oOo

The TARDIS reappeared just as the Doctor reached the top of the hill. Ace was standing there, had been staring numbly at the place it should have been, and she didn't move, even when it reappeared in front of her eyes. When she heard the Doctor behind her, she stepped aside, waiting silently for him to produce his key, fingers fumbling uneasily before finally finding and pulling it from his jacket pocket.

She continued to wait as the Doctor opened the door, hesitating on the threshold as if he wanted to say something. But she avoided his gaze, merely stood, mute and passive, until he finally stepped inside and called his son's name.

There was no reply. The TARDIS was empty.

oOo

There was a note on the console, of course. "Please don't try to find me. I have to stop all this, once and for all. Kyris." The Doctor read it out quietly, and just as quietly replaced it where he'd found it.

A few seconds passed in silence, then: "Damn it!"

Ace looked up, startled, as the Doctor's words exploded from his throat, as the Doctor's fist slammed into the console. The note drifted to the floor as he stared at his hand, an expression of mild surprise on his face at the sight of the clenched fist. His gaze turned uncomprehendingly to the note. He let it lie. "Well, it shouldn't be difficult to figure out where he went," the Doctor went on in a quieter voice. As if he hadn't just lost it, right there in the console room. In front of a companion. "All I have to do is find the Master. I don't suppose Kyris was careless enough to leave in his coordinates--no, I thought not," he interrupted himself as he peered at the destination readouts, his voice still rough with a tangle of unidentified emotions. "Ace, would you be so good as to see if he took the data retriever with him? I foolishly left it in the reader."

Without replying, Ace passed out of sight through the interior door of the TARDIS. The Doctor grimly began trying to reconstruct his son's flight path. "Find the Master, find the son," he muttered. "Nothing to it; I've only got all of space and time to look through." His laugh was brittle, bitter and humorless.

Ace returned a few minutes later, as the Doctor was kneeling down to pull the cover off the TARDIS base. "I've got it." She handed it to him.

The Doctor looked up, startled by the iciness of her fingers. "Ace? What's wrong?" A foolish question perhaps, with at least two answers springing immediately to mind, but for once she forwent the sarcasm.

"I know why he left," she said simply. "I saw what he saw, on the disk."

The Doctor slowly straightened from his half-crouch beneath the console. "Tell me."

"He's going to try to stop the Master killing me." The words were matter-of-fact, but he could see the panic struggling in her eyes. "How come that thing can show something like that, when I'm still traveling with you? Isn't that breaking a rule, forbidden or something?"

Shock, he decided. One too many shocks piled up on her at once, all personal. "Yes," he replied as he moved toward her. Slowly. She blinked at him, but didn't stop him when he tucked an arm round her shoulders and steered her out of the console room. "Apparently Romana wanted me to be able to keep an eye on my companions regardless of where they were in my personal time stream. I imagine she modified it after she the Master attacked them in E-Space."

Ace nodded, as if what he said was reasonable, but he could feel her trembling, just the slightest bit, on the verge of true hysteria. Not something he would ever have expected of her, but these were beyond even the extraordinary circumstances in which they were usually immersed. "Ace, I think you should lie down for a bit, try to rest so your mind can process everything that's happened today. D'you think you can do that for me?" He kept his voice calm, even, as if they were discussing the weather of an alien world; one slip into deeper sympathy and over the edge she'd go.

Ace nodded. "Right. A bit of a lie down, that's what I need. Nice to know some problems are fixable." There was no good response to that, so the Doctor wisely kept silent.

Neither spoke the rest of the way to the TARDIS medical center. Ace obediently hopped up onto the diagnostic bed and laid herself on her back when he asked her to, but he could still feel the trembling as he released her shoulders and tucked a blanket around her. Almost he reached for a sedative, but something made him stop. He looked down at her, pupils dilated, teeth clenched, hesitated, then took her icy, fisted hand in his. "Ace, I want to give you something to help you rest, but I need to ask you something first."

"Righty-oh, Professor, what is it?" As a stab at her normal voice, it was a pretty weak one, as weak as the smile she offered. Both voice and smile quickly faded back to blankness.

"It's very personal, and I apologize for even thinking about asking such a thing, but these aren't exactly normal times," he began, only to have Ace interrupt him.

"Yeah, we had sex," she said, her voice uninflected and face expressionless. "Better check to make sure Susan's not already cooking before you go willy-nilly handing out injections." The bravado of her words couldn't quite cover the shake in her voice. She snapped her teeth together tightly and waited, staring unblinkingly at the ceiling. Knowing what the answer would be even before the Doctor started rummaging around for whatever medical implement he would need to confirm the truth Ace already knew.

The Doctor opened and slammed shut several drawers before he found the scanner he wanted and made sure it was calibrated correctly. He ran it over Ace's passive form, frowning at the readout before raising his eyes to meet her stoic gaze. "Lemme guess," she said resignedly. "Preggers, am I?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yes." He allowed himself to collapse into the room's only chair as Ace turned on her side and faced the wall.

Her muffled voice roused him a few minutes later. "Better get back to looking for Kyris so we can give him the happy news." As if she could feel him hesitating behind her, she rolled back to face him. She was crying, he noted in alarm, but as he stepped forward she slashed the back of her hand across her eyes in an angry motion and shook her head, glaring at him. "Go find him before the Master kills him, too," she said. "Don't worry about me; like you said, I just need some time to process all this." She rolled back on her side, burrowing into the warmth of the blanket, not moving even after he left the room.