Disclaimer: The BBC owned Doctor Who decades before I was born. I don't think they're going to be giving it to me any time soon and until they do, I make no money from writing this.

"Rose?" The Tenth Doctor ran to the corner and looked around it. There was a distinct absence of Rose. He turned on his heel and scanned the street for a blonde girl. A specific one. There were several young blonde girls, but he couldn't see Rose. He'd known she wasn't there before he started looking. He'd seen her vanish right in front of him. He'd felt the disturbance. She'd been snatched away from him. Something or someone had taken Rose. And whatever had taken her wanted her, not him.

"I'm sorry, we're a package deal," the Doctor muttered to himself as he strode through the busy streets towards the spot where they had left the TARDIS.

He stopped in the middle of the street; a figure of stillness alien to the busy humans as they hurried on with their lives.

Rose had chased after Sarah. She had seen a man with curly blond hair and awful dress sense. A woman in an orange cardigan. His sixth incarnation and Evelyn. Anything that mixed his timelines up was bound to be trouble and would resonate through his history and possibly into his future. He traced his way back through his memories, looking for anything wrong.

He had no difficulty in remembering anything; he could feel the minds of his previous incarnations living through those experiences. A man was the sum of his memories; a Time Lord even more so. He had blocked them out in his ninth incarnation, but it only made the silence more painful. Ahead of him were only shadows; he had not lived those lives yet. Perhaps someone he had not yet become, a Doctor minus one, had watched him tonight.

Mel was making her nth attempt at persuading his sixth incarnation to exercise more; he was thinking wistfully of Evelyn's chocolate cake.

He was pretending he hadn't seen Evelyn suddenly scrabble in her handbag for her pills.

Evelyn was admiring his new costume.

He was tracking down a vital temporal nexus point in Earth's history- nothing wrong there. His past was happening as it should. He looked to a point further back.

Another call from Gallifrey. Last time, he had lost Sarah. This time, he would lose Romana- no, earlier than that.

They were calling him back. He would have to leave Sarah.

He was offering her a jelly baby; the first time he had done so.

Apparently, several scientists had disappeared from a top-secret complex- nothing was wrong there either.

He quickly skimmed through the memories of his earlier incarnations. Everything seemed to be fine. He was just allowing himself to feel relieved; to fool himself into believing that this incident hadn't wound the fourth dimension into knots, when he found a jarring note in a time a few scant years after he had escaped Gallifrey.

xxx

A girl helped her up.

"Are you all right?"

Rose shook her head, trying to clear her head.

"I'll get someone."

"No, it's fine. I'm fine. Honestly." Rose attempted a reassuring smile.

The girl didn't look convinced. "Who are you visiting? I'm visiting my mother. Have you been looking after yourself? You know, some people here simply refuse to leave the bedside. They just make themselves ill as well. Come on, maybe you'll feel better after you've eaten." Somehow, she had said it all in a single breath.

She seized Rose's hand. The sudden urgent beeping of the nexus point locator startled Rose out of her daze. She snatched her hand back. The girl didn't seem to mind.

"What's that?"

Rose silently cursed the Doctor's apparent inability to make unobtrusive gadgets.

"It's my watch. I think it's a little faulty. It often does that; it's nothing to worry about."

"More than a little, I think." She peered closely at it. "Is it meant to be showing that?"

Rose looked. The screen that was supposed to display the time and place was instead displaying columns of scrolling figures and formulae.

"Like I said, it's nothing to worry about." She pulled her sleeve down over it, hoping the girl wouldn't carry on asking questions about it. She seemed the inquisitive type.

To her surprise, she didn't. "Come on then, this place does excellent chips. Who did you say you were visiting, by the way?"

Rose looked around her. A crowded hospital canteen; so crowded that her materialisation hadn't been noticeable. Why was it so crowded?

"Um, my mother," she lied quickly.

"Older women do seem to be more susceptible to it, don't they?"

To what? Obviously, to ask would be to mark her as an outsider.

The queue moved forward and the locator began to beep once again, very softly, but increasing in volume as they moved towards the serving area.

Rose ducked out of the line, all too aware of the attention she was receiving.

"I'll go and get a table."

The girl smiled and gestured towards a table near the back of the canteen, where a couple were just vacating their seats.

"Better hurry."

Rose hurried. Slumping in her chair, she groaned inwardly, not wanting to attract any more looks. She was quite certain she had crossed the line from observing to interference. But this was crazy. She was in a hospital canteen, a hospital canteen that was mysteriously full due to some kind of illness striking older women in particular. It looked around her time, and therefore might be on Earth. All the locator was doing for her was attracting curiosity; she hoped the information it was gathering was useful to the Doctor. And how was she supposed to know when to move on?

"Penny for them?"

Rose opened her eyes and found the girl smiling down at her.

"My thoughts are sold at a premium rate," Rose replied.

"Fair point. Will a plate of chips suffice?" She placed two platefuls of chips on the table.

Rose laughed. "I was brought up not to speak with my mouth full." She suddenly realised how hungry she was. They'd been on their way for something to eat when she got involved in this.

She'd eaten nearly half the plate before she realised something. "Do you know, I still don't know your name?"

"I don't know yours. I'd say that makes us quits."

"I'm Rose."

"I'm-"

Something rippled. The world changed.

Rose stared around the canteen in shock. It had emptied instantly. There were only a few isolated individuals dotted around at the various tables.

She caught one of them by the arm as they walked past.

"Excuse me, but where has everyone gone?"

"Everyone? I don't know what you mean."

"There was a girl sitting opposite me; about my age, she had…" Rose trailed off, struck with the realisation that she had no memory of what the girl had looked like.

"I think you should get some rest, young lady. Can you get home alright?" The old woman patted her arm.

"Yes, yes, don't worry, I'm fine."

Rose registered two things as she laid her head upon her arms, hoping to calm her thoughts. First, the locator was now functioning properly and informed her that she was in London, 2005. Secondly, both plates of chips had taken part in the mass disappearance.

xxx

Rose was the first one to encounter a disturbance. She should have been in the era of American history known as the "Wild West". The Fourteenth Doctor frowned as he flicked through the different frequencies the locators responded to. It made no difference. Rose's locator was only registering the equivalent of gobbledegook. The others had the same problem. How was he supposed to work out how to fix the problems when he had no idea what the problems were? A quarter of the screen suddenly cleared and informed him that Rose was in London, England, Earth, 2005. The others followed suit. They were scattered across time and space but none of them were where they were supposed to be. They had all, somehow, ignored the programming of their locators. They were adrift in time and space without an anchor.

An unforeseen consequence of travelling through an unstable universe.