The feeling was difficult to describe.
What made it so difficult was the fact that she'd never been particularly aware that she had felt trapped and controlled. Coming to the understanding that what she was experiencing was the sheer joy of freedom, of emancipation from a regime she'd never quite realised she was under in the first place, was a very odd sensation indeed.
It was the only way she could describe it though. It was if she'd been locked away all her life and suddenly let out into the real world, except that her cell had been the whole of London, England, even earth, and the real world was suddenly an awful lot larger than she'd ever imagined.
The strangest part of it all though was that the feeling wasn't all good. It was exhilarating and exciting and even fantastic, but it was also terrifying. Most of the time she managed not to let that show. In all honesty, the fear didn't usually kick in until after the adrenaline had worn off, after she was back in the TARDIS and lying in her oh so comfortable bed in the room she'd made her own. It was then, as the strange night of the TARDIS wrapped itself around her, that she had to breathe deeply and slowly and try her hardest not to run out and beg the Doctor to take her home.
She didn't want to go home. She didn't want to miss out on any of the excitement, but at the same time… in just the few weeks since she first stepped through those blue doors, she'd been in near-death situations more times than she knew how to count. Alone in her room, she couldn't quite manage to push away the doubts she had. She trusted the Doctor - probably more than she ought to, but there was no going back on that now - but she didn't have that faith in herself.
Of course, she couldn't deny the fact that she had done pretty well so far. But she wasn't always completely sensible, and the Doctor had made several comments about her ability to find trouble. Usually she threw them right back at him, but just once or twice they'd stopped her cold.
She wasn't sure if she was being stupid. She had wondered a hundred times whether she should just go home, make sure she could get out now while she was still all in one piece. But every single time she thought about it, her thoughts went the same way.
This... this thing she'd got herself into wasn't easy. It wasn't safe. But it was, without a doubt, making her feel more alive than she'd ever experienced in her life. Nothing she could think of even came close. She could go back, back to her job in the shop, to evenings in front of the telly with her mum, to Mickey... but could she ever be happy with that again? Really?
Maybe. She was honest enough with herself to admit that she would probably want to stop, to settle down, at some point in her life. And perhaps in the future she would be able to go back to her ordinary life and accept the boundaries of the human world quite happily.
But that wasn't now. If she gave it up now, while she was still young and free, she knew that the bars of that cell she'd never been aware of before would become the most important thing in her life. She would know what she was missing, and she would hate not being able to get out.
She supposed the fear was just part of the package. Maybe she'd get used to it, maybe she wouldn't; but that feeling she got when she was running along, her hand clinging to the Doctor's larger one, wasn't one she was willing to give up so easily.
It wasn't time to give in to her fears. Not yet.