Chapter Seven: Delirium

It was all new, this life, with new sensations everywhere. Clothes felt differently, things smelled differently, and food…Rasillion, who knew fish fingers and custard, was so amazing?

He giggled to himself at the thought. He was a new man, this was a new adventure, he had a new friend…Amelia, Amy, Pond…he liked Pond. Perhaps he would call her simply that.

"Fish fingers…fish!" One floated by his head, a neon purple gold fish, lazily drifting on the currents in his galley. He smiled at it as it wandered past.

"Mad…I've finally turned that corner, haven't I?"

"You've always been mad….I think?" The girl across the table giggled in delight as she spooned up the custard with crunchy bits of breaded fish into her mouth. "This is quite good."

"I know, who would have thought?" He laughs as he watches the sparkling, rainbow of light and goldfish wend through the room. "You know, this is likely just a bad regeneration process. I've always had the worst side effects. Least I'm not trying to kill anyone."

"That's what you get for cheating Death, my sister doesn't like it much, but she does like other things, like dark chocolate, and strawberries, and fuzzy slippers, and Paddington Bear, and she squeals quite a lot over those silly little, fat, angel babies with wings, you know, with all the flowers and silly fluffy, and I've never understood it, but she says there is some irony in it that I'd get better if I wasn't so very confused all the time, and you know your ship talks to people, because it keeps talking to me, it whispers such things….what is Bad Wolf?"

The Doctor stopped his daydream of staring at two squiggly, colorful lines engaged in some sort of lurid mating ritual to glance lazily at the child with her multicolored, scraggily hair and her torn, fishnet shirt. "Someone you don't need to worry about, little one."

It did make his heart ache just a bit.

"Oh…she sounds lovely though," the girl mused dreamily, pulling up scabby knees to her chin.

"She was…is…always will be." He sighed. That was a different him, a different life, and he was a new man with a new companion who was brilliant.

"I like gingers!" He announced as before his eyes one half of his new friends hair suddenly became flaming red. "I liked Donna and she was ginger. I think Pond will suit admirably."

"Ponds aren't ginger, they are clear," replied the girl with a matter-of-fact roll of her eyes. "You can see clear through that Pond, if you want to."

The Doctor had no idea what that even meant. He was preoccupied by the azalea push sprouting out of his rubbish bin. "Never been much of an azalea person."

"You pick up toys and play with them for a while, then you throw them away broken," the girl continued, oblivious to the large, flowering shrub in his trash. "You can see through the pond to the river and they are all just caught up in your stream and neither one of them will get to go in a straight line but will be all twisty turny while you keep falling, falling, falling."

Her hand looped up and crashed down, straight into the bowl of custard.

"Oi! That's breakfast!" He protested as cream and fish finger went everywhere.

"Why do they call it fish fingers if fish don't have fingers," the girl mused, licking the concoction off of her hands.

The Doctor had to admit that he wondered that himself.

"So anyway, yes, falling, falling, and soon you will go BOOM!" The girl smacked sticky fingers together in front of her twin colored eyes, the blue one swirling, the green one fixed on him. "And it will take something quite impossible to put the raggedy man back together again."

"Impossible seems to be my middle name," he joked, staring into the alarming depths of one jade eye.

"No it isn't, Lord of Time." She suddenly became very lucid on him in a way that struck terror inside. "Doctor isn't even your real name. It's your title, your purpose, the sacred vow you took when you stood by my brother's side all those years ago. You've been running down your golden path without heed to everything you've left behind. And it will cost you very soon."

Slowly she blinked her eyes, sticky fingers reaching for him. "Beware the silence, beware the whispers, for the song that comes from the river will lead to your demise."

Her broken, cracked, dirty nails cut into the skin of his hand painfully, but he dared not move or even breath, not even to bat at the goldfish in his face, until those two, crazed eyes opened once again. They both stared, unfocused at the creature hovering I front of his nose.

"Is my goldfish bothering you?"

"A bit, yeah," he admitted as she let him go, reaching for the scaly, bright creature and shoving it into a pocket of her shabby coat.

"I need to go," she murmured absently, hopping off of the chair. "Have fun with the Pond, don't swim in it though, I don't think that the Rory will like it."

"Sure," he shrugged, watching as she bent to smell the azaleas.

"I don't like her as much as Sarah," the girl sighed sadly, her hair now fading to a strawberry blonde. And for a moment the Doctor thought he could see another girl, one he saw on a beach long ago, taking delight in blue sand and lavender sky and Sarah Jane Smith dancing in the water. "Sarah was not as loud."

"Everyone is different," the Doctor replied and realized how much he too had changed in the centuries since. "I need her in my life."

"Be careful what you wish for, Lord of Time," the girl replied, and her hair was once again a riot of color in different lengths. She leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek, his new one. She smelled of stale wine and old cigarettes, sweat, and the faint hint of the memories of a county fair somewhere.

"Madness always seems to follow in your wake."

The girl smiled sadly at this and without a word marched out of his kitchen. Where she went, the Doctor didn't know. But now he was left with a kitchen covered in custard and a giant, flowering shrub in his trash. He better clean it up before Amy wandered in and discovered all of this.