The TARDIS

Ace was four months pregnant before they found a single clue that could lead them to Kyris.

She wasn't showing, not much, not as much as she'd expected to be. She hadn't been around many pregnant women, but she had a an idea that four months was when bellies started to pop out. A cousin had been pregnant, when she was still too small to really understand, and she vaguely remembered being allowed to touch the bump under the girl's loose top she skeptically refused to believe was going to turn into a baby.

The Doctor was no help at all. The medical scanners reported that she was in perfect health, the baby--a girl, as if there were any doubt--was in perfect health, so the Doctor couldn't seem to grasp Ace's concerns. Oh, he understood her main worries, the ones that troubled her from outside her own body, the frustrating search for the Master and Kyris, but he didn't or wouldn't understand her more personal worries. Who would help her, when the time came? Was the baby to be born on the TARDIS, with the Doctor (and, hope whispered, Kyris) her only attendants? Call her sexist, but Ace discovered she desperately wanted a female presence in her life, preferably human. Someone to reassure her, or at least help her understand exactly what she was going to be going through in another, what? Five months?

That was another area where the Doctor was frustratingly vague, the length of Gallifreyan pregnancies. It had been so long since anyone from Gallifrey had actually given birth, Romana notwithstanding, that even the TARDIS database was silent on the subject. When Ace tentatively suggested linking the data reader to the Gallifreyan computers, the Doctor had nearly pinned her ears back with his blistering retort: "A fine reason to be sneaking around the Matrix, rendering it vulnerable, so you can find out if you'll be having a slightly longer or slightly shorter pregnancy!" The Scottish burr in his voice became more pronounced the more indignant he became; contrarily, Ace found it soothing. "The baby's fine and so are you, no toxicity or birth defects, you're well past the little bit of morning sickness you had, so please don't suggest such a thing again in my hearing."

That had been a month ago. He'd gone off, muttering, and she glimpsed his own concerns even as she obstinately refused to believe what she'd asked had been as dangerous as his reaction suggested. Nothing took precedence in her mind over finding Kyris and keeping her baby, Susan, safe.

She peered down at her stomach, trying to see if the tiny bulge had gotten any bigger since the last time she looked at it, oh, roughly five minutes ago. Still nothing. She cupped her hand over it anyway. "At least I don't have to worry about what to name you," she said wryly. If she did have a choice, she knew what she'd pick: Patience. Old-fashioned, yes, but a good way to remind herself of one of her own faults and her desire to correct it. Pilgrims, she remembered, had named their children for the virtues they wanted to them to possess. Of course, from what she'd seen, Susan wasn't lacking for that particular virtue.

She deliberately turned her thoughts away from the grown woman she'd already met and back to the baby that was still sleeping inside herself. She'd spent the bulk of the last four months stamping down hard on panic, weeding it methodically from her thoughts, only to have it pop back up in her dreams. As his one concession to easing her mind, the Doctor gave her a baby book he dug up from who-knew-where. When Ace read that vivid nightmares were part and parcel of pregnancy, she tossed the book into the nearest unused room, wishing heartily for a fireplace or open window instead. Its condescending tone was infuriating.

The nightmares weren't so much about her own inexperience, she knew, as they were about their lack of success in finding Kyris. The longer it took, the less likely they were to find him, Ace knew it but kept chasing the thoughts away. Like a spider it kept spinning new webs in her mind until she felt as tightly bound as any unfortunate insect.

When that happened, when things became unbearable inside her own head, she roamed the TARDIS corridors, opening every door she passed and investigating any that took her fancy. When she inevitably began to tire, she'd suddenly find herself in the corridor outside her own room. At first it had irritated her, but then she'd become reluctantly grateful as she realized how much easier her days were when she was able to catch a short nap. Not that she completely believed in the TARDIS' intelligence, at least not as she in her restrictive, human way defined it, but she knew this was another way of protecting Susan and so she tolerated the coddling.

It was during one of these long rambles that took her everywhere but where she most wanted to be that the Doctor appeared unexpectedly, panting a little as if he'd been running. "I think I've located them."

Ace didn't need any more than that. She immediately followed the Doctor to the control room, sensing that he kept his pace down out of concern for her, that he wanted to be sprinting instead of jogging. She tamped down on her resentment, knowing there was no getting about it; pregnancy slowed a girl up like nothing else, even this early, even barely showing in her tightest outfit and not at all under her baggy baseball jacket. She hadn't worn it in years, the patch-covered thing, but had dug it out the afternoon Kyris disappeared, after her breakdown. Another thing to resent, that; another reason to keep her panic under control. She would admit to no fear, not to the Doctor and not to herself. If the TARDIS sensed it in her, it wisely kept its opinion to itself.

Even though Romana's toy had led them to this situation, she was still grateful for it. Once the Doctor had checked and found Kyris, alive and well and being left alone on the Master's TARDIS, he'd used the small device to fine-tune his cobbled-together attempt at a TARDIS tracker. The reader was temporarily welded to the console's base, sticking out oddly and startling her every time she saw it; it was so out of place, and made the console look more pregnant than she did. "Where are they?" she demanded as soon as they entered the console room. "How's Kyris?"

That was her morning question when she woke up, the question she asked at meals and before she fell into bed at night. She knew the Doctor checked frequently, but she never caught him at it. He refused to let her look after the first time, citing a concern for her and the baby should anything unpleasant be viewed. He stubbornly refused to show her anything regarding her own future, the one Kyris had left on the reader when he left or any other, and claimed he wasn't even checking it himself. "There'll be time enough for that when it comes," had been and remained his unhelpful answer.

This question, however, he didn't bother to avoid. "Kyris appears to be in good health. I managed to pinpoint where they were when Kyris found the Master--Earth, in case you're interested. France."

Where it had began for them, and ended for Romana. Ace didn't bother to mention what the Doctor already knew. "Are they still there? Earth?" Her voice rose anxiously in spite of her attempts to appear under control.

The Doctor glanced at her sharply, but she forced her face into a featureless mask, a copy of the bland look he cast on her so often. She thought she saw a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, just for a moment, before he answered her. "Of course. I told you the Master wanted me to find him. Even with Kyris offering himself and his abilities up in trade, he would never abandon his plan. He wants it all; revenge and Kyris' healing abilities, and I'm sure he thinks he's got a plan to ensure both."

"Well, then I guess we'd better work on being the best damn flies in the ointment the universe has ever spit out," Ace replied. She dug her hands into her pockets just to keep them from hovering protectively over her abdomen. "Let's get him home, Doctor."