Don't you just hate how teachers start reviews for finals at the end of April when finals are in June? Oh, and, uh, this chapter proves why it's rated 'T' not 'K-plus'... Not that it's anything more than vague hinting, but... Yeah, I'm just going to type up the chapter now...

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At some point last night, they must have fallen asleep. Or at least, that was the only conclusion that the Doctor could come up with as to why Rose was cuddled against him. And, backing up his mental validation, she was asleep. Admittedly, his idea meant that he had fallen asleep as well, which, to be honest, would be odd. After all, Time Lords don't need to sleep like humans do. But even the Doctor had to admit that if he was going to sleep, it wouldn't be bad to wake up like this.

A thought that was only reinforced in his mind when Rose kissed him as she awoke.

XXXXXXXX

"Alright," Seren said, entering the console as she checked the fit of the vest she had nicked from the wardrobe. "Where are we headed, then?"

"We're not," Karlex said. "The Doctor and Rose have yet to show up."

"And...?" Seren asked. "That means we can't go anywhere? What kind of rubbish is this?"

"Look, it's not my ship," Karlex said. He knew that he was really just making excuses in an attempt to try and limit how much trouble the eighteen year old could get into. "Besides, there's plenty to do in the TARDIS... Go play in the Zero Room or something. Or read a book."

"I don't want to," Seren pouted. Emrys stifled a laugh. "And I can't find the TV room. The TARDIS keeps moving everything on me!"

Jenny giggled. "You're so... Childish, I guess."

"And you aren't?" Seren asked, defensively. "Besides, the Doctor is more of a child than me..."

"No argument there," Karlex said with a snicker. With a soft nudge from the TARDIS (she was just as bad at holding grudges as her owner) he was reminded of Seren's comment yesterday before leaving Earth. "Actually, Seren, I need a word with you."

"Fine," Seren grumbled, knowing that when Karlex needed to speak to her, it was something major. However, she still danced to a song in her head until Karlex pretty much shoved her down in a chair in what seemed to be a sitting room. "Pushy maniac."

"Seren..." his tone wasn't threatening, but it left no room for argument.

"Fine, I'll stop," she said. "Now, I assume this is about why I agreed to 'play' family with Jenny?"

"Perceptive as ever, I see," Karlex said, but not coldly. "So... Why?"

"Would you believe me if I said that it was because I was lonely?" Seren asked, giving up her hopes of a facade with him. "I have you and Emrys, but..."

"But you know who I was and you can't see Emrys as a brother," Karlex realized, ignoring the pang of knowing that Seren was just one more person that he could never really be close to.

"Yes and no, or rather; no and yes," Seren said, a somewhat sad smile on her face. "Yes, I know who you were, but that doesn't mean you can't be 'Uncle' Karlex. But Emrys... Oh, I don't know how to explain it..."

"I do," Karlex said, telling himself that Seren's calling him 'Uncle' didn't make him feel both elated and guilty. "You love him. Not as Rose loves Jack, but as she loves the Doctor."

Seren half-heartedly glared at him for 3.57 seconds before dropping her gaze to the floor. "Anyway, now that we've talked, wanna grab the others and watch a movie? I doubt Miss Tyler and her beau will be joining us, though..."

"Seconded," Karlex said. "Although I'm not entirely sure how long the 'Miss' thing will last..."

Seren grinned. "Well, duh. Come on. Let's see if Captain Jack is familiar with Captain Jack."

Karlex snorted. He knew for a fact that Jack was, and so maybe he had done a little snooping into Harkness' timeline, whatever. It wasn't like he would that for evil.

No, he was on the side of good, of light, of order. And he intended to stay there.

XXXXXXX

Around an hour later, the Doctor wasn't entirely sure what had just happened. All he knew was that it had.

"You know, if we stay here much longer, the others will start to wonder... Especially Jack," Rose said, but made no real attempt to do anything to change the situation.

"Mmhmm," the Doctor said.

About five minutes later, by mutual consent, both agreed that maybe letting the others think what they would wasn't so bad.

XXXXXXX

Jack was bored. The others had left to go watch a movie, the Doctor and Rose were still hiding somewhere, and he had finished cleaning up the mess that was caused by the pancakes.

"Avast, coward!"

Jack blinked. Apparently it had taken him a lot longer than he thought to clean up the batter, not that he was surprised (how on Earth do you get pancake batter up the faucet, anyway?), because Jenny was standing in front of him, decked out as a pirate.

And pointing a toy sword at him.

"Arrg, matey, what has ye found?" Seren showed up, also in pirate grab. Her sword was tucked in her forest green sash, though. Jenny had gone with the more traditional red colouring for her belt.

"A scurvy dog ready to walk the plank!" Jenny said, waving a hand with more cheap rings on it than Jack could count. "Do we take 'im to the Cap'n?"

"It'll pro'lly be best we do," Seren replied, making Jack wonder who the 'Cap'n' was. "Get yer feet moving, landlubber."

Jack complied, mortal curiosity overpowering the fact that the swords at his back were plastic toys, and couldn't do much. "So, tell me ladies," and he feverishly hoped the Doctor wasn't the Captain, because Jack did not want Jenny telling her father he had tried flirting because of a game, "who's these lovely 'Cap'n' of yours?"

"Do ye want to walk the plank, landlubber?" Seren asked, poking him with her sword. "Get in there or it's the brig for ye."

"The TARDIS has a brig?" Jack wondered out loud.

"Well, judging from the fact that this place seems to have everything, including a swimming pool in the library, I would assume it would have a brig," Karlex said with an amused grin on his face.

"We brought 'im to ye, Cap'n!" Jenny shouted, and now that Jack takes the time to look closely, he can see burning humour in the eyes of the two 'pirates'.

"Yes, thank you, girls," Karlex said. "Now, why don't you go plunder a village or something? I'm sure if you looked, you could find one on this crazy old ship..."

"Aye aye, Cap'n!" both chime in unison, racing out the door with the fake swords drawn.

"Do I even want to know what that was all about?" Jack asked, calmer now that he knew he wasn't actually going to be knocked into the swimming pool or something. Without really knowing either Jenny or Seren, he hadn't been sure what to expect. Admittedly, he didn't know Karlex either, but the older Time Lord had earned some of his respect with heir conversation last night.

"Apparently watching Pirates of the Caribbean made them want to be pirates," Karlex said with a small shrug. "Life here isn't going to be boring, that's for sure."

"When is it with the Doctor around?" Jack asked, grinning.

"Good question. Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer, or even an answer at all. However, that's not why I wanted to talk to you."

"Lemme guess... You want me to keep what you told me last night to myself?" Jack asked, having figured out where this conversation was probably going.

"Perceptive, Captain," Karlex said. "And yes. Myself and Seren are the only two with full knowledge of the Doctor's past, besides him himself, of course. I do think he would appreciate you not spreading his history to everyone. In fact, I'm not entirely sure he would appreciate my having told you anything at all."

"Hey, I got it covered," Jack said, downplaying the situation to put an obviously worried Karlex at ease. "Now... I believe you owe me a game of chess from last night?"

XXXXXXX

Donna was somewhat bored. Yes, she was enjoying the wonderful respite from all the running, but even so, it just seemed so very quiet in the TARDIS. The Doctor and Rose had yet to return (not that she thought or expected that they would return anytime soon) and Seren and Jenny had run off somewhere.

"Well, maybe I can finally get a little reading done, then." With that she wandered towards the library, a little bit surprised to find it already occupied.

"Hello," the raven haired boy said, not looking up from his book. "Sit down anywhere, you want to, Miss Noble. I promise I won't bite."

"Donna," she corrected, almost automatically. "And your Emrys, right?"

"Correct," he replied, flicking through the book at a seemingly impossible speed. "If there's a particular book you're looking for, I'm afraid it might not be where you left it. Karlex was here, and he can be a little obsessive compulsive about organizing stuff."

"I was going to read another Agatha Christie mystery," Donna admitted. "Spaceman and I ran into her recently, and I figured I might as well reread a few of them to get that new perspective, you know?"

"Third shelf from the bottom," Emrys said, pointing at the bookshelf nearly directly behind him.

"Thanks," Donna said as she grabbed one of the books she hadn't read yet and starting it. "What's that you're reading?"

"Mein Kampf," Emrys said.

"Hitler's manifesto?" Donna asked, surprised. "Why would you read that?"

"I was bored and it's in German," Emrys explained. "One of my hobbies is reading in languages other than English unless unavoidable. That way I'll be able to communicate without having to rely on the translation cortex. Plus, Karlex said this book might help me understand the way crazy people think... Bad crazy people, not good ones," he amended, remembering that he was on the Doctor's TARDIS.

"Ah," Donna said, accepting the explanation rather than give herself a headache trying to understand Emrys' mentality.

"Why do you call the Doctor Spaceman?" Emrys said, looking up as the nickname came back to him.

"Because he claims he's not a Martian," Donna said with a smile.

"Of course he's not a Martian," Emrys said, settling back into his book. "I mean, he's not your standard Time Lord either, but he is a Gallifreyan."

"So who exactly are the three of you?" Donna asked after trying and failing to focus on her book.

"Time Lords, at least genetically," Emrys said, setting down his own book. "I will admit, I bio-scanned Karlex to be sure. But after spending a few years with the guy, I've grown to trust him. He really is like a weird uncle that would say he didn't like you until you got in trouble, and then he would make sure whatever might have hurt will never have the ability to do so again. Like when Seren made a mistake and was caught by some crazy scientists."

"How old was she then?" Donna asked, having needled enough information out of the Doctor to know that Time Lords grew up at a similar rate to human for their first twenty years or so.

"Look, and you can't tell anyone about any of this, or Seren'll kill me, but since she won't tell you, I will, but Seren isn't exactly eighteen by a few rules. Technically, she's around thirty or so. But chronologically, she's eighteen," Emrys said, groaning when Donna just gave him a 'what?' look. "When Seren was 'born', she was already physically twelve years old. After all, there was a war going on, so the Looming age was changed from infant to preteen. There was also an immediate post-birth information upload, so that she would be able to, for the most part, take care of herself."

"So she's thirty but she's eighteen?" Donna asked, having gotten the TARDIS to translate a book on Gallifrey for her so she knew what Emrys was trying to saw, even there were parts she was fuzzy on.

"Exactly," Emrys said. "She was ten when he rescued us... And then when she was thirteen, ran off on her own for a year..."

"Karlex mentioned that," Donna said, remembering that conversation from earlier.

"Well, two years ago, she had gone off her own for a few days, because that's how she was until after what happened on that last excursion," Emrys said. "She accidentally bumped into a few scientists, and when they found out she wasn't human..."

"They dragged her off to a lab," Donna realized.

"Yeah, and let me tell you, if you've seen the Doctor when he looks ready to kill, Karlex was that and a little bit more. By his nature, the Doctor is pacifistic. Karlex is not. I can't tell you where to go to give the scientist what-for, because the place is gone. As are they," Emrys' face was dark as he said that, and Donna realized that no matter what they say or do; Seren and Emrys are insanely in love, so much so that they would quite literally kill to protect each other. And that if Karlex cares for someone, you should have your will in order if you're going to hurt them, even if it's only a little bit.

"What pushed him over the edge?" Donna asked, almost afraid of the answer.

"They wouldn't just let her go," Emrys said. "One of them tried dragging her to one the cryo-units by her hair. Seren fought, and in the struggle, a beaker of some kind of acid was knocked over and splashed onto her left forearm. ...I had never heard someone scream like that before, and I never want to hear that ever again."

"Oh my god..." Donna was speechless.

"She still has scars from it," Emrys said, not seeming to have heard Donna. "But I don't remember too much after that... Just Karlex getting us out of there, because I was in shock and Seren had a very ugly chemical burn on her arm, not to mention a few minor injuries from before we got there. When I went back the next day, the place was levelled, and I mean levelled. Just a big bare patch of land. Only dust was left..."

Donna realized that the trio of Time Lords probably had even more secrets, and something told her that those secrets wouldn't stay that way forever.

Yet, at the same time, Donna remembered how Seren had agreed to let Jenny 'adopt' her as a sister, and she had to wonder whether maybe bad things had to happen in order to fully appreciate all the good.

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Ok, so I put a little bit more emphasis on Seren that I meant to... But in my defence, I felt it necessary to help you guys get a better understanding of Emrys, because I felt like I was kinda neglecting him. Plus, it felt right to have Donna be the one he first connects with outside of their Trio, seeing as she's going to be playing a part in a few of the things to come... I've got like, five plots going at one time, and that's ignoring the bigger ones that haven't fully gotten into play yet. The list is as follows:

-Karlex's dynamics with the other members of the TARDIS crew (specifically Jack, Seren, and later the Doctor)

-Seren's and Emrys' little 'tip-toe about each' other deal

-What Rose is hiding (yes, she's hiding something. It's one of the still open challenges)

-The Doctor's and Rose's relationship (It's a 10/Rose fic. This is a vital plot in these things)

-The overall dynamics of the TARDIS crew (emphasis on Jenny's and Seren's comradeship)