Author's Note: Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates it! To those who don't... Happy chocolate day! Here's another chapter. Just my little gift to you guys. Hope you like it!

Chapter Eight- Answers

Everything was blurring together and Leah was starting to lose track of exactly what happened and when it happened. The man, the plane, the planet and the Doctor... and somehow she had gotten swept up into the middle of all of it. She had begun to retreat into herself, letting everything just pass as it wished around her. Leah'd had enough adventure for one lifetime and she was just going to let whatever needed to happen run its course and do her best to stay out of its way.

The Doctor worked quickly, ushering them into a strange sort of place she was sure hadn't been there before. The room was large with looming, organic pillars stretching around and overhead. In the centre of the room stood a sort of console with many strange looking buttons and levers and controls, which the Doctor began to flip and press with a calculated sort of chaos. On the other side of the console stood a chair, and near the door was a ladder that led to a balcony made of metal grating. Harry took a seat on the chair, looking dazed and examining something she couldn't quite make out. Leah decided the best place for her was out of the way, so she climbed the ladder and sat cross-legged on the raised grating.

An angry buzzing in her pocket caught Leah's attention. She patted around a moment but before too long pulled out her phone, wondering how she hadn't noticed it before. The battery was very near death and there was no reception in here, but she did have about a million and twelve messages from Jack. In all of the excitement she had forgotten about him and she suddenly felt very guilty and a little bit homesick.

Leah wondered what Jack had to say. She would have to find out some other time because before she had the chance to listen to any of the messages, her phone died. As the backlight flickered off and the screen faded, she caught her reflection in the now blackened glass of her mobile, and she cringed at what she saw.

Holy shit she was dishevelled. Black smudges that used to be neat lines of makeup rimmed her eyes, giving her the look of a particularly restless raccoon. Her hair was tangled and matted and there were dark, heavy bags beneath her eyes. Seeing herself in this state only served to remind Leah that she hadn't been able to get a whole lot of sleep since the plane ride. She had managed to nap a little bit back in the mansion, but it wasn't nearly enough to offset the jet lag that was only now starting to kick in. Maybe now she could catch a couple of hours. She leaned back against the wall. She closed her eyes...

She sat bolt upright. The walls were humming. Leah hadn't noticed it before, but the entire room was emanating a gentle hum. The slight vibrations from the wall had caught her by surprise, but when she leaned back against it she felt calm. It was a comforting hum, and she couldn't help but feel grateful for its presence. It relaxed her, and perhaps it would help her sleep.

The Doctor was back in the room. She hadn't even noticed he had left, but he was back now and talking to Harry. Leah didn't care. She just tuned them out. Eventually she would need to be taken home, but she decided that she could deal with that when she woke up.

Her mind was getting sluggish. Her eyelids were becoming heavier and heavier, and they refused to reopen now. She was drifting off, the thick feeling of sleep eclipsing all other thoughts. Her consciousness faded, and just when she was about to get there... The humming against her back became agitated somehow. She wasn't sure how she could tell the difference, but the walls seemed unhappy, which was perhaps one of the strangest thoughts that had ever crossed her mind.

Harry and the Doctor were now face to face, speaking to each other in a language she didn't understand and couldn't place. Harry was no longer the Harry she had known, and was instead the Harry who had so frightened her back at the mansion.

It was now clear that she would not be getting any sleep, so Leah crept forward ever so slightly and watched the two men with wide-eyed fascination. She couldn't understand a word they were saying, but the language captivated her. It had a lyrical quality to it, song-like and lilting as they spoke, and she could have listened to it all day. Even when they lapsed into harsher tones, the language compensated with its melodious flow.

Now she really didn't know what to do. Leah didn't want to interrupt them; even though she didn't know what they were saying, the conversation seemed like an important one. She got the idea that she shouldn't stop them quite yet. Still, she would need to get home and that seemed like something the Doctor could do for her.

Leah wished Jack was there. He would know what to do. He always knew what to do. Instead she just sat in place awkwardly, waiting for their conversation to stop so she could get out of their way. She didn't want to be a bother. Still, the tickle in her throat produced the tiniest of coughs, and try as she might to be discreet it still seemed to catch the attention of the Doctor.

"Oh, don't mind me. I'm quite content to just sit here while the two of you work out whatever you've got going over there. I'm not in any rush to get home or anything." When the Doctor didn't say anything, she continued. "No, really, pay me no mind. Your thing seems more important anyway..."

I would like to take a brief moment to discuss matters of Temporal Grammatical Correctness. This may seem like a trivial matter and an odd time to discuss it, but it occurred to me that some of you may have noticed that sometimes the word "Time" is capitalized and others it is not. If you didn't before, you will now. Sorry.

Time is a strange thing, and different beings experience it in different ways. To humans – who make up most of my readership – Time is always linear. It is always cause to effect, and always intangible. You're always moving forward and there's not a whole lot you can do about it. Boring, in other words. To humans Time is always time, the uncapitalized version of the word.

To higher beings, such as the Time Lords or myself, Time is a little bit more complicated. Time can be something almost tangible, something we can sense, like taste or touch or smell. We can sense subtle differences in Time, and we can understand whether it is grand scale Time or simply personal time. This is a very important distinction to make because it can determine how wrong things are going because of the flux.

There is one Timestream. It can be linear, but usually it is not – even if some of you do experience it that way. The Timestream encompasses all of causality, anything and everything that ha happened, is happening, or ever will happen. The Timestream has infinite possibilities, and the ones that come true comprise this reality. Sometimes these possibilities branch off and can be altered by time travelling beings like the Doctor. Usually changes to the Timestream are contained within this universe and simply create small differences, but large changes can create alternate universes.

Then come timelines. The ultimate Timeline is everything that happens in this universe. While the Timestream is all of the possibilities, the Timeline is what actually happens in the most linear route. Even though they mean different things, the terms Timestream and Timeline are used interchangeably. This is mostly because the word "timeline" is most commonly used to refer to personal timelines.

Personal timelines are the linear paths that living beings live. We all move forward and everything happens to us in a certain order. Though we may travel about through Time and space experiencing events out of order, our own lives move linearly. What happens when we meet ourselves at different points in our own timeline is a little bit more complicated, and understanding how to refer to those events is covered in advanced Temporal Grammar courses.

What's that? You don't see how this is important to the story? Well, I didn't ask you. I believe I'm the Narrator, and I feel that this information is important for you to know, whether it has bearing on the events or not. The more you know and all that. It will have importance later in the story, I suppose, and it can help you understand on what level events are affecting Time. I wasn't going to give you homework, but for questioning my infinite wisdom you now have to explain the effects on each of our three heroes and one villain. Don't like that, do you? Well, don't question me next time.

See if I ever try and teach you again, you ungrateful... Nobody ever cares what the Narrator's got to say. I should narrate and nothing more.

Now, on with our story.

"Right, yes, Leah was it?" She nodded. "Sorry, forgot about you. I do that sometimes. As I said earlier, I can be a bit rude when I'm distracted. We really should get you home. You're right, we do have some important things to get to and it's probably best if you're not there for them. But I suppose you've got loads of questions and at the very least I can answer some of them before we part ways. So what did you want to start with? Bigger on the inside?"

The Doctor watched as the girl climbed down the ladder and walked over to where he and the Master stood. The Master had adopted a sarcastic smirk and leaned against one of the pillars. He didn't say a word but he didn't have to; the Doctor had a pretty good idea what he was thinking about.

"Is it?" mused the girl without a hint of sarcasm in her voice. "I hadn't noticed... What with everything else that was going on it must have slipped my mind. But wow, bigger on the inside!" Genuine incredulity filled her eyes as it dawned on her that it was, in fact, larger on the inside than it appeared on the outside. There was the reaction the Doctor had been hoping for. It wasn't the right time for it, but he couldn't help but feel a small rush of pride.

A few feet to the Doctor's right, the Master rolled his eyes.

"No, what I was actually wondering," continued Leah, who had now gotten over the whole bigger on the inside thing, "is what language that was you were speaking?"

The Doctor had forgotten that the TARDIS didn't like to translate Old High Gallifreyan and he hadn't even noticed that he was speaking it. He spoke a lot of languages, but the ones he used most were English and his native tongue. It was easy to slip between the two without noticing.

"That was... the language of my people," answered the Doctor.

"Your people? As in... what, like, foreign?" tried Leah. "We don't get a lot of foreigners in Lakewood, city people speak all kinds of languages. I've never heard that one before."

The Doctor wasn't quite ready to explain everything about Gallifrey to this girl. He would be taking her home right away anyway so she didn't need to know everything. "It's an old language. A dead language, and not one spoken by anyone on Earth."

"So then you're an alien?"

"Yep." The Doctor turned to the Master. "You didn't explain any of this to her?"

The Master shrugged. "It never came up. Besides, as a human I was lucky I could even make it to London."

"Another question," Leah cut in. "Who is he, exactly?" She jabbed her thumb towards the Master.

"He's an alien like me. When you met him on Earth he was human, turned that way by some of our people's technology, but he's changed back now. The other one you saw – the one who had taken over the world – he was the alien version, but at an earlier point in his timeline," explained the Doctor.

"Oh Doctor, how you flatter me," said the Master sarcastically. He looked Leah in the eyes and grinned as he saw her shudder ever so slightly at the sudden eye contact. "I am the Master."

Leah scowled. "Nobody good was ever called the Master."

"Well of course not!" he scoffed. "If I was simply a good man I would have called myself something mediocre like the Doctor. No, I am a great man, and more than that I am a great Time Lord."

"Oh, it's an ego stroke."

The smirk on the Master's face disappeared and his expression grew instantly dark. There was no transition, just a flash between emotions. "Watch it girly," he growled. He was standing up straight now, no longer leaning on the pillar, and his hands were balled into fists at his sides. Leah's eyes widened but she did not flinch.

The Doctor intervened before things heated up. "Nevermind Master. You were the one who scooped her up, so play nice."

The Master gave Leah one last venemous glare before leaning against the pillar once more. His arms were folded across his chest and he was giving the Doctor a hard glare which was being ignored.

"Is he always like this?" Leah asked.

The Doctor sighed. "This is him being co-operative, and he's only doing that because he's got bigger fish to fry. Usually he's making some attempt to take over the universe and make my life as miserable as possible. Though that latter part isn't that difficult, he does that just by being himself. It's a gift, really, to be able to get under my skin so easily."

"Oh, yes, I'm the annoying one," the Master snapped. "I'm not the one who makes it my business to help every person I meet." He glared at them both a moment before looking down at his hands. "You're both lucky that the Chameleon Arch fixed me up. If I still had that energy coursing through my body I could have stopped Rassilon, killed you both, and had the universe under my control in time for tea."

"You're a right ray of sunshine, aren't you?" muttered Leah.

"OK, so, home," said the Doctor quickly. "We should get you there. Now would be a good time to do that. Where is home exactly?"

"Ooh, home. Lovely," sighed Leah. "Lakewood Hollow, Alberta."

Ah, that accent was Canadian. The Doctor knew he recognized it, though he didn't often encounter Canadians. Actually, he didn't often encounter people outside of England. Unless, of course, he was travelling somewhere in the past like ancient Rome or some such place, but even so everyone sounded so English. He supposed the country was a personal favourite of his, and British English was a personal favourite of the TARDIS', considering that's how she always translated it.

The Doctor nodded at Leah. Now that he knew the co-ordinates, it was time to head out. He dashed about the control panel again, making the moves that would be counter-intuitive to anyone else look completely natural. Clearly he was a man who knew what he was doing, or was at least really good at faking it. The TARDIS dematerialized smoothly, but when they were inside the vortex she started shaking. The ride was very rarely a smooth one, but these kinds of tremors never happened unless something was going very wrong.

"No!" cried the Doctor. "No no no no no, this can't be happening!"

"What did you do this time," the Master drawled. Leah had toppled over and the Doctor was dancing around madly to try and hold his footing, but the Master easily stayed steady. "Break something again?"

"Shut up!" the Doctor screeched. "I'm trying to... Come on girl, what's gotten into you?" He bashed a couple of controls with the mallet he kept handy. "Let's go, Canada, it can't be that hard... Oh she really doesn't want to co-operate! Oh no..." The Doctor's stomach sunk. "She's running. Something's trying to take control of the TARDIS and she's trying to escape. That can only mean one thing."

The Master looked at the Doctor, all trace of sarcasm gone from his face. He was now looking very serious and more than a little bit worried. "You don't mean..."

"I'm afraid so." The Doctor turned to the girl. "It looks like you're going to have to wait a little while longer before you get home."