Still very busy (as usual), so that's why this isn't updating quickly in anyone's language and there's not really much I can do about it. Sorry.

"You're quiet."

Sophia raises her head from its resting place on the taxi window to look across to Laura. "What?"

"Don't 'what' me," Laura warns, though with a half-smile on her lips. "You're just… you know. Quiet."

"It's been a long day. I'm tired, that's all."

Laura eyes her closely. "Liar."

"Oi!" Sophia pouts slightly in mock offence, her eyes brightening a little. "There's just a lot on my mind at the moment," she says, resting her head back on the window and gazing at the flashing streetlights beyond.

Laura studies her carefully. Sophia had been oddly pensive and watchful all evening, especially since she and Amelia had come back from their little chat out the back of the bar. "Is it about Amelia? Is that who you're thinking about?"

Sophia closes her eyes momentarily. "Yeah. Not in a bad way, though."

"She seemed happy tonight," Laura murmurs, mostly to herself.

"She was," Sophia says regardless.

There'd just been something about their brilliant and erratic friend this evening – Amelia had had a certain vitality, a spark of life that hadn't been present in years. Whatever complications might surround her relationship with that enigmatic Doctor of hers, they clearly had a deep and personal bond.

So why, Laura wonders, has Sophia been so subdued all evening? True, Sophia is generally reserved by nature, but this…

Laura bites her lip. "When the two of you went out for that chat… what happened?"

There's a pause and a sigh. "It's fine," Sophia says eventually. "She's okay. We had a talk, that's all."

Laura swallows. She hasn't forgotten that sequence of meaningful looks the two of them had shared. "Soph…"

"I mean, you said it, right?" Sophia continues right across her wife with uncharacteristic firmness, almost as if trying to convince herself first of all. "She's enjoying life more than she has in years. That's all that matters."

Less than a month later, the twenty-sixth of April ticks around.

Amelia's birthday.

In years gone by, she'd let the occasion go mostly unmarked, maybe have some quiet drinks with her mates or something, but this year has not gone to trend and her birthday is no different. It could be much worse, though, as she soon realises when the Doctor relays his initial plans over breakfast.

She stares at him in astonishment, a spoonful of cereal laying limp in her hand. "You're crazy."

His face falls a little from its previous giddy excitement. "Is that a yes or a no?"

"No, Doctor," she says firmly.

"But balloons and sparklers-"

"I'm turning thirty," she cuts across him, in a tone of voice which is tailor-made to end the debate. "Not four."

She thinks she's turning thirty, anyway. She has a vague idea of how long she'd spent aboard the TARDIS, but it was hard to keep track of time aboard a time machine, and especially when timey-wimey crap started coming into play.

But according to him thirty is close enough, so that'll do her. Today isn't the sort of day to be worrying about minor details, anyway. Today is supposed to be a happy day.

Even if she has to go to work.

"You're kidding me."

There's a long, tired sigh from the man on the other side of the desk. "We don't really have much choice."

Amelia pinches her nose, leaning back in her chair. She does love her job at the Times, and her boss – Mark, the section editor – is a great bloke, but getting tangled in these sort of bureaucratic nightmares is always a sure-fire way to test her tolerance.

"If this is about my last column-"

"It's not," he interjects immediately, firmly enough that she doesn't doubt his sincerity. She's less than convinced, and evidently it shows, because he looks her straight in the eye and says, "Really. It was a great piece. You're a damn good journo, Amelia, especially for one without formal training."

She appreciates the compliment, even if the subtle condescension isn't ideal. Mark's been something of a champion for her over the last year or two, shielding her from the periodic waves of mass sackings which sweep through the newspaper. As such, she counts him as a good friend – but he is, first and foremost, her boss.

She'd appreciate even it more if he hadn't called her into his office to tell her that the bulk of her work has been put on indefinite hiatus. On her birthday, no less.

"It's just – I've already organised the whole thing!" she exclaims, gesturing her frustration with her hands. "Plane tickets, hotels, itinerary – the lot!"

"I know," he says with an air of resignation. "I've talked to them all already, we'll sort that all out for you."

"You know I've wanted to do Japan for ages, Mark," she says rather testily.

"I'm sorry, alright?" And he does sound sorry as he starts pacing about the office, but he also sounds more than a little impatient, like he has little time for any histrionics on her behalf. "But head office is squeezing us pretty hard and we simply can't afford to pay those expenses right now."

"My readers-"

"Will understand. You're on Twitter, right? Just say you'll be concentrating here at home for a while until I can smooth things over. Trust me, this is the best way."

Amelia isn't sure she agrees. "Yeah, a travel journalist who can't travel, most useful thing in the world," she drawls sarcastically.

"You know the alternatives," Mark replies firmly, eyeing her closely over the desk. "You're a smart lady, Amelia, you can work it out."

She sighs, knowing that she's lost the debate… assuming there was one in the first place, of course. "Fine," she grumbles. "So what am I meant to do around this joint now that I'm halfway out of a job?"

He glares at her. "Miss Pond-"

"Sorry, sorry," she says quickly, aware that she's more than crossed the line. "It's just… it's annoying, ya know?"

"I'm aware. I think International are a bit short on staff as well, maybe you could help them out for today. You've wanted that for a while, haven't you?"

In a way that's true, she has been hopeful of a shift towards being more of a proper foreign correspondent, covering actual hard-hitting stories across the world – that's not to say that she doesn't like writing her column and the puff pieces, but they don't scratch that deep itch within her that she'd discovered one day aboard a star whale. The point, though, is that she wants to be a correspondent, not some desk jockey.

But that's too idealistic, too big for her to be worrying about now. For the moment, she needs to worry about the small details, so she nods and puts on an assured smile.

"Good," Mark says. "Now, we obviously can't just cancel the column for next week, but you could recycle one of your old blog pieces. I'm sure people will understand," he says, his gaze having drifted down to paperwork on his desk. That's as sure a sign as any that she's being dismissed.

"Alright. I'll do my best," she says half-heartedly, already well-aware that her birthday is decidedly not going to plan. "I'll be at my desk if you need me."

She turns to leave, and is halfway out the door when Mark's voice stops her.

"Oh, and Amelia?"

She turns a little to meet his eye. He's smiling at her. "Yeah?"

"Happy birthday. Sorry I couldn't make it a better one."

To her surprise, she smiles back. "Cheers."

Maybe it's the thought that counts.

The rest of her work day is quiet. For the most part she spends it shuffling emails with the blokes in International two floors above her, as they rope her in to do research on the culture of Brazil – a place where she's been three times, including one in the future, so she doesn't have to work too hard to come up with the goods. Decidedly uninspiring work, but it's at least work and she's getting paid for it. Plus, she has a lovely lunch with a few of her favourite colleagues, including one whom she suspects has half an eye for her.

All in all, it's a normal day. Not brilliant, but normal, and she likes it that way. Normal is safe, stable, predictable. It's her comfort zone.

She checks out at five o'clock sharp – no point hanging around without a trip to prepare for – and catches the tube home. The train is on time, she gets a comfortable seat on the carriage, puts her earphones in, and is more or less left in peace for the duration of the journey.

All very normal.

She arrives home at a quarter to six, checks the mail out of habit – there's nothing there – and heads to the door, taking a moment to fiddle with her keys before pushing the door open-

"Surprise!"

It's a miracle she doesn't faint out of shock.

In all honesty, she should have expected this: a surprise birthday party is exactly the sort of stunt the Doctor likes to pull. In her defence, however, she hasn't had one in at least twenty years, so it's not something she's used to.

And it's not just her and the Doctor messing around at home, either, as fifteen of her closest friends and family end up coming over. Indeed, this fact makes Amelia immediately suspicious that he's had some extra help. Most of her friends aren't even aware of the Doctor's existence, after all, so how could he have roped them all in on his little plan?

"Well…" Sophia says slowly, clearing her throat in a laughably fake manner. "I guess he managed somehow."

Sophia is good at many things, but coming up with convincing stories is decidedly not one of them. Amelia glares at her. "Soph…"

"Okay, Laura helped him out a bit," Sophia admits with a sheepish smile. "But he called us."

She nods, understanding – until a subtle point pops up in her mind. "Wait – he has your number?"

A very faint smile. "I think you have our number."

It hits. "Right."

She looks across to the other side of the room, where the Doctor and Laura appear to be deep in conversation. She decides then and there to have a word with him later; she's not a fan of anyone rummaging through something as private and personal as her phone, and he is no exception to that.

Amelia doesn't have it in her to be remotely angry or displeased, though. She's more likely to be laughing at the absurd decorations the Doctor has insisted on throwing up all over the place, or at the ridiculous party hats he keeps trying to make her wear. It's like she's a child all over again – which, to her surprise, she doesn't really mind in the slightest.

No, she isn't angry. Not with so many people she loves and cares about in one place. At first she wondered if so many people could all fit in her less-than-grand house, especially when more and more people had shown up, but to her surprise it just makes the atmosphere pleasantly cosy and, well, warm.

"I'm happy for you," Sophia says softly, breaking Amelia out of her train of thought.

"Hm?"

"Oh, it's nothing," Sophia says. "It's just nice to see you smiling again."

Can't argue with that.

In the end, she doesn't remember much from the party. It all blurs together, becoming one great big smear of warmth and laughter across her memory. She recalls a few things, like the Doctor leading several choruses of happy birthday whilst standing on the couch, like his attempt at a home-made cake which goes wonderfully awry, and like the present he gives her, right at the end of the night when people are beginning to drift off home.

Superficially, it's a simple gift – just a little wooden music box, with deep blue felt and a red-haired ballerina inside – but she'd been immediately struck dumb, her fingers trembling as she watched the little figuring slowly twirl around.

"I mean – it's not much, I know," he'd said nervously, apparently aware of both her lack of response and the sudden silence that had filled the room. "I just found it at an old antique shop the other day and thought you might like it-"

"Oh, shut up," she'd said right across him, snapping the box shut before throwing herself into the tightest of embraces.

Anyway. While it had been a wonderful night, it had only been one night. The next day is back to normal: she wakes up with a hangover, finishes off her recycled column to send off to Mark, goes grocery shopping, and comes home to a house surrounded by fire trucks.

She asks some of the firemen what the hell had happened, but they just shrug and tell her to direct her queries to her husband.

"I don't have a-" she begins, before her brain catches up with her mouth. "Right."

She finds the Doctor waiting patiently in the sitting room, his back hunched and his hands pressed between his knees. It rather reminds her of a nine-year-old boy preparing for a well-deserved scolding from his mother. Or a nine-year-old girl, in her own case, awaiting similar from her aunt.

For her part, she simply stands in front of him, crosses her arms, and waits.

"I – erm – I was just trying something, you see," he immediately gabbles, springing up and throwing his arms about in wild, apologetic gestures. She'd laugh, except for the fact that he's covered in soot and she can still see firemen filing in and out of the kitchen door. "Um, experimenting, if you will."

"Experimenting."

"With the oven," he explains – or attempts to, anyway, adding a shrug for effect. "Was attempting to get an extra twelve percent efficiency out of the heating unit, but something must have went a bit… funny."

There's a brief silence while she glares at him and he decides that his own hands are suddenly of incredible interest.

"And so…" she eventually says, trying her best not to sound too irritated with him.

"So the oven sort of, erm, exploded," he says meekly. "I'll make it better, I promise."

She lets out a half-suppressed sigh, trying her best to contain her rapidly cresting stress levels. It's the Doctor, after all. Things like this are to be expected.

"Fine. But what were you actually doing?" The Doctor is unpredictable and random, but not completely irrational. There must've been a reason he was so interested in the oven.

To her surprise, he looks down at his hands, wringing them nervously. "I was, erm, going to bake you some cupcakes for when you got home," he mumbles.

Her eyes widen, her expression softening as they do so. "Really?"

"Really," he says, looking back up at her. "Though not any more, I guess."

All in all, it's just another ordinary day in the life of Amelia and the Doctor.

Two weeks after the oven incident, with its associated weekend spent repairing the kitchen, it's raining. Not raining very heavily, mind, but it is raining, as demonstrated by the soft pitter-patter of the raindrops against the roof.

She's currently very aware of this sound, and also aware that it's been raining on and off for the last two hours, as it's the only point of interest in her otherwise completely dark, completely silent bedroom.

She rolls over with a sigh, tugging the blankets up above her chest and takes a glance at her bedside clock. Two a.m.… shit.

She's well acquainted with two o'clock in the night, of course. During her late teens, two o'clock would be about the time the parties started to die down – they could have gone on longer, but even that sort of hour ran the risk of seriously scandalising the villagers who didn't hold with that sort of thing. She didn't care about that, of course, but others did.

Of course, her two-a.m.-experiences aren't just limited to parties, goodness no.

Her insomnia is more or less life-long, but it had only seriously kicked in roughly five years ago now – not coincidentally, right about the time her relationship with Rory had…

Yeah.

She screws her eyes shut – why they were open, she has no idea – and tries to clear her mind. This is why she hates not being able to fall asleep, even more than the fatigue that inevitably sets in the next day. Here, awake in bed, with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and listen to the rain, her brain takes her to exactly those places she would much rather avoid.

Like many things in her life, though, it's cyclical. Some months she'll get by with something approaching a reasonable sleeping pattern, other times she simply isn't capable of functioning without assistance from sleeping pills. It's exhausting, but adaptability is a strength of hers and she's long since learned how to adjust.

Still, it's not much fun – as confirmed by the sight of the alarm clock reading 2:24am when her eyelids flutter open again.

Oh, god damn it.

She doesn't want to resort to the pills. She's been putting them off for weeks now, trying desperately to just ride out the low of the cycle without having to take the damn things. She's thankful for them, of course, she has no idea where she'd be without access to them, but she is not a fan of how they make her feel upon waking up.

She curls up tighter into bed and tries to force unconsciousness upon herself using every method she knows – though they all fail, of course. They always do.

The next time she glimpses the alarm clock, it's just ticked over to three.

Fuck.

She sighs, and after another minute of listening to the lightly falling rain, she decides to clamber her way out of bed and get a drink, maybe go to the bathroom – something.

As she limps down the hallway, rubbing her throbbing temples, she notices that the door to one of the rooms is ajar, and a light is on inside. It takes her several fatigue-stretched seconds for her to realise that it's the Doctor's room, which is a surprise. Not that he's awake, of course – the moron never seems to sleep – but that he's not out and about, having late-night adventures out in Chelsea or somewhere.

Well, that probably just shows how late it is – and it is raining, which probably makes adventures just a smidge less appealing even to him. She bites her lip, staring at the door for a second… before pushing her way inside. He's sitting in bed with his lower body covered in blankets, his attire the same as ever except for the tweed. The light, it turns out, is a reading lamp illuminating a thick yellow book of some description.

"Doctor?"

He starts, jolted out of his little bubble by her voice, before putting the book down to stare at her. "Pond. It's rather late for you to be up."

She ignores his point, shuts the door behind her and plops herself down on the edge of his bed. "What are you reading?"

"The book? Oh, just a 1981 Wisden Almanack," he replies.

"Seriously?"

"Serious as ever." He eyes her closely. "Is there something wrong?"

"No, no," she says quickly. "Just… can't sleep, ya know?"

"Indeed." He pauses for a moment, continuing to read her like she's the book he'd just put down, before shifting right over to the corner and opening up the blankets.

She stares at him for a moment, baffled – before it hits her exactly what he's doing. "Wait, I didn't-"

"Well, why else would you have come here?" he asks, as if it's the most obvious question in the world.

"I…" Her voice falls away, though, as she soon realises that she doesn't have an adequate answer. She bites her lip and fiddles with the sheets a little before letting out an exhausted sigh. "Fine."

The bed is only designed for one, so it's a squeeze to fit both their long, gangly bodies beneath the blankets, but eventually they manage. Her back is pressed up against his chest, and she suspects that she's squashing him against the wall-

"No, no, it's fine," he reassures her quickly when she airs her concerns. "Perfectly comfy, me. How about you?"

"I'm good." Better than good, in fact, as she can feel his face nuzzling her hair, his arm draped around her midriff. She places her arm across his, securing his hold on her. It's as comfortable as she's been in ages. "Have you done this before?"

"Yes," he murmurs, his lips all but brushing her ear, "but not for a long time."

She closes her hand around his arm, tightening her grip. "Neither," she replies softly.

He's surprised by that, she can tell by the way his body stiffens. "But you and Rory-" he begins, before cutting himself off as his brain catches up to his mouth.

But it doesn't matter, she's not so easily offended. "Cuddling in bed," she says slowly, searching for the right words, "just wasn't our thing."

And that's true, it wasn't. There was the odd post-sex cuddle, of course, and maybe when they needed a little late-night comfort, but that was rare.

"And before that?" She can hear the curiosity in his voice, so innocent and simple that she can't help but open up.

"A little," she says, her voice barely above a whisper. "Sometimes with Mum. Never with Aunt Sharon."

There's a long silence, a pause as she waits for his response – which she gets in the form of a sigh, his lips pressing briefly into her hair. "Sweet dreams, Pond," he whispers, reaching over to turn off the light before letting her settle into him. "I'll be here if you need me."

She's asleep in less than a minute, and she dreams with a smile on her face.

The Doctor wakes first.

He always does, of course. He only needs two hours a day, after all, and he makes sure to keep his sleep time to the required minimum. Every second spent asleep is a second not moving, not doing, and he can't really abide wasting any more time than absolutely necessary.

He opens his eyes, his vision adjusting rapidly to the still-darkened room around him. There's a little light creeping in through the curtains above him, but no more than a whisper of the incoming day – it surely can't be earlier than five thirty in the morning.

He smiles, settling back into bed and listening to the rhythmic sounds of gentle breathing – though not his breathing.

It's nice, to be honest. He's known Amelia for so long and shared so much with her, but to his knowledge this is the first time they'd ever slept together. And, well… it's nice.

She's rolled over in her sleep so her head is resting on his shoulder, silken hair tickling the bottom of his chin. For a few minutes it's all he knows, the sweet, intoxicating fragrance filling his senses, the way her hair seemed to shine even in the near-darkness, its softness as he absent-mindedly twirls a few locks about his fingers.

Maybe he should do this peaceful moment thing more often, he muses to himself, if this is the result.

Physically, it's about as close as he's gotten to her since he'd come back to her… a realisation which immediately gives him an idea.

Carefully, so as to not disturb her, he reaches across to the bedside table, where he'd placed the book he'd been reading, a spatio-temporal interferometer he'd been building out of a hairdryer and, of course, the sonic screwdriver. After a little blind searching with his hand in the dark, he manages to close his fingers around the device – only to freeze, as Amelia stirs next to him.

Oops. Probably best that she isn't awake for this…

But no, her little murmurs aren't a sign of anything but the most blissful of sleeps. He smiles to himself as she shifts against him, letting out a small chuckle into her hair – before lifting the screwdriver and running it over her arms in one smooth movement.

He flicks it up to his eyes and examines the reading, his lips thinning, his brow creasing as he does so. The scan hasn't told him much – it's just a medical, so it wasn't ever going to – but they do confirm his first suspicion: the cuts on her forearms have been present for a quite a while now.

He'd been looking for the opportunity to find this out for well over a month, ever since that evening where he'd found out about her injuries. At first, he hadn't thought that much of it – sure, it had looked bad, but it hadn't seemed to trouble her in any way.

Except, of course, when it had.

Before this morning, all he'd done was ask her about it. Not directly, of course, as that isn't really their style, but he'd simply tried to find out what had gone wrong. He hadn't even been particularly pokey or nosey about it, he'd just asked if, well, was there anything physically wrong with her that he should know about?

"What?" she'd hissed when he'd first brought it up, giving him an astonished glare over the jumble of electronic wiring and ominous flashing lights separating them. "We're six minutes away from nuclear armageddon and you're asking me that?!"

"I'm just curious, that's-"

"Nuclear armageddon, Doctor!"

Alright, so his timing may have been a little off, but they'd defused the bomb with a comfortable twenty seconds to spare anyway and besides, something tells him that isn't the point.

More importantly, something tells him that the nature of her answer isn't actually a result of the fact they'd been trying to avert a nuclear catastrophe. Something tells him that she'd have given that sort of answer anyway.

Quite simply, she doesn't want him to know.

He doesn't care about the scars themselves. They'd both picked up plenty of bumps and bruises in their merry jaunts across the universe – part of the job description – but nothing permanent as far as he knows. Nothing that hadn't righted itself in short order.

Maybe he shouldn't worry so much; a couple of cuts is almost trivial on the grand scheme of thing and while they may stick around, they're only cuts and they should heal with time.

So why are they such a problem, then? They look bad, sure, and they'd worried him sick at first, but she's doing very well at hiding them… far, far too well.

No.

He has to find out, which means he has to talk to someone. Someone he trusts, someone with the right knowledge and someone he can reach without having to time-travel…

Fortunately, he knows just the man.

"Amelia."

Silence.

"Amelia, wake up." There's a little shifting and a near-inaudible mumble, but other than that, still nothing. But the Doctor persists.

"Come on, Pond," he says, now shaking her gently by the shoulders. "Time to rise and shine."

At this, Amelia finally wakes with a full-on groan and stretch as she slowly pushes herself up to a sitting position, shaking a curtain of untamed ginger hair away from her eyes.

"What time s'it?" she asks, blinking sleep from her still-bleary eyes.

"A quarter past eight," he says.

There's a momentary pause, where she simply stares at him, and then – "Shit," she blurts, her face filling with sudden horror. "Oh, fuck," she curses again, staggering to her feet and brushing past him before he can so much as berate her for her language.

A few seconds later, he's on the opposite side of her bedroom door, listening patiently to her list of things he needs to do in the next five minutes or, apparently, she's going to be "screwed". It's not an especially long list – he just needs to make her some breakfast, make her a coffee and call a cab – but she seems awfully stressed regardless.

"Can't you just show up a few minutes late or so? I'm sure they won't mind."

"No!" she immediately shouts from beyond the door, clearly mortified at the idea given her tone of voice. "I try to be on time for meetings, Doctor, unlike some people, ya know?"

"I was on time last week to that concert thing!" he retorts, deflecting the deeper jibe hidden beneath.

She snorts. "Yeah, just. By, like, five seconds."

"Five seconds is loads of time, you can do plenty in five seconds. And besides, I have my own meeting today too," he says, injecting a note of somewhat childish pride into his voice, "and I'll bet you twenty quid I'm on time for that."

The door opens, revealing Amelia in a sleek grey suit, a clean white blouse, a matching skirt and with curiosity in her eyes. "Really? Who with?"

"Oh… um, just an old friend," he says with an off-hand gesture.

That's probably not the answer she was expecting – or hoping for. "An old friend?"

"Just a guy I used to know." With luck, that'll be enough to satisfy her, as he'd really rather not get into specifics.

Fortunately, it is enough. "Ah, right," she says, her shoulders relaxing and a smile working its way to her face. "I thought you had some hot date or something."

"Amelia!"

"Oh, shut up and get me my cab." She pushes past him with a playful jab to his shoulder and a smile. He pouts and makes a face, but internally he's thankfully that the short conversation hadn't gone down the potentially awkward and troublesome path it had been heading towards.

Once upon a time he wouldn't have thought twice before telling Amelia that he's going off to find her now ex-husband, but this situation isn't quite so simple. Nothing about this is.