Spring Break and Easter time always bring the Plot Bunnies out of their holes... I've decided, though, that Plot Bunnies is just a nice way of saying "Writer's ADD." This is what I am experiencing.

I have not abandoned "Escape From Me," in fact I have a new chapter just about ready to go. It's just that I have a couple of ideas that simply will not die. This was one of them. This will be a relatively short piece by my standards (five chapters, and a short epilogue), not epic.

TWO DISCLAIMERS, THOUGH! 1) It's weird, and may feel too removed from our fandom as we know it for a while, though some of you may well work out the game ahead of time (honestly, I have no idea how easy it will be to figure out). And 2) This is not a Ten/Martha story, as is the norm for me! This is really much more about the 11th Doctor, and it actually (GASP) has just a little bit of Ten/Rose mush that I usually find sort of repellent. But you know I won't take it overboard, and trust me, the story isn't about them!

So, I hope even if you're one of my Ten/Martha followers, you'll dip your toe in for something different. I think you'll wind up intrigued!

August, 2036

I had spoken to friends and family, I had seen four different therapists and even consulted two psychics (but don't tell my dad). I was beginning to think no-one could help me. So, as I sat in the waiting room of a highly-respected (though very weird) British institution, even then I was sceptical. And I felt discouraged. This was the last resort for me, the last stop, and if Torchwood couldn't help me, then no-one could.

But the overwhelming sensation was nervousness. I'd heard rumours of people going into Torchwood and never coming out. I wondered if I'd be kept for experimentation, my identity erased...

I crossed and uncrossed my legs about eighty times in the fourteen minutes I waited, and adjusted my skirt at least a thousand times.

"Reed?" asked a man in a suit, coming through a white door.

"Yes," I answered.

"Come on in."

It looked like the other counseling offices I had been in; carpet in soft tones of blue and green, soft chairs (but not too soft) and just enough sky visible through the window so as not to feel cooped-up.

"Have a seat, Reed," the man said. I sat down where he had indicated and he took the chair across from me, spreading some papers out over a glass coffee table. I took the opportunity to study him.

He was tallish, balding, and wore thick black horn-rimmed glasses. He was younger than he seemed, I assessed, after looking at him more closely. I could also tell that he had broken his nose as a child, but I decided not to ask him about it. In my experience, straight-laced people in black suits don't take well to oddly personal, non-sequitur questions which demonstrated my odd ability to read people's physiognomy. Since hitting the age of twenty-one, my cheek had ceased to be "cute," or so my mother had told me. I wondered at what age she'd stop thinking her own cheek was cute.

"Well, how are you today?" he asked, clasping his hands in front of him.

"Fine, and you?"

"I'm well. My name is Chad Sorenson, I'm here to make a preliminary evaluation, and from there, I can decide whether to refer your case further."

"Sure."

"Now, you say you're having visions."

"Yes."

"Can you describe them, briefly?"

"Erm, well... I keep seeing a girl. A little girl, maybe eight years old. She's usually frightened and I've never had a sense that she has any parents. And I see a different girl, a teenager. She's mischievous and clever. I see her wielding a weapon sometimes, but she's mostly just a loose cannon, not a killer. Though she does have some serious anger issues. And I see a woman. She has curly hair. She is also quite clever and mischievous, but also quite serious in some ways. She's the most enigmatic of all."

"Do you know who these females are?"

"I don't," I said, chuckling. "If I knew that, I wouldn't be here, would I?"

"Well, why are you here, Reed? Why do you think this is a job for Torchwood?"

"Because..." I sighed. This was the hard part. "I feel certain that my visions are real. I cannot explain why or how I know or feel this, I just know they're real. I know these girls, the three females, are real and they are connected somehow, and I feel that they are trying to tell me something, or that I'm supposed to... I don't know. It's not just like a recurring dream or something from out of my subconscious. It's something cloying at me from outside, I'm certain of it. "

"I see."

"And I came here because no-one believes me. My colleagues have dismissed me as over-tired..."

"Ah, that's right, you're in your final year of medical school are you not?" he asked, going back through some of my papers.

"Yes," I told him. "I'm going to specialise in orthopaedics. Speaking of which, how did you break your nose?"

"Excuse me?"

"Never mind. The point is, I have easy access to psychiatrists of many ilks and they all think I'm suffering from fatigue. My family and friends just think I'm a nutter and keep encouraging me to seek help, and the psychics..."

"Psychics?"

"Yeah! Psychics! They can't tell me anything either. So when it gets too weird for doctors and it's outside the ken of those who commune with the spirits, who you gonna call?" I asked with a big smile.

To my surprise and relief, Sorenson smiled back. "I suppose that's a fair point."

"Mr. Sorenson, I'm not crazy. Something is up, I can feel it, but I don't know what it is."

"All right."

"All right, what?"

"All right, I believe you. And I may have someone who can help you."

Sorenson got on his pocket computer device. "I'm going to refer you to Mrs. Haverbrook. She has an opening in about fifteen minutes. I'll send a message to her secretary and tell them to expect you at nine-twenty."

"What does Mrs. Haverbrook do here at Torchwood?"

"She assesses and authenticates interdimensional contacts."

"What?"

Sorenson smiled indulgently. "Sometimes when people come to us, convinced their visions are real, it is actually interdimensional contact. People from other worlds, pressing at the fabric of reality, trying to communicate with us, or accidentally communicating with us. Mrs. Haverbrook has Master's Degrees in Psychology, Neuroscience and Theoretical Physics. She has educated herself expressly to deal with this sort of problem, and is uniquely qualified to comment on your condition."

"Wow. Other worlds?"

"Now mind you, more often than not, these people are assessed as delusional, and are not receiving interdimensional contact, so I'd like you to be prepared for that as well."

"Fantastic."

So I went up to the seventh floor, checked in with Mrs. Haverbrook's secretary, and waited again. After about ten minutes, a woman in a grey suit emerged from another office. This time the door was painted green.

She was, I'd say, in her late fifties, perhaps early sixties. She had probably been blonde once, but now had light whitish-yellow hair that hung straight to her shoulders with a soft curl beneath her chin. She had a warm, but exhausted-looking smile, and she put me at ease for some reason.

"Hi, Reed," she said to me. "Come on in."

I followed yet another mental health professional into yet another green and blue office with soft chairs, except this one was paneled entirely with windows on two sides. It gave me confidence. The availability of the outside world below made me feel as though she wasn't afraid I'd throw myself through the glass at any moment.

She invited me to have a seat, so I did, at the end of a reddish-brown sofa. She sat, to my surprise, at the other end of the sofa, instead of across from me, like every other professional I'd seen. She looked through a set of papers, presumably my "chart," and then she set them aside and turned all of her attention to me.

"So, Reed. Can I get you anything?"

"No, thanks."

"No tea?"

"Got any whiskey?"

She smiled. "Fresh out, sorry."

"Then I'm fine."

"All right. So, just out of curiosity, how did your parents decide to name you Reed?"

"Erm, well, my mother once read a quote in a poem that said the wood that grows in rushing water is the reed. She gave me the name because she wanted me to be steadfast in the world that changes too quickly, and be certain of who I am."

"A noble sentiment. And a great name!"

"Well, under the circumstances it was either Reed, or Louisiana Cypress. That would have been difficult for a child to learn to spell, so..."

She laughed a little. Then, "I'll have to check out that poem your mother read - do you remember the name of it?"

"No, but I can find out for you."

"If you think of it."

"Okay. So, Sorenson said that you might be able to tell me if I'm having interdimensional contact. That's wild!"

Mrs. Haverbrook smiled again, and nodded. Then she asked, "Do you have any idea what makes you think that these three females you are seeing are real?"

"No, it's just a gut feeling. When someone tells me they are products of my subconscious or manifestations of different aspects of my personality, or Jungian archetypes of the virgin, the seductress and the crone... or that I'm just over-bloody-worked, I feel, like, a visceral recoil against it. I want to explode when I hear that rubbish, because I just know. I have no other way of explaining it."

"Okay, I hear you.

"And I'm a doctor... or rather, near enough. I'm a medical student, I deal in orthopaedics, with broken bones and stuff. I'm a scientific-minded person, and normally, I wouldn't have room for this type of nonsense in my brain."

"So, how long has this been going on?"

"Since I was at school, maybe fifteen years old."

"So, about ten years? You're twenty-five, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Now, in the preliminary notes from the switchboard, you said that there is a man in your visions as well."

"Yes, erm," I said, clearing my throat. "He appears most often in the visions of the woman, rather than with the little girl or the teen."

"Do you feel he's real as well?"

"Yes, he's real, and he's... important."

"Important?"

"Yes, he's part of it. The women, the females, are at the centre of the visions, but the man is very closely related. He's part of the puzzle - he cannot be discounted."

"What can you tell me about him?"

"Well, he's... kind of wacky."

"Wacky?" Mrs. Haverbrook asked with another inquisitive smile. She had a wide, bright smile.

"Yeah," I said, smiling back. "He's one of those people whose mind works faster than he can move, so he's erratic and always bounding about."

"Does he remind you of anyone?"

"Like who? Like my father?"

"Well..."

"No, he's definitely not my father," I replied. Mrs. Haverbrook was not the first counselor to ask me this question.

"Okay, fair enough. Continue."

"He's... handsome in a way, I guess. Though, his jaw is a bit wide. He's got dark hair, and he walks sort of bow-legged. He wears a tweed jacket and boots with his trouser cuffs rolled up... and a bowtie. Always a bowtie."

"Hm. Okay. Anything else? Do any of the people in your visions have names?"

"No," I responded. "That's been one of the frustrating things for me. I feel that if I could know their names, I would be able to... or at least know what this is all about. But in all these years, I have never heard a name."

"Okay. Reed, have you had an MRI recently?"

"Not since my neurology rotation."

"I'd like you to have one now."

"All right," I sighed. "Of course you'd want an MRI."

"Don't get me wrong," she said. "I think you're perfectly sane, and based on your demeanour and what you have told me, some non-verbal markers and the like, I'm leaning toward calling your case a genuine interdimensional contact. But I want to rule out tumours or other phenomena pressing at your mind, all right? And then after that, I'll need some more details about things in your visions , such as the environment, language, things like that. Sound good?"

I was flooded with relief. Finally, something to put a name to what was happening to me, someone who might be able to make some sense of it.

We went over to her desk, and she extracted some forms for me to fill out. She handed me a pen with an image embossed on it, that of Queen Elizabeth, the first.

"Ah, Queen Bess," I said. "Not my favourite person."

She smiled. "Why not?"

"I've been told too many times I look like her."

She tilted her head and studied me. "Yeah, you sort of do. You could do worse. I think you're very pretty."

I scoffed. "Thanks."

I filled out the forms, releasing Mrs. Haverbrook and Torchwood from any liability, should the MRI melt my brain.

"Mrs. Haverbook, I can't tell you how grateful I am," I said, handing her back the papers, and finally finding the words to express what I'd been feeling. "I've been to so many people who just dismiss me as crazy or exhausted."

"Well, it's what we're here for. And since it looks like we're going to be working together for quite some time, why don't you call me Rose."

"Rose?"

"Yes, it's my first name, love."

"Oh. All right."

"Just give me a moment, all right? I'm going to move some things around on my schedule so that you and I can see each other this week and get stuck right into sussing all of this out."

She pulled out her own computer device and begin moving her finger about. I glanced at the trinkets on her desk as she worked. There was a photo of herself as a young woman, and a man with ginger hair like mine.

"Who's this? If you don't mind my asking," I pried.

She glanced up. "That's my dad. He's Pete Tyler - does that name ring a bell?"

"No, should it?"

"Well, no, you're probably too young. He was an entrepreneur of sorts. Founded this department, encouraged me to get the credentials to deal with problems like yours."

"What about these guys?" I pointed to a photo of two young men.

"My sons. Paul and Daniel. They're both at university now. One's studying drama, the other's studying art history. I guess you could say they're not particularly interested in my line of work."

I chuckled.

"And this must be their dad?" I asked, pointing to Mrs. Haverbrook's wedding photo.

"Yep. That's him. Shall we go down to radiology?"