Chapter Four

Jack screamed.

Well, no he didn't, but he wanted to.

As he opened his eyes to an empty room, he could smell the smoke rising in streamers of lung-clenching heat from the remains of Gwen's couch. The front room was a blackened mess; there was now a gaping hole in the exterior of the apartment, its edges charred and dangling cotton candy insulation with bits of wire thrown in.

"Looks like vegetable rotini," Rhys rasped as he stepped over a white vase grayed with ash that had melted into the carpet, his features fixing on his wife's position. "Good thing I was in the loo. What the hell happened? Did a hostile find us? Where's the Doctor? And his babies? Oh good god."

Gwen's eyes went wide, her face losing all blood supply as she turned to her husband with their wriggling son in her arms. "A bloody angel, Rhys," she said, balling her free hand into a fist and shoving it into her stomach, so hard Jack thought she would break a rib, "…an angel came. The Doctor said something was coming, and he started burnin, like a fire had started inside and it was eating him up. Not regenerative, though… something else. His baby wouldn't come. Then, an angel came and touched him, gave him some strength back, and he gave birth. They 've vanished, Rhys. They're both gone. And look at my floor."

Her face settled like the stuffing in a cheap carnival prize as she stared at the saplings that had sprung up in the dirt on her carpet.

"The angel did that. God, Rhys, I hope they're both all right, wherever they are."

Jack just shook himself, and held his newborn daughter to his chest with every bit of strength he could find, blinking at the scene before him. Then, as he looked at Gwen and Rhys, they looked at him. And he smiled.

"Course they are," he said, as he took his first swim in his little girl's deep ocean eyes, "…it's Thursday."