John quickly scanned the scene inside the Village Hall: the dance's former celebrants were huddled in tight, obedient little clumps around the room. Jeremy Baines, a man he knew was called Clark and Rose's maid friend were assembled at the front, each holding an identical baffling-looking object—they looked like green, legless lobsters, folded to a perfect right angle. A little girl with a red balloon stood incongruously near them, as well as several men dressed like the most ragtag scarecrows he'd ever seen.

Somehow Baines and Co. had frightened everyone in the place into giving them control, but for what? John quickly decided that just because he wasn't a professor anymore didn't mean he couldn't pull rank on Baines like one. "Baines, what is going on? What do you mean by barging into a peaceful gathering and scaring a group of innocent people?"

Baines' looked supremely pleased at the position of power he clearly held. "From everything I and Family of Mine have observed," he purred, ignoring John's questions, "it seems you're the Doctor."

He heard Rose inhale sharply next to him. He spared her a glance, but needed to concentrate on Baines. "What?" he blinked. "What do you mean? I'm not a doctor. Do you need a doctor, is that what this is about?"

Baines paced forward toward John. "No, you're definitely the man we need, only somehow you've gone quite uselessly human on us, and we'd very much like if you'd stop doing that with all speed." His grin and the tilt of his head seemed utterly wrong.

John began to get angry. This whole thing was merely Baines and a strange assortment of friends being perverse and it needed to stop now. "Enough. You are the only one amused by this joke of yours and you have wildly overstepped the boundaries of propriety. I'm taking you with me to find the Headmaster to sort you out."

"Oh, I believe the Headmaster is going to have very little to say on the matter," Baines smirked, glancing coyly over his shoulder to an empty spot in the room. John couldn't see anything there besides some dust on the floor. A frisson of talk and dread ran through the rooms' other guests, confusing John further. He also couldn't understand why his orders were having so little effect, particularly given Baines' reactions in the past: he'd reduced the boy to a quivering wreck on occasion.

"Fine, if that's the way you want it, I'll take you to school myself." John reached for Baines' arm.

Baines jumped back as though it was a game. "No sir! I'm afraid not, sir! It is us who will be taking you, sir!" he intoned with glee.

The guests were becoming restless. "SILEEEENCE!" boomed Clark suddenly, sending them into a spasm of hushed panic.

"You don't have to scare everyone," Rose said suddenly, defiantly from John's side. "If you don't want to talk to any of them why not just let them go?"

Baines' eerie gaze trained on Rose; John immediately looked down to check on her. He realised she looked not in the least confused nor surprised, merely tense and on guard, ready to fight. He didn't understand why but it made him love her even more and so, so glad he'd met her, and none of it made sense and he remembered his heart was being broken and bewildered just a few moments before.

Baines, for his part, looked as though Rose had presented him with the perfect gift. "Oh, but if I let them go, I couldn't do this." He turned and held his object as if it were a gun, aimed at random and then actually fired what looked like a line of green light from it. It streaked across the room and made contact with a woman who screeched and exploded into a shower of glowing green particles. The crowd erupted in fresh terror, Rose screamed and looked utterly stricken and Baines wheeled on her with an obscene glee. "Please, PLEASE make another suggestion! Your last was EVER so helpful!"

John stared in horror, having absolutely no idea what to make of what had just happened: a woman had existed one moment and turned into green vapour the next. He felt powerless and stupid and shamed as Baines turned back to him. "Now then, Doctor, isn't it worth it to you to change back to save all these simple cattle?"

He tried to conceal his shaking. "Change back into what?"

Baines' smile became something of a grimace; he turned to the rest of his group with a feigned look of long-suffering. "Oh, the limitations of a human brain, how it tests the patience," he said. "Mr. Smith, we'd like you to stop being human, and we'd like you to do it RIGHT NOW!" He screamed the last, startling the guests again.

"How can I stop being human?" John yelled. "What else would you have me be?"

"A Time Lord, of course!" said the little girl. "It's the only way Brother of Mine is going to live forever." John looked to her and recognized just a second too late that Rose's maid friend was no longer next to her. Rose screamed beside him and John whipped around to see the maid friend had an arm around Rose's neck and that strange gun pointed at her face. John suddenly knew a sharper, keener fear than any he had ever experienced.

"I've only just realised," crowed the maid friend, steering a struggling Rose toward her assembled group. "This must be the one the teacher was looking for this morning." She looked at him with an eerie smile to match Baines'. "She's his illicit lover."

"Ah, perhaps that's the way in," mused Baines. "Shoot the girl. Perhaps if his human heart breaks, the Time Lord will emerge."

"Hurt her and I WILL KILL YOU!" John roared, the threat real enough to touch.

"Change form and I WON'T HAVE TO!" Baines roared back, relishing every syllable.

John's brain spun with possibilities: tackle the maid. Grab one of the guns. Find a distraction. Taunt Baines till he's angry enough to make a mistake. None were foolproof enough to guarantee Rose's safety. John's hands clenched hard at his sides and he washed over with hatred. He flashed back to the "toughening" days of his youth, and fixed the assembled group of antagonists with a glare that would have cowed anyone else in the universe with enough sense to pay attention. "I don't think you appreciate," he intoned quietly, "how very well-versed I am in making people sorry."

"Is that so?" Baines crowed. "Well, you've certainly made the people here sorry, haven't you? Landing in this time and place, fleeing from a threat you must have known you could never outrun, your very presence proving fatal?" His sing-songy cadence turned malicious and measured. "Does it seem terribly familiar, Doctor?"

John didn't know why Baines' words felt like they were crushing his chest. He only knew one thing, and that was that he couldn't look at Rose, for Rose, who'd had her arms curled upward against her front ever since she'd been grabbed, was reaching slowly and as unobtrusively as possible into the bodice of her dress, and he knew he couldn't draw attention to it. He somehow knew she had an idea. He somehow wasn't mad with fear that she would do something to get herself shot. Somehow this all seemed surreally familiar. If there'd been time to do, he might have wept with confusion.

"A foray into human lust, Doctor? I'd not have expected that of you." Baines was still grandstanding. "Was that a fringe benefit of the experiment, finding a way to forget your sordid past in the arms of a lesser being? Or was it self-debasement, Doctor? Frantic, messy couplings with a creature barely out of the mud to let you know you gone as low as you could—"

Suddenly Rose brought forth a mystifying object of her own: it was a short gray tube with a blue light at the end and which a strange whirring noise. She aimed it at the maid's weapon which suddenly glowed red and produced sparks; the maid shrieked and dropped it, shaking her hand against what was most likely the pain of a burn.

The next happened so quickly for John that time reverted to slow motion.

The maid dropped her arm from around Rose's neck and Rose charged forward, free. Baines glared at her viciously and raised his weapon. John's feet moved without any conscious thought and he threw himself at Rose to tackle her out of the way. He did, and when Baines fired he felt something lightning hot graze his upper arm. He expected to die but instead landed hard on the floor half on top of Rose, listening to her grunt of impact and feeling himself start to sweat and shake before the pain hit and he let out a cry that sounded faraway to his own ears.

He rolled onto his back with a strangled whimper and watched hazily as Rose sprang into a crouch and shot her arm out to aim the small gray tube at Baines. Baines' weapon was aimed at her. It was a standoff.

"Back away and leave," Rose ordered.

"HA!" yelped Baines. "Sparring with the ape creature, what SPORT!"

"RIGHT NOW!" demanded Rose.

"How do I know that pathetic thing can even harm me?"

"It can do anything I want it to do to you, mate." Rose's lip curled and she sneered with impressive malice. "And right now I'm feeling very creative."

John watched as a blurry maid leaned toward am equally blurry Baines, cradling her burned hand. "It's true, Son of Mine, that thing is a weapon. We can't risk your fragile human body when we're so close to our goal."

Baines considered a moment. "Fine," he said calmly. "We'll regroup."

Rose kept the object trained on them. "Everyone, out of the hall!" she ordered. The villagers didn't need to be told twice, scattering in panic toward the exits with a maximum of commotion.

Rose stayed calm and focused during the noise, turning slowly toward John. "Let me see your shoulder," she requested softly, coaxing him to roll over onto the opposite arm. John couldn't see what she did but the sight of it made her hiss quietly. "It's a nasty, um, burn," she whispered, "but you'll be okay with some help." She sniffed loudly and he looked at her foggily; her face showed she was fighting off tears. "I'm so glad you're not dead," she whispered fervently.

A shuffle of movement from the group and Rose's gaze and arm shot back to them. "No one moves until we're gone. Follow any of us and I'll shoot you on sight."

"We will meet again," intoned Baines villainously. The sight of the motley family and their scarecrow bodyguards swam and tilted in front of John's view as Rose helped him to his feet and together they staggered out the door.

John's legs would barely support him as Rose tried to push him down the path to the school as fast as he could manage. The searing, screaming pain had become all that existed. His brain and body wanted to escape it and kept insisting on tugging him under.

"Please don't faint," Rose pleaded. "We have to get back to the school to get help and there's no way I can carry you."

John nodded drunkenly, concentrating on the fall of his feet, one after the other.

They lurched along in silence for several beats, until Rose finally spoke. "I want you to know something," she said. "I never meant for you to think I didn't want to marry you—I do. I'd love to. I'd marry you every day for the rest of my life if you wanted."

John's fog cleared remarkably as he looked down at her. "Then why didn't you say that?" His tone came out equal parts defensive and beseeching.

"Because...because I couldn't agree to the travelling, because there are a lot of considerations you don't know about, and—"

"And why didn't you tell me that and...whatever considerations you felt there were so that...we could work it out together?" John was beginning to pant a bit now; talking was taking it out of him.

"Because...I wasn't allowed to."

"Not allowed? By whom?"

"Frankly, by you!"

John fought to wrap his head around where the conversation was going. "Rose...you're not making...any more sense than—" All of a sudden John remembered something he'd thought was important.

"You may have been scared back there...but you weren't confused...by what Baines and his 'family' were doing," he stated quietly.

He felt Rose tense against him, watched her bite her lip. "No," she said finally.

"You knew what it was about."

"Yes."

"You had a strange weapon like they did." She nodded. "And the reason you didn't say yes to me...one has to do with the other?" She nodded again. John felt even dizzier. He closed his eyes and dropped his head back. "I need to know what's going on," he stated, listening to his heart pound and dreading the fulfilment of his request even as he made it.

"I'm going to explain everything," she puffed. "Now this has happened, I not only can but...I have to." She stopped and shifted his arm across her shoulders, redistributing his weight; John could see sweat on her forehead in the moonlight, and even through the fog and the confusion he hoped her dress would survive all the exertion—he really was delirious.

"But I'll do it after we get to school," she finished, resuming their pace. "You need the nurse and I need...well, I need to fetch something."

When John Smith stumbled into the infirmary, his tall form supported by a much-tinier Rose Tyler, Joan had a myriad of new information to digest at once.

John's state (pale, clammy and weaving), Rose's dress (chic, up-to-the-minute, outrageously expensive and impractical. It also made her a vision, even though she'd had to sweat in it and soil the hem with dirt from the road), John's accompanying dark suit (they must have gone to the dance), John's suit jacket carried by Rose and her wrap tied around his arm. Joan thought perhaps it had been used to stem blood flow but there were no stains to be seen on his pristine white shirt sleeve (she had absolutely no idea what to make of that).

"What on earth...?" she exclaimed, moving quickly to help Rose guide John to a bed.

Rose helped him lie down, focusing on John exclusively as though she didn't want to have to look at Joan until absolutely necessary. John, for his part, didn't seem to have enough energy left to acknowledge anything; he let out a moan of relief the moment his back made contact with the mattress and seemed to lose consciousness immediately. Joan began carefully unwrapping the shawl from his arm.

Rose sat on the bed next to John and finally turned to Joan, her face as businesslike as she could make it. "There was an...incident at the dance," she said, her voice unsteady nevertheless.

"You mean a fight?"

"More like a...standoff." Joan's look still asked questions. and Rose tried to elaborate. "Jeremy Baines and a..." She seemed to falter for a description. "...strange collection of others barged in and started making demands that didn't make sense. They were all focused on John for some reason, and they each had some sort of weapon I'd never seen before, something like a pistol, and Baines fired a shot that grazed John's arm."

Joan looked sidelong at Rose then nodded without speaking as she pulled the last layer of shawl away and her hand flew to her mouth. This was not the scrape of a stray bullet: John's flesh was not burned, it was melted. Where it still existed, that was. In other places it seemed to have evaporated entirely, leaving a gaping crater that went down to a level of mangled muscle and cauterised flesh. That must have been why there was no blood—the cauterization had stopped it.

"What would do this?" whispered Joan in horror.

"I don't know," said Rose. "Like I said, it was a weapon I'd never seen before." Joan got the vague feeling Rose was choosing words carefully so as not to lie.

John squirmed and moaned softly and absently, only semi-aware. Joan took charge: "Cover him up with that blanket, and use some pillows to raise his feet about 12 inches—he's most likely going into shock. I'll get him something for the pain." She strode to a medicine cabinet and prepared a morphine shot, loading the strongest dose she dared give. Rose's eyes never left John's face as the shot was administered, and only when his body finally relaxed back against the sheets did Rose seem to let go of some of her tension as well. She still seemed very much in combat mode, however, ready to guard and defend.

Joan stared helplessly at John's wound. "I've no idea where to start with this. I've never seen anything like it." Her mind sprinted through possibilities. "I suppose I'd best treat it as a burn, after we clean it." She looked at Rose, and came to a decision. "Rose, come with me, I could use your help."

Rose looked at her as though she'd asked her to swim the Atlantic or something equally impossible. "I have to stay with him," she insisted.

"You can safely leave him for a moment, it won't take long." Joan's tone left little room for argument. Rose stood and followed her into an adjacent room where supplies were kept.

Joan closed the door to the little supply room; off Rose's puzzled look she explained "You can never tell what a patient in John's state can hear, and I wanted to talk to you privately." Rose stared with barely-disguised impatience as Joan prepared her words.

"This may not seem at all the time to talk about it, but I wanted you to know that I was not the one who informed the Headmaster of your and John's relationship."

Rose's eyes widened momentarily, but quickly hardened again in impatience. "You're right, it's not the time at all."

"I promise you, it's leading to a point." Joan wrung her hands. "In case you were curious, as I understand it was the Headmaster himself who discovered it. He's a supremely early riser and I believe he saw you as you were—" The words wouldn't come easily. "—leaving his...quarters."

Rose seemed to have become engrossed in that bit of information despite herself; she nodded quietly. "I did assume it was you," she said. "But you're John's friend. I'm sorry I doubted you."

"Oh, don't be. Your instincts were quite on target." Joan's smile was tight and painful. "I'm wildly jealous," she said, her voice a near-whisper.

Rose simply nodded, exuding a very genuine understanding. She accepted Joan's moment of honesty with a grace that let Joan regain herself. "I've not known John long, but I do consider him a friend, and frankly when he was with you I'd never seen—well, I was going to say I'd never seen him happier but the truth is I'd never seen him happy," Joan said simply. "He had always seemed to be suffering under this invisible weight, dwelling in some self-imposed land of self-denial. I was always happy when I could lighten the load but you..." her words drifted off as she looked at the small, golden thing in front of her. "You relieved him of it entirely." She paused again. "He loves you, truly," she concluded, "and that's nothing to be interfered with."

She watched as Rose inexplicably fought tears.

"But I know even more about your relationship than that, because..." Joan shook with nerves as she reached into her apron pocket and presented John's fob watch. "Because this watch talks to me."

Rose's eyes became huge, her former angst forgotten in an instant. "When did you…?"

"That day we were all in John's study, discussing his journal. You touched it as you were dusting, and suddenly...suddenly it sang out across the room to me, with this music that, unbelievably, never reached my ears." Joan's feelings of awe and fear were suddenly replaying throughout her body. "It told me to take it and keep it safe. At first I was certain I'd gone mad but as I stood there, pretending to talk to John after you'd left and absolutely quaking, in a few moments...it had comforted me." Joan felt vaguely felt the same disbelief she had when it happened. "When John turned his back I took it from the shelf and kept it with me. It's been talking to me ever since." Her gaze became weighty. "I know everything, Rose. All about you and the Doctor."

Rose stared at Joan as if she were the alien. "Do…do you know about the Family?"

"Yes. And why you found it necessary to hide from them. Can I assume they've found him, and that it was their...otherworldly weaponry that produced his injury?" Rose nodded, lips pressed tight.

Joan sighed, digesting the fact that an hour of need they'd hoped would never come had indeed done. "I told you all this so you'd know you can be candid with me, share anything you need to help us protect John. Well—" she interrupted herself, "the Doctor." She looked at Rose uncertainly. "I really would like to help, however I can."

Rose's expression turned sheepish and guilt-stricken, but thankful. "We have to get him to open that now," she sighed, gesturing to Joan's hand.

Joan nodded. "I know."

"I have no idea what he'll think when we drop all this on him, or if he'll agree to change back." Rose's lip began to quiver, her voice dropping to a teary whisper. "And I have no idea what will happen to us if he does."

Joan opened the door, put a hand on Rose's shoulder and guided her gently back toward the infirmary. "We'll do it together."