Ash felt Charity's excitement at the sight of the TARDIS, but he quelled the same eagerness inside of himself. He knew what she thought it meant. He knew it was still wrong. Their mother was dead.

"Well, I'm sorry I can't be of any more help," Ilin said.

The Doctor frowned at him. "I don't think you are."

Ilin shrugged. "You're right." In another blink, the tent and the man vanished.

"Bye, then," the Doctor said to the air. "He was a bit full of himself." She looked at Ash. "You're a fan?"

"To be fair, I never said fan. Just that I'd done reading on it."

Yasmin held up a hand. "I've got a couple of questions."

"A couple?" Graham laughed. "I've got a book full. But shouldn't we keep up with those two before they get too far away?" he pointed after the competitors, whom Ash was currently attempting to scan his memory to see if he could identify both who they were and who run this last race.

"Yes," the Doctor nodded. "Now, I know this is a bit of a shock."

"Well, you could say that. I mean, we have been dumped in space, we got spaceships crashing all around us and now we are marooned on a planet that everyone else is racing to get away from."

"All right, anyone can focus on the negatives."

Graham raised his eyebrows. "Well, what are the positives?"

"What he called the Ghost Monument, that's my ship." The Doctor grinned at the twins. "It's here."

"What, the old police box?"

Ryan frowned. "Didn't look all that."

The Doctor bristled. "It's very all that, thank you very much. Don't you see? I got it mostly right. We tracked my TARDIS here, but the planet had fallen out of orbit. We landed where the planet should've been. It looks like the engines are stuck in a loop, phasing in and out of time and space. If we get to it when it phases in, I should be able to stabilize it. Then I can get you back home."

Yasmin took a step closer. "Definitely? If we get there, you can get us off this planet alive?"

The Doctor faced the human fully. "Yaz, I promise, I will keep you alive and I will get you back home. I'm really good in a tight spot, the twins will attest to it." She paused. "At least, I have been historically. I'm sure I still am." She looked to the twins, but they only raised their eyebrows. "If we stick together, if you trust me, we can get out of this." She looked between each of them. "Right, let's get a shift on."

-I-I-

They followed the competitors down to what looked had once been a forest but was now just scraps of plant life and fabric. Charity fingered her vaporizer as she noticed the male pilot had his weapon out and aimed at the woman's head. The twins followed behind their aunt, but they both kept their weapons out.

"Put the blaster down," the Doctor said. "We all know you're not going to use it." She looked between them. "No injuring, no killing, no sabotage, isn't that what whatshisface said?"

"Ilin," Ash mumbled.

"Yeah, well, maybe I don't play by the rules."

Charity stepped up beside the Doctor, aiming her own blaster at the man's head. The Doctor immediately flinched away, her eyes going wide. "I'll warn you, I'm a much quicker shot. Lower your weapon, and I'll lower mine."

"Charity..." the Doctor started and looked down to see a similar weapon in Ash's hand. "Oi, what've you got those for?"

"Protection," Ash said. "The universe is a dangerous place."

"You can't just go about aiming guns at people."

Charity flicked a switch on the weapon. "Oh, we don't just aim." She fired and the man crumbled.

The Doctor surged forward. "What have you done?"

"Stunned him." Charity lowered her weapon. "He didn't lower his weapon."

The Doctor spun to face her niece. "You shot him!"

"He was going to shoot her. He'll be fine in a few seconds, I lowered the power." Charity nudged the man's body with her foot, making him groan. "See, he'll be fine. Just a bit of a shock." She looked back up to the Doctor. "We were raised by the Master. What did you expect?"

The human companions reached them, looking between the body, the twins, and the Doctor. "What just happened?" Yasmin asked.

The Doctor said nothing. She held Charity's gaze for a second longer before turning away. It hurt, but Charity had expected that. The Doctor was not someone who used weapons. Who approved of them. The twins merely saw them as another of the many tools they had to use to survive. Their mamaidh had protected them, but she'd also taught them what they needed to know to handle themselves.

And that had included knowing how and when to use a weapon.

To be fair, they had needed to adapt that lesson themselves to also tell then when they did and didn't need to kill someone, so they couldn't give their mamaidh all the credit.

The female pilot looked to Charity. "Thanks." In response, Charity winked at her. The pilot climbed into the boat and began to work at the controls, though she almost immediately hit it. "And this boat doesn't work."

"Let us take a look," the twins said in unison.

"You don't get to take charge here," the female pilot said, pointing between them.

"We're all going to the same place," Yasmin pointed out, "and that boat is big enough for all of us."

"Yaz is right," the Doctor said, turning back around, swallowing hard. "If we get it started, we all get on board."

Ryan and Graham managed to get the male pilot, who was once again awake, standing again. "I know what this is," he said. "You're part of Ilin's game. Saboteurs, sent to throw us off."

The female pilot shook her head at him. "You think the whole universe is out to get you."

"How's your family, Angstrom?"

The twins didn't bother exchanging a look before they went forward into the boat, heading to the controls. They didn't have nearly as much experience with technology as their parents or the Doctor, but thankfully they hadn't inherited their mother's apparent inability to fix anything that was non-Gallifreyan, though they had to rely heavily on Charity's ability to see the near future and Ash's to locate them within the technology.

It wasn't that she saw herself fixing things, more that she saw, with a bit of focus, how it was meant to work. Ash would then take what she described and dive into the technology, tracing the circuits as needed. It was easier with their TARDIS, a fact they both attributed to their mother, but they could still do it with other technology. It just took time.

They were still working when the Doctor joined them inside the boat. Ash glanced up at their aunt as he ducked back into the controls. "It shouldn't take much longer. Just need to finish connecting the tri-solar engineering panels from the outside."

Charity jumped down from the top of the boat, where she'd been rearranging the panels, but stopped at the sight of the Doctor. Their aunt turned to her. "You should have told me you carried guns."

"Didn't really have the time," Charity started, but Ash gave her a look. "We haven't killed many people if that helps."

"But you have killed some."

"So have you." Charity held up her vaporizer again. "We just carry our manner of doing so with us. And, to be fair, I didn't kill him. I could have, but I didn't."

"You're children..."

"We were children," Ash corrected. "A long time ago. You grow up quite fast when you're left to be raised by the Master." He reemerged. "Boat should be up and running."

Charity frowned at the Doctor. "You know, you have the same concerned face that I remember. Slightly less powerful without the eyebrows."

"I am still your aunt, regardless of what you've done. I will try and protect you." She seemed relieved when the twins actually smiled back at her for that, their own relief flooding their features. They hadn't known the Doctor well, really only forming their expectations on how she would behave based on the stories they'd been told their entire lives. But the Doctor was the only family they had left at the moment. They needed her, as much as neither twin would never admit it. "You carrying weapons doesn't stop me from being your aunt." She ducked back out of the ship to fetch everyone else.

'Well, that went better than expected.' Ash came up beside his sister. 'Though perhaps we should refrain from shooting anyone else for a brief period.'

'We both know that won't happen.' They watched the Doctor speaking to the rest of the group. 'We do need to discuss what is going to happen once we find Zia again.'

'Where you claim our mother is.'

'It's not just a claim.' Charity glared at her brother. 'We both agree that we want to actually travel with the Doctor?'

'Don't you miss it?'

The twins exchanged a smile and they both knew the answer.

-I-I-

It did not take long for the gathered non-Time Lords to sleep during the journey, taking time beforehand to speak of their families. The twins listened to the conversation but did not retain the information quite as much as they were fairly certain the Doctor would have wanted. The Doctor was left piloting the boat with the twins sitting nearby, watching the passing desolated landscape.

"See anything fun?" Charity asked Ash, speaking out loud for the Doctor's benefit. It was something their mamaidh had drilled into them, one of the few times she had wanted them to be considerate of their surroundings.

"A lot of sand." Ash picked at his nails. "A lot a lot of sand."

"And here I was thinking you had a way with words." Charity still grinned at him.

He shrugged. "Better than you."

"How long were you left on Earth?" the Doctor asked them, making both twins turn to look at her. "After the Master left you?"

Ash frowned. "About a year? We went to school. At Coal Hill." The Doctor gave a small smile at that mention. "How long was it for you? Since we last saw you."

"Less than a day. I was somewhere with snow, and then I was in my TARDIS, but it forced me out." She frowned. "Still hazy on the details." In a blink, she was back to her happy self. It was quite a shock, particularly compared with the only other regeneration the twins knew, where the Doctor had been an old man with an impressive frown and had worn it proudly. As though the Doctor was now attempting to balance the universe back out, at least with how she presented. "You should tell me what you've been up to, with the Master. There's so much of your life that I don't know about."

The twins exchanged a look. "Well, there was one time we were visiting Venice," Ash began. "Originally it was because mamaidh wanted to show us the city that our mother loved so much, but then there were these Gryphons..."

The story continued as they rode the boat further, though Charity could not escape the thought that there was something moving in the sand, even as she knew the planet was entirely deserted.

A/N: The twins seem to be hiding less and less of themselves the longer they spend time with the Doctor. Almost kind that they didn't dump everything on her at once ;)

Notes on reviews:

Purplestan: Definitely! 200 years with the Master definitely changes a person! I'm glad you really see the Master in the twins - they definitely turn out to be interesting people when raised by the Master, with the Singer as an idealized mother, and some lasting thoughts on how the Doctor would want them to conduct themselves. I have quite a few ideas for the new Master ;) I've been on break for the past week (sadly ending soon, which means much less time to be devoted to writing) and I've been trained by doing NaNoWriMo for years to be able to write a lot very fast. Also, I was just so inspired by the new episodes that I couldn't help myself. Don't worry! Love any length review :)