Chapter Nine

A/N: Thank you to DarkPhantom101 for reviewing the last chapter.

The TARDIS hummed softly, almost comfortingly, as if she could understand her owner's distress. The Doctor was leaning heavily on the console, a war raging in his mind over what to do now. He had never met this girl before a few hours ago, but he could not leave her in the clutches of the Master. That was not a fate he would have wished on a hated enemy, let alone an innocent child. 'I cannot allow him to corrupt her.' he thought. 'She is a lonely, vulnerable girl whose biggest dream all her life was to have a family. He is her father and he will use that against her in any way he can, to bring her to his side. It's what he always does.'

For the past few hours, the Doctor had searched all over the city for the missing child, trawling every street in search of a flash of blonde hair, but had had no luck. This had only made him more worried. If she had disappeared so suddenly, then it was almost doubtless that the Master had found her. The Doctor did not want to think of what that might mean, though he could not stop the combination of worry and pity from gripping at his heart.

Finally, the man had sunk down onto the pavement in despair, leaning against the railings of the very orphanage where this whole silly matter had begun. There was a small part of him, the selfish part, that wished he had never seen that girl. If he had never seen her, then he would feel no responsibility for her, he would have no need to try and protect her from her evil father, the man who had once been his closest friend. Everything would have been so much simpler if he had simply ignored the Ood's prophecies.

And there were other implications, far greater than the fact that an innocent child had been burdened with a father such as the Master, for that same man had discovered a way to overwrite the very genetic restrictions the Time Lords had placed on themselves, millions of years ago. If he was capable of accomplishing such a thing, which their race had thought impossible for all that time, then surely he was unstoppable.

'But I have to try.' the man reminded himself. 'It always comes down to me and the Master. That makes it my job to stop him, no matter what the odds.'

He had always been the one responsible for the Master, ever since they had been children. When the Master had wanted to play jokes on the elders at the Academy, he had always been the one to tell him no. When the Master had wanted to torture innocent humans, he had tried to stop him. When the Master had wanted to run away and travel the stars in a stolen TARDIS, he had said that the man was insane. 'Perhaps if we'd travelled together, he'd be a better person today.' the Doctor wondered. 'Or perhaps he never could have been saved.'

But Clarelia could.

With renewed vigour, the Doctor had returned to his TARDIS, an idea coming to him. When he had left Broadfell, he had failed to notice the blonde hair attached to his coat. Lucy's hair. He could use it to track the girl, and through her, find the Master before it was too late to stop him.

It took only a few minutes before the TARDIS had located the signal and the Doctor sprinted out of the doors of the time machine. A frown creased his forehead; he had landed in a graveyard.

'Why on Earth would Clarelia have come here?' he wondered, blinded by optimism. 'Maybe she thought the Master wouldn't look here. I hope she was right, I really do.'

But the more he searched, the more the Doctor became sure that he had been wrong. There was no sign of Clarelia in the graveyard. 'I'm too late.' he sighed, resting his head in his hands. If the girl had ever been there at all, she had certainly not been for a while.

"This is the last place the TARDIS can trace her to." the Doctor whispered, his words carried through the churchyard on the harsh winter breeze. "So either she's here, or she's gone somewhere the TARDIS can't trace her."

That was the most worrying factor. Even as he stated the two options, he scarcely entertained the thought of the former being the truth. That meant that she was somewhere untraceable. 'But nowhere should be untraceable for the TARDIS.' he thought, despairing once more, as yet another of his leads brought him to a dead end. 'It's the only place in the Universe that's entirely off the map.'

Suddenly, a thought struck him, a thought so terrible that it was all he could do not pitch forwards onto the ground. "That's impossible." he breathed. "That's not possible."

And yet it made so much sense. The disappearance, the graveyard, the Master's plan, they all fell into place like pieces of a puzzle. A lonely, vulnerable girl whose biggest dream all her life was to have a family. The Doctor's own words rang in his mind; they seemed so much more bitter now he knew the way his old friend had twisted them. 'And what better to use against the girl than the thing she wanted the most? The person she lost before she ever realised she had her?'

The Time Lord shook his head and let out a shuddering sigh. Even if he could say nothing else for the Master, the man remained as cunning and clever as he had ever been. To bring her to his side, he was going to give Clarelia the one thing she wanted most in all the world.

He was going to give her back her mother.

A/N: Not very good, I know, but here it is. Please review!