A/N: Let's just say, you should be prepared.

The rest of the day the Doctor and I spent looking over Sally's folder again. I had already told the Time Lord everything that I could remember, but re-reading some of the letters and notes that Sally had made helped jogged my memory a little. The Doctor asked about Billy Shipton and I told him everything I remembered: how he was taken by the angels, how the Doctor was able to find him, and how he died. That led to the Doctor asking about the timey-whimey detector that he had apparently not made yet.

"All I know is what it's called and that it goes ding when there's stuff," I said with a shrug. "And that it can do something to an egg from a certain distance."

"Do you know what's it made of?"

"I don't know. The toaster, maybe? The toaster dings, doesn't it?"

The Doctor rubbed his chin thoughtfully and hummed softly. "It must be similar to that device I made to track down TOMTIT," he mumbled.

"… TOMTIT?" I repeated slowly. "Isn't that, like, back from when you were working at UNIT?"

"Yes," the Doctor nodded. "The device I made was able to detect abnormalities, anomalies, and disturbances in the normal flow of time. If I made something similar to that, then I'd be able to detect any anomalies that would manifest themselves when Billy gets displaced in time and that would help us track him down when he does appear here!"

"How are you going to make it, though? You don't have the TARDIS."

"No, but I have this," the Doctor said as he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his sonic. "And I have you."

I smiled and shook my head. "You do realize that I know literally nothing about science or mechanics or anything like that, right?"

"I know. But you could still help. If you wanted. You know, like when I showed you how to fix the TARDIS back when I was all ears. Remember?"

It took me a moment to realize what the Doctor was talking about, but when I remembered it a grin broke out across my face. When the Doctor had still been traveling with Rose and Jack, he'd parked the ship in Cardiff and had gone around fixing things in the console room. I remembered when we had both been laying under the console together as the Doctor explained to me what he was doing.

"That was a long time ago," I breathed.

"But… a good memory?" he asked hesitantly.

I glanced at the Time Lord and nodded with a smile. "Yes."

"We could… do that again? If you wanted," he added quickly, trying not to sound like he was pushing anything onto me.

"If you think I wouldn't ruin anything."

"Diana, you're brilliant. You could really help me. I mean it. But, you don't have to."

"No, I…" I nodded and smiled again. "I'd like to help in any way I can."

The Doctor leapt up from his seat on the couch and began pacing back and forth in front of me. "Right, well if we're going to make a timey-whimey detector, we're going to need a few things," he told me.

"Wait, you're making it right now?" I asked.

The Doctor nodded before he started walking towards the kitchen. "Why not? Best to get it ready as soon as possible so we don't miss Billy."

I pushed myself off of the couch and followed the Doctor into the kitchen, watching as he looked thoughtfully at the toaster from across the room. "Doctor…," I said slowly. "I was kind of kidding about the toaster."

"Mm, but I wasn't," he said before stepping forward and pulling the toaster out of the wall by its plug.

"Hey!" I exclaimed.

The Doctor aimed his sonic at the toaster and ran it along the edges, before placing the sonic between his teeth and ripping the toaster apart. In just a few seconds, the toaster was in pieces across the kitchen counter as the Doctor looked over each piece and scanned it with his sonic.

"What are you doing?" I asked as I came up behind the Doctor.

"Looking for the ding-y part."

"Okay…"

Later that evening, long after sunset, the Doctor had already started to assemble his timey-whimey detector with bits of the toaster and what looked like some kind of tape recorder he had found in the living room. I wasn't much help since putting together a time anomaly detector wasn't exactly my forte, but I was able to understand the very basics of what the Doctor was doing so long as he explained it to me. Not long after dinner time, Martha finally returned home.

"I'm home!" she called from the entryway.

"We're in here!" I shouted as I stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room. "Where were you? I thought your shift was shorter than-."

I stopped myself mid sentence when I saw the young woman standing beside her. She was avoiding my gaze and instead looking at the floor in silence. Martha sighed softly and gestured to Sarah with a roll of her eyes.

"Took me hours to get through to her, but she finally listened to me. Er, where's the Doctor?"

"In the kitchen making his timey-whimey detector," I answered slowly.

"Could you get him?"

I walked back to the doorway between the living room and the kitchen and knocked against the wall. "Doctor?"

"Just a mo," he mumbled as he stared intently at his new tool.

"Doctor, could you come here for a second?"

"Mm hm," he hummed absently.

"Theta, come here." The Doctor looked up at my use of his name and stared wide-eyed at me, a pencil between his teeth and his glasses perched on the edge of his nose. "Come on."

"What is it?"

"Just come here."

Pulling off his glasses and placing both them and the pencil on the countertop, the Doctor wandered over to me with a questioning expression. I stepped back and turned around so I could face Martha and Sarah. The Doctor followed me and then stopped short beside me as soon as he saw our daughter.

"S-Sarah," he stammered in surprise.

Martha looked at Sarah with her eyebrows raised, then nudged her in the ribs with an elbow. "Well? Go on," she scolded.

Heaving an almost melodramatic sigh, Sarah rolled her eyes and turned her head so she could finally look at the Doctor and I. "I'm supposed to say," she began in an annoyed tone, "sorry for yelling at Mum and then running off. And then running off again yesterday. And that I won't run off again."

"And…?" Martha prompted.

"And… that I won't yell at Mum for things she hasn't done yet." Glancing at Martha, Sarah muttered, "There. Happy?"

Martha pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest. "It'll do," she said.

"Sarah, where have you been?" the Doctor asked. "I was worried sick!"

"I'll bet you were," Sarah scoffed.

"I was! You just ran off! I had no idea where you were or if you were alright-"

"What about you?" Sarah asked, looking at me this time. "Did you wonder where I was?"

I nodded seriously. "Yes. I… had a nightmare about you, as a matter of fact."

Sarah's eyes widened just a fraction, but I could see that she was surprised even though she didn't say anything. Martha watched my daughter in silence for a few seconds before she lightly smacked Sarah's forearm. Before Sarah could even protest, Martha gave her a stern look that was incredibly impressive considering she was almost four inches shorter than Sarah.

"Ugh, alright!" she exclaimed childishly. Looking back at us, Sarah shook her head in frustration. "Miss Jones wants me to stay here with you. She seems to think it's a good idea."

"And you're listening to her… why, exactly?" the Doctor wondered.

Sarah's annoyed expression morphed into a knowing smirk as she looked at Martha. "Well she's hot, isn't she?"

Martha's face flushed in embarrassment and I felt my mouth drop open in shock. I stared wide-eyed at her as I asked, "Wait, you're…?"

"Gay?" the Doctor finished for me.

"Ladies all the way," Sarah replied with a wink. Her smirk suddenly dropped as she looked at the Doctor and I. "And if you have a problem with that, then you can fuck off."

I was so stunned that I couldn't even speak. Of course there was nothing wrong with my daughter being gay, even if it was somewhat jarring, although I wasn't too keen on her suddenly cursing at me. The Doctor just stammered for a few seconds before finally falling silent. Before any of us could say or do anything else, something exploded in the kitchen.

"What the hell was that?" Martha asked.

The Doctor ran back into the kitchen with me right behind him. He skidded across the floor to the counter where his device was smoking. "No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!" he cried. "Oh, and I was almost done!"

Sarah stepped past me into the kitchen and moved to stand beside the Doctor. "What's this?" she asked.

"My timey-whimey detector," he answered with a pout.

Sarah grabbed the Doctor's glasses off the countertop and put them on before leaning over to inspect the device. She then grabbed his sonic screwdriver and started scanning it, her lip caught between her teeth as she concentrated on the device. After a minute, she pulled back and looked up at the Doctor.

"You've got it completely wrong. The polarity isn't right and the wires you've used from my toaster, I might add, aren't strong enough for the amount of power you're using. Also, did you use my tape recorder?"

"Wait, her toaster?" I repeated to myself.

Martha, who was standing beside me and watching Sarah and the Doctor interact, nodded. "Yeah. She was the one who helped us get the house. She wouldn't tell me much, just that most of the things in here were hers. I figure it's her house, even though she doesn't really use it that much. She said she lived at work, wherever or whatever that is."

Martha and I stood back and watched as father and daughter worked together on the timey-whimey detector. Although it was more Sarah correcting the Doctor's mistakes as he tried, and failed, to fix the device.

The next month mostly followed the same pattern: Sarah and her father working on the timey-whimey detector, me cooking meals for everyone, Martha going off to work, and evenings in front of the TV or in the backyard while we gazed up at the stars. The Doctor continued to try and do nice favors for Sarah and I every day, bringing me a bouquet of flowers he had handpicked or bringing us both a stack of books from the library that he thought Sarah and I might like. Sarah was still a little distant from the Doctor and I, which I understood and respected, but over time she began to grow more comfortable with us. We felt more and more like a family with each day that passed and although it was a little difficult to get along at times, I was happy that the Doctor and I could be with our daughter and try to make up for lost time.

While the bond between Sarah, myself, and the Doctor started to repair, so did my relationship with the Doctor. We were still a little awkward around each other and I was still hesitant with him, but it was easy to tell that we both missed the closeness we had once had. After speaking about it with each other, we finally decided to try and put the past behind us and focus on the present. Over time, the awkwardness faded away and we became increasingly comfortable with each other. The seriousness of our argument was still there and the worries it had brought were still valid, but we didn't let it hang over us and continue to put a strain on our relationship.

Then, on a completely normal day, as I sat under the tree in the backyard and enjoyed the cool breeze, something happened that I had definitely not anticipated. A loud pop sounded across the yard and I jumped in surprise as a person shimmered into view right in the middle of the bed of roses. It was a beautiful young woman with shoulder length blonde hair, dark blue jeans and a matching blue leather jacket, a dark purple undershirt, and a large gun strapped across her chest.

What the-? I scrambled to my feet in confusion as the woman stepped out of the flowerbed and shook the dirt off her shoes. "Rose?" I asked incredulously.

Rose blinked in surprise before flashing me her tongue-in-teeth grin and running across the yard to embrace me. "Oh my God," she breathed as she pulled back, "it's you! It's really you!"

"What are you doing here?"

"Never mind that, look at you! It's been years!" Rose looked around the yard then. "Where are we? I thought it'd look different than this. Everything looks so… normal."

"Rose," I started seriously, "I don't think you're supposed to be here."

"I know, but I had to get back to this universe-"

"No, I mean, this time. You shouldn't be here."

"Well what year is it?"

"It's 1969."

Rose's eyes widened in shock. "Oh," she breathed. "I'm off by… what, almost forty years? I need to get to 2008."

Looking down at Rose's torso, I spotted the dimension canon on a chain around her neck. I reached out for it and took it in my hands to look at it.

"No, Diana, wait-"

"Is this-"

"Careful!" she exclaimed.

Rose reached out for the device and tried to pull it out of my hands, but her fingers wrapped around mine and caused me to push down on the central button. With a buzz of electricity, the dimension canon whirred to life and we left 1969 with a flash of light.

A/N: So... Thoughts?