Reunions and Wolf Cubs

Chapter 3

I do not own Doctor Who!

Sixty planets, dozens of different times, three birthdays, and a year later they returned to Earth just long enough to refuel on the rift there. Rose was jumpy, not trusting Torchwood to stay away. It wasn't just herself now and she would die before her former employers got their hands on her daughters.

"Mum, what if we used the rift to get home?" Jenny, now eight years old and barely any taller, asked. She was spinning in her chair, bored. Neither her mother nor the TARDIS was letting them outside.

"I thought of that," Rose admitted, "back before Torchwood, but it's not stable. We'd just as likely end up on some random planet with no way back as we would in Cardiff in our home universe." It was a weak point in time and space, but using it was dangerous in any circumstance.

"Something's wrong," Tally, seven years old and growing taller every day (or so it seemed to her family), was staring at nothing. Or rather, what she was seeing wasn't visible to anyone else. Like Jenny and even Rose (to an extent) could see timelines, Tally saw events (sometimes from every angle possible).

"Tally, what is it?" Rose went to the girl and picked her up, cradling her. Some of the girl's visions were utterly terrifying and sent her into hysterics. She always needed to be held then.

"The stars are going away…like they never were." She shivered. "Shiny metal pepper shakers with lasers, planets in the sky that don't belong. It doesn't make sense!"

"It's okay, we'll figure it out." Rose assured her. "mi'girl, unlock the doors. We need to look outside." Rose didn't know how much they would see in the center of the city, but they should be able to see something.

Jenny opened the door with caution, peeking out and looking around. The square they were in was empty and dark. The perception filter around the ship would hide them so long as they stayed close and remained still.

Rose pulled the door open completely and stepped out. Jenny took her free hand just in case they needed to run.

"See if you can find the bears and Orion," she told them, looking herself. While many of the constellations were different here, some were the same. Those were the ones she always searched for and kept close to her heart.

"Mum, I can't find Ursa Major." Jenny said softly. She'd found the other two quickly, but no matter where she looked she could not find the other.

"Back inside," Rose ordered, seeing the same thing her daughters were.

She moved the TARDIS deep into the countryside. Outside they went and looked up again. It was the same. Tally went back inside and retrieved the star maps just in case they were wrong and it was simply the wrong time of year.

It wasn't. The stars were gone, and so were several others. How had this happened? Why was it happening? Rose could think of only one life form that matched Tally's description, but they didn't exist in this universe.

"What are we going to do?" Jenny broke their stunned silence as they watched a star wink out as if someone had just flipped a switch.

"Whatever it is, I don't think it's happening here." Rose held them closer to her. If the stars were going out, people could be next. She would die before letting that happen to her girls, and she would go to the ends of the universe to get them back. They were hers as much as she was theirs. She had already lost one family. She wasn't going to lose another.

"We're going home, aren't we?" Tally asked, still staring at the sky. "The walls are thinning, breaking up. The bees are going away, even here."

"What do bees have to do with anything?" Out of everything her sister had just said, that was the oddest to Jenny.

"Bees?" Rose frowned, a memory tickling the back of her mind. Bees! Not all the bees on Earth were actually of Earth, the Doctor had told her once when she had asked why certain planets had the same insects.

She explained this to the girls as they returned to the ship. She doubted whatever it was that was going on was happening here in this world. No, parts of this world were disappearing.

"mi'girl, scan for any missing or currently non-existing planets that we have files for." Rose called out. "Tally, Jenny, get ready for bed. Nothing's going to happen until morning."

Grumbling, they did as they were told. It was no use trying to stay awake no matter how much they may want to. Rose was determined to raise them as normally as possible when they weren't running for their lives, to give them that little bit of stability. Even if they didn't require as much sleep as human children their age, they would get at least a few hours every night.

She came and tucked them in, reading them a chapter from The Secret Garden before turning off the lights. The TARDIS hummed in their heads, a lullaby they had grown accustomed to. Despite the day, it wasn't long before they were asleep.

Rose watched them for a few moments. If this went right, then soon they would be home and, undoubtedly, in the middle of trouble. It wasn't going to be easy, but she had to believe that there was at least a good ending to be had.

Everybody lives Rose! Just this once, everybody lives. Her Doctor had told her that once, right before Jack joined them. It couldn't mean that it only happened once. After all, she was meant to die in battle and she still lived.

Most of her innocence was gone and she was no longer a child, that part of her had died, but she was still alive. She planned on being alive for a very long time. She was determined to find the Doctor and spend that time with him.

Even if she had to slap him to get him thinking straight instead of wallowing in self-sacrificing guilt, she was going to be with him. She had a promise to keep.

Tally sat in her jump seat, tightening the straps around her. Jenny was doing the same beside her. Both girls were watching their mother, concerned about what they were going to be doing. Jenny understood the mechanics of what Rose was going to do; she just wished she could help. Tally knew what was going to happen, that's why she was making certain she and her sister were going to be mostly stationary.

It was going to be an incredibly bumpy ride.

"Ready girls?" Rose set the final controls and locked them in place. It had taken weeks to get the calculations in place and to find the right point on the rift. They had a single shot at this, so if they failed they'd never get another one.

They wouldn't be around to try again. While not her own, the girls were far too much like her that even if she did have a place to leave them they would just follow her. Even if she did have such a place, as she wasn't coming back she also wasn't going to leave them behind. So she was risking all their lives for this chance.

"We're ready," Jenny took Tally's hand.

"Allons-y!" They shouted together as Rose flipped the last lever.

The TARDIS began to shake and lurch side-to-side, clearly unhappy with doing this sort of travel. Sparks began to fly as the lights went out.

Something was wrong. There was something sending the TARDIS elsewhere.

Rose flew around the consul, half doing what she felt was right and the rest doing what her ship wanted and needed her to do. In a moment that felt both stretched and compressed, everything settled.

Grunting as she got back to her feet from where she'd fallen, Rose dusted herself off.

"Girls? Are you alright?"

Jenny groaned, "I'm 'kay Mum, just dizzy."

"I think I'm going to be sick," Tally muttered, fumbling with the straps holding her to her seat.

"I've got you," Jenny had already escaped from the confines of her seat. "Told you eating all that jam was going to make you sick."

"But it tastes so good! I like jam." Tally retorted with a pout. "Mum? Where did Mum go?"

"Right here," Rose reappeared, helping them back to their feet. "We're not quite there yet, and she's going to be phasing in and out for a bit."

"Someone's trying to change things," Tally muttered.

"I know, and we're too early in this timeline. Jenny hasn't been born yet," Rose told them.

She'd left the TARDIS to take a quick look around. Instead, she'd met with a scene of emergency vehicles and a red-head asking her to tell another woman where the keys would be. Rose knew the person's face only because Jenny had drawn her several times.

"Donna just joined the Doctor," she informed them when she came back inside, "so we've got a bit of a wait."

"Longer than that," Tally had gone blank faced again. "The Trickster wants to play, to see a world where the Doctor isn't there to save it. The creature that isn't there, Donna's got to die to fix it, but she's not gonna die for long because it won't actually happen. The mad Seer is turning things to his whim. A child of time will die."

"Okay Tally, come out of it, that's enough!" Rose shook her youngest, breaking the girl's trance. "Jenny, tissue." Rose wiped blood from Tally's nose. "Talia Jacqueline Tyler, what have I told you about forcing yourself to see more?"

"Don't do it," Tally replied as she always did, "Mummy, I don't feel so good."

"Of course not," Rose wrapped the girl in her arms. "Please stop scaring us like that." One day, Rose was deeply afraid that her daughter would not snap out of one of her visions and be either trapped inside it or brain dead.

"I'll try," she promised, voice small. "Jenny?"

"Right here you daft fool," the smaller blonde told her sister. "You've got to be careful; we don't want to lose you. We love you." She hugged the other girl tightly.

"Love you too," Tally whispered, settling between them. She knew how dangerous delving into her visions was, but a year of love against a life of abuse meant that more often than not that the instinct to do things her own way won.

"Alright, so the ship is going to run a scan of this Earth's history for the next several years both back and forward. We'll figure it, don't worry."

"We're going to be stuck in the TARDIS for a while, aren't we?" Jenny said with dismay. She loved the ship, but she also loved the running.

"We all are, because I'm not sending either of you into unknown danger on purpose." Rose told them. "Don't worry, after this is all over we'll go somewhere and drive the Doctor crazy with domestics, yea?"

That got the reaction she wanted as both girls giggled. Rose kept her fears too herself, tightly locked away where not even Tally could reach them.

Neither of her daughters was going to die, even if she had to reawaken Bad Wolf to ensure it. It never occurred to Rose that it could mean anyone else.