Tony's keening wail of despair shattered the air of the transporter room. Rose's arms came around his shoulders as his legs buckled beneath him. She sank to her knees with him in her arms, tears pooling in her eyes and running down her cheeks.

She rocked Tony back and forth until her muscles ached. Her choked sobs joined his shuddering wails. It felt as if the air was gone from the room. Her lungs burned, her muscles ached from the cold floor. The grief radiating off the whimpering child in her arms in waves left her feeling weak.

After what may have been minutes or hours, the fresh, raw grief gave way to aching emptiness. A Judoon officer directed them to a small set of quarters. Rose dropped into one of the beds and Tony curled into her side as he had done when he was much smaller.

"What happened, Rose?" he asked in a very small voice. For all his brilliance, Rose found it easy to forget how very young he was.

She weighed how much to tell him, and settled on a heavily redacted version of the truth. "There was a coup at Torchwood – you know what I mean by that?"

"Yeah. Violent takeover." Tony's education in history had been thorough, she could tell.

Rose nodded. "We knew somethin' big was coming. Even after the Preachers took over, some of the old Torchwood was still there and Pete… Pete tried so hard to fix it." She took a deep breath and continued. "But there was too much going on. President herself was involved; they'd got to her. Convinced her that Pete was hiding dangerous secrets. We thought they were going to make a move tomorrow, at the party."

"But they knew you knew," Tony said quietly, having connected the dots easily enough.

"Yeah, seems they did."

They lapsed into an uneasy silence. Tony rested his head on Rose's arm as they lay curled together on the uncomfortable Judoon mattress.

He seemed to digest this information, and she could see the wheels turning in his head as he filed it away. "What happened to Dad?"

She brushed his blonde hair away from his forehead. "I don't know. My contact told me he was killed, that's all."

"And mum?"

"Died protecting us both, brave as can be."

His face fell and the tears started anew. "What are we gon' do now, Rose?"

"We're going to go where we can be safe. I promise you, Tony, we're going to be okay."

Tony's small frame shook with sobs. She pressed a kiss to the top of his head and stroked his hair, muttering what words of comfort she could until she felt his sobs give way to sniffles and then the gentle, deep breaths of sleep.

Rose stepped out of the adjoining washroom, wet hair wrapped in a towel, turban-style. She grabbed her blue bag from the desk and sat down on her bed.

"Best you have a shower, Tony. Don't know how long it will be before we have our own washroom again." She looked over at the boy who lay immobile, eyes fixed on the white wall. He didn't acknowledge her words. They'd been with the Judoon nearly a week now, and Tony had spoken very little. He had been nearly immobile in his grief, rising only to go to the loo and change his clothing before bed, and Rose was very worried.

She reached into her rucksack and drew out a fluffy towel and a change of clothes in Tony's size. "Come on, Trouble," she urged fondly, using the nickname John had given him. She had to admit, it was fitting.

"Don't call me that," Tony muttered. It was the first Rose had heard out of him all day.

"Got you talking."

"Don't want to talk. I want to go home."

She rose and moved to the other thin bed, placing her hand gently on his arm. "I'm sorry, Tony, but we can't. We can't go back."

"Why?" His voice broke on the word and he sounded far younger than his nine years.

"It's not safe," she said simply. "Torchwood has their fingers out well past Earth, so we're going away, where they can't find us. Best you get your shower now, we'll be at the port in a few hours."

She could see that Tony hesitated with whether to ask any further questions. He sighed and moved to sit up. Rose grabbed the towel off the end of the bed and handed it to him. "Go on, then."

When Tony returned from the washroom fifteen minutes later, dressed in the clothing Rose had purchased for him in the event of a need for a sudden escape, Rose was seated in the middle of her bed, her ever-present blue bag placed in front of her. She was carefully removing items from the rucksack, folding them, and placing them in piles around her

"How does it all fit?" Tony asked. He pulled on his blue jumper while crossing the small room to where Rose sat.

She folded the jacket in her hands and placed it carefully beside her. "Do you remember working on John's experiments on the coral with him?" Tony nodded. "This is what happened with it. She stopped growing, but he was able to convince her to take a useful shape."

"So it's bigger on the inside?" his eyes were wide. He'd been raised on tales of space and time travel, stories of the Doctor and Rose Tyler in the TARDIS.

Rose waved him over to look. "Yep. This is the TARDIS. Well, sort of." The boy took the dark blue rucksack from Rose's hands and looked inside. Through the opening of the bag he could see what seemed to be shelves. He poked his head through, and it was as though he were looking into a small room from a hole in the ceiling. There was clothing everywhere, boxes of foodstuffs were strewn across the floor, interspersed with books.

"It's a mess in there," Tony said as he pulled his head out.

"Yeah, well, Judoon transport is a bit rough on the stability field."

"Can I travel in there? Obviously you wouldn't fit through the opening…"

"Oi!" Tony laughed, but the sound was short and the mirth didn't reach his eyes. "You might be able to, but I don't know yet. John only got the bag working a couple of months before he died. Haven't much tested it yet. Packed loads of food and clothes, though."

Tony hefted the bag in his hand and Rose could see the gears turning in his head. "So the inside is another dimension, right? Is that why it feels like it's empty?"

"Got it in one. Only the bag is in this dimension, subject to our gravity. The contents aren't. Took me forever to understand that."

"I remember John telling me something about it," Tony said. A look of sadness passed over his features and Rose could tell he was remembering all they had lost. After a moment, he reached into the bag and withdrew a sleeve of chocolate biscuits. "At least you packed well."

Rose decided against chiding him for his less than nutritious selection and took a biscuit herself. "So, the Judoon will be dropping us off at Adaraxidoredanillae, and I can get us passage there to where we need to go."

"Can you say that again?"

"Adaraxidoredanillae. Had a meeting with the general manager couple years ago. Zhe owes me a favour."

"Zhe?"

"Non-binary gender pronoun."

"Ah," said the nine-year-old, as if it came as no surprise to him. "Where are we going from there?"

Rose looked out the small porthole in their cabin and pointed into the black. "That way."

The port of Adaraxidoredanillae, a small tropical moon orbiting a gas giant in the Raxis cluster, was one of the most beautiful sights Rose had seen on her travels.

Rose and John had negotiated a trade agreement with the port authority through U.N.I.T. They'd wanted to harvest selenium from Earth, one of few planets within an economically feasible travel distance where it occurred in any significant quantity. Unfortunately, their mining methods would have left huge swaths of the planet uninhabitable. It had taken every bit of their diplomatic skill, and calling in a number of favours, but in the end they had arranged a contract between a number of mining companies and the Adaraxidoredanillaen management that had left the general manager of the port quite wealthy.

They'd been treated to a week at one of the hotels on the western continent, one of the few off-world trips Rose and the Doctor had been able to take, owing to their immature TARDIS. They had, of course, jumped at the chance when it was offered.

Ships from all over the galactic neighbourhood – the Mutter's Spiral, as John had called it – docked here, exchanging goods, making deals, using it as a layby on longer journeys. The entire eastern continent was dedicated to shipping, but the western continent was an oasis.

Trees in every colour of the rainbow dotted pastoral landscapes where azure grasses danced in the soft winds. Waves lapped on pale lavender shores and oceans as blue as the Caribbean stretched towards distant horizons where the violent swirling of the gas giant below hung in the sky. The view from their hotel room had taken Rose's breath away.

She saw Tony's eyes go wide as the Judoon ship entered low orbit, awaiting clearance to land, and the eastern continent came into view. Captain AoRoHo had left the pair of humans mostly alone since picking them up, something for which Rose was immensely thankful. While the Captain, with whom she'd dealt a number of times whilst transferring non-human prisoners who had used Earth as a hideout, was a gentleman of the sort rarely seen amongst Judoon, she knew the crew would likely be a little harder for Tony to handle.

The klaxon alerting them to the initiation of the landing procedure sounded. She pulled her rucksack over her shoulders and reached down for Tony's hand.

"Ready to go?"

"Yeah. M'starving, though, can we get something to eat?"

She smiled at the small boy. "Just you wait. They have this food, it's like ice cream, but it's not. Made from some sort of vegetable, kind of like an aubergine. Tastes like chocolate."

Rose led Tony to the docking chamber, and after a quick goodbye to the Captain, they stepped off the ship into the vibrant terminal.

The building was not so much built as grown around a frame. The walls were deep red, living wood. Here and there, branches grew inward instead of outward, boughs of blue and green foliage shading the walkway where sunlight filtered in.

"This is brilliant!" Tony shouted. A few people turned to look at them, and shook their heads in amused disapproval at the child's outburst.

"Isn't it? Said the same thing when I was here last. Now, we've got to go register. C'mon!" She tugged him along down the corridor and he followed along carefully. His head craned this way and that, eyes roving all over the place. She could see the questions forming in his mind and smiled, glad that he was refraining from the constant stream of inquiry he was prone to.

They entered the short queue to the customs counter where they would register their arrival. "Tony, keep quiet here, okay?" The boy nodded. Rose placed a hand on his shoulder and steered him along beside her.

"Name, planet of origin," drawled the desk worker when Rose and Tony reached the front of the queue. The ginger woman had skin that was just a bit too pink to be human. It was almost as if she had a fuchsia sunburn. Rose thought it looked rather lovely with her dark red hair, but the bored expression she wore certainly made her look less friendly.

"Rose Marion Tyler, Earth, er, Sol 3. Antony Iain Tyler, Sol 3."

"Humans?" she looked above her terminal screen with the most vibrant green eyes Rose had ever seen. Tony was staring back at her, his own eyes wide. "Don't get many of you."

"Yes, well, I've been here before. Guest of Ka'at M!qin." The woman's eyes returned to the monitor and she nodded.

"Anything to declare?"

"Only personal effects; clothes, books, food, small items for trade."

The customs worker tapper her screen and her eyes dropped to the next question. "Are you carrying in excess of fifty thousand standard credits?"

"Don't I wish," Rose muttered.

"Any live foodstuffs or companion organisms?"

"None."

"What is your business on Adaraxidoredanillae?" She looked up, her eyes boring into Rose's.

"Couple days' layover before we leave for the A'ni'daren systems."

"Please provide proof of sufficient credit for your length of stay." Rose waved her right hand over a flat reader. It beeped as the black ring worn on her thumb passed over it.

The woman twisted to her side and grabbed two small cards from what looked to be a printer. She wrote something on them and attached a sticker to the corner of each. "These are your transit cards. You have been approved for four days' stay and if you require any additional time, please re-register. If you require any tourist information, it can be found at the desk indicated on the map at the end of the corridor. Is there anything else?"

"Nope, s'it. Thanks!"

Rose tugged Tony along behind her. It only took a few seconds for the questions to begin. She knew they had a way to walk, so decided it was best to at least answer some of the questions bubbling up from within him.

"What species was she?"

"A'ni'daren. Pretty common in port cities; they're a nomadic people since their homeworld burnt up."

"What happened to it?"

"Sun went supernova. Don't worry, they evacuated long before. Have a whole bunch of other planets, too, but their people are all over this galaxy. Population here is about half A'ni'daren, half M!" Rose still had difficulty pronouncing the full glottal stop, telepathic translation from the juvenile TARDIS notwithstanding.

"How can I understand what everyone is saying? You can't tell me English is spoken off Earth." Tony was squinting at a poster on the wall. Rose could tell he was watching the symbols morph into recognizable letters.

She smiled as his eyes went wide in recognition. "That's the TARDIS. She's still pretty immature, not ready to travel, but she's telepathic enough to translate. Gets in your head and translates for you. Used to be that John had to be around for it to work, but obviously he managed to fix that. Should work so long as we're close to her."

"So your rucksack is getting in my brain?"

"Yup," she said, popping the 'p' and flashing him a wide grin. "Didn't like it when it first happened to me. Can you feel that little hum? Like someone's singing far off and you can barely hear it?"

Tony closed his bright blue eyes and Rose could tell he was listening for it. A moment later, he looked up at her in surprise. "That's the TARDIS," Rose told him. "She'll keep connected to you, and to me. Won't be a rucksack forever, anyway. Once we're settled, we'll get her growing again."

"What's in the A'ni'daren systems? Why are we going there?"

"Tell you later, okay? Let's get some food and I need to ring Ka'at so we can get a hotel."

Tony thoroughly enjoyed the vegetable-based ice cream-like cold treat. Rose couldn't refuse him a second helping, considering it was a vegetable and she'd managed to get him to eat very little over the previous week. It seemed his appetite was returning, and she was pleased to see it. She could tell he'd lost some weight in his grief, and she didn't wish to see him weaken.

They wandered the shops on the mezzanine of the main terminal building they were in. Rose called Ka'at, who was only too pleased to put them up in zir own manor's guest quarters.

Tony had required a firm talking to that evening, and he had gone to bed, upset, before Rose had a chance to speak with him. He had gawked when the tall, willowy Ka'at met them. Looking rather like humanity's stereotype of aliens, Ka'at's long, lean form, grey skin, and large, hairless skull had absolutely astounded the child. Rose had apologized profusely for his rudeness to the very proud M!si manager who had agreed to help them.

Rose learned, the next day, that there was no transport leaving for any of the major A'ni'daren outposts any time in the next week which would accept passengers.

"You've got to be kidding me, Ka'at," she moaned, looking over the translucent sheet which held the planned departures for the week. "Since when are there no ships to that system? Honestly."

"There are ships, Rose Tyler. They just will not accept human passengers." Ka'at's wide, black eyes blinked. It was a bit unnerving whenever Rose saw the nictating membranes close over those shining eyes. It was an utterly reptilian gesture and reminded Rose of a few species she had encountered that had been less than friendly.

"What's anyone got against humans?"

"Your species is very primitive, Rose Tyler. There are many cultures which do not consider you sentient."

Rose dropped the schedule on the table and dropped into her chair. "Thanks. That helps."