This is the story of a boy called Jamie.
The first four years of his life were founded on a lie. His big sister, Nancy took care of him. He had never known his parents. He'd grown up without a mummy, so Nancy had to do her best for him. She hunted for their food during the air raids. Jamie couldn't remember anything before the War. He had been too young when it had started. But one day he got scared by the bombs and followed Nancy out into the streets when the bombs were falling. He'd slipped his gas mask over his face and ran out into the street looking for her. He never found her amidst the falling bombs.
"The middle of an air raid? What do you think happened?"
The broken body of a four-year-old boy lay on the streets of London, not far from where something else hit the earth. People had thought it was a bomb initially, but the bomb wasn't a bomb. A man from the future had attempted to con the Time Agency into believing the medical transporter he had stolen was a dangerous ship and crashed it into the Earth.
But it wasn't empty.
That ship was full of nano-genes, but unlike most, these had never seen a human before and the first human they found as a template was the tiny body of that four-year-old boy, caught in an explosion. They didn't know what he was supposed to look like so they fixed him up as best they could, but he wasn't right. His head trauma was still visible and his ribs had collapsed inwards and had been fixed to remain like that. Even the deep cut on the back of his hand caused by flying shrapnel stood out clearly as if it was supposed to stay there. But the gas mask did the worst damage. The nano-genes, not knowing it was not part of his head fixed it into his skull. The face of that boy could not be seen. The mask was his face now. His brain had been patched up crudely, the one thing the boy had ever wanted more than anything echoing through his head repeatedly. The child wandered the dark streets of the city calling out for the person one person he knew he had to find.
"Mummy?"
Someone brought him to the hospital and the doctors did their best to heal him, but before long they realised they were beginning to change. Their heads began to ache as they began to show signs of concussion, they found it hard to breathe as inexplicably all of their ribs broke, and for some reason a scar began to develop on the back of their hands although no one could remember how they got it. First the nurses that touched the boy, then their other patients, before long it had spread all over the hospital. As grown men and women began to appear wandering through the corridors of the hospital wearing gas masks that appeared fused to their faces and crying out for their mothers, the hospital was placed under lockdown, but the child had already escaped and was back on the streets of London.
Nancy felt very sorry for herself and to try and distract herself helped to feed the orphans of the war by feeding them, but something began to haunt her. She almost got the feeling that she was beng followed until one day she saw the little boy. He was like Jamie but yet he wasn't. Heard about what had happened in the hospital and was so afraid.
"Don't touch him."
"Why? What happens if you touch him?"
"He'll make you like him."
"Why? What's he like?"
"He's empty."
"Mummy."
That voice haunted her: Jamie's voice. Did he know? Was that why he was following her? She was so afraid. Then he came: the Doctor. He was the only person who had ever known. He realised what was wrong. He worked out the truth.
"He's not your brother is he?"
Nancy nodded, admitting her secret for the first time. She'd covered it up so well. She hadn't even told Jamie's father. She'd refused to see him after she found out. She hid, ashamed of what she was and what other people would say about her. She was fifteen and unmarried. She lied to everyone. She even lied to him. Then somehow in that moment when she nodded, she felt as though someone had taken a millstone off from around her neck. Nancy suddenly had the courage to go to the child she had run from and knelt down in front of him.
"Are you my mummy?"
"Yes."
"Are you my mummy?"
He didn't understand her, and tears dripped from Nancy's eyes, but they weren't tears of fear. There was sadness in them.
"I am your mummy," she sobbed. "I will always be your mummy." She threw her arms around the boy, now not caring what he did to her. "I'm sorry," she sniffed, tears running off her cheeks and sliding down the gas mask. "I am so, so sorry."
It was a miracle. That single touch had healed Nancy's baby boy. Finding a new model from the biological mother of the empty child, nano-genes fixed him. They made him a boy again and the Doctor took the remainders over to the hospital patients and the soldiers around the bomb site, curing anyone who had been touched by the child. Nancy promised Jamie that she'd never let anything bad happen to him again. She had cried for so long, holding him, and Jamie knew he had found his mummy. He had never lost her.
Jamie never moved away from London, hoping one day to see the Doctor again. He was nearly seventy when he did. His mother Nancy died aged eighty-four in 2005. He went down to the cemetery to see her buried, leaning on his daughter Rose's arm. Jamie looked up for half a second as the priest talked about the life of his mother, and thought he saw in the trees by the cemetery wall him standing there. The Doctor stood there looking no older than he had been back in 1941. He remembered how his mother had told him that he had travelled through time, but as he grew older he began to doubt it. He had thought that it was a fairy tale she had told him, but no. He was definitely there. So was she. Rose Tyler stood there with him just watching, and the Captain who had saved him from the bomb. He would never forget their faces, no matter how long ago it was. Jamie wondered if they had seen him. He raised his free hand slightly in a gesture of greeting and thanks. The Doctor, Rose and the Captain all raised their hands too. Jamie smiled and nodded, then turned back to the coffin as Nancy was finally lowered into the earth.
"You see?" said Rose, smiling to Jack. "I told you he'd remember us." The Doctor smiled.
"He deserves to have a good life after what he went through," he said.
"I think he got it," said Rose with a smile. The Doctor looked at her and smiled.
"Yeah," he said.
"So are we going to go to Cardiff?" asked Jack. The Doctor grinned.
"Yep, I need to refuel."
"Can I call Mickey?" asked Rose. The Doctor sighed.
"If you must."
"Thanks."
"No problem."
Jamie watched them go and smiled to himself. Rose saw him and followed his eyes to the retreating backs of the Doctor, the Captain and her namesake disappearing into the trees.
"Who're they?" she asked, looking at her father. "Dad?" Jamie smiled.
"I'm glad they came," he said. "I wasn't expecting them, but I am glad. Mother would have like it."
"But who are they? And who was that man in the leather coat who just waved to you?"
"Did he?" asked Jamie, turning and smiling and nodding to the Doctor who had turned around and given a slight wave. Rose wasn't giving up though.
"Who is he?" she asked.
"The Doctor."
"Doctor who?"
