AN: I am returned now from my exam hell! I am now almost free of assessment-based responsibilities until October, isn't that swell? Although I do have 2 group presentations on June 6th. Currently just getting back into the swing of things, but this storyline should be a good one, I'm gonna work hard on it. Well, this chapter is a bit meh, but it is what it is.

DAY 149

Another Fine Mess

Jenny

For about an hour so far that morning she had been walking back and forth on a balance beam, which was less of a beam and more of a long metal pipe that was very thin and handily sturdy. She had gotten bored of the slackline, and the tightrope was old news, about a hundred and eighty years out of date. It was tricky retraining her busted hand to hold her weight and balance again, but she was still grateful for the new addition of a fancy, state-of-the-art gym on the TARDIS. It even had a boxing ring that projected fightable holograms, though she wasn't too keen on them because they didn't pack much of a punch. Or any punch. It was good to practice dodging, but that was all.

"Would Martha be happy to see you doing that with your hand?" Jenny was interrupted. "And what would your girlfriend say if she saw you so high in the air?" She wasn't facing the door, and was presently standing upside-down balanced on one hand on the pipe. Her bad hand. She loosened her grip and let herself fall, swinging around until she was hanging off it and could see who had come to intrude. It was River Song.

"My girlfriend can fly, she's no stranger to heights," Jenny said, "And I'm only twenty feet up, that's nothing. I could do a highwire act at more than triple this without breaking a sweat."

"Oh, I'd pay to see that."

"People did," Jenny said, switching hands, "The circus was an easy life, for a while. Did you want something?" She pulled herself back up again so that she could stand on the pipe, glancing at her thumb as she did. It was very sore. She needed to get her brace on to keep the crooked appendage hidden from Martha.

"A word with you," River said, "Preferably on level footing."

"Oh, there's enough room on the beam here for a whole troupe," Jenny said, walking up and down along it. She didn't even need to use her arms to balance. She would never understand why humans were so clumsy all the time, especially Clara, who had tripped on nothing and fallen up the stairs at least three times during Jenny's last visit. It was a lucky thing vampires couldn't get grazed knees.

"I think I'll stay down here."

"Are you sure? There's a ladder. It's trickily narrow, of course, but doable," Jenny shrugged, pointing at one end of one of the vertical poles holding up the other pole she was standing on. It had little metal twigs sticking out of it at awkward angles; she loved a challenge. River Song looked at it disdainfully, then looked at Jenny more disdainfully, who sighed. "Fine, I guess I'll come down, if you're not metal enough."

"Because there's nothing more 'metal' than gymnastics."

"I'll show you what's 'metal,'" Jenny persisted, then she proceeded to do a double-somersault off the beam, grabbing a trapeze from where it hung in the air, which began to slowly descend and return her to solid ground. When she was a few feet away, she dropped down lightly and mockingly bowed to River, now in front of her. The trapeze rose back up and away now that it didn't have her weight to pull on it. River slow-clapped a few times, and Jenny smiled.

"Impressive."

"Thank you, never had one lesson," she said.

"God, are you sweating at all?"

"From that? No, I'd have to be on the weights for a good few hours to sweat," Jenny said, "That's nothing. Like walking to the shops. Should've seen me when I did four-hundred push-ups with Clara sitting on my back."

"What was she doing on your back?"

"Reading poetry."

"Sounds like her. You're wearing a scarf, too; why in the world?"

"Clara knitted it for me," Jenny said, touching the scarf defensively. Had she taken that scarf off at all for five days? No. Except when she showered. And when she didn't need to be reminded of Clara, because Clara was present. Very sensually present.

"What are the tiny blobs supposed to be? Stars?"

"No! They're bats. It's the cutest thing I've ever seen, alright?" Jenny grew angry.

"Well. The pair of you do seem very… attached."

"What do you want then, River?" Jenny changed the subject, going to retrieve her bottle of water where it was on the floor next to the cross-trainer she would be damned if she ever used. She hated cross-trainers, and most of those machines. They were no appropriate surrogate for real-world experience, or the kinds of gruelling challenges she often faced just because that was what happened when you lived in a time machine and made it your mission to help everybody you came across. And it was exactly this penchant for helping people that was about to get her into another scrape.

"I think Jack's got himself into trouble," River said. Jenny went cold. Metaphorically cold, that was; she was still wearing a woolly scarf, after all.

"Oh? And that's my business?"

"Don't pull that face, Jenny," River said sternly, in a maternal way, but it happened to be a maternal way that Jenny wholly resented. She didn't even like her actual mother speaking down to her, let alone her dad's ex-wife. By the way she backtracked, it was clear that River Song sensed she had made a grave mistake. "What I mean is, I thought you reconciled with him."

"I keep trying, but he's not buying it. Why should I have to go rescue him? Can't you help him out on your own?" Jenny questioned her, crossing her arms. Her bad thumb was swelling up.

"Your arm's bleeding."

"What? Oh," Jenny glanced down at her left arm, which she'd been shot in during her car chase in New Orleans five days earlier. "That's nothing, just a bullet wound." River didn't ask about it, just cast a disapproving look over the red splotch growing on the bandage. Maybe she should have sewn it up? She'd sewn herself back together before; she could easily withstand the pain. "Why do you need my help? Get someone Jack actually likes, like Mickey or Martha. Martha's got those agility skills now, she can do Kung Fu, and all sorts," Jenny said, briefly doing a mime of punching thin-air as she spoke. She may have made some theatrical noises to go along with it.

"I'd rather have you."

"You don't fancy me, do you?"

"You have a very particular skillset, Jenny. You think I'd have come to you first if there was anyone else? The only other person I would bring on this sort of thing is Jack, and obviously, he isn't here. I wouldn't have chosen to have put up with you being so stubborn," River said.

"Stubborn!?" Jenny exclaimed. She wasn't stubborn! Was she? She was flung into a crisis, one which induced her to find her phone as soon as possible and immediately ask Clara if she was what River accused her of being. Thinking of this, she saw her phone nearby, but did not go to get it. Merely made a mental note. "I'm not the one who's stubborn, he's still been making digs at me."

"Yes, but not for the last five days he hasn't while he's been missing," River said.

"Jack can get himself out of trouble. Since when does he need rescuing? He's the one you send in to do the rescuing. That's like… that's like me needing to be rescued, and when was the last time that happened?" Jenny questioned, crossing her arms.

"What have I got to do? Pay you?" River questioned.

"Pay me?"

"A fancy gun."

"I have plenty of guns."

"Then won't you just come because I'm asking for your help?" River wouldn't drop it. Jenny didn't think for a second that Jack was in all that much danger at all, considering he couldn't actually die and he had as much of a knack as any of them did for figuring ingenious ways out of sticky situations, but she was being asked personally to help someone. And maybe that someone was her dad's ex-wife, and maybe the other someone was her kind-of-ex-husband whose name she had now dropped in favour of her ancient 'Young' moniker, but… well, she was bored, and running out of activities to do to stop herself from going to impose her company onto Clara's evening.

"What's your lead then, hmm? What have you got?" she asked.

"He went to a museum."

"A museum? Jack? What's he want in a museum? Not reminiscing about the war again?" she asked, being cynical. But she was intrigued. What was Jack doing hanging around in a museum? They had a time machine, they didn't need museums. If he was dying to go back to World War Two, he could just go back and pay a visit to a dance hall. For weeks, Jenny had been working out a way to get Clara to come with her to a dance hall, but Clara did not seem too keen on the idea.

"Well it isn't technically a museum, it's a private collection," River said, "The TARDIS helped me out while I was searching – he arrived there on the wrong day, undershot, was aiming for a Friday evening the week after when a black market auction was happening. I think he got caught without the cover of the auction, and he hasn't been back to the TARDIS since."

"Right. Black market auction. You want us to go there a week later to find out what he was looking for?" Jenny asked. River nodded. "You know, I've got a friend who can turn into a bat and doesn't show up on cameras-"

"Your girlfriend can't come."

"…I have another friend who can walk through walls they've started calling 'the Phantom.'"

"Nobody who looks like Clara Oswald can come. Nobody else can come. How would it look with half a dozen people all sneaking into an elite criminal auction?" River asked her.

"Honestly, I just think she's cute it's not against the law…"

"But this auction is. You don't mind about dragging her into your criminal business anymore?"

Jenny paused, and eventually gave up. "…Fine. Me and you. Black market auction. Don't see why we're going afterwards, surely it would be easier to go on the same night and drag him out of there."

"Time lines are complicated," River said, "This way will be easier. We'll just schmooze whoever's in charge and they might tell us all about a break-in the week before."

"We'll 'schmooze'?" Jenny asked, doing inverted commas with her fingers. If they were having to schmooze people, her attractive undead girlfriend was probably the best person for the job. She would suggest herself, but she'd really lost her edge in the flirting department since regenerating.

"I'll schmooze. You can stand guard, or something. I'll be easy. Just like doing an elaborate trapeze performance sixty feet in the air."

"Alright, alright. Where is this auction, then? When?"

"My century, Jack and I. 5091. New Earth."

"'New Earth'? You're going to have to do better than that, there are at least a thousand 'New Earths.'"

"Earth 3-B."

"B? I wouldn't trust a B planet as far as I can throw it; the only people who live on those are rich criminals," Jenny said very quickly when she heard the name 'Earth 3-B', "All crooks, the lot of them."

"Crooks?"

"Yep. I won't go. I won't associate with them. People who have no respect for the law are really the lowest of the low, don't you think? You'd best look for Jack on your own," she said, going to walk past River. River stepped out of her way as she tried to get out of the room very quickly.

"Crooks like Zero?" she said. Jenny Young stopped dead in the middle of the room and turned around on her heel.

"You could get Jack just fine on your own, couldn't you? You don't need me."

"It took a lot of digging the last few days to put the pieces together, Jenny," River said smugly. Yes, yes. So she could use a highly advanced space-machine to hack a few computers and come up with some rogue ideas about Jenny. Why was everyone so interested in her past all of a sudden? It had all started when she had gone with them to Korix and retrieved Emmett the month before, she was sure. Then it had all kicked off, and she couldn't get away from herself, like being chased by a ghost. "Why is it the Blacklight Society call you Zero?"

"What's a 'blacklight society'?" she feigned ignorance.

"Oh, you know exactly what it is, and maybe there aren't any photos of you hanging around with them in that century, but there are eye witnesses and colleagues of yours who spoke to me. It's actually been a mystery that's intrigued me for a while, I have to admit – who is the star member of the Fifty-First Century's most prestigious and secretive thieves' guild? In the end, I wasn't very surprised to work out it was you. You really are so much like him," she said, "Remarkable when he didn't even raise you."

"Telling Jenny how much like her father she is seems to be everybody's favourite hobby at the moment," she grumbled. She didn't go a day without someone commenting about how she was 'just like the Doctor.' "So this is a Blacklight Society auction, then?"

"No," said River, "I assume there will be some members there, though. How kind of them to donate the things they steal to rich people to sell off to each other."

"Listen, I was in it for the adrenaline, just like the rest of them. That's the entire reason people join the Blacklight Society and why it's so esteemed, because the people involved don't have any greedy motivations. Most of the time. Well, I… it's a very splintered and loose organisation, lots of separate cells. If you think dragging me there will get some pull, you're wrong. I doubt they'd like their old wunderkind hanging around in their heavily-guarded auction. No honour among thieves, and all that," Jenny said.

"Yes, but in case we do have to steal something, I'd quite like to have you around to help. And it isn't hosted by the Blacklight Society, I just presume some of the items there were stolen by them," River said.

"Oh, brilliant," Jenny muttered. "Let's just go to a highly clandestine black market auction and sneak around looking for Jack, shall we? As if this is the kind of place he goes, this is just like him. What was he after? This was all because Liam Kent said something weird about Esther, you know, then he ran off. What's Liam Kent got to do with a black market in the Fifty-First Century?"

"We'll have to go and find out, won't we? Now. First things first. Do you own a sexy evening gown?"