"Experience? With who?"
"Torchwood, of course."
--
"You worked for Torchwood?" The Doctor asked, mildly surprised.
"Yes. Well, when I say worked, I mean helped out. Well, when I say helped out, I mean for a week. Well, when I say a week…" Carys replied. "Them at Torchwood are all nutters anyway. The leader's a big headed flirt who can't die. Sort of takes away the dramatic tension, doesn't it?"
The Doctor laughed. "And Jack's head's just going to keep growing, Carys." he replied.
Carys laughed too. She yawned. "Well, I for one am knackered. I can stick a film on for you if you want, since you obviously've been asleep for a while already."
"Sleep? Nah, that's for tortoises. And humans, I suppose." The Doctor replied. "A film sounds fab though."
"Alright, I've got Back to the Future – all of them – The Terminator, Timecop, Timequest, Déjà vu and The Butterfly Effect…" Carys said, grinning.
"Any that haven't to do with time travel?" The Doctor laughed.
"Star Wars?" Carys suggested with a straight face.
"Haha."
"Alright. I've got Aladdin, the Disney one."
"Oh, shove that on. I love that genie. He's my role model!" The Doctor replied.
"I'm not sure whether to laugh or be scared." Carys replied and then turned on the DVD.
--
The next morning, The Doctor was in the middle of laughing at the ridiculous temporal mechanics in Back to the Future III when there was a knock at the door.
"Hope you're decent, because I'm coming in, Doctor." Carys' voice came through.
"Feel free." The Doctor replied.
"I brought you breakfast." Carys said, pushing open the door. "Cereal. Corn Flakes. With raisins. Nice and healthy." She put the tray on the bed.
"Ta very much." The Doctor replied.
"How's your ankle? And, more importantly, your head?"
"I'm fine. I was walking around last night"
"Having a poke around, were we?" Carys asked, raising her eyebrows.
"I might've been." The Doctor replied, rather evasively.
"Good. Get ready. We're going out."
"Out?"
"We're meeting a couple of people." Carys replied. "Enjoy your cereal."
The door slammed shut behind her as she left the room.
"…Who?" The Doctor said.
--
And so they left into the 'brisk Cardiff air' as the Doctor called it. (Carys preferred the term 'bloody freezing'). The Doctor was limping a little, but apart from that he showed no sign of falling from the top of a building the previous day.
"Where's the TARDIS?" The Doctor asked.
"Come on then." Carys sighed and lead him down a winding passage of streets until the familiar blue box came into view.
"Ah, there she is!" The Doctor exclaimed, half running towards the TARDIS and wrapping his arms around it.
"You're not going to get your arms the whole way round, Doctor." Carys said, amused.
"I can try." The Doctor replied, grinning.
"Okay, okay, but we're going to be late for our little meeting." Carys warned.
"Do we have to leave her here? So sad…and alone…" The Doctor asked, with a childlike pleading.
"Oh Doctor, shut up. You'll see the TARDIS soon enough. Come on, let's go."
The Doctor laughed. "Alright, I'm coming."
--
"Doctor!"
The Doctor stared in the direction of the American accent. "Jack?"
"Carys!" Carys replied. "Now that we've all met…Doctor, Jack is the flirtatious, never-to-die hero of the Torchwood Institute. I figured he'd know a bit about these screaming things."
"Great idea." The Doctor said with a tiny hint of sarcasm.
Then another voice. "Doctor! Carys!"
"Martha!"
The Doctor and Martha were soon lost in a hug. Then they babbled on inconsistently.
"How are you?"
"Great! How are you?"
"Fantastic! I'm engaged!"
The Doctor heard Carys and Jack behind him, trying not to laugh at the expression on his face.
He quickly composed himself, however. "That's great! Who is he?"
"Tom…he's human, by the way." Martha replied, smiling. "And at least twice as good looking as you. And not so clumsy as to fall off a building."
"Alright, alright." The Doctor interrupted. "Sorry I asked."
"Let's go inside." Carys suggested.
--
"So, Doctor, picked up a new friend, have we? Very pretty, I must say." Jack said, looking at Carys.
"Watch it." Carys warned. "You might be unable to die for long, but the key words there are 'for' and 'long'"
The Doctor said, "Yep. Carys is going on a trip with me. One return trip."
"That's what he said to me." Martha said.
"Yeah." Jack replied. "And we spent the next year locked up because he kept you."
"Technically, the year never happened." Martha argued.
"Time arguments aside…" Carys interrupted. "Let's discuss the Doctor's headaches"
The Doctor suddenly found everyone looking at him. So he explained.
A strange look caused Jack's face. "The screaming sound sounds like…"
"Like what?" Martha asked.
"There was a girl, 15 or so, a few years ago. She'd go into trances and spoke of ghosts, and demons and them being trapped, and scared, and alone…and then she'd explain how they were screaming in her head. By the time we heard of it she'd died. Too much for the kid to take." Jack finished. "But that was about five years ago."
"Nothing's a coincidence when the Doctor's involved." Martha mused.
"Are we taking him with us?" Carys asked the Doctor, pointing at Jack.
"What?"
"Martha's got a fiancé to get back to, but Jack'll want to come with us. Am I right?" Carys asked the two others, who both nodded.
The Doctor made a sound that sounded oddly like 'doeshehaveto?', but nodded.
"To the TARDIS, then!" Jack said, springing to his feet.
"To the TARDIS." The Doctor agreed.
They all said their goodbyes to Martha. The Doctor and Jack were at the door, when the Doctor realised there was something missing.
"Carys?"
"Just a minute!" Carys shouted back.
Martha was whispering something to her. Carys nodded, said goodbye and followed the men out of the door.
--
"Right, so, about five years into the past, then?" the Doctor asked, inside the TARDIS (Carys had bit back her 'It's bigger on the inside!' comment, with the feeling he'd heard it all before)
"Yeah." Jack replied. "Maybe a bit further back, actually…"
And so they were off, seven years into the past.
They arrived, Cardiff, 2001.
Carys ran to the door. "I'm opening it!" she said excitedly. "I'm actually going ito the past."
"In a time machine? Really?" Jack asked.
"Shut it, you." Carys said then stepped outside of the doors….to exactly the same scene she'd left. Well, she reasoned, of course it was. She'd only went back seven years.
But there was something new. A girl, a blonde girl, around 12 or 13, staring at the TARDIS.
The girl's eyes swivelled to the doors as Carys stepped outside. The both stared at each other for a minute. Then-
"Ahhhhh!" The girl suddenly screamed, her hands going to her head. "No! Stop screaming! Stop!"
Her knees gave way and she was on the ground, still screaming.
Carys ran over. She had no idea what she should do. "Doctor! Jack! A little help!" She shouted back to the open doors. No answer. With one last desperate look at the girl, Carys stood up again and hurried to the blue doors, practically throwing herself inside.
Inside was as bad as out.
There, clutching at his head was the Doctor.
"Jack, what happened?" Carys practically screamed.
"I don't know! The console screen suddenly started showing a blurry image...something living, I think…and then it went blank and then…" Jack gestured to the Doctor.
"Jack, there's a girl out there, a teenager or younger. She's in the same state. We need to help her!"
"What about him?" Jack replied agitatedly.
"I don't know!" Carys replied frantically, "But there's a kid out there! Probably the one we came here for in the first place!"
"I'll go." Jack said and sprinted to the doors.
Carys made to approach the Doctor, but something caught her attention. The console screen was no longer blank.
She stared at it.
And a pair of eyes stared right back at her.
Disclaimer: Nothing recognisable is mine. Got it?
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