The group found themselves a motel room, paid for with money that Rikou seemed to have almost forgotten about deep in his pocket. They had to sneak Ryan and Yasmin in through the bathroom window, as the motel was segregated, but the younger members of their group, including the twins, were quite up to the challenge.
"Very nice," Rikou said, helping Yasmin through the window. "A natural."
Yasmin laughed. "Last time I sneaked into someone's room by a window was Danny Diswas in Year 10."
Ryan, who followed her inside, shook his head. "You just went right down in my estimation."
"All right."
"Danny Biswas? He was punching well above his weight."
Yasmin blinked. "Did you just accidentally pay me a compliment?"
"Whatever," Ryan said, though he was still slightly smiling.
"Why can't we just stay in the TARDIS?" Graham asked from his position seated on the bed.
"Our friend with the temporal displacement weapon's got eyes on it," the Doctor explained. "We go in and out of there, we're going to run into him again and I don't want to just yet. Not till we've figured this out."
"And this is better?" Ryan brushed himself off. "Smuggling ourselves into crummy motels?"
The Doctor held up her hands. "I just need a moment to work this out." The twins sat on the other bed, though Nella actually scooted back to lean against the wall. She closed her eyes and, when the Singer looked to Rikou for an explanation, he waved a hand, indicating that she couldn't be bothered.
Yasmin nodded. "Yeah, like what do we actually know?"
"Well, 1955, Montgomery, one day away from Rosa Parks refusing to give her seat up on a bus," Graham listed.
"Meanwhile, we've got an out-of-time imposter skulking at the bus works with a temporal displacement weapon."
Ryan frowned. "I understand weapon, but not sure about temporal or displacement."
"Displaces you through time," Rikou explained. "You get hit, you're thrown through time to wherever the user has it set."
The Doctor pointed to him. "He had it set for the very far future."
"That's horrible."
"Yes. And it uses artron molecules. That, plus his vortex manipulator were presumably what the TARDIS detected when it brought us here." The Doctor looked to the Singer for confirmation, as she'd done far more to study those readings than the Doctor had.
"So do we think he's trying to kill Rosa Parks, or use that weapon on her?"
The Doctor shook her head, beginning to pace. "He's been here a while. He set up base at the bus works. If he wanted to get rid of her, why has he not done it already? Besides, the sonic picked up something else on him, but I'd need to go back to make sure." She paused, took in the plain wall next to her, and climbed on top of the bed to reach it. Graham jumped up as she flicked something on her sonic and began to write on the wall. "Right, what do you remember about Rosa from school?"
"Oi, whoa, whoa, whoa," Graham said. "What are you doing? That is vandalism. We'll have to pay for that."
"Don't worry, special pen."
"No, pack it in. You ain't Banksy."
The Doctor grinned over her shoulder. "Or am I?" She turned back to the wall. "Rosa takes the bus on the 1st December 1955. What time of day?"
"Evening," Yasmin said. "She was coming home from work. I remember cos she said people thought she didn't stand cos she was tired from working, but she wasn't."
"Where did she work?"
"I think it was in a shop, like a department store."
"Seamstress," Rikou said, standing from his seat on the end of the bed, though his attention was focused on the door. The Doctor pointed at him and would have said something else, but someone banged on the door. "I'll get that."
He made the walk towards it, but the Singer grabbed his arm. "What are you going to do?"
"Just make him forget." He grinned, like that was answer enough, and stepped away from his mother to open the door. Outside, there was a police offer. "Oh, good day," Rikou said, lifting his sunglasses so that he could properly look the man in his eyes. "How can we help you today?"
"Y'all happen to know a couple of..." the man seemed enraptured by Rikou's gaze. Hypnotized. "I don't remember."
"Honest mistake," Rikou said, a grin in his voice. "Happens to everyone. Tell your fellow officers that you found nothing suspicious here, and stop following us. Have a good day, sir." He dropped his sunglasses again and closed the door on the officer. When he turned to look at the rest of them, he was grinning, widely. "Easy." He noticed the expressions of the rest of them. "What?"
"What did you just do?" the Doctor said, her voice tense. She was still stood on the bed, sonic in hand, and the Singer had flashes of worry that the Doctor was going to do something to the twins. She had an even stronger pulse of what she would do in response if the Doctor ever dared.
"Got rid of him."
"How?"
"I think you are well aware, Doctor." Now, Rikou held his aunt's gaze through his sunglasses. He was the one who broke away, looking around at the humans. "Remember, alien stuff." He wiggled his fingers. The action made Graham and Ryan jump, recognizing something in it. "Shall we return to the topic at hand? Rosa Parks?"
"First, tell us what she's doing," Ryan said, pointing to Nella. Nella had yet to move from her position lying against the wall, but the moment she was pointed at, her eyes shot open.
"Just checking some things," Nella said, her voice simple. "Carry on as you were."
"What..."
"We are facing a time-sensitive issue." Nella crossed her arms across her chest. "We need all of the information on Rosa Parks that we can get."
The Doctor swallowed hard, but she turned to start writing again, pulling on some eternal well of cheer in order to distract the humans again. The Singer was left staring at the twins, who were watching the rest.
They needed to talk.
-X-
It was the Doctor's idea that they actually meet with Rosa on a bus, though it was silently agreed that the Singer and twins would not be joining, at least at that point. Instead, they waited in the motel room for the Doctor to alert the Singer of the next steps.
The moment the door closed behind the Doctor and humans that night, the Singer turned to face her twins. They were both seated on the end of the beds with the Singer stood before them, feeling odder than ever in the clothing of her previous regeneration.
"Mamaidh taught us how to do it," Nella said, the first to speak. "Extended our natural empathetic and prophetic abilities."
"And gave you guns."
"You gave us to her to raise," Rikou said. "Who did you believe that they would turn us into?"
"Exactly who you needed to be." The Singer's answer shocked herself. It also appeared to shock the twins. Nella's mouth fell open, Rikou raised his eyebrows. Both leaned forward, eagerness playing across their features. They were not entirely relaxed now, even when alone with their mother. The Singer recognized the tendency from the Master, even flashes of it in this regeneration of the Doctor.
"What are you saying, mum?" Rikou asked.
The Singer took a deep breath. "I've known you were strange since the moment I first found you again as children. It took me some time to admit it, but even before then, I had hoped that I'd be able to take your strangeness from you. I have seen far too many people fall to madness. I was terrified of what you would become."
"You never said," Nella said, her voice quiet, "why you gave us to him. It wasn't just because he had to survive."
It was a fact the Singer had never quite admitted to herself. "I thought they would know what to do, with your strangeness. The best way for you to use it. More so than the Doctor or I ever could."
"Then you're fine with it?" Rikou said. "With what I did?"
"I sent you off with the hope that you'd remember to be like the Doctor and be good. What I saw there was protecting, helping." She nodded to the vaporizers. She guessed they had small perception filters on them to explain how the Singer hadn't noticed them until they'd been getting used, but now she could see them plainly. "Just like you were when you used those. I'm proud of you."
The twins let out a collective breath, and the Singer wondered how worried they'd been about what she would think about them. They'd only had a few years with her, after all, and then centuries with the Master who, though he knew a few things about her at that point in their history, knew nothing like what Missy would later be told.
Had they thought she'd abandon them, too horribly disappointed in the people they'd become that she hadn't been able to stand them. But the Singer had stayed in love with the Master, even after all these years, even after knowing all the horrible things her spouse was willing to do. It was not that she took any joy from killing. Just that she, and this regeneration in particular, did not mind so much as long as her family was safe.
"I'm so glad that we found you, Mum," Nella said, standing. She reached out and took the Singer's hand, squeezing it tightly before quickly embracing her. "I can't wait to show you mamaidh's TARDIS once we get back to the proper century."
"She left you her TARDIS, did she?"
"Made very sure that we knew how to properly care for it," Rikou said, still seated on the bed. "Nothing like you, of course, as she would continually stress, but apparently rather impressive."
"Then I can't wait to see it." The Singer paused. "How long were you alone?"
"Only about a year," Rikou said. "Went to Coal Hill. Made friends." Nella snorted at that, earning her a look from her twin.
The Singer wanted to ask them who they'd been at the vortex, even though she knew the answer without them saying, just in case they said something else. "Do you have any ideas for your titles?"
"Quite attached to the names you gave us," Nella shrugged. "Charity for me. Ash for him."
"I'm glad," the Singer smiled. "Still have a few centuries before you have to be certain."
The twins exchanged a look. "Can I ask you something?" Rikou said, even as Nella's face hardened like she didn't want the question asked. The Singer nodded. "How did you survive that ship?"
"Ash didn't believe you'd survived," Nella said. "He didn't want to look."
"No one should have been able to survive that ship," Rikou reminded her.
"The Doctor did."
They looked to the Singer in unison, a fact that she was very quickly becoming more comfortable with. "I don't know," she admitted. "I remember the ship and an explosion, and then I woke up in the Doctor's TARDIS."
"But you have no idea what happened in between?"
The Singer flexed her hands. "None." She waited, in case the twins wanted to ask her something else, but they remained watching her. Reading her, even through those sunglasses. "Now, I want you to tell me what types of things you did with your mamaidh. I want to know all of the life I've missed."
The twins were halfway through a story about the time the Master attempted to teach them the language of the Judoon and ended up accidentally joining their ranks when the Singer got a burst from the Doctor.
'I'm going to meet with him.'
'Want us to come?'
The Doctor paused for a few seconds. 'Yes.'
A/N: Some wonderful moments between the Singer and her twins. Felt it was important that she state, without question, that she was proud of them, even as the Doctor seems to be questioning her support.
Though it does seem the twins are suspicious about how she escaped the Mondas ship...