Author's Note: A number of people have pointed out to me that just because Seo is blond doesn't mean she's related to Buffy. I just want to mention that it's not just that she's blond. It's that Seo's face looks almost exactly like Buffy's face. Enough so that people instantly know they're related.

I thought I mentioned this earlier. That Seo looks almost exactly like Buffy. Maybe I forgot.

Heh. Jack would know something about lost children popping into your life after being separated from you for a long time. Wouldn't he?

In case you're wondering, yes, Jack has worked something out about Seo, by the end of this. And you'll find out what that something is tomorrow. When he tells Buffy.

Giles wasn't at his house. And still, no answer from his cell phone.

"Can she stop herself from regenerating?" Xander asked, leaning over Seo. "Because… if she's worried they're going to kill the Doctor the moment they find her, she might actually kill herself for good."

"I don't know!" said Buffy. "I didn't take notes or anything, when the Doctor talked about it."

Willow gave Buffy a pointed look.

"Yeah, well, those notes are at the bottom of a giant crater," Buffy said. "So they're not helping anyone." She squeezed her eyes shut, and muttered something beneath her breath. Her last desperate hope.

"Buffy, what are you…?" Willow asked. Then realized. "You're contacting that Doctor Protecting Super-Entity that can't say no to you!"

Buffy didn't answer.

"Do you know how much you could screw up the universe by doing that?" Willow demanded. "You can't just play around with—"

"Did it work?" Xander cut in.

"I… don't know," Buffy confessed. She looked around. "I thought… he'd show up, by now. Just to grumble at me about how I'm always bossing him around and making wishes."

Xander looked around the room, too. Double checking, just in case any super entities had turned up while Buffy wasn't looking.

"If he's not showing up, that must mean he's already given me everything I need to get me through this," said Buffy. "I just need to think. Think really, really… really…" She stopped. Her eyes staring at her cell phone. Her fixed up cell phone. Fixed up for no apparent reason, earlier. She pressed the phone book icon, then picked a number at random. Looked at it. Spun around, to face Willow. "Do you think Seo can survive three hours, without medical help?"

"I have no idea," said Willow. "The only one who'd know that would be… well, the Doctor. And Seo."

Buffy winced. "Somehow, I think if I asked Seo, she'd be all with the freak-out." She hesitated, looking down at Seo. Then back at her cell. At the number she'd selected at random.

Luck had to be on her side. It just had to.

With every faith that the Doctor Protecting Super Entity had gotten this right, planned this all out the way it was supposed to be — and, hopefully, still couldn't say no to her — Buffy grabbed up Seo, taking Giles' car keys off the hook where he always kept them, and making her way out the door.

"Why?" asked Xander, after her. "What's 3 hours away?"

"Cardiff!" Buffy called back.

Buffy had never been completely competent behind the wheel. But dire situations called for dire actions, and she damn well tried her best.

She wasn't nearly as bad at it as she'd expected.

Nor did she get pulled over for seriously speeding — which she assumed was down to Mr. Doctor-Protecting-Super-Entity, since she was going, like, 90. But she made it to Cardiff in record time, and pulled up to Roald Dahl Plass, setting the car into park, and jumping out almost before she had a chance to turn off the engine.

She was more careful about Seo, gently maneuvering her out of the passenger side of the car. The girl looked worse, now. Way, way worse. Pale, her brow in a sweat, and Buffy wondered if maybe she could stop herself from regenerating, and was doing everything in her power to stop herself, right now.

To save her dad.

"And if you save him, you get locked up, again," Buffy whispered. Because whatever reason the Doctor had for confining Seo to the TARDIS, it definitely wasn't over something that had happened when she was too young to understand.

Buffy bet it had way more to do with what that demon Alzoncren had shouted, just before he'd been destroyed. ("Death is coming, death for all, and she — she is Death!")

The sudden rush of footsteps, and Buffy looked up, to find Jack racing forward across the Plass, backpack on his back, looking around for something, in earnest — as if his life depended on it.

"Jack!" she shouted.

Jack stopped. Turned. His eyes lighting up. "Buffy!" he said. "You wouldn't happened to have run into the—"

Then his eyes landed on Seo. Knife blade still in her chest. Jack's every expression melting into utter and complete shock.

"Two hearts," Buffy said. "She's still alive."

Jack nodded.

"Okay, then," he said, swinging his backpack off his shoulders. "I guess that answers that question."

"She'll be fine," Jack assured Buffy, when they were up in his office, door shut behind them. "Trust me. Owen will be griping the whole time, but he'll fix her up. Good as new."

Buffy nodded, but didn't speak. Her eyes fixed on the floor.

"Wanna tell me how it happened?" Jack asked.

"She… got sacrificed to a demon," Buffy admitted. She spun around on the swivel chair, back and forth, trying to take her mind off what was happening. But failing. "She is going to be okay, right? I mean, not like I care, because, you know, she's probably just a shape-shifting demon alien type thing, but… she's still going to be okay, right?"

Jack put a hand on her shoulder. "Buffy," he said, leaning down to look into her eyes. "She'll be fine. Promise." He gave her a wink. "Especially if she inherited any of her parents' healing abilities."

Buffy blushed. Looked away. "She's not my… or the Doctor's…" She closed her eyes, and shook her head. "I mean, she can't be, right? It's just… wishful thinking. I'm never going to see him again. I know it. You know it. He thinks I'm dead and it's better that way."

"Well," said Jack, "I can't speak for your DNA, but she's definitely the Doctor's kid."

Buffy snapped her head around to stare at him.

"I've got a Doctor detector," Jack said, with a grin. "The moment she showed up, it went off."

"You've got a Doctor detector?" Buffy asked. "Since when?"

Jack gave a sheepish shrug, which meant that he was not going to answer her question.

"Then… then she's actually…" said Buffy. "I mean, she can't be… but…"

"Yes," Jack confirmed. "She's actually from your future. In the future, you and the Doctor meet up, again. He finds out you're not dead. You two have a crazy night together. And… nine months later… kid!"

Buffy felt her head spinning.

"But… but no, no, she can't really be…" Buffy shook her head, her eyes fixed off in the distance. "But she is. I know she is. I've always known. When she's around, I just… I don't know… feel something for her. Like… she's mine. My child. I feel like… I love her." She shook her head. "And I can't explain it."

Jack nodded. "That's children for you."

"I mean, I'm scared, now," said Buffy. She looked down at her shaking hands. "Really, really scared. I've just seen a super powerful, destroy-the-world demon go completely freak-outy over her, and call her Death. The End of All. The Coming of Darkness. The Vanquisher of Life. But…" She fixed her eyes off towards the operating arena. "…I'm not scared about that. I just keep thinking, what if Seo doesn't make it? What if I lose her? What if she dies, and never comes back, and I couldn't save her?"

Just saying the words made something icy and terrible flood through Buffy's soul, and she shuddered back.

Jack caught her by the shoulders. "She's the one we rescued from Torchwood London, right?" he asked.

Buffy nodded. "But… it wasn't Elizabeth. Not… the crazy one. She's… Seo."

"Seo?" asked Jack. "Weird name."

"It's short for Seosyrae," said Buffy. "And it's not her real name. It's just what her father called her." She shrugged. "I don't know what her real name is. She won't tell me."

Jack raised his eyebrows at Buffy, as if this confirmed his suspicion about Seo being the Doctor's child.

"It's still hard to believe," said Buffy. "I mean… this is the Doctor we're talking about."

Jack grinned. "Just remember… always up for a threesome!"

Buffy didn't notice he'd said anything. Just stared down at her hands, trying to take it all in. "The Doctor's child," she said. "My child. Our…" She gave a soft laugh. "No wonder Torchwood London was so interested in her."

"Don't tell me the Doctor just popped by and dropped her off to get picked up by Hartman while he left to save the universe," said Jack.

Buffy turned to Jack. "No, she… before Torchwood, she was still a prisoner. The Doctor's prisoner. She's been locked up since she was a little kid, supposedly for destroying some planet, although I'm guessing there were other reasons, too. She's lived decades inside the TARDIS without being allowed to leave it or talk to anyone else besides the Doctor. But then…" Buffy shrugged. "I don't know. Seo mentioned something about how the Doctor got kidnapped by a bunch of people looking for her, and she ran. She told me she's only here because she's trying to rescue him, but… I don't know. I don't even understand how she wound up in Torchwood One."

"Decades inside the TARDIS, without being able to talk to anyone?" Jack asked. "That… doesn't sound like the Doctor."

"I know," said Buffy. "But it gets even weirder. I mean, she's seriously naïve. She honestly had no idea that humans stayed dead, after they died. She just assumed that everyone could regenerate, even humans, and no one ever told her otherwise."

Jack frowned. "That doesn't sound like the Doctor, either."

"And she can't see herself in the mirror!" said Buffy. "Like, all the rest of us can, but she can't. Not at all. She doesn't even know what she looks like. I think…" she hesitated. "I think… Seo didn't even know I was her mom until a short time ago. She calls me Buffy. Like, she treats me like I'm her mom, but… she still calls me Buffy."

Jack absorbed this, his frown creasing.

"And… and… and it just doesn't feel like something the Doctor would do!" Buffy concluded. "None of it. She's so like him, sometimes, Jack, it's scary. She's kind, and caring, and compassionate, and excited about everything she sees — especially new things, she loves those. I mean, I'll admit — she's way more aggressive than he ever gets. And a lot more emotional. I guess… those are from me. But she's definitely got the guilt-trip-central thing going full swing." She shook her head. "She's weird, Jack, and she lies a whole bunch, but… she's not evil. Not at all. So… so… so why? Why would the Doctor do something like that?"

"How do you know she was locked up in the TARDIS?" Jack asked.

"She… kept running into walls and expecting the rooms to rearrange themselves, when she first got here," Buffy said. "And she kept talking to the house, like it was alive. And she mentioned a few things about setting off neutron bombs in her room that wouldn't have made sense unless she was living in the TARDIS."

Jack nodded, slowly.

"And there's only one TARDIS and only one Time Lord out there," said Buffy. "It's not like it could be anyone else, right?"

"Guess not," Jack replied.

Buffy shrugged. "Maybe… maybe this is just how the Doctor acts, when there are other Time Lords around," she said. "I mean, I'm all overprotective of Dawn. Maybe the Doctor's, like, super overprotective of Time Lords, because he knows there are none left, except for him."

Jack thought it over. "Well, the only person we can ask about that is the Doctor," he said. "And if Seo says he's locked up, then my Doctor detector probably won't be very much use."

Buffy gave a worried, distracted laugh. "Doctor detector," she muttered. "Maybe that's how I wind up meeting him, again. I borrow your Doctor detector."

Jack cringed. "Actually, that probably wouldn't work," he said. "You said the Doctor didn't know you were still alive, even in his 11th regeneration. And my Detector only picks up on DNA that's from the… regeneration… before…"

Jack stopped. His entire body freezing, as his mind ran through the implications.

"Oh," he said. "I really, really should have thought of that, sooner."

"What?" asked Buffy.

Jack looked down at Buffy. "Seo can't be from your future," he said. "Because she takes after the wrong regeneration."