Earth
Gallifrey was a frustrating dead-end. The Time Lords either didn't know where the Doctor was or wouldn't tell him. All they'd done was demand to know where and who he was and how he'd got access to a classified frequency. Even when he told them it was an emergency, all he got was more yelling. Typical bureaucracy, just as his mother had warned him it would be. That was one of the reasons she'd hesitated to return to her home planet, even after being sent back from E-Space by their friends to do just that.
The other reason had everything to do with him. He carried an enormous weight of guilt because of that, not that his mother would have allowed him that particular emotion, had she been around to sense it in him. No, she would have insisted it wasn't his fault, not any of it, and although his head might understand and agree, it wasn't the same in his hearts. Had she not hesitated because of her concerns for him, had she gone immediately to Gallifrey, would the Master have dared to follow them there? But she hadn't, she'd gone to Earth instead, with disastrous results.
Oh, her reasoning was sound. The information they had for the Doctor was vital, and a lot of his former traveling companions lived on that planet. It would be easier to wait there than to go looking for him; eventually, he'd show up. Besides, Romana had confessed to her son, she'd rather liked Paris the first time the Doctor had taken her there.
Now she would remain there forever.
Her son's lips twisted in a grimace of anger. She was dead, killed over and over again, each forced regeneration lasting only long enough for her to be killed once more and brought to the next. The woman lying sprawled awkwardly across the small bed was a statuesque brunette who bore no resemblance to his petite, blonde mother, but he'd known it was her, even beyond the circumstantial evidence of it being their own flat and her own room. He recognized her, recognized the Master--and oh, that bastard would pay a thousand times over for this!--and recognized his own danger, all in the space of a double heartbeat. He felt like a coward for just leaving her body, for not saying a proper good-bye, but she would have wanted him safe. Besides, there were others in danger. They were the whole reason he was sitting on this train, headed out to a certain discreetly located military hospital. He had to find a way to warn them, especially now that his mother was...gone.
He swiped angrily at a tear that trickled unbidden from his eye. A vision of her as he'd last seen her flashed into his memory, for an exquisitely painful moment. She would be a medical anomaly, a nameless stranger with an inexplicable double-circulatory system, murdered in their home for unknown reasons by persons equally unknown, at least officially–except that he and his mother were wanted as "material witnesses", which was the same thing as saying they were suspected of murder. The police would neither guess nor believe that Madame Romana Smith and the unknown murder victim were one and the same person.
The young man's lip curled in a silent growl. All because his mother had the misfortune to once travel with the Prydonian Time Lord known only as "The Doctor".
His father.
His fist clenched as he fought the resentment he always felt at the thought of his father. After all, the man didn't even know he existed, hadn't known that Romana was pregnant when she decided to stay in E-Space to help the Tharils. Hell, she hadn't even realized it herself, not for several months! By then, she was even more firmly committed to making a difference in that universe, and had simply taken her "interesting condition" in stride. It was the first time in literal centuries that a Time Lord had been born rather than created in the genetic Looms, but it had been a successful birth nonetheless.
An illogical part of the young man's mind still felt that the current situation might have been prevented if only the Doctor had bothered to check on Romana at least once. He might not have been able to convince her to come back with him, but he might have gotten to know his son; not that the Doctor seemed the reliable sort, but he did seem to have a conscience. He wouldn't have abandoned them. Especially once the Master made his appearance.
How he had found them and his reasons for being in E-Space in the first place were mysteries the renegade Time Lord never bothered to explain, nor had he and his mother spent much time wondering about it. Since the Master's first act upon arrival had been to try and kill Romana, neither of them had wasted energy on questions that might or might not have answers. It was entirely possible that he'd come to E-Space to do exactly what he'd attempted to do. Whatever his reasons, they'd managed to elude him, and Romana had been confident that the trap they'd left him ensnared in would keep him from finding them, at least long enough for her to establish contact with some of the Doctor's old friends at UNIT while they searched for her former lover.
So much for that theory.
He shook his head irritably. Brooding was getting him nowhere. He glanced down at the forged passport that had brought him to England. His mother had frowned at his choice of human friends during their stay on Earth, but even she had been forced to acknowledge the usefulness of getting to know an expert forger and other assorted criminals. Especially under these circumstances. It had been simple to contact Gaston, get him to agree to forge a passport for his friend to "pass along to another friend in trouble,"then allow himself to regenerate, changing his appearance to more closely approximate the photograph Gaston provided.
The tall young man with the white-blonde hair and indeterminate hazel eyes was gone, replaced by one two inches shorter and several pounds lighter, with black hair and eyes a vivid shade of blue. Thank all the forces of the Universes, known and unknown, that Mother had shown him how to control his regeneration. Another Time Lord would have no trouble identifying him--he had no doubts as to the Master's ability to do so if he caught up with him once again--but that was the least of his worries right now. He was more concerned with the Sureté. Far better that they think he and his mother had both dropped off the face of the earth, while he resurfaced with an untraceable new name and face in London.
UNIT was his best chance, his and the people whose names were linked through the small data retrieverhe now possessed. His mother's decision to entrust it to him had turned out to be fatally wise. He patted his shirt pocket, absently assuring himself of its presence. Yes, UNIT was both his best chance and theirs.
He only hoped he could get help--and get to them--before the Master did.
