Peter's decision to make a quick getaway surprised Rose as he took hold of her by the arm and steered her around the nearest street corner.

Taking the advice of the dark-haired beauty that was Rennarita Grigorovich meant that they avoided encountering the incoming swarm of journalists by mere seconds as the group of Nimarians armed with their cameras and notepads ran straight past their hiding spot without even realising they had just missed out on their biggest scoop of the day.

But denying the papers their next front-page headline had come at the cost of Peter not being able to get his own answers. They had travelled to Valerus to do just more than catch the killer from his nightmarish vision, and the one person who had shown any potential in being able to help them had been allowed to vanish.

"We should go after, Peter," Rose argued. "That Rennarita Gr… Whatever her name was."

"No, we need to get out of here."

"But she knew something about you." She persisted. "Come on, she can't have gotten -"

"I can't smell her, Rose! I can't smell anything right now and this place is like a labyrinth." Peter snapped back. "Look at the state of me, I can't be wandering around like this. Especially when my own name seems to be an open invitation for a slap across the face!"

Rose knew that he wasn't mad at her or even Renn for the unprovoked assault. The she-wolf had dismissed Peter's identity as though it were some cruel joke and only when he had allowed her to listen to his beating heart had she thought him to be genuine. Finally, in those last few fleeting seconds when her hand had been enveloped by his, a flickering of recognition had begun to emerge onto her face. The way in which Renn had then told Peter to avoid the papers, as though he was of specific interest to them even without his involvement with the fire…

Was his disappearance all those years ago now infamous?

"Peter… do you think that -"

"That me vanishing in that escape pod was a big deal? Yeah, I'm starting to get that impression." He growled. "The Doctor said that Valerus had some big floating ships and that I must have been on one of them the day I vanished."

Yet if that was true and even if the floating vessel in question had been destroyed somehow, Peter should have landed back down on Valerus within the metal confines of his escape pod. But it had been the soil of Earth he had smashed into instead, with not a single clue as to how the interplanetary journey had taken place.

"You completely vanished," Rose whispered. "People must have been terrified it might happen to them."

Suddenly Peter's head was swimming, and it had nothing to do with the smoke inhalation.

"Oh, I knew this was a bad idea, Rose." He hissed. "Coming here and… I can't think straight."

Rose watched with every sympathy as he leaned back against the wall of the building next to them and inhaled more than a few deep breaths. This really wasn't shaping up to be the best of first days on Valerus for him, and she didn't have any idea as to what they should do next. Really, all they could do for the moment was go back to the TARDIS where Peter could at least clean himself up and get a fresh change of clothes.

The Doctor would simply have to find them there.

"Hey, we'll figure it out." She encouraged. "Right after I kill the Doctor for ditching us!"

Peter's head snapped up as he noticed for the first time that the Time Lord was nowhere to be found. He should have known that even in the aftermath of the fire and surrounding chaos that it was still too quiet. That never-ending cheerful chattering drone the Doctor could produce almost without pausing to breathe could drown out anything.

"What? Where is he?"

"I don't know," Rose confessed. "One minute he was helping people get away from the fire, and the next thing… He just disappeared."

He didn't need this. Peter really didn't need this, today of all days. Coming to Valerus was always going to be a difficult enough decision to make even without his vision of murder which had finally persuaded him to journey here. But in less than half an hour of arriving here, he had almost gotten himself killed and the one Nimarian he'd properly spoken to had acted as though he shouldn't even be here at all.

Now, the only person in the whole universe who knew any more than he did had decided to pull a fast one on him.

"Never mind Renn knowing something, Rose," Peter stated. "I'm starting to think that the Doctor holding something back himself."

"What'd you mean?"

"Think about it. Valerus is the size of Russia, and the Doctor brings us straight to Algero. Out of anywhere else on the entire planet, he brought us to this city."

The suspicion that the Time Lord knew more than he would admit to was no stranger to Rose. It seemed that no matter where or when in the universe they ended up it was almost inevitable that the Doctor possessed more than enough knowledge of any places or species they encountered. If and whenever trouble did arise, his ability to come up with an instant plan always did seem to have a solid foundation from which to formulate a plan to save the day.

"Yeah but…" She began. "He wouldn't have lied to you, Peter. You'd have known if he was."

Peter shook his head at her.

"It's not as simple as you think." He said. "There's a difference between not telling the truth and not admitting it."

Attempting to rub the remaining soot from his face only irritated his nose and eyes more. Peter knew he needed a shower and to get away from the awful polluted air the smoking burnt-out remnants was creating. Renn would be long gone by now and if he'd just been able to catch her scent, then maybe…

"Oh, did I missed all the excitement?"

Had Rose been a wolf then her eyes would have glowed spectacularly bright yellow as she rounded on the Doctor.

The Time Lord had come strolling down the street towards his companions with a big grin on his face as though they had arranged to meet up for nothing more exciting than a late afternoon lunch. Nothing about the fire nor Peter's near-death encounter seemed to be important any longer, and the Nimarian's dishevelled appearance seemed to be just a passing curiosity for him rather than a source of concern.

"Where the hell have you been!?" Rose bellowed at him. "Did you even see what happened?"

There was some seriousness in the Doctor's hazelnut eyes even if the rest of him wasn't as they drifted over to meet with Peter's grey orbs.

"I did." He replied, still smiling. "Well done. You continue to impress me, Peter Argent."

Hearing his own name being spoken aloud again, Peter felt his jaw tighten in apprehension. He was done with the tour guide facade which the Doctor seemed to enjoy personifying so much. Now that he was finally standing on the planet of his birth, he wanted to know what Valerus had in store for him.

"Don't bother." He snarled. "I couldn't care less whether you were there to help or not. The only thing I want to know right now is what aren't you telling me, Doctor?"

Though the Time Lord's eyebrows rose up in apparent surprise, he knew better than to risk inflaming his companion's already short-fused temper.

"You're right." He admitted. "But I can do better than just tell you, Peter. Come on, I'll show you."

Nodding his head back over his shoulder in the direction he had just come from, the Doctor's long overcoat swished around his ankles as he turned around on the spot and began to walk off. Fully expecting his two companions to follow after him, he had gone several paces before Peter's growling tone spoke up again.

"No."

Neither he nor Rose had budged an inch.

Even though staying here ran the risk of being noticed by some of the journalists who were just around the corner interviewing the remaining residents and taking photographs as the Guardsman began to clean up the area, they were both adamant that the Doctor remained to explain himself and where he was taking them now.

"No?" He asked Peter. "Why not?"

Peter scoffed in response as though it should be plainly obvious.

"Doctor, I have enough to worry about in trying to find out who killed that woman." He told him. "Now I can't even tell anyone my name without them thinking that I'm lying to them. So, who am I here? What aren't you telling me?"

"It's true, Doctor," Rose added. "There was this woman who helped us and…"

She stopped talking and looked over towards Peter. He should be the one to tell him about Rennarita Grigorovich. After all, it had been he who had to prove his own identity to her after being on the receiving end of a very sharp smack to the face when she hadn't believed him.

"What woman?" The Doctor asked. "No, It doesn't matter. We should go."

It was the way he was casting concerned glances over their shoulders that told Peter the Time Lord was worried about being discovered here too. What was it Renn had said before she had run off? Avoid the papers, that they shouldn't attract their attention. Was the Doctor under the same impression? Did he know why there was a story to be written in the first place?

The murder. His disappearance off that ship. Renn's reaction to his name and disbelief he was even standing before her.

There was no other Peter Argent they were mistaking him for. What had happened twenty-three years ago had shocked this world enough for it to still carry weight enough as though it were a story told to children to warn them of the dangers of not wandering away from their parents.

"It does matter, Doctor," Peter replied. "It matters because she looked at me like I was a ghost."

The Doctor could see that further delays to admitting what he knew and what had been kept from Peter all this time weren't going to be tolerated any longer. But how was he going to react to such extraordinary, life-changing information? How would he cope with the life that he'd been born into and never gotten to live until now?

"I'm not the right person to tell you." He told him. "Neither is some random woman on the street that you've just met."

Peter's nostrils flared as his nose wrinkled up in irritation.

"You have some nerve, Doctor. You really do." He bit back. "Renn was honest with me, and I can't always say the same about you. You hardly ever give a straightforward answer. The only times that you do it's only because you want to show off as the rest of us get to play catch-up."

"I've never lied to you, Peter." The Doctor countered. "I promise you that."

"Yeah, but that isn't the same as not admitting something." Rose pointed out. "Peter's right, Doctor. Something is going on here, and if you know something then you should tell him."

The anger in Peter's eyes faded away as he looked down towards the cobbled ground.

He didn't want to argue about this anymore and suddenly the Doctor could sense the real risk of him fleeing back to the safety of the TARDIS. He might demand to leave Valerus entirely, and it wouldn't be a guarantee that he'd want to come back when it was of the utmost importance that he stayed.

Stepping forward, the Doctor reached out and laid a gentle hand on the younger man's shoulder.

"I need you to trust me, Peter." He told him gently. "Even if you never have before and won't ever again. Please, let me show you."

Right from meeting the Nimairan, there had always been the uncertainly that he and Rose would never be completely accepted by the most primal and deepest part of Peter's being. Even Stefan Amell, his best friend since childhood, hadn't been guaranteed this privilege. The soldier had warned them that whatever tentative friendship had been forged could shatter again within seconds should Peter decide that he was being tricked or deceived in any way.

Also, Peter's loyalties towards anyone were always going to be at risk of being placed second when he was around other wolves. Torchwood House had been proof enough of that, and whilst Peter would never harm either one of them or allow anyone else to do so, the instinctual reaction to side with his lupine kin was always going to be a strong and permanent bond.

Even now, the Doctor could see the weight Peter was placing on his answer.

"Okay." He said eventually. "I trust you."

The Doctor felt his chest swell up with pride.

But he couldn't linger on receiving such a hard-earned sign of respect. They couldn't stay here with all those journalists about, not when every single one of them could recognise Peter in an instant and give the whole thing away. Even under all the soot and grime, the Nimarian's resemblance to his father was absolute.

Besides, there were two very important people waiting for them.

"Come on." He said kindly. "It's not far."