James had expected to sleep for a couple of hours, wake up, and finally be able to get a decent amount of work done. With the remnants of Torchwood's team, their technology, a relatively safe place to bunker down for a while, and his newly invigorated lungs, he thought that he would wake to what felt like a new and better day. Instead, he slept for thirteen hours, as sick, fragile, and exhausted humans do, and woke to a dead body and a monster.

Celeste had stationed herself near his quarters so that she would know when he woke up. She didn't tell him about what had happened at first. Instead, she herded him to the kitchen and insisted that he eat. When he dug out some bread and jam, she rolled her eyes and told him to sit the fuck down.

Part of James was embarrassed to be sitting at the table, waiting for someone to make him breakfast because he apparently couldn't be trusted to do it himself. He tried to convince himself that it was somehow helpful to Celeste—comforting or distracting—except he could tell that the maternal behaviour wasn't natural to her and she had plenty of work to do without cooking him eggs.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "I do appreciate your help."

"You and Rose have been fighting this fucking thing and saving our asses by yourselves without us even knowing about it," Celeste answered without looking up. "Least I can do is make you some breakfast."

Rose would like her, he decided quickly. It might take some time considering that Celeste didn't seem to talk much, but Rose would learn to like her eventually.

"How long have you worked for Torchwood?"

Celeste glanced over her shoulder at him. James had figured that she probably wasn't one for small talk but there was just something too awkward about sitting there silently.

"Seven years," she answered.

"And that man, Doug, he—"

"He's my brother."

"Oh! Nice," James tried to sound like that was more interesting news than it really was. "It must be nice being able to work together. The hardest part about having a job like this is that you can't share your experiences."

"I suppose."

"Plus, you know you've always got someone to look out for—" He cut himself off when she shot him another look and quickly changed his wording. "Nice for him to know there's always someone to look out for him."

"We all look out for each other," Celeste answered simply. "We're a team."

"Yes, of course. I just meant that, you know, there's something a little more fun about having a sibling on the team, isn't it?"

"Not on days like today."

"Of course," James answered quickly. Doug was one of the ones who went missing. Stupid. "Sorry."

Celeste made him nervous. He couldn't quite put his finger on exactly what it was, but he felt like a child sitting there, trapped alone with a stressed out adult and not knowing how to behave. He stayed silent as he watched her scoop eggs out onto a plate and wished that he could have seen Doug interact with her more, to get an idea of how to do it.

Celeste put the plate down in front of him, asked "Tea?", and then turned to put the kettle on before he answered. It was then, while he quietly ate his eggs and Celeste waited silently for the kettle to boil, that he realized something was wrong. The look on her face, her rigid body, her breathing—she was working up courage for something. She had brought him in here to keep him isolated and was now trying to convince herself to say something.

He didn't want to ask, but he had to. "Did . . . something happen?"

Celeste made an odd sound, somewhere between a snort and a grim chuckle. "A lot of things have happened."

"I know, but . . ." He just wanted to stop talking. If he didn't ask her, then she might not tell him, and he could just eat eggs and drink tea and pretend that things hadn't gotten any worse. "Something happened while I was sleeping."

Celeste took a deep breath and tapped her fingers on the counter top a couple of times, no doubt going through the same series of thoughts that he had just been. If they didn't talk about it, could they pretend it didn't happen?

"Declan died," she said finally. "He was infected. He attacked Edmund and Jack and now he's dead."

James had to think for a moment before he could remember who Declan was. He tried not to feel bad about it and reminded himself that he barely knew these people, but it still felt wrong somehow that the man's face didn't immediately spring to mind.

"I'm very sorry to hear that," he answered quietly. "He seemed like—"

"You didn't know him. It's fine," Celeste cut him off. "He was a good man and a hard worker and he didn't deserve to die like he did." She paused for a long time, taking the kettle off the stove and filling a teapot. "The thing is that we're falling apart at the seams. This thing didn't just hit us hard, it hit us fucking smart. Everyone is just in a daze and nothing's getting done. We don't even know where to start. We're fucking drowning in this." She turned and looked at him square in the eye then. "You've been fighting this thing for a while now. What did you do, where you're from? How did your team handle it?"

Now it was his turn to consider lying or staying silent—pretending that it was okay when it wasn't.

But Celeste was smarter than that.

A dark look came over her eyes. "Everyone?"

"Not everyone," he answered quickly. "Once we left, it followed us, and it left the others behind." He quickly looked away and added in a near whisper, "I think."

She nodded slowly, absorbing the information, and then turned her attention back to the tea. She placed the kettle on the table and busied herself with collecting cups and sugar and whatever else they might need. James ate a few more spoonfuls of egg, suddenly acutely aware that it was entirely possible that it would be his last meal.

He'd tried not too think too much about home or the people they'd left behind—the bodies. One by one, members of Torchwood had become infected and attacked one another. One by one, they died, either murdered by their friends or drained of life and discarded like old toys. Their Torchwood was much different than the one here. It was much bigger and more organized with several divisions—the kind of team that Jack clearly aspired to from the size of their facility—which only meant that there were more potential targets. James's crew of eighty-four had been whittled down to only twelve in little more than a week. Jack's crew had gone from nine to two in only a few hours.

"So your sister is here."

Celeste's voice drew him out of his thoughts. He had completely forgotten that he had food in his mouth until then. His eyebrows moved together and he quickly swallowed.

"Annie came back?" he asked, feeling a little glimmer of hope.

Celeste shook her head. "The other one."

It took a few seconds to sink in before he realized who she meant. "Jenny?"

She nodded. "She's eager to meet you. She'll fuss, mind you, so you'd best finish that so that you can tell her you ate."

That pleased him, though he wasn't entirely sure why.

"Listen, I want to tell you something."

James's eyes snapped up and he stared at her curiously, not entirely sure that he'd heard correctly. "Yes?" he asked slowly.

"You have a lot of people to save, I get it," Celeste muttered, crossing her arms over. "And there are always priorities. There's Rose and you have family in this. Ganbri is your brother. Annie is your sister. Professor Mott is . . . whatever the fuck you guys decided on. It's easy to lose sight of the everyone else involved. It's easy to make mistakes and lose one or two of the others, like Declan."

He could feel the rest of what she had to say coming, and it filled him with a sense of dread. "Celeste, I promise you—"

"Shut the fuck up for a second and let me finish." Her words were harsh but her voice was surprisingly gentle. This was hard for her, he realized. She was not used to asking for help. She was not used to needing it.

James stayed quiet and nodded to signal that she should continue.

"They aren't telling people anything—there's been so much shit going on—but Jenny and my brother have been spending a lot of time together. Things changed. Douglas has never had a lot of girlfriends and the way he talks about her. . ." She paused again, eyes searching the empty wall across from her. "It's just that, if this had happened later, maybe Doug would have ended up being your family too . . . I don't want him to be one of the 'other people' in your mind just because this happened too early."

The weight on his shoulders seemed to get a little heavier and he tried not to slump beneath it. Instead, he smiled and raised an eyebrow. "Does this mean I have to get you a Christmas present?" he asked. "Does this mean you're going to get me a Christmas present?"

Celeste scoffed and tossed the tea towel at his face.

"How do we decide who gets Doug on Christmas?" he continued, earning a slight hint of a smile as she looked for something else to toss at him. He obliged by throwing the tea towel back. "Would it be like a shared custody thing where we alternate holidays? Do we play a game of quarters over it or do we just be civil and everyone gets together at once?"

The tea towel came hurtling back towards him, whipping him in the face. "Fuck off," Celeste said, but there was amusement in her voice. For a moment, at least, he'd made her smile.

He made sure to finish everything on his plate before heading out. If anyone asked, he could truthfully say that he was fully rested and fed. He didn't feel like it was true, but at least he could say it.

The facility was eerie in its silence. The hints of life left behind by the missing team seemed to put a chill in the air, reminding him of their absence. It suddenly occurred to him that there was a morgue somewhere in the building, that Declan's body was inside it, and that he had no idea where it was. The last time he walked down this hall, Declan was a man who had showed an impressive ability to organize and had made James feel more welcome and comfortable than he had felt anywhere in a very long time. Now he was just a body. Not even a person—a thing that needed to be stored until it could be handled properly. James tried to remember if he'd ever properly said thank you for the room.

He found Jenny in a room that didn't look like it belonged in a facility like Torchwood. The presence of a work station and a desk told him that it was a lab, but it looked more like a greenhouse and the computers seemed quite out of place. One wall seemed to be made entirely of foliage, with long, healthy fern leaves reaching out a couple of feet from their resting places. There was a raised garden table in the center, growing some kind of twisting vine covered in flowers beautiful and colourful enough that every instinct he had told him not to touch them. The rest of the room was dotted with other plants, some pots even seeming to compete with each other over the limited space, and gardening equipment was stashed anywhere that they wouldn't get in the way.

Jenny was leaned back in an office chair, feet crossed and resting upon the table of toxic looking flowers, a pile of papers in her hands.

She looked just as strong and beautiful as he remembered. He felt a little swell of paternal pride for just a second before remembered that she wasn't his daughter. Still, he could be proud, couldn't he? They still shared the same genetic material at least.

"Find anything interesting?" he asked. Her eyes barely flickered in his direction before moving back to the paper and she sighed.

"Just looking over Kelevra's stuff, trying to see if his research on Edmund dug up anything useful," she answered in an almost bored tone. "His notes are so bizarre though—like reading someone's diary. Do you know that he keeps track of everything that everyone does? He even writes down what he does. Look at this! 'Cut left forearm on thorns. Wound cleansed and left free to air. Monitor for infection.' Like he's his own bloody patient or something. 'Lost my coffee again'. Lost his coffee! Even writes down his texts . . ."

Jenny's voice trailed off as she flipped past another page, sighing again. James felt a little bit disappointed, and then felt a bit foolish for feeling disappointed. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, really, but with Ganbri's wide-eyed wonder and Annie's excited bouncing around, he had thought meeting him might have been a little more exciting for Jenny. Perhaps the thought of siblings just wasn't as exciting for her.

"Lots of this too: 'Interference successful'. What the hell do you think that means?" Jenny started up again. "He does weird things like locking doors or shutting off power to places and then he'll write something like interference successful or failed. I saw one that said 'Interference irrelevant'. How is that different from unsuccessful? He writes about you too, you know."

He blinked, processing her words. Something about it sounded too familiar. Looking around the room, he realized something about the room was a little familiar too.

"Castor," he muttered, mostly to himself.

How had he not recognized him?

"Oh my God!" Jenny's shouting quickly snapped him out of the thought. "I'm going on like an idiot. Why didn't you say something!" She moved quickly as she spoke, jumping to her feet and dropping the papers into her chair. "I thought you were my dad!" she exclaimed, pulling him into a hug that seemed too strong for a woman of such a small size.

He wasn't sure if it was because he had memories of Jenny or if it was because he was just getting used to such encounters, but he hugged her back instead of nervously freezing and standing there like a board. She held onto him or a long time, holding him tightly and even patting his back a little, as though they hadn't seen each other for years instead of as though they were meeting for the first time.

When she finally let go, it felt strange to introduce himself, but it seemed to be the only sensible thing to do. "I'm, uh," he cleared his throat and awkwardly held out his hand. "I'm James."

Jenny looked down at his hand and smiled as though she found it very amusing. "Nice to meet you, James," she said, taking his hand and giving it a hearty shake. "I'm Jenny." She dropped her voice to a whisper, like she was telling a secret. "Your big sister."

"I don't know about that," he answered, half smiling as he gestured to his worn and weathered face. "Little sister, I should think."

"I was born first," Jenny answered quickly.

"I done think the chronology of our births really matters when everyone is jumping through time regularly. Technically, you haven't been born at all yet."

He hadn't meant it to be an actual point in a debate but the way Jenny raised an eyebrow and immediately crossed her arms told him that the comment wouldn't go unchallenged. "How old are you?"

Damn it.

"Old enough."

"I don't think so. You look older than Dad, but not that much older. You must only be a teenager!"

James cleared his throat again and avoided eye contact. "No," he answered quietly.

"No," Jenny repeated back, almost laughing. "Double digits at least?"

"Technically, I was in a jar for several years before the rest of me grew out so—"

"So doesn't count," Jenny interrupted with a chuckle. "Well, considering that I'm at least old enough to drink and that you technically need adult supervision for most activities, I think we can confidently say that you're the baby in the family. Wrinkles and all." She smiled at him warmly and then, without warning, asked, "Who's Castor?"

It took James a second or two to respond, thrown off by the suddenness of the question. "He was my friend," he answered slowly, gesturing around the room. "This looks like one of his rooms. Sounds a bit like his note-taking too."

"You think he's the same man?"

"Might be." James picked up the stack of papers and began to flip through them. "He'd do funny little things around headquarters all the time—tricking people or guiding them to do things. 'Interference successful' is the sort of thing he'd write." He flipped through the pages, finding the most recent one.

Stress levels and aggression between subjects escalated. Co-operation unlikely. Comments regarding familial connections made. Violent response directed at self. Interference successful.

"Damn it," he sighed.

It was definitely him.

Jenny eyed him curiously. "What?"

"I hit him," James answered with a sigh. "He was trying to annoy us so that we'd stop fighting with each other and I hit him. I didn't know who he was."

"You'd think you would have noticed," Jenny muttered, curiously looking over his shoulder. "You talked to him, right?"

"Different face. Different name." James lowered the papers and rubbed at his face, taking a deep breath. He was trying to be happy about this, or at least amused. He was trying to remember the smell of Castor's gardens and the sound of scratching from his incessant note taking. He was trying to remember the smooth feel of mnemist stones in his hands and the taste of terrible shortbread.

Instead, all he could think of was the way his lungs and the muscles in his legs had burned and the sound of Castor's voice calling to him when he looked back.

"Still," Jenny continued. "The fact that Torchwood's staff doctor is a Zumecki didn't tip you off?"

"We have dozens of Zumecki working for Torchwood where I'm from. Seeing one here didn't seem unusual. He doesn't work as a doctor either."

Didn't.

Suddenly he felt tired. The brief moment of elation at meeting Jenny and of finding a friend across the Void was already buried beneath a mountain of exhaustion that had nothing to do with how much he had slept.

This world was not his own.

Jenny was watching him carefully, absorbing information. She smiled sadly when she saw him notice and slipped an arm around his shoulders.

"Did you get to say goodbye?"

He ignored the memory of the way the words were shouted at him and instead just tried to remember their meaning, and he managed to smile a little bit. "He said he would watch me with pride." Jenny said nothing and he could tell from the way her head tilted slightly that she didn't understand. "It's a Zumecki thing," he added with a shrug. "It was close enough anyway."

He started flipping through the pages again, trying to pull himself away from the memory. It must have been months ago now, maybe even a year, but it was the first time he'd really allowed himself to think about it. He hadn't let himself wonder if Po had survived or if the Bad Wolf had returned there before chasing them through the Void. What if there was no one left?

Suddenly, those forbidden thoughts were catching up to him and he tried to push them back by reading through Kelevra's notes. Most of it was unimportant. Some of it was complete nonsense. Certain parts made it look like he had the memory of a goldfish and plenty of sentences were scratched out mid-thought. Castor was never so disorganized and was definitely not forgetful. Perhaps not having Po around had made him that way. Why were things so different here?

"Your doctor seemed to be under the impression that the team has been affecting Edmund almost as much as Edmund has been affecting the team."

Jenny shrugged. "I don't know much about it. They call me in for missions sometimes but Edmund has been more of a research project. Turns out, they tell me even less than I thought they did." There was a tone of bitterness to her voice.

"It must have been a shock," he said simply.

"To find out that my brother and most of my friends are missing, one my friends had died, and that the universe might be ending? Yeah." She sighed and rolled her shoulders, visibly trying to stop herself from getting worked up. "Have you seen Dad yet?"

A nauseating tingle ran through his body at the word 'Dad', but he did his best to ignore it. "We, um, don't care much for each other's company."

"I imagine not. Most people wouldn't like to meet themselves, Dad most of all, and you have the misfortune of being a spitting image. Odd, considering you have less of his DNA than I do, don't you think?"

He shrugged. "Could be that you look like his next regeneration. You might get your turn yet."

"I hadn't thought of that." She paused for a moment, thinking before raising his eyebrows. "Not sure how Harry would like that."

James shuddered. "Let's not even go there."

Jenny suddenly stood up straight. "Hey, if you've got Dad's memories, does that mean you know what that big animal thing is?"

James raised an eyebrow. "Big animal?"

"It's pretty scary actually," Jenny answered with a quick nod. "He doesn't like to talk about it, but he brings it out from time to time. Harry hates it. Everyone just calls it the Beast."

James had been walking too quickly, he knew. He felt weak and out of breath and his lungs were starting to ache from the effort, but he couldn't help trying to go too fast. When Jenny told him that the Beast was in Torchwood, half of him didn't believe it while the other half thought he should have seen it coming and he couldn't help but move faster than he should.

"You bastard, how could you? What do you think you're doing?"

The Doctor didn't even turn to look at him. He was standing at a desk, working on a computer, with the massive dark monster resting behind him, and he didn't even flinch.

"I'm minding my own business well away from you, James," the Doctor answered in an almost bored tone. "I suggest you do the same."

"Where's Ghanje?"

The Beast turned its head and looked right at him. He frowned back at it. It shouldn't be able to see him or properly perceive his location—he was angry, not afraid.

"Ghanje's gone."

"Gone or dead?" he spat the words. He wanted them to feel like an insult—an accusation even. No one at Torchwood had been in the Death Forests. They had no idea what the presence of this thing meant. Probably not even Harry knew.

But James did.

"I've been assuming dead."

"And that's just okay with you?"

"Of course not," the Doctor answered, his tone far too casual for James's liking. "If I could bring him back now, I would."

"He told you what would happen if you ever let that thing out."

"Ghanje made a decision. I'm not responsible for his choice."

"You made an oath, and you are responsible for whatever that thing does while it's in your charge. How can you bring it here? These people have no idea what that is or what it can do. How can you put them in that kind of danger? How can you put your children—"

"You are not my child," the Doctor cut him off sharply.

It was the last thing he would have ever expected, but those words felt like a slap. It was something he would say himself—he wasn't the Doctor's child—yet, somehow, they hit him sharply.

"I meant Jenny," he said, his lungs suddenly aching with the strain to breathe. "And Ganbri, when he gets back."

The Doctor's eyes stayed firmly on his computer, though they seemed to be staring through it rather than seeing it. "I'll protect them. I have protected them."

The Beast was still looking at him—staring at him directly and watching his movement despite nearly being blind. He looked over at the Doctor again, his eyes hard and unfocused, and realized that it wasn't the Beast watching him after all.

This wasn't his world.

This was the world he was born into, the world where the majority of his memories came from, but it still felt alien. He thought he would understand it. He thought, with nine hundred years of experience in his head, that he would know what to expect and how to navigate it. Somehow, in just a few short decades, this universe had evolved into something strange and surreal.

Whatever he thought of the Doctor and of what the things he might do, waking the Beast of Junicar was never an option he had thought would become a reality. That creature represented nothing but hunger and fear and death. He'd never been able to find out what it was or where it came from—all he really knew was that it had no place among people. Until he found a place where it belonged, the Doctor had sworn to keep it from causing harm to anyone. Apparently, he had decided that the place where it belonged was at his side and under his command. It was a nightmare come true.

James stepped closer to the Beast, noting the way its beady little eyes followed him.

"In my memories, I remember standing in the village and seeing it for the first time," he said quietly. "I remember not running, like everyone else was doing. I remember thinking: what's the worst that could happen?"

The Doctor still refused to move his head, eyes trained stubbornly on his computer, despite the fact that he was clearly not doing anything on it. The Beast watched him instead and, as he reached his hand out towards it, its skin began to slowly come to life with a golden shimmer.

"I remember seeing it again in the forest. Ghanje hid in the whispering trees, but I remember standing in a clearing and waiting for it. When it finally came, it couldn't see me. It wandered past, like I was nothing more than another tree, and I remember, so distinctly, how it felt."

He touched his hand to the Beast's muzzle, its skin glowing yellow and orange beneath his fingers. He'd always wondered what colour it would change for him. He had almost expected that it still wouldn't change.

The Doctor took in a breath deep enough for him to hear and the Beast did the same, then it stepped back away from him.

"You were never afraid of the Beast," James continued slowly, watching the monster retreat from him. "You were afraid of Junicar."

"Junicar wasn't real," the Doctor finally said, though his voice lacked the conviction it held moments before. "I looked. You know that. It was easier for the people to believe that a devil was controlling the Beast than to believe that they simply had bad luck. He was nothing more than a myth."

"Was," James agreed. "But we both know that you see time differently. And we both know that when Ghanje called you Junicar for the first time, even as you denied it, you knew that he was right. You could have shot this thing into a sun but you didn't. With all your good intentions and all your promises, you still knew that, one day, this would be why you kept it."

If Castor were in the room, he'd be proud. James could almost see him, standing there with his clipboard, smiling and listening. He tried to pretend that he was in his class, the only human determined to master a Zumecki art, clutching his little stone and listening to Castor's guidance.

Imagine facing your greatest fear—the moment of confrontation. Imagine being frozen and unable to escape and the only things in the world are you and that which you fear.

"And you were afraid of me," James said softly, turning his back on the Beast to look at the Doctor instead. "Someone who knew not only every choice you ever made but why you made it, how you felt, and what you knew. I didn't exist yet but you always felt like you were being watched. Certain that, some day, you would find out that somebody knew you and you'd have to look them in the eye."

Fight or flight kicks in, and it kicks in for a reason. Whatever that fear is, it is so terrifying and incites such a sense of doom that the only possible reactions are to run away or to lash out at it.

He remembered every word Castor had said. He remembered how easy it had been to put the words into practice, and the look on Castor's face when he picked up the stone. It had been his best work yet.

"You don't like me because I know you. You can't lie to me. You can't hide behind wit or deflection. I know the truth." He paused for a second, glancing back at the Beast to make sure it wasn't stirring. "And the truth is that a lot of the things you take the blame for aren't your fault. A lot of them are, but not everything. Sarrhea, Qhoya, your mother, the Master . . . they weren't your fault. I need you to know that so that you know I'm not just being stubborn or malicious when I tell you that, if you choose to use the Beast, then you are choosing to become Junicar, and any of the consequences of that will be your fault. And I know you don't want that."

The silence was almost unbearable. For a long time, all that seemed to exist was his own laboured breathing. The Doctor didn't say a word and the Beast lay calm and still, its skin relaxed back to its mottled grey and black. It was the moment of confrontation—the moment of frozen silence when a choice needs to be made—and James didn't know what to expect.

The Doctor's head turned to the side, just enough that James must have barely registered in his peripheral vision. "You don't have any children, do you?"

James felt his heart sink down in his chest. "No."

"Then you don't know anything."