Alice must have drifted off again, because the next thing she was aware of clearly was the sound of the TARDIS' engines – they had left Janet Street behind, but glancing around the medbay, Alice could see no sign of Susan Mason, the woman they'd gone there to find. She closed her eyes, swallowing back emotion.

Alice tried to get up, but she couldn't use her hands, and when she tried to roll sideways to sit up, she couldn't stop a shout of pain – even with the morphine still in her system, her shoulder felt like someone was twisting a knife in it. It was almost as bad as when the wound was fresh. Panting, she flopped back down and breathed through the pain until it settled to a manageable level. She wouldn't be trying that again in a hurry.

Alice could see out of the corner of her eye the earpiece that she had been wearing – Jack had removed it and put it on the counter several feet away, and there was no way she would be able to reach it from the bed to call Jack and find out what was happening.

Alice twisted just enough to be able to see across to the Doctor. He was unmoving, but to Alice's eyes he looked a little better, more relaxed, perhaps no longer unconscious, but sleeping.

'Doctor,' she whispered, reluctant to wake him, but suddenly feeling an overwhelming need to reassurance that he was indeed recovering.

His eyelids flickered for a moment, and he made a sound halfway between a gasp and a sigh. Alice belatedly realised that with the injuries to his neck he probably wouldn't be able to speak.

'Sorry. You can go back to sleep. I just wanted to make sure you were alive,' she said, with some relief. She turned her head back to look straight ahead, as the strain of looking sideways was pulling at her shoulder, which seemed to be aching more and more, though her hands, coated in the ointment, weren't feeling too bad. Looking at them, she realised that the ointment had dried to a sort of rubbery coating, as they were no longer sticky. She also realised that there must be some anaesthetic in the ointment, because they appeared a lot worse than they felt. She hoped it wouldn't start wearing off any time soon.

'I'm awake,' the Doctor managed, his voice cracking. 'You alright?'

'Yeah,' Alice lied. 'Do you know where we are? I heard the TARDIS engines, but Jack hasn't come back.'

'He'll have used the emergency return programme, taken us back to the Hub,' the Doctor offered. 'We didn't find her, did we?' he asked, after a pause.

'No. I'm sorry.'

'Not your fault. Still a chance she'll be found. Like Jack.'

'But Jack was dead.'

'Yeah.' The Doctor and Alice lapsed into silence.

Finally, the Doctor couldn't lie still any longer, and with some effort and a grunt of pain, managed to roll sideways and get himself off the bed. He staggered, and found his balance, bracing his forearms against the side of the bed and keeping his head down while he waited for the inevitable wave or dizziness to pass. He then turned and made his way carefully over to where Alice was lying.

'You lied. You're not OK,' he stated, still in a hoarse whisper.

'I'm better than you,' Alice retorted. 'I'd be up and about if my shoulder didn't hurt so much.'

'You'll have torn all the muscle again. I can help with that,' he offered, but before he could reach for any of the medical equipment, the medbay door burst open, and the look on the Doctor's face was almost comical as he realised he'd been been caught out of bed.

'Doctor, what are you doing?' Jack demanded. 'How are you even awake?'

'Oh, you know me,' the Time Lord croaked. 'Take more than a poisonous rift dwelling monster to keep me down for long.' But he did at least sit.

'Actually, Jack, you might want to look at Alice's shoulder. I think she re-opened the wound. It'll need the dermal regenerator again,' he suggested, nodding towards the device which was still out on the counter from the day before.

'Why didn't you say?' Jack asked, unzipping Alice's top just enough to be able to see clearly that the dressing on the gunshot wound was soaked in blood again. He peeled it off, and dumped it in the nearest waste vaporiser, grabbing the dermal regenerator and adjusting the settings before starting to pass it over the bloody mess. Alice bit her lip. The process wasn't any more painful, exactly, but it was an unpleasant feeling.

'This time, you really will have to wear the sling for a few days,' the Doctor reminded her in his hoarse whisper. 'Needs time to heal. Not that I'm ungrateful, though.' He looked down, and Alice wondered whether she would escape a lecture about recklessness this time, since the Doctor had been the main beneficiary.

When Jack had finished, he wiped away the dried blood, and covered it with another dressing, taping it in place.

'Do you feel up to coming into the Hub?' he asked them both. 'We need to debrief, but we can do it here if you prefer.'

The Doctor and Alice glanced at each other, and the Doctor answered for both of them. 'We'll come in. Any chance of tea?'

'Don't tell me – the tannins and free radicals will have you back to normal in minutes?'

'They'll help,' the Doctor admitted, with a half smile.

Jack helped Alice sit up, and then stand. They made a slow and unsteady procession through the TARDIS, and Alice was glad to sit down again when they got to the boardroom.

...

The debrief was a sober affair. Ianto had broken into the Jaffa cakes, but although the Doctor looked longingly at them, his throat was still too bruised to let him swallow anything other than the tea. Alice had one, but it didn't feel right to enjoy it, and in any case, the gel coating her hands smelt odd, and she still felt queasy from the morphine.

In short, the attempt to rescue Susan Mason had been a failure. It was impossible to know if she was even still alive, and trapped in the rift, or if by now she had already been expelled at some other location or would be at some point in the future. The Doctor would be able to search, but it was looking less and less likely that she would be found alive. Alice, like the others, found that the knowledge that they had saved two people wasn't enough to make up for the fact that they had failed to save two more.

They were all exhausted, but Jack, Gwen and Ianto had an emergency call-out to deal with a Weevil attack, leaving the Doctor and Alice alone in the Hub. Alice's head was full of questions, but it just didn't seem to be the right time to ask them. The Doctor seemed on edge, probably from a combination of pain, frustration, and self-reproach, since Alice could echo all three feelings. Plus, she didn't want to make him talk too much until his throat looked better. Although, from what she could make out through the gel coating, it did look like it was healing rather more quickly than her own hands were.

So they sat in silence, and eventually Alice felt herself drifting off, and decided to settle down more comfortably on the sofa. Three days before she had woken up in exactly that position, to see the Doctor sitting exactly where he was now. But everything had changed. The universe was a bigger place, and she felt years older. There was more to life now, much more, but she had also lost something, an innocence that she would never now be able to reclaim.

She had just begun to fall asleep when the telephone rang, shattering the silence. She struggled upright, and the Doctor shrugged, pointing at his neck, and then at Alice.

'I suppose I'd better answer it, then,' she offered, and eventually found a handset buried under some papers on Gwen's workstation, clumsily pressing the call button with a gel-coated finger.

'Hello?'

'Gwen?' came a male voice on the other end of the phone.

'Um. No, sorry, she's not here at the moment,' Alice replied, realising that she must sound like an idiot. 'Can I take a message for her?'

'Tell her it's Andy, and that we've got something she might be interested in. Middle aged woman, found an hour ago in the Splott industrial estate with weird burn marks – paramedics thought it was some kind of industrial accident, but nobody can identify the corrosive, it doesn't match anything that's in use on the estate. Or anything on the hospital poisons database, either. Anyway, tell her to give me a ring, will you?'

'Yeah, will do,' Alice replied, her mind already working overtime. 'Say, Andy, where is she now, and have you got an ID for her?'

'The Royal Infirmary. And no, not yet. We're working on it. She's still unconscious.'

'Thanks, Andy, I'll pass that on.'

'Cheers then, love.' The line went dead, and Alice turned to the Doctor in triumph.

'She's still alive!'

'What?'

Alice quickly relayed what the Police Officer had told her, and the Doctor seemed to come back to life himself, jumping up from the sofa and grabbing the phone handset from Alice to call Jack.

But when the call was connected, it was clear that this was a bad time – they had clearly managed to find the Weevil, but were having some problems containing it. Jack merely said 'deal with it,' and cut the connection.

The Doctor almost looked pleased. 'Alice, would you care to accompany me to the hospital?' His voice was sounding more normal now, just a little scratchy.

'Why not?' she replied. 'But we'll both need to cover this stuff up,' she went on, holding her hands up and gesturing towards the Doctor's neck. 'It's not exactly 21st century, is it?'

'No, it's not, but it's good stuff,' the Doctor protested. 'We'll go in the TARDIS and pick something up from the wardrobe room.

Ten minutes later, Alice and the Doctor exited the TARDIS, which the Time Lord had managed to materialise behind a tree in a very dark corner of the staff car park at Cardiff Royal Infirmary. The Doctor had found from somewhere a ridiculously long knitted scarf, which effectively covered all the healing gel round his neck, though he did complain that it was hot and itchy, and that he couldn't remember why it had ever been a favourite garment. There was a floppy hat, too, that strangely went well with the scarf, perhaps because they were both so eccentric. But it did cover the burn marks and gel that coated the Doctor's ears. He had also donned a pair of gloves.

Alice would have been ashamed to have been seen with him, had she not looked almost as bad, with enormous pink mittens on her hands, and her arm still in a sling. How they were going to persuade anyone in the hospital that they were official enough to discharge Susan Mason, Alice had no idea. At this rate, they would be lucky if the receptionist didn't call security. Or someone from psychiatric, for that matter.

She was proved wrong. They found the entrance to Accident and Emergency, and when the Doctor approached the desk, he fumbled for a moment in an inner pocket, drawing out a small wallet and flashed it at the woman behind the desk.

'Home office. We're here about the Jane Doe found on the Industrial Estate.'

The woman looked usefully impressed, and immediately paged the registrar who had been charged with her care.

She looked tired and harassed. Alice surprised herself by being pleased – a tired, harassed, doctor was more likely to be grateful for them taking the woman off her hands. She and the Doctor followed her.

As they walked, Alice whispered, 'why do you have Home Office ID?'

'Psychic paper. Shows exactly what I want people to see.' The Doctor passed her the wallet, and she opened it, frowning at the contents.

'But this doesn't say anything about the Home Office,' Alice objected.

'Doesn't it?' the Doctor asked. 'What does it say?'

'It says, "Wouldn't it be fun if you were telepathic too."'

'Oops, sorry. Mind wandering,' he said, with a mischievous grin.

They had followed the registrar to the cubicle at the far end of the corridor, and she pushed the curtain aside to let them in. The woman on the bed was undoubtedly Susan Mason, but, like Fran Morgan, she had obviously been in the rift for a while. The burn marks which criss-crossed her face and chest looked to have been inflicted by a flailing tendril. She had been luckier than Alice had dared hope, avoiding the sort of injuries that the Doctor and Jack had suffered.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and the registrar had gone back outside the cubicle, and the Time Lord was happily lying through his teeth. Alice could just make out a few highlights: 'a matter of national security... no risk to the general public ... no, no need for quarantine... yes, we've got a waiting ambulance...' Within minutes, the registrar had agreed to discharge the woman in their care, and Alice began to wonder whether the Doctor's powers of persuasion must be due to some kind of mind control. She couldn't believe it had been that easy.

They wheeled the woman through the staff car park, and into the TARDIS. Once she had been transferred onto one of the medbay beds, the Doctor set her up with a drip, and Alice made herself useful by taking the trolley back. They were back at the Hub within forty five minutes of Andy's phone call, Susan Mason had a drip full of saline and retcon, and the gooey ointment spread liberally across the burns. Alice and the Doctor were feeling very smug indeed when Jack, Ianto and Gwen returned at around eleven o'clock, looking exhausted and dishevelled. Though they did admit that a Weevil hunt which ended peacefully and with no injuries could be counted as a win.

Everyone was sick of pizza, so the Doctor declared it to be curry night, and when it arrived, he surprised everyone by claiming that certain chemicals in fenugreek and cumin were wonderful for healing bruising in Time Lords. Alice didn't know whether he was joking or not, but there may have been some truth in it, because he proceeded to eat all his own portion of curry and half of hers, presumably making up for the food he missed earlier.

There was quite a bit of report-writing to be done, but this was done accompanied by the healthy banter that comes when a team know each other well, and from the shared euphoria of knowing that things had gone about as well as they could have done. Susan showing up, and in relative good health, had felt like a bonus, or even perhaps a reward, to all of them.

Working at Torchwood seemed to require an endless stamina for late nights. The Doctor freely admitted that he only slept about twice a week, but even he was starting to look a little tired. In the end tiredness won over pride, and Alice crashed out shortly before one in the morning, opting to lie down where she lay and fall asleep with the buzz of conversation still going on.

...

An hour later, the Hub was quiet. Jack surveyed his kingdom, silently giving thanks that they'd got through the day almost in one piece, and especially that Alice and the Doctor looked to be recovering so well.

He looked down at Alice, sprawled on the sofa, and smiled. Earlier in the day, at Janet Street, he'd thought he might lose both of them. He'd seen on the monitor the moment when the Doctor had been pulled into the distortion, but he'd barely heard Alice's panicked cry for help, because by that time he'd been completely occupied with trying to contain the numerous small explosions all over the console as the aged time ship struggled to stabilise the distortion long enough to save her Doctor.

When Jack had finally emerged from the smoke-filled console room, his relief had turned to dismay at the sight of their injuries, and especially when the Doctor had taken so long to regain consciousness. Jack had asked him about that later, about why his respiratory bypass hadn't kicked in. The Doctor had looked at him curiously and replied that it had, but that it only bought him an extra fifteen minutes or so. He hadn't realised that in real time, only a few seconds had passed, while he had been struggling with the creature for quarter of an hour.

Jack shivered at all the worse 'what ifs'. You win some, you lose some, he thought, and we won that one. Just about.

The Doctor had hinted that he and Alice would be leaving in the morning. As she lay sleeping on the sofa, she looked small and fragile, and Jack hoped that she really was ready for life in the TARDIS. Not that he could promise her anything safer, if she chose to remain behind.