I don't own Doctor Who... *sigh*.
GD~GD~GD~GD~
The patients were nearly within touching distance when...
"Go to your room!" The Guardian stepped forward, pushing the Doctor behind her.
The patients grew still.
"You know you're not supposed to be out of bed this late." She continued. "Your mum will be very, very cross with you. Now go back to your room!"
The patients hung their heads like scolded children and shuffled away. Each quietly went back to its own bed.
"I'm really glad that worked," the Doctor grinned. He kissed her. "Those would have been terrible last words."
The Guardian laughed. "I was reasonably certain it would work. It worked every time I found a Lord President's children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren out of their rooms at night."
'And yours were always the worst, Eltanin.' she added telepathically, with a slightly reproachful look. No doubt his grandchildren and great-grandchildren had inherited that particular trait from him.
He smiled sadly, making the Guardian regret her words a little. So he had been thinking about his family lately too. It made sense. She and Gaiana had been as good a friends as the High Council had allowed. The woman had been one of the few people who knew about their relationship, and she had been the one who encouraged the Guardian to ignore the High Council's threats.
Gaiana would have been so happy that they were married now.
The Doctor moved to look over the now-peaceful patients again.
"So how was your con supposed to work?" She asked Jack.
He shrugged. "Simple enough, really. Find some harmless piece of space junk, let the nearest Time Agent track it back to Earth, convince him it's valuable, name a price. When he's put fifty-percent up front—oops! A German bomb falls on it, destroys it forever. He never gets to see what he's paid for, never knows he's been had. I buy him a drink with his own money, and we discuss dumb luck. The perfect self-cleaning con."
"Yeah. Perfect." The Doctor replied angrily.
The Guardian walked over to him and pulled his forehead down to rest against hers. 'Eltanin, it is not your fault that Jack turned out the way he did. It was his choice.'
'And it was my choice to abandon him when I did. No wonder he hated me last time I met him.'
"The London Blitz is great for self-cleaners," Jack called. "Pompeii's nice if you want to make a vacation of it, though. But you've got to set your alarm for volcano day!" He laughed.
The Doctor pulled away from the Guardian to glare at Jack.
Jack's laugh quieted and he smiled uncomfortably. "Getting a hint of disapproval."
"Take a look around the room. This is what your harmless piece of space-junk did."
"It was a burnt-out medical transporter," Jack insisted. "It was empty."
The Doctor glared at him and walked for the door. "Guardian, we're going upstairs."
"I even programmed the flight computer so it wouldn't land on anything living." Jack called after them. "I harmed no one. I don't know what's happening here, but believe me: I had nothing to do with it."
The Doctor stopped at the doors and turned back. "I'll tell you what's happening. You forgot to set your alarm clock. It's volcano day."
A siren sounded, making the three of them look up.
"All clear." Jack breathed.
"I wish," the Doctor snapped and threw open the door.
The Guardian hurried after the Doctor, Jack running after them. The Doctor led them up several flights of stairs, to a secure metal door.
"The night your space-junk landed, someone was hurt. This was where they were taken. You got a blaster?" He looked at Jack.
"Sure." Jack pulled his blaster with its once-again-replaced battery out of his coat and disintegrated the lock. He pulled the door open with a flourish.
"Sonic blaster, fifty-first century. Weapons Factories of Villengard?" The Doctor took the blaster from Jack.
"You've been to the factories?"
"Once." He looked over the weapon.
"Well, they're gone now. Destroyed. The main reactor went critical. Vaporized the lot."
"Like I said, 'once'." He put the blaster back in Jack's coat.
The Guardian smirked at Jack's shock.
"There's a banana grove there now. I like bananas. Bananas are good." The Doctor walked into the room.
Jack turned to the Guardian, clearly wondering if the Doctor was serious.
She nodded. "I know. I was quite cross when he told me about that one."
They walked in just as the Doctor turned on a light, revealing a destroyed room. Filing cabinets were emptied, an observation window was broken, chairs were overturned. Electronic equipment and papers lay strewn about the floor.
"What do you think?" The Doctor asked them, pulling the Guardian to him and slipping his arm around her waist.
"Something got out of here." Jack answered.
"Something powerful and angry—no." The Guardian stepped away from the Doctor. "Desperate. Lost." She walked into the second room, one with a child-sized bed in the corner. Sheets of a child's drawings filled the walls and lay scattered about the floor.
"A child?" Jack asked, following her into the room. "Suppose that explains 'mummy'."
The Doctor turned on a tape recording as the Guardian moved closer to examine the drawings. All of them were simply drawn pictures of a woman. A mother.
Meanwhile, on the tape, a man tried to ask the child questions, but the child only responded with 'are you my mummy'. The Guardian's hearts broke as she heard the child cry "I want my mummy". She focused on the drawings to hide her tears from the two men, ashamed of the display of emotion.
"Do you want to be thought of as weak?" Her instructor demanded.
The nine-year-old girl shook her head.
"Then control those tears. Emotions are a weakness."
When she didn't stop crying immediately, the Time Lord struck her hard enough that she fell to the floor. Her knee crackled against the stone floor. The girl couldn't control the scream of pain that escaped her lips as she held her knee. Even at nine, she knew the feeling of a shattered knee all too well.
Her cry earned her another blow, one that forced her completely to the floor. She barely kept her head from hitting the stones.
"Never show pain."
"Always 'are you my mummy'." Jack observed, mercifully jerking her back the present.
The Guardian cleared her throat, feeling the need to cry pass, along with the unpleasant memory. "He doesn't know. Doctor, this time period—an unmarried woman would feel the need to hide the fact that she had a child, right?"
The Doctor nodded slowly, staring ahead. He wasn't even looking at her.
The Guardian closed her eyes, focusing. It wasn't hard to pick up the Doctor's stray thoughts. He wasn't guarding them at all.
An image of Sigma, his youngest grandson, appeared in her mind. Her eyes flew open. Sigma's mother had been her elder sister's youngest daughter. As family, she had been allowed to attend that funeral without anyone protesting. It had been the first time she saw her father in centuries.
They hadn't even spoken.
"Doctor?" Jack spoke. "Guardian?"
"Can you sense it?" The Doctor asked.
"Sense what?" Jack responded.
"Coming out of the walls! Can you feel it?" The Doctor paced around the small room.
Jack didn't respond.
The Doctor stopped and glared at him. "Funny little human brains. How do you get around in them?"
"Doctor!" The Guardian said, pulling his attention to her. "I can feel it. Can't miss it, in fact." She moved over to stand in front of him, taking his hands.
Just then, she noticed another sound that she couldn't miss.
"There are these children living rough 'round the bomb sites. They come out during air raids looking for food."
"Mummy, please?"
The Guardian stiffened. "Doctor!" She called again, forcing herself to not show her panic. Zombies, Slitheen—she could handle them. But a child? And one that she couldn't even touch? "Doctor, it's afraid. Terribly afraid and even more powerful. It's got the power of a god, and you just sent it to it's room."
The Doctor froze as he realized what she was getting at. As he heard what she also did.
The tape had run out, but the child was still speaking.
"I sent it to its room. This is its room." He spun around to see the child standing there, between them and the door.
The Guardian stepped forward to stand beside him.
"Okay, on my signal, make for the door." Jack's voice was low.
"Mummy?"
"Now!" Jack shouted, pulling out… not his blaster, but a banana.
The Doctor grinned and pulled the actual blaster out of the Guardian's jacket. He aimed it at the wall, disintegrating a square of it. "Go now! Don't drop the banana!"
Jack ran through the opening. "Why not?!"
"Good source of potassium!"
One glare from the Guardian and the Doctor followed Jack through. She came after him.
"Give me that!" Jack took the blaster back and fired it at the wall again, repairing the hole just as the child came into view.
They all breathed sighs of relief.
"Digital rewind." Jack explained. He tossed the banana back to the Doctor. "Nice switch."
"It's from the groves of Villengard. I thought it was appropriate." The Doctor responded smugly.
"There's really a banana grove in the heart of Villengard and you did that?"
"Much to my annoyance." The Guardian confirmed.
"Banana's are good!"
A blow from the other side dented the wall, making them all jump.
"Come on!" The Doctor yelled as a second blow actually broke partially through the plaster.
They ran down the hall, but a set of ward doors opened and patients came spilling out. They ran back in the direction they had come from, only to be cut off by more patients.
"It's keeping us here till it can get at us." The Doctor explained, seeing that they had ended up right where they started.
"It's controlling them?"
"It is them. It's every living thing in this hospital."
"Okay. This can function as a sonic blaster, a sonic cannon, and as a triple-enfolded sonic disruptor. Doc, what you got?"
The Guardian pulled out her tranquilizer gun and fired a few rounds at the patients.
Nothing happened.
Apparently, this was just like the Gelth's corpses. Nothing can kill or harm what is already dead. "Well, Doctor?" She smirked a little.
He pulled out the sonic screwdriver. "I've got a sonic… er… oh, never mind."
"What?" Jack asked.
The trio positioned themselves so that they were each facing a threat, the two men facing away from each other.
"It's sonic, okay? Let's leave it at that!"
The Guardian rolled her eyes.
"Disruptor? Cannon? What?"
"It's sonic! Totally sonic! I am sonicked up!"
"A sonic what?"
"Screwdriver!" The Doctor turned back to Jack, holding the sonic up.
Jack turned to him just as the child broke through the wall.
The Guardian rolled her eyes again. "Gentlemen, watch out!" She grabbed the blaster out of Jack's hands and pointed it at the floor.
They fell through the hole, the Guardian rolling to her knees as soon as she fell. She used the blaster to repair the hole.
"Could've used a warning." The Doctor groaned.
"I'll remember that the next time I save your life." The Guardian stood, glancing around the dark room. She immediately noticed the filled beds.
"Who has a sonic screwdriver?"
"I do." The Doctor defended.
"Doctor..."
"Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks 'ooh, this could be a little more sonic'?"
"What? You're never been bored?"
"Doctor." the Guardian tried again.
"Never had a long night? Never had a lot of cabinets to put up? And look, it can do this!" He pointed the screwdriver at the lights and turned them on.
"Doctor!"
The ward's patients sat up in their beds, then started to get up.
"Door!" Jack yelled. The Doctor grabbed the Guardian's hand and dragged her after Jack.
The blaster didn't work—the batteries having run low—so the Doctor used the sonic screwdriver to open the door. It led to a storeroom.
The Doctor re-sonicked the door behind them. "Okay, that door should hold it for a bit."
"The door?" Jack shouted. "The wall didn't stop it!"
The Guardian motioned for quiet. "It's got to find us first." She glared at him.
"Come one, we're not done yet." The Doctor paced. "Assets, assets."
"Well, I've got a banana, and in a pinch you could put up some shelves."
The Doctor jumped up to look out the window. "Window."
"Barred. Sheer drop outside. Seven stories." The Guardian informed him. "I could do it, but I wouldn't be able to make it back up here in time to rescue you two."
"And no other exits." Jack sat down in a wheelchair in a corner. "Well, the assets conversation went in a flash, didn't it?" He chuckled.
"Then we just have to figure out what is going on here." The Guardian replied. "Doctor, what were you saying just before the child found us? About the children living around the bomb sites?"
The Doctor nodded slowly. "Suppose they were there when the ambulance crashed?"
"It was harmless!"
"Yes, you keep saying 'harmless'." The Guardian replied, picking up the Doctor's train of thought. "Suppose one of them was affected, altered?"
"How?" Jack nearly snapped.
The Guardian's eyes widened as she remembered what sort of medical tech the Chulas used. "Oh!"
She turned to Jack, only to see that he had disappeared. "Jack Harkness?" She sighed in frustration. "I'm going to give him a piece of my mind when he gets back."
"As long as that is the only thing that you plan on giving him," the Doctor muttered. He pulled her to himself. "So how come you're so certain that he's coming back?"
She smirked and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Because he can hear us right now, so he knows that if he abandons us to die, I will hunt him down and make certain that he regrets it."
The radio on a shelf came to life. ~"Thanks for the warning, Red."~
"Where are you?" The Doctor demanded, releasing the Guardian to investigate the radio. The wires were all cut, so there was no way it could have worked.
~"I'm back on my ship. Used the emergency teleport. Sorry I couldn't take you, but it's security-keyed to my molecular structure. I'm still not sure how the Guardian got on board."~
"I hacked into the computer and overrode the security protocols." She replied. "But I did that from our ship's computer. It won't help you right now."
"How're you speaking to us?" The Doctor asked.
~"Om-Com. I can call anything with a speaker grill."~
"Now, there's a coincidence."
~"What is?"~
"The child can Om-Com, too."
The Guardian's eyes widened. "Doctor..."
~"And I can hear you."~ The child's voice called, sing-song. ~"Coming to find you..."~
"Jack, can you block the signal?" The Guardian asked.
~"Yeah. It's the least I can do."~
The child spoke again. ~"Coming to find you, mummy."~
The mellow strains of a soft jazz tune covered the child's voice. The Guardian smiled, taking the seat that Jack had vacated. She sat a little harder than she meant to.
"You alright?"
She nodded. "Just tired. Guess I finally found my limit. Transmatting myself several miles, running through corridors, dropping through floors, and dealing with the psychic residue left in the child's room, all on shockingly little sleep." She shot him a look blaming him for her lack of sleep.
He blushed a little and moved over to the window.
The Guardian tried to rest for several minutes, but the ever-present buzz of the sonic screwdriver made it impossible for her to relax. She stood and walked over to her husband.
"Darling, the concrete resonation is never going to work. You don't have five centuries. And since you insist on disturbing me, we might as well use this time productively—like for me to teach you how to dance."
"I can dance!" The infernal buzzing stopped.
She snorted. "I have yet to meet an incarnation of yours who doesn't have two left feet."
"We have been married a grand total of three weeks. I think I have more than amply proved my dancing abilities."
The Guardian rolled her eyes, but smiled. "Well, now it's time to teach you the form of dancing that people usually don't mind you doing in public."
She pushed herself between him and the wall and took the sonic screwdriver right out of his hands, slipping it into an inside pocket of her jacket. Her smile turned into a smirk as she noticed the Doctor's gaze following her action. With one hand on his chest, she lightly shoved him back into the middle of the room.
"Now, remember. Your hands go here—" she placed one of his hands on her waist. "And here." She took his other hand in hers, and rested her free hand on the arm that was around her waist. "And they don't wander. Especially when you're dancing with someone other than me." She frowned teasingly at him. "And try not to step on my feet. With your luck, we're going to need to run later, and I'm rather not run on bruised feet."
She tried showing him how to dance to the music, but he failed miserably. Only her very fast reflexes kept her feet from being trod on.
After a few minutes they slipped into simply swaying with the music, her head resting on his chest, his face buried in her hair. Her hands were on his shoulders and his arms were around her waist. She smiled at the soft, steady sound of his twin hearts. There was a sound that she could rest to, and enjoyed falling asleep to every night.
She had spent nearly her entire life being the one who was expected to keep everyone safe. Now, for the first time, she had someone to protect her from the nightmares in the dark.
'You make me feel safe, Eltanin.' She whispered telepathically.
He kissed the spot where her neck joined her shoulder. 'I'm glad, Amadahy.'
She knew he understood what that meant, that she actually trusted him to keep her safe, something that she had never given to anyone else before.
"You two are so sweet."
Jack's voice broke in on the peaceful moment. The two Gallifreyans looked up, only now noticing that they were in Jack's ship.
"You know, most people notice when they've been teleported. I had enough time to put the security protocols back in place before I said anything."
"This is a Chula ship," the Doctor noted, releasing the Guardian. Now that they were no longer alone, it seemed that he was just as uncomfortable with their intimate embrace as she was. Even though Jack had no doubt seen far more intimate gestures, being so openly affectionate with an audience didn't feel right. They'd both lived with Gallifreyan propriety for too long.
"Yeah, just like that medical transporter. Only this one is dangerous."
"Does it have nanogenes?" The Guardian asked.
Jack gave her a surprised look. "Yeah..."
The Doctor snapped his fingers, and his hand was surrounded by a flurry of glowing golden flecks. "Burnt my hand on the console when we landed," he explained. The glow disappeared and he held up his hand. "See? All better."
He looked up at the Guardian, his eyes widening in understanding. "Take us to the crash site. I need to see your space junk."
GD~GD~GD~GD~
The Doctor led the Guardian up to the bomb site. Guards patrolled inside the barbed wire.
"Hey, they've got Algy on duty," Jack noted. "It must be important."
The Guardian noticed something in Jack's tone. "I'm waiting for you to volunteer to distract the guard."
"You know me well." Jack winked at her and headed towards the site. "Don't wait up."
The Guardian looked at the Doctor. "Fifty-first century?"
"Fifty-first century."
They watched Jack approach the captain.
'Eltanin, he told me that the Time Agency stole two years of his memories. You must have met him during those two years.' She sighed. 'But he could get them back. Maybe he could remember meeting you the first time again.'
The Doctor shook his head. 'Then I hope he doesn't. The day he met me was the worst day of his life, and he hated me for it. Right now, I'm getting a second chance with… the son of an old friend.'
"Guardian! Doctor!"
They ran over at Jack's call, just in time to see the guard transform into another gas mask creature.
"Stay back!" The Guardian yelled.
Jack gestured to the other guards who had come to help. "You men, stay away!"
The Gallifreyans reached the unconscious form of the guard. "The effect's becoming air-borne, accelerating."
The air raid sirens started up.
"Here they come again." Jack muttered.
"Never mind that," the Doctor replied. "If the contaminant's airborne now, there's hours left."
"For what?"
"The human race." The Guardian turned around. "Does anyone else hear singing?"
They followed the singing to the site's headquarters.
"I'll handle this. You go check out the ship." The Guardian pulled the sonic screwdriver out of her jacket pocket to remind the Doctor that she had it and slipped inside the door.
A young woman was singing to another gas mask creature. This one was asleep with its head on the table, which the young woman was handcuffed to.
"Keep singing," the Guardian whispered.
"Rock-a-bye, baby, on the tree top..."
The Guardian slipped over and sonicked the handcuffs unlocked. The two women hurried out of the building and across the site. Lights flickered on around a large object covered in a tarpaulin.
"Who are you?" The girl asked.
"The Guardian. You?"
"Nancy."
"So it was your brother who died here?"
Something flickered in Nancy's expression as she nodded.
They joined the Doctor and Jack just as Jack spoke. "You see? Just an ambulance."
"That's an ambulance?" Nancy spoke, gesturing to the now-uncovered ship.
"From another world." The Guardian moved around the ship to the control panel. "Someone has been trying to get in."
"Of course they have." The Doctor responded. "They think they've got their hands on Hitler's latest secret weapon."
"What are you doing?" The Guardian snapped, when Jack pushed in between her and the control panel.
He started keying in the access codes. "The sooner you see this thing is empty, the sooner you'll know I had nothing to do with it." He pressed another key.
The panel sparked and an alarm sounded.
"Idiot!" The Guardian shoved Jack away.
"That didn't happen the last time!"
"It hadn't crashed last time!" The Guardian began keying in override codes. After a tense minute, the alarm stopped.
Jack sighed with relief. "That was close."
"No, no, it wasn't." The Doctor moved to look at the hospital. "The Guardian just stopped it from exploding. The alarm still went out. The soldiers are coming."
"Jack, secure the gates!" The Guardian ordered.
He ran over, not even questioning. The Weapon could do that. She tried to force the Weapon down as she turned to Nancy. "How'd you get in?"
"Cut the wire."
"Show the Doctor." She passed him the sonic screwdriver and turned back to the control panel.
"Guardian!" The Doctor cried.
"I need to open this!" She looked up at him. "If I'm right about what is causing this, then our only hope to saving the world could be in here."
There was a moment of hesitation, then he nodded and followed Nancy to the fence.
Jack had returned from securing the gates by the time the Guardian got the ambulance open. She saw faint golden sparkles here and there as the rest of the nanogenes escaped.
"See? It's empty." He said.
"What do you expect in a Chula medical transporter?" The Doctor and Nancy walked back. "Bandages? Cough drops?"
"It wasn't empty, Jack. There was enough nanogenes in there to rebuild a species."
"Oh, god." The Captain looked sick.
"Getting it now?" The Guardian responded. "When the ship crashed, the some of the nanogenes escaped. Probably about a billion of them, ready to do what they were programmed to do—heal the whole world. But what they find first is a dead child, killed earlier that night, and wearing a gasmask. And they bring him back to life."
The Doctor took over. "Because what's life? Life's easy. A quirk of matter. Nature's way of keeping meat fresh. Nothing to a nanogene. One problem, though. These nanogenes, they're not like the ones on your ship. This lot have never seen a human being before. Don't know what a human being's supposed to look like. All they've got to go on is one little body, and there's not a lot left. But they carry right on. They do what they're programmed to do. They patch it up. Can't tell what's gas mask and what's skull, but they do their best. Then off they fly, off they go, work to be done. Because, you see, now they think they know what people should look like, and it's time to fix all the rest. And they won't ever stop."
His voice turned darker, angrier. The Guardian had only met the Warrior a few times, but right now, her husband was the very image of him. "They won't ever, ever stop! The entire human race is going to be torn down and rebuilt in the form of one terrified child looking for its mother, and nothing in the world can stop it!"
"I didn't know!" Jack defended.
The Doctor glared at Jack for a long time.
"Guardian! Doctor!" Nancy shouted. She pointed down the way, where the gas-mask creatures were gathering.
"Wait," Jack said. "Guardian, you said 'the soldiers are coming'. But they aren't soldiers!"
"They are now, Jack. Battle-field nanogenes get you ready for the front lines. That's why the child is so strong, and why he can Om-Com. He's a fully equipped Chula warrior. Four years old, and he has all that weapons tech and an army at his disposal. What child wouldn't tear the world apart to save their mother?"
She blinked away a couple of tears. She had been five when her mother died. If she could have done then what this child could… there would have been no Gallifrey left to enter the Time War.
"Why don't they attack?" Jack asked, looking at the people who surrounded the barbed wire.
The Doctor stood. "Good little soldiers, waiting for their commander."
"The child?" Jack asked.
"Jamie," Nancy snapped.
"What?"
She glared at him. "Not 'the child'. His name is Jamie."
"Doctor, that bomb falls any second."
"What's the matter, Captain?" The Doctor snapped. "A bit too close to the volcano for you?"
"He just a little boy," Nancy said.
The Guardian walked over. "I know."
"He's just a little boy who wants his mummy." She was nearly sobbing now.
The Guardian frowned, thinking. Once again, there was that something in Nancy's voice. The Guardian stepped a tiny bit closer and looked at Nancy better. Her own words came back to her, the ones from when they were in Jamie's room. About single mothers in this time period.
What better way to hide?
"It's my fault." Nancy started crying.
"No," the Doctor replied.
"It is. It's all my fault."
"How can it be your—"
He was cut off as the soldiers began calling, "Mummy!" He spun around, looking at them. Then he looked at the Guardian.
The sounds of bombs dropping drew closer.
"Doctor, that bomb! We've got seconds, and I don't have enough time to override the protocols to teleport you guys out."
"So, it's volcano day. Do what you've got to do."
The Guardian glanced up as Jack vanished, then she turned back to Nancy. Watching the girl stare at all the people, tearing running down her face…
It broke the Guardian's hearts, and brought back memories and thoughts that she had kept buried for twelve hundred years. "Nancy, he's not your brother; he's your son."
The girl flinched and hid her face in her hands.
"You were a single mother in a time that despised such things. So you hid, you lied. Even to him." The Guardian blinked. "I understand, Nancy."
"How could you?" She snapped.
"Because I made the same decision."
She glanced over to see the Doctor's shocked expression. She had forced herself to forget, so he hadn't seen that during their bonding. He had never seen the little girl that she had been forced to give up.
"I gave birth to a little girl, so long ago. But I couldn't keep her. In my culture, such a thing was even more taboo than here. I thought I loved her father, but he didn't love me, and he abandoned us."
Nancy started crying even harder, hearing an echoing of her own story.
"I gave her to my sister to raise. No one ever knew the truth except me and my sister and her husband." And a few members of the High Council. What a death she had been given for that rebellion.
But as for her daughter… as painful as it had been, she had cut off the bond that naturally formed between a mother and her child, and wiped her daughter's memory so the tiny girl would never know the truth—that her father hadn't wanted them and her mother couldn't keep her. Her sister and brother-in-law claimed that her parents were friends who had died.
The gate flew open, the chains snapping. The child called, "Are you my mummy?"
The Guardian put her hands on Nancy's shoulders, making her turn and face her. "Nancy, my daughter died without ever knowing the truth, that her aunt was really her mother. Don't do that to Jamie."
"Are you my mummy?"
"He's going to keep asking, Nancy," the Doctor said. "He's never going to stop."
"Mummy?"
"Tell him, Nancy. The future of the human race is in your hands." The Guardian gave the girl a gentle push in the direction of the boy. She stepped over to the Doctor's side, and he wrapped his arm around her.
Slowly, Nancy walked towards her son, as the little boy repeated, "are you my mummy?"
Nancy took a deep breath. "Yes. Yes, I am your mummy."
"Mummy?"
"I'm here."
"Are you my mummy?"
Nancy knelt down in the dirt and gravel. "I'm here," she whispered.
"Are you my mummy?"
"Yes."
"Are you my mummy?"
"He doesn't understand," the Doctor whispered in dismay. "There's not enough of him left."
"I am your mummy." Nancy spoke with confidence, surprising the Gallifreyans. "I will always be your mummy. I'm so sorry." Shaking her head, she pulled her son into her arms.
A cloud of naongenes surrounded them.
"Oh, please," the Guardian breathed. "Please..."
The Doctor's arm around her waist tightened. "Come on, you clever little nanogenes! Figure it out! The mother—she's the mother. That's got to be enough information!"
"Figure it out..." The Guardian begged.
Jamie released Nancy, and she fell to the ground.
The Doctor and the Guardian hurried over.
"Oh, come on." The Doctor begged as they ran. "Give me a day like this. Give me this one."
The Guardian removed Jamie's gas-mask, revealing a perfectly healthy four-year-old boy.
Laughing, the Doctor picked Jamie up. "Welcome back! Twenty years till pop music—you're going to love it!" He pulled the little boy into a hug, while the Guardian hugged Nancy.
"What happened?" Nancy asked, tears falling down her cheeks.
"The nanogenes recognized your DNA in his—the parent DNA." The Guardian explained. "You changed them, Nancy."
The Doctor laughed again and gave Nancy back her son. He slipped his arm back around the Guardian's waist.
The Guardian glanced up to see a bomb hurtling towards them. "Doctor!"
Suddenly, Jack's ship appeared and caught the bomb in a light beam. Jack transmatted in to sit astride the bomb.
"Doctor!"
"Good lad!"
"The bomb's already commenced detonation. I've put it in stasis, but it won't last long."
"Change of plan. Don't need the bomb. Can you get rid of it, safely as you can?"
"Then, Doctor, Guardian, good-bye." Jack and the bomb disappeared, then the ship flew away.
"And now..." The Doctor released the Guardian and walked a bit away from them, summoning the nanogenes to himself. "Time to email the upgrade."
He threw the nanogenes at the gas-mask people, who fell to the ground. What took the first group a nanogenes a month to achieve only took seconds for the entire amount to undo. Moments later, the patients started standing up, once again human.
The Doctor ran back over the Guardian, pulling her into a fierce hug. She laughed as he spun her around, her feet lifting off the ground. "Everybody lives, Guardian. Just this once, everybody lives!"
He put her down, gave her a quick kiss, then ran over to an old man in a white coat who was looking around, confused. The Guardian couldn't help but smile as she watched her husband run around like an excited puppy.
"Is it always like this?" Nancy asked. "Living with him?"
The Guardian shook her head. "No. Today is a good day. But it's the good days that make it all worth it."
The two women exchanged smiles just as the Doctor ran back over.
He climbed onto the Chula ship. "Right, you lot!" He shouted. "Lots to do. Beat the Germans, save the world, and don't forget the welfare state!" He jumped off. "Guardian, could you set this to self-destruct as soon as everybody's clear?"
"Of course, darling." She typed in the codes. "Just sonic it, and you'll have ten seconds to get clear."
"History says there was an explosion here," he explained to Nancy and Jamie. "Who am I to argue with history?"
"Do you really want me to answer that?" The Guardian teased.
"Oi!"
GD~GD~GD~GD~
Since they had about half an hour before the bomb's stasis completely decayed, the Doctor and the Guardian took a few minutes to organize some things. While the Doctor discussed Nancy and Jamie with Doctor Constantine, the Guardian gave the nanogenes a few last orders, to finish cleaning up the mess and deactivate.
Couldn't have a bunch of nanogenes running around, altering the development of human medicine.
When she finished, she found Nancy waiting for her.
"Where's Jamie?" She asked.
Nancy smiled. "Meeting Doctor Constantine. He wasn't upset or anything. He'll help us. Help me give Jamie the life he should have."
"He'll be amazing, Nancy." The Guardian smiled. She had run back to the alley to fetch the TARDIS, and did a little search through the history books. Apparently, a Doctor James Constantine became a major early researcher into nanotechnology, and he bore a striking resemblance to the little boy they had just saved.
Nancy smiled again and started to walk away, but she stopped. She turned back. "Your daughter..."
The Guardian stiffened.
"What was her name?"
The Guardian sighed. Her sister had insisted on giving the little girl a different name, one that fit the traditions of her husband's family. But she had given her daughter a name too... "Kateri. It means 'pure' in my language, because she truly was the purest thing in my life at the time."
Nancy glanced in the general direction of her son. "I understand. Until you met the Doctor?"
The Guardian smiled. "Yeah. Until I met the Doctor."
GD~GD~GD~GD~
Once they returned to the TARDIS, the Guardian insisted on giving the Doctor another dancing lesson—of the socially acceptable sort.
The Guardian landed the TARDIS in Jack's ship while the Doctor started an instrumental version of "It Had To Be You" playing.
"Jack! Are you coming?" The Guardian shouted, as the Doctor tried to follow her through the dance steps.
Jack ran in and looked around.
The Doctor stopped the lesson to address Jack, not wanting to trod on the Guardian's toes anymore. He was already fortunate that she had fast reflexes and a high pain tolerance. "Close the door, will ya? You're ship's going to blow up."
"There will be draft." The Guardian added.
Jack hurried to obey, and the Guardian piloted the TARDIS away from the exploding ship.
"Welcome to the TARDIS," the Doctor said.
"Much bigger on the inside," Jack commented.
"And your stay here is temporary," the Guardian added. "The Doctor and I have only been married three weeks, so we would like to have a bit more time to ourselves before taking anyone else on board."
"So," the Doctor jumped in, joining the Guardian and wrapping his arm around her waist. "Pick any planet, any timezone. It's yours to live in, and we'll probably pop back in sometime in your future and see if you want to join us."
"Okay..." Jack joined them at the console. The Doctor was mildly surprised that it didn't start sparking furiously. It seemed that the old time machine actually liked Jack, which was always a good sign. "I happen to like London. What do you say to the 26th Century?"
"Easy." The Guardian flipped a switch.
GD~GD~GD~GD~
After dropping Jack off, the Guardian made her way to her training room. The Doctor had asked the TARDIS to build it specifically for her, exactly as she wanted it.
She chose a program that would fire harmless, though slightly painful, lasers at her, which she had to dodge. Anything to help her work through the memories that had been brought back up today.
She had been at it for over an hour when the program powered down. She looked over to see the Doctor stepping out of the control room.
"I never thought of her as my daughter, Eltanin." She answered his unspoken question. "After I gave her up, I forced myself to think of her as my sister's daughter. It was the only way I could cope."
It was actually rather ironic. Her daughter had married his grandson. And here they were, married now.
The Doctor knew about the relationship that had given her Kateri—she had never blocked that from him. There really wasn't much to add to what he already knew.
"Dance with me, Amadahy?"
She snorted. "You still can't dance."
He grinned. "Well, you never know. Maybe I've remembered."
She shook her head, but stepped into his arms. To her surprise, he lead her in a much faster, more energetic dance than the traditional Gallifreyan waltz she had been trying to teach him. And he did it well, without stepping on her feet once.
As a grand finish, he picked her up at the waist and spun her around. She laughed putting her arms around his neck as he set her down again. She kissed him.
"Alright, Eltanin, you win. You can dance."
GD~GD~GD~GD~
Okay, I nearly died writing the scene in the storage cupboard. So. Much. Fluff. I have everything plotted out up to 'The Husbands of River Song' (so I'm not kidding when I say that pretty much everything that I change I'm changing for a reason), but I think this point in the Doctor and the Guardian's relationship is my favorite, next to the Guardian and 12's. (*spoilers*)
Confession: I found it a bit strange that the nanogenes took a whole month to do all the damage they did, but then were able to undo it in a few seconds.
Also, I hate to sound like one of those super needy writers who beg for reviews, but I really would love to know what people think of the story, the Guardian, theories about the Doctor's past relationship with Jack, etc.
Next time: It isn't actually an episode from series 1... but series 2? A few familiar faces resurface.