"You should have called me!" The man standing there looked torn between frustration and deep empathy, his hands gesturing wildly with the feeling in his voice.

Margaret only looked up at him. She was more composed than she had been, the sitting having settled her some, but there was enough of that wild abandoning sorrow in her eyes to silence him. "I couldn't." Couldn't admit that Teddy had been gone by the time she'd gotten back from the market, that she'd just known immediately upon entering the house that he hadn't gone off to a mate's to play, hadn't nipped out to the garden on a lark. That she didn't care about whatever time limits the police had, before they'd declare someone missing. That she'd been in, holding Mrs. Friedman's hand enough to know that they'd be no good at all.

"So you let some strangers in instead?" This time, exasperation won out over sympathy. "Margaret, really, I don't know what you were thinking-"

Again, she only looked at him. Sitting there, she'd had a chance to think over how absolutely mad she must have been to pick out a couple strangers and burden them with her sorrow, that she should never have let him in her place – but then that feeling, that faint but overwhelming sense of dread had broken, and that was when it had hit her, that by whatever luck, she'd been right to trust them. But that wasn't something she could explain, and even if she had the words, she doubted anyone as terribly logic-based as he would understand.

"Margaret, I need to talk to you. I need to know if you've seen anything odd lately- absolutely anything, even if it seems silly. Especially if it seems a little silly. But it is very important that you tell me everything-" The Doctor had started speaking before he'd gotten halfway down the stairs, before he noticed that another had joined them. "Who's he?"

"Andy LeStrange, Detective with the Metropolitan Police." Was the curt reply, as he pulled out his badge and a small notebook from an inner pocket of his jacket. "And who did you say you were? I'll need to see ID, please." He wasn't the most immediately imposing man, honestly more hangdog than anything else, but he didn't need a uniform for an air of authority. And he was almost immediately suspicious of this stranger, seeing nothing in the pinstriped suit, the battered sneakers, and the thoroughly distracting hair, which read as particularly trustworthy, and it showed.

Another careless flash of the psychic paper. "The Doctor. Did you call the police?" He addressed Margaret directly.

"She didn't need to. I worked the Freidman case." The tone was a tersely clipped professionalism, the restraint in command of a working officer. "I became acquainted with Ms. Law during the course of the investigation, and swung by with some follow up questions when she explained to me the- ah, current situation." Tact softened, if only slightly, the almost severe line of his face.

"I thought the investigation had been closed." Cat spoke up for the first time this conversation, giving the man a measuring sort of once-over.

"I was not satisfied with the official conclusion."

Those eight words said a great deal about the man, more than he realized, and it was perhaps those words alone that had the Doctor relaxing. "You saw something was off."

Andy nodded, though part of him wondered how it had happened that he was the one being interrogated, instead of the other way around. "Little boys don't just disappear into thin air."

"Well," The Doctor looked like he might have had a story for that, but stopped himself. "You were right. There is something very, very off about this." He looked across his companions, taking in the three different degrees of worry and concern.

"Than what's going on?"

"I have no idea. Absolutely no idea." He didn't seem perturbed at the lack of faith this would inspire in his listeners. "But I'm going to find out."

"Where did you say we were going?" Andy demanded, partially out of breath from dodging through the rush-hour crush.

"You have the Freidman file on you, yes?" Was the Doctor's non-response. They were back to classic mode, with the running and the talking quickly, so it was about time for his pulling-a-brilliant-plan-out-of-his-back-pocket trick.

"Yeah, I brought it with me to Margaret's. Now, where did you say we were going?"

"Somewhere safe. Well, safe as we're going to get. Well, safe as we're going to get so I can track them." There was a risk that the TARDIS might actually be easier for them to find, what with the general signals it sent out about itself, but if he was going to be caught anywhere, he'd rather be caught in the thing than without it.

"Who, exactly, is them?" He continued his questioning, not really trusting any of these strangers, not yet, following more to keep an eye on them, to watch out for Margaret.

"I need to confirm." There was a hint of something in his voice, a something that didn't sound pleased at all with what he expected to confirm.

"Then it's not good at all, is it?" Cat didn't seem to want to let Andy take over the questioning for her, and needed the verbal confirmation of what she could hear in his tone.

"Not at all." But then, there really wasn't a way for it to have been good news.

Cat, distracted by trying to keep up after she'd nearly been felled by a particularly enthusiastic tourist's elbow, managed to run smack dab into a man's turned back. "So sorry, excuse me, really sorry," she murmured absently, still not paying that much attention until the man turned around, obviously startled by her sudden intrusion into his person space. "Sorry-" She started, before finding herself staring into particularly familiar hazel eyes, standing out on a freckled face she knew all too well-

He'd stared back at her, just as frozen for a moment, before disappearing back into the crowd. And she'd stood there, staring at the space where he'd been, for a good long moment before a hand closed on her elbow, jerking her back to reality.

"I did say hurry, didn't I? Just like you humans, picking now of all times to go sightseeing-" The Doctor hadn't been overly worried, but the last person he wanted to lose track of was Cat, as he hadn't forgotten in all the fuss that she still wasn't supposed to be here, but his tone snapped to the serious the moment he realized how white her face was, how large her eyes were in the pallor. "What happened? Did you see yourself?" There hadn't been a shorting-out of the universe, so she obviously hadn't touched herself, that was obvious enough, but even just a good long look-

"No." She shook her head, half to signal her response, half to try and shake her back to the present. "I saw Nick."

"Did he see you? Had you met yet?" He concentrated the less personal, not exactly able to discuss her feelings at seeing him alive again were while they hurried back to the TARDIS to investigate child-stealing aliens. But he couldn't help the lesser relief in his voice, a slight relaxation of his pose. That could have disrupted her personal timeline with the boy, but it was unlikely to tear the world apart.

"Yes, and no. But, you know what I just remembered?" She looked up at him, as if needing absolution for having forgotten this, having forgotten anything to do with him, trying not to fidget from a sudden, phantom wetness on her sleeve. "The first thing he ever said to me was 'Don't I know you from somewhere?' I never thought twice about it, figured I just had one of those faces- but I guess this explains it, doesn't it?" There was a slight need for reassurance in the upturn of her sentence, in the way that it became a question where it didn't need to be.

"I suppose so." He wasn't all that certain that that really had been the first thing he'd said to her until she'd run into him before meeting him (time travel was funny like that), but he didn't say anything. If it had corrected her timeline like that, with his comment, than it meant that it definitely didn't change anything enough to tear the universe apart, which was rather relieving, really. He already had enough to worry about as it was.