Jack declared, and the Doctor snorted.

"A wise man always asks after the contents before offering to carry a bag," he countered, folding his arms. He was pleased to see Rose smile before she looked back down at her hands, and his curiosity couldn't take it anymore. "What've you got there?"

What are you thinking about? That was the real question, buried under casual banter, but he really wanted to know. She was distracted by something. Shiny, metal, looked like a little keychain or something. Not something she'd had when she'd left the TARDIS, surely.

She held it up for inspection without a pause, and suddenly he knew what she was going to say. "I was just thinking," she began, and yes, he knew that. He also recognized the object in her hands: a keychain, yeah, just a souvenir trinket from some shop along the way.

A little spaceplane, painted white, a stylized version of the shuttles of centuries past.

"I wonder how Ace is," Rose was saying. She hadn't taken her eyes off of him, probably knew the minute he realized what she was going to ask. Maybe wondering what he would say.

"Be nice to see her again," she added. "If you felt like it, I mean."

He never told her what he thought before he did whatever she asked. He offered his opinion freely afterward, but she thought they might have avoided a lot of awkward situations if sometimes he'd told her before. She still hadn't decided whether he was just indulging her, or if he was actually trying to teach her something.

The idea that he might be teaching her hadn't even occurred to her until she met Ace. She'd just assumed she entertained him, somehow, and so he was entertaining her in return. But when she'd realized that "Time Lord" was a title, not an alien race, and that he'd sent at least one of his traveling companions off to Time Lord school when she got smart enough...

It didn't have to mean anything. He was sad and lonely, and she didn't have anything better to do, so they went adventuring and kept each other company. And he did anything she asked.

She wanted him to know that she wasn't asking for this if he didn't want to do it. The reminder of Gallifrey had upset him last time, even if he hadn't said, and she had thought maybe Ace was right when she said he wouldn't see her for another hundred years. But Rose wouldn't be around in a hundred years, and she had liked meeting Ace.

Maybe remembering Gallifrey would get easier with time?

"Yeah," the Doctor said, surprisingly cheerful as he nudged one of her bags out of the way and flung himself down on the bench beside her. "It would."

She looked at him in surprise. "Yeah?"

"Who's Ace?" Jack wanted to know. "Anyone fun?"

"Friend of the Doctor's," Rose said absently. She was still studying the man beside her. It wasn't that she'd expected him to disagree... she'd just expected an "okay," or an "after you." An agreement to do what she wanted, not so much an agreement with her assessment of the situation.

"Isn't everyone?" Jack asked, pushing her other bag out of the way. He claimed the place on her other side, leaning back and draping his arm across the back of the bench. "What makes her special? And what's with the keychain?"

"Chemistry," the Doctor said unexpectedly. He grinned over at Jack as though that was all the answer he needed.

Jack raised his eyebrows, looking at Rose. She shrugged.

"All right," Jack drawled. As usual, he seemed more amused by the Doctor's puzzles than annoyed by them. "Why chemistry? Things were good between the two of you, is that it?"

"No!" The Doctor looked indignant that he would even suggest such a thing, which meant that Jack had won. Rose had learned very quickly that if she wanted to play Jack's game then she couldn't react to anything he said. She suspected that the Doctor had always known it.

She also suspected that the Doctor got this all the time. She had seen how often people assumed she was more than just a traveling companion, and he had gone 'round with lots of girls. It wasn't that he was tired of it, she thought, so much as it was that some things were more important to him than Jack's game. His girls' good name was probably one of them.

"Chemistry was what made her special," the Doctor was saying. "Good with gelignite. Now her specialty's a bit more esoteric. Not so much call for interdimensional travel, these days."

"Does she study interdimensional travel?" Rose asked curiously. Not because it meant anything to her, but just because she wanted to know if she'd figured out what he was talking about.

"Yup." He beamed at her like she'd just figured out calculus. "Didn't teach explosives at Prydon. Disappointed, she was. She got over it," he added, in case there was any doubt.

"Prydon?" Jack repeated. "Never heard of that one."

"My old school," the Doctor said, offhand, and she could feel Jack's surprise at this carelessly dropped piece of personal information. If she turned to look at him he would look back, she was sure, silently asking if she knew anything about this.

She didn't look. She did know something, but she wanted to know more, and she kept her gaze on the Doctor as he continued, "Always fascinated with travel, she was. That's why she liked the shuttles." He reached out and flicked a finger against the keychain Rose was holding.

"And why she went with you?" Rose suggested.

He smiled, and somehow she knew that wasn't it before he opened his mouth. But all he said was, "S'pose so," and she frowned a little.

"Where is she now?" Jack wanted to know. "Somewhere fun?"

That made Rose look at him, finally, because it didn't seem like the Doctor was going to say anything else right now. "You're obsessed with fun today," she teased, leaning back against him.

His arm fell around her shoulders easily and he gave her a half hug and a grin. "I'm obsessed with fun everyday," he corrected. "I like to think of it as a healthy fixation. And, may I add, one that's better shared."

She smirked at him. "You think everything's better shared."

His grin didn't fade, and he threw his free arm out to the side. "Isn't it?" he declared expansively.

"Siberia's fun," the Doctor remarked, watching them.

"Yeah," Jack said, apparently considering this. "If you've got enough body heat under the blankets. Not my first choice for a vacation destination, but I'm game if you are."

Rose giggled, but the Doctor paid no attention. He was frowning across the street, but even as she followed his gaze she realized he wasn't actually looking at anything. "You call it... Holly something. Holly's Hearth?"

"Holly's Heart?" Jack was quick. "The time trap?"

"That's the one," the Doctor said cheerfully. "Told Ace we'd meet her there. She won't be expecting you," he added, glancing over at Jack. "But then, I'm fairly certain no one ever is."

"Why, Doctor!" Jack was teasing, but Rose thought he wasn't just pretending to be surprised. "Was that a compliment?"

"Just stating a fact," the Doctor said, stretching his legs out in front of him as he leaned back. "Take it as you will."

Jack tapped Rose's shoulder on the Doctor's side, making her crane her neck to look up at him. "I'm sensing maybe he didn't mean it as a compliment," he said dryly. "What do you think?"

"I think you're right," she said with a grin.

"It's sort of a funny name, if you think about it," the Doctor said. He folded his arms as he stared off across the street again. "Holly's Heart. Who was Holly, and what's that place got to do with her heart?"

Jack didn't miss a beat. "Why do you assume Holly was a she?" he inquired. "I knew a guy named Holly. Nice enough, a little slow on the uptake. Great hair, though, and good taste in liquor."

He barely paused before launching into a story. "There was this one time I traded him a martini for a comb, and oh, you should have seen his face when he realized what I wanted it for." A self-satisfied smile made itself at home on his face. "Never cut his hair again as long as I knew him."

"Which was how long, exactly?" Rose interjected. "One night?"

"Hey, your opinion wounds me," he informed her. "Truly."

"Uh-huh," she agreed, giggling. "I'm sure. How long?"

"Three nights," Jack replied. "At least. Maybe four, I don't really remember. There were a lot of martinis."

"Never was a Holly," the Doctor decided. "Bet it's just a corruption of something else. Like Holis Ark, or All This Art."

"All This Art?" Rose echoed. "What, you think it was like a museum or something?"

"Never been a fan of museums, me." The Doctor paused, squinting at a passerby before turning his gaze to her. "Nah, I think everyone makes up their own words for things they don't understand. Like Holly's Heart."

"Or Siberia?" she suggested, returning the look.

His expression relaxed, and she was never entirely sure whether that meant she had gotten what he was trying to tell her or that he had just given up. "Yeah," he agreed, smiling at her. "Just like."

"So, that's where we're going?" Jack put in. "Holly's Heart, to meet your old school friend?"

"Yeah, but she's not my school friend." The Doctor tipped his head forward to look across Rose at Jack. "She's a friend who went to my school. Y'see?"

"She traveled with the Doctor for a while," Rose said, taking pity on Jack's confused expression. "He sent her off to his school while he went to San Francisco and got shot."

She turned in time to catch the Doctor's surprised look. "See?" she said, a bit smug. "I listen."

"Shot in San Francisco," Jack said with a sigh. He managed to make it sound almost romantic, like something out of a movie. "That's the kind of thing that would be a better with a woman. A really gorgeous woman--a nurse, maybe. And a long convalescence. Preferably somewhere tropical."

"I'd have settled for someone who knew who she was operating on," the Doctor muttered.

Jack's arm around her shoulders slipped a little as he leaned forward. "When in San Francisco?" he asked suspiciously.

"Oh..." The doctor squinted up at the sky like he was trying to remember. "Twenty, twenty-first century? Year's a bit blurry, actually, what with the anesthesia and all."

Jack whistled. "Under the knife in twentieth century Earth," he repeated, shaking his head. "You're a brave man, Doctor."

"Hey," Rose protested. But she couldn't really think of anything to say to that, so she stopped. "Well, yeah," she admitted after a moment. "Okay."

"Nanogenes aren't looking so bad now, are they," Jack teased.

"No better than a human with a knife if they don't know what they're doing," the Doctor pointed out. "Technology's only as good as the person using it."

"Well, glad you made it," Jack declared, leaning over Rose to pat the Doctor's knee. It could have been a comforting gesture, except that then he added, "Bet you've got some great scars."

"Wouldn't you like to know," the Doctor replied, not moving.

Jack laughed, settling back against the bench again. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours," he told the street lazily.

Rose poked him hard, making no effort to stifle her snicker. "You've just been waiting to say that," she accused. "Haven't you."

"Oh, please." Jack dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. "I've got a million of 'em. I don't have to wait. There's one for every occasion, I promise you."

"Not as many scars as you'd think," the Doctor said quietly. He wasn't looking at either of them, but it was a measure of his comfort that he would say a thing like that now. It got Rose's attention, and even Jack sobered a little.

"No?" He didn't say anything else for a moment, like he didn't know where to go from there. Which was strange, because Jack always knew what to say.

No, Rose thought, looking at the Doctor. At least not where we can see. The scars from his past were deep inside, and they hurt when she got too close. Him and her both.

"I've got a couple I can't explain," Jack finally admitted. His tone was equally pensive, and Rose fumbled for his hand without thinking about it. He accepted the reassurance wordlessly, giving her fingers a squeeze.

The Doctor sounded farther away than he was when he offered, "Maybe it's better not to know."

She saw Jack glance sharply in his direction. Maybe it was. Cold comfort, though, for someone who had once defined himself by the loss of those memories. And lately that hadn't really been the Doctor's style.

"Maybe," Jack agreed at last. He too seemed to sense that the Doctor hadn't meant it to hurt, that there was something else behind the melancholy that they couldn't see. "But I'd feel better if I knew that was my decision."

The Doctor didn't answer, and suddenly Rose didn't like this conversation anymore. "All right," she announced. She squeezed Jack's hand to warn him as she stood, pulling him with her. "That's enough of that, then. Things to do!"

She held out her free hand to the Doctor, smiling hopefully when his distant gaze settled on her. "Coming?"

To her relief, an answering smile spread across his face. "Won't get far without me," he pointed out. Scooping up her bags, now only half visible under the bench, he reached out to her with one hand and passed the bags off to Jack with the other. "Make yourself useful," he told their fellow time traveler.

"Glad to be of service," Jack said dryly.

"Come on then," the Doctor continued. "Off we go."

Jack didn't miss his cue. "Into time!" he declared.

"And space!" Rose added with a laugh. She swung both of their hands in the same direction, skipping a little as they headed back toward the TARDIS. The sun was shining, and the wind was coming from the west. It was going to be a good day.

"Why do you call it Siberia?" Jack asked, grabbing hold of the console just as the TARDIS lurched alarmingly. "Hold on," he warned.

"A little late," Rose protested. It was an empty complaint, since she'd already been holding on and she knew better than to let go during one of the Doctor's landings. Having Jack help hadn't done much to improve them.

"Rose, hit that switch!" The Doctor leapt from one side of the console to the other, swinging around her as she stared down at the vast array of switches in confusion.

"Which one?"

"The one with the flashing light!"

She rolled her eyes. "They're all flashing!"

In retrospect, she should've expected his answer. "Then hit them all!" he told her. "Jack, do something about that shaking, would you?"

"Sure thing," Jack said, sounding calmer than either of them. "I'll just install a new spatial stabilizer, rewire the entire rematerialization matrix, and we'll be good to go."

Rose looked up in time to see the Doctor flash him a grin. "That'd be great," he agreed. "Thanks!"

The annoying bit was that Jack could probably do it. Giving the appropriate tools and parts, he seemed to be able to jerry-rig just about anything. It was handy but sort of weird on the TARDIS, which was practically a one-of-a-kind ship. How the hell had Jack learned so much about it so fast? She was still at the "push that switch" stage, and she'd been here a lot longer than he had.

"Really," Jack insisted, paying no attention to the Doctor's sarcasm. The rest of his focus seemed to split easily between conversation and actual piloting. "Why Siberia?"

Ace could fly a TARDIS. Of course, Ace had gone to the Doctor's old school for who knew how long, and she seemed to know something about their time machines. The Doctor himself had said that she hadn't been much help before that.

"Like the name," the Doctor said flippantly. "Hold on!"

She wasn't jealous, she told herself firmly. 'Cause that was ridiculous. Jack was a fifty-first century Time Agent, and Ace was a hundred and twenty-six years old. Or a hundred twenty-five, if she believed the Doctor, which most of the time she did but he wasn't always as clever as he thought he was when it came to marking time. Either of them, all of them, had had lots longer to figure out time travel than she had.

"That was a lot more exciting than my last trip here," Jack commented when the jerking about finally stopped. "And I thought trying to steer a twin-engine carrier with only one engine was a challenge. You really should fix that stabilizer," he added.

"Didn't you say you were gonna do it?" the Doctor asked innocently.

"Don't make me start a chore list," Rose interjected. "'Cause I will. One for groceries, one for chores... one for laundry, if you're not careful. With a whiteboard and a dry erase marker and everything."

"Oi!" The Doctor looked offended at the very idea, as she'd known he would. She tried not to giggle as he protested, "This isn't a flat, you know! Keep your domestics to yourself!"

"I'll share laundry duties with you," Jack offered, a twinkle in his eye. "We can pool our stuff if you trust me to wash your clothes."

"Should I?" Rose wanted to know.

"Should I trust you?" Jack countered. "This isn't your kind of fabric, you know."

"Yeah, and it can't get any smaller," the Doctor grumbled. "Shrink anything he owns, even the slightest bit, and he won't be able to wear it at all."

"We have that in common," Jack said with a grin. "Right, Rose?"

She laughed. "I know how not to shrink things," she promised. "You teach me about washing your clothes and I'll teach you about mine. We can switch off... what, every week or so?"

She was pretty sure Jack was only ribbing the Doctor, but he wasn't giving up the joke just yet. "Every week it is," he agreed. "Be nice to get a week off. Sure you don't want to join in, Doctor?"

"I'll say hi to Ace for you," the Doctor called over his shoulder, already heading for the doors. "Tell her you're busy doing laundry or something, didn't have time to come and see her."

Rose and Jack smirked at each other. "Just as well," Jack said loudly, as they abandoned the console room. "Wouldn't want his wardrobe to contaminate ours with its monotony."

The Doctor waited for them outside, eyeing Jack as he passed. "What's wrong with this jumper?" he wanted to know, an exasperated note in his voice that Rose had heard each of the dozen times he'd asked that same question.

"Nothing that isn't wrong with the twenty you've got that look just like it," Jack replied cheerfully.

"He does have different colors," Rose felt obliged to point out. "That's something."

"Not different enough that you'd have to separate lights from darks," Jack countered.

"Not everyone likes to spend all their time fussing over laundry," the Doctor informed them. "I've got better things to do."

"Not grocery shopping, though," Rose remarked.

"Or repairing the stabilizer," Jack added.

The Doctor just stared at them for a second, then shook his head in apparent resignation. "You lot wouldn't have any adventures at all without me. Spend all your time eating chips and arguing over the best fabric softener for towels."

"And you'd spend all your time dirty and starving," Rose teased, linking her arm through his and leaning against his shoulder. "Not to mention you'd be dead several times over."

"Not the only one you could say that about," the Doctor objected.

"Well, not the dirty and starving part," Jack said with a grin.

"But the dead part, yeah," Rose agreed good-naturedly. "I'll give you that."

"Kind of you!" The Doctor sounded put out, but he was giving her an amused look that made her smile up at him. "Ready to get on with the adventuring, then?"

"Where are we going?" she asked, bouncing up on her toes. She kept her arm in his as he turned away from the TARDIS. Jack came up on her other side, pacing them as they stepped out onto the concourse.

"Find Ace," the Doctor said, like she might have forgotten. "She's got to be around here somewhere."

"Is it tomorrow, then?" She was tickled by the thought that Ace had just seen them the day before. It had been months since she and the Doctor had been in Siberia, but Ace had promised before she left that the next time she was here would actually be "tomorrow." For her, anyway.

"Guess we'll see." The Doctor didn't look worried. "Let's try that way."

"You didn't pick a meeting place?" Jack asked skeptically. "This place is huge. Temporally and spatially. How are you going to find someone if you don't know where or when to look?"

"'When' is today," the Doctor declared. He gestured across the concourse with his free hand. "'Where' is that way. Trust me. She'll be there."

"Is this near where we met her last time?" Rose wanted to know. "Cause I want to see a picture of Jack when he was little."

Jack laughed at that. "Oh, the roving photographers with the wacky cameras? Believe me, I'm not letting anyone take my picture unless one of you is in it with me."

"But I already know what I looked like when I was little," Rose protested, turning pleading eyes on him. "I want to see your baby pictures!"

"Yeah, and what if we get an old camera instead of a young one?" Jack raised his eyebrows at her. "I have it on good authority that I age very well, but I'm not going to be the only one."

She turned to the Doctor automatically. "Some of the cameras show you in the future instead of the past? You could've warned me! I might've looked like my mum!"

"I'm nine hundred years old," he reminded her. "You suddenly being fifty isn't going to shock me any."

"Oh my god," she said as it sank in. "I could look like my mum." Then she realized what she'd said and she swatted him with her free hand. "My mum's not fifty!"

He ignored her slap. "Yeah, like a couple of decades one way or the other really makes a difference to me," he teased.

"A couple of decades!" she exclaimed, pretending outrage. "That's my whole life!"

"And a very interesting life it's been," he added, patting her arm. "Since you've met me, anyway."

"Nine hundred," Jack repeated, cutting off any smart reply she might have made to that. "And you're...?" He gave Rose a meaningful glance. Somehow, in all their travels, it had never come up. "Twenty-two? Twenty-three?"

"Twenty," she admitted. She'd already heard all about the age gap from her mother, and that was back when she'd thought the Doctor was forty-five, tops. No matter how bad he could be, she was pretty sure Jack didn't have anything on her mum when it came to embarrassing her.

"Ah, you weren't kidding about the two decades," he said with a grin. "Kind of robbing the cradle, aren't you, Doc?"

"When I picked you up?" the Doctor replied pleasantly. "S'pose so."

"Yeah, what's your age then?" Rose prodded. "You can't be that much older than me."

Jack chuckled. "You're forgetting when I'm from," he chided. "Humans live a lot longer in my time. Good thing, too," he added, "since we've got a lot more ground to cover."

"Lot more people to dance with, you mean." The Doctor said it under his breath, but Jack was clearly meant to hear. And even though Jack had never heard the Doctor define the euphemism, he seemed to recognize it instinctively.

"That there are," he agreed with a certain amount of satisfaction. "And it feeds on itself, right, because that's what keeps us young. More time means more people, and more people means more time. Nice little circle."

She saw the Doctor shoot him a distinctly unimpressed look, and she decided to jump in before they started to argue the health benefits of "dancing" in the middle of Siberia's crowded alien streets. "So what's your age?" she repeated, reaching out to poke Jack's arm with her free hand. She missed, but only just, and he grinned over his shoulder to let her know that he'd avoided her on purpose.

"Seventy-three," he told her. "That's plus the missing two years."

God, was everybody she met older than they looked? She knew the Doctor was just waiting for her to echo his age in disbelief, so she focused on his last comment instead. "Plus, you mean like including? Or plus like you're really seventy-five?"

"No, not for another two years. I'm seventy-three, including the time I don't remember." Jack shrugged in the way he did when he cared a lot more than he was letting on. "Unless there's more time missing than I know about. Which is possible."

Rose didn't know what to say to that, but the Doctor wasn't at a loss. "Kids," he said in a dismissive tone. "They didn't even let me out of school until I was a hundred four. Seventy-three, I was still studying basic maths."

She looked from one to the other, but Jack seemed just as happy to let it go. So she nudged the Doctor, leaning into him a little as they walked. "Remedial maths, you mean," she teased. "That one of the things you failed the first time you took your graduation exam?"

"Oh, wait a minute, failed?" Jack repeated. There was no mistaking the amusement in his voice. "You failed your graduation exams?"

The Doctor paid no attention, instead frowning down at Rose like Jack hadn't said a word. "I'll have you know I'm very good at math," he corrected, all wounded pride and pretend hurt. "You're the one can't even remember when your birthday is."

"Because you won't get me a watch that works!" she exclaimed. "How am I supposed to know what day it is when we go from 2005 to the year five billion in like three minutes?"

"We were only there an hour," he pointed out.

"Longest hour of my life," she retorted, squeezing his arm to let him know she didn't mean it. "And that's exactly what I'm talking about! An hour here, a few days there, and suddenly it's 2006!"

"For them living in it, yeah." The Doctor shrugged. "You get your own time, separate from theirs. Makes you special," he said proudly.

"Makes me confused," she said, which was true even if she didn't really mind. "I've almost caught up, you know. When we went back to Cardiff I was twenty, just like I should have been."

"What does it matter?" Jack wanted to know. "You're however old you are; time travel doesn't change that. Just make sure you hit the right time on your way home and you're all set."

"Yeah," Rose said, with a sideways look at the Doctor. "I'm not counting on that part, actually."

"One time," he protested. "It was one time. The TARDIS was having a little trouble that day--"

"Oh, well, good thing that's never happened again," Jack interrupted dryly.

"And we were a bit off," the Doctor finished, ignoring him. "I said I was sorry."

"Well, you can get a watch that'll work here," Jack remarked. He must've decided that if the Doctor was going to ignore him, then two could play that game. "They sell all kinds of temporally insulated merchandise around here."

"Won't work in the TARDIS," the Doctor said, before Rose could answer.

Jack raised his eyebrows at him. "Mine does."

"So far," the Doctor allowed. "Just a matter of time."

"Yeah," Jack said with a grin. "It would be."

The Doctor rolled his eyes but didn't answer. Rose took the opportunity to look around, deciding that she didn't recognize any of this and it wasn't getting any more familiar the farther they walked. "Is this where we're going?" she asked. "How do you know where Ace is, anyway?"

He lifted his free hand and pointed to something up ahead and to his right. "That's where we're going," he said. "And it's not where she is. It's where she will be."

"It" turned out to be a small courtyard, set in between a sort of outdoor cafe and a gardening shop. The cafe crowd spilled over into what was maybe a demonstration area for the garden people, but no one was yelling at them to clear out or anything. It was definitely more public than the alley where Ace had parked last time, but it was a lot less conspicuous than where they had parked, so.

"Here, huh?" Jack looked around as they wandered off the street, studying the crowd. "Where, exactly? I guess we're not looking for another police box?"

"Not here yet," the Doctor answered. He consulted his watch--just for effect, Rose was sure, since it didn't tell useful time any better than hers did. "Almost..."

Right on cue, the sound of wind chimes sparkled through the courtyard, and she saw some of the people in the cafe turn to look as a mirror shimmered into view on the garden shop wall. She smiled, nudging the Doctor. "How did you know?"

Jack followed her gaze, studying the mirror with a curious expression. "That's her ship? I assume it operates on the same principle as yours... but it doesn't have any doors, so how do you--?"

"Magic," the Doctor answered. She couldn't tell if he was answering her or Jack, but a glance at him showed that he was frowning at the mirror. "A better question is, how come it still looks like that?"

"What?" Rose looked back at the mirror, but there weren't any answers there. "Like a mirror?"

"Did it look like that before?" Jack asked.

"It's the thing," Rose realized. "The circuit you talked about, the one controls the cloaking device. Hers works, doesn't it."

"Yeah, it looked like that before," the Doctor said absently. "And her chameleon circuit should be working fine. Kept everything in perfect order, she did. Malfunction like that would have had her screaming bloody murder."

"Well, maybe she's been busy," Jack reasoned. "Maybe she needs a part she can't get."

Rose knew perfectly well that they weren't talking about Ace anymore, but Jack didn't have any reason to. She couldn't let him know it without getting the Doctor's attention, either, so she kept her mouth shut. The Doctor didn't seem any more inclined to enlighten him.

"Maybe she's trying to make it easy for us," was all he said. "Good chameleon circuit can make a TARDIS pretty hard to spot."

Rose glanced at Jack and wasn't really surprised to find him looking back. "First rule of active camouflage," she murmured, and he smiled.

"Park somewhere you'll remember," he finished. "Big Ben's good. Here I'd go for something a little more local, though. Maybe that tower over there. Or the Chi Restaurant."

"The where?"

"Great drinks," he said, grinning at her. "We should do dinner while we're here."

The Doctor let go of her arm to approach the mirror, muttering to himself. From what she could catch, he hadn't been paying the slightest attention to their conversation, and now she wished she'd been paying more attention to him. He looked puzzled, which meant this wasn't just a funny quirk of someone else's TARDIS--god knew his had enough--and Ace still hadn't appeared.

As though summoned by her thoughts, the mirror rippled, and the Doctor's former traveling companion stepped out of it. Rose glanced over her shoulder at the cafe people. A couple of them were pointing, but most of them had already gone back to their food, as though mysterious mirrors appeared out of nowhere everyday. And apparently people coming through them didn't rate much higher on the novelty scale.

She wondered suddenly what all this lot traveled in.

"Not bad," she heard Jack murmur. She knew instantly what he meant, and she gave him a hard poke just on general principle. He gave her an unrepentant smirk. "Well, she can't hold a candle to you, but she wasn't exactly beaten with the ugly stick, was she."

"Shh," Rose hissed. The Doctor would hear them, even if Ace didn't, and she wasn't going to let Jack get her in trouble this early in the day. "Be nice!"

When it was obvious the Doctor expected her and Jack to join him and Ace, instead of the other way around, she stopped hanging back and gave Jack a "behave or else" look as they went over. He gave her a "who, me?" look in return. Which was probably pretty much right, she decided, since him behaving was sort of like Mickey being exciting.

"--trouble with your chameleon circuit?" the Doctor was asking.

But Ace was already shaking her head. "Not that I've noticed." Throwing a glance over her shoulder, she added, "I know, the mirror, right? It's been like that since I got it. She must've programmed it that way or something, and I didn't--I mean, I just haven't gotten around to overriding it."

"Programmed it that way," the Doctor repeated, still staring at the mirror.

Ace followed his gaze again. "Yeah, why? Is it strange?"

"Yeah," he said slowly. "A bit." There was another pause, and then he seemed to shake it off. "Never mind. How've you been, good to see you, got a new friend, me."

"I see that," Ace agreed, giving Jack a cautious nod. But she didn't bother to introduce herself, and it was Rose she greeted. "Not quite a hundred years, then?"

"I hope I look this good in ten years, let alone a hundred," Rose said with a smile.

"Keep traveling with the Professor," Ace advised. "Like mineral water," she said, glancing at the man beside her, "only harder to explain to your family."

He just smiled, tucking his hands under his arms, and Rose suddenly got the feeling that she should ask what Ace was on about. But Jack got there first, shouldering his way in with a charming introduction of his own that didn't seem to have the slightest effect on Ace, and Rose was distracted by the fun of it all. Everyone liked Jack. Everyone was taken in by his friendly flirting and carefree humor, and everyone seemed to fall under his spell the moment they met him.

Everyone but Ace.

Well, to be fair, Ace and the Doctor, but the Doctor had had other reasons for not liking Jack when they first met, so he didn't really count. Ace seemed suspicious of him for no apparent reason, which was odd since shouldn't she trust anybody traveling with the Doctor? She shook his hand and acknowledged his jokes, but she didn't laugh at them and she looked like she was sort of sizing him up every time he glanced away.

The Doctor paid no attention. He was frowning at the mirror again, and Ace didn't pretend not to notice. "The mirror thing really bothers you, doesn't it," she remarked.

The Doctor gave her a quick smile. "Nah. Probably nothing."

"You haven't stopped staring at it since I got here," Ace said impatiently.

"Well, that's what it's for," the Doctor declared. "S'posed to stare at a mirror, that's the whole point of 'em!"

Ace shot Rose a significant look, and Rose knew what she wanted. The Doctor wasn't the same person Ace had known, back before the Time War, and his new companions knew him in ways she didn't anymore. And it had taken Ace about two seconds, last time they'd met, to figure out that the Doctor would tell Rose anything.

So Rose said, "You don't even like mirrors. What's this one done to win your affection, then?"

The Doctor looked away from the mirror long enough to give her a condescending smile. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing," he warned, including Ace in his reprimand with a glance. "You think you're so clever. Well you're not, and I'll tell you why.

"The whole point of a chameleon circuit is to disguise things," he continued. Rose suppressed a smile, because he might have been onto them from the beginning but he was still playing their game. "You can't program it to stick like this, that's not what it's for. No one sets it to a particular shape just 'cause they like it."

Jack folded his arms and raised his eyebrows at the Doctor. "You do," he pointed out.

"Yes, but Jack my boy, I am the exception to every rule." The Doctor smiled smugly at him, then added, "Besides, I told you. Mine's broken. Hers isn't."

"How do you know?" Jack asked reasonably. "Have you looked at it?"

"Don't need to," the Doctor told him. "Most people didn't have their own personal TARDIS, there's no need. Like a motor pool, they're all just communal. But this one belonged to someone in particular before Ace came along, and I happened to know that person very well. I can assure you, everything was in tip-top shape."

"Well, where's that someone now?" Jack wanted to know. "Unless they're inside with a sonic screwdriver and a lot of spare parts, I don't see why this TARDIS should be in the same shape it was last time you saw it."

"'Scuse me," Ace said sharply. "I know a thing or two about TARDIS maintenance, all right? It's running just as well today as it was the first day I stepped inside."

"Well, I'm not saying you broke it." Jack made it sound like there was no way anyone could ever have heard that in what he'd said. "From what I've seen, a TARDIS is a finicky thing. Maybe it happened in the transfer from one owner to another."

"It didn't," Ace insisted. "Because it isn't broken. I'd know if it was, and it's not."

"Then why isn't it working?" Jack countered.

"Well, it is working," Rose interrupted, before Ace could slap him. "Right? I mean, it's disguised itself as a mirror, so that's something. It's just not... just not doing quite what it's supposed to do, is all."

"Look," Ace said, clearly exasperated. "Come in and see for yourself if you want. But I'm going to say 'I told you so' after."

"Oh, I believe you," the Doctor assured her. "You're right, of course, you'd know it if was broken." He paused, then added, "So it can't be broken, but it's not doing what it's supposed to do. The question is, why not?"

"You're sure it can't be programmed?" Ace asked, wrinkling her brow. "The mirror... I dunno, it feels right somehow. Like it's supposed to be that way."

The Doctor studied her thoughtfully. "Does it," he said at last. Rose got the oddest feeling that he had heard more than she had in that. Then he shook his head. "Nope! Can't be programmed. Let's have a look, shall we?"

He headed into the TARDIS without waiting for an answer. Rose glanced over at Jack as the Doctor walked right through the glass, and she saw him grin. "No doors," he repeated, and his tone was appreciative. "That's classy."

Ace shot him an annoyed look over her shoulder, and he raised his voice as she disappeared through the mirror. "You just can't give some people a compliment," Jack called after her. It was hard to guess whether she could hear him on the other side or not.

"You're getting the cold shoulder," Rose teased. "Losing your touch?"

Jack was looking a little puzzled. "She wasn't like this with you when you first met?"

"Nope!" Rose exclaimed, delighted by his confusion. "She offered to buy me lunch. Course," she added with a smirk, "I didn't tell her she broke her spaceship, either."

Funny, though--when she thought about it, she did recognize that look Ace had been giving Jack. She had gotten it too, the moment Ace had figured out who the Doctor was... and who Rose had to be, if she was with him. But it had been and gone pretty quick, and she'd put it out of her mind.

Now she wondered, was Ace sizing them up? Weighing their worthiness? The Doctor liked to say he only took the best. Maybe Ace was checking up on him, making sure his standards hadn't slipped?

"I didn't say she broke it," Jack protested, giving the mirror a wounded look. "You were the one who said it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do, and everyone agreed with you. How come I'm the bad guy all of a sudden?"

"'Cause I am friendly and polite," Rose said proudly. She poked him in the arm. "You could learn a thing or two from me."

Jack gave her a too-sweet grin that should have warned her. "Are you offering to teach me something?"

"You offering to listen?" she said with a laugh.

"Yeah." His smile vanished and his voice dropped as he turned slightly away from the mirror. "Who is she? Went to his school, has her own TARDIS, but she's human, isn't she. She's from Earth--from your time, unless she has a thing for vintage clothes--and she goes around in a time machine built by a dead race? Why?"

Rose stared at him. He went from joking to seriously intense in seconds, and she had seen it before but it still caught her by surprise. Especially since Jack had never once pried into the Doctor's past. Maybe because of the hole in his own history, he'd never seemed too concerned with theirs.

She'd been the one to bring it up. Not long after they'd snatched him from his doomed time ship, a casual conversation had turned nasty and Jack had been at a total loss to explain why. Seeing the Doctor shout at him had reminded her of her questions on Platform One, the first day she'd stepped into the TARDIS and the last day she had believed she had to know someone in order to trust them.

Still, she'd figured it would help Jack to know what not to say. His planet was destroyed, she'd told him, after the Doctor stormed off. There was a war, and all his people died. Their enemies, too, and lots of innocent people with them. He's the only one left. Sometimes he thinks it's his fault. Don't ask him about it.

Jack had accepted that with surprising calm. It eventually came out that he had heard of Gallifrey, and Rose would have been jealous except that he admitted he'd never really believed the stories. He hadn't even connected them with the Doctor until an alien who wasn't trying to kill them mentioned the Time War. She had seen Jack's eyes light up as he put it all together. The Doctor had seen it too. They had all looked at each other, said nothing, and silently agreed not to bring it up again.

At least not where the Doctor could hear. Rose didn't find out exactly what Jack knew until some time later, and it felt sort of disloyal to whisper about it when the Doctor wasn't around. They did, if only to pool their knowledge and keep from hurting him accidentally, but they didn't like it.

She didn't like it now, either. But telling him what she knew would keep the Doctor from having to do it, and that had to be a good thing. It was sort of her fault they were here in the first place, so she would take some of the responsibility.

"You're right," she said at last.

Jack shushed her before she got any further, motioning for her to turn so she was standing beside him with her back to the mirror. "Don't you know where the cameras are yet?" he said softly, a smile lightening his face for a second. "Really, Rose."

She made a face at him, but he just folded his arms. "Okay," he said, more seriously. "I'm listening. Teach me."

"Okay," she said, unconsciously echoing him. "You're right, she's from Earth, a few years earlier than me, and she traveled with the Doctor for a long time. He says she was too smart, so he sent her to his old school to become a Time Lord."

"Wait," Jack interrupted, but quietly so that she didn't realize he actually had a question until he added, "People who weren't from Gallifrey can be Time Lords? Are you serious?"

"'Course I'm serious," she whispered indignantly. "Do you want to know or not?"

"Sorry." The smirk flashed across his face and was gone. "Please continue, dear Rose."

She gave him a "hmmph," but she went on. "She was there when the war started, and something bad happened, they wanted to get the students involved or something, so she left. A while later, that TARDIS found her, and when she went inside there was a message from--"

Rose hesitated, not sure exactly what to say. "A friend of the Doctor's," she decided at last. "Sent her TARDIS out looking for him before she... well, y'know. It found Ace instead. Ace found him, but the Doctor told her to keep it. So she did."

Jack was gazing at her intently, and there was a time when she would have been flattered but she knew better by now. He really was charming, and he really was interested, but right now the only thing he wanted was all the information she had. "She died? The woman who had the TARDIS before Ace?"

"Yeah," Rose said with a sigh. "She was the president of Gallifrey, Ace said. Died in the war with the rest of them."

"The president," Jack repeated, raising his eyebrows. "He had friends in high places."

Rose just shook her head. "Doesn't he always?"

"Yeah," Jack said slowly. "Yeah, I guess he does."

That was all he said, and finally she jerked her head back toward the mirror. "So can we go in now? Don't fancy missing all the fun."

"You wouldn't," Jack answered, and just like that he was his carefree self again. "You're welcome!"

"Like not being welcome has ever stopped you before," Rose teased, backing toward the mirror.

"Ouch!" He tracked her with a grin, and she saw his eyes flick past her shoulder when she got close. "Sometimes you have to give people a chance to welcome you, that's all. Some of them take longer than others."

She stopped, clued in by his glance, and smirked at him. "Some people don't know how to take no for an answer."

His eyes twinkled at her. "Good thing the Doctor's one of them." And he walked right past her, striding through the mirror without a hint of hesitation.

Her mouth fell open as she stared after him. The cheeky bugger! Why had she ever told him how she'd wound up traveling with the Doctor? Somehow he got more use out of that then she did out of the banana incident, which was definitely not fair, because his join-up story was a lot more embarrassing than hers was.

Maybe she'd have a chance to tell Ace about it.

She put her hand out and followed him, not quite confident enough to just walk right into a mirror no matter what she knew was on the other side. Jack hadn't gotten very far, just a few steps inside--enough to clear the door, but not enough to reach the console in the middle of the room. And when she looked up, she knew why.

Romana was standing at the console. She was standing frozen at the console, Rose realized almost immediately, and the Doctor and Ace weren't even looking at her. They were standing side by side, looking over each other's shoulders as they worked the controls. The Doctor looked up and caught her eye as she came over to stand beside Jack, giving her a brief smile. She wondered how much of their conversation he'd heard.

"Wow," Jack said in a normal tone of voice. "Now that's one good-looking computer system."

"Not a computer system," the Doctor replied, looking down at the console again. "It's a message, and I can't seem to turn it off."

"There," Ace announced suddenly. "That's done it."

But it didn't, because the hologram stayed right where it was, not moving. "Or maybe it hasn't," Ace added. "But it should have. There's no power to the integration system."

The Doctor frowned. "Bit dangerous, that."

Ace held up a single thread, touched it to one of the open panels in front of him, and Rose could see something flash even from where she stood. "Happy?" Ace asked pointedly. "I don't cannibalize systems when I can just pull the plug. Unlike some people I could mention."

The Doctor sniffed. "I have a very sophisticated integration system. It's not as simple as a piece here or a piece there."

"Not anymore," Ace agreed dryly. She lifted the thread again and used it to gesture at the still-frozen hologram. "The point is, that shouldn't still be there."

"Says you," Jack put in. "I wouldn't mind seeing more."

"And if the message was for you," Ace said without looking at him, "your opinion would matter."

"Is it the same message you saw last time, then?" Rose asked. If she had to choose sides then of course she would choose Jack, but he could be a bit much sometimes. And she did like Ace.

"Exactly the same." The Doctor was frowning at his sonic screwdriver, but before anyone else could say anything he held out a hand to Ace. "Let's see yours."

Ace just stared at him. "My what?"

"Sonic screwdriver," the Doctor said impatiently. "Don't tell me you haven't got it with you."

"I do," Ace protested, though Rose got the feeling she was just humoring him. "You're just not as clear when you stop using nouns, that's all."

She handed over the little device without further complaint, and the Doctor turned it on the console. Nothing happened. The room was quiet except for the hum of the TARDIS and the Doctor's tinkering. Even Ace had stopped what she was doing to watch.

Then, suddenly, the hologram began to speak. Rose actually started, as focused as she'd been on the Doctor's intent expression--almost grim, and that sort of worried her--but at her side, Jack only smiled in appreciation. Leave it to him to see a pretty woman first and the Doctor's distress second, she thought, trying to ignore a twinge of irritation. This was important.

"--what you're trying to do," Romana was telling them. "And I know why. You know why I have to try to stop you."

The message must have gotten part of the way through before they managed to stop it. Rose was glad Jack had missed the beginning, because if he'd seen the whole thing he would've known what she wasn't saying when she called the president "a friend of the Doctor's." She felt a little guilty for not sharing everything she knew, but she was pretty sure she'd feel guiltier if she shared something the Doctor hadn't actually told her.

"That wasn't supposed to happen," the Doctor was telling the sonic screwdriver in his hand. "You're just like her, aren't you. Always doing what I want you to do instead of what I tell you to do. Bloody nuisance, you are."

Rose was only half-listening, distracted by the hologram, by Jack's consideration of the hologram, and by the way Ace was studying the Doctor. "Let it play," Ace suggested, bracing one hand against the console and obviously giving up on the whole thing. "At least when it's done it will shut off on its own."

"You hope," the Doctor commented. "Shouldn't have come on at all, so who's to say it'll shut off when it gets to the end?"

"Don't let yourself be the last," the hologram was saying. "Finish Ace's training, if she'll let you. Then find someone else, and train them too."

"So is this the woman who kept this TARDIS in tip-top shape?" Jack wanted to know.

"Yup." The Doctor was pretending not to watch the message, tapping half-heartedly at the console and giving it an occasional poke with the sonic screwdriver Romana had left for Ace. But Rose could see him looking out of the corner of his eye.

"Never would have stood for this integrator problem," he added, frowning a little. "Seems to be stuck in some sort of loop."

"It seems only fair we trust you with our future." If Rose remembered right, the message was almost over, and suddenly the Doctor was watching it. Totally open, not even pretending to be distracted as the woman delivering it stretched casually and smiled out at him.

Funny, Rose realized. The Doctor wasn't standing anywhere near where he'd been last time, but the hologram was still looking directly at him. Bit spooky. Some kind of camera or scanner trick, she wondered?

"Stop it," the Doctor said abruptly.

Rose blinked, looking over at him, but Ace got it. The hologram stopped where it was, frozen again while Romana smiled at the Doctor. Her hands rested on top of her head, flattening her curls and giving her a sort of impish look. Not for the first time, Rose thought that she looked oddly peaceful for someone saying her last goodbyes.

"That," the Doctor declared, pointing at the hologram with one of the sonic screwdrivers. "That's been nagging me, you know. 'Cause she didn't need help, and if she did, she would have said. But she didn't. Y'see?"

Rose thought she spoke for all of them when she said, "No."

"No," Ace agreed. "What are you talking about?"

"That." The Doctor pointed again, as though they might not have seen him do it the first time. "I'm talking about that."

"The girl?" Jack guessed. His tone said he knew that was the wrong answer, but he was willing to be wrong if it moved the game along.

"That," the Doctor repeated, "is the secret signal of trouble. It means any number of things: I'm in trouble, I'm doing whatever I'm doing against my will, this was a really bad idea and I should have listened to the Doctor when he told me not to wander off.

"But in the end," he concluded, "it comes down to one thing."

Knowing he was waiting for one of them to do it, Rose asked, "What's that?"

The Doctor looked over at her, and his expression was distant and hard to read. "Come help me," he said simply.

For a long moment, the hum of the TARDIS was the only sound in the room. Rose didn't look away, willing to hold his gaze as long as he would let her, wanting to remind him that he wasn't alone anymore. He hadn't lost everything, because he had them. And they would take some of his guilt and sadness and pain if he would only let them.

"But she didn't ask you to help her." Ace's voice broke the silence, and the Doctor glanced away. "I mean, she told you what was going to happen, yeah. But she didn't send that message until... She didn't expect you to see it until it was all over."

"Yeah," Rose said slowly. "That's true. She said she knew what you were going to do, and what she was going to do, and this message was for after, right? You weren't meant to see it until whatever happened had happened."

"Maybe it was a joke," Jack offered. He held up his hands when they all turned to stare at him. "No, come on, a display of solidarity before the end, that's all I'm saying. Everyone gets nostalgic when they have time to think about what's coming."

The Doctor didn't even bother to answer. Instead he turned to Ace and asked, "Could I see the message she left you?"

"Yeah, 'course." Ace didn't even have to think about it. "What about this one?"

"Like you said." He came up with a small smile. "Probably shut off when it gets to the end."

Without a word, Ace adjusted something on the console and the hologram spoke once more.

"Goodbye, Doctor," Romana told him. Her eyes stayed on him until she vanished in a flash of light. There was a quiet moment, and it stretched until Rose finally breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn't sure Ace's message would be any better, but at least the Doctor wouldn't have to keep watching that one.

There wasn't any warning other than the brief flash of light before Romana stood before them again. This time, though, she was looking at Ace and her tone was lighter. "Hi, Ace," she said with a smile. "If you're seeing this, my TARDIS has surprised you somewhere and you're probably a bit confused.

"I'll tell you the truth," Gallifrey's last president continued. "She was actually looking for the Doctor. Unfortunately, the man is notoriously hard to track and I've put in your bio-data as a backup. If there's anyone he'll seek out after all of this, I think it will be you."

"She thought you knew I'd left," Ace murmured, just loud enough to hear.

Rose saw the Doctor lean toward her without taking his eyes off of the hologram. "Probably thought I encouraged you," he grumbled.

"You made a choice," Romana was telling her. "A long time ago, the Doctor made the same one. He's going to make a different choice this time, but that doesn't mean the first one was wrong. Don't second-guess yourself, Ace, and don't come after us. Go on with your life."

The hologram hesitated, as though she hadn't quite planned enough for this part of her speech. "And if you see the Doctor," she said at last, "would you give him a message for me? Tell him... Fred understands."

Romana's image smiled suddenly. "Even if you don't run into the Doctor, I hope you keep the TARDIS. What good is a Time Lord without a timeship?

"Take care of yourself, Ace." The red-haired woman disappeared in the same flash of light that had begun and ended her message to the Doctor, and Rose wondered idly if she'd done that on purpose or if it was just part of the recording process.

The Doctor tipped a sonic screwdriver toward the place where the hologram had been. "That it?" he asked Ace.

She just nodded, watching him.

"You're sure that's it?" the Doctor insisted. He turned the screwdriver on her, wagging it pointedly. "No secret messages that she told you not to tell me about?"

Rose glanced at Ace, who frowned. "That's the only one I got," Ace told him. "I didn't even know the other one existed until you showed up and it played for you."

"Cryptic," the Doctor grumbled. "Just like her."

"Why?" Ace wanted to know. "What are you muttering about?"

"She said, 'Don't come after us.'" The Doctor had turned his most intent gaze on Ace. "Which means she thought you might. Why did she think that?"

Ace didn't so much as blink in the face of his scrutiny. "Probably thought I'd change my mind, come back and try to help."

"Ah, that's where you're wrong." The Doctor handed her screwdriver back with a flourish, and tucked his own inside his jacket. He was smiling, but his eyes hadn't changed. "Because as you just pointed out, she didn't expect you to get that message until the war was over. So why did she think you'd be coming after her?"

Ace was frowning. "Professor... there's nothing left of Gallifrey. I did go back, I did check. I had to. But there's nothing to go back to."

"I know." The smile vanished as quickly as it had come. "But she didn't say, 'Don't come back,' did she. She said, 'Don't come after us.'"

"You think she's still alive," Rose blurted out. The moment she'd said the words, she wished she could take them back. They drew a stare from Jack, a snort from Ace, and a beatific look from the Doctor.

"I think she's still alive," he agreed.

"Professor," Ace began.

"Don't second-guess yourself, Ace," the Doctor interrupted, lifting one hand over his head. The other hand followed, and then he put them both on top of his head. It was an exact duplicate of Romana's "stretch" at the end of her message to him. "And don't come after us.

"Why did she say that?" the Doctor continued. "She told me to come after her. She told you not to. That means she thinks both of us could. Why? What do we have in common?"

Ace looked like she wanted to say something but couldn't quite make herself do it. So Rose jumped in. "The Prydon Academy," she said. "You both went to the same school."

"Both Prydonian," the Doctor declared. "Got that in common."

"You traveled together," Jack offered. "Right? Wherever you went, that's a shared experience."

"Toured the universe," the Doctor repeated. "Got that in common."

"You've both got a sonic screwdriver," Rose pointed out.

"And a TARDIS," Jack agreed, not waiting his turn.

"Got that in--" The Doctor broke off, staring at them. "Not just a TARDIS," he said. "Her TARDIS."

Ace spoke up before he could finish. "Neither of us would have seen the messages she left if we hadn't been in her TARDIS."

"That's it!" the Doctor exclaimed. "She didn't expect us to be together... well, maybe she did and maybe she didn't, but she did expect one or the other of us to have her TARDIS. There's something each of us can do, then, with her TARDIS, that makes it possible for us to find her. The question is, what is it?"

"A better question," Jack interjected, "is why she didn't just tell you. If she left you both private messages that no one was going to see but you, why couldn't she tell you how to find her?"

"Why couldn't she find you herself and save you the trouble?" Rose wanted to know. "If she could send the TARDIS off, get it away from the war and all the way to safety, why didn't she just get on it before it left?"

"Because she's the president," the Doctor snapped, "and she wouldn't have left anyone if there was anyone left to leave!"

Taken aback, Rose closed her mouth and stared at him. The moment of silence that followed seemed too long, but it probably wasn't more than a second or two before Ace added quietly, "And because any timeship with life signs would have been shot down on sight. Tracked and destroyed. By one side or the other."

Rose didn't get that right away, but Jack understood exactly what she meant. "You'd kill your own people to protect the timeline?" He didn't sound quite as incredulous as she thought he should, suggesting something like that.

"No one escapes a Time War," the Doctor muttered. His earlier anger was muted, like disgust was easier than excitement and just this once he didn't feel like taking the hard way. "Once you're caught in it, you're in it till the beginning."

He paused, then added, "Or until the end, as the case may be." His smile was bitter.

"Or until you use a laboratory pocket dimension to knock yourself free," Ace remarked. "And then spend six months trying to find an open vertex back to your own universe before the Time Lords close all the gateways."

"Six months?" The Doctor's smile had lost its harsh edge. "You were a good student."

"They were surprised too," Ace told him. "Considering who my sponsor was."

"Oi!" The Doctor's protest was half-hearted but at least he made the effort. "You could show a little more respect for you elders!"

"Yeah," Ace agreed, straight-faced. "That's what they said about you too, Professor."

"Well, not to belittle your accomplishment or anything," Jack put in, as though he had any idea what that accomplishment was, "but if you did it, couldn't she?" He nodded his head to indicate the place where the hologram had appeared.

"Not a student of interdimensional travel." The Doctor dismissed the possibility with a wave of his hand. "Ace was the first in centuries, maybe millennia. Not a lot of colleagues when you specialize in something that takes you offworld, not on Gallifrey, anyway."

"They're a bit reclusive," Ace admitted. "She was trying to change that, you know."

The Doctor gave her a brief glance. "She would do. No crusader like a convert, or so they say."

"That your doing, then?" Ace gave him a half-smile. "She said they thought you were a bad influence."

"Straight out of school," the Doctor said, almost fondly. "Stuck up little girl with a head full of knowledge and no practical experience whatsoever. Got saddled with her out of the blue, and when the High Council found out, well. You should have seen their faces.

"Actually," he added as an afterthought, "I should have seen their faces." He grinned, a happy, mischievous grin for the first time since they had followed him into the TARDIS. "Would've liked to take a picture, me."

'The High Council," Jack repeated. "That's the High Council of Gallifrey? Some kind of governing body?"

"Yup," the Doctor confirmed. "Eventually they caught up with us. Bloody good at tracking, for a boring lot that never left their planet. Most annoying."

"So... did they split you up after that?" Rose guessed. "If you were such a bad influence?"

"Tried," he declared unrepentantly. "She snuck out through the..." He trailed off, frowning.

Rose exchanged glances with Jack, but it was Ace who prompted, "Professor?"

"The Gateway," the Doctor muttered. "She snuck out through the--Ace, how did you say you got out? Pocket dimension in the laboratory? But you came back through a gateway, isn't that right?"

"Yeah, but they're closed now." Ace was watching him closely. "It was the Time Lords keeping them open."

The Doctor managed a terrifically offended look. "Still a Time Lord, me! What do you take me for, a man can't even open a gateway when he wants to?"

"I studied gateways," Ace reminded him. "Pocket dimensions, vertices, CVEs--"

"Right, then!" The Doctor cut her off with a huge grin. "Between the two of us, we can go anywhere!"

"You can open them and I can use them but they've still gone silent!" Ace exclaimed impatiently. "It took me six months to find one that hadn't been tied to Gallifrey and I knew what I was looking for! That's my point, isn't it: she didn't have six months!"

The Doctor didn't look upset by her outburst. Not even a little. "You think the only gateway tied to Gallifrey was in the Academy laboratory?" he inquired. "Really, Ace. Didn't you even look?"

Ace just gaped at him.

"The Eye of Harmony is its own pocket dimension--ever seen it? No?" He barely waited for an answer before continuing, "the Panopticon might as well be an alternate reality, and, oh yeah, the Matrix is a giant multi-dimensional vertex." He smiled triumphantly at her. "Take your pick!"

Ace put a hand on her hip, the list of names obviously meaning more to her than it did to anyone else. "It'd be easier to believe you if you hadn't just insulted the Capitol," she told him, but she sounded more amused than disbelieving.

The Doctor's smile went from innocent to sly in the space of a second. "Figured you'd notice. Never did like the Citadel," he added. "But what I'm saying is she could've stashed an access point anywhere. That lot wouldn't have noticed a time wind ruffling their robes, let alone tucked into the closet."

"Okay," Jack announced. He held up a quieting hand in Ace's direction and used the other one to point at the Doctor. "Could someone summarize this conversation for me? 'Cause all I'm getting is that the doll with the red hair might be in some other dimension and she wants you to come see her."

The Doctor barely seemed to think about it. "Yeah, I'd say that just about covers it," he replied cheerfully. "Ace?"

"He's your companion," Ace said with a shrug. "I never was much of a teacher."

"Hey." Jack fixed her with a glare. "It's not the technicalities I'm having trouble with, it's the geography."

"Doesn't matter." The Doctor waved it away before Ace could respond. "And her name is Romanadvoratrelundar." He gave Jack a pointed look, and Jack didn't miss the warning.

Jack also pronounced her name perfectly on the first try, which annoyed Rose on some level, but it made the Doctor smile so she decided to wait and complain later. "Or is that Madame President?" Jack added.

"Nah." The Doctor shrugged a little. "All that formality, no need for it, really. What there is need for, on the other hand, is a charged vacuum emboitement and a little bit of directionality.

"What do you think, Ace?" He looked happy and supremely confident, which Rose took to mean that whatever he needed was as near to impossible as to make no difference. "Want to help?"

"Oh yeah, just whip up a pocket dimension right here in the TARDIS," she agreed. "Any one do, or you want to model it on something in particular?"

"Yeah, I do actually." The Doctor grinned at her. "Thanks for asking. Place called exo-space. Think you can do it?"

Ace made a huge show of sighing and rolling her eyes at the console even as she turned toward it and started pushing buttons and hitting levers. "That's the spirit," the Doctor encouraged. "Nothing like a can-do attitude when you can and want to do!"

"What's exo-space, then?" Rose asked, eyeing Ace's activity curiously.

"Just what it sounds like," the Doctor replied. "Dimension out of space."

"That's impossible," Jack put in.

"What's impossible?" The Doctor gave him a surprised look. "Here you are, standing in a place outside of time, and you experience time anyway. Exo-space is the same way, only the opposite, see. If you figure time and space are opposite, which they aren't, but they can be."

Rose looked at Jack, but he didn't look any less confused than she was. "Okay," she said for both of them. "That makes no sense."

"And you're surprised?" Ace asked, without looking up from the console.

Rose frowned, but Jack sounded amused when he agreed, "Fair point."

"Okay, look," Ace told the Doctor. "We've got the power and we've got the vertex, but this place isn't gonna make it easy for us. It'll take a lot of work to get from here to there."

"Can't we go somewhere else?" Rose offered. "Is there somewhere it's easier?"

"This is it," the Doctor said. "Like she said, known vertex. Replicating a CVE, that's hard anywhere, but hoping to stumble over one's not the most reliable way to travel so we'll have to give it a go."

"And then what?" Ace wanted to know. "Say we get into exo-space, what do we do then? Find one person in all of time and space? She got our bio-data from the Matrix and she still couldn't find you. She had to settle for me."

"No one settled," the Doctor said firmly. "I go to a bit of trouble to remain unnoticed, you know."

Rose couldn't help it; she laughed aloud.

"Oi," the Doctor exclaimed. "Shut it, you."

"Yeah, I can see laying low is a real priority for you," she teased, paying no attention. "You're real low-profile, completely under the radar. No one would ever be able to follow you."

"I think she gives me more cheek than you did," the Doctor told Ace.

Ace had no sympathy. "Someone's got to," she retorted.

"I can find her," the Doctor said pointedly.

As quickly as that, Ace let it go. "Let's do this, then." She proceeded to reel off a string of technical questions that made Rose's head spin, and the only comfort she had was that when she glanced at Jack he looked just as lost.

Sidling closer to nudge his shoulder she whispered, "So it's not just me, then?"

"She looks human," Jack murmured in return. "But I'm pretty sure she just told the Doctor she could make time irrelevant, and the last person I heard say that was..."

He didn't finish, and when Rose glanced at him he just nodded toward the Doctor.

She knew what he meant. "Funny when they get together, aren't they?" she said softly. "Like kids talking in secret code."

The Doctor had a particular rate of speed at which he could speak just clearly enough to be understood without actually having any spaces between his words. Normally, when he did it in English, Rose had to stop whatever she was doing and focus all her attention on deciphering what he was saying. She thought he must be doing it now except that she wasn't totally sure the words were English, so she couldn't tell.

"Yeah," Jack said dryly. "Just like kids. Except their 'secret code' could probably rewrite the history of the universe."

"No," the Doctor interrupted, appearing suddenly on their side of the console. "Got to read it first, and that's a project, let me tell you. But there's no point in changing anything if you don't know what it was like to begin with, so, every summer, they sent us home with a bunch of textbooks..."

He glanced over at Ace. "Or was that just me?"

"Not all of us had private tutors," she answered without looking up.

"Yeah, my classmates were really the people you'd want teaching you about the universe," he said. "It's no wonder I turned out so backwards--they should have chucked out the lot of us and started fresh."

"They kept you in school to keep you out of worse trouble," Ace muttered.

"That actually explains an awful lot about my childhood," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "In retrospect, they probably wished they had just locked us up the minute we graduated."

"Oh, come on." Rose eyed him, wondering how much he could do at once and how much they were really distracting him. "You couldn't have been that bad."

"Couldn't have been?" he repeated. He threw an amused look at her over his shoulder. "Rose, I still am that bad."

"You're full of it," she countered. "Bad doesn't really mean good, you know. You should stop letting Jack tell you about historical slang."

"Oh, 'cause I need someone to teach me about the time period where my granddaughter went to high school," he shot back. "Teenagers know everything. I'll have you know I'm very well-informed when it comes to the twentieth century."

"High school?" Jack repeated, which was so obviously not the important point here.

"Granddaughter?" Rose demanded.

"Yeah, didn't I mention her?" The Doctor was all pretended innocence. "Her teachers were the parents of Ace's favorite rock star."

"Okay, you can talk and work at the same time," Ace declared, bracing her hand on the console and glaring across it at him. "But I can't, not and get this right, so leave me out of it."

"Sorry." The Doctor actually did look sorry, too, which was sort of unusual for him. Then he brightened. "You mind if they have a look 'round your TARDIS?"

Ace waved absently. "Yeah, fine, good." Then she threw a warning look at Jack and added, "Don't touch anything."

Jack turned to Rose and remarked, "At least she didn't tell me not to steal anything."

It was on the tip of her tongue to say, It's the Doctor she's got to watch, but something stopped her. "Wait till she knows you better," she said instead, and Jack just grinned at her.

"Off you go then," the Doctor said lightly. "Don't get in any trouble."

"Are you kidding?" Jack responded. "I've got Rose."

"Yeah, okay." The Doctor looked like he was reconsidering his advice. "When you do get in trouble, call for help, yeah?"

Rose gave him an indignant glare, and she saw Jack grin. "You got it, Doc," he said cheerfully. "Ready, Rose?"

"I don't think I'm speaking to you," she informed him primly.

"Okay, so does that mean I get to make all the decisions about where to go?" Jack wanted to know. He was circling the console already, heading for the only set of doors that could lead deeper into the TARDIS. "Let's clarify the limits of the not speaking."

"The limits are that when I feel like speaking to you I will," she explained. She followed him anyway. "And the rest of the time I won't."

"Ah, well, I'm glad we cleared that up," Jack said amiably, holding the door for her. "Now I feel as though I know what my role is."

"And what would that be?" She stepped through and scanned the walls, the ceiling, the floor, everything she could see as she mentally compared this place with the one she'd come to think of as home.

She heard the door close behind them before his footsteps joined hers in the brightly lit corridors. "To be your backup Doctor," he said.

She laughed, automatic but a little confused as she glanced at him. "What?"

"He'll be listening," Jack warned, oddly serious all of a sudden. "You sure you want to ask now?"

"When else would I ask?" Rose frowned at him. "And what do you mean, listening? No one's listening. That's why they've sent us off, so we wouldn't distract them. Why would they be listening?"

"Because the Doctor watches everything you do," Jack said patiently. "And Ace doesn't trust me as far as she can carry me. If they don't already have us up on a screen in the console room, it's only because they've been distracted by something else."

"Yeah, exactly." Rose shook her head. "They're busy. They're not spying on us, Jack."

"Maybe not yet," he maintained. "But they will be."

"They're busy!" she exclaimed. She wanted to laugh at his paranoia. "They don't have time to listen in on us!"

"The Doctor can follow three conversations at the same time," Jack reminded her. "While having two of his own. Trust me, he's watching us."

"All right, whatever you say." Rose rolled her eyes and poked him in the shoulder. "Where's the camera, then? I want to wave."

Without a moment's hesitation, Jack lifted his hand and pointed at a part of the wall that looked exactly like all the rest of it. Rose craned her neck around, but no matter how hard she stared she couldn't see anything. Shrugging, she waved jauntily at the plain bit of wall. "Hello!" she added, giving it a smile. "Back to work with you now!"

Jack laughed. "But don't get done too fast," he added. "We've got a lot of ground to cover."

She poked him again, not quite having forgotten his comment about being the backup Doctor. "Physically, or, you know, metaphorically?" she asked him.

He gave her a charming smile in return. "Which would you prefer?"

"Bit of both," she decided, as a way of not having to decide at all. Glancing around the corridor, she added, "Straight ahead all right?"

"Seems like the easiest option," Jack agreed. "Do you think they'll come after us if we get lost?"

"The Doctor will," Rose said confidently. They moved off down the corridor, leaving the doors to console room--and Jack's supposed "camera"--behind. "No question."

"You're very sure of that," Jack commented. He sounded more like he was teasing her than actually questioning it, which was good, because didn't she have reason to be? The Doctor always came for them.

"Look at all the trouble he's going to for the president," she pointed out. "Not even sure she's alive, and off he goes. The Doctor always comes."

She stopped to peer around an empty corner, but there was nothing but the same brightly lit corridor stretching off in another direction. Funny... the Doctor's TARDIS was darker, but it seemed easier to tell the corridors apart, somehow. Maybe she was just more used to them.

Behind her she heard Jack say, "Did you ask him to come after me?"

She frowned, deciding to keep going the way they had been. "What?"

"When you first met me," he said patiently. "When I yanked that bomb off of you and dragged it out into space. You came and picked me up seconds before it destroyed my ship. Did you ask the Doctor to do that?"

"No," she said, surprised. Then she blinked and shook her head. "I mean, yeah, of course. I would have done, but he was gonna do it anyway. He wouldn't have left you out there, Jack."

"I was the guy who put you in the path of the bomb in the first place," Jack reminded her. "Believe me, he's never forgotten that."

"He wouldn't have left you," Rose insisted. "That's not his way."

"Yeah, well." Jack wore a half-smile that she was sure meant he thought she was naive. "He wouldn't have let me stay, either. If it wasn't for you."

She laughed, turning to walk backwards for just a couple of steps. "Oh, no," she said, pointing her finger at him. "You don't even know, I have a terrible record when it comes to picking people. If I'd asked him to let you stay, he would've laughed at me. Trust me."

"You didn't have to ask him," Jack said, smiling at her. "You danced with me."

"So?" She shrugged, turning again to walk beside him. "You're a good dancer. Even when you are trying to con me out of fantastic amounts of money I don't have."

It was his turn to chuckle. "Did I ever apologize for that?" he wondered aloud. "Just think, if we'd met under different circumstances..."

"You would have been exactly the same," she said with a grin. "Sexy and charming and easily distracted by shiny objects. And the Doctor still would've hated your blaster and you still would've quit flirting with me the second you laid eyes on him, so really, I don't see what the circumstances had to do with anything."

"And if we'd met without the Doctor?" Jack asked curiously.

"We wouldn't have," she said with certainty. "No time machines in the twenty-first century. No fantastic cons, either," she teased. "So you see, I wouldn't have left, and you wouldn't have come."

"The Doctor did," he pointed out.

She rolled her eyes. "He was saving the world," she informed him. "Not trying to scam it out of money."

"Yeah, he doesn't need to," Jack agreed, nudging her shoulder companionably. "For a man who doesn't like money, he has way too much of it."

"He doesn't," she corrected, bumping him in return. "He doesn't have any money, and you know it. Money and guns, he figures, they're two things the universe has already got too much of."

"Except when he gives it to you." Jack paused to peer into an open room, then raised his eyebrows when he turned back to find her frowning at him. "Money, I mean."

"He just gives it to me so I can blend in," she told him. "I'm not an expert at this whole undercover time traveler thing like the two of you. Money sort of makes people look the other way."

Jack studied her. "Did he tell you that?" He sounded amused, but she couldn't figure out why.

"No," she said. Then she frowned. "Maybe. I don't remember--why?"

"Just curious," he said lightly. They started walking again, just wandering along the bright corridors, and he added, "You do know he does whatever you ask, don't you?"

She stuck her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt, glancing down at the floor as they walked. "Yeah," she admitted. "I know."

Jack sounded surprised when he asked, "You do?"

She looked over at him. "Well, it's sort of obvious, isn't it? Why do you think I don't ask him to take anyone with us anymore? I told you I've got a terrible record."

Jack's expression was priceless, and she couldn't help giggling. "You look like I've just told you the most shocking thing ever!" she exclaimed, spinning away from him and pointing with both hands. "I've shocked Captain Jack! I should get some sort of prize!"

"No, come on--" He was laughing now too, waving her away like she'd got it all wrong but of course she hadn't. "I'm not shocked! I just didn't know you'd noticed. What with the way you're all..."

He waved again, and she stuck her tongue out at him. "I'm all what?" she asked, grinning. "How are you going to finish that sentence, now?"

"Sometimes," he amended. "Sometimes, you're a little bit..."

"Oh, no, you're not going to get out of it," she declared, deciding to stalk him. She sidled right up to him, smirking at his utterly unimpressed expression because she hadn't been kidding about the flirting. He really didn't pay any attention to her when the Doctor was around. "Sometimes I'm a little bit what?"

"Clueless," he said, with an apologetic grin. "You are, and don't give me that sulky look, because I know you're just practicing for the Doctor."

Her mouth dropped open. "What? Wait a minute, stop right there," she said, poking him in the chest. "How can you go and call me clueless one minute and then imply that I'm practicing the next? I'm not, you know. I've got no idea what you're talking about."

"Except you do," he pointed out, "because you just denied it."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm going to go exploring now," she announced. "Come on if you're coming but tone down the smarm a little, will you?"

"Whatever you say," Jack agreed. "But I don't know what smarm is, and I think you should admit that I'm what you want the Doctor to be."

She turned around, surprised into stopping. "What?"

"We're never going to be the same person," he said, in a gentle way that probably would have made her want to smack him if she'd had any idea what he was on about. "You could have us both, except that I'm pretty sure the Doctor doesn't share."

This was one of those moments like they'd been discussing last week, something that didn't logically follow from all the ones leading up to it. A non sequitur. Totally unrelated to whatever had been happening before. Those moments seemed ridiculously common when the Doctor was around.

"Okay, I'm pretty sure I already said I've got no idea what you're talking about," Rose told him, "but I think it bears repeating. I don't want you to be the same person, so I don't know what you're on about there. And also, the Doctor shares everything, which means nothing you've said makes any sense at all."

"And there's the clueless part," Jack said, rolling his eyes. "Rose, are you even listening to yourself? The Doctor always comes for you. He does what you want him to do without you having to ask, he gives you things he hates because you enjoy them, he shares everything... with you."

"He shares with you," she insisted. "He does, Jack, he cares about you too. He's trying to make up for what happened to his people, don't you see? He gives us everything because he doesn't have anyone else left!"

"He gives you everything," Jack reiterated. "Because you're important to him. Because he doesn't want to lose you. Because you love him!"

"Because he needs it!" Rose shouted back. "He needs someone to love him and we're all he's got so who else do you think it's gonna be?"

Jack opened his mouth, but she didn't let him speak.

"I do love him, and I love you, both of you just the way you are." The words fell out of her, holding him back, pushing him away. "I don't know what you think I want from you, but I want you not to hurt him and if you do I'll kill you, Jack Harkness. So help me god, I'll kill you with my own hands."

He waited when she ran out of breath, but she just glared at him, and finally he raised his eyebrows. "Is that all?"

"Well, don't expect me to tell you how I'll kill you or anything," she said crossly, folding her arms. "'Cause I've got no idea. You've got a sonic blaster, sonic canon, tri-enfolded something-that's-sonic, and I've got my trusty... sweatshirt."

He burst out laughing. "And you know what, I think you could do it," he declared. "Never underestimate the power of a good sweatshirt. Especially when worn by an angry woman seeking vengeance."

She frowned at him. "Got a lot of experience with that, have you?"

"I think I may be about to," he admittedly ruefully. "Come on, you're angry with me. What do I have to say to make it better?"

That should have been obvious. "Promise not to hurt him," she said promptly.

His response was just as quick. "Can't do that," he answered. "Ask me something else."

She studied him for a long moment, biting her lip as she thought about it. "Promise you won't try to hurt him," she said at last.

And that was right, because a small smile touched his face and he nodded once. "That I can promise you," he agreed. "I won't try to hurt him. Or you.

"In fact," Jack added, "I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm doing my damndest to keep you both safe."

She offered him a smile in return. "Yeah," she said. "I noticed."

His smile widened and he nodded again, like that settled it. "Good," he said. "So..." He glanced around the totally anonymous looking corridor. "Which way now?"

"Like we've got a choice," she said, pretending to sigh. It might be better lit, but this was not as exciting as exploring the Doctor's TARDIS.

"Well, we could start opening doors," Jack suggested.

It wasn't a bad idea, but now that she looked, she thought there was something funny about the shadows further down the corridor. "Let's go just up ahead first. Does the light look weird to you?"

"Well, to all outside appearances, we're standing inside a two-dimensional reflective surface with no doors and a ton of sourceless mood-lighting." Jack's tone was dry. "So does it look weird? Yes. Does something in front of us look more weird than anything else?"

She was already walking down the corridor, not bothering to wait for him while he answered his own question. "No, I can't really say that it does."

Oh, but this did. "Jack," she said over her shoulder, waving for him to catch up. "Come see!"

She could hear him coming up behind her, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the little stone courtyard in the middle of a... grove. It was a big open space right here in the middle of the TARDIS, with light coming down from above instead of out of the walls and lots of plants and trees taller than she was. There was a bench and a couple of chairs around the stone circle in the middle, a funny symbol carved into it, and a rock with water flowing over it into a little pool.

"Wow," Jack remarked, walking past her to touch one of the plants. "She's got her own personal arboretum in here."

A breeze drifted by, almost unnoticeable except that they weren't outside. "It's like a little bit of summer," Rose said, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. The air didn't just move, it smelled like sunshine and flowers and she wondered where exactly they were.

"Interesting take on the junction concept," Jack noted. She opened her eyes and looked where he was pointing, but all she saw was plants, green and yellow with trailing vines and tiny flowers, and trees with silver leaves that rustled in the breeze.

"See there?" he said, when it was clear she didn't. "There's a hallway there, and over there. This is just an intersection of halls and doors. A lot prettier than anything the Time Agency uses," he added, "but still functional."

She moved closer to him, and as soon as she shifted the illusion of forest disappeared. She could see the place where their corridor continued on the other side, and now that she looked there was another door just over there, half hidden by a carefully place shrub. The space wasn't as big as it seemed at first, but it was still big enough for trees.

"I like it," Rose decided. "What are all these plants and things? D'you recognize any of them?"

Jack looked around doubtfully. "Well, I'm no botanist," he said. "Tell me it's a plant and I'll believe you, but I don't think I've seen anything with leaves like this before. At least not sober."

"They look like metal," she murmured, running her fingers over the silver tree leaves. "They feel like leaves, though. Just all... shiny.

"Why's the light funny?" she added, glancing upward. She couldn't see the ceiling through the leaves, but there probably wouldn't be much to see even if she could. She'd never seen anything that looked like a lightbulb on the Doctor's TARDIS, and the light itself seemed to move around depending on where they needed it the most.

"Different part of the spectrum," Jack offered. "It must not be from Earth. These plants probably grow under a different kind of sun."

"I like it," she repeated, wandering through the plants to step into the courtyard. It was beautiful here. She wondered if the Doctor had anything like this, and if he did, why he hadn't shown it to them.

Jack didn't say anything, but he came over and joined her on the stone circle. "Unusual decoration," he remarked.

She followed his gaze, studying the carving for a minute. Like a figure eight with some extra swirls and things. She actually thought it looked kind of familiar. "Feel like I've seen that before," she said aloud.

"Really?" Jack paced around the design, as though a different angle would give him a better clue. "It looks like infinity," he decided at last.

"Yeah, that's the sort of figure eight, right?" She traced it in the air with her finger, and he nodded. "Maybe that's why it looks familiar," she said with a shrug. "It's pretty, whatever it is."

She took a few steps back to sit down on the bench, and she was surprised by how comfortable it was. "This is nice."

"You mentioned that," Jack said, lifting his gaze from the design to smile at her. "I think you're experiencing a little homesickness."

Rose laughed. "Right, like this really reminds me of home," she declared. "Funny sun, silver trees--" She stopped, catching sight of something just behind his left arm. "Giant butterflies," she continued, pointing at it.

Jack turned, and the big bluish-purple wings waved as the creature bobbed away. "Now that's strange," he commented, watching it go. "What do you think it eats around here?"

"Butterflies don't eat," she informed him. "They just drink nectar from flowers and things. There's flowers here, see?"

He shook his head, taking a few steps after the slowly drifting butterfly. "But there's nothing keeping it here," he pointed out. "What if it flies out into one of the hallways and gets lost?"

Rose watched him move out of the courtyard as the butterfly kept leading him away. "Jack," she called, amused by his sudden concern. "Are you worried about a butterfly?"

"Butterflies are important, Rose," he called back. "It's the little things that indicate the health of the overall system."

She rolled her eyes, pushing herself to her feet. "Now you sound like the Doctor," she said, loudly enough that she hoped he could still hear. "Personally, I think you both just like chasing butterflies."

When he didn't answer, she stuck her hands in her pockets and wandered after him. What else did they have to do but follow giant butterflies around someone else's timeship? At the very least, she'd be able to tease Jack about it afterward.

The butterfly did leave the grove, which sort of surprised her. It looked a lot more out of place flitting down the clean white corridors of Ace's TARDIS than it had surrounded by exotic trees and little pink flowers. They followed it until it led them to another junction, this one filled with gardens and the same strange orange light.

She had laughed at Jack when she realized where they were. "Don't think you have to worry about the butterfly starving," she told him, spinning around so she could see everything all at once. "Looks like it knows exactly where to go."

It wasn't the only one, either. There were more butterflies here, and she thought she heard birds until Jack pointed out the chittering insects hiding underneath the leaves. None of them left while she and Jack explored the gardens, but they when they went back to look for the courtyard again they found a little pond instead.

Just like the others, it was an open space where corridors came together, with blocks placed in some kind of pattern in the water: perfect for stepping on to get across, but she wondered if their was some kind of meaning to this design, too. She crouched down on one of the blocks in the middle, studying the water beneath the reflections, looking for movement. Jack entertained himself by picking different paths across the blocks, walking all around the pool without ever touching the edge.

She decided that if there were any fishes or things in the water they were probably scared away by Jack's constant jumping about.

The pond was pretty, but it proved that they were lost because they definitely hadn't seen that between the courtyard and the gardens. When they were done playing by the pool, they both agreed that they had better try to find the console room again. If nothing else, Rose was sort of hungry and they hadn't seen anything that looked like a kitchen.

The console room was surprisingly hard to find. Surprisingly because they never did pass the courtyard again, and hard because on the Doctor's TARDIS the console room was the one place that every corridor seemed to lead to. Walk long enough in any direction and you just seemed to bump into it.

Here they actually discussed which way to turn and which doors to try, and just as she was starting to get tired of it she heard the Doctor's voice from somewhere up ahead. "You out there?" he was calling. "Rose? Jack? Anybody want tea?"

"Doctor!" Rose raised her voice to let him know they could hear him. "You haven't gone and switched us into another dimension already, have you?"

His familiar figure appeared around the next corner--she was sure there hadn't been this many corners when they'd started out--and he grinned as they hurried toward him. "Nope. Gonna take a bit longer, I'm afraid. But Ace has quit on condition of food, so I thought we might pop out and see the sights."

"Finally," Jack declared, his grin echoing the Doctor's and something of a teasing note in his voice. "A Time Lord who knows when to eat!"

"Oi," the Doctor protested. "I eat plenty!"

He didn't correct Jack on his use of "Time Lord," Rose noticed. She wondered suddenly if she was the one who was wrong--maybe Ace was a Time Lord, after all. She didn't know they had to finish school to earn the title. Maybe just starting was enough.

"Yeah, because you've got us to remind you," Jack was saying.

"Reminding, nagging," the Doctor interrupted. "All pretty much the same in the end, isn't it. Surprised you weren't up here at dinner, whittering on about food and restaurants and such. Found the kitchen all right then, I s'pose?"

Rose blinked, and she caught Jack's eye. "Has dinner been and gone already?" she asked. "We must've got so caught up we didn't notice."

The Doctor snorted. "Right. That'll be the day. If you're through having me on, we'll go find Ace and have tea."

"And by tea you mean lunch," Jack guessed. "I've told you, if you don't stop using 'tea' to mean every meal of the day, I won't be responsible for the consequences."

"Bit late for lunch," the Doctor said, eyeing him. "By tea I mean tea. Evening tea. What d'you mean?"

Jack glanced at his wrist, then held it out for the Doctor to see. "I mean, it's lunchtime. What do you mean?"

The Doctor barely gave his wrist device a glance. "Told you that thing was going to break," he declared. "Must've stopped hours ago. Didn't you notice?"

"It didn't stop," Jack said, his gaze sharpening. "It's only been a couple of hours since we entered this TARDIS. Barely even lunch... Rose?"

"Definitely lunch," she corrected. "But yeah, just a little while. We got kind of turned around, but I'm sure we haven't been gone more than a few hours."

The Doctor was regarding them with a pensive look that tended to mean imminent disaster. "That's interesting," he said slowly.

"What is?" Rose wanted to know. "You've got the look. Something weird's going on, isn't it?"

"Considering we've been working on the TARDIS all day?" the Doctor countered. "Yeah. Something weird's going on."

"All day?" Jack echoed. "As in, when you say 'tea' you actually mean 'dinner'?"

"As in, 'tea so late it might as well be supper,'" the Doctor informed him.

Jack leaned over to mock-whisper to Rose. "Supper and dinner aren't the same thing, are they."

"God," she murmured back. "How did you ever survive in London for four weeks?"

"We need to find Ace," the Doctor said, in no uncertain terms. "Come on!"

Not wanting to get lost again, Rose followed him the moment he turned his back, and Jack was right behind her. Of course, with the Doctor leading them, they were back in the console room in minutes. Ace's TARDIS obviously liked him better than it liked them.

Ace herself was leaning against the console, hair pulled back behind her head as she wound it into a new braid. She looked a little surprised to see them. "What, were they hiding outside the doors?" she asked. "Didn't take you very long to find them."

"Yeah," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "It did, actually."

Rose and Jack exchanged glances.

"How long ago did I leave?" the Doctor wanted to know.

Ace shrugged, as much as she could with both hands occupied by her hair. "'Bout thirty-four, thirty-five seconds ago."

"Thirty-five seconds," the Doctor repeated.

"Give or take," Ace said defensively. "I wasn't paying attention."

The Doctor spared a smile for her. "Not questioning your temporal awareness," he assured her. "Just saying, I was gone for a good fifteen minutes."

Ace considered that, twisting a yellow band around the end of her braid before she tossed it back over her shoulder. "Temporal integrity," she said at last. "Must have knocked something loose when we were postulating the emboitement."

"I do not 'knock things loose,'" the Doctor said with great dignity. "If something's loose, it's because you bumped it."

Ace actually rolled her eyes. "Of course I did it," she said, in a way that made it clear she definitely hadn't. "It's just my TARDIS. I've only done every maintenance check there is, know every screw and lever and flashing thing, and, what else? Oh yeah! I'm the one knows what she's doing with CVEs!"

"No need to get touchy," the Doctor said mildly. "Happens to the best of us. Fixing a little thing like that? Easy. No harm done."

"You stay and fix it, then," Ace told him. "Seeing's you're the one broke it. I'm not doing anything else until I eat. I quit, remember?"

"Right," the Doctor agreed. He turned, holding out his arm to her, and Ace sighed. She slid her arm through his, though, and he beamed. "Off we go, then!"

Rose put her hands in her pockets, at something of a loss as she and Jack followed them out of the TARDIS. She wasn't always on the Doctor's arm. It was just... she usually had the choice. He only offered it to someone else after she'd made it clear she didn't plan to take it.

"Shall we?" The question came out of nowhere, and she glanced at Jack in surprise. He had stopped on the other side of the mirror, waiting for her to catch up--and he was offering her his arm.

She smiled, skipping a little as she joined him. "We shall," she agreed, linking her elbow with his. "Into time!"

"And space!" he said with a chuckle.

"And hopefully restaurants," she added. "Where are we going, then?"

"I don't know," the Doctor said cheerfully. She didn't miss the look he gave them, but she didn't know what he had to complain about so she just smiled at him and he smiled back. "Ideas, anyone?"

"Oh, Jack has one!" Rose nudged his shoulder with her own. "What's that place you were telling us about earlier? The one you said was easy to spot?"

"The Chi Restaurant," Jack supplied. Shooting a look at the Doctor's back, he added, "Been there?"

The Doctor scoffed without turning. "Everyone's been there. Ace?"

"Everyone except me," she answered. "Good food?"

"Middling," the Doctor declared. "Fast, though. And the view's fantastic."

"Fast is good enough for me." Rose saw Ace glance at him, though, and there was a suspicious note in her voice when she added, "They do have food humans can eat, don't they?"

"Oi!" The Doctor sounded offended. "What do you take me for? I wouldn't take you somewhere you can't eat the food! Well..." He seemed to reconsider. "Not without warning you, anyway."

"Then you've changed," Ace remarked. She sounded more amused than annoyed. "I'll believe it when I see it."

"Hey, I'm human," Jack put in. "Doesn't that count for anything?"

Ace glanced over her shoulder at him. "For all I know, you only go there to drink," she answered. "How does that tell me anything about the food, exactly?"

"You're right," Jack told Rose. "Any colder and it wouldn't just be a shoulder. It'd be the whole body."

"I've had enough of your whingeing," she chided with a laugh. "Not everyone falls in love with you at first glance, you know."

"Contrary to the high opinion you hold of yourself," the Doctor added.

"That's funny, coming from you," Jack drawled in return. "Any bigger, and you wouldn't be able to fit your whole ego inside your head."

The Doctor lifted one finger to tap the side of his head. "Bigger on the inside," he said smugly.

"That's a trick he's got to teach you," Rose teased, hugging Jack's arm closer to her. "So you could stuff some of your charm and self-confidence back inside when you want to."

"Who says I ever want to?" he demanded, raising his eyebrows at her.

"Oh, just about anyone who ever wanted you to work undercover, I imagine." She smirked at him. "Tell me, do you always have to add 'Captain' to your name?"

"Only when I'm around people who might be impressed by it," he countered. He returned her knowing smile with one that simply oozed sincerity and earnestness.

"So no one here, then," Ace said from up ahead.

The Doctor chuckled.

"Hey, Ace," Jack called. "Don't you have to pick a title now, too? So you can carry on the Time Lord tradition?"

Although Rose was watching, she didn't see Ace and the Doctor look at each other. And she sort of expected them to. Especially with the way Ace replied stiffly, "Don't know what you're on about now."

Jack either didn't notice or didn't care, and knowing Jack, she was pretty sure he noticed. He continued anyway, "The Doctor is the Doctor, so what are you going to be? The Nurse? The Accomplice? The Butterfly Lady?"

"Title's not about fitting in with Time Lord society," the Doctor said, when Jack's question was met with a stony silence from Ace. His tone, too, sounded cool and distant. "More like the opposite."

"Ah, a rebel." Jack's voice was laced with satisfaction. "I should have known. I've always had a soft spot for renegades."

"You're gonna have a soft spot between your ears if you don't stop it," Rose murmured. Even she wasn't sure whether she was warning him or threatening him, but the Doctor obviously didn't want to talk about it and she had learned when not to push.

"Not a feeling they shared," the Doctor said curtly. "Stripped me of name and clan affiliation a long time back. Let's leave it at that."

"Why stop there?" Jack wanted to know. "Sounds like more of a beginning than an ending to me."

"Every beginning is the end of something else." The Doctor's tone changed, became lighter with an unmistakable message: let it go. "Sure that's a cliche, me. Only question is, is it a cliche from the future or the past?"

"Thought you didn't believe in things like the future and the past," Rose teased, hoping to help him change the subject. "The past today is the future tomorrow, and all that."

"Just because it's never the same doesn't mean it doesn't exist," the Doctor declared good-naturedly. "The universe has a past and a future, it just changes depending on where and when you are."

"Not to mention your own timeline," Jack added. "You've got a personal past and a personal future. Traveling in time doesn't change that."

"But that's 'cause I've got awareness, right, Doctor?" Rose didn't wait for him to look back. "You've got to be aware of the present in order for there to be a past and a future. How can the universe be aware of the present?"

"That's a good question!" The Doctor said it in that tone of voice that meant he actually thought it was a good question, instead of the one that meant he was just humoring someone until he could make them figure out the real question.

"The universe is aware of the present," he announced to the group at large. "It's aware of a lot of things--well, everything, and that's the problem. Because if it's aware of the past and the future the same way it's aware of the present, then they're all the present and nothing else exists. Except anything outside of the present, which it also has to be aware of, so it's really a sort of paradox. See?"

"Not really, no." Jack answered for all of them, or at least for himself and Rose. Rose wasn't sure Ace had any more idea what the Doctor was talking about than they did, but she might, and even if she didn't she might not admit it.

"Well, that's what you get for asking too many questions," the Doctor said firmly. He ignored the fact that it was Rose who had asked in the first place, but Jack didn't say anything either so she wasn't about to remind them.

Then Ace asked about the restaurant, which was the right kind of question, and the Doctor and Jack expounded upon it at length, their conflict forgotten. Rose smiled at the two of them, challenging each other one moment, racing to outdo each other the next. They'd never admit it, but they were really just trying to impress each other. Or her. Usually both, and now with Ace around they had an even bigger audience.

She thought it was probably going to be a very silly evening, and she wasn't disappointed. The restaurant's main attraction was that it moved--rotated--and it was very big, so that as it turned it actually passed through several different time zones. And in Siberia, it turned out that "time zones" were really zones of different time, instead of just lines someone had drawn on a map.

Jack's wrist device went crazy. Rose complained again that she didn't have a watch, and to her delight, Ace took off the one she was wearing and put it on the table between them. They took turns pointing at it when it slowed down or sped up, and the Doctor smiled at them all indulgently.

"S'pose this is all just normal to you, then," Rose said at one point, right after they'd sat down. They'd had to make their way through three different "time zones" just to get to their table. "You can experience time any way you want to, yeah?"

"Actually, it's a bit odd," he admitted, surprising her. "I can feel the time change, like a tickle, or a shadow... it's sort of distracting."

"So that's not my imagination," Ace remarked unexpectedly. "Thought maybe it was psychological or something."

"It is psychological," the Doctor told her. "Happens in your head. See? Psychological."

"You can sense the time change in your head?" Jack repeated. "Can you do that..." He trailed off, then said ruefully, "I was going to ask if you can do that in other places like this, but I can't think of any other place quite like this."

"Yes," the Doctor said, beaming at him. He didn't clarify, and for once Jack didn't ask him to. When Rose thought about it, she thought maybe "yes" was the only answer he needed after all.

It turned out that the Chi menu wasn't in English, which was a problem until she nudged Ace with her elbow. "You recognize any of this?" she wanted to know.

"Barely," Ace said, shaking her head. "You can read it, yeah?"

Rose saw the Doctor look up at that, and she was just about to say no when she took another look and realized she could. "Yeah," she said slowly, lifting her head again.

The Doctor smiled innocently when she caught his eye. "Sorry," he offered. "Distracted. See anything that looks good?"

"I have no idea what any of this stuff is," Ace complained.

"And you never will unless you try something," the Doctor pointed out. "Where's your sense of adventure?"

"I'm more adventurous when I haven't skipped meals to spend the whole day working on something that's impossible," Ace snapped. "So you are going to order me something that is edible, preferably tasty, and I don't want to hear another lecture out of you until I've finished eating."

"Whoa..." Jack tipped his menu down long enough to consider her with a sort of admiring look. "You should consider the Fighter as your Time Lord title."

Ace tossed her menu to the Doctor, flipped Jack the bird, and slouched down in her chair with her arms folded. "Fast service," she reminded the table at large. "I was promised fast service."

"Right then," the Doctor declared. "Tea for two. Rose?" he added. "What about you? Gonna give it a go?"

"I don't even know where to start," she confessed, glancing down at the menu again. It seemed like having it be in English didn't really help that much.

"Here," Jack said, leaning forward to tap her menu. "I'd be happy to make some recommendations."

The Doctor snorted. "Yeah, can't wait to see what you get with Captain Jack ordering for you."

Rose shot him a reproving look. He hadn't called their former Time Agent "Captain Jack" for a long time, and she didn't know what Jack had done to deserve it now. "I'm sure Jack can order something I won't hate," she told him.

"Hate?" Jack repeated, flashing a smile at her. "My dear Rose, you will love it. Believe me, I've eaten here many times, and I know exactly what is humanly palatable."

"I'm hoping for something a little more than 'palatable,'" she said, sticking her tongue out at him.

His smile widened. "Aren't we all," he declared, whisking her menu away from her and tucking it underneath his.

She gave Jack too much credit, and she kicked the Doctor under the table when she saw him smirking. Some of what he ordered actually was okay, but sexuality wasn't the only thing that was more flexible in the fifty-first century. What Jack considered gourmet was also a little unpredictable. She might have remembered that if the Doctor hadn't suddenly started calling him "Captain Jack" again.

Her own fault, she supposed, pushing her main plate off to one side so she could concentrate on her salad. She had started it, a term of affection that the Doctor hadn't been able to resist turning into a mocking nickname. He had found nicknames for almost everyone she'd ever gushed over, but this was the first one she'd supplied herself.

A second plate landed next to her salad, and Rose looked up in surprise. The Doctor caught her eye, nodding at the plate Ace had passed to her. "Fish and potato," he offered. "Or, I dunno, something like it. In case you're still hungry later."

In that moment, she loved him more than she had admitted to Jack earlier. More than just because he needed it, more than because there wasn't anyone else, she loved him because he could apologize and forgive at the same time with nothing more flash than a plate of fish and potato. She liked flash, flash was good... but flash didn't feed you when you couldn't read the menu.

"I'll keep that in mind," she said aloud, ducking her head to keep her grin from overwhelming the table. "Thanks."

"Pleasure," he said lightly. And then he was off on the time zones again, comparing notes with Ace over the difference between slower fast and faster slow. Rose was pretty sure he'd made up the terms on the spot, but that didn't stop Jack from jumping in and trying to make sense of it all.

He failed, though he did it in such a spectacularly humorous fashion that she thought that might have been the whole point. Even Ace stopped shooting him disgusted looks long enough to laugh. He really did know how to make people comfortable without making a fool of himself, and no matter what she said Rose couldn't help but admire that.

She was also duly impressed when he spotted someone he recognized about halfway through the meal and excused himself to go chat them up. She'd met a lot of people in her travels with the Doctor, but nowhere near enough that she could expect to start meeting them again by chance. All of time and space was a little bigger than the Powell Estate, and she didn't just bump into people she knew every time she stepped out the front door.

But Jack did. Jack would. That was Jack's entire life: not just making people comfortable, but drawing them to him, time and again. She was starting to suspect that no one ever encountered Jack Harkness just once unless he meant them to.

He patted her shoulder before he sauntered off, and Rose raised her glass to him in a mock-toast. Jack grinned back at her. Ace paid no attention to his departure, but the Doctor gave him a little wave.

Jack was barely out of earshot when Ace turned a quizzical look on the Doctor. "So where'd you pick this one up, then?"

Rose choked on her drink, setting it down hastily. She waved off their expressions of concern, trying to suppress her giggles long enough to swallow properly. "That's--" She gasped, drawing in another breath and getting herself under control. "That's exactly what the Doctor said," she managed at last.

"Well, you do tend to pick up the pretty ones," the Doctor said, as though that explained everything. "I don't know where you find them all."

"He picked me up," Rose corrected, so Ace wouldn't get the wrong idea. "Hanging over London, 1941, during a German air raid, lost my grip on a barrage balloon tether and would've fallen to my death if Jack hadn't caught me."

"Ask her what she was doing hanging from a barrage balloon," the Doctor put in, and Rose made a face at him. He just shook his head, muttering, "Gymnasts."

"The point is," she declared, before he could turn the word into a lecture, "I didn't pick him up. He saved my life."

"Least he could do," the Doctor added. "Since a month before, he started something that could have wiped out the entire population of Earth. But hey, he saved one of 'em. Real gentleman, he is."

"Be fair," Rose scolded. "He didn't know what he was doing."

"I am being fair," the Doctor said indignantly. "He didn't mean to destroy the human race, yeah, great. But he didn't exactly have the purest of motives, did he."

Rose ignored him. "He's a Time Agent," she told Ace. "From the fifty-first century."

"Was," the Doctor corrected.

"They stole some of his memories," Rose explained. "So he's trying to get them back."

"By con or by swindle," the Doctor said, falsely cheerful. "Turns a tidy profit along the way, and he's not any closer to the Time Agency than he was when he started."

"Because you keep us away from Time Agents," Rose protested. "You've never liked temporal enforcers, and you avoid them like black coffee now that Jack's with us."

"You'd be surprised how much fun it isn't to have them cart you off to their own century and interrogate you," the Doctor remarked. "Really a nasty group, those Time Agents. Uppity and self-serving and much too fond of their own rules."

Rose exchanged glances with Ace while the Doctor continued, "Like they were the first ones to think of regulating time travel, yeah. Good for them.

"What?" he added, catching their looks.

"I'm not saying I want to have tea with them," Rose said, deciding to ignore his outburst. "I'm just saying, it's not Jack's fault if he hasn't gotten any closer to them since he's been with us. That's all."

"He's better off," the Doctor grumbled.

Rose smiled a little, looking over at Ace again. "He really does like Jack," she confided. "Sometimes it's just harder to tell than others."

The Doctor scowled, but he didn't contradict her.

"So are the two of you together, then?" Ace's question took her by surprise, and she saw the Doctor's scowl deepen. She seemed to be directing the inquiry at Rose, who floundered.

"What?" she managed.

"You and Captain Jack," Ace said impatiently. "You're pretty friendly. Even if he doesn't know what you like to eat," she added, glancing at the plate Rose had set aside in favor of something sort of like fish and potato.

"No," she said with a relieved laugh. "Jack's just... Jack. He's like that with everyone."

"Really," the Doctor added emphatically. "Everyone."

"Yeah," Ace muttered. "I get that from him."

"He's not so bad once you get to know him." Rose felt compelled to defend their traveling companion, although even as she said it she realized it wasn't entirely true. "Well," she amended, "unless you're the Doctor."

Grinning at the Doctor, she teased, "I think he's got a bit of a crush on you."

"Yeah, great," the Doctor agreed. He didn't miss a beat. "That's just what I need."

Rose laughed at his petulant expression. "Oh, you love it," she declared. "You can't stop winding him up, can you."

"I don't wind him up," the Doctor said, pointing at her. "You do."

Rose scoffed. "Yeah, 'cause he pays any attention to me when you're around. I'm not the one he's buttering up, mister."

"You're not the one driving, either," the Doctor remarked.

She didn't miss his rapid turnabout. "Aha! You just admitted he fancies you!"

"I did no such thing!" the Doctor protested. "Ace! Did I say that?"

"Sounded like," Ace agreed.

"Hah!" It was Rose's turn to point at him. "It's two against one, now!"

"Anybody want dessert?" the Doctor asked pleasantly.

"So how long have you had Mr. Flash with you?" Ace asked, glancing at Rose. "And why'd you pick him up, anyway, if he's all that? Destroying the world and everything."

"Oh, he helped save it once he realized what he'd done," Rose assured her.

"Did not," the Doctor countered.

"He showed us where that ambulance was," Rose insisted.

"To prove his innocence!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Oh no no, it's got nothing to do with me, he said, and he kept saying that until he was surrounded by hundreds of almost-dead people come for their revenge!"

"And then he grabbed the bomb that was about to fall on us while you figured out how to fix everything and took it out into space," Rose declared. "Saving you saved us, ergo, he helped save the world."

"Ergo?" the Doctor repeated. "Since when d'you say 'ergo'?"

"As I just said it," Rose replied primly, "that would be since right now."

"So he saved your lives," Ace said, like she was just checking. "After he put them in danger in the first place."

"Yeah, and he couldn't ditch the bomb once he grabbed it, see." Rose was determined that she know the whole story. "So it was going to blow up his ship and kill him, except we went after him and picked him up."

"Haven't got rid of him since," the Doctor added, though he sounded a little less annoyed about it now. "Going on four months now. Give or take." He shot an amused look in Ace's direction, and it took Rose a moment to get it.

"Have you really got the time down to seconds?" she asked curiously.

"Three months, twenty-eight days, five hours and six minutes thirty-one seconds," the Doctor replied.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I know you can show off. But I don't even have a watch, so how do I know if it's true or not?"

"Well, if you're not going to believe me." The Doctor looked offended. "Can't do anything to convince you, now can I."

"What I want to know," Rose told him, "is if you've got the time, how is it that you're always late? How's that work?"

"Oi!" He leaned back in his chair, draping one arm over the back of it as he glared at her. "Not late, me." He smiled suddenly, as though he'd found the answer to everything. "Just temporally unrestricted, is all."

"Late," Rose repeated, and Ace laughed out loud.

"Late," she agreed, when the Doctor shot her a wounded look. "It's like this, see. The more time they've got, the less important it becomes. He's got it all, so he cares, what? Not a bit."

Rose giggled at the Doctor's expression, but she responded before he could. "Yeah, and what about you?" she wanted to know. "You've got all of time now too, right? Is today really the day after I met you?"

"Well.." Ace shrugged a little, still smiling. "Closer to it for me than it is for you, anyway. Gotta admit, I wasn't sure I'd see you again."

"Me neither," Rose said, glancing at the Doctor. "I mean, if it really was a hundred years... were you joking about that?"

Ace shrugged again. "Could have been. Hadn't seen the Doctor in decades, last time you were here," she remarked. Her eyes flicked over him and she added, "Nor this one ever. Can't blame me for wondering."

"Things to do," the Doctor reminded her lightly. He sounded very confident, but his gaze was shadowed and Rose didn't think he was as happy about it as he pretended. "Try not to take Rose to the same time twice, y'know."

"What?" She started at the sound of her name. She had been expecting something about the war, or some sort of avoidance of the war. "Me? What have I got to do with it?"

"Promised you a tour of the universe," the Doctor reminded her. His tone was light but gentle, not proud like it usually sounded. "No repeats. Unless you ask, of course."

She was caught without a single thing to say.

"Hang on." Luckily, Ace didn't seem quite so speechless. "You always let her pick where you're going next?"

The Doctor frowned in Ace's direction. "Don't have to make it sound like I'm out of ideas," he defended himself. "Still got a few surprises left in me."

"Yeah, but--" Ace suddenly seemed to sense that she would get nowhere with him and turned her attention on Rose. "Does he really let you pick where to go?"

"Oh, like you didn't pick when you were traveling with me," the Doctor interrupted.

"Yeah, I didn't!" Ace retorted. "Have you gone soft? Buying us things, taking us to dinner... letting us tell you where to go?

"I got the prickly Doctor," she told Rose, before the Doctor could reply. "Think you got the sweet one."

"Oi," the Doctor objected. "No need to be insulting!"

"And the thing is, it's the 'sweet' part he thinks is insulting," Ace continued, as though he wasn't even there. "At least, he would have done." Now she paused and gave him a suspicious look. "Well?"

"Think I should've kept you two far apart," the Doctor grumbled, flicking the dessert menu with his finger. "Got one thinks I'm sweet, and one thinks I'm daft. Can't win, I tell you. Just can't win."

"I don't think you're daft," Rose protested, correctly guessing that this was aimed at her. "Just got something a bit loose in your head, is all."

"Oh, thanks," he said, favoring her with a smile that belied his words. "That's so much better."

She smiled back, imitating him. "Pleasure!"

"Well, just for the record," Ace remarked, "I liked the prickly Doctor. Like you daft, too," she hurried to assure him, "but prickly's how I knew you first and prickly's likely how I'll keep on thinking of you."

"When did you meet the Doctor?" Rose asked curiously. "I mean, twentieth century London, I know, but how old was he? You're like... a hundred twenty-six, you said?"

"One hundred twenty-five," the Doctor corrected.

"Twenty-six," Ace insisted. "I'm telling you, I know my own age!"

"Well, you can keep telling me all you like," the Doctor said. "Doesn't make you right."

"I met you when I was eighteen," she informed him. "We traveled together for seven years, and I was at the Academy for ninety-one. I left ten years ago, which makes me a hundred twenty-six."

"Not saying you can't add," the Doctor countered. "Just that you can't count."

"Nine hundred fifty-five," Ace told Rose. "He was nine hundred fifty-five when I met him on Iceworld."

Iceworld, Rose remembered. Not London at all. He'd told her that and she'd forgotten: Ace had been caught in some kind of storm and ended up in the future before he met her. It seemed unimportant in the face of this revelation, though.

"Nine hundred fifty-five?" she repeated, turning to stare at him. "How could you be nine hundred fifty-five a hundred years ago?"

The Doctor shifted uncomfortably. "Well, it wasn't actually one hundred years ago for me," he offered.

Rose glared at him. "I can't subtract anything from nine hundred and get nine hundred fifty-five," she declared.

"You could do," he protested. "Negative fifty-five. Subtract that, and you get..." He trailed off, drumming his fingers on the table while he tried to smile innocently. It didn't work. "Well, never mind."

"Go on, then," Rose said, folding her arms. "Explain how you were nine hundred fifty-five."

Ace was looking from one of them to the other like they might both be daft. "What?" she demanded. "What's wrong with nine hundred fifty-five?"

"What's wrong is he told me he was nine hundred years old," Rose told her. "How's that work?" Inspiration struck, and she eyed Ace speculatively. "How old do you think he is?"

Ace turned to consider the Doctor. "Well... I should be able to tell, right?"

He snorted. "Can't even tell your own age. How d'you think you're gonna know mine?"

"You could just tell us," Rose pointed out.

"Did tell you," he informed her. "Nine hundred. Nine hundred one, now. Don't you believe me?" He put on a hurt look, and she had all she could do to roll her eyes at him.

"Eleven hundred," Ace said suddenly. "Last time, you said you made the same decision as me when you were eight hundred, and the other one at eleven hundred. You're at least eleven hundred, which means it's been longer for you since we met than it has for me."

"Eleven hundred thirty-six," he admitted, casting Rose a sheepish look. "One hundred eighty-one years since we met."

"Hundred..." Ace frowned slightly. "Eight, for me." She shook her head. "Ninety-one years at the Academy, and that's still weird."

"I'm waiting," Rose reminded him.

"I count differently now," he told her. "That's all."

She tried to figure that out. "What, like you started over or something? Or are you... I dunno, using different years, or what?"

He studied her for a moment, then glanced at Ace. "Got into a bit of trouble a while back," he said at last. "Might've said: exiled, disowned, you know how it goes. Nine hundred years ago."

"Nine hundred one," Rose said slowly, beginning to understand.

He flashed her a brief smile. "Just so."

"You used to count the time before that," she said, just to make sure.

He shrugged. She sensed more than a whim behind the decision, but all he said was, "Got to be too much trouble."

"Plus it makes you younger," Ace teased. "President always said you lied about your age."

"Look who's talking," he retorted. "Between the two of you, you couldn't give the right age if you wanted to."

"I told you, I know my age!" she exclaimed.

"Yeah, so, about that," Rose interjected quickly. "Hundred twenty-six years old--"

She should have known better. "Hundred twenty-five," the Doctor corrected in a singsong.

She made a face at him. "Hundred plus, okay, and what's that about? You're human, yeah? From my time, so Jack's thing about people living longer in the fifty-first century doesn't apply. How can you be a hundred years old?"

Ace raised her eyebrows, but this time she was looking at the Doctor. "D'you not tell us until... when? We've been with you long enough to notice?"

He shrugged, tapping his fingers on the table again without looking at Rose. "Most aren't," he said evasively. "Does it matter if they come on a few months, a few years, then go on their way?"

"What?" Rose demanded. "What don't you tell us?"

"You won't age as long as you're on the TARDIS," Ace said bluntly. "Perk of the Time Lords--they define their own time and take it with them wherever they go. You're part of it long as you travel with him."

Rose gaped at her, then turned her stare on the Doctor. "Yeah?"

He nodded once, barely glancing up at her. Like he expected her to be upset or something. "So, I'll be twenty," she began, then corrected, "nineteen... what, forever?"

"Better to keep counting the years," he said quickly, still not looking up. "Makes more sense. Still get the experience, after all."

"Yeah, there's no way I'm telling anyone I'm only twenty-eight," Ace put in. "After everything I been through? Not gonna happen."

"But you said you only traveled with him for seven years," Rose said, frowning. "Isn't that right? How come you're still..." She waved her hand vaguely, not sure how to put it. Young? Alive?

"Funny thing, Gallifrey," Ace said dryly. "Time Lords running around everywhere. The whole planet has its own time. Didn't age a day from the moment I set foot at the Academy to the moment I left."

Rose still couldn't catch the Doctor's eye, but now he was studying Ace critically. "Think you're twenty-eight, do you?" Now he looked in her direction, but still not quite at her face. "Rose?"

She glanced from one of them to the other, considered Ace for a moment, then shrugged. "I'm no good with ages," she confessed. "Not eighteen, okay, but maybe not thirty either. I dunno."

"Probably got your own time, now," the Doctor remarked, like it was nothing special. "Like the rest of us."

Ace shook her head. "I didn't graduate," she pointed out.

He smiled a little. "What's so special about graduation?" he wanted to know. "All that supposed knowledge, it's got to be in your head before you graduate or you don't get to leave. You were there ninety-one years--must've learned something in that time."

"So, when you say 'perk of the Time Lords,'" Rose began, when Ace didn't seem to have any answer for that. "You're actually talking about you, right? It's not being in the TARDIS. It's being around you."

The Doctor looked at her with wide eyes. "I didn't say 'perk of the Time Lords'," he reminded her. He was looking at her again, even if he was pretending he had no idea what she was on about. "I said, Ace has got her own time."

"And so have you," Rose added. "And I'm part of it?"

"Anyone on the TARDIS is part of it," he said, looking down at the table again.

"But it's not the TARDIS," she insisted. "Is it. It's like that language thing you do: that's not the TARDIS either, you just say the TARDIS has got a telepathic field so you don't scare us off."

"It has got a telepathic field," he protested. "And," he added, giving the table a reproving look, "you were scared off by it, so yeah, like I'm gonna go and tell you it's really me."

"I wasn't scared off!" she exclaimed. He looked up without lifting his head, and she felt a smile spread across her face at his expression. "Okay, well, maybe a little. You could've asked," she added.

"Don't think about it," he admitted, and he did sound apologetic about it. "Honestly. And the time thing, can't control that. Short of kicking you off the TARDIS, anyway."

"Bite your tongue!" she said with a laugh. "Really, there are worse things than being always nineteen."

"Twenty," he said firmly. "Told you, keep counting. I've traveled with a lot of teenagers, and between you and me, I think I might be getting a bit old for it."

"You're just scared someone's gonna accuse you of funny business with the younger generation," Ace teased.

The Doctor snorted. "Think the younger generation's having fun with me," he grumbled, flipping the dessert menu up again so he could pretend to read it. "Meanwhile, all I'm looking for is dessert."

"Give me that," Rose said, plucking it out of his hands. "You've had it for too long; it's our turn. Ace? Want anything?"

"You're joking, right?" Ace moved to lean over her shoulder, and Rose tipped the menu partially toward her. "I want all of these things."

"So the TARDIS keeps us from aging," Rose mused, privately agreeing with Ace. "But if it kept me from gaining weight? I think it'd be just about perfect."

Ace grinned at that, and Rose giggled at the offended look on the Doctor's face. "What?" she wanted to know. "I'm just saying."

"Think you'd have learned to prioritize by now," he chided her. "Weight? Hmph. Before you know it, we're in danger again and running for our lives. Takes care of the weight, easy."

Leaning forward to tap the back of their dessert menu, he added, "But dessert? Now that's a top priority."

It was, and it was also better than anything else they'd eaten at the restaurant. By the time they were done, Jack still hadn't come back, so Rose wanted to go and look for him. The Doctor disagreed, though, saying that Jack was a big boy and could take care of himself.

She pointed out that if she had wandered off he wouldn't be saying that about her, and he dismissed it by saying that if she were the one missing alarms would have gone off by now. "Fire alarms," he said. "Or air raid sirens, or something. You don't disappear quietly."

"And Jack does?" she demanded.

The Doctor indicated the undisrupted environment of the restaurant. "No alarms," he said, beaming at her. "Case in point."

"I won't move the TARDIS," Ace said, covering a yawn with her hand as she leaned back in her chair. "He'll be able to find it when he's finished with his drinking buddies."

Rose glanced at the Doctor and found him looking back. If drinking was all Jack got up to, on his own and unsupervised overnight, she'd be very surprised. The look on the Doctor's face said he was thinking the same thing, and she smiled, just a little. At least it would keep him and Ace away from each other for a while longer.

As they made their way back to the TARDIS, though, Ace remarked that she was really too tired to do anything but go to bed. Rose couldn't help noticing the difference. "Not a Time Lord thing, then?" she asked, only half-joking. "The way the Doctor goes for days without sleeping and doesn't even notice?"

Ace shook her head, stifling another yawn. "Gallifreyan," she said. "Or maybe it's just 'cause he's old. Old men don't need as much sleep."

"Which you can be thankful for when I fix the temporal integrity circuits you broke while you're sleeping," the Doctor put in, apparently untroubled by the discussion of his sleeping habits and age. Dessert must have mellowed him.

"I'd be more thankful if you wouldn't break them at all next time," Ace came back. "Poor TARDIS has been through enough without you banging about under the console."

"Companions are tricky things," the Doctor told Rose. "Anyone smart enough to help is also cagey enough to deny responsibility."

She raised her eyebrows at him. "I wouldn't know, would I."

He looked taken aback at that. "Wouldn't you?"

"How often do I get to help?" she demanded. "You've got Jack now, anyway. To fix the things I don't understand."

"Keeps him out of trouble," the Doctor protested. "You're not s'posed to have to work. Free of charge, I said, and I meant it."

She frowned, surprised by the idea that maybe she was being pampered, rather than excluded. "Bit posh, isn't it?" she asked at last. "Not having to do anything but fight evil and run for my life?"

He grinned. "Fantastic, yeah?"

She giggled at his ridiculously pleased expression. "Yeah," she agreed, reaching for his hand. He took hers and squeezed it, beaming at her, at Ace, at everyone passing on the streets around them.

They made it all the way back to Ace's TARDIS before she stopped him, tugging on his hand to keep him from following Ace through the mirror. "I still want to help," she said seriously, searching his expression as she willed him to understand.

"You do help," he insisted. "Hit that switch, pull that lever... what d'you think all that is, just the sound of my voice? Just like to hear myself talk?"

"But I don't even know what I'm doing." It was important to her that he think she was competent enough to help out, even if he said she didn't have to.

"Well, that's why you've got me!" he reminded her. "To tell you!"

She didn't answer, and he studied her for a long moment. "It matters to you, doesn't it," he said at last.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, it does."

"Right then." He nodded once. "Teach you whatever you want to know. Come on!"

She broke into a grin, still holding his hand as he pulled her through the mirror. For the first time, she didn't bother to put her arm up to make sure she didn't bump into it. Seeing the Doctor walk through dispelled the illusion of solid glass.

Ace was doing something to the TARDIS console when they joined her, and she barely lifted her head. "It's not broken," she said, not bothering to ask what had kept them. Rose suddenly remembered the cameras Jack had been so convinced of earlier and she wondered if maybe Ace didn't need to ask.

"Fixed it already?" the Doctor asked, coming to a stop in front of the console. "Nice work."

"No," Ace said, frowning. "I mean, it wasn't broken to begin with. There's nothing wrong with the temporal integrity of the TARDIS."

"'Cept it's not consistent," the Doctor pointed out. "Time can't pass one way here and another way over there. That's the integrity failure," he added, as a sort of aside to Rose.

"But it's not." Ace sounded more thoughtful than exasperated, which Rose thought was pretty good for someone who hadn't been able to stop yawning all the way back to the TARDIS. "The integrity, at least as it's maintained by the TARDIS, is fine. It's Siberia itself that's doing it."

"How's that?" The Doctor didn't look convinced. "Siberia's out there, and we're in here."

"Well, obviously it's not staying out there." There was the exasperation. "TARDIS time is fluctuating just like the time zones in that restaurant we were in."

"But it can't do that," the Doctor said. "The interior dimension's only peripherally connected to the exterior. The only time in here should be yours."

"Peripherally connected?" Rose repeated, but quietly in case this wasn't a good time.

"Yeah, like picking up the outside moves the inside." He glanced at her with an inquisitive expression, and she nodded. "But you can't see out the window in the door, right? 'Cause the inside exists in a different dimension. Well, several different dimensions, actually."

"Several?" she echoed, surprised. "There's more than one dimension in there?"

"Got a dimensional integrator too," he assured her. "Blends everything together, like you can't even tell. Easy."

"If you don't lose bits and pieces," Ace said, just loudly enough to be heard from the other side of the console. "Who knows where some of those doors go now."

"Who knows where they ever went?" The Doctor gave her a pleased smile. "She's got her own ideas about some things, y'know."

"Ideas that probably aren't helped by you jettisoning things, getting stuck in recursive dimensions, or setting off cold fusion explosions," Ace added. "The dimensional integrity of your TARDIS must be enough to... what, find the kitchen? If you're lucky?"

"Find the kitchen just fine, thanks," the Doctor said indignantly. "Fix your mucked-up time and then we'll talk about space, yeah?"

"It's not broken," Ace insisted. "It's got itself connected to Siberia somehow."

"Can't have done," the Doctor replied.

Ace put one hand on her hip and braced the other on the console, glaring at him. "You saying it's impossible doesn't change the fact that it's happened. I told you creating a CVE inside the TARDIS was impossible, and we've gone and done it anyway."

"You also told me your age is one hundred twenty-six," the Doctor reminded her. "All that means is you're wrong more often than I am, so maybe you should listen to me when I say the TARDIS can't be affected by the time outside."

"Um, this might be a stupid question," Rose said uncertainly. He gave her a curious look, so she continued, "Why? Why can't whatever makes Siberia..." She gestured vaguely with one hand. "Weird, or whatever--why can't it make time in the TARDIS weird too?"

"Different dimensions," the Doctor reminded her. "When we're in here, we're not out there. We're not really anywhere. Things inside a TARDIS don't really exist. State of grace, y'see. Your watch doesn't work, Jack's gun doesn't work, you don't age. The outside universe doesn't affect us because we're not really here.

"And by here I mean there," he added. "Obviously we're here."

Rose just looked at him, and he waited. Finally she shook her head. "Okay," she said, glancing at Ace. "So that's why it can't happen. Why is it happening, then?"

"Dunno," Ace said with a frown. She ignored the Doctor's snort, focusing instead on the console. "I'd say we should take it somewhere else, but the CVE can't be moved. It's feeding off of--"

She broke off, and the Doctor lifted his head.

"The vertex," they said at the same time.

"The CVE is drawing energy from the vertex," the Doctor said.

"Connecting the TARDIS to Siberia until we leave," Ace said with a grimace.

"Which we can't do until I can calculate our route into E-space," the Doctor continued. "Exo-space," he clarified, glancing at Rose with barely a pause. "And if we can't count on the regularity of time, we're going to have to stick together."

"It's not as bad as that," Ace objected. "So time's off by a few hours. I'll go off and sleep, and you work on the calculations, and if my time is slow I'll be back sooner to help. If it's fast, I'll be back later and you can just wait."

"No." The Doctor was already shaking his head. "Bad idea. Not just one time difference we're talking about here. If your time's slow and ours is fast and we come to find you but pass through an even slower time on the way, you could wake up and go looking for us while we were looking for you, take a different route and be in our old fast time before any of us found each other. See?"

Rose looked at Ace. She couldn't help a mild twinge of relief that Ace was staring at the Doctor like he'd started speaking another language. "No," Ace said after a moment, "but okay, I get the idea. Splitting up is bad."

"Very bad," the Doctor confirmed. "So!" He clapped his hands once. "Looks like a sleepover! That'll be fun."

"Hang on," Rose interrupted. "What about Jack?"

He gave her an amused look. "Don't think he'll have a problem with a sleepover, Rose. In fact, I think he's been pushing for one for quite a while."

"I mean," she said, trying not to smile, "shouldn't we contact him or something, tell him what's going on. Let him know not to go wandering about in the TARDIS when he gets back. Tell him where we are."

"No need," the Doctor declared. "He'll likely see us when he comes in. Since we'll be right here."

"How did I know you were going to say that," Ace muttered.

"Faster I get these calculations done, faster we can be off," the Doctor said cheerfully. "Come on, it's not that bad. Haven't you ever slept in here before?"

Ace was glaring at him. "Not by choice," she grumbled, but her defiance was sort of ruined by her yawn. "I'll get blankets and things."

"Not alone, you won't," the Doctor remarked.

On this, though, Ace didn't back down. "You are not following me into the bathroom," she informed him, "and that's final. So I'm going to go wash up, and I'll pick up blankets on my way back. Rose, you can come with me if you like."

"Yeah," Rose said, with a quick look at the Doctor. He made a big show of sighing, like they had totally failed to understand a situation that actually wasn't as serious as he was pretending. "That'd be great, thanks."

She was still looking at him, though, and finally he caught her eye. "Well, go on then," he said, waving them off. "But don't blame me if you come back and it's tomorrow."

"That'd mean you'd be done, right?" Rose smirked at him. "We could leave and time would be fixed and that would be bad... how, exactly?"

"Go on if you're going," he told her. "Can't listen to you whitter on all night, can I."

"Actually," Ace said, covering her mouth to hide another yawn, "I think you just agreed to do that. Suggested it, even."

He frowned at her. "Weren't you going to go get some blankets or something?"

"Weren't you going to work out a course?" she countered.

He rolled his eyes, but he took up a position by the console that sort of vaguely suggested working, and Rose smiled at his pretended sulk as she followed Ace out of the room. It was nice to see him and Ace get along. Partly because she thought he needed more people who knew him, really knew him, and partly because Ace was lots more contrary than she was. If he liked Ace...

She wanted to quiz Ace more while they were alone, ask her about when she'd traveled with the Doctor, learn more about the President, see if she knew what the war was all about. But Ace was tough and tired and she didn't seem to be in a mood to talk anymore. She was nice enough, pointing out towels and offering pajamas. But she wasn't chatty.

So Rose washed up, even though it wasn't so late for her what with those missing hours, and she helped Ace gather up blankets and pillows and a couple of things she couldn't identify. The food was making her a little sleepy, she decided, and it might be nice to lie down a while even if she didn't sleep right away. Especially if the Doctor was busy and therefore a bit useless when it came to entertainment.

He looked up when they came back, smiling at their armloads of things. "Got enough stuff?" he inquired politely.

It made Rose smile--he really was gentler now--but Ace just eyed him. "Enough for me and her, yeah," she said, jerking her head at Rose. "You can just work the night away. Quietly."

"Planning to," the Doctor answered, with a lilt that was almost singsong. "Night night, sleep tight. Don't let the vortex bite!"

"While we're parked?" Ace shook out one of the things Rose couldn't identify, and it suddenly expanded like a self-inflating air mattress. She was arranging her bedding against the far wall, out of the way and less and less well-lit the longer she worked.

"Never know," the Doctor declared. "Kind of a silly rhyme, though, isn't it. I'll have to think of another one."

Ace snorted, but Rose caught the smile on her face as she lay down and turned away. "Good night, Doctor," she said over her shoulder. Rose watched with interest as the light in that part of the console room steadily dimmed, apparently all by itself, and Ace added, "Night, Rose."

"Night," Rose answered absently. She gave the other air-mattress thing a shake, and it burst open obediently. Nice, she decided, pushing her own things into a sort of bed-like arrangement.

Glancing around the console room again, though, she hesitated. Having a lie-down sounded less nice than it had. Now it just seemed... boring. Especially with the Doctor working right over there.

"Doctor?" she murmured. She thought she'd be safer to avoid annoying a tired Ace, and she didn't want to interrupt if he needed to focus on what he was doing.

He lifted his head immediately, leaning around the time rotor to get a clear view of her. His expression said, clear as day, Yeah? It made her smile, and he tipped his head to the side. Open invitation to join him, then.

She got up off of her blankets and padded over to the console. "I was just wondering," she said quietly. She looked around again, then waved her hand in the general direction of the door. Or where the door would be, if there was a door instead of a mirror. "She's got a hat rack."

"Not hers," the Doctor said briefly.

"Romana's?" Rose guessed, then corrected herself. "I mean, the President?"

"Not the President anymore." His tone was serious, his gaze fixed on the console as his hands danced across it. "Nothing to be the President of."

She wanted to say, There's you, but she understood that he wasn't a man who had ever really recognized presidential authority. So it didn't really make sense, and she didn't know what else to say. She ended up saying nothing.

Then he glanced at her, hands pausing, and he offered a half-smile. "Romana's," he said, nodding at the hat rack. "Yeah."

She smiled back. "Like yours."

He looked back at the console, but he still sounded friendly when he agreed, "Like mine. Bit of a copycat, she was. Sonic screwdriver, hat rack, robot dog..." He paused, then reconsidered. "Well, okay. I did give her the dog."

"So is that a...?" She waved at the doors again, but this time she meant the little nook on the other side.

The Doctor didn't even follow her motion. "Dog bed," he agreed. "I told her, he's a robot. What's he need with a dog bed? But she would go on," he said with a sigh. "Think he got quite used to it."

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask about the dog, but she remembered the message, and how the dog was supposed to be here but wasn't, and she thought that might be a bad idea. So instead she said, "It's very... pink, isn't it?"

He looked up in surprise. "Oi, now, you're one to talk! Thought you'd like her color scheme."

"Oh, I do!" Rose assured him. "I'm just--it's not very Ace, is it. Is it hard to change?"

The Doctor was quiet for a long moment, and she wondered if she should have asked. Ace had said she didn't feel like the TARDIS was really hers, back when they'd first met. She was very possessive of it now, but it still looked exactly the same.

"Depends," the Doctor said finally. "TARDIS can change the console room itself, like everywhere else. Redesign it, regrow it if it's damaged, that sort of thing. For a Time Lord to do it, though... that takes a bit of work."

"And by a bit," Rose guessed, "you mean a lot."

"And by work I mean really, work," he agreed. "Easier just to spruce up one of the auxiliary console rooms. Or--"

He stopped abruptly, and she waited to see if he would continue.

When he didn't, she prompted, "Or what?"

He shrugged, like it didn't really matter. "Big changes in... personality, in a Time Lord's personality? Well, if they're linked to a TARDIS, that can change things. That's faster. But then, it's not usually a conscious choice."

She considered that, looking around Ace's clean, well-lit, properly maintained console room and comparing it to the dim shambles of the Doctor's TARDIS. She loved his TARDIS, had come to think of it as an extension of him, and maybe that was more true than she'd realized. Maybe stepping into his TARDIS was a little like stepping into his mind.

She smiled a little at that, half sad, half proud that he could be who he was even after everything. She caught his questioning look and assumed it was about the smile. "I was just thinking, I like the way your TARDIS looks."

He shook his head, returning his attention to the console. "You're a daft woman, Rose Tyler."

She had to laugh. "Oh, you love it," she teased, and she beamed when he gave her a sideways glance full of affection.

"Yes," he said solemnly. "I do."

The declaration filled her with a warm feeling of comfort, and she leaned on the console to watch him as he continued to work. She had no idea what he was doing, but it seemed right. Just being here, smiling, seeing him smile and fiddle and just be a part of it all. He was very... present, for someone as lost as he sometimes seemed.

He got through the loss by focusing on things like this, she supposed. Fixing things, figuring things, saving people. Saving her.

A sound from the other side of the room made her look over, and she saw Ace shift under her blankets. Impossible to tell from here if she was asleep or not, but Rose lowered her voice anyway. "So how long were we gone?"

The Doctor looked up for just a second. "Sorry?"

"When we left to get blankets," Rose reminded him. "Did it seem to take us very long?"

He shrugged. "'Bout half an hour."

She nodded. "Yeah, okay, that's about right. Not that I would know," she added, poking him gently. "Seeing as I don't have a watch or anything."

"You still on about that?" he asked, sounding more amused than surprised. "What d'you need a watch for? Can't you just learn to tell time?"

"I dunno," she replied, smiling. "Can I? Isn't it a big Time Lord secret?"

He looked like he thought about that. "Nah," he said after a moment. "Don't think so. Pretty sure anyone can do it."

"How?" she wanted to know.

He stopped whatever he was doing and studied her for a long moment. Then, to her surprise, he reached out to lay his fingers alongside her neck. She just looked at him, but his eyes were distant, like he was seeing something else entirely. She held perfectly still, waiting.

When his gaze focused on her again, he smiled. "Beat per second," he said. "Just the one, and slower than mine. Makes it easy."

She lifted her hand to the other side of her neck, suddenly understanding. "My heartbeat," she said. She could feel her own pulse beneath her fingers.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Feel it. Listen to it. It counts the time for you, every second of your life."

She listened. Her pulse was a steady pressure at the edge of her awareness, more or less subtle depending on how much attention she gave it. Standing there, in the middle of a strange TARDIS with his fingers against her skin, she listened to the rhythm of her heart and she thought she could feel it through her entire body.

"Starts before you're born," he said softly. "Keeps going until the day you die. Clocks, watches... they're just ways of marking time. Your heart is living time. Living it for you, living it through you, and whether you notice it or not it just keeps going. Offering you every moment."

Living. She stared back at him, looking for some sort of explanation in his blue eyes. "Doctor," she murmured. "Why aren't there any living things on your TARDIS?"

He let her go, looking away, but she didn't miss the way his thumb brushed her chin before he pulled his hand back. Unobtrusive, almost an accident... almost a caress. "What," he said, leaning against the console, "you and me and Jack aren't living things?"

He hadn't gone back to his work, and he might not be looking at her but he was facing her and she thought he didn't mind her asking. "Other living things," she said. "When me and Jack went exploring, we found... trees. Trees and plants and insects and things."

"Yeah," he said, gaze fixed on the floor. "And you threatened to kill him with your sweatshirt."

"What?" She stared at him, but he shouldn't know that and that could only mean one thing. "Oh my god, Jack was right! You were spying on us?" She didn't know whether to laugh or hit him.

He eyed her, barely lifting his head, and it gave his expression a positively guilty look. "He told you," he pointed out. "I heard him."

She decided on hitting. She cuffed his shoulder and he pretended it hurt and she exclaimed, "I didn't believe him!"

"Well, he was right." He cradled his shoulder, frowning at her, and she had to giggle.

"You're such a baby," she informed him. "And," she added, lifting a finger to point at him. "I asked a question. How come there aren't any other living things on the TARDIS?"

"What d'you want?" he asked. "It's not like it isn't work, y'know, having all that greenery around all the time."

"There were gardens," she said with a sigh, leaning back against the console beside him. "Not a weed in sight. Who keeps that up? Oh, and the butterflies! There was this butterfly, yeah, and Jack followed it all the way to the gardens because he was afraid it might get hungry..."

She grinned over at him, inviting him to share the joke, and she found him watching her with a sort of sad look on his face. "What?" she asked, softening her tone as soon as she realized how mean it sounded. "What is it?"

But he looked away, smiling a little, only she thought it wasn't much of a smile at all. "The TARDIS used to have a butterfly room," he remarked, staring at the far wall. "Haven't seen it for a while, now."

She considered that. Things in the TARDIS did move about, sometimes more and sometimes less, and she knew that the less she thought about where things were the easier it was to find them. But maybe, if she didn't think about the things themselves, she wouldn't find them at all?

He'd said changes in the TARDIS could reflect changes in a Time Lord's personality. And really, that was why the lack of living things bothered her. If the TARDIS was like the inside of his head, then what did its dark stillness say about him?

"Have you looked for it?" she asked finally.

He shot her a confused look.

"The butterfly room," she prompted. "You said you haven't seen it. Have you looked for it?"

He frowned. "Why would I do a thing like that? Haven't got any use for butterflies, now, have I."

"Did you have a use for them before?" she wanted to know.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Still frowning.

"Well?" she pressed.

"S'pose they pollinated the flowers," he offered at last, looking uncomfortable.

She couldn't hide her smile and she didn't try. "You had flowers?"

He shrugged a little. "Maybe a few," he admitted. "Here and there. In the Cloisters. By the pond."

"You had a pond?" she repeated, delighted by the confession.

He gave her a shy smile. "Had a rainforest, me." Before she could laugh at the idea, he added, "Think that was mostly Erimem's doing, though."

She blinked. "Who?"

"Princess," he offered. At her look he added quickly, "No, an actual princess, from Egypt. Traveled with me for a while. Bit tired of the desert, I suppose."

"She was tired of the desert," Rose said slowly, "so she found a rainforest? In the TARDIS?"

"Well, it's not quite that simple," he said. "I was tired of her cat, but I never found a cat cage." He sighed a little, and it was hard to tell how much he was having her on. "Still, she did like trees, and the rainforest went away after she left."

"A rainforest," Rose repeated. "Inside the TARDIS."

"That so hard to believe?" he inquired. He sounded, not defensive, but like he already knew the answer. Almost like he found it hard to believe now, too.

Yes, she thought, but aloud she said, "No." Was it really so strange to think that once he had been able to stop distracting himself long enough to sit down and enjoy a simple garden?

"No," she repeated firmly. "It's not hard to believe at all." She smiled at him. "I'd like to see that."

The smile he gave her in return was sad and tired and it made her heart ache. "Keep looking," he said quietly.

She reached over to take his hand. He wound his fingers through hers without prodding, squeezing tight as she promised him, "I will."

It didn't sound like words at first, didn't sound like anything at all when the first thing she was aware of was warmth and comfort. She was sleeping, or she had been, and this wasn't her bed. But it was soft and safe and she could hear the hum of the TARDIS, so she couldn't be in any trouble.

Something that she had barely noticed moved and the mattress shifted under her. She murmured a protest as she felt herself sinking toward the motion. The mattress lifted again, and she came fully awake as a hand touched her hair. "Shh," she heard someone whisper. "It's all right."

Her eyes opened in the darkness. That was the Doctor's voice. She turned her head toward the sound, but he was gone and now she heard Jack murmuring, "I miss all the fun."

"I very much doubt that." Funny that the Doctor could put so much into a tone that was little more than a whisper. "Have a good time, did you?"

"Not as good a time as you, by all appearances." Jack, on the other hand, sounded smug no matter what the circumstances. It was no surprise that he sounded exactly as he always did.

"I've been doing math," the Doctor informed him.

"Sure, two plus one equals three." She didn't know how Jack could make arithmetic sound so dirty. "That's my kind of math," he added, and she could hear the grin in his voice. "Wish there had been a fourth in that equation somewhere."

"They went to bed hours ago." The sound of his voice changed a little as the Doctor turned, becoming clearer so she could tell he must be facing her, at least for a second or two. "I just laid down to rest my eyes for a moment."

"Uh-huh." Jack didn't bother to make fun of him for that; he didn't have to. His tone did it for him. "Any particular reason you're all resting your eyes in the console room?"

"Couldn't fix the time problem we had earlier," the Doctor said quietly. "Turns out the TARDIS is connected to Siberia, most likely through the CVE, so its temporal dimensions are in flux. Thought it was best we all stuck together."

"And you didn't go back to your own TARDIS... why?"

"Someone's got to be here to keep an eye on the CVE." The Doctor sounded maybe the tiniest bit defensive, now. "I've got to be here to do the calculations, and Ace won't leave her TARDIS, so here we all are."

"Even Rose?" Jack asked. "She's just sleeping on the floor to keep you all company, huh?"

"What d'you think?" The Doctor sounded annoyed in that way he only did when he was uncomfortable, and Rose was just opening her mouth to tell them she was awake when Jack answered.

"I think she's just sleeping on the floor to keep you company," he drawled. "Like I said. Gonna take more of an incentive than that to get me to join you, though."

"More of an incentive than my company?" The Doctor's annoyance had become amusement in the space of a second--the space of a heartbeat, she thought--and she could almost imagine him shaking his head. "Didn't realize you had qualifications now."

"Oh, your company would be enough for me, Doc." Jack sounded lazy and warm and she couldn't help but wonder if the Doctor knew what he was doing. Flirting with Jack was a dangerous thing exactly because he didn't take it seriously. He had already made it clear that all she had to do was ask, and she was pretty sure all the Doctor had to do was not say no.

He would say no, wouldn't he? He teased Jack, and Jack teased back, and they both seemed happier for it. But there was a big difference between flirting in the daylight in front of witnesses and issuing ambiguous invitations in the dark with no one awake to know.

"Still, I don't think whatever you're lying on is big enough for three," Jack was saying. "And I'm not sleeping in these clothes, which normally would not be a problem, but I think your old friend may be one of a rare breed that actually doesn't want to see me without them."

"Won't leave without you, then." The Doctor didn't seem to be having any trouble understanding his meaning, and Rose wondered distantly if her brain was just too sleepy to keep up.

"Better not," Jack countered. "I know where you live. And I've got a key."

"You try to fly her without me and we could spend the rest of our lives looking for you," the Doctor warned.

"Promises, promises," Jack drawled. "I won't make you chase me if you don't make me leave. You just go back to resting your eyes with Rose."

"Jack." The Doctor's voice was very serious, and she thought maybe he was going to protest the teasing this time. Instead he said, "I'm not asking you to leave."

"Not yet," Jack answered. He sounded equally serious, and she struggled to understand. She couldn't be dreaming, could she? Why didn't she have any idea what they were talking about?

"I've seen the way you look at her," Jack was saying, his voice so low she had to strain to hear it. "Maybe someday three will be too many. Just give me the sign, okay?"

"Jack." The Doctor was whispering now, and somehow it seemed louder than their murmuring had. "She needs friends. She needs family. I'm not family. And if the day ever comes when I can't be her friend anymore, the last thing I'd ever do is ask you to leave."

There was a long quiet moment, and Rose wished she dared move even if she couldn't see more than shadows in the darkened console room. She had a feeling that their shadows would be very close together if she turned to look for them. And she didn't know what she thought about that.

Finally, Jack said softly, "You need friends too, Doc."

"I had friends." The Doctor's whisper sounded harsh. "We went our separate ways."

"Sounds familiar," Jack murmured. There was another pause, and she could hear the soft shift of clothes and the distinctive sound of skin on leather. "I'll be here as long as you both want me."

The Doctor didn't answer. She heard quiet footsteps that had to be Jack's, and then, suddenly, the Doctor's voice. "Jack."

"Yeah." Still barely louder than a whisper, his casual answer came from the direction of the outer doors.

"Don't get in any trouble," the Doctor told him.

She could hear the grin in Jack's voice as he replied, "You bet'cha."

Rose smiled to herself, tucking her head further down into the blanket she was using as a pillow. Whatever they'd been on about, they were fine now. The Doctor didn't like "goodbye" and he only said "see you" when he didn't really mean it. So when he sent off someone he wanted to see again, he told them to stay out of trouble. It had taken her weeks to figure out that it was an expression of affection, not condescension or complaint.

The thing that wasn't quite an air mattress shifted again, and she bit her lip. She'd wondered if he would be back. He didn't touch her blankets, or her, though she was sure he'd been close enough to feel when she had first woken up. From the sound of his movements, she knew he had to be wearing his jacket, and she thought that probably made what he had told Jack more believable. He really had just lain down to rest his eyes, or at least relax a little before morning.

"Rose." His voice was whisper-soft, quieter even than when he'd been talking to Jack. "You awake?"

She doubted it would do her any good to pretend otherwise. She should remember to ask exactly how far that "telepathic field" went. "Yeah," she murmured, or tried to. It came out convincingly and surprisingly sleepy, and she wondered again if this would all turn out to be a dream.

"Jack's checked in," he whispered.

Finally, she had an excuse to turn over, but it was harder than she'd expected because he was lying on top of all her blankets. "Good," she mumbled, bumping into his elbow. He had his hands behind his head. She would have rolled her eyes if it hadn't seemed like so much work. "Comfy?"

"Yes, thanks." There was a pleased lilt to his voice, and she knew he was teasing her. "You?"

"Mmm." She pulled the blanket under her head a little closer as she curled against his side. If a bloke was going to take up space on her bed, the least he could do was provide a bit of cushioning. She'd worry about the rest in the morning.

Rose woke to the sound of Jack and the Doctor arguing. She got an eerie sense of deja vu just before the lights came up and the Doctor's voice announced cheerily, "Rise and shine! Things to do! Worlds to discover, mysteries to solve, tea to be served!"

"Unless you've got some of that tea," Ace's voice grumbled, "you keep your morning cheer to yourself."

"Aha!" the Doctor exclaimed in triumph, and Rose rolled over reluctantly. "Come and get it, then! Can't laze about in bed all day!"

"I'm not in bed," Ace retorted, her voice becoming more clear as she sat up. "And whose fault is that? If someone hadn't mucked up the temporal integrity--"

"All fixed," the Doctor declared. "Or it will be, as soon as we're on our way. Come on and have some tea!"

"Blimey," Rose mumbled, pushing herself up onto her elbows. "Did you actually make tea?"

"Yup!" The Doctor looked very proud of himself. "Well, with a bit of help, I must admit. Jack is very good in Ace's kitchen."

"Anyone would be better in there than me," Ace muttered, throwing off her blankets as she got to her feet. "I'm lucky the TARDIS knows what I like."

"Well, you'll like this," Jack promised. Rose expected him to whip out some little known and highly authentic origin for individual tea leaves, but he just said, "Tea always tastes better when someone makes it for you."

"That's true," Rose agreed, stretching her arms over her head as she padded across the console room to join them. Her eyes widened as she realized tea wasn't the only thing they'd brought. "Biscuits! Jack, this isn't breakfast! This is dessert!"

"Are you complaining?" he said with a grin. "I've always thought days that start with dessert turn out better in the end."

"Where did you get these?" Ace asked, eyeing the food in surprise. "These aren't from my kitchen."

"Nope," Jack agreed. "They're from ours. I wasn't quite as eager as you to camp out in the console room--no offense to present company--so I paid the ol' police box a visit and picked up a few things while I was there.

"Rose," he added, pointing at something over by the railing. "Grabbed some clothes for you, if you want them."

She paused with a mouthful of biscuit and eyed her knapsack with surprise. "Thanks," she managed, after she swallowed. She'd sort of gotten used to wearing the same clothes for days at a time once she'd met the Doctor--a lot of his adventures didn't fit neatly into a single day, and they couldn't always get back to the TARDIS to change--so she hadn't given it much thought. But it would be nice to have clean clothes.

She and Ace were excused after biscuits with refilled cups of tea and Rose's knapsack, and a warning from the Doctor that if they weren't back in an hour either he or Jack would come find them while the other waited in the console room. It didn't seem like a failsafe plan to Rose, but then, they rarely did.

Ace waved her into the bathroom while she went to find clothes of her own, and when it took her fifteen or twenty minutes to return dressed exactly as she'd been the day before, Rose figured that was proof that time on the TARDIS was still a bit odd. For herself, she spent the time wondering if she should ask how Jack knew which was her favorite bra. And which t-shirts went with that bra, which jeans went with those t-shirts, and which panties went with the jeans.

She decided that no, she shouldn't. Jack paid attention to her clothes as closely as she did, which was a little bit funny, a little bit alarming, sort of flattering and also sort of annoying, since he was obviously the only one who noticed. He also knew her makeup, which at this very moment was just lovely, because Ace really didn't have anything that she would use.

Rose was putting on her face when her hostess walked in, and she gave the other girl a quick smile in the mirror. Ace smiled back, but it was a token smile, and Rose didn't know what she'd done to deserve that until Ace asked, "So are you shagging him, then?"

Her mouth fell open and she couldn't do anything but stare. "What? Who? What are you talking about?"

"Heard him crawl into bed with you last night," Ace remarked, grabbing a brush and attacking her hair with it. "Woke up before he did this morning, and there he still was. All tangled up in you like neither of you were wearing any clothes at all."

Rose gaped at her. She remembered vague flashes of the night... Jack, mostly, Jack's voice, talking, the Doctor talking, both of them talking to each other. Jack must have stopped by Ace's TARDIS before he went back to the Doctor's. She did sort of remember the Doctor lying down beside her--after Jack left, probably--and it wasn't like he wouldn't have been welcome. He knew that well enough.

But she didn't remember him holding her. And something else Ace had said...

"Did he sleep?" she blurted out. She'd thought he meant to stay up all night, working on his calculations, his unspoken penance for having abandoned people who might yet be alive. And, maybe, a way of avoiding the nightmares brought on by their last visit here--though whether they had been caused by reminders of war or the message from the president, she still didn't know.

Ace was staring at her, and she cleared her throat. "I mean, no. Of course we're not--why would you think that?"

That was a bit silly, she thought, and Ace's expression said she agreed. They had been sleeping together. Apparently, anyway, and yeah, it wouldn't have been the first time. It wasn't such a big leap from sleeping to shagging. At least, it wasn't if you didn't know the Doctor.

"He has nightmares," she told Ace. "You must know that. He can't even sleep sometimes, so he stays with me and I wake him up if they get too bad. That's all."

Ace studied her for a long moment. "Just sleeping, then?"

"Yeah," Rose said firmly. "Just sleeping."

"Bit hard to imagine," Ace commented, still eyeing her.

Rose bristled. "That two people can sleep together without it having to be about sex? You better be careful; you're starting to sound like Jack."

Ace's face lightened a little, giving the hint of a smile without actually showing one. "No," she said, and if her expression was lighter her tone was still just as serious. "It's just... hard to imagine him needing someone, y'know? 'Specially someone like you."

She winced at Rose's expression. "I mean, like the way he needs you, not like you in particular," she added. "He needed me, y'know, to watch his back, protect him from the bad things. He needs other people, sometimes, to remind him the bad things aren't everything... but I don't know that he's ever needed someone to wake him up when he can't block out the bad things by closing his eyes."

Rose bit her lip, wondering if Ace was politely disagreeing or if she actually believed her. Ace didn't really seem the type to be polite about any disagreement. "Maybe the bad things are badder than they used to be," she said quietly.

Ace looked away, shaking her hair back over her shoulders and gathering it up with her hands. "Yeah," she told the mirror. "Maybe they are, at that."

Rose took a deep breath, turning back to her mascara to disguise her nerves. If she said this, she wouldn't be able to take it back. "Would it be so bad?" she asked her reflection. She'd never worried about what she couldn't take back until she met him. "I mean, if we were...?"

Ace's reflection was staring at her steadily. "Don't ask me that."

"Why not?" Rose concentrated on her eyelashes. "Does it go against some sort of Time Lord code or something?"

"No." Ace's tone didn't change. "It goes against my personal view of him as best friend and father figure to think about him having sex, ever."

"Oh." Rose considered that and decided it was fair. "Well, but it's sort of weird anyway, right? I mean, he's like nine hundred years old."

"Eleven hundred thirty-six," Ace reminded her. "And didn't I just tell you not to talk to me about this?"

"No, you told me not to ask you." Rose turned and pointed her mascara brush at Ace. "Who else am I gonna talk to, anyway? I get into a timeship with a bloke who saved my life and told me to forget him, dropped me off back home and asked me to come with him, showed me the destruction of my planet and then apologized for it..."

She drew in a breath, letting her hand fall. "God, I still don't know him, do I. All this time, and I don't know him any better than I did then."

Ace was twisting the last of her hair into the braid that always seemed to hang down her back, fingers working calmly while her eyes watched Rose. "Think we all know him in those first few moments as well as we'll ever know him. He always said he was who he was, right then, at that moment. At any moment. No before and no after."

Rose started to reassemble her makeup, an automatic task that didn't take up nearly enough of her mind. "Funny thing for a nine-hundred-year-old bloke to say," she said, even though something about it tugged at her memory. Their fight on Platform One. Not the first time she had asked him who he was, but the first time she had insisted on an answer and he had shouted back at her.

This is who I am, right here, right now! All that counts is here and now, and this is me! And he had walked away from her. A few steps, nothing more, looking away when she followed but standing his ground. And just like the night before, he had apologized with the most ordinary thing she could imagine: a phone call home, to hear her mum's voice, to remind her that she wasn't totally alone with a crazy man who had no past and no future.

"He's not the only one," Ace said at last. "Most of them, yeah, so stuck in their own history you can't see 'em ever having an original thought. But a few, they're just like..."

She trailed off, and Rose glanced at her. Ace was frowning at her hair tie as she wound it around her braid. Finishing, she tossed it over her shoulder and looked up to meet Rose's gaze. "It's like the more time they have, the less it matters to them," she said. "Like they're, I dunno, born again every day, or something."

Rose couldn't help smiling a little at that description. "He's sort of like that sometimes, isn't he."

"Not so much now," Ace said with a sigh. "But sometimes, yeah, I still see that."

Rose zipped her makeup bag shut and tossed it in her knapsack, checking her face in the mirror one last time. "He's nine hundred years old," she reminded herself.

Ace was still watching. "How many other nine-hundred-year-olds d'you think he knows?" she asked neutrally.

Rose glanced at her. "What are you saying, then?" 'Cause actually, she could think of a few off the top of her head. Not exactly the sort she'd want to share blankets with when the nightmares got too loud, but maybe that was just her.

Ace shook her head. "I'm just saying I've seen a lot of unlikely things in the last hundred years," she said. "And pretty much everything about the Doctor is so far past unlikely you can't even measure it."

"Yeah," she said before she thought. "No question there."

"Not saying I think it's a good idea," Ace added, frowning. "But I'm not thinking about it, so what do I know. I do know it wouldn't be the first time."

Rose turned, bracing herself against the counter. "What d'you mean by that? That he's--"

It was a good thing she paused because Ace gave her an irritated look. "Stop right there," she said, even though Rose had already stopped. "I told you, don't ask me about that. I don't know, anyway, and honestly I don't want to."

Rose looked at her more closely. She seemed maybe more upset than Rose would have expected of her. "You having me on?" she asked suspiciously.

To her surprise, a small smirk appeared in Ace's expression. "Maybe a bit," she admitted. "You blame me?"

Obviously. Who else was she gonna blame? She was being made fun of by one of the Doctor's former traveling companions, and it all started because of something she'd have liked to remember but couldn't. She was beginning to think that starting with dessert wasn't such a good idea.

"It's not your age," Ace said, maybe reacting to her silence. "It's just... the Professor?"

"Yeah," Rose said defensively. "So? He's a bit caring."

"Caring," Ace repeated. Like she'd said something in another language. "Yeah?"

Rose just stared at her, and Ace shook her head quickly.

"I mean, yeah, I know," Ace hurried to assure her. "I just didn't--guess that's not what I expected you to say, is all."

"Well, he hasn't got rock star looks," Rose pointed out. "And he couldn't charm his way out of a paper bag. He hates my mum, he can't stand my friends, and let's face it, his sense of direction must have got lost somewhere.

"But he cares," she continued. "He cares so much about the whole universe and the people in it and what happens to them. He'd put it all right, if he could. Then he'd stir up trouble just to see what happened and he'd tell me to stop being so narrow and in the end he'd fix it all up again anyway."

There was a look on Ace's face, a funny look, maybe a bit... nostalgic?

"That's what it is," Rose finished awkwardly. "That's why, yeah, the Doctor. Plus I like him," she added, shrugging a little to show that this most important thing wasn't really at all.

"Y'know what makes it weird," Ace said at last. There was a softness in her eyes that hadn't been there before, almost a sort of respect. "That's just what kept me with him, all those years. You're right. He does care."

"And why's that weird?" Rose asked, surprised.

"What's weird is that we both love him for it," Ace said, "but I guess maybe not in the same way."

Rose looked away. "It's a bit mad, really," she told the counter.

"Yeah," Ace agreed. Then she added, "What isn't, around him?"

Rose smiled a little. "Guess we'd better be getting back," she said after a moment.

"Rose." Ace was looking at her curiously. "It's not the first time. One of the human girls traveled with him before me? Helped him double-cross an invasion of Gallifrey, fell for a guard there, got off the TARDIS tilt-a-whirl and settled down with him. Had a kid, even. Half human, half Gallifreyan."

Rose stared at her. "You're kidding."

Ace snorted, and just like that she sounded more like the Ace that Rose knew. "Yeah, made it all up, 'cause I really want to encourage you to jump him."

Rose swallowed, making herself hold that dismissive gaze. "What happened to the kid?"

Ace looked down first. "Studying at one of the academies when the war got bad," she muttered.

Studying to be a Time Lord. The child of a human mother, growing up to be a Time Lord. God, that was a weirdly terrifying thought. She tried to put it aside.

"I'm sorry," Rose offered at last.

"Yeah," Ace agreed quietly. "Me too."

She moved toward the door first, but she waved at Rose's knapsack as she did so. "Can leave that here, if you want. Looks like we'll only be taking one TARDIS, so you might be staying a little while.

"I'll find you a room, if you like," Ace added. "If the staying bit works out."

"Yeah, thanks," Rose said, surprised. "That'd be great."

Ace just nodded, but she stopped right outside the bathroom and waited for Rose to put her knapsack down again. "For what it's worth," she said abruptly. "He never touched me like he touches you."

"What?" The question was reflex, not actual lack of understanding, and Ace seemed to know it. She didn't answer, anyway, and they made their way back to the console room in silence from there.

The Doctor and Jack were right where they'd left them. In fact, right where they'd left them, which became clear as the two of them looked up and exchanged surprised glances. "Wow," Jack remarked. "Any way we can make this temporal distortion thing permanent?"

"I'm fairly certain it wouldn't always work in our favor," the Doctor admitted.

"But it's great when it does!" Jack declared. "Two beautiful women walk out in pajamas--which I loved, by the way--and return seconds later dressed and ready for the day! Rose," he added with a smirk, "you're looking particularly stylish today, if I may say."

"You may," she said, rolling her eyes, "since you picked it out. I don't want to know how much time you spent in my underwear drawer."

"No, you probably don't," Jack agreed with a grin. "It was time well spent."

"Right then," the Doctor said, clapping his hands. "Off we go!"

Jack wasn't so proud of himself that he wasn't paying attention. "Into time!"

"And space!" Rose chimed in.

The Doctor exchanged glances with Ace, and the suppressed laughter written all over his face made his attempt at a long-suffering sigh fail utterly. "One moment of entirely appropriate enthusiasm, and now these clowns think they have to say it every time."

"I thought I'd heard that before," Ace said, joining him at the console and starting to move things about. "It's very..."

"Charming?" Jack suggested.

Ace snorted. "Not the word I was thinking of."

"So is it all ready then?" Rose asked, peering at the time rotor. The color and the shapes inside were different, and it drew her eye no matter how many times she saw it. Didn't actually tell her anything about their status, but she knew from experience that the console wouldn't either, so she elected to watch the pretty and incomprehensible instead of the simply incomprehensible.

"Ready, waiting, and completely untested," the Doctor said cheerfully. "What d'you think, Ace?"

"I think if we let the untested part stop us we'd never do anything worth doing," Ace answered, still doing something to the console. "How do you want to split this up? Can flyboy over there do anything useful with the controls?"

"They both can!" The Doctor sounded surprised she even had to ask, and his reaction made Jack close his mouth. "Rose is still figuring out the technical stuff," he added, "but she's very good at following directions. She can navigate."

"Um..." She looked around to see if this was a joke she wasn't getting. "Excuse me?"

"Navigate," the Doctor repeated impatiently. "Come over here and watch these lights."

She approached his part of the console with a certain trepidation, but he stepped back, put his hands on her upper arms, and steered her into his place. "There you go," he said. "That panel there shows our course and coordinates, see? All these lights show deviation from that. Anyone of these come on, flip the switch beside it. Okay? Okay."

From long experience with the Doctor's lights and switches, she demanded, "What if the light comes on again?"

"Flip it back the other way," he answered. "Jack, big fella, you're on spatial synchronization. That all right, Ace?"

Ace waved with one hand, apparently indicating whatever he wanted was fine, but Rose felt she had to protest. "Shouldn't Jack be in charge of navigation?" she wanted to know. "It's sort of important, yeah?"

"Oh, you've done lots more important things than that," the Doctor assured her. Then he flashed her a grin. "You just didn't know it."

Her expression must have told him that this didn't help, so he added, "Making sure we land in one particular place isn't nearly as important as making sure we land somewhere. That's Jack's job."

Jack looked up and gave her a wink. "Landing you 'somewhere' since 5027," he declared. "After all, you only get one chance to go nowhere."

"Yeah, thanks," Rose said, making a face at him. "That's so reassuring."

"You'll be fine." The Doctor patted her shoulder, then pointed at the panel in front of her again. "Watch those lights."

"What about the rest of you, then?" Rose wanted to know. If he was going to teach her things, she was going to make sure he didn't do it halfway. "You, and Ace? What are you doing?"

"Ace makes sure we land somewhen, brings us out of the vortex, and monitors the CVE," the Doctor answered. "Simple, really. I'm in charge of making sure we don't die. So. Here we go then!"

Rose spared a glance for the tea tray, perched precariously on one of the railings, before bracing herself against the console. She fixed her gaze on the lights as Ace and the Doctor started pulling levers and flipping switches. The takeoff, at least, was smooth, but the tray probably wouldn't survive the trip.

One of her lights lit up, and she freed a hand to hit the switch beside it. She felt a sense of accomplishment when the light went out. Ace was saying something that didn't make any sense, and it didn't sound like anything Jack and the Doctor ever talked about while they were working so Rose guessed it had to do with the other dimension. She concentrated on her lights and waited for the shaking to start.

Suddenly all of her lights lit up at the same time and Jack said something about dimensional drift and Ace told him do his job and let her do hers and Rose started flipping switches madly. It took her a few tries to get any of the lights to stay out, and about half of them wouldn't even blink, so she called, "Doctor!"

"I know, I know!" He didn't look at her, just slid over and punched something over Ace's shoulder. "Ace!"

"The power's coming from the vertex," Ace said, sounding calmer than anyone else in the room. "There's nothing I can do. Get us back on course or Rose's panel's gonna shut off, and I really don't want Captain Jack in charge of landing."

"Hey!" Jack protested. "A little faith, here!"

Then the Doctor was at her side and she was about to step back when she felt his hands land on her shoulders again. "Good," he said briefly. "Keep doing that." He took the controls next to her and she could see him grinning out of the corner of her eye.

"You're mad," she told him, because it seemed like the thing to say.

"Mad, bad, and dangerous to know!" he declared. But the lights on her panel started steadily blinking off as he worked, and she breathed a sigh of relief when the majority of them stayed that way.

"We're through," Ace announced, just as the entire room seemed to shift somehow. Rose glanced up quickly, but nothing had changed that she could see. She looked down, flipped another switch, and the rest of her lights stayed dark.

"Whoops," the Doctor remarked. She shot a look at him but he was backing away from controls that were still and silent and that didn't seem right. He strode around the console, adding, "Sorry 'bout that. We there yet?"

"Yeah." Ace didn't look up when he joined her. "And it wasn't you. Siberia overloaded the CVE with that power boost and the buffer short-circuited."

"The buffer?" Jack repeated skeptically. "How the hell does a buffer short circuit?"

"The temporal transit buffer," Ace said, like that explained it all. "The thing that lets us travel in the TARDIS without our bodies de-aging or turning to dust? Sort of important?"

"I didn't ask whether it was important," Jack pointed out. "I asked how it short circuits."

"Don't know," the Doctor said cheerfully. "Never happened before. We're on the first of thirty-two separate backups now, though, so we're all right. Figure it out before we leave, anyway."

"If we leave." Ace sounded ominous. "Even assuming we can create another CVE, the power to push us through came from the Siberian vertex. The TARDIS couldn't have made that trip on its own."

"Okay, so--we're here?" Rose interjected. "We're... wherever we were trying to go? Just like that?"

"Just like that?" Jack repeated, giving her an appreciative grin. "Rose, my dear, you have an admirable disregard for the effort that went into this little expedition."

"No, I just mean--" She looked around, catching sight of the tea tray. Still perched on the railing, not even tipping a bit. "It was a sort of smooth ride, wasn't it?"

"Smooth?" Ace echoed.

At the same time, though, the Doctor protested, "Oi! What are you trying to say?"

Rose tried to hide a smile. He, at least, knew exactly what she meant. "Well, there wasn't any banging about or shaking or anything. Doesn't really feel like we've gone anywhere without that."

The Doctor folded his arms, looking decidedly miffed, and Ace got it. "Type 90," she told Rose. "A new one," she added, glancing at the Doctor. "Bound to be a smoother ride."

"Don't see any reason to throw out the old things just because something new comes along," the Doctor said, frowning. "Bit of tinkering, bit of respect, and a thing'll keep going for years.

"Nobody knows how to work at things anymore," he continued, warming up to the subject. "That's the problem. They think if it gives 'em the slightest bit of trouble, oh, that's it, chuck it in the bin! But it's not, is it! Thing could have lifetimes left in it, and how d'you know if you toss it at the first opportunity?"

Rose glanced at Jack and found him looking at her without lifting his head from the console. Not enough to get anyone's attention, but his expression said clear as day, What set him off?

She shook her head once. No idea. The Doctor could take the occasional teasing about his ship; she and Jack had both done it often enough and he never seemed to mind. This was different.

"No one's chucking you in the bin," Ace said. She grabbed her jacket and shrugged it on over her shoulders. "Come on, Professor. You're not obsolete yet."

"That's my point, isn't it," the Doctor agreed. "They retired the Type 50 a thousand years ago, and look, still going! She's a perfectly good ship, and I had to save her from the scrap heap!"

"Thought she saved you," Rose ventured. The Doctor's gaze flicked to her, and they just looked at each other for a minute. She wondered what he saw on her face.

"She did," he said at last. "S'pose we saved each other."

Rose felt herself smiling. "S'pose you did at that," she murmured.

"This is a story I've never heard," Jack drawled. "At least," he added, giving Rose an amused look, "I think it is."

"Not saying you haven't done great things with her," Ace was telling the Doctor. "Just saying, she was in the shop for a reason."

"Yeah," Jack put in. "Presumably because he put it there."

"She wasn't the Doctor's then," Rose said, only realizing after the fact that she'd fallen into the Doctor's occasional habit of referring to the TARDIS as a "she." It seemed odd to switch back now, so she added, "He stole her from the shop."

"Stole?" Jack repeated, raising his eyebrows at her before turning an incredulous gaze on the Doctor. "So you spoke from experience when you told me to remember whose ship I was flying."

"Now," the Doctor began. "Technically speaking," and here he glanced at Rose. "I didn't actually steal her. She agreed to come with me."

"Escape with an exile or be slowly mothballed," Ace remarked. "Not much of a choice, was it."

"No," Rose said, suddenly understanding the Doctor's look. "No, it wasn't even a contest. Of course she chose to go, but not because one option was so bad. Because the other one was so good."

He smiled at her, and it made her feel warm inside. He knew exactly what she was saying. She'd thought he knew that, but maybe it didn't hurt to hear someone say it every once in a while.

"You stole the TARDIS," Jack said, eyeing them with some amusement.

"Borrowed her," the Doctor said firmly. "Always meant to return her someday. Mind you," he added, "it's gotten a bit harder lately."

It was the first time she could ever remember him being casual about the loss of Gallifrey. Of course it didn't have to be about Gallifrey, and that made her smile so she bit her lip to hide it. "We're busy," she offered. "Things to do."

"That, and I've gotten a bit attached," the Doctor said carelessly. "Hard to imagine giving her up now."

"Hard to imagine her wanting you to," Rose agreed.

"Aw, you two are sweet," Jack teased. "Want Ace and I to have this conversation without you? Maybe I'm the only one, but I'm curious about this 'exile' thing."

"I'm curious about where we are," Ace interjected. "How did you come up with coordinates, anyway?"

"Genius, me." The Doctor beamed at her. "Besides, I've been here before."

With that, he spun and headed for the doors. Or the mirror where the doors should be. He stepped out without waiting to see if they were following, and Ace was right behind him. Rose and Jack looked at each other as they hurried to catch up.

"That woman can move," Jack said approvingly. "How'd she get in front of us?"

"Did she say something about not being able to go back?" Rose wondered.

Then they were outside, and they were standing on... sand. The wind whipped her hair out of her face and she just stopped, staring. That was an ocean there. A normal looking ocean, all blue and grey with waves and whitecaps and seaweed-looking things strewn on the sand. She looked up automatically, and the sky was ordinary enough, if a bit on the purple side. Nothing to say they were in a completely different dimension.

"Looks like we've arrived just ahead of the storm," the Doctor observed, and she was surprised when she realized he was shouting. It was the only way she could hear him over the sound of the wind.

"It figures," she said loudly, raising her voice in answer. "We finally land on a beach and it's just about to rain."

"You and your beaches," the Doctor complained, turning in a circle to survey the mostly desolate stretch of almost stormy sand. Mostly, except for the house huddled down in the shadow of a great stone outcropping a little distance away.

"I don't understand it," he continued, still practically shouting. "Why've you got to have a beach everywhere we go? I'd think you'd have got your fill of them already. You live on an island!"

"Bit far to walk," she shouted back. "And the bus ride is terrible, all screaming kids and people in swimsuits who really shouldn't be."

"What's that over there?" Ace wanted to know, her voice easily raised to counter the wind. Rose put her hands in her hair, envying Ace's braid as the flying strands distracted her.

"Small one-story structure with two sides to the rocks," Jack called out, describing the building they could all see perfectly well. "Habitable and defensible, if a little outdated. Who builds in black and white anymore?"

The outside of the house was actually white and dark grey, Rose thought, staring at the design over the door. It looked very familiar. Like a figure eight with sort of swirly things surrounding it, and she was sure she'd seen that before.

"Well, come on!" the Doctor declared. "Only one way to find out!"

He already knew. She was completely sure of that, as sure as she was that she'd seen that figure eight symbol somewhere before she'd run across it in Ace's TARDIS. The Doctor was going to get to that house come hell or high water, and little things like wind and sand and lagging companions weren't going to slow him down.

"Do you get the feeling he knows where he's going?" Jack shouted in her ear.

"There's only one place to go," she yelled back. Because yeah, she did.

"Yeah, because he put us right next to it!" Jack wasn't going to let her lie to herself--or at least not to him. "From another dimension, all the way across space and time, and he brings us right here."

"That's what he does!" Rose shouted to him.

She saw Jack grin at her through her flying hair. "Then I guess it's a good thing we don't let him do it alone."

She smiled in relief. "Yeah," she answered. "Yeah, it is."

The Doctor was way ahead of them by now, and Ace was pursuing doggedly while the two of them dawdled behind. They were strung out along the beach when Jack exclaimed, "Hey!" and grabbed her arm to make sure she heard. "Look!"

She stopped struggling through the sand long enough to look up, and at first she didn't know what they were looking at. Then she realized there was someone at the house. Standing right outside the door, a splash of pink against the white, and Rose knew without having to ask.

The woman was walking toward them, and the space between her and the Doctor vanished in a second. Between one heartbeat and the next, she went from the front door to the space right in front of him, and the Doctor didn't even seem surprised. He walked into her and wrapped his arms around her and didn't let go.

Ace caught up to them, then Jack. Then Rose. And still they were holding on to each other like they were the last survivors of a dead world with nothing else in the universe to cling to. Rose trudged over to Jack's side, cold and windblown and hungry for contact. He put an arm around her shoulders the moment she leaned against him, and she smiled her thanks. He gave her shoulder a squeeze, a promise that he was still with her.

None of them moved until at last Ace went over and put her hand on the woman's shoulder. One of the woman's arms loosened its grip and her hand went searching. Ace took it, and Rose saw their fingers squeeze together before the Doctor finally let her go enough to step back. The woman with the red hair kept her arm around him but she pulled Ace to her in a half hug with her free hand.

It surprised Rose a little, actually, because Ace didn't seem like a hugging sort of person, but when she looked at the Doctor she saw tears on his face and she knew better than to open her mouth. Even Jack knew better, and that said something about the solemnity of the situation. So they just stood and waited, outsiders, witnesses to a reunion in which they had no part.

The wind gusted, tearing across the sand, and for the first time Rose gasped under the onslaught. The air made it hard to breathe. She turned her face into Jack for protection, felt his hand tighten on her shoulders, and she knew he was about to say something.

Then a voice she didn't know was lifted over the sound of the howling wind, and she knew it had to be the woman she'd seen in the message tapes. Her voice had never been raised in those recordings, and when it was now, it had a completely foreign tone. The ring of power, of authority, of confidence that whatever she said would be obeyed.

"We should go inside," the woman's voice declared. "The storm is almost here."

The storm is already here, Rose thought, but she didn't argue. She didn't want to be outside any longer than she had to, and the house was closer than the TARDIS now. Why, she wondered, had they parked so far away?

Jack stayed with her this time, and they helped each other through the wind and sand to the front door of the little white house. As they went, it occurred to Rose that the wind wasn't actually blowing the sand at all, but she couldn't see enough through her hair to be sure. What kind of wind messed up her hair but didn't touch the sand?

The wind didn't seem any less as they stepped into the shadow of the house, which meant that either they weren't on the lee side of the rocks at all or that the wind was getting stronger by the second. The Doctor didn't look like he was having any trouble with it, and the woman's hair was flying but she leaned against him like they were just out for a stroll on the beach. Arms still around each other's waists, they slid through the door one after another without losing contact.

Ace followed them, of course, and Jack stopped in front of the door to let Rose go first. She did, gratefully, but the second she stepped inside the storm flew out of her mind. Everything here was calm, bright, and... humming.

The sound of the wind was gone. The sound that took its place brought an instant feeling of home. The unmistakable murmur of the TARDIS washed over her, welcoming her in and making her relax without even realizing it.

"Wow," Jack said, stepping into the house behind her. "Nice trick. Where are we?"

"This is Tharil." The woman by the Doctor's side smiled at his reaction. "Or it was. And probably will be again. I like this time, and you wouldn't believe how far you can see on nice days. But the storms out on the beach are a bit much sometimes."

"That wasn't just any storm." Jack was eyeing her in that way he had, sizing her up while making it look like he was just admiring the view. "Those looked like time winds, out there."

"You can sense time winds?" The woman glanced at the Doctor, who shook his head the slightest bit. Frowning back at Jack, her expression cleared when he held up his wrist device.

"Handy thing for tracking temporal disturbances," he offered, with a charming grin. "I'm never without it."

"I see." She smiled back at him, but it wasn't a charmed look. It was a polite look of comprehension and maybe a hint of amusement. Rose stifled her own smile, wondering how Jack's ego would survive these last two days.

"Captain Jack Harkness," he offered, apparently undeterred. He held out his hand, and she took it with that same attitude of tolerant interest. "I'm always pleased to meet a friend of the Doctor's."

"Yes," she agreed, and Rose thought she saw her smile soften a little at that. "I feel the same way."

The woman's gaze moved on to Rose, and her curiosity couldn't be missed.

"I'm Rose Tyler," she said, holding out her hand. "Nice to meet you."

"You too." The woman's hand was cool, somehow reminding her of the Doctor even though plenty of people had cold hands. It was just something she'd come to associate with him, without even realizing it.

"I'm Romana," she was saying. "I don't answer to 'President' anymore, no matter what anyone tells you. I prefer 'Romana,' but 'Fred' is fine if it strikes your fancy."

"How about Holly?" the Doctor asked unexpectedly. "Starting a collection, you are. Name plates must get expensive."

The woman--Romana--paid no attention to his joke, past a look of fond exasperation that might or might not be related. "Did you finally work that out? It's been sitting there for millennia."

"Having it help us into E-space was a bit of a tip," the Doctor admitted. "S'pose we should thank you for that."

Rose frowned, glancing at Jack to see if he'd got it, but all of his attention was fixed on a door on the other side of the room. "I see you have company," he remarked, dropping the words into the pause and effectively halting the conversation.

He was very good at making things sound casual that weren't, Rose thought, following his gaze. Jack would probably figure any company was some sort of security threat, and there he'd just let them all know he was keeping an eye on it. All of them, and whoever it was standing in the door.

"Energy," Romana said. She was looking at the door Jack had indicated, and at first Rose thought she meant ghosts or spirits or something. Then the other woman added, "Is that you?"

The empty doorway suddenly wasn't anymore. A stocky blonde woman stood there, arms folded, with a cold look on her face. "I thought I felt someone arrive," she said.

"It's the Doctor." Something in Romana's voice made Rose look at her, and her bright smile didn't hide the tears in her eyes. "He's finally found his way here. And he brought Ace from the Prydon Academy with him."

"The Doctor?" The blonde woman's eyes went unerringly to him. "Romana said you'd come. If you ever stopped running about long enough to do some proper math."

The Doctor's smile faded. "Well, if she said it," he began, giving the lady president a dirty look. "Then it must be true."

His smile returned full force as he turned back to person in the door. "And it is, 'cause here I am. Here we are, and here you are; we're all here! So who are you, exactly?"

The woman didn't look any happier. "Energy," she said. Like she was challenging him or something. Rose decided she didn't particularly like this one.

"Yeah, I got that, thanks," the Doctor agreed pleasantly. "What I haven't got is whether that's a name or a description, see. So which is it?"

"Which is 'Doctor'?" she replied, eyeing him with obvious suspicion.

The Doctor looked at Romana in surprise. She just smiled, raising her eyebrows at him like she wanted to know too. And if Rose hadn't completely agreed with them, she might have jumped in to defend him.

"Both," the Doctor said at last. "And neither," he added, beaming. "So what's yours, then?"

The woman lifted her chin. "Both," she said defiantly.

"And neither?" the Doctor suggested.

"No." She frowned at him. "I know who I am."

"And who is that, exactly?" Jack must have got fed up with the games. Or maybe he just didn't like the way she was glaring at the Doctor. "You're here with the president of Gallifrey," he said, looking from her to Romana, "and you can sense time travelers. But you've only got one heart, so you're not a Time Lord..."

"I would have been." She'd switched her glare to Jack now. "And I'm closer to time than you'll ever be, so maybe you should stop guessing about things you don't understand."

"Energy was a student at the Arcalia Academy when the High Council lost control of time," Romana said, intervening with the voice of someone who expected an audience. "She's not biologically Gallifreyan, no," she added, glancing at Jack. "But she is from Gallifrey, and she has good reasons for not trusting those who travel in time."

"So what were you doing on Gallifrey, then?" Rose stared at the standoffish woman, wondering why Romana hadn't just made the introductions to begin with. This was her house, wasn't it?

"Studying," Energy replied curtly.

"Let's all sit down," Romana interjected, not as though she expected anyone to disagree. "We can get caught up over tea."

The Doctor, of course, disagreed. "Sorry, we've just had tea," he said cheerfully. "Any chance we could get a cup of coffee?"

"Maybe some more dessert," Jack suggested, like she had asked them what they wanted.

"I fancy some toast," Rose remarked, getting into the spirit of it. "Biscuits were good, but I don't think they really clued me in that it's morning yet."

Instead of protesting, Romana just gave Ace an amused look. It was hard to know whether she was checking to see if Ace had anything to add, or if they were just sharing a private joke. They had, after all, traveled with the Doctor themselves at some point. It gave you in a certain sort of outlook on the universe.

And, Rose thought to herself, on the importance of breakfast.

"Never satisfied," Ace said, a bit sadly. "They don't accept anything as is, none of 'em."

"Nor do you," Romana noted with a smile. "Didn't I tell you not to follow us?"

Ace snorted. "Yeah, like I was gonna let him have all the fun. Don't be daft."

"Coffee," the Doctor reminded them. "Where's that, then? Get it myself."

"No, you won't," Romana said. "Energy makes the coffee."

Energy just looked at them.

The Doctor looked back, and he had an odd expression on his face. "Do you now," he said thoughtfully.

She turned and disappeared through the door without another word. "The kitchen's through there today," Romana remarked, seemingly unsurprised. "Come in and we'll find you all something to eat."

They found Energy in the kitchen, setting out coffee cups on the counter and lining up sugar and milk. The kitchen was warm and comfortable, but Rose couldn't help noticing there weren't any windows. Maybe it was on the back side of the house? There wouldn't be any view but rocks here, then. Didn't most people build on top of cliffs, instead of in the shadow of them?

"Can I help with that?" Jack asked, approaching Energy from behind. She had a coffee pot in her hand now, but Rose hadn't seen where it came from. It must have been made already--did they really make a whole pot at a time for just the two of them?

"No," Energy said, starting to fill the first cup. "I don't need help to pour coffee, thanks. You can add whatever you like to yours when I'm done." It was the first remotely polite thing she'd said, even if the "thanks" was a bit sarcastic.

"Here." Rose felt a gentle touch on her shoulder, and she looked around in surprise. Romana and the Doctor had finally let go of each other long enough to occupy separate spaces in the kitchen, and Romana was pointing toward the large kitchen table. "You're welcome to sit down, if you like. We were expecting company today, so we have plenty of space."

"Not us, I take it." The Doctor was leaning against the wall by the doorway, watching Energy and Jack with interest. His gaze flicked to Romana and then Rose briefly before returning to the other two.

Ace was missing, Rose realized suddenly. Where had she got to? She wanted to ask, but she figured maybe it was like when Jack disappeared and she and the Doctor were supposed to pretend not to notice. He would do some unobtrusive snooping, sneak back in like he'd never been gone, and give the Doctor the all-clear signal. Or not.

"No," Romana agreed. "The other students were coming this afternoon, but I'm afraid the time winds are too unpredictable right now. Hopefully the weather will settle a bit later."

"Other students?" Rose repeated, obediently taking a seat at the end of the table. She picked one with its back to the rest of the kitchen, swung her leg over and braced her arms against the back as she regarded them. "Who are they?"

"Energy's classmates," Romana answered. She might be talking to Rose, but she was looking at the Doctor. "She got them all out of Arcalia and safely hidden in the Matrix. I found them when I went in there to..."

She trailed off, but the Doctor was frowning. "Student shouldn't be able to get into the Matrix," he said. "Not without permission of the President or the presence of the Chancellor."

"She's not just any student." Romana pulled a chair away from the table for herself, sitting down with a sort of careless grace that made her look much younger than she had to be. Bracing her hands on the sides of the chair's seat, she leaned forward, smiling at Energy. "She had a telepathic link to the Matrix and a buried genetic key."

"Like the TARDIS," the Doctor said.

"Exactly like the TARDIS," Romana agreed, sounding amused. "Except with a humanoid form and an independent consciousness."

"A stolen form," Energy put in. She turned away from the counter with a cup in each hand. There was a bitter note in her voice. "And a consciousness that could have been perfectly happy where it was."

"Hang on," the Doctor said, frowning at her as she went over to hand Romana a cup and place the other one on the table behind Rose. "You saying you're a TARDIS pilot? Thought I'd put a stop to that! Me and Mel, we were there, we--"

"You were too late," Energy interrupted. "You couldn't stop them all. The ones they'd already created, what were we supposed to do? Gallifrey didn't want us. No one wanted to risk a secret like that getting out. We had to leave, split up... all alone in the universe, just because some scientist had an idea and some bureaucrat made the wrong decision.

"Forgive me if I'm a little wary of time travelers," she added, shooting a glance at Jack. "You don't know what it's like trying to live without knowing who might recognize you, who might know something about you that you don't even know yourself, who might prefer you disappear from the universe rather than reveal their mistake."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Yeah," he told her. He kept his eyes on her as she returned to the counter for the other cups. "Actually I do."

"So you're, what?" Rose asked, squinting at Energy like it would help her figure out what they were talking about. "Trained to fly a TARDIS? Why's that bad?"

"She's not trained to fly it," the Doctor said quietly. "She is a TARDIS."

Energy looked at her just as Rose's eyes widened. She shook her head, sliding a cup of coffee toward Jack before carrying the other one to the Doctor. "Shocking, isn't it."

"Secret program," the Doctor added, when Rose threw him a helpless look. "Kidnapping aliens, filling 'em up with a TARDIS consciousness... more than a bit dodgy, typical of the High Council at the time."

"Fighting evil and corruption all across the universe," Romana murmured into her coffee. "Should've stayed home."

"Yeah, I said that, didn't I." The Doctor lifted his coffee cup to Energy in silent thanks. "Wish it wasn't true, of course. But a bloke does what he can."

"What you can is a bit more than what most people do," Romana declared. "You shut the program down, and maybe it didn't help Energy, but look at what she's done." Turning her attention to the woman at the counter she said, "You saved all of us."

"You saved us," Energy countered fiercely. "All I did was run."

"All any of us did was run." The Doctor's voice was harsh and he looked angry but Rose didn't think it was with Energy. "Sometimes that's all you can do. Sometimes that's what saves the things worth saving."

"She snatched up all of her classmates," Romana said into the quiet that followed. "She took them to the one place no one could detect them, and that's where they ran into me. The last agent of the High Council, prepared to destroy the Matrix to preserve our past--what was left of it--and I found the future instead."

"How'd you get out?" the Doctor asked. He actually sounded curious, and for all his speculation the day before Rose didn't really think he had any idea.

"Ah, now that's a story that needs more than coffee." Romana smiled as she pushed herself to her feet and started moving around the kitchen with more purpose. Over her shoulder she asked, "Toast, did you say? And dessert?"

Jack assured her he'd been joking. But they ended up with a lovely breakfast that did include dessert, which even Rose thought was a bit much after the way they'd started the day on the TARDIS. With the--

Just like that, the hum around her registered again and she looked at Romana in surprise. "Is this house a TARDIS?" she demanded.

"No." Energy answered for her. "This TARDIS happens to be a house. For the moment."

"This is your TARDIS," Rose realized, turning to stare at her. Of course. Energy made the coffee, after all. It wasn't hard to talk to the Doctor's TARDIS, but it was harder to imagine a TARDIS talking back. She was still trying to get her mind around it.

"This is me," Energy clarified. "The body and the ship, we're both the TARDIS. We're both the same... person."

"And you went to school on Gallifrey," the Doctor said abruptly. "Just to... why, again? See if you could keep from getting caught?"

"To see if I could learn something," Energy said sharply. "I never stopped being drawn to Gallifrey. When I heard that the current president--" She nodded to Romana. "Was opening up admission to offworlders, I thought I had the perfect disguise."

"You nearly did," Romana put in. "You could easily have gone a hundred years without needing to rescue anyone in that intelligent skin of yours."

"Perfect to anyone but you," Energy grumbled. But she flashed a smile at the former president, and Rose realized she was actually joking.

"People are easier to see in the Matrix." Romana dismissed it with a wave of her hand. "It would have taken me much longer if I had just had visits to Arcalia to go on, I'm sure."

"Arcalia, that's a school, right?" Rose decided that if answers were being given away with breakfast, then she wanted her fair share. "What about the Matrix, what's that?"

"Arcalia and Prydon are two of the big clan academies," the Doctor offered.

"Arcalians are known for their fairness and love of justice." Ace had appeared in the doorway when the food was being served, and Energy had handed her a cup of coffee without asking where she'd been.

Of course, if this house was a TARDIS, and Energy was... what did the Doctor call her? A TARDIS pilot? Then she probably knew exactly were Ace had been. And what she'd been doing, too.

"Prydonians are known for their crafty deviousness," Ace continued, leaning back in her chair. "They've got a reputation for being a bit sneaky, I'm afraid."

"An undeserved reputation," the Doctor protested.

Rose looked up. She wasn't the only one, either. Every head at the table turned toward him, and he frowned. "Well, mostly undeserved, anyway."

"Half of your graduating class turned out to be power-hungry megalomaniacs," Romana remarked, as though she was remembering something about the weather. "Three of you got yourselves exiled within two centuries of graduation, and the rest probably should have been."

"So there was one bad class," the Doctor said with a shrug. "Look at Ace, she turned out all right."

Romana glanced at Ace. "Unless I'm mistaken, she went into voluntary exile by stealing resources from the Academy and deliberately disobeying an edict from the High Council."

"Conscientious objector," the Doctor replied promptly. "Protected by the fifty-seventh article of the first Treaty of Time. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but resources that have been allocated for student use are not typically considered stolen when a student uses them."

"My point," Romana said, looking amused, "is that there's nothing straightforward about Prydonians."

"Don't sell yourself short," the Doctor advised cheerfully. "You've caused enough trouble for both of us and then some. Not exactly the puppet president they were hoping for, were you."

Coming from him, that was like a huge compliment, and Rose could see that Romana knew it. She looked genuinely pleased, and she couldn't hide her smile. "Well," she said, with obvious pride. "I had an excellent teacher."

The Doctor beamed at her, and Rose wondered if she meant that literally or figuratively. Had she really been the Doctor's student? Or had she just picked up her rule-breaking ways from his company?

"So how did you get out, anyway?" Jack was reaching for another scone, and he added, "These are delicious, by the way. My compliments to the chef." He glanced in Energy's direction, and she nodded once. He held up the scone in a mock-salute.

"I was hoping he would have shown up by now," Romana said, looking around the kitchen oddly. She seemed to be searching the floor for something. "He must be busy somewhere else."

"He's fixing the peripheral symmetry circuits upstairs," Energy offered. "Do you want me to send him down?"

"No no, let him work." Romana waved it off. "He likes to feel useful. He'll figure out that the Doctor's here soon enough."

"Who's that, then?" Rose wanted to know.

Romana smiled, but it was the Doctor she addressed when she said, "Old friend of yours? Small, silver, utterly loyal?"

The Doctor looked surprised. Making a show of patting his pockets, he frowned, then reached into his jacket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. "It doesn't look like it's upstairs," he said, peering at it more closely.

"Thank you very much," Romana said primly, reaching over to pluck it out of his fingers.

He snatched it back just in time. "Oh no," he said, wagging a finger at her. "I nicked it fair and square. 'Sides, you've got a whole new model now. She showed it to me." He jerked his head in Ace's direction.

"Your TARDIS found me first," Ace admitted, when Romana followed his gaze. "He caught up with me in Siberia a while later. Got his message, found the sonic screwdriver, told me to keep everything and come back for training if I wanted it."

"Did you?" Romana asked curiously.

"Meant to. That's what yesterday was supposed to be. But his message played again and we couldn't shut it off, so he got to thinking, and you know what that's like."

The Doctor frowned at her. "What are you trying to say?"

Ace paid no attention to him. "Next thing you know, we turn up here. Time storms on the beach, Gallifreyan refugees behind the seal of Rassilon..."

"Excellent scones," Jack added, when she trailed off. "Don't forget those."

"Mmm, and the coffee," Rose agreed quickly. "Better than any of us makes it."

"Hey, speak for yourself," Jack told her.

"She's speaking for you," the Doctor put in. "Rose makes perfectly good coffee. When she gets up early enough to start it."

"Which is never," Jack finished. "So really, let's compare relevant examples, shall we?"

"Hang on." The Doctor looked over at Romana. "If K-9 got you out, why'd you tell Ace to expect him on the TARDIS?"

Rose blinked, looking from him to Romana and back again. Jack seemed just as confused but more willing to wait for the answer. Ace was the only one other than Romana who even seemed to know what the question was.

"Because," Romana told the table, tapping her finger against the side of her coffee cup, "Olianna is one of Energy's classmates."

The Doctor was frowning again. "That name sounds familiar," he mused. Eyeing Romana, he added, "Why does that name sound familiar?"

"Because it's a Sevateem name," Romana answered promptly.

"Ah." The Doctor brightened. "Ah! Olianna of Sevateem! She here, then?"

"She will be," Energy put in. "When the storm outside lets up."

"Ah," the Doctor repeated, clearly pleased. "Well. That's good news. That's very good news. I'm very glad to hear that."

Rose leaned toward him, pretending to whisper. "Um, Doctor? Who's Olianna of Sevateem?"

"Leela's daughter," he told her, like she should have known that. Glancing around the table, he shared his delight with each and every one of them. "Leela and Andred, parents of a bouncing baby girl, born on Gallifrey and admitted to Arcalia when she was five. Very proud, they were." His smile dimmed a little, but he just repeated, "Very proud."

"Okay," Rose agreed, since apparently he felt that was enough of an answer.

"Leela traveled with him before I got stuck with him," Romana told her. "You wouldn't believe how many times I heard, 'Well, Leela would've just used her Janus Thorns...'"

"Oh!" Ace exclaimed. "I got that too! Only with me it was more snide comments about my lack of subtlety, and the skill it takes to throw a knife instead of lobbing a canister of Nitro-9. I heard all about the Janus Thorns."

"Oh, you did not," the Doctor said crossly. "Don't know how I end up with such violent companions, anyway. Jack carries the legacy of Villengard around with him, and that thing can level a building without any skill at all."

"I'm the pinnacle of an evolutionary progression," Jack declared. "From throwing knives to sonic blaster in--how many years was it?"

Romana was giving the Doctor an odd look. "I thought you did something about Villengard?"

His frown vanished, replaced by a satisfied smile. "Oh, it makes a lovely banana grove. Just these leftovers that seem to keep coming back. Never should have let him charge the battery from TARDIS systems that first time."

"Don't pretend it hasn't come in handy," Jack warned him. "You can't always bargain your way out of prison with an offer of free interior decorating."

"Prison," Romana repeated, smiling a bit. "Now I remember what I like about this place. No one's threatened to toss me in prison for... oh, at least two years, now."

"From what I've heard," Energy muttered, "I expect it to become a more frequent occurrence now that the Doctor's around."

"I should think that the fact I'm not currently imprisoned says something about the number of misunderstandings there've been over the years," the Doctor declared. "Really, all it takes is a reasonable discussion to clear up these sorts of things. Nine times out of ten."

"Same odds you give on people not hurting you once they realize you're unarmed," Romana noted. "How do you explain your actual statistics there?"

"I go about with a lot of armed companions," the Doctor reminded her. "They throw off my numbers a bit."

"Excuse me?" Rose gave him a pointed look, and he rolled his eyes at her.

"Had some bad luck there for a while," he said. "It happens."

"There are ways of handling bad luck," Jack remarked. "With a lot less collateral damage than improvising a last-minute explosion, or a missile strike, or a giant space-time collapse."

"No." The Doctor pointed at him. "It should always be a choice, not an automatic reaction. That blaster makes it easy, Jack. Violence should never be easy."

Jack looked at him for a long moment. He didn't argue, and he didn't joke, and finally he nodded like maybe he understood. In her head, Rose remembered all the times Jack had slipped up and called the Doctor "sir." She wondered sometimes if it wasn't just the heat of the moment or the flashbacks that made him do it. Maybe, sometimes, he did it on purpose.

"You were saying?" The Doctor's voice was light and brittle, like he regretted saying that and he was trying hard to be cheerful but he couldn't quite get past it. "About Olianna?"

"I was saying that K-9 Mark I and K-9 Mark II have never gotten along," Romana said, her words easy and smooth. "My K-9 had the knowledge to get a hypothetical vessel into exo-space, with the power of Gallifrey behind him, and he shared it with hers."

When Rose snuck a glance at the Doctor, she saw his forced smile fade and she relaxed a bit. Everything about Romana seemed to soothe him, somehow, and maybe it made her a bit envious but it also made her grateful. He needed this sort of company.

"One of them was supposed to stay behind," Romana continued. "Take my TARDIS and find you, let you know what happened.

"It would have been the safest choice," she added, more quietly. "Energy isn't quite the hypothetical he was calculating for, and he was basing it all on a one-way trip in the opposite direction. Add to that, with the High Council decimated and the Matrix unstable, there weren't any reliable power sources left on Gallifrey.

"He should have stayed behind," she repeated. "One of them should have. If only to find you. But they both thought it was the coward's way, I'm afraid, and mine wouldn't leave me any more than Olianna's would leave her."

"Figures," the Doctor grumbled. "The only ones you can convince to evacuate are the ones that believe it's the most dangerous thing they can do."

"Evacuation was never on the table," Romana said, just as softly. "You had to know that."

"You know what I had to know?" The Doctor's calm shattered, violent and spectacular and he shouted, "I know I let an entire planet die to save the universe! That's what I know, that's what I have to live with every day!"

Rose just watched, seeing his fingers clench white around the handle of his coffee cup and fighting the impulse to reach out and take it away from him. He would break it, or he would realize what he was doing, and either way she had to let him be who he was. Who he'd become.

"Why is it so much to ask?" he demanded furiously. "Why was it so impossible that a few insignificant little people could save themselves!"

He gave his coffee cup an utterly disgusted look, shoving it away from him before it could crack, and it toppled onto its side. The force of the thrust made the cup skitter toward the edge of the table, leaving a wash of coffee in its wake, and Rose reached out instinctively. The cup tumbled off of the table and into her hands.

Only she and Energy moved. Rose stood up, and the TARDIS leaned forward in her chair. Energy placed one hand in the middle of the table, coffee making little ripples around her fingers, and as Rose watched it dried and disappeared. The table cleaned itself completely until there was no trace of a spill.

"Nice trick," Jack said into the silence. "Any chance you could teach me to do that?"

Energy gave him a disgusted look.

The Doctor muttered, "Learn to use a towel, Jack."

Irrepressible, Jack grinned. "Give me yours and I'll consider it."

Rose smiled a little as she made her way over to the counter. The Doctor didn't need silence. It was the silence he was scared of. And if there was one thing Jack was good at, it was filling the silence.

"My place was there," Romana said. "If not to save these students, I never would have left, and that was my choice, not yours. You can't take responsibility for the decisions we made."

Water washed over the cup, inside and out, carrying away the last traces of coffee. Rose held it under the tap and listened, wondering if it was raining outside. Maybe time storms were just funny purple skies and wind that didn't stir the sand.

She heard the Doctor mumble, "I should have killed them all when I had the chance," as she turned the water off.

"Conscientious objector," Romana's voice replied. "The High Council was wrong. You were right."

"If I had listened, just once..." The misery in his tone made her turn, still holding the dish towel and cup, and Rose watched as he braced his elbows on the table and propped his forehead against his hands. "They might still be alive."

"Doing what you're told doesn't make it right," Romana reminded him.

He didn't lift his head, still staring down at the table. At least, Rose thought he was staring. She couldn't tell if his eyes were open or not.

"Maybe life is worth making mistakes," he muttered.

"Whose life?" Romana asked quietly.

"They're not alive!" His head came up, eyes filled with loathing and loss. "They're killers in a shell of hate and fear! Any spark of significance has been cleansed and purified until there's nothing left but the need to destroy anything different! They're not alive!"

Romana didn't flinch. "You wouldn't be either if you'd killed them all on Skaro," she said. "Before they'd even had a chance to make that choice."

"What choice," he snarled. "That's no choice."

"That's the only choice," Romana said sternly. "How to live and die is the one choice everyone makes, and no one has the right to take that away from us. Not even you, Doctor."

Rose set the cup down on the counter and started to pour in sugar, confident enough to turn her back now. Romana knew just what to say. She poured coffee over the sugar and stirred, slowly so that the scrape of the spoon wouldn't be so obvious in the quiet room.

"If it makes you feel any better..." Energy's voice intruded, and she sounded uncertain. "A few insignificant little people did manage to save themselves."

"Oh, Energy." He sounded a bit choked, and Rose thought it would be just like him if she couldn't tell whether it was laughter or tears. "You're not insignificant. You're extraordinary."

Rose filled the rest of the cup with milk and watched the white lace through the dark. It cooled the coffee enough to drink, and she couldn't resist taking a sip. Barely even coffee, her mum would say.

"Really," the Doctor was saying as she turned away from the counter. "The lot of you."

She took her place at the table again, setting the coffee down by his right hand. He smiled at her, and yeah, those were definitely tears in his eyes. "Extraordinary," he repeated.

Rose smiled back at him. "I've always thought so," she agreed. "And we only travel with the best."

"I'm flattered," Jack said. "Really, I am."

She could see the Doctor remembered, though. I only take the best, he'd told Adam, when they dropped him off at his home after his one disastrous excursion to the future. I've got Rose.

"You should be," the Doctor said. He was looking at her, but then he added, "Jack. You should be."

Rose couldn't help it. She laughed aloud, grinning over at Jack. "We'll all be the best together, yeah?"

Jack draped an arm over the back of his chair as he leaned back, including the entire table in his lazy smile. "Sure. I think I've got enough of the best to go around."

"Learn to make biscuits like this," Ace remarked, taking another from the mostly empty plate in the middle of the table, "and maybe you're on to something."

"These are amazing," Rose agreed. "Think I've had breakfast and dinner by now, and it was so worth it."

"Energy is a woman of many talents." Romana smiled at the TARDIS. "We're very lucky to have her."

"Yeah, so what do you actually do here?" Jack asked, gesturing with the hand over his chair. "You said the other students aren't here, but they're supposed to be. Where are they?"

"They're working," Romana answered. She clearly supported their effort to turn the conversation away from the war and give the Doctor a chance to collect himself. "We'll show you when the storm lets up a little."

"They mostly get about on the time winds," Energy offered. It was the first time she had volunteered information without prompting. "But during storms like this, they're too unpredictable to use."

"Storms don't usually last long around here," Romana added. "That's one of the reasons we meet here. Energy can go anywhere, of course, but the rest of us rely on the time winds for travel, and during this period they're relatively calm."

"That's just typical, isn't it," Rose said with a sigh. "We come to a place with a beach that's always pleasant and beautiful--except the one day we happen to show up."

"I've got a beach," Energy said unexpectedly. She looked a little uncomfortable when Rose looked at her in surprise. "If you like."

"Are you serious?" Rose stared at her. "Like a real beach, with waves and sand and everything?" It was on the tip of her tongue to turn to the Doctor and demand, "Why haven't you got a beach?" but she figured now might not be the best time.

"Would you like to see it?" Energy looked uncertain, but sort of... hopeful. Suddenly Rose saw a student in place of a Time Lord or even a TARDIS. Just a kid, not a big bad master of time at all, and she thought maybe Energy wasn't as tough as she'd thought.

"Yeah," Rose said, smiling at her. "I would, actually.

"Can we?" she added, glancing at the Doctor. "Please? A real beach!"

"There's a beach right outside," he protested. "You'll see it when the storm lets up!"

"Two beaches in one day!" she exclaimed. "Now that's a vacation!"

"Is this a tropical beach?" Jack wanted to know. "Are there tropical people on it? Tropical drinks? Because if not, I don't see what all the fuss is over."

"There's us," Rose informed him. "We'll be on it. Isn't that enough?"

"Depends what you're wearing," he said, leering at her.

"Well, I haven't got a leather jacket," she teased. "But since you picked out my underwear today, I'm pretty sure I've got something you'll like."

"With an offer like that," Jack announced, "how can I say no? Let's go to the beach!"

"Doctor?" Rose prompted. "Are you coming?"

He mustered a smile from somewhere. "I've already seen your underwear, Rose."

She laughed, but it didn't keep her from blushing because it sounded somehow more scandalous coming from him. "I mean to see the beach," she informed him. "A bit of ocean is good for the spirit. That's what Shareen always says."

"Maybe later," he said, in that tone that meant really, maybe later. "You go on. Take Ace with you," he added, glancing across the table. "She hasn't got to see anything exciting in, oh, few minutes at least."

Rose got the message loud and clear, and she wasn't the only one. Ace bristled. "You don't have to treat me like a child," the Doctor's former companion told him. "I'm perfectly capable of entertaining myself."

"Yes," he replied patiently, "but Energy likely won't take kindly to you blowing up bits and bobs in the name of entertainment. So run along, and try to stay out of trouble."

Ace scowled, but Rose wasn't surprised. They were all children to the Doctor, and he would take care of them with his last breath. If he thought that meant saving them from him, then he would do it. He would send them away while he fell apart. That was just who he was.

And they would always come back, because that was who they were.

She glanced over her shoulder as Energy led them out of the kitchen. The Doctor and Romana were still sitting across from each other, not speaking. Two grown-up kids left behind to deal with the problems of the world while everyone else went off to play. She wondered who dealt with the problems that were too big for them.

Rose turned to follow the others. She saw Energy tilt her head as though she'd heard something she didn't recognize and Rose looked around automatically. This wasn't the same door they'd entered through, though, and all she saw was corridor. "What is it?" she asked.

Energy looked at her in surprise. So did Jack and Ace. She shrugged a bit. "You looked like you heard something," she offered.

"Oh." Energy considered that. "You didn't?"

"Hear what?" Ace wanted to know.

"What Romana said on our way out?" Jack guessed, and Rose looked at him in surprise. He'd been right behind her, and she hadn't heard anything.

Energy just looked at him, which Rose guessed meant yes.

"She says things must've changed on the TARDIS," Jack said. "That's all I got. And I wouldn't know, so it doesn't mean anything to me."

"That'll be the innuendo," Ace put in. "The Professor never paid much attention to it when I knew him."

"Ah." Jack looked pleased with himself. "My contribution, then. Always glad to bring something to the party."

"He doesn't pay attention to it now," Rose pointed out.

"Except for the part about you in your underwear," Ace said dryly.

"He was definitely listening to that," Jack agreed with a smirk. "He'd have caved if you'd pushed a little harder, Rose."

"He wanted to talk to Romana," she protested. "There's nothing wrong with that. It's good, even. She's good for him."

"Yes," Energy said softly. "I think he's good for her, too."

Rose glanced at her, wondering what she saw. "They share the responsibility," she said cautiously, looking for a reaction.

Energy stared back at her. "We've never been able to, not really," she said with a sigh. "We're still children to her, no matter where we came from or how much time passes."

"He always tells us it doesn't matter," Rose said quietly. "Not for us."

"She tells us it's her fault," Energy agreed. "That we didn't do anything wrong."

"Hey." Jack slung an arm over each of their shoulders, turning them so they faced down the corridor again. "If anyone can get through to him, it's her. And vice versa. And I, for one, am quite willing to let them try."

"Right," Rose said, nodding her head once to convince herself. "To the beach, then."

"To the beach," Jack declared. "Hey, did we ever find out whether this is a tropical beach or not?"

It wasn't a tropical beach, as it turned out. Which was probably good, because Rose had a sneaking suspicion that Jack might have held her to her "offer," but with the cool air she had a plausible way out. The beach itself was shockingly... beach-like, even if it wasn't like the warm vacation getaways they always showed on the telly. It wasn't as cold and foggy as home, and the "sky" was a bit orange, making it look like sunset even when it wasn't.

But there was water and there were whitecaps, and they stretched out as far as she could see which made her stop and stare. "Wow," she blurted out. "How big is this?"

"How big do you expect it to be?" Energy asked, standing a little distance away while the rest of them gawked.

At least it was a different answer than the one she always got from the Doctor. It wasn't any more helpful than "big enough," but it was different. She filed away this image in her mind for future comparison to the Doctor's TARDIS. Did he have any place big enough to have a horizon? And if not... why not?

"Do you s'pose if we walk far enough it will turn into something else?" It was a sort of whimsical question, and not one she'd have expected from Ace, but Jack seemed to appreciate it.

"I'm game if you are," he said, turning to walk backward while he grinned at Ace.

"You'll trip over something if you try it like that," Ace told him.

"You underestimate my powers of coordination," Jack said, giving her a smirk as he kept it up. "I advise you not to do that again."

"I'll do it when I like, up to and until you prove me wrong," Ace retorted. "Keep it up then. Keep walking backwards and we'll see how far you get."

"No need to sound so smug," Jack chided. "There's nothing to trip over here."

"Yeah, that's what you think." Ace sounded very sure of herself, and that would have been enough to make Rose turn around right there. But Jack just grinned at her, teased her, and kept on walking backwards down the beach.

"Are you going to leave him?" Energy's voice was suddenly very close in her ear. Rose started, but the TARDIS woman was walking beside her at a reasonable distance.

"How d'you mean?" Rose asked, half defensive, half curious. She didn't even totally know what she was being accused of yet, but she knew it sounded like an accusation. "Leave who? One of them?"

"The Doctor," Energy said bluntly. "Are you going to leave him?"

Rose frowned. She glanced over at Ace and Jack, but they weren't paying any attention. They were actually drawing away, as Ace tried to outpace Jack, and Jack walked backwards faster. She was probably trying to make him trip, Rose thought.

"Romana says he's almost always got someone with him," Energy continued, not waiting for her to answer. "But those people, the ones that travel with him... they come and go. Will you go?"

"That's not a fair question," Rose protested. "How do I know? I can't see the future. Not like him," she added. "You'd do better to ask him that."

Energy was staring at her. "Do you want to go?"

"No," Rose said immediately. "Of course not."

"Then why do you think you might?" Energy wanted to know.

"Well, it's not just up to me, is it," Rose reminded her. "It's his decision too. He's the one invited me along, after all. And he's uninvited a couple of people along the way. Who's to say he won't do the same with me?"

"He is," Energy said simply. "The way he looks at you. The way he responds to you. He doesn't want you to go."

"Not now," Rose allowed. "But--" She couldn't keep it up, and she shook her head to hide her embarrassment. "Hang on, the way he looks at me? What's that s'posed to mean?"

"A new TARDIS has to be awoken by a Time Lord," Energy told her. "Did you know that?"

Rose frowned in confusion. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"They bond," Energy said, ignoring her question. "Buffering one and anchoring the other, so that the Time Lord can travel and the TARDIS can stop. It's a symbiotic relationship, you see. A TARDIS can't function without it."

"Yeah?" Rose said. She guessed she wasn't going to get an answer until Energy finished her story. "So the Doctor's bonded to his TARDIS, is that it?" A slightly more relevant question occurred to her, and she added, "Are you bonded to someone?"

"Once the first bond is established," Energy explained, "a TARDIS carries a memory, an imprint of that anchor that allows them to work with anyone. Even people who aren't Time Lords."

Rose smiled at that. "So, like, you and I could go for chips or something?"

"I'm answering your question," Energy said sternly. "Please pay attention."

Rose's smile vanished. "Sorry," she muttered, taken aback.

"A TARDIS forms a new bond with every Time Lord that travels with them. The Doctor and his TARDIS must be unique," she added, "because they've worked together for so long. But that's not my point."

"Well, they can't have been together that long," Rose interjected. "Right? By the way Time Lords measure things, anyway?"

"Most Time Lords don't have a personal TARDIS." Energy was eyeing her like she might already know this. "It's sort of an--eccentricity. Romana must have picked it up from him. I like it, but it's still a bit... odd. Most Time Lords worked with whatever TARDIS was available at the time."

Rose considered that. "What, like a motor pool?" she asked at last. "You say you're going out, and someone goes and brings a car around? Any car?"

"Most people on Gallifrey didn't 'go out' quite as much as your Doctor," Energy said, in a way that made it clear this was a vast understatement. "But if you're using the word 'car' to mean 'TARDIS,' then yes, that's right."

"Okay." Rose paused, then decided she'd better ask. "So, why d'you say you were telling me this?"

"Because you've awoken him," Energy said. She stopped where she was and studied Rose. Rose stopped too, looking back at her curiously. She was sure that was supposed to be significant, but she couldn't work out quite how.

Whatever Energy saw made her nod, and she continued, "You're his anchor. He looks at you like you remind him who he is and why stopping matters."

"Stopping... what?" Rose asked carefully.

"A TARDIS without a Time Lord is just a concept," Energy answered. "It exists everywhere, and it exists nowhere. D'you see?"

"No," Rose told her. "But that's all right, I'm getting used to it. Go on."

"It doesn't exist in one place and time unless it has a reason to," the TARDIS told her. "Unless it has an anchor. You're the anchor, the reason. You make him stop."

Rose eyed her. "So you're saying... he's the TARDIS, and I'm like a Time Lord? Is that it?"

"Yes." And Energy smiled at her, sort of relieved and sort of triumphant, and Rose couldn't work out whether it was because the idea was so clever or just because she'd finally gotten it.

"Funny, isn't it?" Energy added, before she could say anything. "I'm Romana's Time Lord, too. Our roles are reversed. That's how I could recognize it in you, see. I know that look he gives you."

"You're--" Rose frowned, wondering if every conversation with Energy was like this. Not standoffish at all, once she warmed up to you, but not totally understandable, either.

"I have the memory," Energy said, like that was the answer. "It's funny, I remember the Time Lords better than she does already. And she's so, so sad... I guess you know what that's like," she concluded.

"Yeah," Rose said carefully. That part she understood. "It's a bit much, sometimes."

"Yes," Energy agreed. "So we anchor them."

Here Rose guessed it was okay to smile. "Yeah," she repeated, smiling a little. Energy might be odd, but she was nice, and she obviously cared about her friends a lot. "That we do."

Energy looked like she might start walking again, but suddenly she stopped and said, "So that's what I mean. Don't leave him. Because I don't think he can stand it."

Rose sighed, very quietly. "I think you're right about that."

"Does it scare you?" Energy asked curiously.

Rose opened her mouth to deny it, but maybe there wasn't really any point. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I'm scared. Terrified. I don't even know the first thing about his war, or what he did, or even who he is."

"But you're not scared of him," Energy said, studying her.

"No." She didn't have to think about it, but when she did she knew why. "He's not as big and bad as he thinks he is, not so out of control as he pretends. He's just trying to fix things, really. He's trying to fix everything he can."

"And some things he can't," Energy guessed. "If he's anything like her."

"A lot of things he can't," Rose agreed. "And d'you know... it's like, every time he can't, it reminds him. Of the war, of what happened, of what he couldn't do."

"And you remind him of what he can do," Energy said. "Your friend, Jack--he was right when he said you could have made the Doctor come, wasn't he. The Doctor would do anything you asked."

Rose looked away. Jack and Ace were down by the water now. Jack was still walking backward, and Ace was zigzaging back and forth in front of him, trying to get him to back into the waves. It didn't look like it was working too well.

Energy didn't say anything else, and finally Rose looked back at her. "What about you?" she asked tentatively. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. "Would Romana do anything you told her to?"

It was Energy's turn to think about it, but she held Rose's gaze while she did it. Her eyes were a funny shade of blue, Rose thought distantly. So light it was hard to say they weren't grey. And maybe they were, she didn't know. If Energy was a particular sort of alien, she wasn't anything Rose could recognize.

"I don't think so," the TARDIS said at last. "She's responsible, you see. To all of us. To the Tharils. I think there are things I could ask that she wouldn't do, if she thought it would hurt them."

"Well, the Doctor wouldn't hurt anyone," Rose said hastily. "I could, maybe, hypothetically ask something he wouldn't do, but I wouldn't ever, so it doesn't really matter."

Energy was looking at her in a way that made her think maybe the TARDIS knew more about what the Doctor would or wouldn't do than she did. She was almost relieved when Energy didn't answer. Instead she blinked and remarked, "Sreetse's here."

Rose just waited.

"The storm is letting up," Energy said. "Sreetse is very good with the time winds. She's just arrived."

Rose got it. "One of your classmates."

"The youngest," Energy confirmed. "Gil will be right behind her."

"Oh, we should go!" Rose said quickly. The Doctor could send them away, but he couldn't keep them from coming back. "We'll have to get Jack and Ace--"

"Done," Energy interrupted.

Rose looked around in surprise. Ace was down by the water, waving in their direction, and even as she watched the other girl started back toward them. She looked like she was yelling something over her shoulder to Jack, but Rose couldn't hear what it was from here. It was a very realistic beach.

"How d'you do that?" Rose blurted out. "You just told Ace they're here?"

"Just the one," Energy corrected. "I told her one was here, and the others are probably on their way. You'll get to see your second beach," she added.

"But how?" Rose wasn't going to be distracted, because she had a feeling this was the answer to a question she hadn't been able to make the Doctor explain. "How d'you tell Ace what's going on from all the way over here? I didn't hear anything."

Energy frowned at her. "You can't have traveled with a Time Lord this long without knowing they're all telepathic."

"How d'you know how long I've been traveling with him?" Rose countered. It was just something she said, so that she didn't say nothing, but the answer wasn't at all what she expected.

"I can see when your molecular structure was stabilized for time travel," Energy told her. "More than a year ago, now. You haven't aged since."

"Yeah, I just found out about that." Rose bit her lip thoughtfully, torn between conversations. There were so many things she still wanted to ask Energy, but Ace and Jack were on their way. "This telepathy thing..."

"How far does it go?" Energy guessed. Without waiting for an answer, she said, "It depends on you, on how far you let it go. He can't do it without your permission."

Rose stared at her. "Really? But I didn't--"

"Your tacit permission," Energy interrupted. "You don't have to say it out loud, you know. That's what telepathy is. He can just tell."

Really? She was chewing on her lip again, and she made herself stop. If that was true, it made what she'd said about asking first sort of... well, she felt bad for shouting at him, anyway. He could've asked, she'd said. But maybe he had. Maybe she just hadn't noticed.

"Hey!" She could hear Jack calling, even down the beach like they were. "For someone who insisted on seeing a beach, I'm not feeling a lot of appreciation from this direction!"

"Things to do!" Rose shouted back. "Important matters to discuss, you know how it is!"

"I try not to," he countered, grinning at her as he and Ace rejoined them. They had to turn back, retracing their steps across the sand. If walking far enough would get them somewhere else, then they must not have gone far enough, because the only way out she knew of was the way they'd taken in.

"Well, anyway, next we'll go to a real beach," she told him. "Then you'll see my appreciation."

"This is a real beach," Energy objected. "What's not real about it?"

Rose winced. That had been the wrong thing to say, and she hadn't given it a single thought. "I just mean... you know. Under a real sky, with real tides and everything."

"The tides here respond to a changing differential gravity," Energy informed her. "Just like anywhere else. And the light is filtered through the same sort of atmosphere we had on Gallifrey, so if you don't think it's real just because it's from another planet--"

"No," Rose interrupted hastily. "That's not what I meant. I just meant... it's on a spaceship, right? It's not on an actual planet. There aren't rivers feeding into it, or storms that are forming out of it, or anything like that."

"So it's not real because it exists in isolation?" Energy suggested. "Out of context?"

"Well..." Rose looked helplessly at Jack, but he just shrugged. His amused glance seemed to say, You got yourself into it.

"Yeah," Rose said at last. "It is out of context, I guess."

"I don't even know what planet you're from," Energy remarked. It seemed totally random until she added, "Wherever it is, though, it doesn't exist in this dimension. You're out of context too, Rose Tyler."

That gave her pause. "S'pose I am," she admitted at last.

Energy gave her an even look. "So am I," she said. "I always have been. Does that make either of us less real?"

"No," Ace said, looking about two seconds from rolling her eyes. "Of course it doesn't."

"It doesn't make you less real," Jack put in. "But it does make you different."

Energy switched her gaze to him, considering him, assessing him. "Different than what?"

"Different than who you are in any other context." Jack gave her a rueful grin. "Believe me, I've given this a lot of thought."

So the two of them started debating reality and context and who knew what else when they were using metaphors like that. Rose exchanged glances with Ace, who did roll her eyes this time, and Rose hid her smile. Not that Jack or Energy probably would have noticed, but she was pretty sure that commiserating with Ace would only encourage the two of them to try to involve everyone.

She had enough to think about already, thank you very much. Plenty of stuff banging about in her head without them adding to it. Energy was hard enough to understand when she was trying, and no one ever knew what Jack was on about half the time.

Plenty of stuff banging about in her head, yeah--and maybe all of it wasn't even hers. She found she didn't object to the idea as much as she had at first. She was still going to ask him, though. One day she would corner him, and he would tell her just how much he knew.

The two of them were still going in the corridor on their way back to the kitchen, and they must have given plenty of warning to whoever was there now. Or they would have, if the lot in the kitchen hadn't warned them first. She could hear the shouting before she even realized quite where they were, and if she hadn't heard laughing at the same time she would have been worried.

Laughing. Not exactly what she expected, but it had to be good, right? She actually felt a little left out, and Jack must have felt the same way because he nudged Energy with a grin. "Any chance you can fill us in?"

"No," she said primly. "Confidentiality. You know how it is," she added, sounding a bit more like Rose than Rose had noticed before.

What language was Energy speaking, she wondered suddenly? Gallifreyan? Or some sort of alien language, maybe the one that her alien hostess had come from? Did a TARDIS even speak, really? What if she was just "hearing" a verbal manifestation of Energy's psychic conversation?

Rose shook her head, deciding it was better not to think about it too long. She told herself to pay more attention when the Doctor talked to the TARDIS in the future. Or, failing that, to maybe pay less attention when Energy talked to anyone, ever.

"That's my boy!" It was the Doctor's voice, and she could make out a new voice trying to talk over him as they approached. "You can't tell me cat hair has any redeeming properties!"

An oddly mechanized voice replied, "Cat hair has redeeming properties, Master."

"Hah, see, I win!" the new voice declared. "You lose, Doctor!"

"No! K-9's just trying to prove me wrong! Aren't you, boy?"

"That's because I'm right!"

"Cat hair does not have redeeming properties," the mechanized voice contradicted itself.

"See!" Now the Doctor sounded triumphant. "I told him he couldn't tell me, so he did--doesn't make it true!"

Rose glanced at Jack, and he raised his eyebrows at her. "I wonder what's going on in this conversation," he said loudly, as they peered around the doorway.

"Rose!" The Doctor beamed at her from the other side of the kitchen, and she couldn't help smiling back. "Come meet a Time Lord's best friend! K-9, this is Rose Tyler. She's very important, so keep an eye on her."

"Well," Jack said dryly, following her into the kitchen. "I know where I stand."

"Jack Harkness," the Doctor added, waving at him briefly. "And you know Ace, of course. This is K-9 Mark II, the smartest dog in the universe!"

"Hello," Rose said, because it seemed the sort of thing to say.

"Hello," the dog replied. There was a mechanical hum as he turned and lifted his head, funny wire mesh ears swiveling as he studied her. "Pleased to meet you."

Rose smiled, glancing at the Doctor and then nodding gravely at the little silver dog. "Well, I'm pleased to meet you too."

"And this is Sreetsesilmandverakard," the Doctor continued. "Formerly of the Arcalia Academy, now of the late green period in Tharil's tenth millennia."

"Hi!" A woman with silver-shot hair and freckles beamed at them in a way eerily reminiscent of the Doctor. "Call me Sreetse! I've been hearing so much about you!"

Jack swung around Rose to offer his hand and a charming smile. "Captain Jack Harkness," he said warmly. "He always leaves the 'Captain' part off."

The Doctor snorted, but Sreetse looked delighted. "Captain," she repeated, taking his hand and returning his smile happily. "So glad to meet you!"

Rose glanced at Ace, who promptly rolled her eyes. Rose didn't bother to stifle a giggle. Jack had finally got one that responded. She supposed that would only make him more insufferable in the days to come, but it would be fun to see him with someone to distract him from the Doctor. The Doctor pretended Jack annoyed him, but really, the moment Jack's attention was somewhere else he'd be trying to get it back.

"Energy!" Sreetse was saying, and her classmate slipped past Rose to hug her. "I love the house! It looks beautiful! And the kitchen!"

Rose saw Romana lean over to whisper something in the Doctor's ear. Whatever it was, it made him grin, but he didn't take his eyes off of Sreetse and Energy. Two that saved themselves, Rose thought. She hoped it helped, somehow.

She blinked when she realized the Doctor was looking at her. She smiled, and he tilted his head back in obvious invitation. Her smiled widened, and she wandered around the table to stand next to him and Romana. Energy was introducing Sreetse to Ace, and this time when Romana whispered, "She's got better pronunciation than you," Rose heard her.

Without thinking, she whispered back, "Well, she's had more practice, hasn't she," and the Doctor laughed out loud.

"Yeah, see?" he said, grinning at Romana and then at her. "What Rose said!"

"You're terrible for his ego," Romana said with a mock-sigh.

"No," Rose assured her. "I'm really very good for it, because he didn't say his pronunciation was perfect, did he. I just gave him an excuse to admit he was wrong. I'm subtle, y'see."

The Doctor folded his arms, trying to frown, and she stuck her tongue out at him. Romana just tilted her head, a small smile fighting to be seen on her face. "I never found that was very effective," she observed.

"What, being subtle?" the Doctor demanded. "It's not exactly your strong point, is it!"

This made Romana laugh. "Oh, and you should talk! You wouldn't even recognize subtlety if you saw it!" Pretending to consider, she added, "That's probably why it works so well, actually."

"Gil's here!" Energy declared, drowning all of them out, and Rose looked up in surprise. Energy hadn't shouted, but it had been impossible to miss what she was saying. Sort of like at the beach, when she had spoken in Rose's ear without even being that close.

The Doctor shook his head, like he was trying to clear it, and she saw him glance at Romana. "Echoes a bit, doesn't she," he said, keeping his voice low.

Romana smiled indulgently. "She's still getting used to having people on board," she remarked. "She's doing some fine-tuning."

Rose frowned at them, and the Doctor caught it. "Telepathic circuits," he offered. Waving his hand by his head in a way that was maybe supposed to explain something but didn't, as usual, he said, "Sounds a bit funny in here."

"It's not just you," Romana said softly. "It's strange for all of us, having you and Ace here. We've gotten used to only hearing each other."

The Doctor stared down at the floor, but he didn't say anything. Rose guessed she didn't mean actual talking, and she remembered the Doctor saying if there were any Time Lords left, he'd know. Up here, it feels like there's no one, he'd said, tapping his temple. She'd wondered at the time how literally he meant that.

"You know what that's like," Romana murmured after a moment. She sounded the slightest bit apologetic.

"Yeah," the Doctor said briefly.

"Is there noise here?" Rose blurted out. "The noise you hear, you and Ace? From the war?"

She saw Romana look at her sharply, but commotion from the door drew the Doctor's attention and Rose turned in time to see another stranger being embraced by Energy and then by Sreetse. The person was vaguely masculine, so she decided on "he." He hugged both the girls, hugged Jack without any introduction at all, and then went down on one knee to pat K-9 with a laugh.

"How are you, dog?" he asked, in an oddly high-pitched voice. "Not much of a guard dog lately, are you? I don't recognize half these people!"

"It hasn't slowed you down!" Sreetse crowed. "Look, that's Captain Jack Harkness you just hugged, and Ace from the Prydon Academy--"

"Ace!" He was on his feet again, ignoring K-9's protest that he was guarding them just fine, thank you. "I knew you looked familiar! Big fuss over at Prydon, you were the..." He was clearly looking for someone, and his eye lit on the Doctor. "Doctor!"

Rose glanced up to see the Doctor grinning. "Well, I should hope not," he said. "'Fraid the universe has only got room for one of us."

"Well, no more than thirteen, right?" the stranger declared, striding forward. Then he stopped, turned to Ace, and held out his arms. "I'm sorry! I'm being terribly rude! Welcome to Tharil!"

Ace was laughing as he encompassed her in a hug, and Rose thought she'd never seen her look quite so happy. "Hi Gil," she said. "Heard about you too. Always mucking up my experiments, you were. Can't believe we never actually met."

"Me!" Gil drew back and kissed her soundly on the forehead. "You were the one blundering into my pocket universes every time I turned around! God, I should have got some sort of border patrol or something!"

"Heard about him," the Doctor said under his breath, while Ace protested. "Think she started doing it on purpose, just to annoy the Arcalians. Hello!" he added, as Gil turned to him.

They were all subjected to Gil's embrace, each of them in turn, even Rose, and though she expected it to be odd it was surprisingly gentle. Like he wasn't really there at all. He just swept in, swept all around, and then drifted away. Like air. Like an alien. Or just like a really friendly, careful, human.

A second K-9 arrived while Gil was expounding on his excitement at meeting the Doctor, and Rose guessed that meant that one of the new people was Olianna. She had to work to figure out which, though--it should be the girl, right? But one of them dressed in blue and the other had what looked like a tooth hanging from a cord around their neck, and those were there only distinguishing characteristics at first.

"Olianna!" The Doctor solved the problem by picking out the one with the tooth and throwing his arms up in the air. The sort of androgynous person proved her femininity by squealing and racing toward him. Rose jumped back to avoid getting run over.

"You're all very friendly, aren't you," she said, not really directing the remark at anyone in particular. After all the Doctor's complaints, she'd expected... well, a bit more formality. Boring, he'd call the Time Lords. Stuffy. Nothing to write home about.

"And you're very pink." The new arrival in blue had an arm around Energy and called to Rose, "It's a good color, but not very welcoming, is it? Everything just sort of bounces off of it."

Rose blinked at the blue person. "Excuse me?"

"Kempefarries studies mood flow and the distribution of empathic perception," Energy offered. "He's the only one who doesn't like pink, because it means he can't read your mind."

Rose blinked again. "Okay," she said.

"I like it just fine," the all-blue person was protesting. "And I can read your mind! Rose Tyler, right? You and the Doctor, and Captain Jack, and--Ace!" He let go of Energy and threw his arms in the air, just like the Doctor had. "Gil hates you! I can't believe we finally get to know you for ourselves!"

This provoked a storm of protest, mostly good-natured, as Energy told him not to show off and Ace complained that she didn't know what she'd done and over all of it Gil shouted that he didn't hate anyone. Rose just stared at them, trying to equate these loud, exuberant people with the ones the Doctor hinted at ever since she'd known him. And he was joining in, even, calling to the blue person that he was thinking of a number.

"Nine hundred one!" the person declared triumphantly.

Rose looked up at him in surprise, and the Doctor scoffed. "That's an easy one! Try this: I'm thinking of--oh, wait, not that. How 'bout this?"

The person in blue didn't even wait for a clue. "The Jericho Street Junior School Under Sevens Gymnastic Team!" he replied. "They had purple t-shirts!"

"Hey!" Rose protested. "What are you doing? Cut it out!"

The Doctor rocked back on his heels, grinning at her. "He's very good," he said smugly. "Probably got what I told him not to, even."

"Which was?" she demanded suspiciously.

"Nothing," he said, all innocence and bright smile and she couldn't find it in her heart to chide him. Not when he was looking so chuffed, and this was the first chance he'd had to play about with other Time Lords in who knew how long.

The only problem was that everyone was watching them. The chatter had quieted when the Doctor and the blue person started tossing things back and forth, and she now found herself the subject of some curiosity. "Hello," Rose said, a bit self-conscious.

"Right," the Doctor declared. "Who's just come in? Olianna, meet Rose Tyler, gymnast extraordinnaire. And that's Jack over there, just as flexible, but for different reasons. Don't let him catch you by surprise. Guess you all know Ace, hear she caused a bit of trouble for your Academy--and who're you, then?"

He was addressing the blue person, who actually wasn't blue at all but his clothes drew the eye. Sweeping his arms out to the sides, the blue person introduced himself, "Kempefarries--mind the syllables and I'll mind yours!"

"Kempefarries," the Doctor repeated, shooting Romana a look. She just smiled, and he continued, "And can't forget, K-9 Mark I! You've taken good care of him," he added, nodding in Olianna's direction.

She looked terribly pleased with herself. "I do my best," she agreed proudly. "K-9 gives very good instructions, which is good, because really, New Jersey? Well, and he had a bit of trouble when he first came here--"

"The time winds," the Doctor interrupted.

"Yes, but he's all better now," Olianna said eagerly. "Romana helped me fix him, see."

They were just kids, Rose realized. She couldn't really believe it, not when they were "students" in the way that Ace had been a student and Ace was one hundred and twenty-six. And they had robot dogs and a talking TARDIS and they could read each other's minds. But sometimes, when they were all yelling over each other or showing off or looking for the Doctor's approval, they did seem a bit like the kids she knew.

When she thought about it, she couldn't decide whether that made her feel very old all of a sudden, or just embarrassingly young.

"I see that," the Doctor was agreeing. "That's very clever, very clever indeed. Not just luck then," he added, glancing at Romana. "You working out a way to fix the shredding of his memory wafers."

She smiled like she'd won something so big she didn't need to brag. "Vaccination."

"Ah." He nodded solemnly. Eyeing the students again, he asked, "And what do all of you do the rest of the time, then?"

He might as well have asked for a round of show-and-tell. Olianna linked her arm through his and declared, "We'll show you now! Can we?" It was Romana that she looked to for permission, but the rest of them instantly started to echo her.

"We've only been waiting for you," Romana said with a smile. "All of you. The Doctor's very curious about what you're up to here."

"You said the Doctor's curious about everything!" Sreetse's voice was raised above the others, and the Doctor immediately protested that they knew more about him than they did about him. Kempefarries claimed that wouldn't last, Gil agreed that they all had to have a tour, and that was pretty much the end of anything that made sense.

Rose did get to see the beach, but not for very long. The lot of them piled out of the house, or the TARDIS--though Energy came with them--and spilled onto the sand in every direction. Rose found Jack at her side, grinning at the group and whispering to her, "Young, aren't they."

"They must have hundreds of years on us," she whispered back.

He laughed. "Nah, come on. They're just kids. Look at 'em."

Romana's students were still shouting and dancing around each other, and it looked random but Rose could see that they were all sort of revolving around the Doctor. What had Romana told them about him, she wondered? Maybe it was just that he was another Time Lord, one most of them had never met, maybe, but someone familiar nonetheless. He certainly seemed just as drawn to them, letting them hug him or hang on his arm and chatter on about things that seemed utterly impossible.

"It's not about age," Jack murmured in her ear. "You're probably guessing too high anyway. Numbers are nothing to time, remember. They're just like bookmarks in the history texts, something we travelers use to hold our place."

"Yeah?" Rose glanced at him, found him very close, and she smiled. "Bookmarks in the history texts, huh? I like it."

"Rose!" The Doctor's voice rang out through the clamor. "Jack! Don't wander off!"

She blinked, opening her mouth to protest that they were just having a bit of a chat, and then a breeze ruffled her hair and the entire beach disappeared. They were walking through a forest and she just stopped, staring. Jack paused beside her, but he looked more impressed than startled. "Time winds," he said aloud. "Okay. Wow."

The water was still there, she realized suddenly, but the beach was gone, or further away, or something. She could smell the ocean, but they were definitely standing under trees. "Where are we?" she wanted to know.

"Same place," Jack said, consulting his watch. "Different time."

"This yours, then?" she heard the Doctor asking Olianna.

"No!" She laughed as though that was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. "This is Sreetse's! Mine is much more tropical!"

"That's my girl," Jack said, not bothering to lower his voice. Rose poked him, hard, but he was too busy grinning at the kids. Age is just a number, Rose thought, rolling her eyes. Of course. Like Jack had ever cared about age.

Something sparkled through the trees, and she hesitated a moment longer while one of the students dragged Jack off. Sreetse, she thought. She should ask her what that sparkly thing was. Nice that the wind rustled here, instead of whistling--

The ground dropped away in front of her as the wind howled up all around, snatching at her clothes and her hair and pushing her toward the cliff. She let out a shriek as she lost her balance and went stumbling, going to her knees to keep from pitching forward. Bluffs had replaced the trees and she was kneeling at the edge of the world.

All she could do was stare. It was a very, very long way down. And look, there was the ocean, way down there...

Same place, Jack had said. Different time.

Where was Jack?

"Rose!" She felt hands on her arms then, sliding under her shoulders, yanking her up and away so easily she might as well have weighed nothing. And it wasn't Jack's voice, of course, not his voice nor his strength, because Jack couldn't pick her up like that.

"Just once!" the Doctor was shouting at her. "Just once, would you listen when I tell you not to wander off!"

He sounded panicked and mean and if she weren't shaking so badly she might have protested. As it was, she just wrapped her arms around him and let him squeeze the breath out of her. The wind roared all around them, strong as the storm on the beach outside the TARDIS, and nothing around them changed. She didn't question it.

"I didn't," she mumbled at last, when his grip loosened a little. "I didn't wander off, you did. I was just looking at something."

"Hush." The Doctor wasn't looking at her, and he wasn't letting go. "D'you hear that?"

She could barely hear him. The wind was too strong, and she was grateful for his support. "Can we get away from the cliff now?" she asked, giving him a bit of a push.

"No," he said. He didn't move, and so she didn't either. "Now hush."

She bit her lip and went to step away, but until his arms released her she wasn't going anywhere. So she stood still, waiting, and finally he sighed a little. "Got it," he muttered. "Come on."

His hands gripped her arms and hauled her sideways, wind whipping her hair as they stepped right into--

Trees. She gasped as the wind vanished and the noise was replaced by clamoring voices. The Doctor turned her around, one hand holding onto her shoulder and the other pointing at the worried faces that were fast surrounding them. "See them?" he demanded. "They can navigate the time winds. You can't. Stay with them, and don't wander off."

"I didn't!" she protested again, but he was already glaring at Jack.

"Same goes for you," he said sternly. "And the rest of you, don't let these two out of your sight. Not for a second."

Rose saw Sreetse sidle a little closer to Jack, her eyes wide, and Jack grinned at her when she slid her arm through his. "You gonna be my guide?"

"Yes," Sreetse said quickly. "I'll keep you safe. I promise."

"Excellent promise." Jack lifted his free arm to pat her hand, looking entirely too pleased with himself. "I think you can count on me staying very close."

Rose didn't have to worry about finding her own partner, since the Doctor didn't let go of her hand for the rest of the tour. She gathered that the time winds were sort of like the tube, in that they moved fast and weren't entirely predictable, but if you knew how they worked you had a pretty good chance of getting the right one. Unfortunately, she and Jack couldn't read the schedule board.

The commute was like nothing else, though. After the third shift she'd started to relax again, and after the fourth she was actually starting to enjoy it. She got that they were seeing where the students lived, and if she wasn't totally clear on what they were doing there, she'd at least worked out that they were popular with the cat people they kept running into.

"Cats," she heard Ace murmur at one point. "It would be cats, wouldn't it."

"Tharils," the Doctor told her. "Don't worry; it's not contagious."

Ace just rolled her eyes at him.

Rose poked him, hoping for an explanation, and he leaned a little closer. "Turned into a cheetah once," he whispered. "Never really got over it."

"Okay," she said, amused. Obviously. What else could it be?

She wondered if she should worry that the more time she spent with the Doctor, the more he made sense to her.

In the time it took them to tour the various periods of Tharil, every one of the students managed to spend time hanging on the Doctor's free arm. She supposed it would be more efficient if he could entertain two at once, but the only time he let go of her hand was when they sat down to eat in Gil's period--a giant hall with big robot statues--when he had her on one side and Romana on the other. No vacancies.

So the students had to take turns while they walked. Nobody questioned it, no one suggested that Rose could maybe walk with one of them instead, and if Jack grinned at her every so often she made it a point to stick her tongue out at him. She was Rose Tyler. She was the Doctor's companion. And right now she had uncontested hand-holding rights.

If someone had asked, she probably wouldn't have been able to say exactly where they were. But she knew where she was, and that was right where she wanted to be. It had turned out to be a good day after all.

It was nice to see Ace again. Lovely to meet the Arcalian students, five extraordinary people who'd refused to give up, and absolutely brilliant to find Romana with them. K-9. And K-9. And Olianna. Leela would be spilling over with pride.

They gathered that evening, in Energy's cozy little sitting room, and he felt like a bit of a fool telling stories to a group of grown children. But they insisted, and what else did one do after tea, anyway? No use fighting for a life that didn't involve sitting rooms and stories and leftover scones.

He told them about meeting Rose. He told them about taking Romana to Paris. He told them about how K-9 really had come from New Jersey, and he told them about how the Time Lords had hijacked his TARDIS and broken it and fixed it again. He even told them about one of the times Jack had saved him and Rose, because it seemed fair.

The kids loved it. They must have worn themselves out telling him stories all day, he decided, because all they wanted to do now was hear him talk. They made the most attentive audience he could have asked for.

Jack was lounging on the floor with his back against the armchair Gil and Sreetse were sharing, and there was no doubt he was storing every word for later. Ace sat with Olianna, the two of them shoulder to shoulder and whispering whenever he said something particularly outrageous. K-9 Mark I dozed beside them.

Romana had taken the settee, and Energy looked surprisingly comfortable curled up beside her. K-9 Mark II waited at Romana's feet, monitoring the room and perhaps silently making fun of his counterpart for sleeping. Kempefarries was sprawled by the hearth, blue silk turned warm by the firelight and a content expression on his face.

Rose shifted, knees pressing against his leg as she moved her head into a more comfortable position on the arm of the sofa. Her eyes were closed, and had been for some time. From time to time, she lifted her head to insist that she was listening, and he smiled and patted her knee reassuringly.

When he finally suggested that they all ought to get some sleep, he was met by protest from every corner. He didn't know what Romana had told them, but Energy asked for something out of Gallifreyan history. A good story, she'd said, and Sreetse added that it had to be something about the Other.

The Who, he'd asked? Never heard of him.

And they all jeered, laughingly, even Romana, who gave him an amused look and told him to explain to them all about Rassilon and Omega.

Boring story, he'd said. Sure you don't want something more exciting?

But they didn't, and so he told them that really, Rassilon was mad and Omega was clever and that was all there was to it. The founders of Gallifreyan society hadn't gotten along well at all, though, which caused some trouble. Except there were these rumors, see, that someone, some Other, had held them together long enough for them to accomplish things.

His audience was suitably hushed while he told how the Other had just disappeared, never seen since. Or before, for that matter. Bloke had come out of nowhere, fixed it all up so it happened just the way they all remembered, and vanished again. Some said the future Time Lords had deliberately erased him, just got rid of all of those records, while some said they never existed in the first place. That he never existed, he was a figment of people's imagination.

"Lucky we can all still imagine, then," Romana said softly, into the silence that followed.

"Yeah," he agreed solemnly. "Very lucky, me."

And later that night, when everyone had gone off to bed except the two of them and Rose, who was now definitely asleep, Romana thanked him for holding it all together. He just smiled, and she added, he could stay. Here with them, if he wanted to.

He did want to. He liked them, liked what they were doing, liked it all so much. It was a little bit of home, and it was better than nothing.

Then Rose shifted restlessly and murmured in her sleep, and he patted her knee absently. She relaxed, murmuring something else, and he smiled again. Thanks, love.

Better than nothing, yeah, but he didn't have nothing, did he. He had Rose. He had Jack. He had the TARDIS. Romana and Olianna were a little bit of home--a little bit of something he already had.

He had a home, and it was right there with him on the sofa.