A dead person. Okay, well, wasn't like they'd never seen a dead person walking around before, but the way he looked made her think there was more to it than that. "Any particular dead person?" she wanted to know. "Someone you know?"

He didn't answer, not directly anyway, and as far as she was concerned that meant yes. He answered her questions. Not always in a useful way, and not always with the detail she wanted, but he answered. Except when it came to his past.

"Hang on a minute." He was frowning at something on the street, but she couldn't tell what it was until he started walking. He was heading for a windowless alley between shops, unremarkable until they ducked down it and she realized there was a mirror propped just inside the entrance.

"What's that, then?" she asked, since it looked like that was what had got his attention. "What's a mirror doing here?"

"Well, that's the question, isn't it," he said thoughtfully. He stopped in front of it, and it was taller than he was. Wider, too. A full-length, free-standing mirror, parked in an alley between time travelling tourist shops. He was reaching out to touch it when she saw something move across the reflective surface.

She turned quickly. There was a woman standing at the entrance to the alleyway now. Backlit by the light from the street, she looked very dark. Black leggings, black skirt, black jacket... the expression on her face was hidden by shadow, but she looked human enough. Leaning casually against the corner, she gave the impression that she'd been waiting for them all along.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rose was relieved to see the doctor had turned away from the mirror and was studying the stranger too.

"Looking for something?" The woman's voice sounded younger than she'd expected, but it had a sort of "don't mess with me" tone that made Rose wonder what they'd done wrong this time.

The doctor crossed his arms, and she glanced sideways at him. "You, actually," he said, and the odd note in his voice echoed his defensive posture.

"Oh yeah?" The woman didn't move, and if it weren't for the fact that she'd just voiced Rose's question exactly, Rose would have been tempted to jump in and try to smooth things over. "What'd I do to deserve that?"

The doctor hadn't taken his eyes off of her. "You survived."

Rose looked at him in surprise. Was this was his dead person, then? The one they'd been chasing?

If the woman knew what he was talking about, she didn't give any sign. "So far," she agreed, in a tone that indicated she was just humoring a crazy man she'd met on the street. Her gaze flicked to Rose, and the lack of recognition was clearly mutual.

"But the Prydon Academy burned," the doctor protested, and that got her attention. Got both of them looking at him, actually. The what?

It must have meant something to the other woman. "Yeah, I heard that."

The doctor was just staring at her. "You weren't there?"

The woman glanced down at herself, lifting each elbow in turn as though looking for something. "No singe marks," she said with a shrug. "Guess not."

"Rose." The doctor wasn't moving, not even to look at her as he asked, "Is there a girl standing by the corner talking to me? Black jacket, lots of spaceship patches, that sort of thing?"

Rose squinted at the figure, deciding that yes, some of the patches on that jacket might be space shuttles and things. "Yeah," she reported. "Definitely looks that way."

The doctor nodded once. "Okay."

The stranger shifted a little, just enough that her face was in better light, and Rose could see that the other woman looked almost as confused as she felt. "Do I know you?" she asked carefully.

Rose glanced at the doctor just in time to see him smile a bit. It was a sad looking smile, not a happy one. "You did, once," he agreed. "Couple of lifetimes ago."

The woman studied him, and Rose wondered what she saw. He knew her, but she didn't recognize him? Who could forget the doctor?

"You from Gallifrey?" the woman asked at last.

She gave the doctor a sharp look, but he didn't seem surprised. "Was," he said quietly.

The woman nodded as though that explained everything. "Right." Her tone had lost some of its wariness. "Sorry about that then."

"'Scuse me," Rose said, when it didn't look like the doctor would answer. "Gallifrey?" In a moment of weakness, he had told her the name of his planet, then never mentioned it again. "Are you from Gallifrey too?" she asked the other woman.

The stranger shrugged. "Depends how you reckon it. Lived there longer than anywhere else. Born on Earth, though."

"Right," the doctor said abruptly. "Rose, this is Dorothy Gale, better known as Ace." She saw the woman straighten out of the corner of her eye, like she hadn't expected that.

"Ace," he added, "this is Rose Tyler. Another London girl, you'll like her," he remarked flippantly. "Better at running, not so handy with the explosives."

The woman he had called "Ace" was staring at him, looking... well, almost like he had when he'd taken off down the street in pursuit of a dead person. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Rose looked from one to the other but the reaction didn't seem to have anything to do with her, so she stayed out of it.

Finally, Ace found her voice. "Professor?" she murmured.

For the first time since they'd stepped into the alley, the doctor's face lit up. He beamed at her, holding his arms out to his sides as he asked, "What's the matter? Don't like the new look?"

Ace didn't smile. "Oh my god," she whispered, taking a few steps forward.

The light on her face changed as she moved, and Rose realized she wasn't as dark as she'd looked. Her clothes were black, but she had light skin and mousy brown hair. There was a braid down her back and colored patches on her coat and she was wearing brown hiking boots.

Not so good for running, Rose thought absently.

"Is it the jacket?" the doctor was asking, but Ace paid no attention to his attempt at humor.

"I thought you were dead," she accused, her voice gaining strength as she approached. "I thought she was wrong and you'd gone and died with all the rest of them!"

That wiped the grin off his face. "I was," he started, then shook his head. "I mean, I did--"

She was close enough to hurt him now. Rose tensed at her sudden movement, but the strange woman just threw her arms around him. He hugged her back, as hard as he'd ever hugged Rose, and suddenly she thought, they traveled together.

"I love the jacket," Ace choked, and it was hard to tell whether she was on the verge of laughter or tears.

They traveled together.

"Um," Rose began, a little awkwardly. "Do you want me to..."

"No." The doctor didn't even let her finish. "The three of us'll have tea. Sit down, catch up, shake it all about.

"Come on," he added, when Ace started to pull away. "Know just the place."

Ace turned, like she was seeing Rose for the first time, and it was definitely laughter that hovered around her bright-eyed expression. "He always does, doesn't he."

Rose smiled tentatively. "Yeah... He does that."

So they ended up in some little place that smelled sort of like pizza, and Ace endeared herself to Rose by demanding that the doctor pay for her calzone. "You owe me," she informed him. "For letting me think you were dead."

"I could say the same of you," he retorted. "Buy your own lunch."

"Cheap bastard," Ace muttered. But she did, and she even asked Rose if she wanted anything, which made the doctor all indignant.

"I can still pay for the living," he complained, turning to Rose expectantly. "So what'll it be?"

She blinked, not quite sure what to make of that. "I just ate," she reminded him.

"Right." He made a shooing motion in Ace's direction. "Go on, then. We're fine."

"So glad to hear it," Ace said dryly. She made her way toward the counter while they found a table, and it was odd but she seemed very much like them in the midst of the varied alien clientele. Even the strangest looking humans looked the same now, familiar even, as she began to understand how not human the rest of the universe was.

The doctor drummed on the table as he sat down. "So," he began, leaning toward her. His voice was quieter than usual. "Where d'you want to start?"

She looked over and caught his eye, leaning in to put their heads together while she braced her elbows on the table. "Where did you meet her?"

"Iceworld," he said briefly. "Your future. Waitress there, caught in a timestorm after she got kicked out of school on Earth."

"Kicked out?" Rose repeated.

The doctor grinned. "Very good with explosives."

She decided it might be better not to know. "Did she travel with you a long time?"

"Not long enough," he said, his grin fading a little. "Too curious by half, too clever to stay with me. Nothing to do but pack her off to school and hope she stayed out of trouble."

School, she thought? She almost asked but then the pieces clicked together in her mind. "You sent her to school on Gallifrey," she said. "Your home planet."

"Give the girl a gold," he declared, and she couldn't tell if he was really surprised or just teasing. "Gallifrey it was. Would have made a terrible Time Lord, her." He smiled proudly. "Just like me."

Rose felt this deserved confirmation. "She went to Gallifrey to become a Time Lord?"

"Yup." His face darkened then, and he looked away. Toward the counter, she thought, following his gaze. Ace was leaning against it, gesturing emphatically at the sort of wet-looking creature on the other side. There really was something of the doctor in her... her intensity, Rose thought, or maybe her self-possession. Or something.

"Good idea," the doctor muttered. "Bad timing."

"She got caught in the Time War?" Rose guessed, careful to keep her voice down.

"Thought so." He was frowning now, and he hadn't looked away from the woman at the counter. "Don't know how she's here now. Must have left the academy before--"

He broke off abruptly, and he didn't start again.

Finally Rose nudged his shoulder. "Why does she call you professor?" she wanted to know.

That brought a smile to his face, and he threw her a grateful glance. "Dunno," he said, shrugging cheerfully. "Not the worst nickname I've had, though."

"Yeah?" she said, smirking back at him. "What's the worst, then?"

"Oh no." He wagged a finger at her. "That's for me to keep secret and you to never know."

"Guess I'll just have to start guessing," she teased. "Let's see. If not doctor, or professor... maybe captain? Skipper? Gunner?"

"Gunner?" he repeated skeptically. "Where d'you get 'gunner' from?"

"Oh, so I'm on the right track with 'captain'?" she said with a laugh. "Commander? Master?"

"No," he said quickly. "That's a different bloke."

"What?" She stopped, blinking at him. "Who?"

"The master. Same class, better scores in cosmic science. Always using time flow analogues to muck up my experiments," he added. "Very irritating."

She stared at him. "Seriously? The master?"

He nodded once. "Yup."

"D'you all use titles instead of names?" she asked incredulously.

He grinned at her. "Only the bad ones."

He shifted a little then, sitting up straighter, and she saw Ace making her way toward them with a plate of something that really did smell like pizza. "What about you, Ace?" he asked as she pulled out a chair. "Were you one of the bad ones?"

Ace didn't hesitate. "Most likely." She tugged her jacket off and dropped it over the back of the chair before she sat down, and Rose was surprised to realize she was wearing an ordinary t-shirt underneath. "Started as a bad wolf, ended as a bad Time Lord."

"All the good ones were bad." The doctor was more vehement about it than she'd expected, but the declaration drew a reluctant smile from Ace.

"Cryptic as ever, yeah?" She caught Rose's eye, like she was sharing a joke, but the doctor leaned forward before she could say anything else.

"Ace," he said. "Why d'you leave the academy?"

She looked down at the table, poking at her plate uncomfortably. "I ran out on them when they needed everyone who could help. Does it matter why?"

"Does to me," he said quietly.

Ace lifted her gaze, and her expression wasn't ashamed. It was mutinous. "D'you know what they wanted the Prydonians to do?" she demanded.

The doctor looked at her for a long moment, his face unaccountably grim. "Got a pretty good idea," he muttered at last. "Yeah."

"I couldn't do it," she said. She sat back in her chair, looking disgusted. "And you know what the worst part is? I've thought maybe... Every day since, I've thought maybe I was wrong."

"Eight hundred years," the doctor said seriously, "and I couldn't do it either. Eleven hundred, suddenly I could. Think I was wrong both times."

Ace studied him. "There's no right answer, then?"

"Maybe there is." The doctor was looking at her, Rose realized suddenly. Why? "Just haven't found it yet, is all."

"Sorry." Ace followed his gaze, giving her an apologetic grimace. "Awfully gloomy, I guess." She reached for her plate, making an obvious effort to change the subject. "What'd I interrupt, before?"

This seemed to be directed at Rose, but she wasn't sure she wanted to get in the middle of... whatever this was.

The doctor took the decision away from her. "Rose was just trying to guess one of my more embarrassing nicknames," he offered. "So far she hasn't come up with anything worse than 'gunner.'"

Ace actually ducked her head, giving the impression that she was stifling a snicker. She swallowed, shaking her head once, and this time she was definitely addressing Rose. "Try the Greek alphabet," she advised.

That made the doctor sit up, looking from one of them to the other. "Now, that's not fair," he complained. "Someone at the academy has been telling you stories!"

"Someone?" Ace repeated, smirking at him. "Try everyone. Long memories, those Time Lords."

"Wait--" It seemed safer to interrupt this conversation, and Rose did, feeling more than a little left out. "What'd I miss?"

"Theta Sigma," Ace informed her. "That was his nickname during his academy days. His mates called him 'Thete'."

"Oh, you had to go and tell her," he grumbled. "Thought I'd finally got rid of that name for good. Never hear the end of it, now."

"You called me Dorothy," Ace reminded him. "You had it coming."

"How long were you at the academy?" Rose asked quickly, not wanting to miss her chance to get involved. "Did everyone know the doctor?"

"Everyone knew who he was," Ace said, rolling her eyes at him. "You didn't tell me you'd been the bloody president."

Rose looked at him in surprise, but he just shrugged uncomfortably. "Just a formality," he assured the two of them. "Kept me alive when they wanted to string me up, is all."

"One of many times," Ace corrected.

He eyed her. "You couldn't have had that many of my old teachers."

"You'd be surprised how many people find the time to look you up in a hundred years," Ace said, biting into her calzone again.

"A hundred years?" Rose blurted out. "You're a hundred years old?" She saw the doctor giving her an amused glance out of the corner of her eye, but she ignored him.

"Hundred twenty-six," Ace said when she finished chewing.

"Hundred twenty-five," the doctor corrected.

She frowned over at him. "No, I'm sure it's twenty-six."

"I graduated," he reminded her. "You didn't. Got an innate sense of time, me."

Ace snorted. "Yeah, don't think I don't know that you and your innate sense of time barely passed your graduation exams the second time around."

"Barely passed?" Rose interrupted, looking from one of them to the other. "Is that true?"

"Oh, now look what you've gone and done," the doctor grumbled. "I get no respect from this one as it is!"

Ace grinned triumphantly at Rose. "Fifty-one percent," she declared. "On the second try. Don't let him make you think he knows everything."

"Yeah, that's really been a problem in our relationship," the doctor muttered.

"Don't be such a baby," Rose told him. "Your head's almost as big on the outside as it is on the inside. You'll survive a few secrets getting out."

"But I'll wish I hadn't," he predicted. "Go on, share some of your illustrious past, then."

"Yeah, where are you from?" Ace put in. "London, right? When?"

"2005," Rose offered. "Well, six, now." She glanced at the doctor. "Or will it be seven, next time?"

"Up to you," he said, refusing to rise to the bait.

Ace looked from her to the doctor in surprise. "You visit, do you?"

"Yeah," Rose said ruefully. "My mum would have my head if I didn't."

Ace didn't answer, just raised her eyebrows at the doctor.

"What?" he said defensively. "It's not like you wanted to go back."

Rose glanced at him before looking back at Ace. "Didn't you ever go home, then?"

"Couple of times," she admitted, a smile playing about her face. "Not exactly on command, though."

"You could have done," the doctor protested. "After the cheetah people I didn't think you were too keen on it, is all."

Ace ignored him. "He's mellowing in his old age," she confided to Rose. "You're not careful, soon he'll be buying you trinkets and things and having tea with your mum."

Rose's hand went to her zipper pull, the doctor looked uncomfortable, and Ace caught on instantly. She laughed out loud. "Oh, I see how it is then! You spoil us rotten these days, don't you! Just a big softie," she added, with obvious affection.

"Not spoiling anyone," the doctor objected. "She earns her keep, just like you did. I show her 'round the universe, she saves my life now and again, and we call it even. That all right with you?"

Ace paid no attention. "So what's London like in your time?" she asked, leaning toward Rose conspiratorially. "We're only a couple decades apart, you know. Last time I was there was 1989... Johnny Chess still big?"

Rose frowned at her. "Who?"

"God, that's so depressing," Ace said with a sigh. "See, that's why I don't go back. It's all different. Or if it's not, it's so much the same that I think I'd be even more depressed."

"That doesn't make any sense," Rose pointed out, glancing sideways at the doctor.

"Give it time," Ace predicted. "So you from the city, or what? He pick you up in the middle of some big alien plot, or d'you just wander into the TARDIS by accident?"

"Big alien plot," Rose admitted, trying not to smile. "What about you?"

"Oh, I was the replacement," Ace told her. "His other companion got sick of wandering, so he took off with me instead."

"Oi!" The doctor banged his hand down on the table, apparently tired of being ignored. "That's not true at all!" When they both looked at him, he added, "Mel didn't get sick of wandering. She got sick of me."

Rose blinked, but Ace just rolled her eyes. "Well, can't imagine that," she drawled, and Rose couldn't help giggling as she turned the moment of solemnity into a joke.

"No," she agreed lightly. "No, I can't either."

"Enough of you lot, then," the doctor grumbled, but he was only pretending to be upset, she could tell. He was practically smiling to himself. "Just pretend I'm not here."

"I was from Perivale," Ace said, taking him at his word. "You still have Greenford, right?"

"Yeah," Rose agreed. "Other side of the city from me, then. Live on the Powell Estate with my mum. Worked downtown, till he blew it up."

"You blew up London?" Ace asked, sounding not at all incredulous.

"Just her department store," the doctor defended himself.

"And all that under the London Eye," she reminded him. "And Downing Street. Oh, and part of Cardiff."

"You blew up London," Ace repeated, as though that confirmed it. "And after all those lectures you gave me, too."

"It was C-4, not Nitro-9." The doctor said it like it mattered, like it made all the difference somehow. "Much more controlled, I'll have you know."

"What, the explosive on the roof of the department store?" Rose guessed. "What about the anti-plastic under the Eye? Or the gas explosion? Or the missiles, how well-controlled was that?"

"They had a specified target!" he exclaimed.

"Yeah, specified by a car mechanic hacking into the Royal Navy with a forty-year-old password!"

"It was a perfectly good password!" he retorted. "And you don't need any special skills for a point-and-click missile launch! Good thing, too," he added under his breath, "or we'd all be so much radioactive sludge right now."

"I remember radioactive sludge," Ace said, and there was something that could have been nostalgia in her voice. "Guess the more things change, eh, Professor?"

The doctor scoffed at that, but a smile touched his face nonetheless. "You were a bad influence, Ace."

She smirked back at him. "Funny, s'what everyone I met at the academy said about you."

"Well, what d'you know," he teased. Then, heedless of their expectation, he remarked, "You've gone and got yourself a bit of an accent."

"Yeah?" Ace looked suddenly pleased. "Learned a little of the language, even. Guess it shows."

"Let's hear it, then." The doctor leaned back, folding his arms. "Go on, switch over."

"Don't put me on the spot or anything," Ace complained. "It's not gonna stand up to a native ear, you know."

"No, that's very good." The doctor was smiling at her. "Sounds very Prydonian. Not sure that's a compliment, mind you," he added. "But you could pass, easy."

Rose gave him an odd look before glancing back at Ace. "All I hear is English."

"That's 'cause you know English," the doctor told her. "Know any other languages?"

She made a face. "Just a bit of French. Went on a school trip once."

He shook his head like she'd asked a question. "Sorry, never learned that one. Ace?"

"Seulement un peu," she said promptly. "Juste que j'ai appris a l'ecole. Entends-tu le francais ou l'anglais maintenant?"

"Uh..." Correctly deducing that this was aimed at her, Rose struggled for the words. "J'entends le francais. C'est... vraiment bizarre?" She hadn't used French in a long time.

"It's all English to me," the doctor said cheerfully. "Or whichever one of the hundred other languages I know that I choose to hear, of course."

"Wait," Rose said, frowning at him. "You hear us speaking in whatever language you want?"

"Can," he said with a shrug. "You know enough French, and you can hear what I say in French if you want. Same for me. Rather listen to you in English, though. S'what you're speaking, right?"

Vaguely reassured, she nodded slowly.

"I've got a question," Ace interjected. "If you let us hear everyone in whatever language we know, where'd the accents come from? It's all English, yeah. But why d'you give everyone a British accent?"

The doctor shrugged again. "Everyone is British, to you lot."

"Hang on a minute," Rose protested. "You? I thought it was the TARDIS did that. Telepathic field from the TARDIS, right? Gets inside my head, translates?"

The doctor drummed his fingers on the table, looking oddly guilty, but Ace just brushed it off. "Him, the TARDIS, same thing," she said. "Speaking of..."

She trailed off, which didn't seem like her. It was barely enough to distract Rose from the idea that maybe whatever was in her head wasn't the TARDIS at all. When she looked at the doctor, though, he was still staring intently at the table.

"You saw the mirror," Ace prompted at last.

"Yup!" He looked up with a bright grin on his face, and Rose thought it looked a little forced. "Yours, then. S'pose you stole it. Good for you."

"Professor..." Ace was gentler than Rose had seen her yet. "I didn't steal it."

The doctor looked away, staring across the little shop like something had caught his eye. He didn't turn to follow movement, though, and he didn't say anything, and finally Rose understood that he was just refusing to look at them. At either of them.

"After I left," Ace said quietly. "I couldn't sleep much. At first I thought it was guilt or something, but it wasn't. It was so loud in my head... it was the war, wasn't it."

The doctor didn't look at her, but Rose saw him nod once.

"I still hear it," she said. She pushed her plate aside and put her hands on the table, staring down at them. "Just the echoes, I guess."

Noise in her head, Rose thought. And the doctor heard it too? Still heard it?

Ace looked up then, but the doctor hadn't moved. "One morning it was different. The noise, I mean. I heard this sound... like wind chimes, you know?"

There was silence for a moment. Just when she thought Ace would have continued, the doctor said curtly, "I know."

"The mirror was just there," Ace went on, her gaze fixed on him. "So I went in. Must have been programmed for me, didn't need a key or anything. Message came up as soon as I was inside, telling me--

Here she hesitated, and finally she said, "Well, it's not important, I guess. But she told me, if I ever saw you again, I should give you a message."

The doctor didn't ask, and Ace didn't wait for him to. "She said, 'Tell him Fred understands.' I don't know how she knew you'd make it, but..."

She stopped talking when the doctor stood up. He turned away from their table without a word, heading for the door. Ace just sat there, looking deflated. "Yeah," she muttered after him. "Figured you wouldn't want to talk about it."

"Talk about what?" Rose asked carefully, when she was sure the doctor was gone. He loved her curiosity when it came to everything except his past, but she wasn't going to pass up the chance to ask someone else about him. "The war? Who's 'she'? And what's that mirror thing, anyway?"

"The war," Ace said with a sigh. "Yeah. She's the president of Gallifrey, and the mirror was her TARDIS. She sent it to me just before she died."

"Okay," Rose agreed after a moment. "How come?"

"She knew I was friends with the professor," Ace said, staring after him. "I was easier to find than he was, I guess. Best way to get a message to him if she couldn't do it herself."

"What kind of message is that?" Rose asked curiously. "Fred understands? What does that mean?"

"Dunno," Ace admitted, glancing over at her. "Didn't meet anyone named Fred, and the professor's never mentioned him. But that's what she told me to say, so. I said it."

Rose shot a worried look in the direction of the door. "Think we should go after him?"

Ace didn't hesitate. "Yeah. I do."

So they did, and they found him moping just outside the door. His face brightened when he caught sight of them, though, and he gave them a smile that said he was ready to not talk about it some more. He teased each of them in turn, and they let him get away with it, because he was the doctor and they took care of him.

They went back to small talk about accents and explosives and even nicknames when the doctor made fun of a particularly obnoxious group of tourists. Rose pointed out that he didn't mind giving other people nicknames, and Ace remarked that he could remember more names than she had ever known so he really needed to find a new excuse. The doctor thought he had an argument for this, but he didn't, so they laughed at him and linked arms behind his back and herded him down the happy, brightly lit street.

No one mentioned the war again. Rose did get a few more stories about Gallifrey out of them, but everyone avoided the names and subjects that made the doctor look away. It was fun, unusually relaxing, and for once absolutely nothing went wrong.

Until the moment they were standing in the alley again, waving to the sound of wind chimes as Ace's TARDIS slowly shimmered out of existence. Rose snuck a glance at the doctor, and he might be smiling but she thought his eyes looked a little too bright. She didn't say anything, just kept waving until the mirror had completely disappeared.

They stood there in the silence for a moment, contemplating the empty space.

Then there was the faint sound of wind chimes. It intensified again until it sounded like it was right in front of them, and Rose blinked as the mirror faded back into view. Forget something, she wondered?

A moment later, Ace poked her head out of the reflective surface. "That's not supposed to happen," she remarked, peering about with a puzzled frown.