On a plain of dust and bones a thousand miles across the Doctor sat poised in a heavy wooden chair, his grey eyes never wavering from the chessboard in front of him. In the inky blackness above another star flared and died, quietly fading into nothing as it folded itself into the empty tracts of space-time that had already collapsed into darkness.

From across the table came the rhythmic tap of a pawn being struck against a queen. The Doctor ignored the noise, his hand poised over the ornately carved white queen as he pondered his next move. The game was at a crucial stage, a wrong move now would be disasterous. The sound of chess pieces knocking together ceased abruptly as the pawn was placed slowly back onto the board by the delicate hand of his opponent, a thin but unremarkable man in an immaculate black suit.

They faced each other in the silent void, while around them the universe grew ever colder and reality slid inevitably toward it's end.

'So here we are again, Time Lord. Playing the immortal game at the end of everything.'

'Shall we skip the portentous posturing?' the Doctor said, his eyes fixed on the chessboard. 'I think the imminent collapse of reality is probably enough of a spectacle without your grandstanding.'

'How you must detest finding yourself in my domain after all these aeons.'

The Doctor looked around him with a raised eyebrow and ran a finger across the the bone white surface of the table, 'Would it have killed you to tidy up? A bit of a dust at least, maybe run the hoover round if you're expecting company? I bet you'd look terribly smart in an apron.'

'Must you still caper for the crowds, even when deprived of an audience?'

'Oh I know this tune! You hum it and I'll play it,' the Doctor said, producing a pair of spoons from an inside pocket.

His opponent slammed a hand onto the table, making the chess pieces dance on the board. 'Silence!'

'That's right,' the Time Lord said above the clattering of the spoons, 'All the way to the cheap seats!'

The thin man settled back into his chair and steepled his delicate fingers. The Doctor put away his spoons and beamed.

'When you're quite finished...'

'You have beautiful hands by the way,' the Doctor said, 'Almost like a pianist's,'

'Thank you.'

'Considering how much blood you have on them.'

'Evil is as evil does.'

'Yes, yes, I was wondering when we'd get around to that,' the Time Lord said excitedly. 'You're oh so devious, oh so powerful and oh so evil! You're the original ancient naughtiness from beyond the dawn of time, blah blah blah. Change the record, it's older than both of us.'

'Silence!'

'Make me!' the Doctor said darkly. 'If you're so powerful then make me stop talking, I dare you...No?' he leaned back in his chair and smiled. 'I thought not.'

Angry green eyes glowered at him in the darkness.

'I can't help but notice you're travelling alone,' his opponent said finally. 'No companion to save you this time.'

'Well done,' the Doctor said, clapping his hands together. 'You've finally said something interesting. Lets talk about Ace, that is the reason why I'm here after all.'

'You're here at my behest and entirely under my-'

'Fine, fine, fine, whatever you say but it's Ace that I'd very much like to discuss. I have grave concerns regarding her future... so many variables, so much interference...'

The thin leered unpleasantly, 'Sugar and spice and all things nice. What is it that you'd like to know?.'

'You know exactly what I'd like to know. Tell me about Christmas.'

Shivering in her wet clothes as they picked their way out of Maiden's Bay, Ace tried to keep hold of the elation she'd felt while she was in the sea. The water had been freezing cold but everything else had seemed so clear. Of course she'd forgiven the Doctor, the devious old sod. It'd all made sense in the water but the further away they walked the more she couldn't shake the feeling she'd forgotten something important.

She looked sideways at her friend as they stumbled across the beach, holding each other tightly, the Doctor planting his umbrella between the stones with a certainty she wasn't sure he possessed.

It was immediately obvious her life wasn't normal, her best friend was an immortal alien who travelled the universe fighting injustice and doling out tea but she'd just experienced an all new level of strangeness. She'd met her nan. Hell, she'd even held her own mother as a baby and loved her unquestioningly, without knowing who she was.

It'd all got a bit too close to home for her liking.

She shook her head and focussed on the rushing sound of the sea as it crashed against the rocks, her thoughts still consumed by their uneasy flight from the military base to the beach.

'Believe me,' the Doctor had said to her as they'd knelt in the mud. She'd wondered if anything could ever be that simple again.

'You lied to me! All this time I thought I was watching your back, keeping you out of trouble, the Doctor and Ace out among the stars! What a joke.'

The angry words had fallen from her so easily, like bitter tears. For all her freind's protests she knew she'd just been another one of Fenric's pawns, like Judson, Millington and poor dead Sorin. It hadn't even mattered whose side they were on in the end or why they were fighting, it was all just wars within wars, small battles and human cruelty.

It had all just been one great big chess game only she was too stupid to see the squares.

'You know what's worst?' she'd spat. 'When I realised I'd created the future I hated. Sending Kathleen to London so that I'd end up stuck in that flat with Audrey, always either angry or drunk.'

The Doctor's eyes had looked sadder than she'd ever seen them but still she hadn't been able to forgive him. If only he hadn't known exactly what to say to hurt her so precisely.

Of course he'd taken her hand so gently in his own, this man she'd pledged her life to on a promise of something better, a life not spent waiting tables and she forced herself to look him in the eye, his face blurry through her tears.

'Everything you ever went through made you exactly who you are and you are my friend. I'm so sorry I deceived you, I only ever wanted for you to be your own person. Your parents, your teachers, Fenric... none of that matters. I could tell that you were wonderful from the moment we met and I'm so proud of the woman you've become.'

Standing in the summer rain that was when she broke, her angry tears giving way to something deeper. They held each other for a long time amidst the mud and chaos of battle.

Still, he'd spent a good half an hour on their walk to the Maiden's Bay explaining and apologising and if anything she felt like she actually understood him a little better now. They had a bit of a way to go before they were back to normal again but time would fix everything eventually, of that she was sure

Trust is like getting given a really great bicycle when you're a child, she mused, lovely to have but horrible once it's been taken away.

She stopped walking abruptly and stood very still on the slippery stones despite the cold wind whipping through her wet clothes. Something about the thought of a bicycle had triggered a childhood memory so vivid she wondered how she could ever have forgotten it. It'd been dark, she'd had cold feet and there had been an empty stocking hanging at the end of her bed but that was all that she could remember.

Realising he was walking alone the Doctor turned back with a frown.

'What's wrong?'

'Something important, I...'

And then she remembered.

Once upon a time in Perivale, Dorothy Gale McShane had known that the world was magic. It must have been Christmas because everything had been lit with the sparkle of tinsel and those really cheap Christmas tree lights her mum used to buy from Woolworth's. She'd woken up in the cold dark quiet and listened for a long time to the sound of raised voices from downstairs...

'What is it?' the Doctor asked.

Focussing on the memory now it had come back to her she spoke slowly, as though one careless word could banish it again. 'When I was in the water I membered something about mum. It was Christmas...'

She shook her head. There was something about the memory that felt familiar but didn't quite add up. It'd been cold that Christmas, the coldest anyone could remember and she'd woken up because of a strange noise from outside.

Suddenly she knew what it was that had been so strange about her memory of Christmas long past. After the noise and the flashing lights had stopped she'd stood on cold tiptoes and peered out of her bedroom window at the strange looking blue box nestled in the snow.

She'd seen the TARDIS outside her bedroom window, years before she ever even knew what it was. Why on earth would the TARDIS have been in Perivale if not for her?

'I think there's something we need to do,' she eventually managed to say.

'You aren't here to talk about Christmas you fool,' his opponent said as knocked over the Doctor's rook with his black knight, 'In your own strange way you already understand that.'

The Doctor smiled disarmingly, 'Then why am I here?'

'For forgiveness,' he said finally.

The Doctor shrugged absent-mindedly and moved his bishop into a more favourable position.

Ignoring the move the thin man narrowed his eyes.

'Even I wouldn't have betrayed the girl in that way. It was an ill done thing.'

The Doctor's attention strayed once again again from the chessboard. 'You wouldn't have used her? You took her from her home and cast her into an unknown future, like a die on a crap board and all in the hope I'd take the bait.'

'In that I was right.'

'You were correct in your assessment of the situation though nothing about it was right. Your actions were morally reprehensible.'

'I've always found morals... problematic. So flimsy and prone to breakage,' his opponent said with a smile, his small, sharp teeth just discernible in the dim light

'How utterly unsurprising,' the Doctor replied.

'Is that my fault?'

'I never said it was, but we digress...'

Ace stamped the snow from off her boots and looked up at the squat L shaped block of council flats to frown in recognition. How strangely ordinary it felt to be back in Perivale after all this time. Turns out you can go home again, she thought bitterly, you just need a TARDIS. She looked back at the rickety wooden form of the time machine that she now thought of as home, where it stood solid and blue nestled in the snow. A thin dusting of white had already started gathering on the roof and in the recessed panels of the door.

Home was a tricky thing, sometimes it seemed to be wherever you weren't, never where you actually were.

She blew on her hands in the freezing air before hugging herself tightly inside her bomber jacket, though whether it was for warmth or for comfort she couldn't tell.

'Christmas in Perivale,' she said. 'Ever have that dream where you're back where you grew up and you've changed only nothing else has?'

'I rarely dream,' the Doctor said, holding up a finger as a single snow flake settled on it. 'Or grow up for that matter.'

Stands to reason, she thought. 'When are we?'

'December, 1976,' he said. 'Christmas Eve. Well, Chritsmas Day to be precise, just as you requested.' He blew the snowflake from his finger with exaggerated care and turned to face her.

'You remembered something important that led us here. Tell me what it was.'

'I told you all I could remember back in the TARDIS!' she said. 'When I was in Maiden's Bay, all I could think about was mum and it just came back to me. I was only little but it seemed so familiar, I heard raised voices downstairs but I stayed in bed until the coast was clear and then...'

'Yes?'

'Doesn't matter,' she mumbled. 'Anyway I'm sure I saw the TARDIS outside. At least I think I did.'

'Hmmm,' was all he said

Without another word her companion wandered off into the darkness and she stared up at the same four-story fortress cast in concrete and dull red brickwork that had been both home and prison for sixteen years. It looked exactly as she remembered, right down to the same tacky Christmas lights blinking haphazardly in the plastic-framed windows. Same old Perivale, she thought to herself, of all the places in the universe why am I back in this dump? Cheap tinsel, stale mince pies and all the neighbours gathering round to watch the drunken drama unfold. Ace didn't care much about Christmas, she thought it was naff.

Give me a pound of really decent explosives, she thought, and we'll see what that does to a silent night.

Though the air was thick with snow flurries she could just about make out her old bedroom window. Somewhere up there I must be slowly waking up right about now, she thought to herself. Despite the strangeness of the situation, or maybe because of it, Ace was sorely tempted to throw a snowball at the darkened window.

'That would be a bad idea,' the Doctor said, taking her arm.

Before she had the chance to break the time continuum they stepped into the darkness beyond the amber spotlight of the streetlamp the TARDIS had landed beneath. The snow crunched satisfyingly under her boots.

The Doctor frowned suddenly and tilted his head towards the darkened sky, his eyes lost in shadow. Ace felt it as well, a tension building in the silent stillness. Perhaps she'd shrugged it off as the strangeness of coming home again but there was definitely something in the air.

'What is it?' she asked.

'There's an evil at work here.'

'You mean apart from the cold war, the IRA and Margaret Thatcher?'

The Doctor reached out and gripped Ace's arm with a sudden intensity. 'We must be careful, and not only because we've ventured back into your own personal history.'

'Alright Professor leave it out, I don't need another lecture on the sanctity of the laws of time.'

They both turned at the sound of a crash that came from the darkened corner of the bin room at the bottom of a nearby stairwell and stood unmoving until the noise subsided.

'Follow me,' the Doctor said.

They ran quickly up the stairs, ignoring the litter and graffiti, the Doctor navigating by whatever strange instinct it was that Time Lords possessed while she followed close behind. At the top of the stairs he turned left along the third floor balcony, just as Ace had known he would, past the identical front doors she knew all too well. Eventually he stopped and put his hand on the white plastic frame of the furthest door from the stairwell and she felt her heart convulse a little, even though she'd known it was where they'd been heading all along. No matter how far she travelled, it had always been there waiting for her, like a guilty secret.

'Home, sweet home,' she said bitterly.

The Doctor placed a hand gently on her shoulder. 'After everything you've been through already it won't be easy to see her, to re-enter your past, believe me. I wouldn't think any less of you if you wanted to go back to the TARDIS...'

'No chance,' she said. 'This ends tonight.'

Ace reached down to retrieve the spare set of key from where they were hidden under the doormat for those nights Audrey came home too drunk to find her own. Sliding the key into the lock, she took a moment halfway inside the doorway of her childhood home to stare at the orange and brown patterned carpet that covered the floor of thr hallway. Was it always that hideous? Had she just not noticed or was it different to how she remembered? As far as carpets went she had to concede it was pretty bloody awful.

'Ace?' the Doctor prompted.

'Sorry.'

She moved forward down the hall towards the door to the living roomou. Through the frosted glass panels she could just make out the lights of the same artificial Christmas tree. She felt the Doctor's steady presence behind her and carried on walking till they reached the door ahead.

Without knowing what she'd find on opening the door the scene was all too familiar. A pile of LPs lay scattered on the ugly rug next to the sofa. The same hideous fringed lamp, the imitation wooden sideboard opposite.

She registered all the details of the room peripherally, blurred into background noise. All her attention was entirely taken up by the figure of a slim, dark haired woman lying on the sofa, her permed hair splayed out across the faux-leather and her clothing slightly askew.

Ace took a step forward but stopped abruptly as her foot bumped against an empty wine bottle. As she stood in silence she noticed the steady rise and fall of the chest of the woman in front of her.

'Hello mum,' she said finally.

'That's not your mother,' the Doctor said quietly.

Before Ace had the chance to correct him, Audrey pulled herself upright and turned to face the Doctor, moving slowly as though waking from a dream.

Her eyes opened and they glowed an unearthly green.

'Time Lord,' she whispered.

The Doctor held his Queen poised aloft as he considered his next move. From somewhere far away he heard the distant crash of thunder, as unearthly electricity flickered across the flat horizon.

'To use her mother like that...' he said eventually. 'Now that was an ill done thing,'

His opponent smiled, 'Though not without a sort of poetic irony, was it not? It was also necessary.'

'Is evil ever necessary? Beyond the maintenance of the universal equilibrium I really do wonder what purpose you and your kind serve? Tiresome little nemeses from the dawn of time, I seem to be beset with them in this incarnation.' The Doctor brushed a speck of dust from the lapel of his tweed jacket. 'I do hope my next self has a more even playing field, I'm finding chess increasingly tedious.'

Fenric leaned forward in his chair, his cruel lips drawn back into an attempt at a smile. 'You sense your end is soon. Another little death for the Time Lord that has brought ruin to so many.'

'I might have dirtied my hands somewhat but it was always with the best intentions.'

'Tell that to the good citizens of Skaro, if you can find any.'

'The Daleks had it coming,' he said with a grim sneer. 'Enough with these games, have you anything useful to tell me about Ace?'

Fenric arched an eyebrow. 'Christmas was so long ago, it's difficult to remember.'

'Aren't they all? Try harder.'

'Only if you sing for me again Time Lord.'

'As you wish.'

Time was moving more slowly than normal. Ace stumbled forward but there were no words that she could form. Fenric seemed to fill the room, illuminating everything in the same unearthly green glow. Even the plastic Christmas tree looked like it was made out of evil. From somewhere on the street below she heard a dog barking and the sound of drunken merriment.

'Oh no,' she whispered.

The Doctor swept past her like a stormfront, as angry as she'd ever seen him.

'Fenric.' he said, his voice dripping with disgust. 'I thought I smelled a familiar stench when we arrived but I assumed it was the bins. Having a day out I see, I'll have to put a stop to that.'

Smoothing down her clothes Audrey McShane took a halting step forward. Ace caught the same scent of perfume she remembered from her childhood.

'Fleur de Lys,' she said softly, taking in the horror of what she was witnessing. She swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly dry and and her hands trembling,

'Doctor what's it doing?' she cried, 'Why is it here?' How do we make it stop?'

'To answer your questions in order,' he said. 'I don't know, I don't know and I don't know. Fortunately I enjoy surprises'.

Fenric turned and fixed her with a sharp glare, the eerie green eyes set below the same disappointed frown she knew all too well.

'My my my Dorry, look at you all grown up.'

'Shut up!'

The body infront of her twitched involuntarily but it was Audrey who leaned forward with arms outstretched. 'Haven't you got a hug for mummy?'

Horrified Ace backed away, bumping into the fringed lampshade behind her. This isn't happening, she thought to herself, sweat beading her brow and her heart thumping in her chest.

Fenric shrugged whilst hoisting her clothes back into place and brushing the hair from her shoulders.

'Now where are my manners? Who fancies a nice cup of tea?'

'No!' Ace screamed. 'Not my mum you monster, leave her alone. You've already taken everything from me but not her as well.'

With an angry shove Ace sent the woman she'd hated for as long as she could remember flailing backwards. She landed awkwardly on the sofa.

A hand pressed itself into her the knot of her shoulder and Ace felt herself go slack.

'Aboo-Fenrán!' the Doctor shouted, his voice echoing throughout the small corners of the room. 'I don't know how you've escaped and I don't care. Whatever it is you hope to achieve, it ends here and it ends now. I command you to return to the shadow dimensions from whence you came,' he said. 'Leave this woman alone.'

Staring up at them from the sofa Fenric began to laugh, a low smoker's laugh that dissolved into coughing. 'Oh no, I'm afraid that's not for you to decide at all.'

The smile faded from Audrey's face and her eyes hardened. 'I won't be disrespected in my own home.'

'You're not her,' Ace shouted. 'Stop pretending to be my mum!'

'Oh aren't I, Dorothy Gale McShane?' The slim brown haired woman said as she crawled off the sofa like a spider. 'Wasn't it me who carried you? I never wanted to be a mother. I came round eventually when I found out I was having my own little girl. All those dresses I bought from Mothercare and what do I end up with? You. Such an angry little thing, nohing I ever did was good enough for you. Sulking in your bedroom and stinking out the house with all those nasty chemicals. Now get up those stairs and think about what you've done.'

Ace clamped her hands over her ears and fought to control her breathing, like the Doctor had taught her. All the monsters they'd faced and the cruelty they'd faced, everything they'd done to put the universe to rights had just fallen into nothingness. It'd all been a beautiful dream but she was just the same old strange little Dorothy McShane, dreaming of the stars while getting told off by her mum.

'Of course!' the Doctor exclaimed. 'By travelling into your own past we've created a weak point in the substrata of the continuum, that's why Fenric is manifesting here.'

'Doctor, can't you do something?'

'I'm so sorry Ace, I can't, this isn't my battle. But you were right, there is something here that we need to do.'

'Such a disappointment!' Audrey said, scowling venemously. 'All your school reports and then the police involved as well? I nearly died of shame the day they brought you home, all the neighbours watching too. And then those awful social workers had the nerve to say I was to blame.'

Ace balled up her fists and pressed them into her eyes. 'You were to blame,' she shouted. 'I wasn't bad, I was just a child. All my life you bullied me, made me feel like I wasn't good enough, like I was the reason you were unhappy!'

'Fight it Ace,' the Doctor called. 'If I'm right Fenric is only able to manifest here because of your hatred of your mother. When it was defeated in 1943 part of it survived, feeding off your negative emotions because of your relationship with her,' he said, pointing at Audrey. 'The daughter of Kathleen Dudman. Your memory of the TARDIS waking you up on Christmas Eve wasn't real, it was Fenric's last trap, to bring you here to the point in time where it could break free using the strength of your own emotions against us. Hate her or fear her, it'll only make Fenric stronger.'

'I don't understand! What can I do?'

The Doctor pulled her face close to his. His eyes were alive with the most perfect trust. 'Only the most powerful and important thing in the universe... You have to forgive her.'

'I can't!'

'Tell me what else happened when you woke up as a child in this house. What happened when you came downstairs!?'

Before she could answer Audrey grunted with rage and sent the Time Lord flying. He winced once as he bounced off the imitation fireplace and lay still upon the carpet.

'Doctor!'

She threw herself on the small broken form of her friend. He was out cold but his strange double pulse was still strong and steady as she felt his wrist. Despite her small stature Audrey towered above her.

Ace knew that if she could just stand up, figure out what the Doctor had been trying to ask then she stood a chance. Instead all she could hear was Audrey's voice.

'Do you really think he cared about you?' "An emotional cripple who couldn't even pass her chemistry O-Level?"

'He only said that because of you,' she whispered.

'No no no, Dorothy. You belong here with me. I might have found it hard to love you but I always put food on the table and I kept you in clean clothes and put a roof over your head. Not that you deserved it, you sullen little madam.'

Ace screwed her eyes shut tight and put her hands over her ears, made herself small just like she'd always done as a child when her mother got angry. With the Doctor out of action there was only her, cowering in the front room of her childhood home, facing down her demons. Which was she more afraid of? The woman who hated her own daughter or the ancient evil from the dawn of time. Didn't make much difference in the end, they were both out to get her.

But then it was different this time. Despite Fenric's poison there was nothing Audrey could say that could be worse than Ace'd already heard growing up.

All Fenric had was words, there were no monsters to do its bidding this time, no haemovores lurking in the airing cupboard. Maybe those words had been true once but not anymore. She wasn't Dorothy Gale McShane anymore, bad at school and picked on by her boring classmates, she was Ace, and Ace knew better, Ace did better.

It was Ace who'd beat up a Dalek with a super-powered baseball bat, taken on a Cyber assault squad armed only with a catapault and a bag of gold coins while the Doctor had saved the day again. She'd held aloft Excalibur and fought countless other monsters and gods and won, and who else but Audrey had she to thank for teaching her how to fight?

Finally she understood what it was the Doctor had been trying to tell her.

Ace opened her eyes and looked up to see Fenric advancing towards her.

She stood up and smiled.

Before she had a chance to think better of it she hurled herself forward and closed her arms tightly around her mother. She felt the woman go tense, just as she always had when her daughter tried to hug her. Maybe Dorothy would have pulled away in shame but Ace didn't care

'Thank you,' she said finally. 'Thank you for making me exactly who I am and who I needed to be to survive you and Fenric. You were always so cross with me, like you thought I was worthless. Maybe I was crap at school but I knew things and I was cleverer than you realised. And for what it's worth I do love you and I forgive you, even though you don't deserve it because lets face it, I might have been a disappointment but you were a bad mother.'

With a gasp Audrey went rigid, her eyes rolling up in their sockets. Stepping backwards Ace realised the Doctor was up and standing by her side, his eyes blazing with a fierce pride. She couldn't tell for certain but it looked like he was smiling.

Audrey clutched at her throat as the green glow in her eyes flickered and faded.

'Time Lord,' she said. 'How did you know?'

'I didn't, not for certain,' he said, taking a step forward, 'but I hoped I was right and sometimes hope is enough. Thank you for confirming it.' He raised an index finger and touched it gently to her mother's forehead.

'Go.'

As Fenric dissipated, back into whatever hell it'd escaped from, Audrey McShane fell slowly in on herself like a house of cards, as the Doctor swept forward to catch her. He laid the sleeping woman softly back on the sofa, arranged her skirt to cover her knees and cleared his throat awkwardly.

'Tell me,' he said simply.

'I woke up and came downstairs,' Ace said through her tears. 'I thought maybe I'd been asleep long enough that Father Christmas had come but it wasn't reindeer I heard. I found mum weeping on the sofa, all lit up by the same plastic Christmas tree lights we'd put out every year, Her make up was all smudged and her clothes were just a little bit too tight like they always were but it was still my mum and she was sad. I don't know why but the memory must have stuck because for once she didn't shout at me, she just reached out her hand and pulled me close as she sobbed on the living room floor. There was an empty wine bottle on the floor just like always and the room stank of cigarettes but I didn't care. I didn't understand why but in that moment I knew that I was loved.'

The Doctor put a hand on her shoulder.

'If there's anything else you'd like to say, now is the time. We don't have long.'

Ace brushed away the tears on her cheeks. 'Nah, said it all already. Thanks for making me. Will she remember anything?'

'She'll wake up from a nightmare she'll neither comprehend nor recall and she'll hold her daughter close just as she should, until they both fall asleep,' he said. 'Exactly as you remember.'

'But I was wrong, we were never supposed to be here were we? Like you said, it was all Fenric's trap all along.'

The Doctor cocked his head and stared out of the window at the promise of Christmas Eve that lay beyond. ' I think that we were precisely where we needed to be.'

They both turned at the sound of a floorboard creaking overhead.

'Time to go?' she asked.

'Indeed, I think we've both had enough excitement for one night,' he said, ushering her out of the room and closing the door softly behind them.

As they retraced their steps toward the TARDIS Ace felt the enormity of it all still threaten to overwhelm her if she let it. Instead she only processed it as fragmentary images; the burning chess set in Millington's laboratory, the green glow of Sorin's eyes as she realised the truth.

Where would this land in the story of her life? Standing in the wet heat of a summer rain as she'd waited for the bullet that would end her life. Or maybe what she'd remember when she was grey and old was meeting her nan, holding her mother as a baby, or laughing with Jean and Phyllis before they'd been turned cold and monstrous by Fenric's curse.

Perhaps what she'd remember above all else was standing in the rain as she helped Kathleen escape and the promise she'd made to always love the baby that would turn out to be her mother.

Not that it really mattered, death was death and it was coming for them all eventually. Experience was just the labyrinth you wander through in search of some kind of truth, she thought.

Or maybe it's all just nonsense and we are who we are because of what we've experienced, not inspite of it.

Look at me Professor, she wanted to say as she chased after his coat tales, I get it now. Time is what it is and you do what you have to do but so do I and that's why we're a team. We chose each other, and it had nothing to do with destiny or curses. We're a family

Satisfied with who she was, what she knew and where she was going, Ace crossed the snow covered car park, followed the Doctor into the TARDIS and closed the door behind her.

The Doctor repositioned his queen, knocking Fenric's king off the board with a casual swagger.

'She was always in control, that's what you failed to understand. Ace was never your wolf and she joined me on her own terms, just as I appreciated her for who she was. Tut tut Fenric, have you learned nothing in all your years of incarceration?'

'I learned how to strike from the shadows, to take what victories where I could find them.'

'I'm sure you have, though suburbia really doesn't become you. From ancient Constantinople to Perivale? How are the mighty fallen.' The Doctor replaced his hat on his head and smiled. 'And it's back to the shadows for you, at least for now.'

'I may have lost the girl but don't imagine that our game has ended. I have other pieces on the board, other traps to spring. Perivale was only ever a reminder that I can reach you anywhere at any time.'

'Oh Fenric you poor mad brute,' the Doctor said as he collected up his umbrella. 'I was never playing chess, I was only ever playing hopscotch.'.

'Wait,' his opponent commanded. 'You can't leave, I forbid it!'

'I think not. TTFN,' the Doctor said, doffing his hat.

'Please, I beg of you... I'll be alone.'

'Yes I imagine you will,' said the Doctor with a smile of satisfaction.

'You'll never know Dorothy's future! My wolf, my most perfect trap. I can still see her and all it is she could become. Don't you want to know?'

'I already do. This will be my last visit. Enjoy the rest of eternity, it's very nearly over.'

The Doctor toppled his king before turning and setting off toward the horizon.

The wind howled, and nothing of importance ever happened again.