Prologue

The steady beeping faltered. The long red hair of the old woman had long since faded grey and the blue eyes barely opened. Her flaming skin seared the young girl's hands as she gripped tightly, a little tighter for each moment her grandmother slipped away. Tears had been sliding down her cheeks steadily all night, through her constant vigil, but she could feel the end approaching. They both could.

Amy Williams felt that she had lived a long and productive life. She had loved someone and been with him until the end. She had two beautiful children; a daughter, an adopted son, both of whom she would love until she no longer could. And then there was the young girl holding her wrist tightly in her fist, crying, her only granddaughter by blood, the sign that she and Rory would continue to have a bloodline. Of course, the biggest and most important time of her life had been the time she had spent with the Doctor, she would never have been the same without him. She would never have loved Rory as much as she had if the Doctor hadn't shown her what it was to lose him. She wouldn't have had her insane daughter, River, if she had never met the Doctor. If not for the Doctor she would probably never have really lived at all; the little Scottish girl in an English village with nothing but a post office would have shrivelled up inside her leaving a grown up in its wake. She would never have had her fairy tale. Amelia Pond would have died without the Doctor.

But there she was; Amy Williams dying of terminal circulatory cancer. She had refused treatment a while ago now, but she was fine with dying. Rory had been gone for two years and she didn't want the rest of her family watching her go through all of that pain for just a few more months of life. She gathered up the last of her strength and gave the young girl's hand a squeeze. The New York sun was rising, its light filtering through the thin curtains. Amy felt a sense of harmony, she was dying as the sun was rising; a full life-cycle. She breathed out for the last time and closed her tired eyes. Amelia Pond, after so much time and so many places, was finally at peace.

The beeping stopped. The young girl looked up at her grandmother's face with red-rimmed eyes, took a deep breath and stood. She tucked her bright red hair behind her ears and hugged her young cousin, who had been drifting in and out of consciousness all night. The small girl sobbed into her shoulder and she made eye contact with her uncle, Anthony. He nodded to her as she rocked her cousin gently, singing softly a lullaby that her mother had taught her, a long time ago.

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The tell-tail sound of the TARDIS appearing with the landing breaks on echoed throughout the prison. The blue police box materialised and the Doctor jumped out, a large grin plastered on his face.

"River, you will never guess the surprise I've got for you," he exclaimed but the cell which usually housed the happy and outgoing Doctor River Song was ominously empty. He sighed, "I've done it again wrong time. She's probably with me anyway," he laughed, "Come on, old girl. Let's try again," he exclaimed jumping back through the TARDIS' doors.

The TARDIS dematerialised leaving the guard who came running to the cell a little disorientated. Down the hall of the prison, in the hospital, there came another hoarse scream.

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"Lu, lu, lu, I'll take you dreaming,

Through the raining night,

To a place behind the raindrops,

Where the stars are bright,

You may not find gold or silver,

But a richer prize,

Waits for you, behind the raindrops,

If you close your eyes,

Tonight, tonight,

When all the worlds asleep,

We will tiptoe home with a wonder star,

A star you can always keep."

Mary sang softly to her little cousin as she rocked her, back and forth, into a fitful sleep. All the while Mary was stuck in her own memories. She had spent the first few years in that prison cell with her mother, where she grew. At about the age of eight, she had quite suddenly stopped growing. She supposed it was characteristic of Time Lords but she couldn't really tell for sure as there was only one of them left and she had never met him. She spent a good twenty years in that prison, except unlike her ageless and technically innocent mother she was allowed to wander freely. The guards loved her and they doted on her constantly, so all in all it wasn't a bad childhood. She glanced at the clock; 6:02.

When she turned twenty, River gave her the vortex manipulator in a box, as it turned out River had always suspected that she was going to die when she had and so had sent it to her on the occasion of her death. Oh boy, had Mary had fun with that, hopping all over the place, but never too far from the prison. The gift she got for her fiftieth birthday had been downright terrifying however. River had taken her on a little adventure, far from the prison to a planet called Malafrion, where she was told she must have a decent education. The scary bit was when River left her there alone. Mary had come back three quarters of a century later, head bursting with knowledge. River had hugged her and kissed her on the top of the head and told her that she was going to a new home. She had arrived with her grandparents barely a month later, although technically many hundreds of years in the past and stayed there ever since. Even though they were family she couldn't tell them her true name because that was the equivalent of marrying one of them to a Time Lord, and that was frankly disturbing. So since arriving with her grandparents she had been Mary. It avoided suspicion around the neighbours, because what human family names their child "The Doctor", really. She found she liked being called Mary. It made her feel normal, or as normal as you can feel when you're an alien.

She had always loved living with Amy and Rory and later with Anthony, who grew up and married Rhiannon. The only problem was they died and she didn't. Rhiannon had died only a few years after Clara had been born and now Amy and Rory were both gone too. The only one she knew of who didn't die like them was her father and she had never known him. Her mother had claimed she had been keeping Mary safe from what she called the Silence, whatever that meant. Mary supposed there was always Jack; she rolled her eyes, the walking sex machine.

Mary gently rolled Clara off her lap and onto the couch. She turned to look out of the window; it was a beautiful day, mores the pity. She was not to know it but mere hours from that moment she would receive the scariest gift that she ever could. At 11 o'clock on June 22nd 2003, in the garden outside the William household, an old, new, borrowed blue box would appear and it would be ominously empty.

Mary turned from the window and picked up the sleeping girl, gathering her gently in her arms, careful not to wake her and took her into her room. She tucked her into the still made bed and closed the curtains, before shutting the door softly behind her. She could hear Uncle Anthony downstairs, on the phone. Probably the undertakers, she thought grimly. She walked back into her grandmother's room. "Goodbye, Amy," she murmured, just has she had for her grandfather not so long ago. She stroked down her grandmother's face, one more tear slipping down her cheek. Her two hearts were beating loudly in her chest as if to give the figurative finger to human frailty and mortality, but as the old saying goes, "life must go on."