Ace and McBride threaded their way through a city that was slowly coming alive around them.  Ace was like a sponge, absorbing sights, smells, sounds - drinking in everything.  Of all he experiences that she had been through with the Doctor it was this, wandering through her near past, that made her spine tingle.  So often visits to Earth ended in remote areas of the country - desolate moorland or quarries.  London was always so vibrant and exciting, no matter what the decade.  She had resisted the offer of visiting the future.  She had an overwhelming dread of meeting somebody she knew, seeing them old and wizened, and she unaware of everything that would have passed for them.  She realised that she was living outside of time, and that the longer she stayed with the Doctor, the harder it was going to be to reintegrate herself into a 'normal' life.

She shook her head.  She was getting morbid.  For the moment she should enjoy the experience of wandering through a time years before her birth.  She giggled at the absurdity of the situation, pulled her camera from her pocket and began taking snapshots of what was going on around her.  Tube stations were slowly disgorging their tenants on to the streets in a steady stream and people were beginning to emerge from Anderson shelters, blinking like moles in the morning light.

Families returned to their homes, not knowing what they might find.  Shop owners made their way to their businesses, praying that they had been spared the bombs and the looters.  Ace watched a woman break down in floods of tears, burying her face in her husband's chest as they regarded the bombed-out shell of their small shop - windows broken, clothes and mannequins scattered across the road.  Abruptly the woman pulled herself straight, dried her eyes and began to clear away some of the wreckage, standing dummies up and piling rubbish into sacks, determined that they would open as usual.

Ace felt a pang of guilt.  No wonder her grandmother had kept talking about the Blitz.  She was proud of it.  Proud of how she coped with it.

Ace resolved that if they should ever meet again she would listen to the stories with a little more interest, not dismiss them as the boring afternoon ramblings of a nostalgic old woman.

She suddenly felt an urge to stay and help, but McBride dragged her away, keen to get over the river and out of the rain as soon as possible.  He was cold and miserable.  His hair was plastered to his forehead.  Ace huddled up to him under the umbrella.  'What's up with you?'

'You mean apart from being cold, wet, and very probably out of my depth?'

'Yeah,' Ace grinned, 'apart from that.'

McBride fixed her with a serious look.  'Where are you from?'

'Me?  I'm from Perivale.'  Ace's expression was one of pure innocence.

McBride grunted.  'The Doc sure ain't from Perivale.'

Ace remained silent.  Explaining quite where the Doctor came from was ticky at the bast of times.  She found it best to say nothing.

The two of them walked in silence for a while.  To McBride's surprise Ace linked arms with him, grateful for some extra warmth.  She hadn't really dressed for the occasion.  She had the offer of using the TARDIS wardrobe, but she always felt more at home in the clothes that she had brought with her from Iceworld.  It gave her a degree of independence and, despite the fact that the Doctor was the only adult she had ever been totally comfortable with, she still needed that slight independence, an emotional crutch that said no matter what happened, she still had control over her own destiny.

It was McBride who broke the silence.

'The Doctor... he isn't a violent man, is he?'

Ace looked puzzled.  'The Professor?  No.'  She stopped.  'Not unless you've got sink plungers instead of hands, that is.  Why?'