Tuesday

Poor Jenny. Her first shopping trip and they were in real danger of being washed away. If she'd never travelled with the Doctor and seen climates like nothing on Earth, Donna might have said that the rain was like nothing she'd ever seen. And the wind! It could physically propel you along. Dragging Jenny into a nearby doorway, they watched a woman nearby give up any attempt to hold an umbrella and throw it down to the pavement. It immediately blew sideways, causing a man to just out of its way and into a gutter full of water.

"Probably not the best day to go shopping," she said to Jenny.

But Jenny was staring around in fascination. Donna supposed that she'd never seen so many people together, never mind shops filled with things she'd never be able to explain.

"I know why you're doing this," Jenny said, her eyes bright with sudden amusement.

"What?"

"Taking me here. You both think I need to get less wary of humans. Will you ever learn that I have really good hearing?"

"Probably not. Still, we'll never keep secrets from you then, will we?"

"I'm not wary of humans."

"What?"

"I'm not afraid of anything," Jenny said, raising an eyebrow slightly, "you should know that by now. I don't want to hurt or offend humans because I know my father wouldn't want me to. So..." Her smile faded and she stared into the middle distance, "is that awful of me, Donna? I can't hurt them so I don't know how to be around them. Am I some sort of monster?"

"No! 'Course you're not!" Donna struggled for something right to say. "You're on the defensive when you meet someone because you've been taught to be. That takes time. There's not been many situations for you when you haven't had to be."

"There's nothing after us now."

"No. Except this rain. Look at that...the road's getting flooded."

"There's a lot to take in," Jenny said. Donna followed her gaze to a bus passing by, with people pushed against the doors. Lights flickered around them as the cars trawled through puddles on the road. People pushed past them into the shop, shaking out sodden hats or sleeves.

"Is it too much for you?" she asked tentatively.

"No!" Jenny was grinning again. "I don't know where to start!"

"Toys."

"What?"

"Toys. My friend's had a baby and I'm going to visit her on Friday. I need to get a present."

"Toys...for children?" Jenny looked disappointed.

"I'll be quick, promise," Donna assured her.

The shop was large and colourful with a floor getting slippery from a day of wet feet tramping through it.

"Barbies!" Donna pounced on one, holding up the box to show Jenny. "I could play with these for hours. I had everyone tortured to get them for me." She bit her lip to keep from laughing. The toys were clearly enchanting Jenny as much as they were her.

Jenny reached around her for a glittering doll with wings.

"That's lovely," Donna said, "not for a baby though, I suppose. Maybe later on. All little girls love fairies."

"What are fairies?" Jenny asked and Donna heard the thrill in her voice, at a word not in her vocabulary.

"Well, kind of like a spirit. A friendly little spirit with wings. We used to have flower fairy dolls. They were really pretty."

"So they exist here on Earth, these spirits?"

"No!" Donna laughed slightly. "They're a myth. A bit like Santa Claus. Oh, you don't know about him either. We humans seem to believe in a lot of things when we're children and we give them up when we grow up. They're just nice little stories." She frowned suddenly.

"I just realised...it's hard to know what I believe anymore."

Jenny shot her a glance that was half understanding, half sympathetic.

"Try not knowing what to believe in the first place," she said wryly.

They didn't do much shopping in the end. Most of the trip was taken up with trying to stay as dry as they possibly could, and trying to keep Jenny focused on the job in hand. They returned to the TARDIS and emerging into the console room after a shower, Donna found Jenny sitting over books.

"Where's the Doctor?" she asked.

"Out looking for nails," Jenny said, "can you imagine, in all the vastness of this ship, he couldn't find nails!"

"Have you seen the way he tidies?"

Jenny laughed.

It was all strangely domestic, Donna thought. Staying in one place with nothing special to do, even if only for a day didn't really fit with her life with the Doctor but at the same time it was interesting. She knew the Doctor wouldn't be comfortable with it. That was probably why he was out, stocking up on hardware. Nothing to do meant time to find something to do and maybe the TARDIS herself was in agreement with that because suddenly a shrill alarm made them both jump.

"What was that?"

"I don't know!" Tentatively Donna stood up and moved around the console without a clue of what she might be looking for.

"It's moving," Jenny said, as the familiar whirring sounded.

"Can't be...the Doctor's not here!" Seriously alarmed now, Donna looked frantically around for something to press. Shouldn't there some of sort of TARDIS equivalent to an "escape" key. But there was nothing.

They clung to the console as the ship shuddered to a sudden halt.

"Might as well see where we are," Jenny said, heading towards the door.

"I don't think we should. Could be anywhere!"

"Yes and we might as well see. Come on, Donna. We've been moved for a reason."

"The Doctor'll have kittens when he finds us gone."

"We can't do anything about that now," Jenny replied calmly, "I can't fly it back. Can you?"

Donna looked uncertainly at the controls.

"I never have, by myself."

"Well then." They stared at each other for a moment.

"He can find us though," Donna said, "he's got his key. He can bring us back. If we leave here, and the TARDIS leaves, then we're stranded."

"Just a minute...one minute." Jenny was already opening the door.

"We can't do anything," Donna warned her, "if we're in some other time. We can't interfere."

"'Course not!"

The door swung open.

In the doorway, all Donna could see was Jenny staring into the distance.

"What is it?"

"Not a lot," Jenny said, moving outside to let her see, "it's like a forest or something."

Sure enough, all they could see around them was trees and earth. Even the sky was hard to glimpse with the expanse of green above their heads.

"We could be somewhere prehistoric," Jenny said, her tone excited.

"Don't count on it." Donna pointed to the ground at their feet. "That's a tin, like a tin of beans or something. The dinosaurs weren't eating those."

"There's nothing much to see." Jenny walked ahead, trying to see. Suddenly she stopped and stared ahead of her.

"What? What do you see?"

But Jenny was gone, at full gallop and Donna followed, even though she knew she couldn't hope to keep up. Jenny was seriously good at running.

It seemed to take ages before she did catch up. Jenny was sitting beside a stream, watching the streaks of sunlight in the water.

"Sorry," she said, "I thought I saw something."

"Like what?"

"I thought it was...the light looked funny." Jenny laughed slightly but there was something manic in her laugh, "we're not supposed to interfere, are we? But it's ok to be seen, isn't it? That's no harm."

"No," Donna said uncertainly.

"It was just children," Jenny said, "two little girls running about. They've gone now."

"What did you think they were?"

"Just thought we were supposed to be looking for something. Like for whatever reason the TARDIS brought us here." Her face was tense and Donna noticed, not for the first time, that so much of Jenny's bravado was a front for an awful lot of uncertainty about the world.

"Come on," she said, holding out her hand to help the girl to her feet, "we'd better get back."

***************************

"And that's all it was? A forest?" The Doctor's voice was incredulous. "Think, Donna, was there anything? Strange noises? Anything strange about the atmosphere? The TARDIS wouldn't have done that for no reason."

"Nothing." Donna shook her head. "A forest and children playing by a stream. We don't even know when it might have been, apart from the tin of beans and that doesn't exactly narrow it down. Jenny thought the light looked strange though, didn't you?"

Jenny shrugged and Donna could help noticing that she didn't seem to want to look directly at either of them.

"No, it wasn't really. Just evening sunlight."

"And you didn't talk to anyone?"

"No." Donna wondered briefly if she should mention how Jenny had run from her and how she'd been the one to see the children but decided against it. After all, neither of them had interacted with anyone or interfered with anything. The Doctor and Jenny argued so much over Jenny's impulsiveness that it seemed pointless to start them off again.

Still though, she could understand why his face looked so troubled. After this long travelling with him, she knew as well as he did, that nothing ever really happened for no reason.