Chapter 9

Melody looked at her parents from where she was sat on the hip of the neighbour's daughter Barbara as they waved goodbye to her. The last few weeks had gone by in a blur for her.

It had been a bit weird at first to find that she wasn't able to talk or walk anymore. It was all a bit frightening, because technically, she knew how to do those things. But somehow when she opened her mouth, only incomprehensible babble came out, and when she wanted to go to a different place, her little arms and legs automatically shifted into crawling position. When she had tried to pull herself up on her legs, she was mostly only able to take one tiny half-step before she landed on her bum and began to cry.

That was another annoying new thing. She had a very weird urge to cry - a lot. It was also a bit convenient, she had to admit. Whenever she did this, her parents seemed to stop everything at once in order to find out what she needed and to stop her from crying. It was fast service.

She was glad that her mother and that woman with the curly hair, who looked vaguely familiar, had come to save her from those evil people (or was it aliens? She couldn't remember).

It was nice to finally have a real family - and that it was her real mum and dad looking after her was a welcome bonus. She accompanied her mother to work, reading some of the books when her mum wasn't looking (though it was difficult to hold the books with the weak little hands she now had); she liked listening to Mary sing on the rare occasions that her parents took her with them to one of Mary's evening shows; and she liked falling asleep between her parents at night.

She always listened to everything her parents had to say. It was nice to hear their voice, and they talked about a lot of interesting things because they didn't know Melody could understand them.

So when Mary had given her parents tickets to the 1948 Summer Olympics, as well as flight tickets to move to England, she was excited to finally see the country her parents had grown up in.

A few weeks after that, she had watched her parents run around the small flat, putting everything they owned into suitcases, and finally opening the drawer she had always tried to pry open to find out what her parents where hiding in there.

It turned out it was something Melody had vague memories of - two mobile phones (Madame Kovarian had taught her a lot about electronic devices that she had to be able to use at some point in her life, but she only really remembered their names) - as well as clothes that didn't look like the clothes her parents had worn recently, that is, in 1948, but rather like those she had seen them in when they had found her in 1969 and 1970 - both images of space suits and of a woman shooting at the scary men came to her mind - or like those she had seen Mary walk around in in her flat when she had spent a day with her parents' best friend once or twice; and there were also two wallets with ID cards (her mother had shown her the ID saying, "Look at this, Melody, I was so young when I took this photo!" and she had been able to see that her mother had been born in 1989) and a few pounds that, as her dad had noted, were totally useless because they had a Queen on them that wasn't even Queen yet.

Whatever that meant.

Melody had accompanied her mother to work one last time.

"Are you really sure?" Mr. Loup had sounded and looked extremely scared.

"Yes, I'm sorry. We've been planning to go back to England almost as long as I'm here. I've loved working with you, though," her mother had answered, and Melody could see that her mother meant it.

"Well," the old man had said, looking down sadly, "there's really no stopping you. But know that you're always welcome to start working here again if you ever come back to America!"

"I promise I'll think of that." Her mother had smiled, then went back to her desk to put everything she needed into her bag.

Melody watched her mother as she put away one thing after another before stopping, taking a stack of paper out of the bottom of the desk drawer, staring at it for a while. She noticed her mother turning to glance at her, so she quickly resumed "playing" with some random toy, but she didn't miss the strange look her mother gave her before putting the stack of paper into her bag, closing the now empty drawer and looking over the desk to make sure she had everything.

Then they'd said their goodbyes and left.

Not much later they had left New York on a plane to London. Mary had offered her parents to stay with her for a little while until they were able to buy their own flat, and after exchanging a guilty look they had agreed with her (Melody loved that nobody suspected she understood so much of what was said, really. Adults just talked about everything with her around).

Melody hadn't expected a house, though. She and her parents had their own rooms, Mary had one as well, then there were two bathrooms, a kitchen and a living room. There even was a small garden in the back! How she wished she could still run - it would have been nice to be able to play in such a nice garden…

The neighbours were nice, too. She didn't know all of them, but there were Mrs Wright and her daughter Barbara who sometimes looked after Melody when her parents went out with Mary. She liked Barbara. She always talked to her like with everybody else, which was refreshing when other people only talked to her like they would with a baby (what she technically was, but still). So she listened to Barbara telling stories from school, about her dreams of going to university to study all about history, and about all the places she wanted to visit when she was older.

So this was another one of those days where her parents went out with Mary.

Melody waved back at her parents as they got into the cab that was going to take them to the Olympics.

"Let's see what we can do today, hm, Melody?" Barbara shifted her from one hip to the other as she walked back into the house.

!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!

It was yet another day where they attended the Olympics. It was still very interesting, and Amy had to admit that she felt somewhat special to be able to attend such a, well, historical event again. It reminded her of her time with the Doctor, when things like that were an every day thing.

But today she really didn't feel like following Mary around in her search for John.

Mary had been trying to find him for the past five days now, and as she had no idea where to find him, she usually just ran about the place while Rory and Amy stayed and watched the games.

Rory was even quite interested in those, but for Amy it got boring after a while. She also didn't really want to follow Mary around. She'd tried that once, but the young woman was so hard to keep track on that she had soon given up on trying to keep up with her and just went back to Rory, watching the games.

Not today though.

Today she left them both alone and took the tube to central London. She'd had an idea last night and she just wanted to check.

So an hour later she was standing in front of a familiar museum.

She made her way inside and walked around for a bit, then went looking for that familiar box.

She couldn't find it.

Turned out, it had all really been in an alternate timeline after all.

She'd thought she could have visited Rory the Night Guard, tell him everything was going to be alright.

It had been a rubbish idea anyway. He would have wanted to know why she was there, in 1948, all alone. And she couldn't very well tell him.

She shook her head to clear it.

Turning around, she decided she'd look around again, this time paying attention. She walked slowly, looking at all the paintings. Some of them she didn't remember seeing the last time she went here in her own time.

She went through all the different areas of the museum.

Until at some point, she found something very interesting indeed.

!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!

She dashed through the afternoon crowd, trying to get back to the Wembley Stadium as fast as possible, tapping her fingers impatiently against the seat in the tube, jumping up as soon as she could see the station approaching.

She ran back to the stadium and found, for once, both Rory and Mary sitting in their usual spots, watching athletes running around the stadium round after round.

"Rory!" Her call made several people turn around to look at her curiously, and after Mary tapped his shoulder, Rory looked back at her, too. By then she was already halfway down to where they were sitting.

She made her way through the seats to get to them. When she did, she just looked them in the eyes and said, "You have got to come with me right now. Both of you. You won't believe what I found."

She said it with a serious look, but Rory could see that her eyes shone with excitement, so he stood up and followed the already retreating form of his wife, trusting Mary to come with them.

The three of them went back the way Amy had come. She wouldn't say what exactly she had found, no matter how much Mary and Rory probed her.

Eventually, they left the tube and walked the short distance to the museum. Once inside, Amy took Rory's hand and led him through the different rooms, Mary in tow.

"There," Amy said suddenly, stopping in a room full of statues.

At first, this room had scared the hell out of her. So many stone statues - and she really hated those. But then, in the corner of her eye, she'd seen something, no, someone familiar.

She led Rory further into the room, feeling him tense at the sight of the statues at first, then relax when he realised it wasn't Weeping Angels that had made Amy want to show them this room.

They didn't even realise Mary had stopped at the entrance to the room.

"That's…," Rory tried, but couldn't really finish the sentence.

"I know! She looks exactly like Mary!" Amy turned to look for the young woman, but didn't find her directly behind them as she had expected. Instead, she saw her standing a way back with a small sad smile on her face. "You alright?"

"Yeah," Mary said, walking towards them, eyes never leaving the statue. "'s just, I haven't seen it in years."

"So you knew about it?" Amy stared at her wide-eyed.

"Well, yeah, a friend of mine showed it to me a long time ago - in about the same way that you did, actually." Mary chuckled slightly, a fond look on her face.

"Just around the corner, come on!" They heard someone running down a corridor nearby, shouting at someone else to keep up.

They all turned around to look at the commotion, just as a petite brunette dashed around the corner, gripping the doorway to swing around into the statue room, calling, "See, there it is. I told you, it looks exactly like-"

But by then, another person had skittered to a halt in the entrance of the room.

"Rose."

!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!

A/N: Let me tell you, when I started this story, I wouldn't have thought I'd be writing a part of it in a baby's point of view. Also, sorry for not updating these past few weeks. I had an exam today and a lot to study, but as soon as that was done I wrote this chapter (and a huge part of the next one, so that shouldn't take long). Please tell me what you think of this turn of events! No fear to those who don't like this turn of events (and I expect there to be some to be honest), this will continue to be a story about Amy and Rory!

Disclaimer: I (still) don't own Doctor Who. :(