A/N: Wow, this is going to be a very short chapter (sorry!), but I wanted to leave it off where it leaves off! And I wanted to submit the next piece. I'll be getting the next one in within a couple of days, possibly tomorrow. Feedback would be awesome! THANK YOU for reading! ~

Sitting there on the floor, back to the wall, face in my hands, I cried about everything. I cried about how much I hated my job, my nine to five life; I cried about how badly I wanted to love John the way he deserved; I cried about the crack in the wall and my twisted wrist and the gum I'd stepped in on the bus. I grazed the edges of the forbidden memories in my heart; a few tears slipped between the bricks in that thick barrier as well. I was too involved in my own self pity to even recognize that I'd been stopped there for probably long enough to be noticed on camera.

I didn't care. I could hear only…

Waves of unwanted recollection washed over my clouded mind and all I could hear was him.

Rose, you've got to stop this. You've got to stop this now. You've got the entire vortex running through your head. You're gonna burn.

A wet-sounding sniff disrupted the tense air around the aching body I'd detached myself from.

I have to live on. Alone. That's the curse of the Time Lord.

As the bricks crumbled around the once-safe zone of my own head, no protection for my heart, one more loud heave escaped my salty lips and I knew I would burn if I kept recalling these words—that voice.

Is that what you're going to do to me?

No… not to you.

I wiped the pools of tears from the lines of my face and cracked an eye open. I had to distract myself and snap out of this before someone—

"Is there someone there?" My cruel fate, the nemesis of justice and fairness, demanded of course that I be caught. I wiped the rest of my face quickly with my sleeve and glanced around for the source of the voice. It was a child's voice, a girl's. She hadn't seen me, and I couldn't see her, probably just looking for her mommy. I got up on my knees to fumble with the torn poster I'd taken down in my fall, and thought the girl must have moved on, but when I heard her speak again it was as though she was talking to me a foot in front of my face. "Hello? Are you alright? Have you been crying?"

Surely I was delusional, because the voice couldn't have been coming from there… the crack in the wall. I shook my head and twisted around to search again for the girl with the voice, but nobody was around for meters in either direction. Risking the appearance of being even more crazy than I surely already looked on the surveillance tapes, I leaned close to the wall, to the crack in it and saw nothing. I whispered, "Hello?"

"Hi. Are you okay? I heard you crying? Who are you?" the response was immediate, and definitely coming from the crack in the wall. But it couldn't be, could it? It was the outside wall… of a second-story department. I really was losing it, then. I'd kept my cool watching the destruction of the planet Earth, five billion years in the future; I'd saved the world my share of times and I'd survived the absorption of the entire time vortex and this was how I was going to lose my mind—by falling from a step-ladder in an underwear corner? I didn't know what else to do. I answered her.

"Hullo? Is there someone really there? How are you out there?" I spoke quietly, preferring not to be taken from work that day in a padded white van.

"I'm not out anywhere, really. I'm standing right here in my bedroom. Where are you coming from this time?" The thoughts didn't really all make sense put together, but hell, I'll bite.

"I'm in a shop. In London. I work here… My name's Rose."

"Usually the things in my wall don't talk back to me… I'm glad you are, Rose. You're not scary like the others. Just sadder," the girl said. Somehow kids have this way of being so naïve and so much more honest than any grown person, all at once. I supposed, if I was going crazy, a young girl really would be the ideal companion… Companion.

"Rose to guest services, please. Rose to guest services," wafted from the intercoms, interrupting the cleverly placed songs and ads on the store's radio station. Crap, surely someone had seen me, either falling, breaking things, lying on the floor, talking to myself, or all of the above. Likely, the last one. That's just me.

I got up off of my knees and brushed the carpet dust from my jeans, just crossing my fingers that I wouldn't be written up for slacking off or breaking the wall (though I still don't see how I could've been responsible for that). I didn't think to check back with the girl in (the crack) my head, but as I was bent over to pick up the cardboard hearts that were my only charge still intact, she checked back with me.

"Rose? Are you still there?"

"I—ah, I'll… be back. Later… what did you say your name was?" I asked, feeling stupid for even feeling rude leaving. It was all in my head! I just didn't know what else to say… This was dumb. I finished picking up the posters off the floor and turned to walk away. Just before I was out of earshot, I heard the small voice answer me.

"Amelia. I'm Amelia Pond."