The Doctor made a couple of sandwiches, a tea and a hot chocolate, and then returned to the sickbay. He sat on the chair by Josh's bed and shared the table with him. "It's going to be a while before UNIT arrive. Do you want to tell me that story?" the Doctor asked him. "What did your great grandfather tell you?"

"I thought it was just a story," Josh admitted. "I thought he told me it to make me feel better after mum and dad died."

"What happened to your mum and dad?" the Doctor asked him sensitively. He doubted it was anything he had been involved in. If they'd died three year ago that would have made it 2023 and he'd not spent any time in that year. It was too close to his current time line with Rose. Even now speaking to Major Magumbo for the first time, it was clear that he was going to have future dealings with her, and that always complicated things, and, if it got too complicated then it could make him weary and sick gathering memories he'd not be able to retain when he returned to a time more appropriate to his own timeline. He was skipping ahead into recent events and that was never a good idea.

"They were on holiday. It was sort of a working holiday. Mum worked with an environmental group. She was very pro-active and was all about saving the planet. She won a load of money on the lottery before I was born and she used that to work on environmental projects. She was linked with a group that was working with the Brazilian government to try and stop illegal logging in the rainforest. It was the summer holidays from school so mum and dad decided to make it a family holiday at the same time. Mum, Dad, and Vee were there."

"Vee?"

"She was my little sister," Josh commented. "She was 9. They all went up in a small plane to fly over the rainforest and to map the areas where logging companies were working illegally. The plane got into difficulty and it crashed down into the forest. Everyone on board the plane died. My mum, dad, and Vee were on it as well as my Uncle Paul who was my dad's brother. It took them three weeks to find the wreckage of the plane in the rainforest. When they did they said everyone had died on impact."

"I am very sorry, Josh," the Doctor offered.

"I was supposed to be there too and so was Gramps. We were all supposed to go."

"Why weren't you?"

"I fell out the treehouse the week before we were due to go and broke my arm," Josh explained. "I had to have some pins put in it and because of the surgery the doctors said it would be too risky for me to fly or to go roughing it in the rainforest. Mum was going to cancel it all, but in the end I stayed behind with Gramps. He was 94 and said he was too old to go running round the jungle. The others all left on the holiday and they never came back."

"I am sorry that happened to your family, Josh," the Doctor stated. "I'm not quite sure what it has to do with me?"

"That bit doesn't," Josh commented. "But, it was just me and Gramps after that. He was so sad but we did our best to look after each other, but one day I was really upset and I was angry with mum for going off on holiday when I'd broken my arm and for not coming back. I was shouting at Gramps that I hated mum for leaving us and I thought he'd get mad at me for being mean, but he told me a story."

"About me?"

"It was more about mum than you," Josh told him. "He said that mum would never have knowingly left me and that she was brilliant and special, but she was more special than anyone else could ever know. More special than even she knew because she'd had to forget about it all and she couldn't remember that she had been the most important person in all the universes. He said there were people right across the other side of the universe who were singing songs about my mum because she saved them and that she saved the whole universe when she travelled with a man called the Doctor in a little blue box called the TARDIS. He said that she travelled to different planet and to different times. He said you took her to a planet that was made of diamonds, and he said that I shouldn't be angry with mum, because even when she died, and even if she couldn't remember, she was still trying to save the planet, but she was doing it in the only way she knew how," Josh informed the Doctor. He looked at the time lord expectantly, but the Doctor wasn't sure what to say. "Is that true?"

"It could be."

"You'd remember if you knew my mum," Josh told him. "No one who knew my mum forgets her. Gramps said that the thing that made her forget made her special and that was why sometimes she day dreamed and said stuff that sounded really smart but that she didn't know herself. She did that. She didn't know how to change a light bulb, but when the microwave broke she fixed it and then couldn't remember doing it or what she had done to it. Gramps said he thought that some of it might have passed on to me because I day dream a lot and sometimes I feel things or know things and I don't know how, and maybe it is real, because you're here and all of this is happening and I should be really freaking out. None of this is normal and none of it makes sense. Even this room isn't normal. It's like I can feel the room breathing around me or something and I should be scared, but I'm not, it's like I'm the opposite of scared. You travelled with my mum before I was born and before she met my dad. You did didn't you? Is that why you came to save me?"

"What was your mum's name?"

"Donna Temple-Noble, but it would have just been Donna Noble when you knew her. Temple is my dad's name. What was she like? You know before she had to forget and stuff?"

"The thing is, Josh, I am the Doctor and I do travel through time and space in the TARDIS and I often have friends travelling with me. The story you have told me sounds possible, but when you travel in time like I do sometimes things don't happen in the order that you would expect them to. It can get pretty complicated."

"How?"

"Well, for example, if you were in 2026 talking to someone's son, about things you have done with their mother, but you've just come from 2006 and a point in time when you've not met their mother yet."

"Then you've not travelled with my mum?" Josh asked confused.

"I've never met anyone called Donna Noble," the Doctor admitted honestly. "But I'm out of my own personal timeline at the moment and this is why I really try not to do this. My life doesn't happen in the right order. I'm really sorry because I can't tell you what your mum was like, because I've not met her yet, but, she does sound like the kind of person I'd really like travelling with, and, I'm very sorry she died."

"You don't know her?"

"No, not yet."

"Then why did you come and save me? How did you happen to be here right now at this time?"

"In all honesty, I'm not sure," the Doctor offered. "I can tell you what happened, and, thinking about what you've just told me about your mum, I think I might have got my first impression of what happened wrong. I just didn't imagine it could possibly be the other. I was in the TARDIS and I'd just left Rose with her mum. I got a really bad headache," he informed Josh. "I've still got a little bit of it now, but it was really bad. When it faded I got the sense that I was scared and that I wanted to hide and I couldn't explain that, because I was in the TARDIS and the TARDIS is the safest place you can be. I realised that I was receiving a psychic message from someone who was very scared and who needed help. It had to be someone or something that was a really powerful telepath to do that, or, the bit that I didn't even consider as a possibility — it was someone who is somehow linked to me. I followed that link to you," the Doctor informed Josh.

"I didn't realise it was you until that point where we touched just before the animal attacked us, but it was definitely you. I don't know what happened when your mother travelled with me in her past - what will happen when your mother travels with me in my future, but I do know that somehow we are connected. If you wanted, we could ask the TARDIS to do a full scan to see if we can find out how, but I'd need a drop of your blood and your permission to do that."

"Well, you're not my dad, because I'm half black not half alien," Josh told him.

"I don't make a habit of impregnating human women," the Doctor informed Josh. "I'm fairly sure that I'm not your dad as well, but there is a connection there, and that feeling of security and safety you said you didn't understand? That's from the TARDIS. She feels connected to you somehow as well. She wants to protect you and to keep you safe and that is what you're feeling, and, if I'm honest with you, that's kind of how I'm feeling as well. If you wanted to investigate that further then we can do. I don't know if it will or not, but maybe it will answer some of your questions. I'm just sorry I can't answer the questions you have about your mum."

"But you are going to meet her and travel with her?"

"All the evidence suggests I will. Your connection to me and to the TARDIS. Your great grandfather's story. I think I can safely say that I will at some point in my future meet and travel with your mother."

"But then that is good isn't it?" Josh asked the Doctor. "If you've not met her yet? When you do meet her all you have to do is tell her not to go to Brazil on that holiday. You can tell her not to go on it before she goes on it and then she won't be dead," Josh suggested. "Even if she goes on the holiday you could tell her not to get on the plane, and then it will be okay. You can do that can't you? You can tell her not to get on the plane, and then…" Josh paused when there was a loud knocking echoing into sickbay from the TARDIS door.

"I'm sorry, Josh, that's going to be UNIT," the Doctor reminded him. "Let me go and give them some initial information and instructions so they don't all go blundering into the tunnels or accidentally set off the explosives I left down there. Then I am going to be right back," the Doctor told him. He got up to go to the door, both cursing and thanking UNIT for arriving at that very moment. How was he going to tell a 14 year old boy who'd lost his entire family - that even if he'd not met his mother yet, that he couldn't tell her not to get on the plane that killed her? He was too involved and too wrapped up in his personal time line now. He could feel it twisting and warping around him making his headache that little bit worse. He wasn't going to be able to retain the memories when he returned to his own personal timeline and to Rose. How could he tell Josh that and break his heart?