The Doctor:

Jace had been quiet since we left Mickey, one of the people she cared most about. We'd been to the 50's, to Kroptor, stopped a weird Absorbalof type thing, related to the Slitheen, and stopped a girl who snatched me and Rose away from her into a drawing, but she'd still been quiet. And then I found out why, when I did a routine check of the med stocks.

There was a copy of companion DNA missing. Lucie Miller. I checked through the files, and there was a recent DNA test, a pathology one. Jaclyn Smith, father, The Doctor, AKA Legacy. Mother, unknown.

What? No, that couldn't be right. I knew her mother, I loved her mother until she decided to leave, going off to travel herself around the world. Lucie was the woman who raised her, and who else would I ever be with? Rose? No, the TARDIS would have known that DNA, but there was no one else.

But why would she ever even want to see if Lucie was her real mum or not? There had to be a reason that doubt was put into her mind, and what was that? Jackie, the other one, she said that she was left with Lucie, but Lucie just left her on the streets. She needed to see if that was a parallel or not. But it wasn't.

"Jace? Jace!" I called, following the sound of music coming through the corridors, a recording of Jace's singing as Lady Belle Voix, someone having gone back in time to see it. Well, I was her number one fan. "Jaclyn, I want to talk to you!"

She stuck her head out of the room she was in, a spare one hidden near the Eye. "Dad, what? I'm busy."

"No, you're not. You're going to tell me about this." I held up the report for her DNA test. "Pathology results. For you. Confirmed me, yeah. But not Lucie. Why did you even try that, baby girl?"

Jace scowled a little. "I'm not a baby. At all. Jackie said that she was the parallel of me because I would have been like her if Lucie never chose to keep me. That I'd have been left on her doorstep, and she'd just moved me somewhere else as a toddler. About 3 and a half. Some woman you loved."

"Hey, no. She still raised you, Jace. In this universe, she is your mum."

"She barely spoke. Harry, my other dad, he spoke more. He was a bigger part of my life, she... she just... I loved her, because she was my mum. Or I thought she was. Curly haired Song. That's what Jackie said. What if that's my mum here? The same woman?"

She was really thinking about this, how she had a different mum out there, some blonde woman. "Jace, when did you last get a good nights sleep? Not since Reinette, I'd bet. I know, Jace, I know you want anything to take your mind off it, to keep running and not look back, and it doesn't work. Once you start, you won't stop. I know you won't and I don't want that life for you."

Jace, hugged her arm around herself, before brushing her own beautiful long blonde curls out of her face, looking so, so young, when really she was halfway through Time Lord maturity. 46 years old. "She was my best friend, and so was Mickey. Only one actually survived, but I won't see either ever again. I can't... I can't do this, I can't keep living when I know that no one will live with me. Every friend I ever make, they'll be with me for a while, and then they'll be gone."

I moved forward and hugged her close, kissing her long curls. "I know. I know it isn't fair, my Calliope... My Jace... I'm so sorry, love. But it's just what happens. It's who we are, Time Lords, Jace. My amazing little girl, the first of your kind..." She hid her face in my chest, and I wished I could take this all away from her, to let her live a normal life, but I couldn't. The Chameleon Arc wouldn't work, she was already part human. "There's no one like you, but that means no one can think like you. That woman, the woman who is really your mum... I don't know her. But maybe we'll find her, soon. Maybe we'll find her?"

"Maybe." Jace whispered. "But maybe I don't want to know why she left me, or why she lied to you, not telling you she had me. It's so confusing, dad... The fact that I'm so much older, but Rose, she's still the same. I was 15 nearly 16, and she's 20. Now she's still 20 and I'm 46."

"It's OK. It's OK, my amazing, fantastic Jace." I cupped her face and kissed her forehead. "Now, we need to go and sleep, because neither of us have for weeks at least. So, lets either go adopt another cat, or go to sleep. And I am not ready to replace Rain for a while, OK?"

She nodded with a small smile now, and I saw that she was unsteady on her feet. Jace was shattered, so I lead her back to her room, then lay her down on the bed, sitting in the armchair next to it. There were tonnes of sheet music around the room, all of it in her own hand, elegant and slanting. She learnt to compose when she was away. "Tell me a story."

Tell her a story? Well, my whole life was one. So, let's tell her mine.

"Once upon a time, there was a little boy. And he was from a far away kingdom, lost in the stars and the heavens, so when he became a man, he stole a box to run away and see the universe, and all of time." She smiled a little, and I kept going, smiling at her reaction. "He found friends as he went, that man and his granddaughter, whom he loved more than anything. First there was Barbara, and Ian, who taught his granddaughter, before she left to start a family of her own.

"Then there was Vicki, Katerina, Sara and Steven, all in a year before they had lives of theirs to get back to, and Dodo stayed even less. But then he changed when he was with Ben and Polly, before Jamie and Victoria, then Zoe after. He changed again after them, and his friends were made to forget him as his people called him home, furious with how he ignored their rules and principles, before banishing him to Earth.

"It was there the man met Liz, who went to the moon for her people, and later Jo, who found love in the Amazon. And after that, there with Sarah Jane. Now she was fantastic, and became great friends with a doctor, Harry. But I had to go home-" I stopped as she was now asleep, her chest rising and falling evenly. "Sleep well, my Jace. I love you."

Kissing her forehead, I got back to my feet, tucking her in and going back out into the corridor, but I went through to the music room with a handful of of the notes she composed, and sat down at the piano, starting to play what she wrote, the title So Long Sweet Memories, writing in our language. It was fast, and sad, but so, so beautiful, and I could imagine her voice coming up with words to go along with it, but her voice was locked inside her, locked in the sorrow of her loss.

I kept playing after, playing things I'd composed, or just things I made up, and lost track of how long I'd been there, because about 12 hours later my daughter came and sat next to me, joining in on what I was playing, just adding in bits and pieces, humming softly as we went. "You never finished the story dad. I fell asleep just after you spoke about Harry."

Of course she'd want to hear the rest of it. "There was Leela, and Romana, one of his own people, who went on to become the President of their race. He changed again soon after, before he met Adric, Nyssa and Teegan, who all mourned the man when he saved a world at the cost of his own life. Nyssa then left to save so many people, suffering from advanced leprosy, before Tourlough joined the team. initially, he was to hurt the man, but soon became his friend, before going back to school.

"Teegan went back to her home and job, just as Peri came, and the man sacrificed himself to save her, and changed yet again. The people who'd once exiled him brought him home again, and put him on trial when Melanie came, it ended with them making him change again, and Peri went home. But Mel went home soon after, leaving me to find Ace, and I took her to see the stars, reminding him so much of his daughter, but she went home too, to start working on making her life amazing.

"The man travelled alone for a while, before his old best friend was killed, and he asked the man to take his remains back to their home. But on the way, something happened, and he changed again, just as he met Grace. But Grace never wanted to travel, so he went on, meeting Lucie. Now, Lucie was beautiful, smart, funny and was never afraid to speak her mind. He loved her, so much, but a War had started in his home, so he made himself change, to become a warrior.

"But the War ended when he destroyed both his people and the enemy alike, and he thought he'd be alone. Until he found this beautiful flower, and heard a shining song, and suddenly he wasn't alone anymore. The man became younger, and he did whatever he could to keep the song going, and the flower alive, even sacrificing himself when needed. Because he loved them."

Jace sniffed a little, wiping her eyes as she stopped playing, and I wrapped an arm around her. "Does the story have a happy ending?"

Oh, Jace... "I don't know. Because the story hasn't finished yet, and neither has yours. Don't let it finish early, Calliope. Please. You need to understand that no matter how many people you love and lose, it's better than spending eternity alone."

"You borderline just quoted Tennyson at me, dad."

Did I? Oh, yes, I did. 'Tis better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.' "Good point, my Jacey. Righty ho, Rose can't work out the TARDIS washing machine, so we're going to have to head back to her mums so she can use the one there."

"Why can't she use the washing machine, it's self explanatory. Plus, you put the clothes in, press the right buttons, add the time you want it to take, and it does it itself." Jace sighed, shaking her head as she started playing chopsticks. "I have a weird feeling about going to Earth right now. I don't know what it is."

I kissed her hair again, holding her close. "It's fine. I'll do everything in my power to keep you safe, Calliope. I'd do anything again and again to make sure that you were safe, because you're everything to me. I love you more than words can ever say."

"Dad, stop quoting poems and songs at me. You don't even realise your doing it, it's the Lion King all over again." Jacey giggled, looking up at me through her hair. Seriously, stop."

Now, that was something I didn't mean to do, it was just the fact that the quote worked very well with what I was trying to tell the Sycorax. But yeah, I needed to not quote things unless I meant to. Like when I told stories. We're all stories, but some are in the dark.

Gonna be skipping a couple of episodes, as you may have guessed, and I'm going to my favourite Rose eps, when she leaves. Sorry, not sorry. Series 3 and 4 may be mostly skipped, for a reason you will not appreciate. But it'll be worth it, as this story will keep going until the end of series 6 at least. Izzi Petrova xxx