Author's Note: Here is the next chapter guys! Sorry about the wait! I have been writing a good deal for my Harry Potter fanfic (new chapter is up, feel free to give it a look) because aparently I am in a Harry Potter mood!

Anyway, enjoy the chapter!

The Doctor felt that dinner took an agonisingly long time to get through. He hadn't thought that he would be able to stand all the small talk, all the useless chat that meant absolutely nothing to him. All that he wanted to know was if Bella had been okay, that she wasn't hurt and when (and why) her house had been searched, yet he couldn't ask these questions until Bella, ironically, left them alone. He had no idea what state she was in mentally, which meant he had to tread very carefully until he figured out what the Trickster had done. He didn't even know if there was a possibility that he could even get her memory back…

"John?"

"Sorry – what?" the Doctor said looking up to Bella who was on her feet beside him.

"Have you had enough to eat?" she asked, glancing down to the Doctor's hardly touched dinner plate.

"Oh – yeah, sorry…" the Doctor said apologetically, glancing down to what he probably would have enjoyed, had the occasion been different.

Bella smiled down at him in what the Doctor thought to be a forgiving kind-of-way as she picked up his plate.

"That was delicious!" beamed Jack as he made a move to help her clean the table.

"Don't worry about the dishes, I'll do them." She said smiling. "You can stay here so you can all catch up with one another."

Jack made to protest out of habit, but the Doctor subtly shook his head. They needed some answers.

They waited in a tense silence that Bella seemed not to notice until she left the room and Sally waited a few moments before finally speaking.

"So, how is it that my best friend has no memories of the past year with you?" Sally said looking directly at the Doctor. Her tone was not that of an accusing one, it was more filled with worry than anything else.

"Won't she be able to hear us?" Dylan whispered, glancing to the door.

"Of course she won't hear us, Dylan." Sally said shortly. "You know what she's been like! She'll be off in her own little world with her headphones blaring. So Doctor, what happened?"

The Doctor took a moment to answer.

"I took her to a planet that had violet snow –" (Shocked looks from Sally and Dylan, which the Doctor chose to ignore) "- and we were trapped by the Trickster."

"Who's he then?" Dylan asked. "Is he like some kind of court jester or something?"

"The Trickster is a member of the Pantheon of Discord," the Doctor began, trying to remember as much as he possibly could, "Who were a group of some of the most evil beings in the universe, who all went about causing chaos and altering various realities. As far as I know, the Trickster is the only one left after they had all been banished from our universe."

"There is more than our universe?" Dylan asked with wide, excited eyes.

"Yes, but that isn't really the point." the Doctor said shortly.

Dylan cleared his throat. "Right, continue then."

"Anyway, the Trickster is nearly always associated with death because he'll often appear to someone who is on the brink of dying. He'll bargain with people, offering to save them if they do something for him in return."

"What does that mean?" Sally asked hesitantly.

"It means that he saves someone's life that should have died." The Doctor said somewhat bluntly. "He makes bargains with people to alter the progression of time, often creating chaos which is what he feeds off; the energy that the change creates.

"Say for instance that the Trickster made a bargain with a homeless man living in Liverpool; not much would happen at all. But say that that person was actually Bella or myself; that instantly creates a huge, cataclysmic problem for the universe."

"Says you," Dylan said, once again moody. "What makes you so special?"

"His line of work is what makes him so special." Jack said defensively, understanding where the Doctor was going with the conversation now. "So what you are saying Doctor, is that the Trickster is powerless unless he has the consent of another person to act?"

"Correct," the Doctor nodded.

"I still don't get how you and Bella come into this." Sally said frowning.

"Bella and I travel throughout the universe, saving planets and their people," the Doctor explained. "It isn't a chosen profession, it sort of just happens… anyway, in Bella's time with me she has saved her fair share of people, including my life and everyone's on this earth so imagine what would happen if she didn't continue to do that?"

"What if she didn't want to travel with you anymore?" Dylan asked, but the Doctor thought it sounded like more of a challenge.

"That would be different all together." The Doctor stated, secretly hoping that it would never happen.

"Why?" he pressed.

"Because that would be the right thing according to the time line due to the fact that Bella would have consciously made the decision herself," the Doctor told him sternly. "You need to remember that Bella is not the person who has given the consent here; her appearing on your doorstep six mornings ago is the result of someone else giving their consent for it to happen. Bella's timeline has been altered because someone that she knows is alive that shouldn't be. None of this should have ever happened."

"And how can you possibly know that?" Dylan asked looking at the Doctor angrily.

"I'm a Time Lord," the Doctor said with an edge to his voice. "I'm the first one to know when something stops time from running as it should."

The two of them stared angrily at each other until Sally brought them back to the more pressing part of the conversation.

"Don't mind Jack and I while we try and work out how to help Bella, will you?" she said somewhat angrily and both the Doctor and Dylan looked away from each other.

"Has she been okay though?" the Doctor asked eventually after an awkward silence.

Sally and Dylan exchanged glances.

"Well," Sally began, unsure of how to answer him. "I suppose she's been okay, but she certainly hasn't been herself."

"How do you mean?" the Doctor asked sharply.

"She doesn't remember anything about you, Doctor." Sally said quietly. "It's hard to get anything useful out of her at all, let alone how she got here. When she first arrived Dylan and I managed to get a few details out of her, but it wasn't much."

"It was just really vague details," Dylan told him seriously. "She said she had travelled to Scotland and the Amazon as well as London, but when we told pointed out that she couldn't have gone somewhere like the Amazon without a passport – something which she has never had – she merely shrugged and said that she had gotten there by a nice sailing ship with a bunch of polite sailors."

The Doctor frowned; they had travelled on a sailing ship with sailors. Admittedly they weren't you average group of sailors, but they did sail.

"I pointed out that she still needed a passport, but she just shrugged the comment off." Sally added.

"Did you see how she got here?"

"No," Sally answered the Doctor frowning. "She was just standing at the door with a confused look on her face. I thought it would get better over time, but it seems to be getting worse! She has changed; she hasn't been reading at all and she would normally always have a book somewhere near her that she'd be reading, she doesn't use the internet or the computer and it's very hard to have a conversation with her that actually makes sense. All she does since coming back is clean, cook, ride her horse and sit in her room listening to music and writing things down and stuff."

The Doctor frowned deeply, getting the feeling that Sally wasn't telling him everything. "Tell me what happened when Bella left with me after we brought her back – what happened with the police?"

"They weren't very happy with me, that's for sure!" she said darkly. "I made up this story that Bella had wrung me from an airport in Italy somewhere saying that distant relatives on her mother's side had turned up out of the blue wanting to take her on a once in a lifetime trip around the world. The police asked 'why would they want to do that' and I said that it was because they were an old, childless couple that felt terrible about Bella having such a rubbish and lonely childhood."

"Creative," Jack smirked.

"Bella and I took creative writing in our final year at school," Sally said dismissively.

"Did they believe it?" the Doctor asked curiously.

"Eventually, yeah," Sally said, the Doctor looking at her with raised eyebrows. "Especially after old Edwin Milton confirmed my story by saying that he'd seen a car in Bella's driveway that afternoon when he had driven past."

"Edwin Milton?" the Doctor enquired. "Doesn't he own the pub?"

"He used to be a copper, hence the name of the pub; The Sleeping Policemen." Dylan said.

"He was far more than just the local bobby," Jack said, and everyone looked to him frowning. Jack rolled his eyes. "I have done some research since arriving here, Doctor; I don't just hang out at pubs."

"Right," the Doctor said with a slight sceptical expression on his face. "What have you found out then?"

"Until very recently, Milton was the local coroner who serviced places from Bristol across to Bath and the surrounding towns." Jack said. "He was also the man who declared Bella dead when she first went missing – or rather when she was kidnapped."

"Did he now?" the Doctor said quietly, wondering if this man had anything to do with the Trickster. "What happened then?" he asked Sally.

"They wanted me to tell them the next time that Bella contacted me so they could talk to her; I really don't think they believed me at first in all honesty, which was so surprised when Milton backed me up. The following day the local newspaper had an official apology from the Bath Police force admitting that they had made a mistake and that Bella was alive and well and travelling overseas with relatives. I am assuming that they didn't get into contact with Bella, because no one gave them her number."

"They didn't," the Doctor said, exchanging a glance with Jack, both of them thinking along the same lines.

"The police wouldn't admit to making a mistake like that," Jack said. "There is no way in hell."

"No," the Doctor agreed slowly. "There would have had to have been a new inquiry at least and they would have needed to have seen Bella alive with their own lives before they changed the status."

"There sort of was another inquiry," Sally said, earning herself very shocked expressions from the Doctor and Jack. "This bloke came around, said he was part of some 'specials branch' of the police. He came and asked me all these questions about Bella and I had to make up all these things about her mum's relatives. He asked if I thought that Bella was in some kind of trouble and I said she was probably safer than she's ever been because she was with family who actually cared about her, but I really meant you Doctor. He was here nearly two hours before he left and he asked me one more thing, which made me feel a bit uneasy."

"What did he ask you?" the Doctor pressed quietly.

"He asked me how Bella managed to get overseas to Italy without a passport," she said nervously.

"How did you answer that one?" Jack asked moving uncomfortably in his chair, thinking the same as the Doctor was; that it sounded like this man had caught the bluff.

"I told him that it was impossible for anyone to do that and he just smiled and said 'exactly'." Sally said. "He told me not to worry though, that her name could have just become lost in the system. He says it happens all the time."

"What's this guy's name?" Jack asked. "He sounds like a right –"

"Ingram, I think." Sally said, frowning as she tried to remember.

"Ingram?" both the Doctor and Jack repeated at the same time, recognising the name from a UNIT report that they had read back at Torchwood concerning the events of the Dalek invasion. Was this the same man? If so, why would UNIT have been involved in a simple missing person's case?

"Yeah, but I don't know his first name though," Sally said frowning still. "Why do you ask what happened once you left?"

"Has Bella been back to her own home yet?" the Doctor asked.

"No," Dylan answered him. "She simply refuses to go."

"The Trickster must have given her mind instructions when he wiped her memory." The Doctor said to himself.

"Perhaps that's a good thing, considering the state that her place is in." Jack suggested.

"What do you mean, what's wrong with it?" Dylan asked quickly.

"Bella's whole house has been searched from top to bottom," the Doctor told them, Sally gasping in surprise. "Someone has been searching for –"

The Doctor broke off as there came a small knock at the door and Bella's head appeared shortly afterwards.

"I just made up the two sofas in the living room for you two," she said smiling, looking at the Doctor and Jack.

"Thanks," Jack grinned. "Is that a subtle hint for us to go to bed?"

"No," Bella said warmly. "But you may want to think about it, considering it is half-eleven."

"Half past eleven already?" Dylan gasped, standing up.

"I don't know why you're so surprised," Bella said, looking amused. "I mean, we didn't get home until ten o'clock."

"Oh man! I've got to get up at dawn to help dad with the sheep!" he complained. "I'll see you all tomorrow night sometime." He added, rushing out the door and into the hallway.

"Goodnight!" Bella yelled after him as the front door opened then slammed shut. She added "goodnight everyone," to Sally, the Doctor and Jack and disappeared again.

"C'mon," Sally said, she too getting to her feet. "I'll show you where you can sleep."

They both followed her into the living room, where sheets, blankets and pillows had been placed on the two sofas beside a roaring fire. Sally bade them goodnight and shut the door behind her as she left the room.

The Doctor sunk wearily onto one of the sofas, his head hitting the pillows and his eyes automatically closing in exhaustion. At least he had found her, he thought to himself as sleep quickly began to overcome him. He now had all the time in the world to figure out what to do next…