Notes: So begins the second part of this story. Starring Matt Smith as the Doctor, Billie Piper as Rose, Eddie Redmayne (seriously he's awesome, look him up) as Jamie and well... you know the rest. I hope that you find the changes that I make along the way interesting enough to make the rewrite enjoyable and worthwhile. A HUGE thanks goes to my two betas again, who are incredible, Elensari and TheDoctorMulder. (Happy Birthday Elensari, as I post this) ... Please review! Thanks for reading!
Chapter One – Eleventh Hour: Part One
The TARDIS was flying out of control and there were flames burning beneath the grating. The Doctor had been trying to get the time ship under control, when a particularly nasty jolt sent him rolling down the ramp and right out the door. Rose ran to help her husband back inside from where he was just barely hanging on.
"Doctor!" she yelled, scared that he'd lose his grip and fall to London below. "I've got you, love! What is it with you regenerating and sending this thing out of control? Couldn't you regenerate with it parked safely on the ground?" Rose asked as she tried to pull him up.
"Sorry... More fun this way," the Doctor told her with a wink.
The console sparked loudly and Jamie shrieked. Rose and the Doctor were suddenly distracted by his fear and the Doctor almost slipped from her hands again. He was dangling rather precariously and Rose could see that they were headed straight for a tall church spire.
"Jamie! Pull that big lever by the stabilizers!" Rose shouted over her shoulder as she grabbed hold of her husband's forearms rather than his hands and pulled hard enough for him to come through the door and land right on top of her on the floor.
"Well, as lovely a position as this is, let's try to land safely for now, yeah?" the Doctor said as he got up and shut the doors behind him. Rose and the Doctor both ran to help Jamie with the controls.
After a few more minutes of the console sparking and grinding, the TARDIS came to a stop with a mighty crash. The gravity shifted, violently throwing them down the hall all the way to the swimming pool. The problem was, looking around, they were in the library. The swimming pool was supposed to be across the hall, however the water seemed to have migrated into the library.
With much sputtering and coughing, the Doctor, Rose, and Jamie found each other in the water. The Doctor reached deeply into his pocket and pulled out a length of rope with a large hook on the end.
"I should be able to get us out of here with this," the Doctor told them as he threw the hook to latch around the railings in the console room down the hall.
They pulled their way to the railings, then the Doctor snapped his fingers and the doors flew open. With a wink to his wife, the Doctor threw the hook once more to catch something outside and they began to climb out.
The Doctor went first through the door and peeking over the edge, he started talking to someone outside, "Could I have an apple? All I can think about. Apples... I love apples. Maybe I'm having a craving? That's new. Never had cravings before."
"Oh really, love?" Rose called to him and giggled when he blushed pink. "How about you help the rest of us out of here, yeah?"
The Doctor straddled the edge of the doorway and lifted Jamie and then Rose over and out before jumping down to the ground himself. Rose could feel the Doctor's slightly manic, confused thoughts and recognized what it was he was craving. It wasn't apples, it was a snack they had shared once when he had regenerated the last time.
"Are you ok?" a little girl asked them in a Scottish accent.
"Just had a fall. All the way down there, right to the library. Hell of a climb back up," the Doctor told the little girl.
"You're soaking wet," she observed.
"We were in the swimming pool," Rose added.
"You said you were in the library," the little girl argued.
"So was the swimming pool," the Doctor explained.
"Can we keep the pool in the library? That would be brilliant, yeah?" Jamie asked his parents excitedly.
"Sorry, sweetheart, it's not good for the books," Rose said and ruffled his damp hair.
"Are you a policeman?" the little girl asked hopefully.
"Why? Did you call a policeman?" the Doctor wondered as he studied the girl thoughtfully.
"Did you come about the crack in my wall?" she continued to question without answering.
"What crack? ... Argh!" the Doctor began then fell to the ground as he clutched his stomach.
"Are you alright, love? Do you need tea or something? Like last time?" Rose questioned as she rushed to his side and put an arm around his shoulders.
"No, I'm fine. It's ok... this is all perfectly norm..." he sputtered and then breathed out a small cloud of golden regeneration energy.
"Oh my god. Is that going to attract the Sycorax again?" Rose panicked at the sight, so familiar to the last time when he slept for days and one of his hearts had stopped.
"No, dear. No, it's fine," he assured her as he patted her hand on his shoulder.
"Who are you?" the little girl asked him.
"I don't know yet. I'm still cooking," the Doctor replied, looking at his hands which were still glowing a little.
Jamie laughed at his father's behaviour. "He's called the Doctor. He's my daddy. My mum's name is Rose, and I'm Jamie," he informed her.
"Does it scare you?" the Doctor asked the little girl.
"No, it just looks a bit weird that you're glowing," she replied.
"No, no, no... the crack in your wall. Does it scare you?" the Doctor clarified.
"Yes," she said quietly.
"Well then, no time to lose. I'm the Doctor, like he said. That's Rose and Jamie. Do everything I tell you, don't ask stupid questions, and don't wander off," he rambled as he jumped to his feet.
"Wandering off comes later," Rose murmured under her breath and watched as her husband walked straight into a tree.
Everyone ran to his side again as he sat up from where he fell.
"Are you alright, daddy?" Jamie asked him.
"Early days. Steering's a bit off," the Doctor replied and Rose put her arms beneath his and pulled him back up. He patted her head and started confidently walking towards the house.
Rose shook her head at him and took the hands of both children to follow him. When they reached the kitchen, the little girl grabbed an apple and handed it to the Doctor. He looked at her suspiciously before taking a bite of it.
He immediately spit it back out again, saying plainly, "That's disgusting. What is that?"
"An apple," the girl told him as if he were stupid.
"Tell you what, sweetheart. He's a bit hungry and confused, do you think we could have a bit of a snack with you?" Rose asked her.
"Sure," the little girl said with a shrug as if strangers came to her house in the middle of the night for a snack all the time.
"What's your name?" Rose questioned with her hand out to shake.
"Amelia Pond," she told Rose and shook her hand with a smile.
Rose watched as the Doctor searched through the cupboards for something else to try eating and threw cans across the room over his shoulder. He moved on to the fridge and pulled out a small, white container. "Ah! Yogurt! Yogurt's my favourite!"
He pulled open the top and poured it into his mouth, immediately spitting it onto the floor. "I hate yogurt. It's just stuff with bits in," he complained and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
"Is he always like this?" Amelia asked Jamie as they watched him spit out the various foods that he found in the fridge.
"No, he just regenerated. Mum said he gets a bit sick after it happens, but he'll be alright soon," Jamie replied.
"I know what you're craving, love. Will you let me get it for you?" Rose asked and guided him to sit at the table.
"How do you know what I'm craving? I don't even know what I'm craving," the Doctor complained but sat down obediently.
"Because I can feel it," she said tapping her temple. "And we've had this before."
Rose pulled a box of fish fingers from the freezer and a carton of custard from the fridge. She warmed up the fish fingers and poured the custard into a large bowl.
"Oh! You are brilliant, Rose! Absolutely brilliant. Yes! When we were experimenting with dipping our fish and chips in all kinds of stuff at that buffet on Barcelona," the Doctor praised and smiled broadly at the memory.
"Don't you mean in Barcelona?" Amelia asked.
"Nope. On Barcelona, the planet," Rose answered as she placed the items in front of her husband.
"Can we have ice cream, mummy?" Jamie queried with his most convincing smile.
"If it's alright with Amelia, it's fine with me," she told him and sat herself down to dunk fish fingers in custard with her husband. The Doctor decided to feed some of it to her with a teasing grin and they proceeded to finish all of the fish and custard while the kids both ate ice cream straight from the tub.
"You sound Scottish. Are we in Scotland?" Jamie asked Amelia.
"No. We had to move to England. It's rubbish," she told him.
"So what about your mum and dad, then? Are they upstairs? Thought we might have woken them by now?" the Doctor wondered.
"I don't have a mum and dad. Just an aunt," Amelia said.
"You don't have a mum and dad? That's rubbish. Do you want to share mine? You could come with us! It would be great!" Jamie told her, getting more excited by the second.
"Slow down, Jamie. I think Amelia's aunt might be a little bit upset if she disappeared. So, where is your aunt, sweetheart?" Rose asked her.
"She's out," she said a bit crossly.
"And she left you all alone?" the Doctor asked incredulously.
"I'm not scared!" she replied.
"Course, you're not. You're not scared of anything. Box falls out of the sky, a family falls out of the box, we eat fish custard in your kitchen, and look at you... just sitting there. So, you know what I think?" the Doctor rambled.
"What?" Amelia wondered where he was going with all of this.
"Must be a hell of a scary crack in your wall," he told her as he wiped some custard from his mouth and sucked on his finger.
Amelia led them up to her room to look at the crack. The Doctor moved to examine it closely. Rose looked at the various toys and books around the room and Jamie stood next to the little girl.
"Will you be my friend, Amelia?" Jamie asked her. "I don't really have any friends my age."
"I guess so," she replied with a shrug.
"You've had some cowboys in here. Not actual cowboys, though that can happen," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "This wall is solid and the crack doesn't go all the way through it. So, here's a thing... where's the draught coming from?"
The Doctor scanned the crack with his sonic. "Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey... Jamie, what do you think?" he asked his son.
Jamie pulled out his own sonic and scanned it. "That's weird. The crack isn't in the wall," he said.
"You're right. If you knocked this wall down, the crack would stay put, because the crack is everywhere... in everything. It's a split in the skin of the world. Two parts of space and time that should never have touched, pressed together right here in the wall of your bedroom," the Doctor told them as he examined it more closely.
"Can you hear anything through it?" Jamie wondered.
"A voice, yes," Amelia said softly.
The Doctor looked around the room until he spied a glass of water on Amelia's nightstand. Dumping the water on the floor, he pressed the glass against the crack and his ear against the glass.
"Don't you usually have a stethoscope in your pocket, Doctor?" Rose asked him with a shake of her head. She used a nearby blanket to wipe the water off the floor.
Completely engrossed in what he was doing, the Doctor didn't reply, but listened to a voice saying, "Prisoner Zero has escaped."
"Prisoner Zero...?" the Doctor muttered.
"Prisoner Zero has escaped," Amelia quoted the voice. "that's what I heard. What does it mean?"
"It means that on the other side of this wall, there's a prison and they've lost a prisoner. And you know what that means?" the Doctor deduced.
"What?" Amelia asked him, a little worried.
"You need a better wall," the Doctor said as he moved her dresser out of the way. Jamie took Amelia's hand as they backed away from where his father was working to fix the problem.
"The only way to close the breach is to open it all the way. The forces will invert and it'll snap itself shut. Or..." the Doctor began to explain, but trailed off when he realized that going any further in his explanation might frighten the children.
"Or what?" Amelia pushed.
"You know when grown-ups tell you everything's going to be fine and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better?" the Doctor asked.
"Yes," she sighed with a roll of her eyes.
"Everything's going to be fine," he told her.
"That's very reassuring, love. Should we back away a little more?" Rose asked him as she put an arm around the children's shoulders. Amelia and Jamie were still holding hands.
"It's alright, Amelia. Daddy can fix anything," he reassured her.
The Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at the crack and activated it. The crack suddenly opened wide to show what indeed looked like a prison on the other side. A bright light shone into the room and a giant eyeball appeared in the opening, saying, "Prisoner Zero has escaped."
"Atraxi?" Jamie asked.
"Very good, Jamie, yes," he told his son proudly, then addressed the alien, "Hello? Hello?" There was no response, but a beam of energy shot towards the Doctor's pocket and he doubled over for a moment.
"Are you alright, Doctor?" Rose asked him worriedly.
The crack shut itself then and the Doctor smiled as he concluded, "There, you see? Told you it would close. Good as new."
"What was that thing? Was that Prisoner Zero?" Amelia asked him.
"No. I think that was Prisoner Zero's guard. It sent me a message on my psychic paper, though," he said as he pulled out the small, black wallet. Reading it, he said, "Prisoner Zero has escaped. But why tell us? Unless..."
"Is it here, Doctor? Did the prisoner escape through the crack?" Rose questioned as she hugged both children a little tighter.
"He couldn't have... could he? We'd know..." he mused and looked around. Going out into the hallway, he took in all of the surrounding doorways.
"It's difficult. Brand new me. Nothing works yet, but there's something I'm missing. In the corner of my eye," he said softly.
"Like a perception filter?" Rose wondered.
The sound of the cloister bell started ringing from the TARDIS outside, breaking his concentration. The Doctor shouted, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no!"
He grabbed Rose's hand to tug her along behind him as he ran back to the ship. Jamie and Amelia were close behind. There was a light shining from the time ship that was still lying on its side and steam or smoke was flowing out of the open doors.
"We've got to get back in there. The engines are phasing. It's going to burn!" the Doctor shouted frantically as he moved the rope they had used to climb out so that it would be better positioned for climbing back down again.
"But it's just a box. How can a box have engines?" Amelia protested.
"It's not a box! She's our time machine," Jamie told her proudly.
"What, a real one? You've got a real time machine?" she questioned.
"Not for much longer if I can't get her stabilized. Five minute hop into the future should do it. I'll need your help, Rose," the Doctor said as he hopped back up onto the edge of the doorway.
"Can I come?" Amelia asked the Doctor.
"Not just yet. Five minutes, give me five minutes. We'll be right back," he told her.
"People always say that," Amelia sighed, sure that she was being blown off.
"Amelia, you're my new friend. We're coming back. Promise," Jamie told her.
Amelia considered the freckle faced boy in front of her a moment, then held up her little finger. "Pinky promise?" she asked.
"Pinky promise," he replied and wrapped his little finger around hers. "We WILL come back for you."
The Doctor jumped back into the TARDIS, with a shout of, "Geronimo!"
Rose lifted Jamie up to hop back in as well and she climbed up to follow them. "I can't guarantee the five minute part, Amelia. But we will be back," Rose told her with a smile. She dropped into the ship and the doors shut behind them.
Climbing around the console, the little family managed to get their ship to dematerialize and right itself in the Vortex.
"Well, that's better! Now, a short hop to pick up our new friend. What do you say?" the Doctor affirmed with a broad smile across his new face. Rose decided that she liked the way his green eyes twinkled in this incarnation and gave him her patented, tongue touched grin.
"Yes, please! Amelia's going to be my very best friend!" Jamie shouted and danced around the destroyed console room.
As the Doctor worked on the controls, his face suddenly fell. "Oh... oh... I am so thick. I knew I missed something!" he shouted and worked faster to get them back.
Jamie stumbled over a piece of broken coral and Rose moved to help him. He had a bit of a scrape, so she reached into her pocket for the bandages that she always kept handy. The Doctor rushed out the door as soon as they landed, without waiting for them.
Outside, the sun was shining and the Doctor realized that they had jumped a little further than five minutes. He ran to the back door and unlocked it with his sonic before rushing inside and up the staircase.
"Amelia! Amelia, I worked out what it was. I know what I was missing! You've got to get out of there!" he shouted as he ran up the stairs. "Amelia? Amelia, are you alright? Are you there?"
He looked at the door that he realized had been hidden by a perception filter and tried the locked handle for a moment. He called to her, "Prisoner Zero is here! Do you understand me?"
There was a small creak in the floor behind him, but when he turned to look, a cricket bat smacked him in the head.
