Standard disclaimers, yadda yadda. Thanks to Rosesbud for betaness. And yes, I acknowledge this story line has outworn its welcome.

XYZ

Chapter Four

XYZ

From his seat in the jump chair, Rom scratched his head then ran his fingers through the big floppy curls piled on top of his head, looking at the console as the green lights died away. "Well, that worked out really well."

His eyes were red and glassy, and he looked like he'd been awake well past his bedtime. Violet was already leaning against the railing, massaging the back of her neck. "Why won't she talk to us?" It should have been even easier with two of them.

Yawning, the boy blinked, trying to keep the tiredness that was creeping over them at bay. "I don't know. Maybe she's all bflert too."

Violet flipped the switch that sent the ship back into an idle state. She was already in one, seeing as how she'd powered herself down, but if she came back online, they didn't want to hurt their mother. Why had she locked them in? The TARDIS wasn't even telling her that. "Ok. That sucked. Jack has nothing. We have nothing. The Doctor hasn't so much as batted an eyelash since we got back from that ship…" Her pocket began twittering, interrupting her train of thought. With an exhausted sigh, she reached deeply in, pulling out a mashed granola bar still in the wrapping, a ball of string and a rubber duck, shoving it all into another pocket before finally reaching the phone. She answered, annoyed with the interruption. "Tell me something brilliant."

Rom hopped off the chair, creeping closer. He climbed the railing she was using for a step stool, straining to hear the conversation.

Violet groaned. "And you have no idea what it is? Of course you don't. That's because you're an idiot." She couldn't help it—she hated Owen Harper. Every time she heard his voice, she hated him a little bit more. Every word brought her one step closer to her eyes exploding. "You know it's a pheromone, but you have no idea what species it's supposed to affect. Great, thank you." She pinched the bridge of her nose.

The voice on the other end was terse. "You know, a little gratitude would be nice. I have managed to divine the impossible from the three poxy readings you let me take. Next I plan on solving world hunger with a paper clip and a stick of chewing gum."

Closing her eyes, Violet wrapped her hand around the rail tighter, trying to hold herself steady. "Yeah, well…"

The phone dropped out of her hand, and she didn't care. The clattering against the grill floor seemed to take forever, each space between bounces stretching out beyond anything reasonable. She could feel herself falling, but that happened so slowly too. She had time to think a world of thoughts.

Was it something with the ship? She'd been caught in a time anomaly within this TARDIS before. Or was it her brain? Was her near-perfect perception of time wavering? Could the Doctor's mental lash out cause something like this?

And what of Owen Harper? She was having trouble remembering why she hated him so much, now that the pressure behind her eyes had released. She should apologise that he was an a—

Her head hit the floor once.

Pheromones. What the hell did pheromones have to do with it? Seriously—they fought the four-ship formation. They destroyed one ship, sent the others packing. The Doctor was running ahead of them, entirely secure in the knowledge that they'd get out, even though she'd stopped to help Greg—Captain Jack saw to that. They came in the TARDIS. Violet hadn't been paying a lick of attention to the control room—she was trying judge how deep the slice in Greg's skin had been, mostly based on the amount of blood soaking through his shirt.

Her head hit the floor for a final time, and she felt it loll to one side. Very weird. The sound that her skull had made against the metal grating was deep and low, not at all what she'd expected to hear.

She was in a lot of trouble if she couldn't make her limbs start working again.

Aww hell, it figured. A theory she wanted to test out regarding the pheromones had just popped into her head, and she was probably going to lose consciousness. Could time drag on any more? What the hell was up with that? She just hoped SHE wasn't slowing time down for real—just what was happening with her brain? Was she spewing psychic runoff like the Doctor, too?

Her eyes finally closed and a swallow worked its way around the back of her throat. She'd come through the Void, finally, after all these years of it being completely closed—no cracks, not even little transmissions slipping through—and she'd promptly gotten herself into trouble.

Oh well. At least she'd met her brothers.

That was so weird. Brothers. She'd been an only child all of her life, now she had two—about to be three brothers. Why was she the only girl? Something really should be done about…

She really wanted to stay awake, but just couldn't. There were too many things pressing in on her mind. As soon as she reinforced one mental barrier, another one fell. Oh well. At least if she was unconscious, her brain would stop hurting…

Something cold hit her face, snapping her out of whatever place she'd been about to go of to. Shuddering with shock, she opened her eyes. Rom was standing over her with a metal jug. "Whew," he breathed dramatically. "That worked," he told the person on the other end of the phone that was crushed between his shoulder and ear. "She was getting all bflerty."

Ok, that was twice now. Violet refused to let there be a third time. She reached out and took the mobile from Rom. "Thanks." It came out as a breathy rush, trembling still from the cold. Her hair dripped onto her coat, just to ensure she was thoroughly drenched. "It's getting worse. Any signs of this happening outside the ship with the compound you found?"

"Ahh, suddenly I'm not so stupid," Owen Harper noted smugly.

Her eyes would probably start bleeding at any moment, but Violet was too tired to fight back. "Can you just check? I can't figure out why the TARDIS would lock us in, if pheromones have anything to do with it, and it's relegated to the inside of the ship. 'Cause, like everything else in my life, this makes no sense." Rubbing her forehead, she grabbed the rail and pulled herself to her feet. "And…can you send the chemical breakdown to my phone?"

There was some tapping in the background, followed by the definitive slamming of an Enter key. "I thought you lot could taste it in the air or something. Maybe you can lick the console like the Doctor does."

Violet's eyes narrowed. "Sod off. I'm trying to solve a real problem here, and I don't have time for--" an eyebrow shot up as the conversation caught up with her addled mind. "He licks the console? That's disgusting. Even for him." She looked to Rom, who just shrugged. "God help mum. If that's not love, sticking with THAT, I don't know what is." She ended the call before Harper could make another snide remark. Yes, her suspicion that her mother was a saint was correct.

Rom was tugging on the middle of his shirt, fidgeting back and forth from one foot to the other, looking at her for a game plan. That was weird. Not being in charge, per se. But having a child look at her like that. Like she knew what the hell she was talking about. Boy would he be surprised… "So what do we do now?"

Opting not to put the phone in the pocket of her drenched coat, Violet shrugged. "I'm going to clear my head with some tea—hope that works—then I'm going to take a look at what that--" she wanted to say prick. Her mother probably wouldn't approve. "What Doctor Harper sent." Ok, well she didn't like him. That went without saying. But usually she could choke down her hostilities for the sake of solving a problem. It was like everything was being exacerbated—tiredness, grumpiness… her desire to strangle that man.

The boy skipped half-heartedly after her. "You should change. Mum doesn't let us run 'round in wet clothes, since that one time, with the sea monkeys."

Sea monkeys? Violet couldn't even fathom what possible series of events could have ended with a rule banning running around wet, and sea monkeys.

XYZ

Gwen set one cup of tea in front Rom and the other in front of Violet, who was still shivering, wet and a tad dazed. She'd gone to see what the sound had been, and had gotten into the control room just as Violet was explaining the new game plan to the boy, and had offered to make the tea. She felt like a bitch for having gone into Rose the way she had—the other woman had been right. There were some things that former PC Cooper just didn't know about.

Men, coming into their home with guns, in the middle of the night…

No, Gwen would suppose, after that, the TARDIS would feel much safer than Earth.

Rose was still sitting at the table, rubbing the head of her sleeping four year old. "You scared the daylights out of me," she quietly told her daughter. "I had no idea what was going on."

Weary, the younger woman took a sip of the tea, making eye contact over the top of the cup. She set it back down, still trying to catch up with everything going on around her. "Scared me too. I—it was my fault. I got mad at Doctor Harper. I started thinking about the problem, and my mental barriers slipped—God. The Doctor's brain is like standing outside a category three hurricane right now, and then with Branden broadcasting on top of that... If it gets much worse, it's going to be doing far more than knocking me onto my back." She rubbed her eyes. "The TARDIS did tell the boys earlier that the Doctor wasn't well. I'll presume it was to get them to come inside. Now she's not talking to us at all. It's like she's completely blocking us out."

Concentrating for a few moments on the cup, she blew, thinking hard about the situation. "And she's locked the door to the cargo level, so I can't get to my ship. We were talking about either moving the Doctor to the Zero Room, or taking a breather there ourselves—but that room is a resource hog. The second we enter, it'll probably start drawing enough energy from the Vortex to make you wish that you've never been born…" She looked to her younger brother significantly, then apologetically back to her mother.

Readjusting the dead weight in her arms, Rose leaned over and gave her daughter's hand a pat. "We'll figure something out. This isn't your fault. Branden…was picking up on the Doctor's memories. He's probably better off unconscious, if that's the case."

Violet nodded, then pushed her cup towards Gwen for a top-up, her eyes showering thanks once the cup was full again. "Except now I can hear him too. I'm having trouble blocking just the Doctor out—now I have another voice to contend with." She looked to Rom. "I think he might actually be fairing better than me, which is a little frightening. You'd better watch that he doesn't try to take over the universe in a few years' time."

The boy stuck out his tongue. "It's not my fault I'm through the level four texts all by myself."

Gwen had to smile. It was almost a normal family conversation. If it weren't for, well, the extreme abnormality of the situation. "With everybody working on this, we're bound to find the answer in quickly," she tried to encourage.

A warm smile was returned by Violet. Gwen had met the young woman a long time ago, back when Violet was—well—a different person, but it seemed like they still had the rapport they'd developed back then. "Thanks. Soon as my head's a little clearer, I'm going to start working on figuring out what that compound is. Hopefully someone outside the ship can tell me if they're detecting it there, as well." She sighed in frustration, but her eyes grew very distant, staring into and through her tea, at some answer that was eluding her gaze. "Why's the TARDIS doing this? I mean—all she needs to do is give us a straight answer."

Rom drained his cup, seemingly impervious to the heat of its contents. "Yeah, why's she ignoring us? We're nice."

Violet rubbed her temple. "I swear. She's doing it because she hates me."

Offering her daughter an indulgent smile, Rose brushed the hair from her four-year-old's forehead. "Yes. She's doing it just because she hates you, personally."

That seemed to bring Violet back to herself, if even for a few moments. "I don't know. Maybe." She sighed. "So other than this mess, making lots of Time Babies and becoming honourary empress of Enj Prime…what've you been up to?"

It was impossible not to laugh. "Alright, who told you about that?"

"Psychic spew. I'm finding out all kinds of things I never wanted to know." She didn't offer any further details.

Gwen put her own cup down. "I'll be right back." It seemed only polite to leave them to it—this was really the first time they've had a chance to speak in a decade. There were things she would just be intruding upon, things she didn't feel she had the right to.

XYZ

Jack eyed his former partner in crime suspiciously. "That's just sick."

The younger of the two finished stirring his mug, putting the spoon on the sink in the small kitchenette. "What? You put sugar in yours. This is practically sugar."

"That's not sugar. That's honey. You just put honey in coffee."

Walking away from the coffee machine, Greg joined him at the glass wall, watching the bustle below in the Hub. "It's practically sugar."

Jack looked up at the ceiling as he took another sip from his mug. Unfortunately, they really had nothing better to do at this point than try to think over something warm, sugary and hopefully mentally stimulating. The last message from the alien straggler was that it needed time to compose a reply, which was little more than a diplomatic stall while they thought up something clever.

Tosh was working on the communications and monitoring the weird energy outputs they were starting to get from the TARDIS, Ianto was now digging through storage on a hunch and Owen was working on the weird compound that he THOUGHT was a pheromone of some kind, but really had nothing to go on, other than similar molecular structures being found in the reproductive processes of certain amphibians. It sounded like a stretch, but it was all they had to work with, and Owen seemed convinced that it was important—important enough to bother talking to Violet about it. As far as Owen was concerned, all aliens who thought they were better than him could go shove it.

Oh well—it had provided about ten minutes of rather obscenely funny entertainment this morning. "Back when I met her the first time, she was kind of gung-ho about the whole humanity thing. I got the feeling she'd chuck away all the Time Lord powers and such if she got to lead a 'normal' life. What happened between now and then?"

Greg turned, shoulder pressed against the glass. "Couple of bad experiences. I was surprised she even kept me around after that last mission with Torchwood." He sighed, swallowing down his emotions with his coffee. Whatever it had been—it had been bad. "Rival group out of Eastern Europe set a rather elaborate trap. Took forever to find her—was like she just disappeared off the face of the earth. Was almost two weeks before we got her back, and by then…." The damage had already been done. Any last delusion the girl had about people or the universe was gone. He just remembered the hollow, vacant look in her eyes as they'd wrapped a blanket around her, pulling her thinner, abused frame out of a cage no bigger than a dog kennel.

The young man shook his head, staring down into his coffee cup. "I was with the team that got her out, and I couldn't believe what—no, maybe I can. Anyway—it was definitely the worst thing she's ever been through, and it was at the hands of people she wanted to be like. I think she feels betrayed, more than anything. It's been seven years and she won't talk about it."

He wasn't sure he had a right to ask, but he did anyway. "And the other?"

Finishing the rest of the coffee, Greg stared down into the mug. "Her grandfather lost the re-election—mostly because she stopped an invasion attempt a couple weeks before the election. The other side spun it hard—basically made it look like he had set the whole thing up, and that Violet was part of the problem. He only ran the first time because of the international debacle that ended up with Violet spending two and a half weeks being dissected and tortured. Then the second time… She didn't take that well either. Now she only goes back to Earth to see her grandparents. She only 'gets involved' when she has no choice. This is probably more humans than she's been around in a couple of years." He put down the empty mug, a bit sad.

Rose had been a bit put off of humanity in recent years as well. She'd had a bad experience when Rom was just a baby, and she'd never quite recovered her equilibrium from it. The Doctor hadn't either, truth be told. Of course, he never said anything—the man perpetually played his cards close to the chest (Jack sometimes still found it difficult to believe that he'd actually managed to procreate—more than once, even! He never asked Rose about her love life, so there might have been, uh, technology involved, but it didn't seem like she was that kind of girl). But Jack knew just how much he limited time on Earth since that incident. He didn't think Branden had ever actually seen the sky on this planet in this time zone, and it was a little sad.

Putting his own mug down, Jack folded his arms over his chest. "Yeah, that'll shake the ol' faith in humanity. Hey, if we can skip to the part where we save the day and everybody's happy and back to normal, this might be good for her. Granted she and Owen don't square off in the autopsy room with bone saws or something."

The kid resisted, but eventually a grin spread across his face. "That was funny. I don't care if it's wrong to think that."

Unable to hold back a laugh, Jack grinned at the kid. Greg was a little evil with how loose he played it with his lover's feelings, but obviously had the 'nice guy' mutant power. Usually they finished last, but it looked like the young man had somehow managed to pull through. Didn't mean Jack couldn't give him a hard time. "I'm telling her you said that." They both stared out into nothingness for a moment.

Suddenly their faces fell. Apparently they both had the same idea at that instant. "Pheromones," Jack muttered, snapping his fingers. "We had it right there in front of us."

Greg dug into his pocket for his phone, his thumb fumbling with the buttons. "I can't believe we didn't think of this before."

Touching his headset, Jack dialed Owen. Or he tried to, at least. All he got was static. A few feet away, Greg tossed the mobile phone onto the table, sighing at its apparent uselessness. "I can't get through to her."

Jack grimaced, gesturing for the young man to follow him to the door. "And I betcha it's the TARDIS running interference. She knows we've figured it out."

TBC…