"Doctor?" Amy called, looking at him intently. He'd been working with the console for hours, trying to find the exact right time where the girl was. He was a wreck, and Amy was worried. She had never seen this nervous, restless, fidgety side of him before, and it scared the hell out of her.
"Are you being logical about all this?" she asked carefully, leaning against the console.
"Since when have I been logical about things?" he muttered, flipping a switch that sent hot purple sparks out. After a moment of surprise, he turned distractedly to Amy. She was pained to see how much sadness there was in his eyes. All of the sudden, his age was showing more prominently than it ever had before.
"Are you alright?" she said in an undertone, her eyes searching his for a sign of fever or just sheer insanity.
He nodded after a second or two, letting his eyes and hands drop to the console once again. "Yeah, yeah. Fine. I just…"
"Kids exaggerate, you know." She reminded him.
"Yes, I know. But not her. Not this one." He sounded so sure, so positive that this girl was in grave danger. Amy supposed he would just have to wait and see that the child had merely been reprimanded, or gotten a bad letter grade.
A knob must have been turned or a button pushed, because the next moment, Amy was clinging to the console as the TARDIS plunged through the atmosphere. It was quite a funny feeling, ripping through time and space. Weightless and airy and as if all your senses had been torn away and replaced with strange, new ones. It was also the most terrifying sensation ever if one wasn't properly prepared—or forewarned.
Jerkily, the TARDIS came to a swiveling halt. Amy picked herself off of the floor, where she'd landed after accidently letting go of the console. Gathering her newly scattered wits, Amy straightened her clothes, brushing her fingers through her now-tangled ginger hair. "You could have bloody warned me!"
"Right. I'll remember that for next time. Where's Rory?"
"Reading in the library." She answered coldly, still sore over the sudden travelling. The Doctor gave her a look, a stern one, and she knew she was to go retrieve her husband. She sighed agitatedly, then wandered off towards the hall, her arms crossed and her pouting mouth murmuring insults like a rebellious teenager. "The bloody moron… What's a spaceman if he can't even control his own damned ship—"
"Pond." he called warningly. She guiltily looked back, expecting to see him angry with her. But, again, she only saw sorrow; pleading. "Don't. Not right now."
Amy's eyes flitted to the ground, ashamed. Her fingers busied themselves nervously with a loose string on her beige jacket. "Sorry." She muttered in an embarrassed tone, turning to go find Rory again.
The Doctor didn't enjoy Amy when she was harvesting a grudge—and that's all she ever did whenever anybody reprimanded her. She acted sorry at first, then came the passive aggressiveness, and significantly displayed bitterness trudged closely behind that. Because heaven forbid the girl do anything even slightly wrong in her life that may need fixing or improving or anything otherwise that involved constructive criticism. She was such a child, sometimes.
Thoroughly aggravated and, honestly, disappointed in the lack of maturity found in Amelia Pond—his companion, his confidante, his responsibility—he launched a lever harshly to the right, parking the TARDIS in the proper time and place. December 12th, 1983; second room off the front left hall; 1220 Dean St. in a crumbling town called Minnie, Oregon.
The Doctor waited as patiently as his instincts allowed. He looked towards the corridor that Amy had gone down just a few minutes before. She still wasn't back. He, of course, knew that the TARDIS was a complicated mess of rooms, but surely Amy knew enough of the string of halls and nearly unlimited doors by then to get to and from the library with ease. Every second felt like hours—costing that little girl additional trauma. He tried everything to distract himself until the Ponds got back. Making sure the time and place were exactly correct; keeping all the possible scenarios firmly locked out of his mind. But they weren't coming back. They had gotten lost or something—whatever it was, he found himself simply not caring at the moment.
So finally, brashly and irresponsibly, he pulled on the door of the TARIDS and stepped out.
The room he was in was impossibly dark and cold. And it wasn't the sort of cold that reminded one of Father Christmas and fiery mugs of hot chocolate, but it was a wet sort of cold, the type that could loom gloomily over entire towns and carry the stomach flu along with it. It smelt like burnt tar and smoke. The Doctor waved a hand over his nose to clear the air a bit, but it didn't help much.
His vision adjusting, he began to be able to make out items of furniture. A lanky wardrobe, an upside-down rug, and a dusty window that lent a crummy view of the stars outside were just a few of the obstacles the Doctor ran into/tripped over while trying to manoeuvre about the small space. The nearly inaudible, rough breathing of a human signaled where the girl must be. The Doctor knelt down next to the lumpy bed, only to find the girl completely awake with a terrified expression on her face.
"Who are you?" She asked, her voice staying impressively steady.
"I'm the Doctor," he said, trying to make an effort at sounding calm.
"How did you get here?"
"I got your signal. You needed help."
The girl's eyes widened and she sat up weakly, brushing strands of wet hair aside. "That worked?"
He nodded silently. "Whatever it was—it certainly did. What's your name?"
"Rosie Sennett."
Rosie.
The sound of that name resonated through every part of him, striking memories like an electric current and stirring emotions more overwhelming than should be possible. No. Don't. She's gone, understand? Gone. This girl needs you right now so don't be getting distracted by a simple coincidence. Trying to clear his head, he decided right then and there that he couldn't call her that. It was too much.
Sighing in confirmation, he eyed her cautiously. It was so dark that he couldn't really see if there were any physical wounds on the girl. He could see that she was very malnourished, though, simply from the bony, shivering fingers which were dimly shown by the light of the waning moon.
"Well, Miss Sennett, let's get you out of here." The Doctor motioned to the blue police box taking up half of her minute room.
She gaped at him for a moment, and then shook her head ardently.
"Why not?" He questioned. "You're getting hurt here, aren't you?"
With reluctance, Rosie nodded, looking down in shame.
"Sennett, I won't hurt you. I promise. I'm here to help." His eyes searched her dark and wide and frightened ones. She shook her head again, her hair falling limply across her face as she scooted slowly away from him.
The Doctor tried to not be offended by this. He took her circumstances under consideration, but he also couldn't help but be a tad agitated at this response. He was just trying to help her, to get her out of this situation, but she wasn't cooperating. He just kept reminding himself that she was hurt and scared and that a strange man was probably the last thing she wanted in her bedroom at that moment.
"There was a lady with you. I meant for her to come." Rosie had stated it so plainly that it took a second to process what she was meaning—to whom she was indicating.
"Amy?" The Doctor questioned.
Rosie looked down, her fingers absent-mindedly twirling around a piece of thin fabric. "Is that her name?"
The Doctor thought for a moment, cringed at what was soon to come, and then nodded bitterly. "Yeah. That's her name." His tired voice sounded foreign to him—like the first words spoken from a new regeneration—it was something he would have to get used to.
"I'll be right back, Miss Sennett."