Notes: I want to thank everyone who reviewed, but a special thanks goes out to jonojigsaw. This chapter and every fourth one that follows it owes their existence to their review. And I'll try to get a bit more inventive within the existing episodes, too, but-well, I don't want to give too much away. Spoilers! ^_~

Also, I want to give credit to Wikipedia for their article on Jeanne Poisson. The poster the Doctor uses is there, along with several other images if you want to take a look. This is where I got my information on her life.

I've got a rough outline of the whole book, which will go through the end of BtVS Season 2 and will also cover Army of Ghosts/Doomsday. Ideas and constructive criticism are definitely welcome, and please let me know if I commit any major blunders.

Warning for this chapter: mentions of spousal and child abuse. Nothing on camera, though.

Chapter 4: Nightmares

"EXTERMINATE!" The Dalek slowly rotated his top dome toward the three teenaged girls, and no matter how Xander struggled, he couldn't free himself to release them. Buffy was knocked out, and Willow and Cordielia were tied too tightly to escape. "WATCH AS YOUR FRIENDS DIE, HUMAN!"

One by one, their bodies were illuminated from within by the extermination ray as Xander mutely screamed in denial. Then the dome turned to him, and horribly, he welcomed it. "EXTERMINATE!"

The green light of the Dalek's extermination ray still bright across his eyes, Xander woke screaming, and he knew he was in trouble. He'd been talking to the Doctor a little about his nightmares and it was helping, but the trouble wasn't going to come from his subconscious. It was going to come from his father.

Tony Harris was neither nice nor patient, and this was the third nigh in a row that Xander had screamed his way out of sleep. If Tony woke up, Xander was really going to be in for it. Xander had gotten pretty good at fighting vampires over the last year and a half or so, at least for a living non-slayer human, but he knew that wasn't the same thing. Tony was human, but he was big, well muscled from his work in construction, and...

Xander saw the hallway light come on and cursed quietly. He had to get out of the house, but-the window. The basement did have a small window that he might be able to escape by. There wasn't much time, so he grabbed his shoes and his book bag. He stuffed a couple of changes of clothes and his alarm clock into the bag. Then he moved the end table to the window and climbed up on it.

"Xander, you little shit! You woke me up again!" Tony's voice was right outside the door. Xander jumped up, pulling himself through the window and out into the yard. He stopped and looked around, making sure he wasn't going to run into a passing vampire, then took off for the high school. The janitor always left the library wing doors unlocked so that they could get in, having reached an understanding with Giles long ago. He could get into the gym, the locker-room. Hell, he could go into the attic where Marcie Ross, the girl who had turned invisible, had made her little nest. There was a futon mattress up there he could sleep on. He'd be able to wake up early in the morning and run down to the locker room for a shower and to do his laundry. He'd just have to make sure not to run into anyone else who might be there in the middle of the night.

The school was always a little eerie at night, but that was only to be expected. Most buildings will take on a spooky tone in the dark, and everything is spooky in Sunnydale, anyway. It didn't bother Xander because, to be honest, the school was more of a home to him than home was. He wouldn't ever go home if he didn't have to, and now, well, he wasn't going home anyway.

He pushed that thought back. He needed to get hidden before he allowed himself to think about what he'd done. He walked through the empty halls until he reached the band room. Marcie Ross had moved into the school after she had literally disappeared, and then she had started tormenting the bullies who had tormented her. Buffy'd stopped her, but then the men in black had come and taken her away. Idly, he wondered if this world had anything like UNIT or Torchwood. If it did, that was where Marcie ended up. But her little cave upstairs was still there, and he was moving in. It wasn't like she could charge him rent.

Xander climbed the trophy cases under the loose ceiling tiles and then up into the vent space that Marcie had made into her little bedroom. There were some definite improvements that would have to be made, both for his comfort and for safety. He'd need a more stable crawlway, with some cross-bracing to support his weight with frequent travel. He'd need to bring a trash bag up here and get rid of Marcie's stuff. He'd also need to sneak back into his parents' house at some point to get more of his laundry and the few small Time Lordy projects he had lying around the basement. And his bed linens as hers were horribly girly.

He also needed to figure out what to do about money. Living in the school he'd have free use of the facilities and water, but he was going to need money for food and toiletries, for school supplies and for his tinkering. He was trying to build a sonic screwdriver from strictly Earth-based materials, and that was no mean feat.

He couldn't go get a job. Anything like that at his age would raise red flags with the authorities, and anything with set hours would keep him from having the freedom of movement necessary to help Buffy and Giles. But he might be able to do some things with computers. He could write some security software that would net a good amount of cash, have it deposited in an account under an assumed name. Since he had solutions to problems that didn't even exist yet, but that would rear their heads over the next twenty years, he could even start a company, hire Willow when she was older.

For tonight, though, he just needed sleep. His head was really hurting, both physically and mentally, and emotionally he was just drained. He cleared all the stuff off of Marcie's bed being careful with the piccolo because he thought he could probably sell it for a few bucks. He crawled into the bed and tried to get comfortable.

But his mind wouldn't be quiet. He had run, not from an alien enemy or a demon, but from his own father. Because his father would have come down into the basement and beaten the crap out of him. Unexpected and unwanted tears clouded his eyes. He hadn't cried in years, and he didn't plan on starting back up now. Still a tear rolled softly down each cheek before he could stop himself, and he wiped them angrily away.

Willow didn't even know about his old man, he'd hidden this that well for that long. The Doctor might know, because they'd been joined at the cranium, but the Time Lord had been very considerate of that temporary connection and hadn't looked, so he might not. Giles and Buffy certainly didn't know, and if Cordelia knew it would have gotten all over the school. He wasn't just running; he was hiding, and he swore to himself that one day the hiding would stop, even if the running never did.

And somehow he knew that this was a major shift in the timeline, the toy sonic being in the bin being the minor one. He would have dressed as a soldier, and now that thought made him shudder, but it would have given him a different solution to the problem of his father. For now, he knew that he was different, and that his changing timeline touched the most crucial one in their generation; that of the Slayer. He was her friend, so what affected him would affect her. And that was why he was hiding. He had to insulate his friends from his changes, or he could cause major ripples in their time streams.

Unless he could change Buffy's at that critical moment in her future. But that was so dangerous. If it was fixed that she die at that point in space-time he couldn't change it. Reapers-the thought made him shiver. They would eat the whole planet, and it would be his fault. But if it wasn't fixed-

By some instinct he stopped thinking about it. The line of thought literally cut itself off. That made him frown. That was something new. Since when did his mind have instinctive time controls?

His eyes widened. Time-related instincts were a Time Lord trait, a part of their biology that had developed to prevent paradoxes caused by their travelign through time and space. It was why one who met a younger version of himself would remember the encounter, but the younger one would not. He now had that instinct, keeping him from focusing on Buffy's future because-

Because he could see it! Xander's eyes caught the movement of a mouse running along the beams toward the general direction of the cafeteria, and knew that would be the perfect test. He focused on the mouse, on her tiny timeline. Even so small a creature had a path through tiem, and it would be a safe one to look at. Sure enough, he watched it unfurl before him, that thin golden strand that started six months ago and ended three months from now in the jaws of a stray cat.

Looking made Xander's head hurt, and no wonder. Human minds weren't meant to be able to do that, and he was definitely stretching his neurons with that stunt. But he could do it, and that was just amazing! It was scary as hell, but still quite fascinating. He needed to tell the Doctor about this, for sure. He'd be able to help him train this ability.

Tomorrow was a Saturday. Maybe he could catch the Doctor on Monday. Meanwhile, he needed to get some sleep, and then get the loft set up tomorrow and Sunday. It wasn't urgent enough to push it faster than that.

Tony Harris had to be at work at six a.m. Saturday morning. It was construction work, and his company staggered the shifts so they could get more work done, running half the crew Sunday to Thursday and the other half Tuesday to Saturday. This meant that he wouldn't be in the house. His mother would be.

Tamara Judah-Harris married Tony when she was only eighteen, and already pregnant with their son. His alcoholism and violence drove her alcoholism and withdrawal, but to Xander she had always been loving, kind and attentive. He wasn't worried about her causing him a problem; he was only worried about her remaining with Tony.

He waited behind the bushes that lined the border between their yard and the neighbor's for his father to leave the house. The man was obviously still hung over, but since it was Saturday, Xander would have all day long to get moved what he needed to. Once the truck was well down the road, he left the bushes and went into the house by the front door.

Tamara was sitting on the big couch in the living room, holding a bag of frozen peas on her left eye. Rage flooded his mind, but for her sake he squashed it. She needed his compassion right now, not vengeance. "Mom?"

"Xander? Are you okay? Tony said you ran away last night."

"I did." He sighed, guild coming in under the rage. "I should have stayed so he wouldn't take it out on you." He sat down next to her and pulled her into a hug. "You need to get out of here. There's no reason for you to stay anymore. I'm not coming back here. Go to Grandma Judah's or your sister's place."

Indecision flitted across her face. "I don't know if I'm strong enough."

"Of course you are! You're brilliant! You're so much better than he lets you be, and I'll help you get out of here. I'll help you pack you car up right now as long as you're sober enough to drive it, or we'll call you a cab if you're not. But once you're out, I want you to get some help. Alcoholics Anonymous, Women's Services, a church, something. Stop the drinking, go to school, build a life. I know you can do this, Mom." He kissed her forehead.

She looked at her son, studying his face. He watched her, too, and judged her sober enough to drive. Some exercise would do her good, as well, and she'd get that in the packing. "You've changed. Grown up, I guess." Looking at her hands, she said, "You don't need me anymore."

He shook his head. "No, no now you listen to me." He held her face in his hands so she was looking at him. "I will always need you. But right now I need you safe."

Tears rolled down her face. "Come with me."

He shook his head. "There's people here who need me, people I've sworn to help. But don't think you're getting rid of me. We'll keep in touch; phones, e-mail, even old-fashioned letters. Whatever it takes. I'll visit you over the summer and we'll do something great together."

"You really think I can get better?"

He grinned at her. "Oh, Mom, never doubt it. You are going to be fantastic!" Tamara's face brightened a bit with a little smile.

By Monday Xander had his loft completely redone to his liking. He'd taken his own futon mattress from the basement and all his linens and rolled them together into as compact a space as he could, packed all his clothes and all the little projects he was working on in a couple of old suitcases. Then he'd put a ridiculously powerful rare earth magnet on his home computer's hard drive for an hour to erase it. No way he was leaving that kind of technology upgrade around for someone to just pick up and play with.

It had taken him three trips between the school and the house, but he was indoors by sunset, and he spent the next couple of hours raiding various parts of the school for unused, trashed and otherwise discarded items that he could recycle and repurpose in his little space. he took paint from the art room and covered the walls in the brown and orange coral of the TARDIS control room, built a new computer station with a lamp that simulated the green light of the Time Rotor and began the process of building a miniature computer similar to a laptop, but more advanced than anything this planet would have in private hands for at least fifty years.

The space now to his liking, Xander spent the next day making it both easier to access and harder to find. He put in access panels that were perfectly disguised in the library, the locker room and the art room, all with extending ladders. He rigged a phone into the loft with its own extension from the school's main number. All of the wiring for the phone, computer and electricity were suspended from the ceiling of the loft and came down through the Time Rotor lamp, hidden by a tube of white PVC. The computer wasn't finished yet, and he needed parts to finish it, but all in all he was pleased with his TARDIS loft. When he came down early Monday morning, he got a quick shower and was ready for the day.

"Doctor?"

The Time Lord looked up from where he was grading the essays on Maximillien Robespierre's Reign of Terror, an exercise which was actually giving him pain, thankful to see a friendly face. It was Xander, but seriously he'd have taken anyone but Snyder or a Dalek. "Xander! What can I do for you?"

Seeing the hopeful look on his face, Xander grinned. "I take it you're hating the homework just as much as the students?"

The Doctor groaned and Xander chuckled a little. "It's a toss up which is worse; the essays or the text book. It's wrong half the time and they're wrong the other half." He looked up at his young fan-cum-student. "I need the break anyway, so what's on your mind?" He gestured to the second chair next to his at the library table.

Xander nodded and sat down. He took a moment to collect his thoughts, then said, "It's the nightmares, for one, but I've noticed some other things, too. I'm still able to see timelines if I try to look at them."

"What!?"

"Yeah. I noticed my brain forcibly turning my train of thought off the other day, and so I tested it-on a mouse, don't worry. Even the mouse gave me a headache, though. Nine months of life, two litters of babies, and lunch for a cat three months from now." He clicked his fingers to emphasize the point.

"And it was the nightmares that had you thinking about it, no doubt. I could definitely wish the Time War hadn't got stuck in your head, but now you're starting to have this ability pop up-. I may need to take a look inside your head, see if anything else was affected."

But Xander recoiled, sitting up and back abruptly. "No." It was plain that he was barely refraining from shouting it. Something was bothering him more than the memories and nightmares. "There's got to be another way to get a handle on this."

The Doctor gave him a level look. "It'll be harder, but I can help you to train your mind without going into it." He said it quietly, gently. "I suppose being in each other's heads once was more than enough, eh?" He tried not to sound hurt by that rejection.

Xander hesitated, wording his response carefully. "My mind is a mess, like my bedroom. I don't invite people in there, either. It's not you."

The Doctor acknowledged the point, glad that he made it plain his reluctance wasn't due to it being the Doctor who was asking. "Very well. But this means we're both going to have to go somewhere very uncomfortable. In order to train your mind to deal with temporal vision, you're going to have to deal with the things that are giving you nightmares."

Xander nodded. "Sometimes I'll see what really happened, the memory by itself. But the ones that wake me up the most are when my own memories or fears get mixed up in it, like the one with the little Gallifreyan girl being possessed by Eyghon, or the one with the Daleks killing all my friends in front of me."

The images made the Doctor swallow hard, but he pressed on. "Those make sense. Your subconscious has a lot to deal with, and you hardly needed the Time War on top of it all." He sighed. "The demons and vampires, seen from my perspective, are little different from the vast universe I'm used to, save for their near-universal hatred of humans. But from your perspective, this is something else impossible dumped on top of an already impossible situation. When did you first find out about the reality of the underworld?"

"About a year and a half ago."

"That's not a lot of time to adjust before being bombarded a second time. You also have very real, very justified fears of losing your friends to the violence around you." He raised an eyebrow significantly. "Perhaps one in particular."

"Buffy. She-" Xander paused to gather his thoughts again. "Slayers don't live a long time. The war they're fighting' it's just as nasty as the Time War, for all that it's hidden, and they do it alone. Willow might get hurt trying to help, or just walking down the street. Cordelia practically has 'bite me' tattooed on her forehead. But Buffy's life will end some day because of the battle she's called to fight. Not might. Not probably. Will. She's already died once, but I was close and was able to give her CPR." He sighed. "Maybe that's why her timeline is so tempting."

"Because you want to know when she's fated to die?"

"Because I'm praying she's not, even though I know better."

After showing Xander a few meditation techniques to get him started, and explaining that they would help him deal with the conflict in his head and organize it so that he could begin learning how to use and control his time sense, the Doctor sat back in his chair in the library and just let his thoughts drift. Their conversation had been more enlightening than Xander probably realized.

All of Xander's friends were strong, capable women. Their strengths were in different areas, but he admired them all the same and wanted to help them. This pointed to a woman he was not able to help as much as he liked, someone who should also be strong, and perhaps needed his help to be better, most logically his mother. Why that might be necessary-well, humans were quite capable of being absolutely awful to one another, even the ones they loved. Someone had hurt her, and it was no stretch to think that they had hurt Xander as well.

And given typical, if completely incomprehensible, human reactions to abuse, it wasn't hard for him to come to an unsubstantiated conclusion about Xander's home life. This was why he hadn't wanted the Doctor in his mind. Not that his fears for Buffy Summers were unfounded or incidental. That situation angered him, as well, and he wondered if there might be some way to alter it, to give her a better chance, more or better backup.

With a sigh, he stood to return to his classroom. His planning period was over, so it was time to get back into the thick of it. Thankfully the last class of the day was the honors students, so their level of interest and willingness to debate rather than argue were much better, making for a much more enjoyable class. The problems of Xander's possible home life and Buffy's future doom would have to be put on the back burner for now. But he was not forgetting about either one.

Cordelia was becoming a different problem all together. While he was glad that he had gotten her to pay closer attention in History, and that her scores were showing a marked improvement as a result, her attention was becoming less academia and more infatuation as time went on. She was leaving blatantly suggestive notes here and there, and her assignments would have notes in the margins as well. Worse, she'd watched exactly two episodes of the show that depicted his life; the one where he'd met Rose, and the one where he'd met Reinette. Somehow she'd come to the conclusion that she was better than Rose because of her socio-economic background, and that he'd be amenable to the company of someone with higher status.

He needed to disabuse her of that notion, and quickly. No one insulted Rose Tyler to him; certainly not a jumped up high school queen bee. He blinked and realized exactly what he needed to do about Cordelia

Tuesday's History class went into the gossip mill with frightening speed. It was the day someone actually took on Cordelia Chase and not only won, but forced her to submit.

Rumor out of the Cordettes had it that Cordelia had set her sights on Doctor Smith, the History teacher, and conventional wisdom was that Cordelia got what she wanted. But if there was one thing that could be said about Doctor Smith, it was that he was anything but conventional.

The class all settled in for the period, and the final bell rang. Doctor Smith stood up from his desk and walked around to the easel he'd placed there. "Before we leave the eighteenth century, I'd like to talk about one more figure in French history." With a flourish he flipped the cover sheet off, revealing a poster of a painting featuring a young woman in a green dress*. "Her name was Jeanne Antoinette Poisson. She was born in 1721 to Francois Poisson and Madeleine de la Motte. When she was four, her father was forced to flee France over several unpaid debts, charges he was later cleared of. Her earliest years were spent in a convent, but her mother later removed her and had her trained in the arts. It was rumored that she had an imaginary friend who lived in her fireplace, and when she was nine years old, a fortuneteller told her that she would one day reign over the heart of a king.

"When she was nineteen, she was married to Charles d'Etiolles. With him she had two children, a boy who died only a year after his birth, and a girl who survived. Her husband adored her, but she still had that prophesy in the back of her mind. She was introduced at court to Louis XV in 1745, when he was still mourning his third official mistress. It was February when she met him and by March of the following year she was his mistress, and she separated from her husband in May. To be presented at court, she would need a title, and the King loved her, so he didn't want her to want for anything. He bought the marquisate of Pompadour and gave the estate, its titles and its coat of arms to his mistress.

"Understand, this girl was a commoner. Many thought the king debased himself by consorting with her, thought he was too good for her. But she used her position to patronize those whose beliefs she shared, including Voltaire and Choiseul, and she did all of this without irritating the Queen, who could have demanded her head. She was a common girl with common beliefs, a good head on her shoulders, and a great vision for France. She took Louis and she made him better, never faltering until her death from tuberculosis in 1764."

Here, Doctor Smith paused, pinning Cordelia with a look. "All those noble women would have taken her place in a heartbeat. But she was his best friend, beyond being his mistress. They played cards together, toured the countryside, went hunting. She sang his praises to anyone who would listen, and in turn he would never let her put herself down as the ravages of disease stole her youthful good looks. What could any of those silly young women have done for her that she could not?"

He walked back around his desk, but looked back out on the class. "There's not going to be an assignment over this, but I want all of you to think about this. Reinette, as she was known to her friends, was a real girl, not a falsehood of makeup, clothes and privilege. A real girl, whether she comes from nobility or money or from a lack of those things, is much better company through life. So, you young men think about what kind of person you really want to spend your life with, and you young ladies think about how to be a real girl and become a real woman, a woman worth knowing.

"My best friend comes from a council estate in London. She's never had money, and she didn't finish school. She was working in a department store selling clothes when I met her. But if there's anything in this universe or any other I believe in, I believe in her. She makes my life worth living. She makes me better. You should all be so lucky."

The Doctor Who fans in the room all had their eyes bugging out. So did the upper-crust boys and the Cordettes. But Cordelia was stunned immobile and mute, staring at Doctor Smith with the look of someone who'd taken a pole to the forehead. Then she frowned. It wasn't petulant, but thoughtful, a sign she was working something out in her head. Finally, she sat up straighter in her seat and nodded to him, her face clearing. She got the message. She wasn't better than Rose Tyler. But she could be a better Cordelia Chase. He smiled at her, pleased.

Class let out, and Doctor Smith was the first one out of the room, which left everyone else free to talk. Harmony said, "What's a council estate?"

Xander said, "Government housing, a bit like the projects in New York. Same reputation, too."

The girl scoffed, "And he thinks its better to be like that than like the rich French girl?"

Xander grinned and shook his head. "No, Harmony. He thinks that despite growing up like that she's better than the rich French girl."

"Well that doesn't make any-"

"Harmony," Cordelia interrupted. "Drop it." She stood and gathered her books then left the room without another word.

Harmony looked at her retreating form in shock. "PMS much?"

Buffy walked up next to Xander, who was also getting ready to leave. "Wow. Did Cordelia just grow up?"

"I don't know," he said. "But I think she's starting to."

From the back of the classroom, a kid named Jonathan Levinson said to his neighbor, Andrew Wells, "Cordelia just met the Oncoming Storm!"

Xander turned to them as he walked out, rolling his eyes. "Hardly. That wasn't a storm. That was a polite notice."

Xander sat in the lunch room, eating the free meal provided by the school. He hoped he didn't look too hungry, but he certainly wasn't wasting any of the food. He would write the code for the security program he planned to sell in Ms. Calendar's class later that day and ship it to Microsoft before he met the Doctor in the library to work on his head. But then they had to decide to buy it and make him an offer. And he'd have to take what they offered because he couldn't afford not to.

He sighed, his apetite gone. He was homeless. He had run away, helped his mother run away, and now he was homeless. He knew that he didn't have to be. He could go to his friends and ask their parents for sanctuary. But he couldn't see being able to do that without having to explain why, and he didn't want the cops involved. He didn't want to end up in the system, or in a foster home. He needed to keep his ability to run, to help his friends, to defend the Earth. He couldn't do that with that kind of official scrutiny.

But that meant he had to get money, and writing and selling programs was the only way he could think to do it without resorting to something really unsavory. For a moment, he cursed his youth, which limited what he could legally do without drawing attention, but only for a moment. Despite current evidence to the contrary, he knew what a fleeting gift youth was.

Oh, for a scrap of psychic paper!

He looked out across the lunch room. People watching was one of his favorite things to do even before the Doctor had got into his head. But before he got too far, he noticed that he was being observed. Cordelia was watching him, a quisitive look on her face.

Cordelia? Looking at him? Why?

Cordelia ate her lunch without tasting it, even though it had been made by Daddy's cook, who was really the best at what she did. The Doctor had really taught her a lesson today, and it was still swirling around in her head. A real girl is better than a real rich girl or a real popular girl, and he had a real girl waiting for him back home.

She'd watched that silly sci-fi show that he had come out of, and thought that, hey, sci-fi had actually got something right. The guy's seen, like everything there is, and he has a massively cool ride, great hair and he can take you anywhere you want, anywhen you want! And he was riding around with that little bottle blonde scrap of trash-but now she got it. Rose wasn't a TV character to him. She was real, and even though he didn't say it, she could tell he loved her.

And he was telling her that she needed to be more like Rose. That went so far against what she'd always believed. Mama got where she was by being a classy bitch, and she trained her little girl to do the same. But when she thought about it, her parents didn't do stuff together. They had separate lives, except when there was a dinner party they both needed to go to. The Doctor and Rose were friends, even if they weren't anything else. Did people ever really marry their best friend?

Suddenly she thought of one guy, someone she could turn into a "real girl" for. Xander Harris had been a loser to her way of thinking; no money, no real prospects, and a weirdo geek, too. But he was the most loyal guy she knew, sticking to his friends in this Twilight-Zone town and fighting the gross, the bad and the ugly on a nightly basis. Most guys would be splitsville if they had to deal with half this crap!

Cordelia looked across the lunch room, and spotted him people watching. What did he look for in the crowd of kids? What did he see that she didn't? And would he want to share it with her? If she could make herself really care? He was different than he used to be, she knew that. He was a lot more mature since Halloween. Since he'd accidentally brought the Doctor into this universe. Maybe he'd seen something, something that made him grow up a little.

She didn't know what she felt about Xander. It was too new for all of that. But she knew one thing for sure. She was curious.