Author's Note: Hello everyone. Big thanks to the following people for reviewing - Romana-II, irishartemis, MayFairy, SlytherinPrincess123, padmay97, mericat, Imorgen, xxTeam-Masterxx, Aietradaea, Astra68 and Bad Dog No Biscuit.

So glad to see not everyone has forgotten Ten!

To Imorgen: Thank you so much! I'm delighted to hear you have been following and enjoying the series. I hope you will continue to review and let me know what you think! XXX

(NB To all those following "The Master's Rose", Chapter Nine is now up, if you haven't already read it!)

And here's another chapter of this one...

CHAPTER THREE

At the sound of Tejana's scream, the Doctor whirled around. Horrified, he saw her trying to fend off a long, silver, segmented creature like a snake with a flat head. The thing was flailing and writhing in her grasp, single-mindedly trying to reach her throat. Even though he had not seen one for a long, long time, the Doctor had no trouble whatsoever in recognising the creature as a Cybermat, one of the small cyborgs used as advance guards and plague carriers by the Mondasian Cybermen. During the Time War, the Cybermen had used nests of Cybermats to infiltrate and wipe out the humanoid populations of entire planets with their lethal venom. Like their Cyber-masters, they were pitiless and relentless killers.

Acting purely on instinct, he sprinted back towards his daughter, pulling out his sonic screwdriver as he ran and turning it up to the highest setting. Grasping the Cybermat behind its eyeless head, he managed to tear it away from her and hurl it to the ground, before aiming the screwdriver at the creature and activating it. The Cybermat was just about to leap at them again when the acute hypersonic sound wave hit it, effectively disabling its motor functions. Twitching and hissing violently, convulsing in its death throes, it rolled into a ball like a wood louse and lay still.

"There are more of them," Tejana gasped, pulling her own sonic screwdriver from her pocket. "They followed us from the village. There must have been a nest of them there."

Sure enough, more rustling noises came from the forest all around them. Quickly, father and daughter took up a defensive position, standing back to back, their screwdrivers held before them. Then the attack began in earnest. Gleaming like incandescent malice, driven by an inexorable urge to kill, the Cybermats swarmed through the undergrowth in immense numbers, metallic silver streaks slithering towards them wherever they looked. Each one had to be individually struck with the sound wave in the exact spot where the head joined the creature's body, requiring intense concentration from the two Time Lords. One slip and they knew they were both dead. Soon the overgrown path was littered with segmented metal spheres, like oversized, discarded ball-bearings. The Cybermats seemed completely undeterred by the destruction of their fellows. They just kept on attacking, consumed by their deadly purpose. And, one by one, they were destroyed and fell away.

At last, just as the Doctor thought he would have to falter through sheer exhaustion, the creatures stopped coming. The undergrowth stopped rustling and the forest was still again. It appeared the Time Lords had won, at least for the time being.

"Whew, that was close!" he exclaimed jubilantly. "How good were we though? Hand to eye co-ordination, that's the ticket! I told you all those shoot-'em-up games on the Nintendo Wii would come in handy some time."

Tejana did not answer. Concerned, he turned to look at her. She was bent over, supporting herself with her hands on her knees, her head bowed. "Are you all right?"

There was a short silence. Then she said, "Not exactly, no." Raising her head, she extended her arm towards him. Two dark puncture marks lacerated her wrist, the twin incisions looking somehow obscene and lurid against her smooth skin. "The first one got me."

The Doctor went pale. The virulent poison from the Cybermat fangs had already contaminated the wound. It had turned bruise-black, filaments of venom beginning to emanate from the bite-mark, reaching up her arm. Her complex Gallifreyan immune system was doing its best to halt the advance of the poison, but it was fighting a losing battle. Her cheeks were flushed with fever, her eyes much too bright. Reaching out, he just managed to catch her as she wavered on her feet and almost collapsed.

"Stay still, Tejana," he instructed, lowering her carefully to the ground and supporting her against the trunk of a nearby tree. "The more you move, the quicker the poison spreads."

"What were Cybermats doing here?" she gritted out, the breath constricting harshly in her throat. "The Mondasian Cybermen were all but wiped out in the Time War."

"I don't know. Perhaps some of them got stranded here when this galaxy slipped out of the mainstream of Time," the Doctor replied distractedly, his thoughts racing, sorting rapidly through his limited options. "Listen to me, Tejana. I have some Cybermat antivenin in the TARDIS. If I run, I can get there and back in half an hour. But I'm going to have to leave you here. I can't take you with me – it would only stimulate the venom and you'd never make it that far. You have to sit still, conserve your strength and wait for me."

Tejana stirred restlessly, murmuring something incomprehensible about the Time War. The Doctor gripped her by the shoulders and gave her a tiny shake. "Tejana, can you hear me? Do you understand?"

"TARDIS...antivenin...sit still, don't move," she muttered disjointedly. "Gotcha."

He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. "I'll be back. Trust me."

"Always," she responded, giving him a weak smile.

Then he was running back towards the TARDIS, as fast as he possibly could, his brown coat flaring out behind him.

Tejana had no idea how long she had been waiting. It could have been a minute, a day or a year. Time seemed to bend, winding in and out of her increasing delirium, twisting and refracting like an untouchable ray of light.

The Doctor had said he would be back. He would be back, wouldn't he...he wouldn't leave her here? He always came for her eventually, always, even if she had to wait a long, long time...

Sweat stood out on her brow. Her body seemed to burn, as arid and parched as a desert, bathing her in heat everywhere except for her injured arm. That was cold, so very cold, like ice. She looked down at it, trying to force her fevered brain to focus. The twin puncture marks on her forearm stood out in sharp relief, obsidian dark against her pale skin. Already a network of dark veins was beginning to trail further up her arm. The venom was spreading in a slow, lethal tide, reaching for her hearts.

She leaned back against the tree, feeling the roughness of the bark behind her head. Her own shallow respiration echoed in her ears, short, sharp inhalations like tiny hiccups. Overhead, through the canopy of leafy branches, she could see glimpses of orange sky. A small contented smile touched her lips, her mind briefly wandering into confusion. Orange? Was she on Gallifrey? Was she...home? At long last? But then the wind stirred the green, green leaves...green, not the beautiful silver of her own world...and the smile dropped away as she remembered that Gallifrey was gone forever. All she was seeing was an ordinary sunset on a planet time had forgotten long ago.

A single tear slid down her face, eerily falling as though in slow motion, landing with a splash on something in her lap. Looking down, she saw she was holding a doll, with long blonde hair, dressed in a ruffled white night gown. It was the doll from the abandoned village. Tejana frowned. She couldn't remember bringing it with her. Her tear had fallen on to its frozen porcelain face, pooling in its wide open blue eyes and running down its white cheek. A shudder ran through Tejana's body. The thing looked just like a weeping child. She tried to drop it, tried to force it from her lap, but her hands wouldn't seem to co-operate. The doll just lay there, staring up at her as if in reproach, its face wet with sorrow.

And then she heard it...the sound of the children crying, not just one, not just a hundred, but thousands, sobbing in fear and bewilderment, far, far away, beyond her reach, beyond her help. The forest seemed to wheel and yaw around her, spinning in slow motion like a nightmare.

"Who are you?" she screamed, her eyes raking the gloom surrounding her. "Where are you?"

As if in response, the sound of the crying grew louder and even more poignant. In the distance, through a veil of swirling mist, she saw a tall figure standing between the trees and watching her. For one wild, relieved moment, her vision blurred and she thought it was her father, returning with the antivenin. But then she realised that the man was wearing a long blue, air-force issue great coat.

"Jack?" she whispered incredulously.

He didn't answer. Instead he just stood there and looked at her, an expression of devastation on his face. Tears glittered on his cheeks, his eyes shattered and desolate in a way she had never seen before. Tejana's hearts nearly broke as she realised what it must mean. Something was happening back on Earth. Something had gone wrong, while she was away. Somehow, even in his overwhelming grief, Jack's gaze was accusing, blaming her for not being there...

"Jack!" She struggled to her feet and began to stagger towards him, straying further and further into the depths of the forest, away from the path. Brambles and creepers tore at her, holding her back, ripping blood from her skin as she desperately fought to reach him. But no matter how she tried, she couldn't seem to get close. His image wavered like a mirage across her tortured vision, always just a little bit further away, watching her with that terrible look of betrayal and condemnation on his grief-stricken face. "Jack! Tell me what happened! Jack!"

Then the children stopped crying and began to scream, one long, piercing note, resonating at some kind of weird frequency that went on and on and on, drilling mercilessly into her head. She clapped her hands over her ears, frantic to shut the ululating noise out of her head, yet knowing that it could not be shut out, because it was already inside.

"Jack! PLEASE!"

But the vision of Jack shimmered and disappeared, leaving her alone in a forest which was suddenly threatening, black with pain, the looming trees pressing in around her as the terrifying sound of the children screaming seared through her veins, inextricably entwined with the cybermat venom spiralling rapidly up her arm.

"Jack, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

She took three more stumbling, uncertain steps through the howling darkness and then helplessly fell.

And the earth opened up and swallowed her whole.

Another Author's Note: OK, so I wrote that last bit listening to "The Ballad of Ianto Jones", from the "Torchwood: Children of Earth" soundtrack. SO DAMN SAD! Going into my concrete bunker for a little cry now. (Slams door!)