A/N: I haven't updated in almost a month? I am so, so sorry for the delay in updating! It's everybody else's fault for writing such good fanfic so that I do lots of reading and hardly any writing…okay, I have absolutely no excuse.
This chapter is dedicated to fugaziclash for being the 100th reviewer.
Disclaimer: One word- Doomsday.
A scream rips the relative quiet of the Tardis apart.
Peeking out of a cupboard the Tardis has created expressly for the purpose, Romana admires her handiwork. Adding pink hair dye to Jack's shampoo is simple yet effective. And no less than he deserves after syrup-and-feathering her. It was very sticky. And the feathers were very itchy. He completely ruined the top from Jafeen. It had taken six hours to get clean, fifty-five different types of shampoo to clean her hair and the Doctor had got just as wet as her. That part had been quite fun. But not so much as to save Jack from her revenge. The pink brightens up the boring black-and-white outfit marvellously. At least in her opinion. She has a feeling Jack doesn't agree with her. She manages to suppress her laughter until Jack storms from the room, either heading to set up his retaliation or to the console room.
Two minutes later, the Tardis rocks with the Doctor's laughter. The console room then.
xxx
"Where are we going? Jack would fit right in on Pialn, don't you think?"
Jack scowls and the Doctor fights to keep his face neutral.
"We are going to 2014 to buy black hair dye."
Romana pouts. "All my hard work…do I have to come?"
The Doctor snorts in disbelief. "You think I'm going to leave you and Jack together? I like this design. I don't want to redecorate yet. You are coming with me, young lady. Jack, if you want to explore, go ahead, but if you're not back before us, we're leaving."
"That's just a fancy way of saying stay here."
"Yep! I really don't want to unleash you on unsuspecting 21st century London," the Doctor agrees cheerfully. "Of course, I'm sure Jackie would be delighted to have you hanging around for a few months."
Jack opens his mouth to protest but closes it as an idea strikes him.
"Jack?"
"Yep, you go ahead. I'll just hang around…" Though not in the same way Romana will be later.
The Doctor eyes him suspiciously. Jack looks altogether too innocent. The Tardis interrupts by landing.
"Romana, take that thing off and go and get some shoes."
"Thisthing saved my life."
"Now."
xxx
"Don't touch anything."
Romana looks at him in surprise. It's not that she hasn't heard that before, just that usually that means they're in danger of incarceration/ loss of limb/ death.
"Honestly, some human chemicals are pure poison to our alien physiologies."
An old woman gives them a strange look and hurries past into the shop.
Romana giggles. "I think she heard you."
The Doctor doesn't laugh, instead pulling her away.
"What- I thought we were going in there."
"Some people are very paranoid about aliens. Earth hasn't had very good experiences with aliens so far. There's a Boots down the road, we'll go there."
"But we just walked past a Superdrug!"
"Never really trusted Superdrug after I stopped…Just trust me, I am not welcome in Superdrug."
They walk down the road in comfortable silence.
As they reach their destination, Romana, seized by a sudden suspicion, wanders down to the corner and seems to find something rather funny.
"What is it?"
"Does anything along there seem remotely familiar?"
The Doctor's gaze follows Romana's finger. A large blue box sits on the pavement some way down the road.
"We walked in a circle."
"Looks like it."
"Makes a nice change from running."
"That wasn't actually my fault, Jack…"
"No, it was my fault for letting Jack flirt unsupervised. Remind me to restrict him to one sentient species per planet. Better still, one gender."
"Better still, let him discover what pink hair signifies on Haynhi."
"We are going into Boots. We are going to buy black hair dye. We are going to take it back to the Tardis and give it to Jack. And we are going to do all that before I give in to that temptation."
"No fun."
xxx
Everything is ready. The rope lies in a large circle on the floor. Someone who walks through the door to Romana's room will have at least one foot in the circle when the opening of the door causes the massive book to fall, rapidly shrinking the circle to the size of the object inside and yanking it into the air. Jack has carefully calculated the length of the rope so that Romana will be just a little way above the floor, but high enough that she won't be able to reach the floor with her outstretched arms. Then she will be completely at his mercy. He hasn't decided what to do after that yet. Perhaps he will poke her repeatedly- from a safe distance, with a long stick. Perhaps he will spin her round; there's got to be a limit to her infuriating alien balance. Perhaps he will throw icy water over her, even though the cold doesn't bother her, he can still make her wet. Or perhaps slimy. With an evil smile, Jack sets out for the kitchens.
xxx
The Doctor stares in amazement. There is an entire shelf of black hair dye. Midnight black, blue black, dark black. Dark black? Surely their marketing department would save a lot of time if they just called it black. Wash-in, wash out, permanent, semi-permanent.
"Which one do you think?"
"I think…that one."
"That is not black hair dye."
"Well, green might suit him better." She wanders away.
The Doctor eventually decides on permanent midnight black. As long as it doesn't come with sparkly stars, it'll be alright. He doesn't want to have to repeat this just because the dye washes out before the pink grows out. Turning around, he discovers a distinct lack of Romana. He eventually finds her a couple of aisles down, in front of the makeup testers.
"The toilets are over there. Wash that off and meet me by the tills."
Romana glares. He's sure she would pout, but her lips are stuck together by a mixture of goops. He's pretty certain that not all of them were intended for application to the lips.
"And don't sulk or I'll tell Jack."
If looks could kill, he'd be frightening the other shoppers, who probably aren't used to men suddenly bursting into flames.
She stalks away. The Doctor ignores all the curious looks from the people who, if they had a five-year-old daughter, would take her to the bathroom and wipe all the gunk off her face themselves rather than sending her off on her own. What do they know about Romana? She's much more capable than that. And she wouldn't appreciate him not treating her as such.
He walks away to pay for Jack's hair dye.
xxx
There's a swish, a thud and a pained yell. Jack's out of his hiding place and racing towards his sprung trap before he can realise that not only did the thud of the book landing on the floor sound strange but that Romana screams rather than yells.
The unset jelly is thrown over the person attached to the rope before he registers who it actually is.
"Thanks for that, Jack. I was just thinking that here I was in a strange version of traction; my back in pain, having narrowly escaped breaking my neck: what I really needed was someone to throw something wet, slimy, lumpy and sticky over me." The Doctor gives Jack the best glare he can manage from his somewhat awkward position. The rope length had been carefully calculated for Romana's height. Due to the Doctor being somewhat taller, his leg has been hoisted into the air but his back is strangely angled to allow for the way his shoulders were about floor level.
"I thought you were Romana."
"I know we have a certain facial resemblance, but I had no idea she had suddenly grown a metre and taken to wearing pinstripe suits. Why hasn't she tripped this already?"
"She's been out with you."
"You mean, she's not been back?"
"I thought she was with you."
"She was. But I waited for ages. She wasn't in the toilets."
"You looked for her in a public toilet?"
"Yes, that was the logical thing to do."
"A ladies toilet?"
"Yes, so what? It was empty."
Jack's grin is replaced by a disappointed look.
"And we were just round the corner from the Tardis, so I thought she might have come back."
"No, I haven't seen her."
"Are you sure?"
"You know the first thing she does is run to her bedroom. Ask the Tardis."
The Doctor puts his hand against the floor.
"She hasn't seen her. Romana isn't in the Tardis."
The Doctor realises he's breathing quickly and tries to quell the rising panic.
"Are you sure she's not just standing there, waiting for you?"
"Jack, I waited for half an hour before I looked in the toilets. And then I searched the entire shop. Then I came back here."
"I'm sure she's fine…she's just disappeared...okay, she's probably not fine."
"You are a real comfort, Jack. Now get me down so I can do something."
"Something?"
"Anything!"
"No."
"What…"
"How are you going to look for her? You are not going to tear London apart."
The Doctor closes his eyes and forces his mind to work rationally.
"I can trace her Tardis key."
"You won't run off and get yourself killed or captured? Because, as I'm sure you know Doctor, she's probably been taken for what she is. Perhaps as a way to get to you."
The Doctor chooses not to answer. He's always known that Romana could be hurt to hurt him; there are things that would view her not as a child, but as his main weakness. He hates the fact but he knows it. Perhaps Rose and Matthew are lucky, away from him.
xxx
"Stick that into your device-thingy…"
Jack takes the chip.
"Stick it in my device-thingy? What happened to the technical language?"
"I need you to understand this."
"I think that was an insult." Jack nudges a bundle of wires apart and inserts the chip.
The Doctor peers over his shoulder.
"See, that big blob is the Tardis…"
"Big blob? You really have abandoned the technical language."
"If you miss it so much, I can use technical language. I can speak Gallifreyan and use technical language, then you'll have even less chance of understanding. So this big blob," he stresses the words, "is the Tardis. We'll have markers as well, as long as we carry our keys, but they won't show up until we're away from the Tardis. And if we just widen the range…" He stretches over and twiddles a knob. The golden dot on the display shrinks as another gold dot appears on the edge. "There she is! Co-ordinates?"
Jack reads them off.
"And off we go!"
xxx
"Turn left and head straight up."
"Left?"
"Right."
The Doctor takes the right turning. Jack calls him back.
"You said right!"
"I meant right, go left!"
They take the left turning and proceed in silence although Jack is certain that the Doctor is mumbling something about stupid apes, always making things difficult for themselves. At least he's acting somewhat normally, for him. Jack's seen the Oncoming Storm before.
"Turnright and…No, no!"
"What?"
"She's moving. Moving fast. Away from us."
The Doctor throws himself around the corner.
xxx
Romana makes her way to the back of the shop where the toilets are. Several ladies give the small girl, sitting on the edge of a sink so to be able to see into the mirror as she scrubs at her face, strange looks and she has to reassure more than one that she is perfectly fine. She uses up a tree-worth of paper towels, but she manages to remove all the goo from her face. However do human women stand it? She had been practically suffocating. Rubbing at her lips one more time to try to remove the lingering stickiness; she sees a shape behind her in the mirror. She hasn't time to do more than whip round to face it before there's something covering her nose and mouth. This is really unfair. It's her last conscious thought for a while.
xxx
She slowly drifts back to the waking world and immediately wishes she hadn't. There is a humanoid standing in front of her. Humanoid, but definitely not human. Its skin is a scaly grey and the eyes, slitted yellow eyes, are set too high on the face. Lifeless platinum blond hair lies neatly across the top of the head.
"How are you feeling, pretty?"
Dizzy and nauseous but don't show weakness. "What are you?"
"We are the Nivas." A pointy black tongue flicks out.
"Where are we?"
"An abandoned storage facility."
"What are you doing on Earth?" Keep them talking, give yourself time to analyse the situation, and perhaps find something useful out.
"We wish to take human brides to strengthen our blood."
"I'm afraid arranged marriages aren't popular on Earth anymore. So if you could just put me back in the shop, my…my mum will be worried, and…go away…"
"But little one, it took such a long time to find Earth. And we have finally reached our destination and found such a prize… A Time Lady. Your blood will make our race great again."
Romana's eyes widen. She should have seen this coming.
"Absolutely no chance!" She's up, he's down, she's past…Another three appear and block her path before picking her up easily and dumping her back in front of the first one, probably the leader. They disappear soundlessly, but now she knows they're there.
"Such a spirited little girl…" He reaches out and takes her by the chin. She stares defiantly back.
"It'll be broken. I do hope you aren't one of the strong and stubborn type. I don't want to hurt you more than necessary. Let's see." She can feel him worming his way into her mind. She has just enough time to hide anything about her family or the Tardis. The only trace is the memory of Jack's pink hair.
"Oh yes. You like playing jokes, a sizeable streak of mischief here. Mischief can so easily become malice. Yes, you will be broken. By the time you're broken, you should be old enough to bear my children. With Time Lord blood, our children will become undisputed leaders. My family will be all-powerful again."
"My dad isn't going to like this."
"Oh dear, I'm scared."
"You have no idea."
"You're right. I have no idea, so there's no point. Psychological warfare is not going to work."
"This isn't psychological warfare. This is truth."
"I grow tired of your prattling." He bends down and pokes her in the stomach. "Do you have anything useful to say?" Her suppressed nausea suddenly returns. She cheers silently and smiles sweetly at him.
"Just one thing."
"What?"
"Chloroform is so old-fashioned." She's promptly sick over him.
xxx
She sighs. If they're hoping to destroy her spirit with boredom, they are going to be severely disappointed. She picks up a brick and throws it at a sack. The spiralling dust motes are quite beautiful. She would try to call the Doctor, but that thing inside her head seems to have blocked off the link. She just can't find it.
The thing enters the room.
"You don't believe in giving people a break, do you? You only chucked me in here five minutes ago. Can't you leave the spirit-crushing till we leave Earth?"
"No."
He's already scraping at the defences round her mind. She withdraws and curls into a defensive ball. The lightest brush… has she imagined it? No, there is a link. It feels slightly foreign, probably because she has lost it and found it again. She latches on and screams desperately.
xxx
In a place far away in both time and space, Matthew awakes screaming a name.
A/N: Remember when I said there should only be a few more chapters? Yeah, scrap that. Sorry, but I have been viciously attacked by a few dozen plot bunnies and I have decided to torture these characters for a bit longer. I do have the end all worked out, and I have even written the epilogue. I'm just…stretching the middle.
Anyway, thanks so much to everyone who has ever reviewed this story! I can't believe I've passed the one hundred mark!