It's a regular Tuesday for Rose Tyler. Well. Sort of regular. It's hectic - and that's not at all out of the ordinary. Her life has worked out rather domestically, considering the fact that she's married to a instantaneous biological metacrisis version of a nine-hundred-and-something-year-old Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous - who, until very recently, hated the idea of all things domestic. Between her and the Doctor, they have a full-time job at Torchwood, which basically means that one of them goes there every day, usually taking it in turns - and they have weekends to themselves, which they usually use for trips forward and backward in time, in their handy time machine.

Said time machine is where they live, mostly. They have a house, kind of. Well. Their TARDIS - still young, an infant sister to the original - is parked in a room at the Tyler Mansion in London, where Vitex Millionaire and alternate version of Rose's father lives with her mother, and her brother, Tony, who is seven now. The room that their TARDIS is parked in, when it isn't traversing time and space, is quite well-furnished; like a living room.

When they have company, they receive them in the room where they keep the TARDIS - never inside the ship. That would just be dumb. Some people will ask about the phone box at the back of the room, but mostly, they don't even see it. The Doctor says that the perception filter is working.

They thought up the outside image on a long rainy night, after a long interlude between the sheets.

"We could just have the police box again," Rose suggested with a yawn.

"But they never even existed in this universe," the Doctor argued obstinately, tracing circles with a fingertip on Rose's bare upper arm. "And it's time for a change. The police box was for me, alone, for seven hundred years. It's time for a TARDIS to suit the Doctor and Rose Tyler."

Rose grinned happily, before they spent a long time in silence, thinking about it, suggesting all manner of weird things - lamp posts, public bins, grit-salt containers, post boxes, cars, etcetera. Rose had an idea, opened her mouth to say it, then stopped, frowning.

"What? What is it?" the Doctor asked.

"Nah, it wouldn't work. You'd be able to see into the TARDIS from outside."

"What's your idea?"

"Well, you know, they used to have those big red phone boxes, the ones that say 'telephone' on 'em? I thought we could have one of those. Some of them still work, the ones that they fix up and put new phones in - nobody would think twice, even if they did see past the perception filter. Except they have glass windows around them, so it won't work."

The Doctor had been growing a grin on his face, thinking about this. And then he'd kissed the top of her head. "I could make that work."

And he has.

Regular phone box on the outside - and through the glass, you can see only an old-timey telephone with a rotary dial (the Doctor is a fan of the retro look) - but with the turn of a key, you pull open the door (pull, not push) and there's the cavernous control room of a fully functional TARDIS.

And even the control room is a little cozier than the original - with wooden lines between the panels on the console, and a jump-seat that looks and feels more like a couch than anything else. There are still hard edges, and the haphazard curve of wires arcing across the domed ceiling, but it's slightly softened by the warm touches. Rose's favorite bit is that the control room has windows all around the outer walls; like the windows of the phone box.

Only one wall panel in the console room isn't a window to the outside world, and that's the one housing the hallway into their living area. The ship is smaller than it's older sister, but it has everything they need, and more. The kitchen is cozier, and library has a bigger, heartier fireplace, even if it does have fewer books in it. They have a single bedroom, rather than two separate ones, and it's littered with her things and his, since neither of them are fans of tidying up.

And then there's the room right next door to their bedroom - it would have to be right next door, considering all the times that one of them has had to get up in the night to go in there. It's Jack's room. Not Jack Harkness, certainly, but a little boy who they've named after the Captain.

Jack Wilfred Tyler was born four years ago - weighing in at a healthy nine pounds and two ounces, nineteen-and-three-quarters-of-an-inch long with grey eyes and a fuzzy head of brown hair. Four years is a long time, of course - and Jack's grey eyes have since turned brown, closer to Rose's shade than the Doctor's, and his head is now kept warm by a curly mop of chocolate brown hair that he refuses to let anyone trim. The Doctor doesn't help, in that area.

"It's his hair! He should get to decide how long he wants it!"

"He's four years old! And he's not the one who has to comb it out in the morning!"

And they fight - Rose and her Doctor. Of course they do, they always have. But now the fights are less moral and more practical, and the fallout of these fights lasts longer. It's funny. Rose has once reasoned with him, stopped him from killing a Dalek. And yet, she can't get him to drive a car. She knows why he won't drive a car, though - how could she not? He calls them deathtraps at every available opportunity.

But things are good. Rose loves her life, and she knows that the Doctor does too. They love their son, and they love their weekends in time and space, showing little Jack planets and events that nobody he goes to school with will ever get to see. They love their TARDIS, which was their first adventure in parenthood; with the Doctor up at all hours soothing the TARDIS as it grew accustomed to its new mechanical components, as he added them, bit by bit. They love being close to Jackie and Pete, even if the Doctor won't admit it. They love watching Tony playing with Jack.

"Ro-ose?" a voice calls out, and Rose whacks her head on the machinery under the TARDIS console.

"Hey, Mum," she tries not to sound too irritated, a hand coming up to rub her forehead, as she hears the front door of the phone box swinging shut behind Jackie.

She's not doing anything important - just taking a look at the heating system. She's been hearing a rattling noise lately, whenever she turns on the heating. She knows how to fix a leak in a fuel tank, thanks to Mickey, and the Doctor would doubtless be impressed if she got that fixed.

"God, you're turning into that bloody alien," Jackie says from above, but Rose can hear that her mother is smiling as she says it. "Speaking of him, where is he?"

Rose frowns, curling her fingers around a bar above her head and hanging her arm from it briefly. "What do you mean? He's at Torchwood. It's his day today."

Jackie is silent for a moment.

Rose sighs and turns her wrist to take a look at the watch the Doctor gave her for their second anniversary. "Is Jack with you?" she asks curiously, poking a finger at the tube coming out of the fuel tank under the console. Jackie is supposed to pick Jack up from school, most days. Unless Rose calls and tells her that she's going to pick up the kids - Jack and Tony are at the same primary school - then Jackie is in charge of that. "School's out - you didn't forget, did you?"

Rose has forgotten, before. Only once. Jack was in tears and Tony wouldn't speak to her for three days. Pete had ended up picking them up, a full two hours after they'd been standing on the curb, waiting for their ride home. Tony is like a big brother to Jack, and they hold hands almost as often as Rose and the Doctor do.

"Hey, careful!" she remembers Tony saying sharply to Jack, yanking him back onto the pavement by his hand. "You could get hit by a car!"

Rose sighs a smile of her own.

Jackie exhales like she's putting her hands on her hips. "Well, I got Tony. Jack wasn't there - the teacher said his dad came and picked him up already, before I got there."

Rose nods slowly, poking again at the fuel tube, pulling her mouth to one side. That's not right, she thinks. Is it leaking? Or maybe there's a bolt rattling around? Then she freezes, and whacks her head again on the metal components under the console.

"Rose?" Jackie asks.

"How could the Doctor pick 'im up?" Rose blurts suddenly, eyes wide. She maneuvers her way out from under the console, and when she comes out, she guesses she's got some oil on her face, because Jackie gives her a judging look. But Rose ignores it. "He doesn't have a car," she reminds her mother, face going ashen. She feels her gut twisting. Oh, god, something's happened. The teachers at the school don't even know what the Doctor looks like - for all they know …

Rose grabs the edge of the console. Someone's … has someone taken him?

"Oh my god," Jackie says, her face awash with concern.

At once, they pluck their phones from their pockets and start making calls. At that moment, Tony runs into the TARDIS.

"Tony!" Rose blurts, lunging forward and grabbing his shoulders. "What happened? Where's Jack?" she asks, her panic already writing itself on her face.

"I don't know!" Tony answers loudly, obviously just as upset. "When I got out of class, the teachers said Jack already went with his dad, and I couldn't find him, I thought the Doctor had already gotten him or …" the boy sniffs hard and then smacks his hand to his face, "I'm sorry, I …"

Rose hugs him, and he starts to cry. She looks over her shoulder to Jackie, who's on the phone already, waiting.

Then Jackie exhales quickly. "Doctor!" she says.

Rose doesn't hear what her husband says, but she can tell that it's smarmy.

Jackie shushes him. "Doctor, is Jack with you?" she asks sharply.

The phone is silent. The next thing, she does hear. "He's supposed to be with you!" in a high-pitched, worried tone.

Jackie swallows hard, and she looks guilty. Her brows tilt, and she lifts her hand to the side of her face. "I …" she starts, but then Rose hears the Doctor shouting on the other side of the phone.

"Where is he? Jackie, where's my son? I'm coming home!" he's yelling, and he's obviously upset.

Rose inhales suddenly, realizing she's forgotten to breathe. Tony bawls into her shoulder, moaning out how sorry he is. Rose squeezes him in her arms, thankful to have someone to hold onto. Her mind is already reeling, listing off places her son could be, people who could have him, people who might want to take him - things that could happen to him. She tries to breathe again, but she can't.

My baby, she thinks. And she swears she's having a heart attack.


"Come on," the stranger coos, wiggling his pudgy fingers at Jack.

Jack looks at him, confused. This isn't dad. And it's certainly not mum. He stays where he is, sat in the back seat of the stranger's car. Mum has a car. Sometimes she gets out of the car, and leaves him in the back seat for a little while, and then she comes back, and they go home. Yes. He'll stay in the car, and mum will come back.

Tony says not to talk to strangers. He didn't really have much choice in the matter, earlier, when the stranger picked him up from school and told his teachers that he was 'dad'. The stranger picked him up under the arms, like mum and dad and granddad and granny do, and he's not supposed to wiggle when he gets picked up like that - because once, he did it while granddad was carrying him, and granddad dropped him, and it really hurt.

"What's your name?" the stranger asks, leaning over the open door into the car.

Jack watches him warily. He doesn't like stranger. He's a liar - Tony says lying is bad. Stranger lied to the teachers and said that he was Jack's dad, and he isn't. Jack feels a little bit scared. He wants dad. He sticks his hands between his knees and looks away from stranger.

"Don't be like that!" the stranger laughs, and sticks his hand into his pocket. "My name's Roger."

Jack thinks he's still a stranger. He knows lots of people's names, but that doesn't make them not strangers. Jack doesn't look at the stranger, instead, looking out the other windows of the car. The car is dirty. Mum's car is always clean. This isn't mum's car. Jack is worried. Maybe mum won't come back to this car. There are wrappers on the seats and floor of this car, and out the windows, he can see the brick walls of an alleyway.

Stranger starts to get nervous. "Stop sulking now, little boy - we've got to get moving," he says, sounding angry, but Jack doesn't listen. He screws up his face and then glares at the stranger. He wants to go home, to the TARDIS. In the back of his head, he can feel his dad is worrying, panicking. Poor dad. Sorry, dad. "Don't look at me like that, you little brat!" stranger snaps, and Jack draws up his shoulders.

Stranger won't hit him. Nobody's ever hit him before - except another kid on the playground. Tony says he got smacked a few times when he was younger, like when he'd drawn on the wall in granny's house, or wet the bed. But mum and dad don't smack Jack. When Jack does wrong, dad gives him bad-feelings, with their telepathy. He doesn't like bad-feelings, so he tries not to do wrong.

But stranger looks angry. Jack thinks stranger might hit him. He remembers what granny once said to Tony, after picking them up one day. Tony had gotten a black eye from another boy on the playground, actually the same one who's hit Jack in the past. The boy's name is Kyle.

"I don't want you - and that goes for both of you - to be the one to throw the first hit, ever! D'you 'ear me?" granny said, while driving, "But you'd better bloody well throw the last hit, or they'll keep picking on you."

The next day, Jack remembers that Kyle tried to steal Tony's lunch sweets, and then hit him. And Tony knocked out Kyle's front tooth. Kyle doesn't bother them anymore.

Stranger grabs Jack's arm, and yanks him out of the car. Jack cries out, and tries to wiggle free - this is wrong. People don't pick him up like this. Stranger's pudgy fingers are tight around Jack's bare upper arm, and through the skin, he can feel that stranger is giving off bad-feelings. Stranger is going to hurt him, hurt him bad.

Jack is very scared.


They call the police. They call Torchwood. They call in a few favors all across the world - with UNIT, and the CIA, and a black-ops group in Russia that nobody's supposed to know about, all people they've helped in the past. Rose and the Doctor suit up for interrogations, but they are immediately slapped with prohibiting phrases like 'conflict of interest' and 'subjective viewpoint'. All the while, they argue, and shout at one another.

"Your mother was supposed to pick him up!" the Doctor barks across the back seat of the police van, on their way to Torchwood Tower, with a police escort. "If she hadn't been so late to pick him up, he'd be safe right now! What the hell was she busy doing? Getting her nails done?!"

Rose is close to tears, but she is not going to let him walk all over her - not now. If she breaks, she won't be able to fix herself again. She's terrified, and he's not helping. "Don't you blame my mum for this!" Rose seethes back at him, clenching her fists. "If you'd picked him up from school, just once, the teacher would've known whoever nabbed him wasn't his dad!"

"Oh, God,are we going to turn this into another argument about me not driving? Really, Rose?" the Doctor drawls out viciously, and throws his gaze away from her, out the window of the police van, to the pouring rain outside. He clenches his jaw and clasps his hands on the fabric of his seat. "I can feel him," he breathes out tensely. "He's terrified," he rubs his hand over his mouth and then threads it roughly through his hair.

Rose taps her foot anxiously. The shouting subsides into terse silence, both of them thinking over all the things that could happen to their child, all the people who would take him - all the mistakes they might have made to lead to this. This has to be someone's fault, and it's certainly not little Jack's.

Rose thinks of all the people, and aliens, she's put away in the past for inhumane (using the term loosely) actions against sentient creatures and the like. The Doctor thinks of all the people in the universe who might want to run painful tests on a Human-Time Lord hybrid child to see what they could gain.

The police van pulls up in front of Torchwood Tower, and out the blackout windows, they can see that the media have already caught wind of the story. It must be the story of the year, the Doctor thinks bitterly; the toddler grandson of the Torchwood director, going missing from his primary school - kidnapped, taken right out from under their nose - so simply. Why was it so easy, the papers will ask - why didn't anyone see it coming? Surely, with two Torchwood agents as parents and a whole security detail just for the Vitex mansion, someone should've known, right?

The paparazzi swarm like hornets outside the police van, and as the police force them back behind the press barriers, Rose looks over to her husband, her thumbnail in her mouth so she can chew on it. The Doctor looks tense - furious, and at the same time, terrified. He's always been her rock - and she's always been his - but neither of them is strong, right now.

"How did this happen?" Rose asks quietly, her voice breaking.

The Doctor draws a shaking breath, and presses his mouth into a thin line. He slides his hand across the back seat of the police van and wraps it around hers, threading their fingers together. He swallows the lump in his throat. "I don't know," he chokes.

The police open the doors for them, and they step out, hand in hand. The media assaults them - there's no other word for it. They ask questions that have already stormed through their heads for the last two hours. How are you going to find your son? Who do you think took him? What do they want him for? Is this a revenge plot? Why hasn't there been a ransom call? Who do you think is to blame for this? Why didn't your son have a security detail?

The police clear a path up the steps into the building, and both the mother and father of the missing boy stay silent, unwilling to answer any questions put to them. They don't have the answers. They don't know - they just don't know. And that's the most terrifying bit. At the very least, the Doctor knows that Jack is still alive, and awake. He'll know, if they kill his little boy; he'll know, because it will hurt him too. Not just mentally, but physically. He'll feel it. And he's on the edge of his seat right now, terrified that they might do it at any moment. He wonders if Jack knows what's going on.

They file into the tower, across the lobby and into the lift.

The Doctor looks over to his wife, whose hand is sweaty in his. She's biting worriedly at her thumbnail, and usually he finds that adorable, but right now it just puts him even more on edge. He needs a shoulder to lean on, and she can't do that, not right now. He squeezes her hand, and she squeezes back, seeming absent. He can tell what she's thinking - knows the look on her face, because he's wearing it too. She's thinking of all the things that could be happening to Jack. She's thinking that she should have seen this coming. She's thinking that she should have kept him safer.

"He's alive," the Doctor says quietly. "At least there's that," he tries to sound reassuring.

Rose swallows. "For how long?" she asks, eyes fixed on the floor indicator in the lift. "I could've …" she breathes, her lower lip curling over momentarily - and she might just break, for a second - but then she looks at him and steels herself. "I wasn't doing anything. I could've gone to pick him up, if I'd known mum was late. I could've," she tells him, eyes burning with tears.

The Doctor breathes in deeply, remembering the eleven months that she spent carrying Jack, the sixteen hours she spent in painful labor, and then the excruciating birth - the screaming. He remembers all that she went through, and he remembers her crying in his arms the night their son was born - crying out of fear that she wouldn't be a good mother. And he remembers how the pink, wrinkly baby in their arms, sucking on her sore breasts and waking them up in the middle of the night, made it all worthwhile.

The Doctor remembers Jack saying 'Dad' for the very first time. He remembers him reaching out telepathically for the first time. He remembers Jack's first steps, his favorite color, his favorite flavor froot-shoot. And he realizes that after all that, someone has come along and might just decide to kill their baby boy, simply because they can.

The lift opens, and they bundle themselves out into the hallway, and down it, and straight into the crowded conference room.


They stop, just inside the conference room, and survey the people here. There are people from all over the world, who have somehow managed to get here within the two hours since they discovered that Jack was missing.

"We transmatted them in," Pete says, and Jack's parents look to see the Director at the head of the table, hands on its surface. He gives a weak smile. "Everyone wants to help."

The Doctor nods weakly, and threads his hand roughly through his hair again. "What do we know?" he asks, approaching the table. There are no briefs, no papers - no written down information. They're all going on brainpower. Usually, that's not a problem for the Doctor, but today, he worries that it won't be enough. "Have you spoken to the teacher at the school?"

Two people at the table - who the Doctor recognizes as Ari Dorohkov and Michael Bragin from the Russian Extraterrestrial Intelligence Unit - RETIU - get up and offer their chairs to him and Rose, and he gives a thankful smile to them. There are plenty of people standing around on their feet, thanks to the shortage of chairs at the table. He takes a seat, and Rose takes the one next to him.

"Yes, we have," Stella Davis, leader of the CIA team that Torchwood is allied with (thanks to a past adventure of Rose's, before the Doctor joined Rose in this universe) says, standing against one wall in the room with her arms crossed over her chest. "She describes the man who took Jack as a tall, bulky white man, with dark hair. He drove off in a silver sedan, headed south. There was no-one in the car aside from him and the child."

Rose finds that she doesn't feel any better, the more she learns. "Do we have any footage of them leaving? Security cameras, CCTV - Christ, do we have a plate number, maybe?" she asks hopefully, sitting forward in her chair.

Another agent, this time, one from UNIT, who is seated to the left of the table, speaks. "We got a silver sedan speeding through a speed-check zone, about half an hour after the abduction, and snapped the plate number. Unfortunately, we've located the car now - it was abandoned in an alley."

Rose blinks at this, exhaling heavily, face pale. "So we have no idea where they are?" she asks weakly, shoulders sagging.

"The car is registered to a Patricia Morris, reported stolen about three months ago. We can't trace the car to the man who took your son," Agent Dorohkov begins, brows tilted apologetically, and Rose and the Doctor have to look over their shoulders to meet his gaze, "But so far, the evidence suggests that this man isn't working with any sort of organization."

That's supposed to be good, the Doctor thinks. It means that maybe it's just some whacko that's taken Jack - not someone who wants money, or someone who wants to use him as bait for Torchwood. But the Doctor feels his throat tightening all the same. He knows that this means it'll be harder to find Jack. First they have to identify the man who took him - and they haven't even done that. He also knows that if it's just some whacko, it might be the kind of whacko who likes to touch little boys like his son. His gut clenches uncomfortably.

"There hasn't been any ransom call to the house," Pete says seriously, drawing a breath - and Rose can tell that he's on edge, too - then frowns, "Have either of you gotten anything on your mobiles?"

Rose and the Doctor have checked their phones a hundred times since Jack went missing, partly in waiting for said ransom call, partly because the Doctor made sure to teach Jack both their mobile numbers before even teaching him to count - which is, incidentally, why Jack thinks that four comes after eight. But they take out their phones again and check once more. There is nothing.

They lay the phones on the table - and both their home-screen photographs are of Jack, grinning. They slide the phones to the middle of the table, like adding their chips to the pot in a poker game. Every heart in the room breaks a little bit for the grinning face on the screen. And everyone in the room wants to bring him home.

"We'll stay. Until we find your son, not a single one of us are leaving," Gwen Cooper, head honcho from Torchwood Three says, smiling sadly at Rose and the Doctor, leaning against the window with her hands tucked behind her backside. The wide-mouthed man at her side looks a little bit annoyed, but nobody else argues.

"I second that," a man from German Intergalactics - GIG - says with an agreeing nod. "We'll work into the night."

There are murmurs of approval, and a hand lands on Rose's shoulder. She looks up to see Agent Bragin, smiling reassuringly at her. She gives a watery smile of her own and covers his hand with hers.

Pete nods, leans over, and presses a button on the intercom beside him. "Julie, we're going to need coffee - en masse."

"Right away, director."


It's four AM before the adrenaline and stress of worrying for thirteen hours straight finally gets to Rose and the Doctor. Pete grabs the Doctor by the upper arms and tells him they need sleep. The Doctor argues that he doesn't need nearly as much sleep as humans do, but Pete will hear none of it - the Doctor is exhausted, and Pete knows it. Then Rose argues that everyone else will be working through the night, so why can't they?

Pete doesn't have an answer for her, but threatens that if they don't leave, he'll have them escorted out by security.

So they leave. Some devoted paparazzi are waiting outside, but one glare from the Oncoming Storm - tired though he may be - is enough to send them packing. Jackie pulls her car to the front of Torchwood Tower, and they climb in. A whole new can of worms is opened; the Doctor shouts and yells and screams at her - and blames her, and that's the worst. Rose is too tired to speak, to tell him to stop.

It ends with Jackie crying, and apologizing, and when they finally get home, she pads away from them, so overcome with guilt and grief that she can't even stand her own company. The Doctor rips off his suit jacket and flings it to the floor on the way to the TARDIS, with Rose at his side. She says nothing, just raking her fingers through her hair for the umpteenth time today.

When he looks over at her, she doesn't say anything - just gives him this look.

"What?" he snaps at her. They come to the top of the stairs and she walks in the wrong direction, away from the TARDIS - away from him. "Where are you going?" he asks accusingly.

"To see Tony," Rose breathes quietly.

The Doctor stops, tenses and then clenches his jaw. "I might do the same," he grinds out maliciously - because he has a thing or two to say to Tony; Tony, who should've said something as soon as he heard Jack had gone missing, who should have known that Jack was supposed to go home with him.

Rose suddenly whirls around and points a finger at him. Her eyes are red and puffy, in addition to the dark circles, and she bares her teeth at him like she is just sick of him. "Don't, you, dare," she seethes at him, her voice coming out over a lump in her throat, "Don't you dare to the same to him as you did to my mum, you cruel bastard."

The Doctor is taken aback, and his face suddenly pales.

"I should've said something, you know - but I'm so tired. I just haven't got the energy to argue with the Oncoming Storm," she chokes out, and her eyes fill with tears, "But I swear to god, if you even think about blaming Tony for this, I'll …" she clenches her hands ineffectually, and then exhales heavily, trailing off. What will she do? What can she do? She can't do anything. She's helpless. She sniffs hard, flattening her palm over her forehead, because she won't cry. She won't let herself.

The Doctor stands at the top of the stairs, watching her. His eyes drop to the floor, and he thinks about this. God, she's right. It's not Jackie's fault. She's picked the kids up late before, and nothing happened. How could she have known? How could any of them have known? But there's got to be someone he can blame, because he's so scared, and so angry. Anything could happen.

And Jack is still awake, in the back of his mind - still awake, and still scared, and afraid to fall asleep without his mum and dad close to him. God, he's never been away from them, never even had a sleepover. And they're no closer to finding him than they were ten hours ago.

The Doctor chokes out a ragged breath, a hand coming up and covering his mouth and nose. His face reddens, and his eyes fill with saltwater. He chokes again, and this time it's a sob. His legs waver under him, and his whole body hurts - his chest, his stomach, his head, his arms and legs. He presses his palms into his eye-sockets and sobs again, and his tears wet the heels of his hands. His whole body racks and shudders.

He's so scared - so worried. His little boy, the little boy he's sung Gallifreyan lullabies to, and taught to spell, and carried on his back, is missing. The thing most precious to him, even more precious than Rose - and Rose wouldn't mind, because he knows that Jack is more important to her than he is, just how it should be - has been taken, right out of his schoolyard. He's supposed to protect that little boy. Rose is right. If he had picked him up from school just once, this wouldn't have happened.

He sinks down and sits on the top step of the staircase, hunching over and burying his face in his hands, crying. Rose sinks to her knees beside him and puts her hand on his arm. He drags in a gasp for breath and tears his wet face from his palms, to look at her. How can she be so strong? How has she kept herself together all day? The Doctor drops his hand and grasps hers.

"Who would do this?" he whispers desperately, scrubbing his other hand through his hair so hard that some hairs come out between his fingers. "Why? Why would someone take him?" he asks her, because please, god, someonehas to have some answers. His voice breaks and his face twists again, as more tears pour down his cheeks.

Rose wraps him in her arms, and holds her head to her chest, rocking him slowly - and he cries until he can't cry anymore.

And then his awareness of Jack's mind fades into nothingness; silence, blackness. The space in his mind where Jack is supposed to be is suddenly empty. He tries to tell himself that his baby boy is just asleep, that he's finally fallen asleep, but he's so scared. That part of his mind is cold and empty, and Jack-less. And he finds that he has some more tears to shed.


On the second day, Rose wakes up early in the morning, her head on the Doctor's chest, and the buttons of his striped button-up pajamas leaving indentations in her cheek, on instinct. She's usually awake at this hour, to get Jack up and ready for school. But he's not here. The Doctor is dead to the world. God, she doesn't know how long he cried last night. She remembers falling asleep around six, and when she looks over the Doctor's torso to the clock, she sees that it's not quite seven.

She really should go back to sleep - she needs to rest. She won't be any good to anyone if she's exhausted.

Rose closes her eyes again and tries to fall back to sleep. The Doctor's single heart beats beneath her ear, his chest rising in falling, and her arm is draped over him. His hands are holding onto the fabric of her own spotted pajamas, unwilling to let her go. She tilts her head up and opens her eyes briefly, to see his face contorted with unease. He's having a nightmare. Rose closes her eyes again.

She remembers when Jack was first born, and keeping him in the bed with them as a baby. It was so much easier that way - no more running back and forth to the crib whenever he cried. And he slept through the night so much more often when he was close to them. She would lie on her side, without her shirt on, and when he got a little older, he'd suckle when he was hungry without even waking her.

Rose inhales deeply through her mouth, blinks away the tears in her eyes and furrows her brow.

She remembers waking up one morning to the image of her baby boy sprawled in his onesie on the Doctor's bare chest, both of them deep in sleep, the Doctor with his head tilted back, his pillow shifted from behind his head to his side - a precaution to make sure Jack didn't fall off him and onto the floor, no doubt - and Jack with his cheek smushed into the Doctor's skin, drooling on his father.

Rose curls her legs closer to her chest, sidling closer to the Doctor. She's not going to cry. She is not going to cry.


They head back to Torchwood Tower as soon as the Doctor wakes up, at ten o'clock - Rose never does manage to fall back asleep after waking up. She doesn't know whether he talked to her mother, but she does see him coming from Jackie's bedroom with the car keys and mildly rueful look on his face. Rose drives. On the way, as they scarf down a cheap gas-station breakfast, they hear breaking news about the case on the radio; the name of the man who took their son. Roger Edwards. They both wrack their minds, trying to remember whether they've ever angered anyone called Roger Edwards in their Torchwood exploits. Or even anyone with the last name Edwards. They come up with nothing.

When they get to Torchwood Tower, the crack team is still working tirelessly. Some of them have crashed out in the lounge rooms, or taken brief naps to keep them charged, and neither Rose nor the Doctor can blame them. But now, a handful of them look hopeless. That bothers Rose. She has to believe they'll find Jack.

There's a manhunt out for Roger Edwards, and the news - according to the television now set up in the conference room, which has now become a crisis center - is calling Jack's disappearance a national tragedy. Most of the primary schools in the area have had to close for the day, since hardly anyone has sent their children to school today. It was so easy - abducting Jack Tyler from his school - and everyone has seen how it could easily have been their own child. Roger Edwards' name and picture is all over the news, right next to little Jack's.

'If you see Roger Edwards or Jack Tyler, call the number on-screen, or your local police'.

Reports are coming in of sightings of Roger Edwards - none of Jack, yet, but the team is optimistic.

Edwards is the same height as the Doctor, possibly an inch or two shorter, but bulky. He's got pasty skin, pockmarked with acne scars, and has facial hair, just a moustache and small beard, the same color as his scruffy dark hair. He was seen in a dark hooded sweatshirt and a baseball cap. He looks like a goon, to Rose's trained eye. He's been in trouble with the law before - driving under the influence and aggravated assault.

But is he acting alone? If he is, is that good?

The Doctor dives in with the Russian Intelligence Unit, helping them pore through the calls and security footage they've got hold of, on their laptops, lined up on the conference table. Rose is at a loss for the longest time, just hanging back and watching everyone functioning, when for her, the world has completely come to a halt. That boy, that little boy is her life. She looks outside, to see that it's still raining. She feels so useless, so helpless. They have the best intelligence people from all over the world in one building, and all they've gotten is a face and a name.

Then a swarm of fluorescent yellow marches into the conference room. It's Stella Davis from CIA, and Gwen Cooper from Torchwood Three, and a handful of other brilliant agents, and some local police - all kitted out in their reflective coats. And Rose knows what she can do. She'll join the manhunt, join the search.

"Pete," Rose says, grabbing the spare yellow coat that one of the police officers is holding - they came here looking to recruit more field agents, and that's exactly what Rose is good at - and shucking her leather jacket. Pete looks up from where he's working with a UNIT member and sees her pulling on the coat. He simply sighs. "I'm going with them," Rose tells him curtly - there's no room for argument.

Pete glances from her to where the Doctor is working with RETIU, obviously throwing himself in just as much as Rose wants to. Then he gives a wan smile and nods to Rose. "Be careful. It's raining hard enough to flood out there."

Rose snorts. "Then I'll swim," she answers dryly, zipping up her coat and pulling the hood over her hair.

She crosses the room, to the filing cabinet that's supposed to hold papers, pulls open the bottom drawer, and takes out a standard-issue firearm. Stella and Gwen both have guns, as do the police officers. She feels the power of holding a gun flooding through her as she straps it to her belt. The swarm of yellow turns and marches out of the room.