Author's Notes: So, chapter two. There are references to two books – one about the third doctor and one about Ten and Martha during their travels where they met said creature.

As you can see, these will be unrelated one shots in a plot that is actually consistent if you look closely. Which is why I'm asking for your opinion on the next chapter – do you want me to just go on or would you like me to tie it up with Torchwood for a while? Because I have ideas for both and I'd love to know which route you'd like me to take and also what you think of the story in general.

Colour: Red

Prompt: Red sky in morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailors' delight.

"That can't be good," Ianto said warily as soon as they came out of their cabin. "Look at the sky."

The Doctor squinted against the rising sun. It was blood red, but he couldn't understand Ianto's troubles. "Blood was spilled last night? We already know that."

Ianto rolled his eyes. "No. You know the saying, don't you? Red sky at morning, sailors take warning and all that."

The Doctor scoffed. "You most of all should know that that's rubbish. Humans just like to think that since they can't control the weather they can at least predict it. Every nation had some form of omens when it came to that and none of them were even remotely close to home."

They had received strange readings on the TARDIS last night and had followed the coordinates only to end up on a Viking ship – or, actually, near one – while the passengers got ready to leave. There had been no one in visible need of help so they had introduced themselves as brothers – which had raised a few eyebrows – and had joined the already numerous crowd on board of a rather primitive, if outstanding for its time, ship that consisted of people from several different countries that were all in search of the same thing – Vinland, which had been mentioned by the current leader of the expedition – Leif Erikson – on some of his earlier travels.

There hadn't been much time for explanations and snooping around because, almost as soon as they had left Norway, there had been dinner and then everyone had gone to bed. Erikson had generously given them a spare room that would have quite possibly been too small for one, let alone two grown men. Ianto, though, had curled on his side, taking as little space as e possibly could, and had then promptly fallen asleep.

"Have you ever worked for UNIT?" The Doctor asked now and Ianto turned to him with an inquisitive expression on his face. "In no relation to the weather," he added.

"No, I haven't." Ianto's voice still had a confused note to it. "Why are you asking?"

"It's nothing, really. I was just thinking about last night. You seem to have some sort of military training – it looks like a habit for you."

Ianto laughed mirthlessly, his eyes still focused on the horizon. "Back when I worked at One, I was Yvonne's favourite lab rad. She hired me because Torchwood picked up my psychic energy from the other end of the city, so she figured out that my mind was harder to break than the normal person's, and she indented to do all sorts of curious things with me. She liked to see how long I could endure it without snapping."

The Doctor could feel a shiver running down his spine as he asked quietly, "What did she do?"

The small, sardonic smile was still there. "Everything she could think of. Retcon resistance. Hypnosis too, as well as mental shields practice. She then liked to test how good I was at resisting all of that, preferably at the same time, so that meant Retconning me single-handedly, pushing against my shields until I was forced to fight her as a defence measure..." He faced the Doctor once again, his eyes completely hiding any emotion to such an extent that the older Time Lord could barely recognise him. "Everything you can think of, she did it."

The Doctor didn't quite know what to say and Ianto didn't seem to need it, because he kept going, voice completely different from the pained whisper it had been seconds ago, "Anyway, the sky. I'm pretty sure it meant trouble."

The Doctor frowned. "Not really. That, though, that surely means trouble." He held his screwdriver up and it let out the same signal as before – three brief beeps, three long ones, and then three short again. "The universal distress call, but it's way out of its time."

Ianto nodded briskly, then extended his arm for the screwdriver, giving the Doctor a questioningly look. "May I?"

The Doctor passed it to him, not without some hesitation, and Ianto smiled as he started fiddling with the settings, turning thing on and off and spinning other things around, and the Doctor found himself staring at his companion with something that closely resembled awe. Ianto was working quietly, without any pretences or pride, and there was a little frown of concentration that made it all the more endearing. He'd missed this, he realised – to have another one of his kind by his side; someone who could keep up without even trying. Ianto was young, so the Doctor supposed that he ought to be protective and fatherly and yet, there was something else. Something about the look in Ianto's eyes that made him think that he was not only fully capable of taking care of himself, but that he'd also take charge of anything he had to without thinking twice about it or–

"Doctor?" Ianto's voice pulled him out of his thoughts. "What is it?" the Doctor asked, crouching by Ianto's side and frowning at the light on top of the screwdriver. "What's wrong?"

"What time is it?" Ianto's voice was quiet and strained and his eyes were wandering about – assessing, thinking, trying to imagine their position on the ship from above.

"Well," the Doctor looked up, shielding his eyes from the red sunrise. "Norway in the spring; sunrise should be in about eight in the morning."

Ianto nodded slowly and his eyes locked with the Doctor's. "Then why are we the only people here?"

Just as the realisation creeped into the Doctor's mind, the ship around them filled with all the sounds it was meant to at this hour – the laughter of the children, as few as they were here, and the creaking of the woo under their feet as men and women moved around, hardly noticing the pair of them. The TARDIS had made sure that they were both fit to look like part of the scenery – from their boots to the long coats that had to keep them safe from the cruel winds and also make them look like the Irish travellers they pretended to be.

"Now that's– strange. Not weird yet, but we're getting there."

"You have a scale for strangeness?" The Doctor found himself asking as he snatched the screwdriver back from Ianto and started taking new readings. Strangely, everything was back to normal now.

Ianto nodded solemnly. "It starts with 'interesting' – usually reserved for dinosaurs seen on the street. Then there's 'intriguing' – still dinosaurs, but alien ones. 'Doo-lally' – Tosh's favourite term – is for strange and inexplicable behaviours amongst humans. Disappearances and sudden reappearances fall under 'strange'."

"What's weird, then?"

"Shapeshifters and upward. There are a lot of things I would have preferred not to remember and disposing of a corpse that looks exactly like me is in the top ten." Ianto said as if confiding some big secret and the Doctor tried really hard not to look impressed.

"Really?" He said anyway. "What did the shapeshifter do?"

"It kissed Gwen's husband; that's how he knew it wasn't me. Never mind that now," Ianto added hastily when the Doctor looked up incredulously; ready to start questioning his life choices – or his sanity. "We need to focus."

The Doctor nodded, determined. Ianto was the kind of person who could stay among the chaos without as much as ruffling his feathers and he felt strangely ready to follow whatever plan he'd thought of. "Of course. Now, Vinland. What if it's just a country from another universe? Maybe the walls between the worlds are thin and we're having disturbances in the Time Vortex which in itself draws out–"

"It's North America."

Silence suddenly reigned between them and then there was a timid, "What?"

"The so-called Vinland is just a Viking name for Newfoundland." Ianto's tone alone suggested that this was the most common fact "They thought they'd found some new place but they found the locals; even traded some goods. And all of that about four centuries before Columbus."

The Doctor didn't say anything at first – he was used to be the one delivering the information – but when Ianto didn't look like he would continue, he prompted, "And then what?"

Ianto shrugged. "Nothing, really. The winter was bad. Their ships weren't good enough and were half underwater by March The Norwegians – the ones from Greenland – got angry at the Icelanders for reasons that probably seemed logical at the time and slaughtered them all to the last child." His companion's voice was full of disgust as he looked at the people around them. "There was another attempt for colonising the place later but it didn't really work – superstitions and general stress being the main reasons, I suppose – and that's about it. I don't remember anything alien about it at all."

"You can never really spot the alien element," the Doctor pointed out. He wanted to do some more scans, but thought that waving the sonic around probably wouldn't have been a good idea. He had past experiences with Vikings and their so-called curses – seven lifetimes ago, really – and had no intention to have them repeated, especially when he considered the fact that Ianto would get in trouble as well. "Think about it," he continued. "We're alien, and we weren't in that tale, were we Hello, sorry," he added loudly, clearing his throat as he tried to attract the attention of a woman nearby. Ianto looked alarmed as she neared them, but the Doctor just continued smoothly. "My brother isn't feeling too well. Is there any chance for you to leave us on the closest place you can think of?"

Just as Ianto hissed 'What are you doing?' under his breath, the woman touched his forehead and then his sides and her face contorted with concern. "He's ice cold!"

"Yes, I felt that too," the Doctor agreed wholeheartedly, thanking the naturally cold skin of his species not for the first time. "And he looks so pale–" He did, but what she didn't know was that Ianto was unnaturally pale as it was, even though he'd been in perfect health for the bigger part of the time he'd spent with the Doctor.

The woman nodded eagerly and assured them that they would soon pass by Greenland and drop them off and, once he saw her turn her back, Ianto turned on him.

"What was that?" he asked in disbelief. "We can't just leave them here!"

"I've seen this before," the Doctor said quietly. "It's a creature that feeds on this sort of ambitions; it's tracking travellers all around the Universe. They'll get out of it themselves. We have no place here and they'll trade us as slaves. British people weren't tolerated around by these times."

o.O.o

Two days later, when they had managed to get back to the TARDIS, the Doctor watched Ianto with mild amusement as the younger Time Lord quickly took a shower and got back in his usual attire for no time and, for the first time in quite a while, felt an emotion he hadn't expected to ever get back blossoming into him.

Hope.