Epilogue

It hadn't taken long for Nyssa and Roland to prepare the crystal. All they had to do was melt it on a stove until it turned into oil and apply it to the Doctor's burn. Roland got sick to his stomach when he saw it. The burn was almost as large as the breadth of his hand, and it was deep enough in the middle to have destroyed most of the Doctor's sternum. The skin around the burn had appeared yellow at first, but when the acid was neutralized it turned orange. How the Doctor survived, Roland wasn't sure, but he imagined it had something to to with the fact that the Doctor was an alien.
"Now that that's handled, we should get you straight to a hospital," Nyssa said.
"That won't be necessary," the Doctor insisted. "Time Lords have extraordinary resilience. A bit of rest and the entire area will have healed."
Roland squinted when he heard the words 'Time Lord', trying to think why it seemed so familiar. He remembered Jenny having said she was a 'Time-something-or-other' and wondered if they were the same species of alien. "It might explain why she wants to travel", he thought. "Perhaps all Time Lords like to."
"If you insist, Doctor," Nyssa complied. "I do think we should at least take you somewhere quiet to rest. Like Castrovalva." She paused. The Doctor raised an eyebrow and she added: "Except real and safer, of course."
"That's not a bad idea," the Doctor agreed. He stood up slowly and realized that his jumper was all but disintegrated. "First, however, I would like to put on a new jumper and then get Roland back to his friend."
The Doctor spent some time in the cricket room trying to find a new sweater that fit. When he came out, he looked almost as good as he did when Roland first met him. He was bit paler than normal, but as soon as he put on his hat and coat, he dashed to the console room and set the coordinates as if nothing had happened.
"I don't know how he does it," Nyssa whispered to Roland. "He might be a Time Lord, but they're not all that different from humans. I got curious one day and looked up Time Lord physiology in the Tardis database. The biggest differences I noticed were that he has two hearts and four kidneys."
"Four kidneys?" Roland spoke a little louder than he intended to. He glanced up at the Doctor, but he didn't seem to have noticed. He was to enveloped in his work. "I suppose that makes sense, having two hearts and all. But four?"
A while later the console stopped thrumming and the Doctor turned on the scanner. When Roland saw the Gatehouse laboratory he smiled wide and had to stop himself from jumping up and down screaming 'Finally!'. He had enjoyed being with Nyssa and the Doctor, but the excitement was more than enough for one day. A good rest in his own bed was just what he needed.
Roland said his farewells and stepped out the door, followed by the Doctor. "This is a very nice laboratory," the Doctor said. "I see you have a time window, too. Did you set this up yourself?"
"Most of it. That module on the wall over there was here when I moved in."
"That's fascinating. It's a primitive way to time travel, really, but I imagine it works remarkably well."
"It should." Roland frowned and looked at the time window. "I just don't understand how I got separated from the shuttle."
The Doctor followed Roland's gaze and smiled. "In my experience, Roland, when you travel in time and something sends you where you didn't want to be, it's because you were supposed to be there." He took Roland's hand and shook it. "I should be off now, but if ever you need assistance in your travels, come find me. It shouldn't be too hard; I've traversed most of time and space."
Roland waved as the Doctor entered the Tardis and shut the door. The whirring, grinding sound of the Tardis echoed through the Gatehouse as the Tardis faded in and out of time before finally disappearing.

The vortex seemed to swirl gleefully as Jenny flew through in her shuttle, as if it was welcoming her home. Jenny smiled in response and picked up speed, only slowing down just as she burst through the time window and into the laboratory. There was just enough space in the room for her to spin the shuttle around. This way, she would be able to fly straight into the window next time, rather than having to fly in reverse.
As she jumped out of the shuttle, she saw Roland run out of the kitchen. "Thank heavens!" he said. "You're back. When I saw the shuttle wasn't here, I thought..."
"It's okay, Roland. You don't have to say it; I know." Her tone was playful and Roland could tell she was about to tease him. "When you saw I wasn't here you thought you'd get something to eat and then go looking for me."
Roland sighed and pulled Jenny in for a hug. "Well, yes. That's true," he admitted. "But I hadn't eaten anything for several hours.
Jenny looked at the time on the control module and asked, "Where were you? The module says it's only been fifteen minutes."
Roland waved his hand, signalling that he wasn't ready to talk about it yet. "You first, Jenny. According to regular time, you've been gone the longest. Besides, I'd like to know where you got the hat." He pointed to the newsboy hat that Jenny's hair was tucked into.
Jenny smiled nervously and took off the leather jacket Roland had left in the shuttle. "I'd rather not talk about it. It was... an ordeal."
Roland nodded understandingly. "Okay. Did you solve the mystery of the vanishing man?"
"I did," Jenny said with a smile. She handed Roland his jacket and took off the newsboy cap. "Once again, the culprit was a perception filter. Now, tell me, how did you get back?"
Roland sat on top of a nearby desk. He settled himself comfortably and Jenny listened intently as he began his tale. "Mine's a bit of a long story too. I was pulled from the shuttle and found myself in an English meadow in the 1980s. There was a strange man there who said I'd been pulled out of the vortex by time distortions. How he knew, I never bothered to ask him, but he was a time traveler, like us, and he brought me back in his time ship. He called himself 'the Doctor'."
Jenny's eyes opened wide. She grabbed Roland by either arm and got in his face. "You met my father?" she asked as she squeezed his arms. "Tell me the whole story! Every detail."
Roland winced and started to resume the story, but instead, all that came out was a quiet "Oouuch".