HI! I'm sorry I've been away so long but uni just sort of happened to me again and I really shouldn't even be doing this so ssssssh....(glances around shiftily)

Thanks for the reviews! I feel I should answer some of the questions though, since I have been puting it off a bit...

Terrorist of the Seven Seas: No I didn't make up the 12 times thing, it's actually cannon with the series and is mentioned quite a lot by all the Doctors. So when Tennant-Doctor says he's going to die it's almost true since he only has one regeneration left. The Doctor has done a previous 'internal' regeneration when he didn't change forms so that puts him at 11...he only has one more regeneration left before it's all over. NUUUUUU!

Also! Thanks for the general reviews!

Right, on with the chapter!

Allons-y!

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Part VI - I Need Him

The feeling in his stomach couldn't possibly be described properly. Suddenly it cramped and he felt bile rise in his throat. His hands were shaking, the blood draining from his face. He tried desperately to think what he could do. What he could change. Despair sank into his bones and his lips moved soundlessly. It was like some had carved his heart out with a serrated blade and drenched the wound in lemon juice. It burned.

"Dad," a voice called from his left, it sounded so very far away. It didn't matter.

"Dad!" the voice was more insistent and eventually he turned to look into the fearful brown eyes of his daughter. "What're we going to do, Dad? Is he gone?" There was panic in her voice and he could see she was feeling as much pain as he was.

He pressed a hand across his eyes and forcefully kicked his brain back into gear, back into thinking at thousands of lightyears a second. He glared at the space where his son had vanished a made a silent vow. He'd lost too many children and he was so very old now, he would not lose the one who taught him to love again. The one who taught him how to live again.

"Dad?" Jenny asked tentatively, sensing the growing mood.

"He's not gone, Jenny," he told her, "because we're going to bring him back. Captain!"

"Doctor," the American replied as he was instantly at the Time Lord's side. He'd never seen the Doctor like this and, frankly, it scared him.

"What kind of equipment do you have here?" the Doctor asked shortly as he glared at the now stable containment field.

"Only what you see," Jack replied, looking around to take a quick inventory.

The Doctor's eyes scanned the room critically before falling on the rift manipulator once more. "Not to many scavenged bits then. Jenny, move the TARDIS to the hub," he said without even looking at her. Jenny nodded and sprinted out the door.

"You trust her to move the TARDIS? I wasn't even aloud to touch the controls," Jack asked, surprised.

"You aren't a Time Lord, she's good enough to do the basics," the Doctor told him rubbing his chin. "We're going to have to make do. Do you have surveillance in here?"

"Of course," Tosh replied, already moving to her computer and bringing the various feeds up, "we like to know what we're doing after all."

"Bring up the footage of the containment field," the Doctor ordered as if he had all the authority in the world, his eyes were cold and his tone short.

Tosh did so without thinking and moved aside so the Doctor could examine the feed himself. He put on his glasses and squinted at the screen. He replayed the footage and switched the black glasses with a pair of strange cardboard 3D ones. "Yes!" he shouted, leaping backwards. Everyone else had jumped out of their skin.

"What is it?" Tosh asked, looking for whatever had caused such an exclamation.

"Stuff," the Doctor told her, "well, Void stuff. It's leaking into the hub. Coupled with the presence of neutrino particles and a sudden flux of temporal radiation I would say that we have interdimensional travel."

"I thought you said that was impossible," Jack asked, concern on his face.

"It is," the Doctor replied easily, "but I think what we have is recent rift disturbance resonating against a similar disturbance in a near identical universe causing a temporal funnel that pulls any temporal anomaly through. John just happened to be closest when the activity peaked."

"What does that mean?" Owen asked from the back.

"It means he's alive," shouted Jenny, who'd just come through the door. There was grin on her face and she flew into her father's arms and they hugged tightly. That was at least something.

"Does that mean you can bring him back?" Jack asked, also grinning.

"Not so easy," the Doctor grimaced breaking away. "We'd need a power source from our universe and two matching recepticals."

"But it is already resonating," Jenny pointed out, "if we left the field active and John built a similar device-"

"They'd move in tandem and generate a funnel field, a threshold! Jenny you're brilliant," the Doctor exclaimed with glee. "We'd also need to build a stabiliser into the TARDIS itself to make sure we could travel through but that should be easy enough to achieve. It's going to take what? A day?"

"If we both work on it," Jenny agreed excitedly, bouncing. "Can I work on the stabiliser?"

"Yes, make sure you fit it to the TARDIS properly," he shouted after her as she danced out the door. Distractedly he moved to grab what he needed from inside the Torchwood hub.

"Can you travel the same way he did?" Gwen asked, eyes still on the containment field.

"I could," the Doctor confirmed looking over his shoulder, "but it'd be a bumpy ride. If John's lucky he won't have been pushed out the other side too forcefully but I wouldn't count on it. Think magnet attracting paper-clip. It won't be pretty."

"But he's alright?"

"I don't know," the Doctor paused for a painful moment before resuming, "but I hope so. Hope springs eternal."

"Is there anything we can do?" Jack asked, placing a hand on the Doctor's shoulder, friendly but not flirting. Now was hardly the time.

"Tune the rift manipulator for me, that should take all four of you," the Doctor replied as he dumped his items on a work bench to begin.

"We'll find him, Doctor," Jack reassured him.

"Yeah," was all the Doctor said.

The day passed with a flurry of activity with the Doctor and Jenny leading the wave. They were in the TARDIS, out the TARDIS, tasking the rift manipulator apart or assembling a communicator. Sometimes all at the same time. They never seemed to stop and the Torchwood team had trouble just keeping up. No one really noticed how late in the evening it had become until Jenny slumped asleep against her desk. The Doctor glanced over, his expression softened and he did not move to wake her.

"She alright?" Jack asked from where he was threading wires together. "I don't think I've ever seen you sleep, I imagine she's much the same."

"You don't sleep?" Owen asked incredulously from where he was piling things together. He was also on his way out and would soon be nodding off.

"Of course we sleep, just not as much as humans is all," the Doctor told them as his hands continued to busily work, he didn't look up. "She's fine," he reassured Jack, "we're due our two hours a week tomorrow, the extra work and stress must have tired her out."

"She's really worried huh?" Jack paused and looked over at the girl, she looked a lot like the Doctor he noted. Very pretty and slender.

"Yeah," the Doctor laughed dryly. "It's funny, they fight like cats sometimes, really go at it you know? But they're as loyal as pitbulls and only a bit less angry."

"I can imagine that," Jack also laughed, glad to see some humour once more.

"Here," Gwen said as she offered the Doctor a cup of tea, which he enthusiastically took and sipped. She glanced down at the work near the Doctor's hands, seeing calculations and more than one burn on his fingers from the soldering iron. "You need to sleep too you know," she reminded him. "Alien or not. Tosh is already camped out upstairs and Ianto is down for the count. I think Owen's hot on his heels," she nodded to her slumped co-worker.

"I'm fine," he hedged, rubbing his eyes.

"Really?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"So I'm a little bit tired," he shrugged. "I can't stop now, not when I'm so close. I just can't." The glasses were back on and the speedy work resumed. Jack watched silently.

"You're really worried aren't you?" Gwen asked as she sat down next to him, also drinking her tea.

At first the Doctor said nothing, he just stared at his hands for a long moment. "You know," he said shakily, "I wasn't prepared for the whole fatherhood thing, TARDIS pulled a fast one on me. Suddenly I found myself with a newborn Time Tot and no way of really caring for him, let alone educating him." The Doctor laughed and shook his head.

"One of her moods?" Jack asked.

"Replicated my DNA on the fly," the Doctor replied, dabbing at a wire with his finger to make it stick down. "Like I said, I wasn't really ready to be a father but we got by, me and John. We made it all this time through those disasters and near-world-endings. Even found Jenny again. I thought we were invincible and then this happens!"

"It'll be alright," Jack murmured, trying to reassure him.

"Again?" Gwen asked, it was only then that Jack noticed the phrasing.

The Doctor looked up them, seemingly surprised they didn't know. "Well I did have children back on Gallifrey," he said quietly. "Technically you could say I have six children, four boys and two girls," he continued.

"Six?" Jack was now very surprised.

"Four of them are gone of course," the Doctor elaborated, blowing gently on a recently soldered wire. "Have you ever lost a child, Jack?"

Jack didn't quite know what to say, he coughed uncomfortably. "No," he said slowly, "not really. Didn't have a family of my own and my parents have long since gone."

The Doctor nodded, "mine too," he agreed. He then looked up at Jack with such a haunted look that it tore in Jack's very heart, "take it from me, Captain, losing a child is the most painful experience you will ever know. No parent should ever, ever bury their children." There was an awkward silence. "Well, John's not dead so no worries there," he chuckled suddenly. "Sorry, sometimes old memories sneak up on me. I've had a while to get used to it. A couple of centuries is a long time after all."

"Centuries?" Gwen asked, "Exactly how long do you live, Doctor?"

"Oh, I'm nine hundred and thirteen. Feeling the pains of middle age," he smiled.

"How do you know that John is building the device you need?" Jack asked, curious as ever.

"Because he's my son and he's amazing," the Doctor told him with a grin. "Now you all go get some sleep, you're distracting me."

The work continued the next day and was only interrupted by a loud shout the next evening when a strange beeping came the communications device that Jenny had been working on. It was a series of clicks and tones that damn near indecipherable to anyone that wasn't Jenny or the Doctor – both of which were absolutely ecstatic.

"What the hell is that?" Owen bellowed as the noise began to reach intolerable levels.

"Message from the soldier in the field," Jenny called back as she danced over to the device and began fiddling with it.

"From John?" asked Gwen, moving to her side.

"Told you he was a genius," Jenny confirmed as she fought with the device, trying to get it to obey her will.

"Pass it here," the Doctor called, catching it when she threw it with ease. He pressed an ear against it and twiddled the dial. He growled in annoyance and pulled out the sonic screwdriver, after a few seconds of special attention still nothing had changed. "Come on," the Doctor shouted as he slammed it against the counter. Suddenly the signal died all together.

"Have we lost it?" Jenny asked as she jogged over.

"No, it's converting," the Doctor told her with a grin. Suddenly the device shuddered and a strange hologram appeared over it. It started off as a translucent glowing blue ball that seemed to squirm as if possessed. After a few seconds of movement it grew weird spikes that undulated slowly is a strange but repeating pattern. "Ah ha," the Doctor crowed triumphantly.

"What is it?" Tosh asked as she leaned close to examine it.

"It's a temporal vector," the Doctor explained, moving the dial to make the picture clearer.

"I've seen temporal vectors before and they've never looked like that," Jack commented as he leaned over the Doctor's shoulder.

"Well your lot only projected on four dimensions with vectoral practice instead of the forty two that John's projecting," the Doctor replied, carefully he put the machine on the counter and pulled out a stethoscope from his inside pocket.

"How can there be forty two?" Jack asked quickly.

"That's why the TARDIS is a sports car and your wrist strap is a space hopper," the Doctor told him, rolling his eyes. "It's Time Lord science, same sort of thing with the TARDIS being dimensionally transcendental. Multiple planes of existence and all that. John is actually broadcasting his exact parallel world, time frame and land mass coordinates."

"What are the other vectors?"

"If I'm not going to let you have a time travelling teleport I'm hardly going to let you have the Time Lord mechanics of time travel am I? Get a little perspective, Captain." The words were warning but the tone was much happier, the Doctor was getting back to his old self.

"How accurate is it?"

"Temporally it's likely to be spot on but geographically could be a bit out." He looked up at them, "what? He's doing pretty well!"

"Better yet," cut in Jenny happily, "if he's transmitting he's alive, well and in a place with sufficient technology for him to build his own stabiliser!"

"How long will it take for you to lock on to and get to him?" Jack asked as the Doctor listened to the device carefully with a stethoscope.

"About five minutes," the Doctor grinned as he scooped up the device and sprinted to the TARDIS, Jenny hot on his heels.

"Doctor," Gwen called after him.

The man pivoted and looked back over his shoulder questioningly.

"You take care," she warned him in her thick welsh accent. "You bring him back so we can see him too, hmm? We're worried you know."

The grin widened and the light was back in those dark brown eyes. "You just watch me, Gwen Cooper. You just watch me."

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Well that was short...Sorry....the next chapter is longer! I've already started it! Forward planning! YAY!

Anyway, tell me what you think! Please review! Uni work has crushed me and I need the support!

Love y'all!

- D