A/N: Okay so SLIGHTLY late but still sorta okay? :D

Yay, just a little more background and we're getting into the actual plot! Phew, I hate starting from scratch, as I believe a wise person once said.

Chapter 4: A Dark and Stormy Night

It was as though the weather knew the mood of the room as the beautiful clear skies of Pleaneas ominously turned dark and cloudy, setting themselves up for what was probably going to be a raging lightning storm overnight.

The Doctor somehow found himself sitting at the table opposite to his daughter, who was staring up at him with her eyes so full and focused on his face, ready to listen with extreme attention to every single syllable he was going to say. It was set up like an interrogation, with Leah as the detective, him as the perpetrator, and Jack the defence lawyer sitting on his right.

When he opened his mouth to speak, he had no idea what he was going to say. Somehow, and from somewhere, vague words managed to form themselves halfway down the channel from his brain to his mouth, and before he knew it, he was speaking.

'... Do you remember over a year ago, when your mum killed her brother?'

'Yeah,' Leah replied, nodding. 'When she killed him to save you?'

'Yes,' he confirmed, with every word feeling like it was tearing through his very being. 'Well, for a long time afterwards, Mum was struggling very badly. She was depressed, anxious, and she had PTSD. She couldn't sleep for nightmares, and she was barely eating. She was extremely mentally ill, which was making her physically ill. To help her, I used the bond to get inside her nightmares and become a sort of 'Dream Guardian' for her, so at least she could sleep.'

'What does that mean? Dream Guardian?'

'Well, I basically went inside her head when she was dreaming and gave her a character - a fictional version of myself for her dreams - who's immortal with superpowers. Someone she could rely on to save her whenever she had a nightmare.'

'Um, like an imaginary friend?'

'Yeah, kind of. But one for her dreams. A kind of superhero imaginary friend.'

'Did it work?'

'Yep. Mum's nightmares stopped, and we were happy. But that's when the Bar'zellis arrived.'

'When those people with guns came into Torchwood, and we had to go on holiday?'

'Yeah. The Bar'zellis wanted to abduct Theo, and they'd have had you too. It got very dangerous, so that's when we had to run. We spent all that time travelling to keep you two safe. After a year, I pretty much thought we'd completely lost them, and we were about to head back to Torchwood. Your mum wanted to get some souvenirs for everyone, and so we went to the market on Hivernia. But while you were off on your own, the Bar'zellis found us. They abducted Theo. Me and your mum chased after them. I was just about to win around the Bar'zelli agent with a bit of charm when the head of the organisation walked in - Bac'ou Bar'zelli. I recognised him, and he recognised me.'

'You knew him?'

'Unfortunately, yes,' the Doctor replied solemnly. 'I'd met him when I was much younger. So to cut a long story short, I was shot at point-blank range with a stun gun, Theo was taken, and your mum was completely abandoned on an alien world.'

Leah's jaw dropped.

'I came to my senses two months later, after being in a coma. Your mum had been living rough on the alien world, and her nightmares had come back. We didn't have any way of communicating with you or Torchwood, plus we had no Tardis, so I promised her we'd find Theo. We hitched a ride to Sirrus.'

'That criminal planet you went to before?'

'Yeah. We tracked down Theo to the Bar'zelli Headquarters. By that time, it'd been three months since he'd been taken. We made plans to break him out, but it went wrong. Bac'ou caught me, stabbed me in the wrist with a poison blade, which is how this happened,' he gestured to his paralysed arm, 'but by then, your mum was so ill that the disease completely took her over. Don't ask me how exactly, but she destroyed the entire cell block. Everything was on fire. I managed to get to where Theo was being held, but I collapsed from blood loss. She arrived, and I was so relieved. I thought she was going to try and save us. I waited for her. But she didn't. She … walked out.'

'She didn't save you?' the little girl asked, still staring at him.

'No.'

'But she'd never do that.'

'No, she wouldn't. But it's … it's not her.'

'What d'you mean?'

He swallowed. 'There's … There's a disease. A mental disease. This disease acts like cancer to the brain of low telepathic species. It ravages the brain and the body, and in 98 percent of cases, it kills the host. It's usually transmitted through heightened and sustained telepathic connections. It's called Lanwa's disease. It's incurable, and it's a death sentence. Your mum has it.'

Leah stared at her father, not blinking. '... Mummy's dying?'

'... Yes. She's got six months.'

'But she can't be.'

'I'm sorry … Oh, Leah. It's all my fault. I'm so sorry.'

'It's not your fault,' Jack stressed.

'How's it your fault?' Leah queried, confused.

'Because … because I infected her,' the Doctor croaked, putting his head in his hand.

'What?'

'I didn't know. I didn't know I was carrying the disease. As a carrier, I have no symptoms, it's just there. I think the Master must've given it to me when …'

He trailed off.

'When the Master telepathically attacked him before you were born,' Jack completed for him. 'We think that's when he gave your dad the disease and didn't bother telling him that it was a possibility he could be infected.'

'Oh,' Leah muttered.

'All that time, she became, iller, and iller, and iller, and I didn't notice,' the Doctor berated himself, staring at the table. 'I didn't see any of the symptoms. When the Bar'zellis caught up with us, in that time she was alone, the Lanwa's spread through her brain to the point of no return. When I woke up from being shot, I knew she'd changed, but I assumed it was because she'd been forced to survive on an alien world for two months.'

'Which is really reasonable to think,' Jack added.

The Doctor ignored him. 'The disease is using your mum's body as a sort of vessel.'

'But what's it trying to do?'

'Infect me,' the Doctor muttered. 'We've now got a disease that's completely sentient and has struck lucky. Because of how gallifreyan brains are constructed, usually Lanwa's can't take me over - I can only be a carrier - but because I'm bonded to your mum, there's a sort of psi connection between us. This disease is basically fed by psi energy. That means the disease, if it tries hard enough, can transmit itself from mum back to me, and then …'

'We'd get a sentient disease that can exist in a body that can sustain it, and time travel and regenerate,' Jack supplied.

'Yeah,' the Doctor confirmed weakly.

'But you'll save Mummy, right?' Leah asked, anxiously.

He sighed. 'There's … There's a small chance. This disease thrives on psi energy, which is all linked to telepathy, telekinesis, and to a small extent, the subconscious - which includes dreams. The disease basically used your mum's nightmares as a road to get in her head. But I got there first. I made that Dream Guardian. There's that little version of me inside your mum's imagination that can push back the disease. But what's left of your mum needs to believe that he's strong enough to kill the disease.'

'How you gonna do that?' Leah wondered nervously.

'We need to somehow capture her, and I need to help my Dream Guardian self beat the disease. But that's going to be hard. I don't know what sort of powers the Lanwa's has.'

'Okay,' Leah croaked, still staring at him.

'When you saw her, did she look injured? Or recovering from something?'

'Umm … she looked tired,' Leah said, thinking. 'She didn't look hurt, though. Why?'

'What I don't know is what she was doing here,' the Doctor muttered. 'It can't be a coincidence.'

'Wouldn't Panacea see she was sick anyway?' Leah wondered.

'Lanwa's disease is extremely difficult to detect,' the Doctor replied. 'Despite all this technology, she might have missed it. Or maybe even Panacea couldn't cure it.'

Leah paused, still gazing at him. Then she sat up and nodded as if just having made a huge decision. 'Okay. So what do I do?'

'You can't do anything, Leah,' the Doctor said regrettably. 'This is completely up to me.'

'But I wanna help.'

'You can help by looking after Theo for us,' Jack told her. 'You two need to stay safe. All of us have gotta be extra careful.'

Leah nodded. 'What do I do if I see Mummy again?'

'Run,' the Doctor replied immediately. 'And keep running until you can't run anymore. Anything she says to you, don't believe her. She wants you on her side, now. She wants to use you to manipulate me, and I won't let that happen. And if she can't manipulate you, she might try to hurt you. So just run. Don't fight. Don't even try. Okay?'

'Okay,' Leah replied nodding.

'And … please forgive me.'

She gazed at him briefly, before she dropped down from her chair and moved around to give him a hug. He held her with his one working arm, feeling his hearts hammering in his chest.

'It wasn't your fault,' his little girl told him.

It wasn't.

He didn't reply. He just stayed holding her for as long as the girl was prepared to stay in his arms.

By the time the Doctor had seen Leah to bed, the storm was in a calm phase just before it let loose. Once again, it seemed to be coinciding perfectly with his mood. Despite everything, he did feel significantly better by telling Leah. Not relief - it could never be relief - but maybe just slightly less uptight. Like his head was somewhat less crowded.

He checked in on Theo, who was sleeping like a log. He then returned to the main room, where Jack had made them both some more tea.

'You did good,' Jack commented as the Time Lord took his seat and pulled the much-needed cup of tea towards him. 'I know that was hard. But she needed to know.'

The Doctor sighed, nursing his cup of tea. 'Yeah. She did.'

'We'll get through this,' Jack assured him. 'We'll get Rose back.'

The Doctor nodded silently, just as his infowatch beeped. He checked it. 'Got my first appointment tomorrow morning.'

'Want me to come?'

'Nah,' the Doctor replied. 'I'll be fine.'

They simultaneously took a sip of tea as the storm began the symphony outside.

'Are the kids safe from the disease?' Jack suddenly asked. 'They can't be infected, right?'

The Doctor felt his hearts pang with a flash of sheer frustration, perfectly coinciding with a crack of thunder. 'The kids don't have the strong connection to their mum that I have, so unless it infects me, they should be safe.'

'Should be,' Jack echoed.

The Doctor shook his head. 'Honestly? I don't know. Nothing like that has ever happened before. Usually, Lanwa's dies and kills the infected person after six months. But it's got a foothold on infecting gallifreyans. If it does …'

He paused and looked at Jack with a grave expression.

'What?' Jack asked.

'I need you to promise me something.'

'Yeah?'

'If I get infected, I want you to kill me.'

Jack took in a sharp intake of breath. 'I can't.'

'You have to,' the Doctor stressed. 'If it infects me, I can't be cured. Then it'll infect the kids, then everyone in Torchwood, then it'll probably take over the UK, Earth, and then the universe, piece by piece … It won't stop, Jack. Please. Promise me you'll kill me.'

'Fuck,' Jack swore.

'Just shoot me in the head, I won't regenerate from that. You have to promise me.'

Jack swallowed. '... Okay.'

'Promise me.'

'... I promise.'

'Thank you.'

The Doctor didn't sleep. He spent all night analysing the exotronic to the point he could garner no more information, keeping himself busy as the storm came and crashed its way through the night. He was a little surprised that Theo hadn't been disturbed, but the little boy was in something akin to a coma, which had worried the Doctor so much he had ended up checking his breathing a few times. But he was fine.

The storm finally rumbled its last note at dawn, where it parted to leave a beautiful clear early morning sky as Leah appeared in her pyjamas rubbing her eyes, yawning. She looked at him with surprise. 'Are you still up?' she asked, confused.

'Yeah.'

Her hands snapped to her hips in the perfect tiny model of a disgruntled Jackie Tyler impersonator, as the six-year-old equipped those genetically-gifted fiery Tyler "eyes of death" and gazed at him sternly. 'Go to bed, you're sick,' she ordered, as though she was the parent.

He smiled a little. 'No point, I've got my first session in an hour.'

Leah's arms fell to her sides. 'Oh,' she said, all essence of Jackie Tyler rapidly fading away. 'Can I come?'

'It'll be boring,' he warned her.

'No, it won't,' Leah insisted. 'Can I?'

'Well, if you want to,' he conceded. 'But don't say I didn't warn you.'

She beamed at him and skipped over to the food dispenser. 'Chocolate pancakes with loads of cream!' she demanded of the machine, before adding a hasty, 'please!' on the end. The device rumbled and dinged completion. She got onto her tiptoes to extract the plates of pancakes from the dispenser and wandered back over to him.

She grabbed a fork and immediately got stuck into the small mountain of batter and chocolate. 'Did you eat yet?' she wondered after she'd managed to clear her mouth from the first bite.

'Not yet.'

'Eat something,' she ordered him. 'You need to keep up your strength.'

'Okay, okay,' he conceded and retrieved some fruit to pick at before returning to sit next to her.

'Is that it?' she asked, staring at the few slices of fruit as the outside of her mouth became progressively layered in more and more chocolate sauce as they ate.

'I'm not that hungry.'

'But you're always hungry,' Leah pointed out before she changed the subject. 'So what are they gonna do to you first?'

'They're healing my foot and chest,' he said, nodding down to each in turn. 'It's probably going to be a bone and tissue regeneration chamber.'

'One of those long tube things that looks like a giant baby bottle?'

He smiled. 'Yeah, one of those. Probably going to have to lie in one for a couple of hours. Told you it'd be boring.'

'It'll be even more boring on your own. We can be bored together,' Leah said happily.

His smile broadened. 'Thank you,' he said as he rapidly finished the fruit. She was right. For the first time in a while, he was hungrier than that. His eyes drifted to the mountain of pancakes in front of his child.

Leah caught his gaze. 'Get your own.'

He laughed again and got up to do just that.

'That's the grossest thing ever.'

The Doctor followed Leah's gaze across the ward as they waited in the patient lounge, where a woman was standing by the counter covered patches of snotty green rashes.

'Laucominisitis,' the Doctor told her under his breath. 'I had that once.'

She looked up at him and pulled a very twisted face of pure revulsion. 'Eww. Ewwwww.'

'Still not as bad as Flamaen Pox,' the Doctor added, grinning a little. 'Massive yellow spots with veins all over them, and when they burst, they spray out a load of blood and black pus.'

'Ewww!'

Several people looked at them, including an unfortunate man who was covered in yellow spots.

'Sorry,' the Doctor said seriously, just before the man was called and walked away. The Doctor and Leah exchanged a look, and both snorted with laughter.

'What the grossest disease you've ever had?' Leah wondered.

The Doctor thought that over for a moment. 'Probably back when I was just done travelling with your Auntie Sarah. Something very big, soft and veiny grew on the top of my head that was the size of a football.'

'Ewww!' Leah chorused, looking horrified.

'It kept moving around, and I swear it had a dance routine for Lady Gaga's Poker Face.'

'Ewww. Ewww.'

'That's what I said when it hatched, and my head gave birth to twenty thousand maggots.'

'Ewwww!'

'And that's when the maggots started grouping together and formed one big maggot.'

'Okay so now you're lying,' she stated, entirely sure of herself.

'Honestly!' he insisted.

'So what did you do?'

'I had to lure it to the biggest natural hot spring on Earth, Frying Pan Lake in New Zealand, and lead it in. When it died, it exploded, and I had to turn up to a meeting of the High Council of Gallifrey covered in maggot guts. Cardinal Borusa wasn't amused.'

'This story stopped being true forever ago.'

He smirked. 'Did it?' he wondered, leaving his little girl to ponder that with a face of horror just as his name was called.

Leah stayed with him for the entire process, which was, just as her daddy had said, incredibly dull. But since he was the one stuck in a tube with lights running all over him, she took it upon herself to make him happy. That was, after all, her self-made job now.

After two hours and a lot more talk about disgusting diseases to the quandary of an unfortunate nurse in the room with them, he was finally let out. Leah watched, mesmerised, as the man who'd hobbled in with a crutch and the weight of a thousand ills on his shoulders suddenly emerged standing somehow taller than she ever remembered, and immediately smiled at her.

'Are you fixed?' Leah asked.

He briefly tested his ankle and took in a deep breath to check his chest. 'Oh, much better,' he said, grinning. 'I forgot what oxygen was.'

Leah giggled as the nurse walked over and indicated for him to sit on an examination bed. She checked his pulse and carefully felt the bones of his ankle and chest through his skin.

'It is still all there?' the Doctor joked.

The nurse smiled. 'It looks like everything has aligned itself, although we'll need to do a scan and an examination to double-check,' she told him.

'Oh, that'll take a while,' he realised, wincing. He looked at Leah. 'You can head off if you like, this'll be another hour.'

'Um, are you sure?'

'Yep. See you back at our room in a couple of hours if Theo hasn't destroyed it.'

'Okay.'

He nodded. 'And thank you again.'

She beamed. 'You're welcome,' she said happily, jumping up to give him a hug and a kiss before running out of the door, and straight to the lift.

'Good morning, Leah. Where would you like to go?' Panacea's voice asked.

'Um, the library please.'

'Of course. On exiting the lift, you will find the section on Lanwa's disease three rows to your right.'

Leah blinked, astonished. 'Um, how did you-'

'Please speak to me if you need any more information. If not, please enjoy the ride. Your journey will be an estimated further 78 seconds.'