Three

Even Lorcan had to admit it was highly unlikely that a spy would have arrived in this state. It had seemed especially un-spylike to faint. Reflexes overrode reason, and he caught the girl before she hit the ground. She remained slumped against him. Up close she looked younger than he had guessed. He had thought her to be the same age as Aigon. Looking at the girl in his arms now, he guessed her to be closer in age to Brenna.

His daughter.

Brenna. Over three seasons had passed now since she'd been taken from him. His beautiful Brenna. Thinking of her, her merry blue eyes and strawberry hair, and that little line between her eyebrows when she scolded him…how much like her mother she looked. His throat grew tight thinking of where Brenna might be now.

If she yet lived.

Lorcan was a good man at heart. Anger gone now, he gently hefted the girl in his arms and turned to the young man who was studying him now. Aigon met his eyes. No more need be said. They were few enough as it was. No matter where she'd come from, the girl was here. They might need her. Another thought struck him. She looked battered enough. He saw the same thought in Lorcan's eyes as the man stared grimly ahead. If this girl had somehow escaped from the mines, then there might be hope for the others.

He gathered the canteens and day rations from where Lorcan had dropped them when the girl had fallen at his feet. They started for home.

The Doctor was losing his patience.

Once he had explained to the guards that he was not, in fact a spy, and allowed them to search him for weapons or beacons of any sort they seemed to be at a loss as to what to do about him. They'd taken the sonic screwdriver for further examination, but seemed to be satisfied for the time being that he didn't present any immediate threat. So it was largely by mutual agreement that they had escorted him here, to the council chamber. They brought him before a long table that apparently served multiple functions. A large man with dark hair and cruel, beady little eyes looked up at him with undisguised malice as the guards dropped his jacket, and the contents of his pockets onto the table in front of them.

He'd been impressed at what he'd seen when they'd escorted him down the narrow stone stairs into the cavern. Considerably wider at this level than at the surface several caves and paths diverged here below the surface. The rock walls he had taken from the surface to be sheer granite were riddled with caverns. Homes. Skinny, ragged children darted in and out. Too small for their species, the Doctor was certain. In spite of the hunger and hardship he could see on every one of their faces, they still shrieked and laughed as they ran. He had smiled a little, in spite of himself. In spite of what Rose may have thought, he liked children. In fact, there had been a time…

His mind clamped down on the thought before he'd even completed it. At that moment a ringing blow to his face left his head singing, jarring his attention back to the present. Two silent guards held him upright, arms pinned painfully behind his back. Rough hands gripping his jaw forced his head up. He regarded the man behind the table coldly. He hadn't heard whatever question the man behind the table had barked at him.

"I could have you killed right here!" Said the big, red-faced man sitting behind the table rifling through the Doctor's assembled belongings.

"I told you!" said the Doctor for the third time. "I'm a traveler, that's all."

The angry giant banged his fist on the table and stood up, advancing on the Doctor.

"We don't take kindly to spies here in the settlement!" He spat, grabbing a fistful of the Doctor's collar.

"Tristan, that's enough." The Doctor couldn't see whom the voice belonged to.

The man's face turned purple with rage. Resisting the urge to drop this man where he stood, the Doctor waited.

"Broccan, he's lying! Look at him! Kill him now before he tells the Citadel where we are!" The hint of a whine in the big man's voice gave him the tone of an angry schoolyard bully.

"Tristan, I won't tell you again. Stand down." The voice from the shadows was like a brick wrapped in a pillow. Soft, but unyeilding.

The Doctor understood there was some sort of crisis unfolding here, but couldn't concern himself with that overmuch. He had a much more pressing concern.

If his estimation of the time were correct, Rose had been out in the desert, alone, for close to twenty hours now. He'd walked for nearly five hours before he'd run into this lot. He had a pretty fair idea of how much water Rose would have found on her own. Even if she had found water, there was no guarantee that it would be safe for her. This was, after all, another world.

That part still nagged at him. Technically, if the information the TARDIS had reluctantly given him was correct, this wasn't ONE other world. It was hundreds of them. Or rather, PIECES of hundreds of them. Patched together like a quilt. From all different worlds and times. How it had been done, and how it was being held together were a complete mystery to him. He couldn't BEGIN to fathom the WHY aspect of the equation.

Much less the "who".

He raised his eyes as a small man stepped from the shadows near the entrance, and into the large part of the cavern they were now standing in. They regarded each other carefully.

"Sit." Said the man, kindly, gesturing to the table Tristan had just vacated.

The small man gestured for the others to stand down. Obviously he was a person of some importance. The others moved off towards the wall, and stood talking amongst themselves. The one he'd called Tristan stalked angrily from the cavern. Somewhere a radio squawked something he couldn't quite make out at this distance. Two of the guards ran out of the cavern.

"Drink." The old man placed a canteen in front of him.

"It's only water." He said, in response to the Doctor's hesitation. As if to prove it, he lifted the canteen to his lips and drank first. Satisfied, the Doctor drank. He wondered if Rose had been as lucky.

Pinning the man with an intense gaze that somehow conveyed more urgency than his words had been able to do, the Doctor explained again.

It had taken less than an hour to convince the man that he was who'd said he was. Broccan's people were not primitives. While still in its infancy, on their own world they'd attained space travel. Time travel was, at least, in theory, something he could conceive of. It also offered an explanation for how they had come to be here. An entire province, albeit a remote one, lifted out of time and space, and plunked…here. Wherever here was. There were several who still believed that they were on Danna yet. That some terrible fate had befallen their world and their little desert province was all that was left recognizable. Tristan and his little band of thugs were among them. Broccan knew better. He'd known from the day the shift had happened. Almost a hundred seasons ago now. He'd felt the "otherness" of it from the very first.

This tall stranger had been trapped here as well. Drawn here by some force neither of them understood, and stuck here, with his little blue box, like a fly in a web. And somewhere out in the blistering desert heat, a girl was stranded too. On the surface, in plain sight of the things that searched from the sky. He'd explained about those things to the Doctor, and watched as the colour had drained out of the man's face. He'd shot to his feet like his seat was on fire. Broccan thought he'd understood. So many here had lost loved ones to the winged guardians, and, ultimately the mines. To be on the surface during daylight hours one risked much more than sunstroke or dehydration. There was no time to spare. A second wasted could condemn another innocent to life, and eventual death, in the mines below the citadel.

Broccan had assigned a detail of 6 men to the Doctor, and returned his sonic device. The Doctor had clapped his shoulder in thanks, all efficient commander now. Obviously a man accustomed to managing a crisis. The stranger in black had seen battles before. Broccan was certain of it. Only his eyes and a small twitch in the muscle along his jaw gave any hint of how frantic he was to find his companion. Broccan knew the feeling too well.

"Stay below the surface or under the spires until after dark." He instructed the Doctor's retreating back.

Broccan muttered a quick prayer to Daigh, and then set off in search of a messenger. He would gather the council tonight to discuss these new events. The Doctor's arrival shed some new light on things. And with new knowledge, came something else he had not seen in a long time. Something he'd hardly recognized in himself.

Hope.