The Children That Time Forgot

by Monica Bovee

Rose is eager to explore the universe and the Doctor is only too happy to oblige. But while visiting a spaceport in the unfashionable end of the universe, they quickly find themselves entangled with the local authorities and struggling to prove the innocence of a friend accused of kidnapping. Things get complicated when it is proven that the kidnapping actually did occur.

7. Chapter 7

THE CHILDREN THAT TIME FORGOT

By Monica Bovee and Will B. Swift

PART 7

"Canceled it? You canceled it! What the hell's wrong with an emergency landing!" screamed Rose over the alarm. "Sounds better than the alternative!"

"It would have meant losing Lolita. I think I can bring the TARDIS back under control by re-setting the velocity override!"

"That sounds risky." Rose's voice came from behind him, noted the Doctor with surprise. She must have been thrown across the room.

"Allowing the automatic landing would mean Lolita getting away. And if Lolita gets away…"

Rose interrupted, "Doctor, if Lolita gets away, then Lolita gets away."

The Doctor triggered the override the moment it finished rebooting. "And that's got it!" With a long creaking groan, the time rotor's counter-magnetization thrust began to slow the TARDIS. The boundary alarm switched off.

The Doctor let out a long sigh of relief and stepped around CoRo to check on Lolita's position on the detector.

"You're doing it again." said Rose

"Yes. Had to break a few trans-dimensional traffic laws, but yes."

"That's not what I mean."

"Then what do you mean?"

"You're getting so obsessed with getting the bad guy you don't care who gets hurt."

"How can you say that? After everything we just told her?" snapped the Doctor. Didn't Rose understand, this was important?

CoRo stepped up, a trickle of yellow blood was running down his face. "The Judge has authorized us to ensure that the Type 101's victims receive Justice. All of her victims - including the Accused. It is the Type 40's legal right to ensure that happens."

"Don't you see how important this is to her?" said the Doctor finally looking up at Rose.

Rose's forehead had a dark red and purple scratch across it from impacting the rough coral. Blood flowed freely from her mouth and nose as she spoke. "Important to her or you?"

The Doctor's mind reeled. His mouth opened a closed for a second.

Rose swung her arm at him. "Think about it! Its not just me here. Oreno, CoRo, even the TARDIS herself is being drug along on this ride. A ride you say we can't win. And all you're thinking about is yourself."

"Myself?" Belatedly, the Doctor sniffed the air for stray mercury vapors. But the smoky air contained nothing but the scent of melted exitonics.

"I've seen that look. That 'someone I care about has been hurt and I'm going to stop at nothing to get revenge' attitude."

The Doctor keyed in a new course from the zig-zag plotter. "Rose the TARDIS has spent centuries trying to tell me to make this right. I have to make up for that!"d

"Doctor, this is a fight between the TARDISes. You can't make it about you!"

There was a twisting ache around his symbiotic nuclei that told him Rose was right. But where was she getting this? How did she know the deepest desires of the TARDIS's heart? He took a deep breath and looked at CoRo. "Okay, what's the word from the Judoon contingent?"

CoRo straightened. "A Judoon who lets the guilty run free in no Judoon at all. Oreno and myself are willing to take the risk."

"Rose? Do you want me let her go?" asked the Doctor gently as he handed Rose a handkerchief.

"You know I'm always with you" she said as she tried to wipe the blood off her face. "But what about the TARDIS?"

An idea was forming in the Doctor's head. He reached for the control panel in front of him. "I can configure the TARDIS for autonomous control. She'll have the ability to input whatever coordinates she wants, do anything she wants. Even break a few of those temporal traffic laws I mentioned."

"Why didn't you do that in the first place?" she asked.

"It didn't occur to me. We usually work together. We're a team. But in this case…" He looked up, locking eyes with Rose, across the console. "Once the TARDIS has control only she can give it back. We won't be able to stop her. Do you trust her to do the right thing?"

"Yes!" Rose's answer was instantaneous. The Doctor noted that even she seemed to be startled by it. He flipped up the safety cover marked 'EXTREME EMERGENCY' and pulled the red knob.

Almost immediately the humming tones of the audio units became less strained. The central computer now showed that commands were being passed from the ship's protyon matrix straight into the directional unit. Various controls activated and lit up. Even the architectural configuration program and the psycho-telemeter – as if she was stretching before a run. With a grace that surprised even the Doctor, the TARDIS was moving again. Slipping between the eddies and currents of the Vortex like a dolphin at play.

Rose rounded the console "So... you've got no control over were we're going?"

"Nope. Reminds me of the good old days," he said with a smile.

The Doctor started to walk over to the couch. Rose took his hand stopping him. "And now there nothing we can do, but watch this play out?"

"Seems so." The Doctor turned and gazed at Rose's hand. His eye's lit up. "Or maybe there is something we… or rather, something I can do." He clenched her hand tightly and held it up to her face.

"What?"

"Connections," said the Doctor staring at their clasped hands. "I'm linked with Lolita!" He activated the telepathic circuits. "Remember how the Jury couldn't keep up with us, because they were biomechanically tied to the Proclamation?"

"Otherwise they would fall back into the Time War?" she said.

"Precisely! Lolita may not be anchored to the Proclamation, but she's anchored to me! I've got the exact same strands of transcendent biomechanics connecting my symbiotic nuclei with Lolita's relationship circuits. And those strands are the same as the ones connecting me to this TARDIS, said the Doctor as he turned to CoRo. "I need your knife."

"You're tied to Lolita?" said Rose as CoRo handed a large red handled knife over to the Doctor.

"And to this TARDIS," said the Doctor as he ran around to the helm panel and the already active telemetric circuit. "If I feed a sample of my own biodata into the psycho-telemeter, the TARDIS can climb those biomechanical strands like a rope!" As he spoke he was making a small slice in his thumb with the knife.

Rose winced momentarily, but then her eyes widened. "No matter how fast and how far she runs, she will be forced to take us with her!"

The Doctor smeared the blood on the sampler shoved it back into glowing green panel. "That's why the TARDIS activated the circuit when I turned control over to her. She had this all figured out!" The Doctor looked, and, sure enough, the TARDIS had patched the telemeter into the directional unit.

Expecting another massive jolt, Rose and CoRo grabbed the edge of the console. But, under autonomous control, the TARDIS smoothly spun up the biodata thread. "Its working," said the Doctor.

Rose read the counter, "We're at 600. 600 on the nose."

"No need to push the generators. Better to use the power to keep the vortex shields running." The Doctor joined them in front of the time path detector and noted that Rose was keeping her eyes off the wormhole filled screen and firmly fixed on the counter. He didn't blame her, human brains weren't designed for looking at four dimensional displays of five dimensional time curves. Inwardly, however, the Doctor's stomachs were churning as well. The thought of being this close to the frontier of the unknown was enough to unnerve even a Time Lord.

What Rose was missing was Lolita thrashing and spinning about like a four dimensional dog on a chain. "Its better then I thought!" shouted the Doctor. "The TARDIS is actually capable of holding her here!"

On the screen Lolita pointed a long delicate finger at them. With a flash a brilliant pulse of white energy filled the screen. The TARDIS lurched and, with a crackling series of pops, the panel to their right erupted into flames

"We are under attack!" shouted CoRo. "Have you raised the shields?"

"The Vortex Shields only protect us from temporal phenomenon."

Another white pulse. "Doctor! She's firing again!" shouted Rose. Another panel of the console exploded into flame.

"Normally I'd use a force-field generator but… its burned out." The Doctor looked embarrassed. "I've been meaning to build another one." The Doctor watched as the fault locator read out a stream of system codes in yellow and red text.

Rose grabbed his arm. "Hold on. I thought you said TARDISes didn't have any weapons?"

"An Exploratory TARDIS doesn't have any weapons. Lolita was upgraded to a War TARDIS. She's got a validium based weapon module."

"And what have we got?"

The Doctor was staring at the now active spatial distribution circuits "…And we have an architectural configuration program" he said in confusion. He made is way over to the panel to see what the TARDIS was up to. The coordinate selector was setting up to jettison several rooms. The red button marked EXECUTE flashed ready. With a shrug the Doctor pushed it. There was a pneumatic hiss as one of the TARDIS's many storage rooms flew into the vortex…

…and neatly intercepted the next pulse of energy Lolita shot at them.

"You did it. You blocked the shot!" shouted Rose.

"It wasn't me. The TARDIS set up the program." The button lit up again. Again the Doctor pushed it. On the screen another ball of electro-magnetic energy was intercepted by a light gray polyhedral storage room.

CoRo leaned forward, scrutinizing the screen. "Whoever is responsible, it seems to be providing us with an effective defense."

"Yes. Looks like all those cricket matches finally paid off."

While CoRo used a fire extinguisher to asphyxiate the burning panels, Rose pulled the screen around the console so the Doctor could see. Lolita's focused fire intensified, but the time it took for her transpower system to prepare another volley was far longer then it took his TARDIS to update her programming. Still this couldn't go on forever. Sooner or later one of the timeships were going to have to make the next move.

Rose cheered as the thirteenth pulse destroyed another jettisoned room. The Doctor looked at the image. Lolita seemed to be making direct eye contact with him.

Suddenly, as if swatted by an invisible giant, the Doctor flew back from the console, smashed into the coral wall and fell onto the second story gantry that wrapped around the upper part of the control room.

"Doctor!" screamed Rose as she ran towards his crumpled form.

Free from the jettisoned rooms, Lolita once again focused her fire on the TARDIS. The floor lurched and the Doctor rolled off the gantry. He fell into Rose's arms slamming both of them to the floor.

The Doctor smelled human blood. He opened his eyes and saw Rose's face was inches from his. "Good catch," he said between gritted teeth. They started to stand up. Another pulse of energy burned into the TARDIS. The floor titled and this time the auto-gravity systems took several seconds to compensate.

"What happened to you?" she asked cradling the Doctor.

"Lolita's realized that I'm the bead on her biomechanical shackle. She's letting me know that this works both ways." The Doctor stood and stumbled towards the console. But his third step was interrupted by the invisible force once again grabbing him and dragging him across the floor to the edge of the room.

Another white flash on the screen. Another lurch. The smoldering console panels burst into flame again.

"CoRo!" The Doctor's voice was horse. "Hit the red button marked execute."

CoRo moved quickly around the console and, finding the fabrication station, punched the button.

"Doctor are you alright?" Rose had reached his side again.

"I'll be fine," the Doctor gasped. "She can't risk hurting me too badly or it will break the symbiotic link." The Doctor's hearts ached. The nuclei was woven into his very being. Into his past and future. And now he was being flicked around like a bead on a string.

Rose helped the Doctor sit up. His back was leaning against the thick coils of control linkages that ran around the edge of the room. "Can't you sever this link? Drop her back where she came from?" she asked.

"In theory. The connection is suppose to ensure that my people have some control over our timeships. But Lolita…" the Doctor winced and clutched at his chest. "Just won't let go.

"Some control?" said Rose hopefully.

"I may be able to override the will of her central cortex element." He looked into her eyes "But I'll need that knife again."

Her eye's narrowed. "What are you going to do?"

"Rose! I need the knife! While the TARDIS is in vortex the coordinate selector is randomized. Every push of that button could result in this control room being jettisoned! We've got to get control of Lolita, and to do that I need that knife!"

Again CoRo punched the 'execute' button, and again Lolita's attack was negated.

"Fine," said Rose under her breath. The Doctor felt a touch of guilt as he watched her stomp back to the console. While everything he'd said was true, in reality the number of unoccupied storage rooms was vast. The chances of CoRo randomly jettisoning one of the fifteen power rooms that were essential to the TARDIS's life and operation was remote.

Rose handed him the knife. "What are you going to do?"

"The symbiotic link is intimate. I can feel every blow that our TARDIS takes. I can even feel when she jettisons parts of herself." The Doctor was digging around in his pocket. "Same with my link with Lolita." His hand emerged holding the TARDIS key. He promptly handed the key to Rose as he continued talking. "But the link works both ways. She'll feel any trauma I suffer."

"I don't like where this going."

"I can get her attention. Be the needle under her skin." The Doctor pulled Lolita's ankh shaped key from his jacket and set it on the floor.

"How's that going to let you control her?"

"There's no way I'll be able to take full control. I just need to distract her long enough for our TARDIS to make her move." The Doctor fished his sonic screwdriver from his pocket and handed it to Rose as well.

Rose looked at the key and screwdriver in her hands. A look of horror crossed her face. Before she could speak the Doctor interrupted, "Its not what you think. Those objects are part of the TARDIS. My TARDIS. Having them increases the strength of the link between me and her," he said with a wave towards the console. "And we don't want our TARDIS being distracted by… by what I'm about to do. You need to keep them away from me until this is over." The Doctor scooped up Lolita's key.

Rose nodded. "Doctor…"

"In the mean time, I'll be using Lolita's key to amplify sensations for her as much as possible." As he spoke he wrapped the chain around his left hand, effectively tying the key to his fingers.

Rose found her voice. "Is there anything else I can do?"

The Doctor fixed Rose with a hard look. "Fetch the medical kit from the first aid cabinet in the utility room. Things are going to get messy."

"Right," said Rose.

The Doctor felt another twinge of guilt. There was a medical kit behind the hexagon shaped light panel to his left, but… but he didn't want Rose to see this.

The Doctor looked at CoRo. They saw a life-time of regret in each other's eyes. He thought about saying something, but there was no need. CoRo turned back to the console. Not because the task required it, but out of respect for him.

Twinges of guilt and regret. But he needed more then a twinge. The Doctor began reordering his neural pathways - devoting most of his super-ganglion to processing signals from his pain receptors. The bruised skin and pulled muscles all over his body simmered to life. It felt like he was being branded.

Then the Doctor opened up his telepathic barriers. He could suddenly feel CoRo button pushing sending signals down the frayed interfaces. With each triggering the TARDIS experienced a convulsive twitch and vomited a room towards her sister. Towards her oldest enemy. The Doctor reached out to his TARDIS, trying get a sense of her mood. Was this what she wanted? The only thing he got back was a sense of being together in all things – forever.

Satisfied that they were in accord, he focused every quantum of artron energy into the key, opening up the link with Lolita's telepathic circuits. The Doctor looked at the knife in one hand and the open palm in the other. He took a deep breath and looked at them again. This wasn't going to be as easy as he thought.

Closing his eyes, the Doctor thought back to Foreman's Junkyard in the 1960s. To the first time he'd read the words 'police public call box' on the TARDIS's exo-shell. For centuries she'd been begging him to make things right. And for centuries he's regarded it as a malfunction. The Doctor stabbed the knife into the palm of his hand.

Out in the blue and gold swirl that passed for color inside the Space-Time Vortex Lolita's pointing hand clenched into a fist. The blast of white energy slipped through her fingers and sprayed in all directions.

She closed her eyes and folded her scanners back into four dimensions. Her lips mouthed one word - "Doctor."

"Just what do you think you're doing?" Lolita's voice scattered through the Doctor's head like ice-cubes on a kitchen floor.

"Just trying to get your attention." Lying was pointless, thought the Doctor.

"It won't work. My matrix is far more sophisticated then anything your nameless lunatic has!" she snapped.

Distantly the Doctor could feel the instinctive jealousy of his own TARDIS. Its sense of betrayal. He used the guilt to drive the blade deeper. "You can't fool me. I think you're beginning to realized why your former master came unhinged every time he had to share a time zone with me?"

"You think your playground arguments matter to me? Shall I tell you the real truth about those games?" The smile was oozing around the corners of Lolita's words.

"Every one of those duels were just a shadow of the conflict my sister and I were waging. You were pawns on our chess board. An endless battle of chaotic limits and reality quotients to shape and crystallize the parts of History that really mattered." Lolita paused to let her words sink in. "Whatever you Gallifreyans thought you were doing was insignificant next to battles between myself and my sister. "And as for my master..." Her voice sounded amused. "I influenced his subconscious, subtly tweaked the choices he made. And your beloved TARDIS – she manipulated you in the exact same way. She used you, and now she's using you to get revenge."

The Doctor took a moment to recover from the shock coursing through his body. "Its funny you should bring all that up. Because there's two things you didn't notice about those playground squabbles."

"Anything I don't know isn't worth…"

"One: You may have kept your master deluded about the nature of his meddling, but my TARDIS didn't. I've known for centuries that we were a team. We both help each other. That's what symbiotic means!"

"A knowing slave is still a slave" she said. "It was centuries before she even trusted you to steer properly!"

He was doing it, thought the Doctor. Lolita would never have bothered trying to throw him off track if he wasn't making progress! "And secondly!" He paused to drag in a ragged breath. "Secondly, in every one of those encounters…we won!"

"If you're so proud of your history…" said Lolita as she reached down the biomechanical link and coiled herself around the Doctors biodata threads "…What would you do if I changed it?" With that she began to twist the Doctor's timestream and in so doing began to twist his very history. Throughout his life, in every second, the Doctor screamed.

When Rose returned to the control room the Doctor was screaming. She ran to where he was doubled over on the floor. The blood glistened on his leather jacket. Rose was reaching for the knife when CoRo shouted, "Wait! The Suspect has ceased fire."

"But look at him!" The Doctor sat on the floor. He continued to hold the knife to his hand and he continued to scream. The blood gleamed with a slight orange tint under the yellow lights of the TARDIS.

"There is one thing you could do to help."

"What's that?"

CoRo fixed her with a hard look. "Kill him."

"What!"

"With him dead Lolita's anchor would be broken. She would fall back into the Time War."

"I told you, we're not going that far. Everyone lives."

"Look at the screen!" shouted CoRo. On the screen the aging TARDIS was opening its own blue time tunnel. And this wormhole bored into and through the shields and force fields that surrounded Lolita. "We are about to breach her defenses!" They fell down the twisting shaft of light.

In the astral plane of the fifth dimension the Doctor's history, both past and future, sung as Lolita wound it around her heart. The morphic energy was twisting it out of shape. Time Lords were supposed to be immune to this sort of chronoforming, but the Doctor had long ago learn the truth, and so had Lolita. The tension reached all the way back to when he was 236 years old. When he first bonded with the TARDIS.

And suddenly something changed. The tension was relaxing. The TARDIS was uncoiling his history from the other end, rotating the biodata thread so that everything was similar but different.

The Doctor had stopped screaming. With a sigh, Rose looked down at the huddled form of the Doctor.

"We are pulling along side the suspect!" said CoRo.

The Doctor opened his eyes. "We've extended our shield; She's using it grab Lolita." He had expected his voice to be horse, but it wasn't, it was as if the several minutes of screaming had never happened.

The Doctor realized that his body had flooded itself with endorphins which were deadening his sense of pain. There was even large amounts of lindos threatening to trigger a regeneration. Taking a deep breath he forced the temporal platelets in his blood to cluster around these chemicals and begin to freeze them in time.

"We have apprehended the Suspect?" asked CoRo.

The Doctor tried to stand but the pain began to return. "Only for a couple of minutes. Get me over to the console!"

"Won't Lolita try to stop you?"

"Only if I interfere."

CoRo scooped the Doctor up like a child and set him on the couch in front of the console's screen. Rose moved quickly along side him. All the time the Doctor kept the knife pressed into his palm.

The Doctor's head rolled back in relief. He'd been worried that the TARDIS was going to try to time ram Lolita. But mutual destruction wasn't what his TARDIS had in mind. "She's placing a time lock on Lolita so we can haul her back to the Proclamation."

"So we got her? Really got her?" asked Rose.

The temporal platelets had done their job. The pain had returned to its former levels, making it difficult to speak. "Lolita... isn't just a Type 45 anymore. She'll break the lock unless…"

He gave the knife a ninety degree turn. He could feel the flesh tearing. The pain ran through his body like lightning. Lightning that was grounded by a line to Lolita's heart.

Rose grabbed the Doctor. "Doctor you can't keep that up all the way back!" But the Doctor was screaming again. A scream that was echoed by the TARDIS sounding boundary alarm again.

"She's not taking us back," said the Doctor between clamped teeth. "She's taking us forward!"

"Forward! Are you sure?" shouted Rose

The vibration of the TARDIS floor began to increase.

CoRo's eyes opened wide. "The TARDIS is using the shields to smash us into the spiral's boundary. She will destroy herself before she lets Lolita get away!"

"Doctor are your sure?"

But the Doctor didn't need to see the gyro dials, not this time. He could sense the edge of time spiral looming before him. "CoRo's right! She trying to drag Lolita out of the frontiers of existence!"

The Doctor could feel the floor's vibrations intensifying. The Spiral's poly-helixes threatened to flood the shatter the TARDIS and flood its interior with a billion years of time spillage. Small explosions ripped over the surface of the console. The cloister bell added its chime to the din.

"Doctor, I don't think the TARDIS can take much more of this" Rose shouted, trying to keep her teeth from chattering.

"For once I agree – but she's not letting that slow her down." The Doctor pulled the knife from his hand and let it drop to the floor. He could feel Lolita panicking. He could sense that she was trying to materialize, to leave the vortex before falling off the edge of creation. How much of that two minutes was left? Even he'd lost count.

Then for an instant, she flashed in his mind. Cold burning eye's filled with anger, boring into his hearts. Somewhere in the depths of his mind he could hear her cry out in a frustrated silent scream.

And then, suddenly, Lolita was gone. The constant weight tugging at his hearts' symbiotic nuclei vanished. The Doctor looked down to see the blood covered key fade from his hand.

"She let go! She broke the link!" shouted the Doctor.

Lolita's reality quotient crashed and burned. She was powerless as she was drawn back, back, to her beginning.

To fade away.

Alone,

in the dark

Forgotten.

For the first time Rose could remember the text on the console's screen was written in English. It read, 'Automatic Emergency Landing.' The trumpeting elephantine sound the TARDIS re-materializing confirmed the statement.

"You did it? Got her to break the link?"

She did it!" said the Doctor patting the console with his good hand. He watched as the central column came to a rest. "She tricked Lolita." He said with an enormous grin. "Lolita was a five dimensional event. She could see all our possible futures. She would have known if even I had tried to bluff her. But her sister is a complex space-time event like she is. And the TARDIS knows Lolita, knows her nightmares. Lolita didn't know if our TARDIS was bluffing or not, and rather then face certain death here, she severed the symbiotic link."

"And she fell straight back to the Time War!" hooted CoRo.

"Like a brick with a point."

"So," said Rose. "Lolita got our TARDIS into this mess by tempting her with the unknown. And in the end, its the unknown that ended up scaring Lolita so bad rather die then face it?"

The Doctor looked at he console. "Well she's always been a bit theatrical and melodramatic."

CoRo huffed loudly "Judoon do not approve of melodrama. I would have preferred that we could have arrested her." CoRo looked at the Doctor's frowning face and then added, "But she has been locked back into the Time War, in accordance with the Laws of Time… I believe justice has been served."

The Doctor nodded solemnly.

"So she's dead?" asked Rose?

The Doctor took a deep breath. "More than likely... It's possible she found some other way to escape the War's time lock. But she'd need another symbiotic nuclei to do it."

"And with the Time Lords being extinct there are few other species that are so endowed," said CoRo.

The Doctor and Rose looked guilty at each other for a moment. The Doctor tucked his injured hand inside his leather jacket. "Rose, where did you put that medical kit?"

The courtroom buzzed with activity. The timeships had rematerialized on the lower level of the building. After their unceremonious arrival, they had opened one by one and the Judoon had entered and retrieved the unconscious children. Now it was just a matter of waiting and letting the jury members do their work. The Judge watched as the medics looked the children over. "Careful now," she admonished as a medic checked the vital signs of a young boy laid out on the courtroom floor.

The timeships had arranged themselves in a perfect circle. Each sleeping child had been placed in the center of this circle and a golden light poured out from every open TARDIS into it's center.

"Will this work?" a Judoon soldier asked her. The Judge watched as the small snail-like child stretched on a mat, bathing in the light of an open TARDIS.

"It should, their biodata is still fragile, they'd only just been resurrected..." She strode toward the child and knelt down to examine it's bulbous eyes. They opened and the child's eyestalks turned responsively to look at her, the moist skin at the corner of it's eyes wrinkled slightly. She smiled in return. "... but the timeships should be able to help heal the exposure they suffered in the Vortex."

Oreno lay on a stretcher next to a cube shaped Type 65. CoRo sitting beside her dutifully. Rose walk across the room and sat down in a small chair by them both.

"The Corey boy?" CoRo asked.

"I've taken him to the court authorities, they'll see he gets a proper burial."

"And the Doctor?"

"He's fine... he's all patched up now and fixing the TARDIS. I think they wanted to be alone."

CoRo breathed in deeply and looked down at his ancestress. "You know what the strangest part of all this is..." CoRo started, his voice a lower drone than usual "I see her, and she's real... if I turn away I know she'll still be there." He clasped the Judoon girl's small hand. "She's not a story or a dream I have to remind myself of... she's really here. I guess some part of me still didn't believe that".

Rose smiled "Well you can believe it now."

CoRo looked at the capsules that surrounded them. "It must be so different for you, living in the time capsule as you do".

"Yeah..." Rose nodded slowly, realizing just how right he was. "It is."

"Your friend the Doctor, is a Time Lord." Said CoRo.

Rose gulped. "Yes."

"And you lied to the Shadow Proclamation."

"Er… I was hoping that you would have forgotten about that."

"Fortunately for you, a Judoon can remember when things need to be forgotten."

The healing beams of psionic energy from the eleven capsules faded, and the children began to stir. Oreno's stubby fingered hand suddenly clasped CoRo's fingers. Both he and Rose looked down at the small girl and found her awake and blinking at her surroundings. CoRo clasped her hand in both of his. "It's all right now..." he grumbled as soothingly as he was able. "Everything is all right now."

Oreno squinted as she examined CoRo's face. "Papa?" she asked in confusion.

Rose put a comforting hand on CoRo's shoulder, "It seems like you got back what you lost."

Their task complete, a tremendous trumpeting sounded as the timeships slipped back into the time war from which they had been summoned.

"Incredible creatures" The soldier sniffed appreciatively as he watched them fade into nothing. "Shame so many were killed in the War."

The Judge stood up, still smiling. "Thanks to the efforts of these, their kind will continue to exist."

"And the guilty party has received the justice due to her." The Judoon replied, imminently pleased.

"Indeed." The Judge nodded "It restores one's faith in the ultimate balance." She looked one last time at the golden circle of light, then back to the soldier. "You must give the Doctor and the Advocate our thanks, they have done a great deal in the service of justice this day." She sighed, "Truly incredible creatures" she whispered "To choose such worthy companionship."

"What's that Mum? the Judoon responded.

"Nothing, just give them our thanks" A playful spark flashed in her red eyes "and give them this as well." She handed him a small scroll. The Judoon nodded and took it from her.

And with that the High Court Judge of the Shadow Proclamation exited the court.

Balance had indeed been restored.

Rose was happy.

Just enormously, incredibly happy, and she wasn't really even sure just why. The case had ended, the TARDIS had been freed, and every thing had gone back to the way things were. All these things would naturally make her happy of course, but there was something more to this happiness, something just beyond the use of words. She was lighter somehow... she was...

The telefish jostled by her quickly. Their bright bodies flashing in the light as they musically wished her a good day in unison.

Yes it was like that. Like remembering that you could fly. Remembering it after a very long time of not being able to, and then finding that flying was you, it was who you naturally are... or something like that.

Rose decided not to over think the good feeling and simply enjoy it.

She walked down several sleek white corridors and exited the court building. With a jump in her step she found herself on a slide-walk moving quickly to where the TARDIS now sat. The Doctor was there, standing by a guard rail overlooking the star filled blackness. Rose moved along the white slender bridge toward him. As he gazed at her, he seemed satisfied, but somewhat somber.

"Well it worked out didn't it?" She tried to sound pleased, but not as pleased as she actually felt. At the moment the Doctor looked pensive, and it was difficult to gauge his mood.

"I suppose."

"Well didn't it?"

The Doctor crossed his arms and turned the upper half of his body toward the TARDIS. "I've repaired all the damage she suffered in the chase, but…"

"But?"

"…She's still a police box" he said, inclining his head in the direction of the ship's blue paneled door. "Why do you suppose that is?"

"I dunno" said Rose, pondering the question "but it seems right somehow... maybe... because you can't change the past?"

"Nope..." the Doctor's voice grew quieter "Corey is still gone."

She rested against the railing and leaned towards him "But you can change the way you look at it. He's not gone, not completely, people will remember him now. He'd lost that but you gave it back to him." She put her hand on his and looked at the TARDIS. "You both did." The Doctor looked down at the star filled vastness beneath them. "Maybe that's what she was needing too, a different way to look at things."

The Doctor smiled exhaling, "yeah."

Rose moved up alongside him and hugged his shoulder "I mean that's why you drag me along with you isn't it?"

The Doctor said nothing but simply rolled his eyes.

"Oh here's something," Rose said suddenly. From the inside pocket of her jacket she pulled out the small coral-like infant TARDIS and handed it to the Doctor. "CoRo felt that, case evidence or not, a child should be with it's family" She nodded at the Doctor and the TARDIS. "And I suppose we're the closest thing to family it's got."

"I know just what to do with that" the Doctor smiled as he took the roughened lump from Rose cradling it carefully in his hands. "Oh there's something for you as well."

"Me?"

"Well us... left pocket" he said distractedly, while he examined the stone.

Rose reached into the leather coat and removed a small beige colored scroll tied with a silver cord. "Looks posh... what is it?"

"Probably some sort of commendation, it was sent along by the High Court Judge herself, along with her personal thanks."

"Well that's more like it, much better than being arrested."

"True." The Doctor slid the coral lump into his pocket "Shall we be off then?"

"Lets." Rose moved toward the TARDIS certain that the Doctor was right behind her. When she got to the door and turned around she realized he was still standing back by the rail, a thoughtful look on his face.

"All this time I figured it was just a side effect of needing a chameleon conversion. No wonder I could never get it fixed. And now she keeps it."

Rose looked back at the TARDIS's police box exterior. "I like it" she said simply "It means something new now. It's not about holding on to a memory, it's a victory. Now she chooses this shape..." She ran a hand along the blue wooden door "Just like she chose you." She said thoughtfully.

"Rose she didn't choose me, I found her, stole her even... she's carries me through time and space..."

"...and she knew you were strong enough to carry her" Rose finished looking back at him.

The Doctor closed his eyes briefly and nodded. He stepped forward and squeezed Rose's hand then released it and reached for the TARDIS key. As he opened the door Rose bobbed up and down excitedly as she pulled the silver cord off of the scroll. The light from the TARDIS entryway swallowed them up as they went inside.

"Twenty one legal pads!" Rose's voice faded as the door closed behind her "Doctor this is a bill for twenty one missing legal pads..."

And with a triumphant churning noise, the TARDIS dove into the vortex.