Disclaimer: I still do not own Doctor Who.

The Tardis is still not listening to her. Obviously doesn't recognise her. She's been wandering the corridors for hours, dozing in an abandoned room for a few minutes at a time. They landed and went off again, and she was wandering the corridors. She doesn't know where the others are, but as these corridors have a layer of dust a centimetre thick on the floor, she doesn't think there's much chance of her being discovered. Hopefully, the Doctor won't come down this corridor until he's passed her point in his timeline. Otherwise, he might find small footprints a bit puzzling. They've landed again. Now would be a great time for the Tardis to stick the console room in front of her. She takes a hopeful step forward. The corridor stretches in front of her, endless and deserted.

xxx

The Doctor's hunched over a book in the library, but last time she asked, it hadn't been more help than "paradoxes are bad." Jack's in the kitchen, cooking a dinner that nobody will eat, so she's been left to her own devices. She comes up against a door marked with a rose. Rose's old room. She pushes the door open and sees all the boxes. Didn't Rose keep a diary? Maybe that will help. She knows Rose won't mind, if she ever finds out.

The Doctor has passed discouraged and is rapidly heading towards fatalism when Jackie bursts in, waving something in one hand.

"Hello, Jackie."

She waves the object at him, breathless.

"What's that? A photo?" He crosses over to her and she shoves it in his hand. It's the picture of his ninth self, Rose, Jack and Mickey in Cardiff just before they met Margaret Blaine, Mayor of Cardiff, otherwise known as Blon Fel Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen. Jackie stabs a finger at the left hand side. "No, it's not quite centred, is it?"

Having regained some of her breath, Jackie is able to gasp "Who…took the…photo?"

"You know, I have no idea. JACK!" The summoned appears in the doorway.

"What? You've found something?"

"Jackie has. Who took this photo?"

"A woman. She just came up, offered, aimed her camera, handed us the photo and disappeared again."

"And what," the Doctor is surprised to find that his voice has become high, "did this woman look like?"

"Um…she had long red hair…um…"

The Doctor interrupts. "When you say red hair, do you mean red or do you mean coppery, orangey, gingery?"

"Orange. Why?"

They are interrupted by Jackie, now fully recovered. "No, this is the important bit!" She's stabbing a finger at the picture again. "In the background, just past you, Doctor."

He slips his glasses on as Jack squints at the picture. "What the…" He takes the picture. What he sees hits him like a ton of bricks, but the force behind this bricks is the almost painful sudden hope. He thinks his hearts might burst with it. A small figure… no, two small figures, but clutching each other so tightly. He's kneeling down to her height, her scarf draped over his back.

"That's why she took the photo. Not for them," he indicates the foursome, "but for them!" He points at the two figures in the background. "Ha!"

"Who…" Jackie's question is lost to posterity as the Doctor grabs her, picks her up and swings her round as if she weighed no more than Romana, then, putting her back on her feet, presses a kiss to her forehead before rushing off to the console room, still holding the photo.

Jack smirks as Jackie staggers slightly and moves to steady her. She blinks at him.

"Oh, um, thanks. What was that?"

"That was the Doctor. He must have gone mad with gratitude." He stops smirking when she slaps him.

xxx

They take off again and land very quickly; they can't have travelled far.

She steps into a much more used looking corridor and has just spotted the console room at the end when the Tardis gives an almighty shriek and lurches violently. An alarm sounds violently and lights flash all over the console. The Cloister Bell. That is not good. She spins round to see if anyone has spotted her, but the corridor is deserted. The Tardis screams again and jerks so violently that she's knocked to the floor.

The Tardis is spinning, the corridor is blurring, the walls are twisting and warping: grey, white, dark, yellow. The air is full of voices, of remarks made centuries ago, and Romana is being flung from floor to ceiling to wall. She screams, but it's drowned in the babble of the Tardis' past.

A door stretches upwards from the floor, a door decorated with a rose. She throws herself through it, the door stretching around her. It doesn't help. Images flash in front of her eyes; the Doctor, Rose, Jack, Rose, the Doctor, a woman with orange hair and blue eyes. I know her! The images slow slightly, but now she doesn't recognise them. A lady with thick dark hair, a small boy with sandy brown hair doing nothing to hide disproportionately large ears, a woman with the same light brown hair and big brown eyes…I know those eyes. She squeezes her identical eyes tightly shut. Their voices rise above the babble: "Earth Colony 2794…someone…Lydia from the library…Mayblossom, 623,999...you are a beautiful living person…" Her head hurts, her head hurts so much. It's bursting with thoughts and feelings alien to her and she screams to drown them out.

She doesn't know how long she screams for, as she tumbles from side to side. It seems a long time; she eventually runs out of breath. She's just drawing another breath when she notices all the voices die away. Her mind aches, but it's a dull, ignorable ache, not like the head-splitting pain of having her mind stretched to bursting point. And her body aches too, from hitting a hard surface at high speed over and over. She lies still on the floor for some time before gingerly gets to her feet. The Tardis is still rocking, but comparatively gently, with only occasional jolts. The room's intact. Not an oddment out of place. She staggers slightly and falls against a chest of drawers. She's twisted her ankle. At least she hopes that's all it is. The impact causes a photo frame to fall forwards. Honestly, the room's been spinning like the drum of a washing machine, except going every which way, and it falls over when she knocks against the chest of drawers. She reaches out and picks it up. That picture of the Doctor, Rose, Jack and Mickey. She looks at the surroundings. Cardiff. She likes Cardiff. With Mickey there, that must be just before they meet Blon Fel Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen again. That can't be right. Jack's not on the Tardis yet. She hasn't heard him, heard of him or seen any traces of his presence. So how can there be a picture with him in it? She studies the photo closely. Nothing appears odd, but the simple fact is that this photo shows the future of time travellers. She'd say it was impossible, except she's holding it. Then again, she's the future for the same time travellers, and she's here.

The realisation strikes her: This Doctor has just days to live and she examines his image closely. She's not sure what she's looking for, some harbinger of doom perhaps, some trace of the Doctor he will become. Ever since he explained the concept of regeneration, she's been curious about his other selves. She's seen pictures, she knows her scarf, or an identical twin, was worn by his fourth and he's described himself as best as he could (and always finished with "I'm the best yet") but she wonders what they were like as people, how different they were to what she knows. Sometimes she mourns the fact that he's already on his tenth. So much that she will never know. It's sometimes hard for her to accept the idea that she's such a recent development. Five years out of nearly a millennium. It's also hard to believe that she could achieve such a lifespan. Invariably when she follows this train of thought, she wanders onto one of two topics. Either idle speculation on regeneration and what she might look like in the future, or a painful realization; that that thought must have haunted her mother: The Doctor had had such a long life before her, and he would still live when she was long gone. She was part of his life for less than a tenth of the span. And her children would not only outlive her, but outlive her by centuries, perhaps millennia.

Her gaze drifts past the Doctor and focuses suddenly. She knows that coat. And the scarf draped over the back. She's barely visible, a dark blob enveloped by a lighter coloured blob. She reaches out with her hand and her fingers encounter cold glass. The figures stay motionless. Cardiff. I'll find him in Cardiff. In the meantime…she opens the now solid door and discovers the console room just outside. The column's going up and down very very slowly. Slower than she's ever seen it before, slow and steady. Up…down…up….down…it's almost hypnotising. She's rudely awakened by a screech from outside, and a shock rippling through the Tardis. Whatever anchor they'd found has been broken, and she goes falling into the shadowy depths of the ceiling. Not even the Doctor knows, or remembers, what's up, or down, here.

xxx

"So what, we go to Cardiff and hang around waiting for them to turn up?"

The Doctor looks up from the controls and flashes her a manic grin. "Yep!"

Jack whimpers slightly as he nurses his scarlet cheek.

"I didn't hit you that hard!"

"Oh, have you been the recipient of a Tyler slap?"

Jack nods. He really doesn't like the idea of talking as that will require stretching his cheek.

"Trust me." The Doctor turns back to Jackie. "Those slaps are famous across time and space. You're a legend in your own lifetime…well, before and after as well. I know of at least two invasions that were called off because of you."

She doesn't know whether to be flattered or demonstrate.

"And Jack, for future reference, Romana is also a Tyler. And she really doesn't appreciate being called Ro-Ro."

"She didn't mind!"

The Doctor raises a cynical eyebrow.

"No, maybe it wasn't the Ro-Ro, maybe it was the bit afterwards."

"Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…"

The Doctor hastily interrupts. "Yes, that. Where did you learn it, anyway? I notice your cheek is miraculously better."

"Jack, if you want to call her Ro-Ro again, I recommend you wear a full suit of armour."

The Doctor raises an admiring eyebrow. "Couldn't have put it better myself, Jackie."

"So, we go to Cardiff. What happens to Romana?"

"Well, we hang around in the vortex for a week or so because Rose is very upset because she thinks she caused the end of the world, and killed me and her dad. Then we go to Killindy. Then we spot something mauve and dangerous and chase it down to 1940's London. Then we pick Jack up. Then we go to Lakghiet, and Jack proves he's bigger on the inside. Then we go to that planet where people went fantasy crazy. Then we decide to go to Kegron Pluva, but get sidetracked. Then we drift through the vortex for a couple of days before Jack answers a distress signal, and morally obliges us to help them. Then we stop off at Cardiff to refuel."

Jackie is, to say the least, slightly surprised. "And while we wait at Cardiff, and you hop around, Romana is hiding."

"Um, yes, I suppose so."

"Can't we just go and pick her up earlier?"

"No. No, there's got to be a reason why we can't meet till Cardiff. And if we pick her up earlier, then this photo will suddenly be the focus of any number of time paradoxes. And it was taken by that woman to give us a message. And…I trust her."

Both Jack and Jackie are staring at him incredulously.

"All she's ever done is help us! Saved my life, saved Romana from slavery, sent us this message…I don't know who she is, but she's told us Cardiff, so we're going to Cardiff."

Jack and Jackie are beyond mystified.

xxx

She's been falling for some time, and at what seems quite a speed, but she can't tell. The surroundings don't tell her anything. The lost reaches of the Tardis are not exactly interesting; just plain, ordinary walls. Or as plain and ordinary as walls can be when they're distorting around her. She supposes they're changing colour, but everything looks grey and shadowy. She is flung against the wall as the Tardis suddenly snaps back into position and manages to grab hold of a useful protrusion. It stays there. The walls don't move. And down is now most definitely the way she came from. Fantastic. She's stuck, and her hands are getting sweaty, and the pole is cutting into her hands. This is most definitely not the best position to get stuck in. Her arms are already aching from being above her head, and her feet are slipping down the wall. There's a ledge further down, to the right, but it's too far to jump, she'd probably miss it. There's another pole directly below, but it's too narrow to drop down to. Ho hum.

What if- She carefully removes a hand from the pole and begins to unwind her scarf. Throwing one end over the pole, she tugs gently. Hopefully, it'll be strong enough. Taking a deep breath, she lets go of the pole and, a scarf end in each hand, abseils down the wall till she's level with the other pole. Her rational, logical mind is shrieking about madcap, stupid ideas, but if she listened to it, she'd just cling to the pole till she couldn't. So she proceeds with her madcap, stupid idea that could just save her life; grasping the pole with one hand and pulling the scarf down with the other, slinging the scarf over the pole and abseiling down from it till she could go no further. Taking a deep breath, and telling her hysterical mind to shut up, she kicks away from the wall and begins to swing back and forth. One, two, three… And on the highest point of her swing, she lets go of the scarf with one hand and throws herself forward. She collides with something and hastily snatches a handhold. When she's convinced she's not falling to a rather premature death, she opens her eyes. And shuts them. And opens them again and laughs so much she's in danger of falling off. She went flying past the ledge and collided with the wall. Lucky the wall has a ladder attached. She doesn't know how far down it goes, but for now….And after wrapping her scarf back round her neck, she starts down.

She can see the console room below her now. It seems like it has taken hours, an endless cycle of hand down, foot down, hand down, foot down…Laughter floats up and she freezes. There's a knocking on the Tardis doors.

"Who the hell are you?" Jack?

There's a reply from outside.

"Captain Jack Harkness. Whatever you're selling, we're not buying."

"Out of the way!"

It seemed a long time. But not a few weeks. I'm not even hungry!

"Don't tell me, this must be Mickey!"

Mickey. So they must be in-

"So what are you doing in Cardiff? And who's the hell's Jumping Jack Flash?"

She hooks an arm through the bars and risks a look down.

There are two dark heads and a blonde head by the console. Directly below her, a dark head with a red flashing light attached. Don't look up, don't look up. She breathes a sigh of relief as he descends to stand beside his two companions and has to stifle a giggle as they show off to Mickey. She watches them go with a certain sadness. In a few days, the unbeatable team will be parted forever. But now she has to move quickly, taking the scarf off and bridging the gap between the end of her ladder and the ladder the Doctor had been standing on. She moves towards the door and is just about to open it quietly when she hears voices from outside. "There's no police boxes any more, doesn't it get noticed?" That would have been fantastic. Get to Cardiff safely then just walk out of the Tardis into the middle of them. She hears them move away and risks opening the door a crack. They're walking off, the Doctor's words float back "…safest place in the universe." She's not thinking about them anymore; she's just seen a flash of brown in the corner of her eye.

xxx

In front of them, the four have stopped as a woman with coppery, orangey, gingery hair takes a photo. Rose will take the photo she hands them; it will fall out of her pocket when they walk on, and be thrown away by a council street cleaner. The woman will put another copy on the Tardis, as it stands in a corner of Satellite Five, in the year 200,000. Nobody will notice it until they land in medieval Japan, and then Rose will assume either the Doctor or Jack bought a frame and put it in her room. She'll forget to mention it till she forgets all about it. But the Doctor and Romana neither know nor care as they cling together, so tightly it seems each is afraid that the other will vanish. Even Gallifreyan doesn't have the words. The beat of the other's double hearts says it all.

A/N: This story is still not finished! But reviews make me happy.