The Chestertons.

Martha and Romana were just leaving a church that held some workers for the Master's labour force. Both girls were tired, even Romana, who was the strongest of the pair.

They were just about to look for the shelter - the church was too open, one of the Toclafane who rounded the slaves up would probably see them, even with the perception filter - Romana still needed to find an opportunity to adjust them, to make them less crude.

" Excuse me, miss Jones and miss Romana," A voice spoke from behind them. When the girls turned to face the speaker they saw a man and a woman. They looked like they were in their thirties, but Romana could see that there was something wrong, time didn't run through them like other people. They were not what they seemed.

The man was tall, well built, handsome with dark hair, his eyes showed an exceptional - for a human - intellect, the woman next to him reminded Romana of a schoolteacher of hers, she was kind looking, but there was a sort of severity that would kick in when needed. But right now she seemed, like the man, desperate to speak to them.

" Yes ?" Martha asked.

The man looked uneasy, " We'd like to speak to you, if you can spare the time that is."

The man and woman led them away, near the alter where they wouldn't be disturbed.

For a moment both parties looked at one another, studying each other. Then the man broke the silence.

" We believed your story, and we intend to help spread the word." The man smiled to put them at their ease.

The woman added with a wry smile, " We do, after all, have a common friend."

Martha gasped figuring out these people, which was easy. " You've both travelled with the Doctor ?"

The couple smiled, " That's right. My name is Ian Chesterton, and this is my wife -"

Romana gasped, she knew these people, well, she'd heard of them.

" Barbara."

They turned to face her in astonishment, " The Doctor's told you about us ?" Barbara asked.

Romana lowered her eyes, in truth the Doctor had only told her when she'd rooted through one of the old rooms of the TARDIS, finding a photo of the couple. The Doctor had only told her when she'd told him to. He was really easy, Romana thought with a smile.

" More or less. You made quite an impression," Romana said with a smile," breaking into the TARDIS, following Susan back from school, helping him become who he is now by stopping him kill that caveman. Stopping the Daleks on Skaro."

At the mention of the Daleks and Skaro, she grimaced remembering the hellish encounter she'd had on that planet with the slaves, the mine working for locating Davros, and the Movellans.

Martha interrupted her line of thought, like always. Why the human didn't learn polite conversation was beyond the Time lady's comprehension.

" Hold on, caveman. The Doctor was going to kill a caveman ?" Martha couldn't envision a time when the Doctor, a champion of justice in the universe, how corny that sounded, would want to kill a caveman.

Ian looked uncomfortable, " Well the caveman was wounded, I like to think the Doctor was thinking of us. And Susan." He added.

Romana lowered her eyes, uncomfortable of talking about a sensitive topic. Unfortunately, Martha Jones, whilst a great medical expert, wasn't very good at noticing such things.

" Who's Susan ? Romana ?" Martha asked her directly.

Romana sighed, " Susan was the Doctor's granddaughter. I don't know if she's survived."

" Survived ? Survived what ?" Barbara's face was stricken with worry for her old student and friend. Ian looked as frightened.

Romana closed her eyes, glaring at Martha briefly. " A lots happened since you left the Doctor. Me, the Doctor," she hesitated here, unwilling to except the Master as a Time lord, " and the Master," she said reluctantly, " are from the same race. We're called Time lords, we controlled the structure of the universe, we travelled in ships like the TARDIS, we protected the universe."

Romana looked at them pointedly, " But we weren't invincible. We were embroiled in a war with the Daleks, and we put up a good fight. But we were losing. Badly. As a result every Time lord and lady was brought in to help us fight, the renegades, of which the Doctor was once a proud member,"

" Renegade ?" Ian and Martha asked at the same time, desperate to learn something new about the Doctor and his people.

Romana sighed. This was going to be a long night.

" Contrary to what my people thought, and you might think, we weren't perfect. We'd been in power for 10 million years, never advancing, always standing still. Talk about stagnation. I used to think our people would outlive the cosmos, that we were safe. The travels I had with the Doctor, the time I spent stopping slavery, my own imprisonment in an alternate universe, the slavery and torture I endured by the Daleks and the Time war broke me of that.

" Time lord society was rigid, I guess you could liken it with the 1800s, with a class system, parents arranging marriages. That sort of atmosphere, it's stifling especially for Time lords with the same sort of mindset of the Doctor.

" Even amongst my people…." Romana shook her head, trying desperately to come up with an explanation for the man she loved more than life itself.

" The Doctor, and don't repeat any of this, had a very difficult life. He wasn't loved much by his family, he had average grades at the academy, he tried desperately to earn his family's respect. But nothing he did worked. His family looked down at him, the Time lords at the academy did the same, they looked down on him, said he wasn't a proper Time lord." Romana's tone grew angrier and angrier as she thought about it, and the parallels of her own life before she left her planet.

Romana, by contrast, had been perfect. She'd had perfect grades, studied ahead, and, as humans said, was the perfect teachers pet.

But her family wanted her to do things that now felt like she was being locked in a prison. Being something she wasn't didn't sit well with the Time lady. Romana loved who she was, she loved the Doctor, she loved his insane moments, she loved his brilliance, she loved the TARDIS, old and rackety as she was, she was just wonderful.

Romana pulled herself out of her reverie, " When he failed his TARDIS examination for the 10th time running, that was it. He stole an old TARDIS, and left. He travelled around a bit, learning everything he could. His travels showed him that the Time lords and their opinions didn't matter, all that mattered was what he did for himself."

" When he got back, he changed his whole reputation, turned things around. In a short time - 60 years, he became one of the greatest councillors back home on the council. During that time he met a Time lady, a Time lady in her final life. She didn't like life on Gallifrey anymore than he did, only she didn't have the courage to be like him and walk away, she wanted to have a family before she died. They were a perfect couple."

Romana felt jealousy as she spoke of the Doctor's first wife. But it didn't matter, not anymore.

" They had a son and a daughter, but they were nothing like their parents. They were like all the others. Boring, by the book, that sort of thing. But the daughter married the son of another Time lady who would become one of the most prominent renegades. She would later be exiled for turning mice into monsters, don't ask why. I don't understand the logic. She would travel to Earth, India and find a name for herself. She would be called Rani. But her child, and the Doctor's child, would have a granddaughter. Susan became orphaned, when her parents were working in research. The Doctor and the Rani took turns to look after her. The Rani may've been an arrogant bitch, but she loved her, if from what I observed in the field is true. Later on, the Rani was exiled by the president himself. The monsters she'd made took a chunk out his leg, and killed his pet cat.

" Not long after the Doctor and Susan left our world, travelled before they arrived on Earth. You know the rest."

Ian and Barbara were still assimilating the details of the Doctor's life. As teachers they'd seen how abusive school and home life was. The fact it had happened to the Doctor explained a lot about him, his motivations, his vulnerabilities and everything about his nature.

The news that the Doctor had been bullied and looked down upon when he was growing up was news to the couple, Ian and Barbara remembered how closed the Doctor was, hardly speaking about himself, Susan or his people. Ian remembered how insensitive he'd been, always asking him irritating questions.

Barbara, unlike her husband, had been content with the idea of waiting for the Doctor to explain himself to them, and her idea paid off. At times. The Doctor was a private individual, Barbara understood that even though Ian hadn't.

Martha had heard about the Untempered Schism, about how the Doctor had run away, how the Master had been driven insane by the sight of the Time vortex. Martha had no idea how the Doctor, now she knew a bit more about him and his past, had coped.

Martha shuddered as she thought about how she'd cope if she looked into the schism, and couldn't imagine what she'd see.

Martha looked at Romana, the Time lady didn't look comfortable, and Martha cursed. She'd always known she suffered from a big mouth, that she always pried into other people's business when someone else mentioned a little tidbit. Now she'd nosed her way into the Doctor's own past, she'd made Romana speak about something that was incredibly strange, incredibly….him. Martha had seen the Doctor and Romana interact, seen the way they looked, and whilst she felt jealous, Martha knew she could never be the person the Doctor needed, and that hurt.

Romana's question to Ian and Barbara shook Martha out of her little fantasy world, " I know you two left the Doctor on the planet Mechanus after a chase by the Daleks, and that you two took a Dalek time machine back to your home time. What I want to understand is how you two haven't aged a day. You two don't look older than the day you left the Doctor."

Ian and Barbara looked at one another. This had always been a problem for them, their families had treated them like freaks and there were times they cursed the Doctor because of it they couldn't lead normal lives. Rumours followed them, stories, more absurd, followed them. They hated it completely.

" We don't know."

Ian's answer irritated Romana, who didn't hesitate when she spoke more sharply than Martha had heard, " What do you mean you don't know ?"

Barbara ran a frustrated hand through her hair, stress from doing the Master's dirty work and the question making her as sharp as she was when she was a teacher.

" We don't know. Is this normal ?"

Romana's voice became like a lecturers, " No, TARDIS travel isn't designed to be like this. In a multidimensional environment aging is slowed, but the process returns to normal when you leave. Wait, the Dalek time machine…." she trailed off, murmuring quietly to herself.

" The Dalek time machine. Did the Doctor say anything about it ?"

Ian was thrown by the question, " Yes, " he said slowly, " he was impressed when we first laid eyes on it but that changed when he saw the power source."

" Did he say what it was ?"

Ian nodded, eyes closed slightly, " Yes, he called it taranium."

Romana nodded, " I should've known."

Martha looked between the Chestertons and Romana, " Why, what's taranium ?"

Romana looked grim, " I'm sorry, there's no way to remove the radiation from your bodies. Taranium is a rare mineral, and I do mean rare. It can only be found on 1 out of a million planets or moons, it's that rare. It isn't the most sought after mineral either because it's not common. It has no real application, you can't use it for alloys, you can't make it into starship fuels. But you can use it for powering time travel.

" The Time lords used a more superior power source, a black hole in a micro universe where we could gather the energy and contain the gravitational energies. But the Daleks….they used the most crudest method imaginable. Taranium is hard to find, hard to refine, hard to even use to power the sort of machine the Daleks had in mind. When the radiation's exposed to flesh it bombards low level chronitons - discreet time particles - into the genetic structure of living beings. All sorts of things change, they don't age as fast. They can be more knowledgeable than before. The possibilities are endless.

Ian looked like he was beginning to understand, " That's why the Doctor didn't want us to use it to get home."

Romana nodded agreeably, " It's more than likely. Time physics and taranium don't exactly go together, exposing time energy to taranium lets the radiation out. It makes sense the Daleks didn't research it. The Doctor would know that the taranium would have an effect on you, and he knew he couldn't do a thing about it. Taranium radiation is incurable, and the Doctor's control of the TARDIS wasn't brilliant, not since he made sure the Time lords couldn't track him. Before you ask it's complicated. "

Barbara wanted to move on from this topic anyway, and sensed that the Time lady wanted to do the same.

" What happened to Susan ?" Barbara asked, trying to steer the subject back to what it had been previously.

Romana sighed again, " I have no idea. The war was hell, people were being brought back to life over and over again, planets were on fire, time paradoxes were being created all over the place. Susan was a principal fighter, her experience as a time traveller was more use on the field than back home. We needed all the help we could get, so we did the worst thing ever."

Ian leaned forward, " What was that ?"

Romana closed her eyes, the next bit had made her regret it ever since she'd learnt the council, still sitting on chairs in front of the council table, not bothering to realise that their little world was falling apart.

She opened her eyes and looked Ian in the eyes, " We brought the Master back to life. He'd fallen into a black hole, long story, don't ask, he lost his body but not his mind. We fished it out, gave him a new body with a new lifespan since his original had dwindled. We set him to work on the field. On his first assignment, the little coward ran away and gave the Daleks a major victory."

Ian looked comprehending, " Now he's back to his old tricks, not caring about the consequences."

" Yes," Romana nodded.

Barbara looked the pair of them, " What's the Doctor doing about it ?"

Romana looked uneasy again, " The Doctor's a prisoner of the Master, there's little he can do. Besides we can't tell you what he has in mind."

" You mean he doesn't trust us."

Romana's voice became more curt, more forceful, " If the Master does go after the Doctor's former companions then he'll rape their minds. The Master's primary aim is to make the Doctor see him as superior, but it's never going to happen. If he rapes your minds, and I tell you, then say goodbye to your pathetic society and say hello to a lifetime of hell, slavery and pain. That's what's going to happen if I tell you. Why is it you pathetic humans don't see that ? First Sarah Jane Smith, now you. Next time I see another companion of the Doctor's I'm going to make it clear they don't know anything else."