A/N: Sorry for the delay. I hope the relative length of this will make up for it. This chapter is dedicated to Oy Wilson for the review!

They appear somewhere and fall in a heap, fighting off dizziness and nausea. A terrifying thought occurs to Rose and she manages to command her mouth to shape the words.

"Matthew, does that thing give us protection?"

He groans. "What?"

"Remember what I said about the cavemen and the rip engine? Around Bromley?"

It might have been an affirmative answer.

"We couldn't take Das home because the rip engine polluted his cells. If he travelled in time again, the vortex pressures would tear him apart. The Doctor said that any time traveller gets their cellular structure flipped but the Tardis gave us protection. Does that? Because I saw someone get ripped apart and it didn't look fun. Incidentally, where are we?"

"Umm, Rose. This might be a problem." Lydia's the only one who's managed to open her eyes.

Rose opens her eyes. The person gaping at her causes her to run through every curse she knows, including a few that she has no idea of the meaning, but the Doctor blushed when she copied him.

She jumps to her feet, pulling Matthew with her, trying to hide him. He drops the device.

"Oh. My. God." A younger Rose stares at the woman huddling at the opposite end of the cubicle, and the boy she's trying to hide in her arms. It's too late; she's seen the eyes and the ears. "Me and…and him? Really? How long?"

Not good. Not good. Many things about this are not good. Rose racks her brain, trying to remember this scene. She glances around, hoping for a memory trigger. Her eyes fall on a discarded plastic cup lying on the floor. An image leaps to the forefront of her mind; the same cup lying only an inch away from her nose. This is where she woke up on the floor. The Doctor and Jack were looking for a part for the Tardis and she went shopping. One minute trying on a skirt, the next waking up on the floor.

"Matthew? Is that your name?" The younger Rose kneels to his level.

Matthew walks calmly forward out of his mother's arms and up to Rose.

She smiles at him. "Hello Matthew."

He smiles back. "Hello." He reaches out and the younger Rose slumps to the floor, her face close to a discarded plastic cup.

"You didn't hurt me, did you?" Rose asks.

He looks up at her. "Did I?"

"Well, no. You took this memory though. Blacking out like that scared me."

"Sorry."

"Don't worry about it. I forgot about it in an hour."

Lydia hands Rose her bag.

"Hope I got everything." On arrival, the contents of their bags had spread themselves widely. She'd been picking them up.

Matthew looks quickly around the room. "I can't see anything. Now, come on, we need to leave before you…she wakes up."

"Matthew, does that give us protection?"

He looks down at the device. Being dropped on the floor doesn't seem to have done it any harm.

"I don't know."

Rose nods her understanding and places her fingertips upon the surface. Lydia takes a deep breath and does the same.

Matthew studies the device intently. Rose watches and wonders what's happening to him. She wonders whether she likes it. Just that morning, he had splashed around with his friends. Now, he's abandoned that life without a second glance. Perhaps it's the Time Lord in him waking up. And part of her mourns that small boy and his life on Mayblossom.

Matthew presses the button and they disappear just as the girl slumped on the floor stirs.

xxx

Rose wanders back to the Tardis, laden with her purchases. She manages to open the door and instantly drops her bags on the floor. A few pieces of lingerie spill out of one bag just as Jack wanders into the console room.

He gives an appreciative whistle. "How about a private showing? My room, midnight."

The Doctor hauls himself out from under the console and gives Jack the worst glare he's had since the last time he flirted with Rose.

"That's all sorted now. That component should make the refuel more efficient, should only take about twenty-four hours." He swings round to grin at Rose. "A nice peaceful day in Cardiff, how does that sound?"

Rose looks up from stuffing her purchases back in their bags and is momentarily captivated. A trace of something tickles her mind. Blue eyes, big ears…something to do with the Doctor.

"Rose?"

The trace vanishes and she is hauled back to reality. She kicks herself. Of course blue eyes and big ears have something to do with the Doctor. It's what he looks like. Now she's been caught staring at him like a complete idiot.

"A nice peaceful day with you? Pigs might fly."

"Actually, on the planet Porcino Prime, by the year 3300-"

Laughing, Rose disappears through the interior door.

"I resent that. Why is the idea of me having a peaceful day for once so unbelievable? I mean, what can happen in twenty-first century Cardiff? Safest place in the universe."

Jack hasn't heard one word of his protestations. "There's actually a planet of flying pigs?"

xxx

Jack is playing with Romana's new Barbies, given to her by Jackie's friends. He's slightly more than tipsy, as evidenced by the way he keeps hitting himself in the face while trying to fly them through the air. The Doctor is reading a thick book about black holes, laughing quietly to himself and making corrections in the margins while picking at his sixth slice of cake. There is a small gash on his cheek; Jackie was horrified when her ring drew blood. He doesn't mind. He deserved everything.

Romana is in the kitchen with Jackie. She's wearing Jackie's present to her; a pair of dungarees with a sunflower embroidered on the front pocket. It's already clear that she's going to wear them till they fall to pieces. The Doctor gave her a large, rather clunky locket. That's strung round her neck on the same chain as her Tardis key.

She's chatting non-stop about everything and anything. What's being said doesn't matter. She's occasionally dropping in a sentence in Gallifreyan and Jackie is completely failing to notice.

Jackie notices when she drops to her knees, gasping for breath.

"Romana?"

Jack appears in the doorway, his eyes still slightly unfocused. "Jackie, the Doctor…Romana?"

He scoops her up in his arms and carries her through the living room. The Doctor is sitting on the sofa, arms wrapped around himself as Romana is doing. Jack carefully lowers Romana onto the sofa next to him. Unfortunately, his depth perception is slightly messed up. She bounces once and curls up into a tight ball.

"Doctor, what's going on?"

He gasps in pain. "Someone…must have got a…sample… of my blood. They're…using it to…track me."

"And it hurts?"

The Doctor manages to look incredulously at Jackie.

"Yes, Jackie. It does. Every… cell in my…body is being…pulled. Whoever it is… is using the attraction of…the same DNA…to pull themselves through…time and space."

"Why's it affecting Romana as well?" Jack asks.

"Half of her…DNA'S mine."

"But she's worse."

"She's younger."

Jackie interrupts. "How come you didn't use this to trace Rose? You've got Romana. And me."

"That really wasn't an…option, Jackie." The pain was lessening, the time jumpers obviously having settled into a space-time. "It's very primitive. You don't choose where or when to land. I could have ended up in 1987, when she was a baby. Or with one of her relatives. The chances of hitting the right Rose would have been miniscule. And I might have created enough paradoxes to bring the Reapers before I found her."

Romana hasn't uncurled yet.

"Romana?"

She looks up. She's pale and shaking. The Doctor takes a chicken soup wafer from his pocket and gently feeds it to her.

"Why do you have a food wafer in your pocket?"

"Much tastier and more nutritious than prison food."

Jack returns from the kitchen with a jar of marmalade and a spoon. However, when he removes the lid, a fur of mould covers the top.

"Jackie, that is exceedingly irresponsible of you," the Doctor turns around. "You could be accelerating the evolution of the Dren. They're not supposed to evolve until 2900."

Both Jack and Jackie look blank.

"In the 2700's, the surplus food mountains began to sprout an extremely strange type of micro-organisms. They would send out spores and suffocate anyone who came near. The terrified humans decided to dump the lot on an uninhabited planet. It so happened they chose one with an excessive greenhouse effect. Within two centuries, the hostile mould had evolved into a form of sentient life." He says this all with a straight face. The effect is ruined by the giggling coming from the sofa.

"Ha. Very funny, Doctor," Jackie rolls her eyes.

"Yes, I thought so too," the Doctor grins widely and heads for the door.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know."

"You're leaving already?"

"Jackie… I could stay here for centuries…"

Jack snorts. Jackie rolls her eyes again. "And Lucifer just installed an ice rink."

"But," the Doctor ignores the interruption, "we have to find whoever it is who wants to find me and stop them. Be back in no time."

He disappears quickly. Jackie will no doubt express her displeasure when he returns.

xxx

It involves a lot of adjustments to the Tardis and the Doctor sticking a wire to his arm. Then they wait. It doesn't take long. Soon the pain comes again and the Tardis starts to move. Then comes a very bumpy ride. Jack doesn't quite understand what they are doing, but apparently they are simply tracing the link pulling on them.

"Isn't that dangero... oof." Jack has collided with a wall as the Tardis lurches and shrieks. It's the worst landing he's experienced. They just seem to drop.

"Where are we?"

"The Tardis lost the link. The jumpers must have settled into a space-time."

"So where are we?"

"Don't know! Let's find out!"

Jack shivers as soon they stepped out of the Tardis. "Why's it so cold?"

"It is quite chilly," Romana agrees.

"Chilly? It's… it's freezing!" Jack manages to talk through his chattering teeth.

The room that they have landed inside is a long but low-ceilinged square. The Doctor wanders over to one wall. When he takes his hand away, there is a handprint left. It's a window, misted up. He wipes a patch clear. What he sees makes him hurriedly clear a much larger patch and step back in revulsion.

"What the…" Jack starts.

"Children," Romana says wonderingly.

"Yes," the Doctor replies, his voice toneless. "Children."

He wipes the whole wall clear, slowly and deliberately, moving away from them. At the end he stops and pulls out his sonic screwdriver. Then he paces back up to them.

"A child from every species. Held in suspended animation. For too long. Brain dead, every one of them."

Romana presses against the glass. Behind it, the pod contains a humanoid child, covered in fine pale green fur. The incisors barely jut beyond the lips. She knows this species. She knows that the eyes now permanently hidden behind the thick eyelids are a deep purple-black.

"Who could do this?" she whispers. She doesn't realise she's crying until Jack smears them across her cheeks with his thumbs. The Doctor is still staring at the pods.

Suddenly Jack stiffens. "I think they can answer that question."

They all turn.

Of course. There are basically two types of monster in the universe and it isn't dependant on species. There are those who simply do what they do. And the cold, calculating, scientific types. The ones who do what they want, fully aware but regardless of everyone else. It's like the difference between a trap and poison. Of course anyone who could do this would be poison. This aren't children, they're specimens. And this is all in the name of science, to advance this species' development.

"Finally. You've come voluntarily. Most accommodating of you. It would have taken us at least another five years to be able to pull you here. As it is, she's the perfect age."

The Doctor and Jack instantly take up defensive positions either side of Romana. It's always about her. She's too vulnerable. And she makes him vulnerable. Before, the main aim of the evil he ran across was more often than not world domination. Now, the aforesaid evil sees an opportunity in her. It's becoming ridiculous. The Doctor knows he has always under-estimated her worth to others. Others that do not necessarily have her best interests in heart. But what can he do? He tried the living on Earth idea. They never even got to Earth. Perhaps he should have stayed on Earth when she was a baby. But that would never have worked. Even Jackie could see through it. He couldn't have healed there. And Romana would have grown up with something missing. And they would never have met Jack again. Perhaps he and Rose should have just stayed on Earth till the twins were old enough. What does it matter? They didn't. This is what happened, this is his life.

Romana is pale. "Me?"

"No," the Doctor says harshly. "Never. I'd rather kill her myself than let that happen to her."

"We want the girl. We will have the girl. Our collection is almost complete."

"Time to go, Doctor?" Jack hisses.

It chuckles derisively. "I think not. Look behind you."

"Oh please. Like we're really going to…" Jack is interrupted by the ominous click of weapons. They turn slowly. Old-fashioned laser guns, but with an inhibitor. These are designed to kill.

"Look, Romana's more human than Time Lord. Take me instead."

Jack and Romana shout together. "No!"

"You are old. You have lived again and again. We need the girl."

There is a pause. The Doctor hastily calculates.

"Romana, take Jack's hand." They both look at him oddly, but comply. Obviously there is no chance for him to explain whatever plan he has cooked up. The Doctor walks around to Jack's other side and grasps his hand.

"Sorry, she's not available now or ever. Be seeing you!"

And the three disappear.

xxx

All six legs crumple as they find the solid tarmac of the Powell Estate under them. Jackie, watching from the balcony, sees them.

"Oh my god! What are you doing? Where's the Tardis?"

Her voice carries easily. The Doctor waves weakly up.

"Hiya, Jackie. We're back and," he glances at his watch, "only an hour after we left."

xxx

"But what happened? Where's the Tardis? Oh no, you're not stranded here, are you?"

"No," the Doctor replies, setting everyone's mind at rest. "Hopefully. This transmat is programmed to find Jackie's flat. Its twin is programmed to find the Tardis."

He looks around at their faces.

"What?" he says defensively. "I couldn't program an emergency teleport into the Tardis, so I thought this would be the next best thing." He plucks a tiepin off his tie and scans it with the sonic screwdriver. "One-use apparently. Or it might be the thing about three of us together on one trip." He reaches across and applies the sonic screwdriver to Romana's locket as well. "That still works. Well, it should. We didn't activate it."

Their expressions range from curiosity (Romana) to incomprehension (Jackie).

He sighs. "Romana, that locket is a transmat which, when activated, will bring you here at the appropriate date. It's the last resort if we are condemned and unable to reach the Tardis. It's sort of Emergency Program One without the Tardis. Now you'll stay here with Nanny Jackie and…" And what? Don't worry? Be a good girl? "And don't give her any more reason to slap me." He hugs them both, fishes a button out of a pocket, flashes his grin then both he and Jack are gone.

xxx

They fall into the middle of a fair. Matthew drops a foot onto a bouncy castle. Rose and Lydia drop a foot onto the ground behind the bouncy castle.

Matthew attempts to get to his feet and promptly falls over as the ground sinks and shifts beneath him. The soft, strange, bright yellow ground…

"Hey! Boy!" Matthew looks around. All the others (strangely, and somewhat pointlessly, jumping up and down) are girls. He looks over in the direction of the voice. There's a man beckoning at him.

By the time Rose and Lydia have picked themselves up, collected their belongings, cleaned their clothes to attempt to appear respectable (all three are quite definitely worse for wear by now) Matthew has been ticked off for sneaking on the bouncy castle without paying and is now being upbraided for having such filthy feet. Although the adults of Mayblossom have shoes left over, the children tend to go barefoot.

"Matthew! There you are!"

"Are you his mother?" the man demands.

"I am, yes," Rose agrees, "I apologise for any inconvenience he may have caused. He's always wandering off and getting into mischief. Come along now, Matthew. Say sorry to the man."

Matthew obeys and they rush away before the man can open his mouth again. If he watched them, he would notice that they disappeared from the middle of a crowd.

They appear again in a large, low square room. Lydia immediately shivers and pulls two cardigans out of a bag. She passes one to Rose.

"Thanks," Rose chatters. Her breath fans out before her in clouds.

"This is a bad sort of cold," Matthew says.

"Bad?"

"It's wrong, it's…it's still. It's…artificial, calculated….it's dead."

Rose and Lydia have the same mixture of confusion and fear on their faces.

"Oh, how wonderful. Just when we thought we had lost them, just when we thought our great work was never to be completed. Another comes! Three Time Lords in the universe and all three come to us! Our work is recognised."

Three? The Doctor. Romana. Matthew. They were here. They escaped. They're alive!

Rose throws back her head and laughs

The leader gestures and armed aliens approach. The three back away till they come up against a wall. A warm, wood wall.

Rose spins round and throws her arms around the Tardis.

"See you soon, old girl," she whispers.

Two trios face the same enemy. Both trios stand together. Both trios defeat them. Both trios simply disappear.

xxx

Romana sits on the chair, swinging her legs, and glares at everyone.

"What about these, sweetheart?"

Romana glares at Jackie.

"What about these?"

"Oh, they're pretty! What do you think, Romana?"

The intensity of her glare, even split between the unfortunate assistant and Jackie, is enough to make grilled bread product.

xxx

The Tardis spins through the vortex. The Doctor sets co-ordinates but it is really instinct working the controls. His mind is fully occupied with thinking of what the ex-leader had said to him and the implications it holds.

"You cannot stop us. Our work is recognised. It must be completed. You know this yourself. Why else would the only three with Time Lord blood come to us?"

Three.

xxx

Romana stands out on the balcony, watching for the return of the Tardis. She's been waiting a week. They'll be back. Of course they will. They have to be. The pain tugs at her body again but she simply clutches the railing tighter. Sometimes it's worse than others. She supposes that means the jumpers are passing nearer to her current time-space. Jackie comes up behind her and wraps her arms around her. She leans back into the embrace as Jackie presses a kiss to the top of her head. They stand like that till it becomes too dark to see.

xxx

It has been a week since the Doctor and Jack have left. Romana lies on the floor, drawing some kind of alien creature. Jackie, preparing dinner, discovers a certain something hidden behind tins of baked beans.

"Romana?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you have any idea how these came to be behind the baked beans?"

"Probably the same way they ended up down the back of the sofa, under the bed, and on top of the wardrobe."

"How on earth did you reach there?"

"I threw them."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"If they're on top of the wardrobe, you can't wear them."

"That's why then."
"The Doctor wears glasses."

"His look nice."

"So do yours."

"No, they don't."

"Yes, they do."

"They don't."

"They do."

"Don't."

"Do."

"Don't."

"You refused to choose them yourselves. And they do look pretty."

Romana stalks into the kitchen and snatches the glasses from Jackie's hand. Jackie watches her go and wonders where they will end up this time. Even if she hadn't discovered Romana had inherited the eyesight of two incarnations of the Doctor, the atmosphere would still be similar. This petty dispute just gives them some way to vent their frustrations. He's never been gone this long before.

xxx

It is really her fault. Not that she will be admitting that to Jackie. She has been told to stay in the flat while Jackie went shopping and she has deliberately disobeyed and gone to the park. She swings on the swings for a long time, and has just gone down the slide for the third time when a man approaches her. She's wary, of course she is; but she has her locket and she answers the questions carefully. She's six; she's staying with her nanny on the Powell Estate while her dad is away. No, she doesn't know how long he will be gone, probably not long.

When Jackie turns up, she is frantic. The sulky part of her takes pleasure in this. The nicer part feels guilty. Jackie turning up does not help the situation. Between their stories, she is condemned. The man is a truant officer. And she should be in school.

So she spends the next day completely bored out of her head. The other kids try to do the lessons; she tries not to. It's going to be bad enough when she literally vanishes off the face of the Earth, without them remembering her as the Year One girl who knew it all.

Jackie picks her up and she tells her that the only way she's going back is if she's dragged back.

The next day, Jackie drags her back. Another day of frustration as the other kids take five minutes to form a clumsy sentence.

Two more days pass in this manner. She slips up in the middle in the week. If it had been a writing exercise, she would have been fine. She would have had time to think. As it is, the question catches her off guard. It also might have helped if she'd been listening.

"Why do we need to know the times tables? We can use calculators."

The teacher smiles. She has this explanation down pat, having been asked the same question every year for the past ten years.

"When you learn your times tables, it's like having a calculator in your very own head. You can take it everywhere. Calculators are only necessary for big calculations, such as…what's 7563 x 2765?"

Romana, off in a daydream, only catches the question. Not fully aware of her surroundings, she answers "20911695."

The whole class hears her.

Unfortunately her first response to realising what she has done is to curse in Gallifreyan. Not as bad as the words the Doctor uses when he thinks that she can't hear him but still something Jackie would never want to hear out of her mouth.

"What was that?" the kids whisper to one another.

"What did you say?" the teacher asks.

An idea sparks in Romana's brain. Perhaps there's a way to brazen this out. She repeats herself, silently apologising.

"Is that your native language, Romana?"

Yes. But no. She doesn't know where the teacher got the idea she's foreign. Although she is. A lot more foreign than anyone can imagine. "It's Gallifreyan. Only me and my dad speak it."

She can almost see the teacher's thoughts. Lots of children make up their own languages.

"Well, please speak English when you're at school."

Romana lets herself relax a tiny bit.

"How did you know the answer?"

"I…I have a calculator." She whispers, trying hard to look guilty. It's a new experience; she has innocent off to a tee.

"Well, you shouldn't have done that. As I was telling the class, calculators aren't the answer to everything."

She nods silently.

"Now Thomas, can you tell me what 3 x 2 is?"

Her two hearts stop racing.

xxx

She doesn't mention the incident to Jackie, other than to warn her that she has been caught speaking Gallifreyan, and they believe that it's a made-up language that only she and her dad speak. And the scolding she gets for being that careless is quite enough.

She manages another two days without arousing suspicion. The monotony of this life is enough to blur the days together, so that she doesn't realise how long they have been gone till Jackie says that the Headteacher has told her that Romana needs a school uniform if she's going to be attending the school for any length of time. Dungarees are not acceptable.

Romana flatly refuses to let Jackie purchase one.

She is quite certain that she has never been happier to hear the Tardis. She's leaping down the steps before Jackie has registered the sound. She's in such a hurry she forgets to remove her glasses; as she realises when Jack promptly bursts out laughing.

The Doctor whips out his glasses and beams at her. She isn't appeased; his glasses aren't oval and gold.

"Where have you been? I had to go to school!"

Jack's laughter doubles in volume. She briefly contemplates kicking him.

"Nothing happened?"

"Nothing much. They're going to wonder what happened to me."

"Well, if your teachers come looking for you, I'm not kidnapping them. Perhaps we should stay here," the Doctor says straight-faced.

Romana is speechless.

"Just kidding!"

A/N: I'm afraid updates may become even longer. I've just started sixth form, and will have to fight my inclination to write than do work. But reviews actually do motivate me to write, I'm not just saying that.