Charity sat in the cab of the crane, closed her eyes, and reached out to the controls. Ash and Ryan stood on either side, crammed into the space. "You two are not normal," Ryan said, looking between the twins.

Charity grinned in a manner that reminded Ash distinctly of their mamaidh. "More than you know."

She swung the arm of the crane around so that the Doctor was closer to Karl, using Ash's hand on her shoulder to judge how much more she needed to do. She was too busy focusing on very quickly learning Earth technology to focus on depth or anything of the immediate future beyond the buttons she needed.

Charity did manage to pull the crane to a stop just before the entire crane sparked. Ash looked down the side and saw the creature of gathering coils had short-circuited the entire machine. And even though Charity had slightly foreseen if, the Doctor was stuck below Karl's crane.

"I hate being right," Charity hissed, standing.

They couldn't hear the Doctor while inside the cab, but they watched as Tzim-Sha climbed onto the arm of Karl's crane, coming closer. Karl made to jump, but the alien grabbed his collar, pulling him back.

"Let him go!" the Doctor's shout echoed back to them before rolling her shoulders. She took a run up and jumped. For a moment, both twins weren't certain they could breathe.

But then she'd grabbed onto Karl's crane, hanging there until she'd managed to pull herself up.

Tzim-Sha removed his faceplate and the Doctor searched her pockets for something, finally holding up a glowing red device. The recall device from Tzim-Sha's pod.

'Of course, she's still self-sacrificing,' Ash groaned. 'I never should have expected differently.'

It was one of the many points their mamaidh had driven home in the twins as a way to demonstrate how they were not meant to behave. Self-preservation was the key, according to their mamaidh.

The Doctor seemed to just be talking, which was what the twins knew she did best. They could still remember some of the speeches they'd witnessed from their aunt, even as they'd been children at the time. It had been quite remarkable, even as their mamaidh had chosen not to stress that aspect of her stories when telling them of their aunt.

They watched Tzim-Sha press an activation button, but it only took a second before he started to scream from pain, clawing at his skin. It appeared that the Doctor's plan of removing the DNA bombs had worked as neatly as Charity had known it would. As Tzim-Sha began to melt, his body crumbling, the Doctor tossed the recall circuit onto him. Karl gave the body a kick and the alien fell, only just managing to vanish with the recall circuit before hitting the ground.

The Doctor took a moment to look at Karl before turning back to the people in the cab. Ryan had started cheering the moment Tzim-Sha had started to melt, but the Doctor was focused on the twins.

Finally, she recognized them.

She'd been nearly smiling when she'd turned, but her mouth dropped open in pure recognition at the sight of them. After all, even if she hadn't known their adult faces, she could sense their Gallifreyan heritage even from that distance. Relief came over next. The twins knew that she had not had much time to miss them, but still, seeing that there, knowing that the Doctor was glad to have found her niece and nephew again, was delightful.

-I-I-

The twins were concerned that they hadn't known that Grace would die. When they descended from the crane and found her body lying there, cradled in Graham's arms, Charity knew that she should have realized this would happen the moment she looked at the human. Normally, she couldn't tell someone's death, but this was such a near future that it should have filled her like air. She shouldn't have had to focus to know this would happen.

But she'd been too distracted by her mother and the Doctor that she hadn't noticed.

And that hurt, strangely. Charity felt bad. As though she could have done something.

The twins and the Doctor could not speak in private immediately, but they found the space as the humans began to arrange for Grace's funeral.

"You're alive," the Doctor breathed, looking between them. "It worked." She hugged them before they had the chance to speak, holding them close. "I am so sorry."

They knew, then, that the Doctor entirely believed that their mother was dead. That Charity was the only one who truly believed – and knew, as she would continually stress – that their mother was just wherever the Doctor's TARDIS was. But to the Doctor, the Singer had been left to certain death on that ship.

"I'm still a bit hazy on the details," the Doctor pulled back from them, though she kept a hand on their arms. "But I am so sorry." She paused, truly beginning to process more. "What are you doing, here? On earth?"

"We were left by mamaidh," Ash told her. "To find you again. Mum did make her promise to try and find her again."

The Doctor nodded. "I am glad that you did." She looked them over. "You're so big now!"

"Almost two hundred now," Charity nodded. "We lost count."

"Just like your mother." The Doctor's eyes misted. After all, she had never truly had to mourn the Singer before, having escaped the Time War together. The twins knew what their mother had done after, how she'd hid herself, how the Doctor had been forced to abandon her. But the Doctor had always known their sister was out there, alive in some form.

This time, the Singer was dead. Charity made to speak, made to make it clear that their mother was very much alive, that she knew that to be true, but Ash cut her off with a look.

'Don't give her false hope.'

'It is not false.' Charity looked away from her brother. "It is important that you know that the...abilities that we had when we were younger have only grown."

The Doctor nodded. "I remember. A prophet," she looked to Charity, "and an empath."

"They're still not that specific," Charity admitted. "But mamaidh helped us learn to control them more. As well as...other things."

The Doctor's face darkened for a beat. "She never should have told you of her hypnotism."

Ash shrugged. "We're not that good at it, actually. It's partly why we really needed to find you sooner rather than later."

"We'll try not to use them," Charity said. The lie came easy. She was thankful that the Doctor had yet to actually notice the weapons that the twins kept at their sides at all times.

The Doctor sighed. "We will figure this out. I promise."

The twins did smile, then, in honest relief.

"Oh, we should tell you..." Charity said, "that mamaidh left us with her TARDIS."

The Doctor brightened. "Oh, brilliant!"

They did wait to tell the humans that the twins were actually related to the Doctor. They went to Grace's funeral together, sitting with the group of humans outside after. Charity lay back on the steps, looking up at the sky.

"What did you mean in your speech," the Doctor asked Graham, "you thought you'd run out of time?"

"Oh, well...er...I had cancer and...er...well, strictly speaking, I'm still in remission, three years gone. And Grace was my chemo nurse. That's where we met and fell in love. So by rights, I shouldn't even be here."

Yasmin looked to the Doctor. "Have you got family?"

The Doctor nodded to the twins. "Just a niece and nephew, now. Everyone else was lost a long time ago."

"Our mother died," Ash said. "Very recently. We've been trying to find the Doctor again ever since."

"I'm so sorry," Ryan said. "How do you cope with that?"

"I carry them with me." The Doctor gave a small smile. "What they would've thought and said and done. I make them a part of who I am. So even though they're gone from the world, they're never gone from me."

Graham smiled. "That's the sort of thing Grace would have said."

There was a pause, where Charity tried to decide if a cloud was actually shaped like a rabbit before Yasmin spoke. After all, Charity was not mourning their mother. She knew that woman was alive and well wherever the Doctor's TARDIS was. "So everything we saw, everything we've lied to people about, is this normal for you? For all of you?"

The twins let the Doctor answer. "I'm just a traveler. Sometimes I see things need fixing, I do what I can." She took a breath. "Except right now, I'm a traveler without a ship. I've stayed too long. I should get back to finding my TARDIS." She looked to the twins, who nodded.

Yasmin held up a hand to stop the Doctor as the Time Lady made to stand. "Doctor. Can I just say...you really need to get out of those clothes."

"Yes, thank you," Ash said, grinning. "I've been waiting for someone to say something."

The Doctor looked down at herself and back at the humans and twins. "Right, yeah. It's been a long time since I bought women's clothes."

"Don't worry," Charity said, sitting up. "We're experts."

"One of a great many things that our father taught us," Ash said.

-I-I-

In the end, the Doctor's clothing was not something that the twins would have ever picked for themselves, but very much suited their aunt, all the way down to the boots that they knew their own mother would have very much approved of. The final touch was an ear cuff that bore quite a bit of resemblance to necklaces that both twins wore.

Together, the twins and the Doctor came up with a plan to locate the Doctor's TARDIS. Charity couldn't help but hum as she knew they were nearing her mother. They were getting so close.

If only she could actually use her prophetic abilities to help them. TARDISes and things surrounding them were always difficult for both twins, but it had never been as annoying as this.

In the end, the twins brought their TARDIS to the large industrial unit where the pod sat. The Doctor would use it to try and locate her own, even though the twins had been searching for their Zia and had found nothing. There was, after all, always the chance that the Doctor would know something they didn't.

They brought the three humans to the unit as well, to help them set up everything and so that the Doctor could say a proper goodbye. The plan was that the Doctor would get her TARDIS and return to the twins if she could. If not, she would leave a sign for the twins to come and find her in their own TARDIS. They didn't know what they'd do after that, but the Doctor couldn't just leave her niece and nephew alone in the universe.

Graham, clutching a car battery, raised his eyebrows. "How long have we got to stand here for? I'm getting cramp."

The Doctor waved a hand. "Seriously, Graham, trying to concentrate here."

Ryan leaned closer to the other humans. "Do you understand what's she's doing?"

Charity popped up the wires she'd been fixing. "Her ship uses a particular type of energy that ours can recognize. We can track the energy trail from the moment she lost it to wherever it is now."

The Doctor patted the side of the pod she was working on. "Now, given this is a transport pod, I'm configuring it to send me to the planet where my ship seems to have ended up."

"You're going to another planet?" Yasmin gasped.

"Well, trying to. Except Stenza technology's really annoying and super hard to decipher. 139 layers, seven of which don't make sense, even with Ash's help." The Doctor straightened. "Right. Graham."

"Yeah?"

"Clamp those onto there."

Graham nodded, moving over with the battery. "All right."

"Yaz, thread the cable onto the top. Ryan, you turn on the switch." The twins stepped back to join the humans and the Doctor looked between them all. The twins knew they would see her again, but somehow this still hurt. "Okay, you all, I'm almost gonna miss you." A microwave beeped. "That's it. It's connected up. It should work." She leaned down and set the timer on the microwave. "Moment of truth, then. Wish me luck." She smiled. "And goodbye. Oh, deep breath." The humans obeyed, and the Doctor waved a hand at her. "Not you lot. Me."

The twins watched as the Doctor took in a deep breath and activated her sonic just as the timer reached zero. Power surged through the cables and the entire room went white.

When the twins opened their eyes, they were floating with everyone else in space...with no TARDIS in sight.

'Couldn't have warned us about this?'

Charity wanted to glare at Ash. 'Shut up.'

A/N: Finally! Recognition! There are going to be quite a few realizations coming about how exactly children raised by an unreformed Master for over 200 years have turned out ;)

Notes on reviews:

Purplestan: The Doctor has always been big on protecting (which is why the Singer was always so adamantly against needing protection) so there was no way she wasn't going to be including the twins in that, even if she didn't quite know who they are. Sadly, the Doctor had to wait until she recognized herself before she could recognize them, but there was no denying who they were after, especially with the twins beginning to stop hiding it.

bethisabear: Oh, I am definitely looking forward to the new season, both just as a fan of the show and as a writer ;)