Author's Note: Hurray! Answers!

By the way, "a good deal later" means a few days or so. It's really quite a long while later. I wasn't sure how to express this, because of the timelessness of the Celestial Toymaker's realm.

Enjoy!

Torchwood, 2008.

"Searched through the whole Torchwood archive," said Owen, racing up to Jack, a little out of breath. "Nothing on any 'Celestial Toymaker'. Whatever or whoever it is, we don't know about it."

Jack gritted his teeth.

A month of thinking Alison had died in the 1970's, and a month of Buffy furious at all of them because of it — and now, just when they discovered Alison was still alive, that she'd been snatched away and kidnapped with Seo… they had no information. Nothing that could help.

So close…

"Tosh traced that call to somewhere extra-dimensional, right?" said Gwen. "We're right next to a rift. Maybe there's some way to use that to get to wherever they are."

Jack raced over to the computer area. "Is there?"

Tosh shook her head. "I've worked out a model to use the equipment at our disposal to create a wormhole there," she said, "but I can't make the breach into that dimension big enough for a person. Moment the wormhole gets beyond a certain size, its mass makes it collapse in on itself."

"So we can't get in to rescue them," said Owen, "or create a way to get them out. Bloody fantastic, Tosh."

"We can still send something else through, though," Gwen suggested. "Something small, that we have here, in the Hub. Something that can help them escape!"

"Like what?" said Jack.

Gwen hadn't actually thought that far ahead.

"If they're in a prison dimension," Tosh proposed, "we could send through a wave signal that would cancel out the walls of their prison. Make the whole thing unstable."

Jack shook his head. "Collapse the dimension with them still inside it, and they'll die."

"Can we send an object?" asked Ianto, emerging from Jack's office. He raised up a small package, wrapped in brown paper, with writing on the outside. "Like this?"

Jack turned. Staring at the package, as a whole string of events suddenly made sense, in his mind.

"What's that?" said Gwen.

"I don't know," Ianto admitted, walking over to them. "But it says that when I find it in Jack's office, we should send it." He placed it down beside Tosh.

Tosh picked it up. Weighing it in her hands.

"Yes," she decided. "We can send it. Only just. But the moment we do, the mass of the wormhole will grow too great, and we'll be cut off from that dimension forever."

Jack absorbed this.

Then nodded.

"Do it."

The Realm of the Celestial Toymaker, a good deal later.

The entire graveyard had gone quiet. Nothing and no one moving. Not even a fake owl hooting or a stray dog barking.

"It's happening again, isn't it?" asked Alison. "Same way it has the last three times."

Seo nodded. "Exactly the same way. First the dolls all harp on me. Suddenly seem to know who I really am and all my deepest fears. And then…"

"The Toymaker seems to just forget about us," said Alison. She shook her head, dropping the stake to the ground. "You still think that's all taken from your subconscious, Seo? Something about it… just feels… off."

But Seo wasn't listening to her, anymore. She had raced forwards, to the edge of the cemetery, hands outstretched as if feeling for something. "You notice that there are certain places in this pretend Sunnydale no one ever goes?" she called back. "Not even the monsters!"

Alison rushed after her friend. "What?"

"Over here," said Seo, stepping forwards, a little more tentatively, feeling around. "No one ever goes round here. We're always herded away… least, when the Toymaker is watching us. Almost… like…"

Seo yelped, snatching her hand away and jumping back, shaking it out with pain on her face.

"Found something?" asked Alison.

"Unstable dimensional interface," Seo agreed. She winced. "Stings like mad, just touching the surface."

"And would probably kill us, if we stepped through it?" Alison guessed.

"Almost certainly," Seo agreed. She stepped back, looking at the invisible barrier before her. "There are two different stable dimensional interfaces, see. One a subset of the other. A bit like… well, a bit like how I made my ship."

"Dimensional transcendentalism," Alison provided.

She'd been around the Doctor long enough to hear all sorts of explanations about how that worked. Not that she'd understood any of it. Or how her iPhone was, apparently, essential to making the dimensions continue to keep doing it.

"Yep! Bit like that," said Seo. "Only a little different. Any rate. This is where the two fields meet — except there's no stabilizer field to create congruity between them, which traps us here."

Which was when, just behind them, the air suddenly ripped open for a brief second, just long enough for a small package wrapped in brown paper to shoot through and smack Alison on the back of the head.

She spun around. Rubbed her head, as she picked up the package. "Ow! What…?"

Then Alison stared. As she read what was written.

For Jack, Torchwood:

Do not open. When Ianto discovers this in your office, you'll know it's time to send it.

— The Doctor.

Alison's heart raced, as she tore open the paper. Almost positive she knew what was inside. And… yes! She was right! The one thing the Doctor could send them that would get them out of a jam like this — with Seo standing right by, to do the technical bits.

"It's an iPhone!" said Alison, showing Seo the unopened box. "Seo, the Doctor sent us another iPhone! To replace the one he stole and dismantled from me! He sent us exactly what we needed!"

Seo seemed lost. "He did?"

Alison opened the packaging around the iPhone. "Well, yes! You said this was just like dimensional transcendentalism. Like what your ship and the TARDIS do." She waggled the new iPhone at her friend. "And in the seventies, I pulled out that dimensional stabilizer interface bit you were talking about, from the Doctor's TARDIS. To repair it, he dissected and reconfigured my iPhone."

Seo didn't take the iPhone. Had bent down to analyze the brown paper that Alison had just thrown on the ground. Staring at it in confusion.

"Don't you see?" said Alison. "You were right! The Doctor was trying to find me, after I disappeared! He must have traced me here and, unable to use his TARDIS, sent this little device to us, instead."

"It's not from the Doctor," said Seo, her voice a little startled. "This isn't his handwriting."

Alison blinked. "How do you know?"

"Because it's mine," said Seo. "This package is from me." She spun on Alison, grabbing up the iPhone from her. Yanking the casing off of it, analyzing the insides.

"But… but… why would you send something to yourself, and pretend the Doctor did it?" asked Alison.

"To send myself a message," said Seo. She squinted at the interior wiring of the iPhone. "Ah, I see…" she muttered. "Just tweak this bit, here, and add in an alien gadget there, and wire it up a bit different…" She shook her head, digging into her pocket and grabbing something out of it. "iPhone as a dimensional stabilizer. It's actually a bit brilliant. I wish I'd thought it up myself."

"Seo!" shouted Alison.

Seo didn't acknowledge Alison, just began to adjust and readjust and tweak, Alison watching over her shoulder.

They were cut off by a growl. Looked to the side. And discovered that the monsters and vampires had re-emerged. Were now making their way towards the two friends, ready to grab and bite and kill.

Seo thrust the device into her pocket. "Respite's over," she said.

"Toymaker's back to paying attention," Alison muttered. She turned to Seo. "Run?"

"Over the river and through the woods!" Seo agreed, turning on her heels and darting towards the exit of the cemetery. "Retreat to Grandma's!"

Joyce Summers, as usual, was happy to see them. Welcomed them with a warm smile and a hug, even offered to make Alison a cup of tea.

But it didn't last.

As always, when they weren't in the middle of the action, Alison and Seo got jump-cutted into the next day, in the library, at Sunnydale High. Facing Giles, who had long since gone back to thinking he was real and that Seo was Buffy.

"…can't believe you just let them go!" shouted Giles. "Of all the irresponsible things to do… letting those vampires go, without even trying to stop them!"

Alison leaned across the table. "So how do we use…?"

Seo shot her friend a look that said, Shut up and play along. Then turned back to Giles, planting precisely the same innocent-seeming expression onto her face that she usually did when facing down her mum.

"I just got scared, was all," Seo apologized.

"It's not her fault!" Alison pitched in. "The vampires started yelling at her. Taunting her."

"And that's a reason to let a group of bloodsucking monsters loose on the streets of Sunnydale?" Giles snapped. His face red with anger. "Don't you have any sense of right and wrong, Buffy? Don't you realize what you've…?"

Seo stood up. "You're right," she said. "And tonight, Alison and I will go out to the cemetery and take an extra long patrol, just to make up for our failure last night."

Giles stiffened. Suddenly studying Seo, carefully, a little unnerved. "What are you doing?" he asked, in a low voice.

"Winning the game," said Seo, with a wink.

Then raced with Alison out of the library, running off into the next jump-cut, through the doors and straight into…

That night. The cemetery.

Seo already in the middle of beating up a vampire, seemingly without her actually having begun it, in the first place.

The vampire lunged for Seo, who ducked, letting him launch himself over her head, then grabbing him up by the ankles and tossing him into the second vampire, creeping up on her from behind.

Grabbed up Alison by the hand, yanking the iPhone out of her pocket as the two raced towards the dimensional barrier, full force. Seo slammed the iPhone along the outside of the dimensional wall, as it opened up in front of her, revealing a black shimmering void.

And a little doll, sitting on a little chair, staring in at them.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Seo said, running over to the doll and grabbing it up in her arms. "I should have worked it out sooner. Alison said it couldn't be my subconscious guilt he was playing off of."

Alison looked back over her shoulder, to discover a gigantic snow globe of Sunnydale. Then turned to Seo and the doll. A doll just a little bigger than Seo's arms, made of wood, of a youngish looking man with floppy brown hair, green eyes, and a bow tie.

Alison stepped forwards. Confused. "Who…?"

Seo looked up. "Don't you know?" She held the doll out to Alison. "This is my father. The Doctor."