LIVING THE DREAM
I do not own Doctor Who or the Maltese Falcon and I am making no profit off of this.
This is a sequel to my story, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of. You don't have to have read that story to understand this one though. All you need to know is that Amy is back in a new Flesh body and traveling with the Doctor and Clara. I hope that you'll enjoy it.
CHAPTER 1
I'M THE DOCTOR
Amy Pond woke up to see the familiar surroundings of the TARDIS all around her and smiled as she said, "Yep, still here."
It had been several weeks since Amy had returned to the TARDIS, and she still couldn't get used to it. Every day she still woke up a bit surprised to find herself back in a young body and in her old room in the TARDIS once more. Part of her still worried that this was just some kind of dream and that she really wasn't here at all. Every day she feared that she would wake up to find herself old and alone once again. She was so glad every day when she woke up to hear the familiar sounds of the TARDIS in her ears instead.
The only downside to this otherwise wonderful new life of hers was that Rory wasn't in it. She still missed him even after all of these years. She had asked the Doctor about saving him too, but he had said that he still couldn't reach Rory physically and that his death was already a fixed point in time anyway that couldn't be altered. She knew that the Doctor was just as sad about that as she was.
She wasn't going to give up on the idea though. Maybe somehow someday she would come across something or someone that could help her to save him too without altering the timeline. She just had to try because she knew that Rory would do the same for her if their positions were reversed.
She also still wanted to save River somehow. She wanted some other way to see her daughter than to download herself into CAL. That was very disorienting and she definitely didn't enjoy the experience. She was more than willing to do it in order to talk to her again though. She didn't want things between them to stay like this forever however. She needed Melody there again on a regular basis so that she could be able to talk to her like a normal mother could. Somehow she was going to save her too.
Her thoughts were interrupted as Clara suddenly burst into her room without knocking and said in an excited voice, "Amy, you just have to come out here and see this!"
Amy smiled at her and wasn't in the slightest bit angry at her for barging in unannounced like that. She had long since gotten used to the Doctor doing that often with disastrous results back when she and Rory had been traveling with him together. Besides that they had already become such good friends in such a short time that Clara already knew that she was always invited in without even having to ask.
"I'm sure whatever it is that I've already seen it or something just like it before, Shorty," Amy said as she teased her new friend.
Clara frowned slightly but the smile never left her eyes as she said, "Oh, stop it with the grizzled old war veteran bit, Red. I can practically guarantee you that you've never seen anything like this before. Come on, Amelia. You really need to see this."
Amy smiled and said, "Alright, Mrs. Doctor, I'll be right out in a minute once I get dressed. I don't want to be caught outside the TARDIS in my nightie . . . again."
Clara winced as she said, "I told you to stop calling me that. What if the Doctor were to hear you? I love you, Amy, but sometimes you really get on my nerves."
Amy smiled as she said, "I'm just trying to get you to admit the truth to yourself, Souffle Girl. The sooner you do that the better off that you'll be believe me."
"I think that you just do it to watch me squirm," Clara said.
"That too," Amy admitted with a chuckle as she gave Clara a quirk hug.
Clara smiled already forgiving her as she said just before closing Amy's door, "I'll see you outside."
Amy quickly got dressed and went to join the Doctor and Clara who were already outside the TARDIS. As soon as she opened the doors, she gasped in absolute surprise.
"Did I call it or what?" Clara asked with a smug grin.
"Yeah, you certainly did," Amy said in a shocked voice.
She watched with a growing smile on her face as the night sky above her filled with meteors that suddenly exploded and formed a rainbow of multiple colors across the sky. Then a new group of meteors appeared, and the same thing happened again. This pattern continued to repeat itself over and over again as Amy stared in awe at the beauty unfolding before her. Each time the explosions created new and different colors and patterns across the heavens so that it was never the same twice.
"It's so beautiful," Amy said in a wistful voice.
The Doctor smiled at her like a kid at Christmas who had gotten exactly what he wanted. He was now happier than ever that he had finally gotten her back so that he could share all of the special moments in his life like this with her once more.
"It's the effect of the unique atmosphere of this place. It's more than capable of supporting life on the surface, but up in the higher levels as you get closer to space there are deadly concentrations of ionized plasma that form a natural protective shell over this world and instantly incinerate anything that tries to come here. That's what destroys the meteor showers that constantly come through this area of space, and the different colors are a result of the different types of materials that the meteors are made of reacting with the plasma and the different gases in the upper atmosphere to produce unique and very cool effects every time one of them explodes. The plasma shell helped protect the inhabitants of this world from being invaded for millennia. Even the Daleks didn't come here for the longest time. Of course the Daleks being the Daleks came up with a way around that eventually because they never let anything keep them from trying to annihilate every new race that they come across for long. Luckily someone was here to stop them when they eventually finally did show up," the Doctor said with a pleased look on his face.
"Let me guess. He wore a bow tie?" Amy asked with a grin.
"No. I think I wore the question mark sweater on that particular occasion. At least I think so. Or maybe I was Rainbow Man. No, I blew all of the Daleks up so I was definitely the Professor," the Doctor said confidently.
"The Professor? Rainbow Man?" Amy asked in amusement.
"Rainbow Man was his sixth self who wore this terrible multi-colored coat that even makes what he's wearing now look good. The Professor was what Ace, one of his old companions, called his seventh self who wore a sweater covered in question marks. The Doctor's never had very good taste in fashion except for maybe the Doctor before him. He wasn't so bad. He was actually a pretty snazzy dresser," Clara said.
Both the Doctor and Amy looked at her in surprise as the Doctor asked, "You know that from your echoes?"
"Yep. I remember more and more about their experiences with you now. I even remember meeting Ace on Ice World. I really liked her. How did you wind up hanging over that huge pit holding on for dear life at the bottom of your umbrella anyway? What was that about?" Clara asked with a grin.
"It was . . . I was trying to get a better look down the pit and well, it didn't quite work out like I planned it," the Doctor said.
Clara and Amy both smirked at him as he said in a flustered voice, "Shut up!"
Then he put an arm around both of them and smiled. He was so glad to have them both there even if they did tend to poke fun of him at times.
"You know you love it, Mr. Chin," Clara said always knowing exactly what he was thinking at all times just like usual.
He kissed both of his friends' foreheads before saying, "Come on. It's about to be daylight soon. You definitely won't be safe here when the sun rises. That's when the inhabitants of this place wake up."
"Why? Are they dangerous?" Amy asked.
"They're pacifists actually but they can be very dangerous without meaning to be since they're all giants compared to us, Amy. All of the people on this world are around forty to fifty feet tall on average and they probably wouldn't even notice you before they stepped on you. I almost had it happen to me once or twice. The poor fellow was very apologetic afterwards, but Ace wasn't so forgiving of him. She tried to blow him up with Nitro-9 and wound up giving him a hot foot instead," the Doctor said with a fond smile on his face.
"I wish I could have been there to see that," Amy said laughing.
"Oh, you would have really liked her," the Doctor agreed as he took Amy and Clara inside the TARDIS.
Not long after he dematerialized the TARDIS and left the giants of Lexa VII far behind, the ship started to shake violently. The Doctor rushed across the console as he tried desperately to figure out what was happening before the entire ship shook itself apart.
"Doctor, what's going on? Explain," Amy said in an irritated voice as she hung onto the console tightly as the shaking became worse and worse.
"There's no time for that right now, Pond. I'm much too busy trying to keep us all from being spun out into the Vortex forever," the Doctor said as he rushed past her.
"He doesn't know yet," Clara observed.
"Yep," Amy said having reached the same conclusion herself.
"I do too! What's happening is that we're experiencing a slight bit of temporal disturbance. It's probably due to someone moving a massive amount of ships through the Vortex," the Doctor said.
"A slight bit?!" Amy said as she glared at him.
"Just a slight bit is it? Are you sure about that, Chinny?" Clara said with an amused smile.
"Exactly, Clara. That's exactly right," the Doctor said with a reassuring smile.
"He's trying to downplay it so that we aren't scared," Clara said to Amy who rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, well if I didn't fall for lines like that when I was seven, what makes you think that I will now, Raggedy Man?" Amy said with a frown.
The Doctor couldn't help but smile at that even as he continued to worry about the ship coming apart. He was trying to keep them from panicking, but as usual they were both made of sterner stuff than he gave them credit for.
Of course they were. He only took the best after all, and Amy and Clara were both the best of the best.
His smile was immediately gone however when the console suddenly began to light up with warning lights everywhere due to the massive damage being done to the ship, and he knew that he was going to have to land the ship soon or risk killing them all. Unfortunately he had absolutely no idea where he was going to wind up. He just hoped that it would be somewhere safe for them to stay for a while until the TARDIS had a chance to fix itself.
Right now almost anywhere was better than this though.
The Doctor quickly landed the TARDIS just as the console started to catch on fire all over it. The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief as he realized that he had landed just in time. Another moment longer and he wouldn't have been able to since he wouldn't have been able to leave the Vortex and materialize anymore with all of the TARDIS' systems being shorted out at once like they were now.
After he put out the fires, he rushed to the console and smiled as he found that he could still see where they had arrived at on the display and said, "Twenty-first century Earth. Oh, it could have been so much worse. Now I just have to see where we are because it shows that we're several hundred feet above the ground moving slowly across London."
"So we're on a plane?" Amy wondered out loud.
The Doctor turned on the monitor and frowned as he saw a very familiar scene there. It was a place that he knew quite well since he had spent a year of his life there. A year that now had never happened.
"That doesn't look like a plane to me. Where are we, Doctor?" Clara asked as she looked at the monitor in puzzlement.
"You're right, Clara. It's not a plane. It's a flying aircraft carrier that UNIT uses sometimes. It's name is the Valiant," the Doctor said with a sinking feeling in both of his hearts at once.
He had a very bad feeling about being here just now. He and the Valiant had never been a good mix.
"Why do I get the feeling that you'd rather be anywhere but here, Raggedy Man? Are we in danger here?" Amy asked as she realized what that look on his face meant.
"No, I don't think so. At least we shouldn't be anyway. I just . . . have bad memories here," the Doctor said without explaining any further.
Amy nodded knowing that there were some things that he just didn't talk about in his past no matter what just like the mysterious Rose that she had heard him muttering about once when he thought that she couldn't hear him. She wasn't sure who she was, but she definitely got the message loud and clear that she wasn't to ask about her anymore when she tried questioning him about her. He had almost bit her head off about it and then immediately apologized afterwards.
The Doctor hesitantly opened the doors of the TARDIS to find that the entire ship was filled with Daleks!
"Wonderful. Well, that explains the temporal disturbance then," the Doctor said as he quickly closed the door and turned the TARDIS invisible.
"What is it?" Clara asked.
"Daleks. The entire ship is filled with them. They haven't seen us yet but they will. I have no way to get us out of here until the TARDIS fixes itself either," the Doctor said.
"I thought you said that this was a UNIT ship. What are the Daleks doing onboard?" Amy asked.
"We must have come right in the middle of one of their invasions of the Earth," the Doctor said.
"Lucky us," Clara said.
"So what do we do now?" Amy asked with concern.
"I'm going to have to do something that I normally wouldn't under most circumstances. I'm going to speed up the ship's maintenance cycle way past its maximum speed and hope that it doesn't do more harm than good because overclocking the TARDIS' systems like that can be very, very bad. It seems that we have no choice though," the Doctor said as he started to adjust the controls.
"We'll just have to risk it, Chinny. Hurry up," Clara said in a nervous voice as memories of being Oswin suddenly flashed through her mind and made her shake with fear.
"It's going to be okay, Clara," Amy said in a reassuring tone.
"Yeah, of course it is, Red," Clara said as she tried to be brave.
As the TARDIS' natural maintenance operations started to speed up faster and faster, the Doctor smiled. At this rate, they should be ready to go in less than ten minutes. As long as nothing else blew out by doing this that is.
Of course ten minutes was an eternity when you were in a ship covered in Daleks. The invisibility might buy them a little more time, but these were Daleks that he was dealing with so he didn't expect that to keep them from finding him for anywhere near long enough.
He just had to hope that he was wrong about that.
Unfortunately he wasn't. After just five minutes, they all heard the Daleks start screaming outside.
"THE DOCTOR'S TARDIS HAS BEEN DETECTED. HE MUST BE EXTERMINATED!" A chorus of Dalek voices started to shout in unison.
"No, not now! We still have five minutes left before we can go," the Doctor protested as the Daleks started shooting at the TARDIS.
The ship started being shaken all over again from the impact of the Dalek blasts, and the Doctor knew that the TARDIS' shields were already damaged enough from before that they wouldn't provide the ship with much protection against their attacks before they went down. They definitely weren't going to last long against that kind of firepower.
"I'm going to have to move the ship and hope that I don't make things worse. I'm still not sure what else might be damaged that I could make worse by moving her. Hold onto something. This could be bumpy. Geronimo!" the Doctor said as he started to fly the TARDIS across the Valiant as fast as he could.
The TARDIS' console began to catch on fire once again as the Doctor flew her out of the Valiant and away from the Daleks. He silently pleaded for the ship to hold on just a bit longer until he could safely land it as the fires on the console began to get even worse.
"I take it that the TARDIS didn't like that very much," Clara said.
"No, she didn't. Now the steering and flight controls are threatening to go out. If that happens, we'll drop like a rock. Come on, Old Girl. Just hang on a little longer until we're back on solid ground," the Doctor said.
"Well, if we go out this way at least it'll be fitting. This is the way that we first met after all with you crashing the TARDIS," Amy said.
"Don't worry, Amelia. We're not finished yet," the Doctor said with a smile.
Amy knew just by the use of her name that he was worried about both her and the situation that they were in. She could only hope that he wasn't lying to her.
Suddenly as the Doctor continued to adjust the controls on the console in a desperate attempt to keep the ship going, the area of the console that he was working on suddenly exploded in his face! The Doctor was flung to the floor with severe burns all over his body, and Amy and Clara screamed at him with concern.
As they bent over him to examine him, the TARDIS started to go out of control without anyone there to fly her. Clara ran to it immediately to see if she could do anything but soon found that none of the controls that she knew how to use were responding, and she had no idea what to do next.
"Amy, nothing's working anymore. We're free falling now," Clara said in alarm.
"Doctor, what do we do? Doctor!" Amy said.
The Doctor could barely keep his eyes open as he could already feel himself starting to automatically slip into a healing coma against his will. He was fighting it all that he could but he knew that it was only a matter of time until he did, and then they would all surely die without him there to land them safely. Clara knew how to fly the ship under normal circumstances, but these were far from normal after all. Only he could save them now, but only as long as he was awake in order to do it.
Suddenly a burst of inspiration struck the Doctor as a sudden, daring plan sprang into his mind. It wasn't something that he would do under normal circumstances, but he knew that this was the only way that they would survive now. He had to do it now while he still could and hope that there wouldn't be any consequences for it later.
Not for him or Amy.
"Amelia, there's a way out of this. You have to agree to help me with it though," the Doctor said in a voice barely above a whisper.
"Of course I'll do it. I'll do whatever you say, Raggedy Man," Amy said in a desperate voice.
"Listen to me before you agree to anything, Amelia," the Doctor said in an even weaker voice as he quickly whispered something to her that Clara couldn't hear.
Amy looked at him with fear at first, and then she briefly looked at Clara and her expression quickly turned to one of quiet determination instead. Clara had no idea what was going on, but she knew that it must be something very bad for her friend to react like that.
She watched in confusion as Amy suddenly lay down next to the Doctor and held his hand. She had absolutely no idea what she was doing. Was she giving up?
Then Clara gasped as she saw the Doctor starting to glow, and then the two of them seemed to almost blur together until she couldn't tell where Amy started and the Doctor ended anymore. The light became brighter and brighter until she lost track of both of them completely and couldn't see either of them anymore.
The light faded after a few moments, and then Clara's heart stopped as she realized that the Doctor had completely vanished! Only Amy was lying there now.
"Amy, what happened? Where's the Doctor?" Clara asked with mounting fear.
Amy quickly got up and raced to the console where she manipulated the controls of the ancient ship like an expert now. Clara watched her in mute fascination as all by herself Amy fought with the uncooperative controls and despite everything still managed to safely land the TARDIS somewhere. Clara had had no idea how she had done it.
Actually an idea did come to mind of what had happened, but it was simply too horrible to her to even contemplate at that moment.
Amy didn't answer her. She simply checked over the console instead. Clara had absolutely no idea what she was doing.
Finally Clara asked again, "Amy, where is the Doctor?"
"I think you already know the answer to that, Shorty. You just don't want to admit it," Amy said with a small smile.
Suddenly there was a pounding on the TARDIS doors, and Amy went to answer them. As she opened the doors, she saw Kate Stewart standing there looking at her with a hopeful look on her face.
"Amy, Clara, it's so good to see both of you again. Please tell me that the Doctor is with you. The Daleks are everywhere, and we're swiftly losing ground against them. We desperately need his help," Kate said.
Fear filled Amy as she looked at Clara uncertain of what to say. Clara gave her a reassuring nod, and she decided to tell Kate the truth.
"Kate, the Doctor isn't here. I'm sorry but we're all of the help that you've got right now," Amy said.
"Where is he? Do the Daleks have him?" Kate asked with dread.
Amy took a deep breath before she started to explain what had just happened as she said, "No. He was badly wounded while getting us away from the Daleks who were doing their best to kill us. The TARDIS was going to crash, and he was about to slip into a coma at any minute so in order to save me and Clara he . . . He told me that there was some kind of weird old Time Lord technique that he had once learned about from someone called the Master where they could merge with another person and become one being. I agreed to let him do that with me so that I could use his knowledge to land the ship safely."
Kate looked at her in amazement as she said, "Is there any way that you can separate from him?"
"No, I don't know how. Only the Doctor can pull us back apart again, and he's in a healing coma right now. He's transferred all of his Time Lord abilities, physiology, knowledge, and memories over to me though. Basically he remade me into a Time Lord which I really don't like because I'm still not him even with all of his knowledge. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, Kate," Amy confessed.
"You're going to have to do the best that you can despite that, Amy, because right now you're the only hope that this planet has," Kate said.
Amy sighed looking unconvinced as Clara said, "Come on, Red. You can do this. I know you can. I'll help you every step of the way until the Doctor comes back."
"Now I really don't know if I can do this," Amy said as she tried to make a joke.
"Ha ha! Very funny, Mrs. Doctor!" Clara said as she tried to make Amy laugh.
"Yeah, I guess I deserve that title more than you now. Talk about irony. Alright, Kate. I'm going to do the best that I can to help because I have no other choice if I want to save the planet," Amy said with a reluctant look on her face.
"I miss my Chin Boy already," Clara admitted.
"So do I. I really wish that he was here right now," Amy said sadly.
As soon as Clara and Amy followed Kate out of the TARDIS, they were immediately surrounded by several Dalek patrols that Amy realized must have followed the TARDIS on the way down in order to finish them all off. The Daleks all pointed their gunsticks at the three women and the UNIT soldiers that Kate had brought with her as they anxiously looked towards the TARDIS.
When no one else emerged from it, one of the Daleks finally asked, "WHERE IS THE DOCTOR?"
Amy took her deepest breath yet as she plunged right into the biggest bluff of her life with both feet and said in her best impression of her Raggedy Man, "Don't you know? Haven't you guessed yet? You lot must be getting slow in your old age or something. Don't you even recognize me anymore?"
Clara and Kate looked at her in shock as the Dalek who had spoken earlier asked, "WHAT ARE YOU REFERRING TO? ANSWER! ANSWER!"
"Oh, you really are dim, aren't you? I mean sure I don't have my usual cool gear on or you'd probably recognize me right away I'm sure. It's still me all the same though. It's me, boys! I'm the Doctor!" Amy said with a huge cocky grin on her face.
Amy knew that they couldn't just rely on the knowledge of the Doctor. They also had to have his reputation too. They needed that because he was the one being that the Daleks absolutely feared. That and that alone might be what she needed to make a real difference here. She only hoped that she was able to pull it off.
I really hope that you know what you're doing, Amy. Clara thought to herself as she looked at her in disbelief.
Next: Can Amy really get away with this impersonation of the Doctor or will the Daleks see right through her? Can she and Clara possibly defeat the Daleks all by themselves without the Doctor or is the battle to save the planet already over with before it's even begun.