Sorry It's taken so long to update, I've been seriously lacking the motivation it takes to write lately. But hopefully I'm back now and will get a few more chapters up before long.

I've also decided to restructure the way I've been writing, as in I think one of my problems has been that I've been trying to cram too much exposition into one chapter (i.e. The Savage Bride) so I'm going to try and keep my chapters shorter and see if it helps.

Thanks to all you lovely people that commented!

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Chapter Eleven: Stitches

Getting to the console room was a mess. With the floor becoming the wall and the walls becoming the floor every few steps, it was a wonder we made it there at all.

Well, a wonder I made it there at all. While I stumbled and flopped along the passage the Doctor darted through like the captain of a ship on stormy seas. He had his sea legs. Or 'Tardis legs'. He seemed to anticipate the ships movements as the corridor spun, taking it all in stride.

Obviously he made it to the console room before I did. By the time I got there he was dancing around the controls, bringing the sentient machine under some kind of control.

"It was just a program!" He protested, glaring up at the heaving glass center reproachfully.

"What is?" I shouted over the sounds of the Tardis in flight, just managing to grab onto the railing as the room lurched sideways again. The bar I was holding onto slammed into my stomach, knocking the wind out of me.

"No! No!" The Doctor shouted again. Thankfully, the shout prompted me to hang onto the rail tighter, because then the room decided to turn upside down. "It was just supposed to be a scanner! Preemptive measures! Just as a test scan! I didn't mean to try to take off on your own!"

I let out a frustrated growl and was slammed back into the floor. I wrapped my arms and legs around one of the vertical bars, determined to just cling on until this wild ride was over. Especially if he was just going to talk to the ship instead of explaining what was going on.

After another few minutes of this, the TARDIS gave one final lurch before landing with a thud that had my teeth rattling in their sockets. I released the bar I had been hanging onto with a groan, flopping back onto my butt. What would've happened if I hadn't hung onto the bar when the TARDIS turned upside down? Would I have hit the ceiling and just fallen straight back down when the ship righted herself?

I gazed up at the ceiling above my head. That would be an awfully hard fall.

"Alright there, Buff?" The Doctor called from somewhere on the other side of the console.

I grunted and used the railing to pull myself up onto my feet. "Yeah. You?"

"In one piece, as far as I can tell," The Time Lord said happily. When I made it to my feet I could see him over the edge of the console, evidently enraptured by whatever was on the monitor.

"What happened?" I asked as I padded over to him, rubbing my lower back ruefully.

Instead of answering, the Doctor motioned me over with a flick of his hand. I peered around his shoulder inquisitively at the diagram displayed on the screen. It sort of looked like a topographic map, except without any roads or trees. Or maybe a sonar reading of the bottom of the ocean. At any rate, it was basically a bunch of blue lines and circles decorating a black surface, showing the texture and height differences between what looked like hills and valleys. On the surface, however, there were three other squiggly lines depicted in glowing white. I squinted at the lines, trying to figure out why they seemed so familiar. I knew I had seen them bef…

A sick feeling clumped at the bottom of my stomach. Ah. Doctor Who again. I was looking at cracks in the universe.

To avoid having to explain why I knew that the cracks were… well… cracks… I asked, "Okay… so… what?"

"Those are cracks," he explained, just like I expected him too. "An' not just any cracks. Cos instead of being in a window or a table, these are in the fabric of reality. In the skin of the universe."

"Okay," I acknowledged slowly, "But what does that have to do with the TARDIS going nuts?"

The Doctor looked rather sheepish. "Well, uh... " He scratched his head nervously. "I was hoping we'd have a little more time to work on preparing an' practicing before looking into some actual stuff… but…"

I raised my eyebrows and waited for him to stop rambling.

"... but you see, I wanted to go ahead and start fiddlin' with a program to locate holes. Just a test run. Honest. I wasn't gonna try an' get you into it until we knew more about how you interact with extra dimensional forces, but the TARDIS must've gone and found a point."

"Get me into what?" I asked shakily. Crap. I knew there would be more to the medallion thing. My mind flashed back to the message Mirror Girl had left me… God, that felt like so long ago… she had a job for me, but hadn't said what it was.

"Remember what I said earlier about 'Stitching'?"

I nodded. At least it sounded kind of cool. Too cool for me to have much hope of doing a good job of it.

"Well, that's what this is." The Doctor pointed to the screen again, but turned to focus bright blue eyes on me. "Fixing the holes. I mean, that's not all you can do, but it's the most important thing."

I blinked up at him anxiously. "Can't the TARDIS do that? Fix the cracks?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Some of them, but not always. She's better at detecting them than the actual healing process."

"But how am I supposed to do it?" I whined piteously.

"I'm sure you'll figure it out," The Doctor dismissed as he paced back around the console, towards the door. "Have you got the manipulator?"

I chased after him. "You mean you don't know?" This was bad. Very bad.

"Not exactly," he sighed, striding outside confidently. "Can't know everything, can I? Not to mention that this is your job. Not mine. Figure it out, stop naggin' me."

I stopped by his side in the late afternoon sunlight, not even paying any attention to where we were. Stuff like this should NOT be left up to me. Bad idea. Very bad idea. My head felt fuzzy. Exploring was one thing. Actually doing something important was another.

The Doctor crossed his arms and gazed out at the surroundings I was currently ignoring. The low angle of sunlight made his eyes seem brighter and paler than usual. After a moment of me not answering, he looked back down at me.

He sighed again, kinder this time with an air of begrudgingly giving in. "Alright. Tell you what. Get this done an' we'll explore China some. Then you can pick where we go next."

"China?" I echoed, startled. A quick glance around to see we were in some kind of village. Definitely not in what was my idea of 'modern times'. There were carts, animals, and people roaming around on the muddy street, making it crowded and busy. Down the street and between the buildings, I could just glimpse the glimmer of sunlight reflecting on the water of what appeared to be a harbor. Beyond the smells that a large number of people and animals caused, the smell of the sea reached my senses. "We're in China?"

"Yep," the Doctor confirmed, what I could swear was a smug grin creeping across his face. "Early seventeenth century. Near the South China Sea. Not exactly an alien planet, but it's worth a look."

"Yeah," I agreed, voice coming out as a quiet squeak. "Never been to China. Or the seventeenth century." Excitement prickled in my chest to mix the the terror.

I felt his chuckle reverberating through his arm. That's when I noticed that I had latched onto him again, which explained why he was being smug. He seemed pleased though, at the short little human that kept clinging onto his arm whenever she was a bit overwhelmed. Whatever.

"That's something we can fix," he replied cheekily, giving my arm a squeeze so I was pulled closer into his side. "But first we need to take care of these cracks, alright?"

"Okay," I said quietly. I had the distinct impression that he was bribing me. Like a little kid, even. 'Do your homework and smile at scary aunt Carol and we'll get ice cream afterwards'. But hey, seventeenth century China. "So… now what?"

"You tell me." The Doctor lifted his eyes again to scour our surroundings. "You could sense the distortions on the jungle planet. Cracks should have the same effect as interdimensional creatures. The walls between the dimensions aren't as thin here, but cracks should leave a larger footprint."

I nodded distractedly, forcing down panic and tying to figure out what exactly it was I was supposed to be so sensitive to. The distortions I'd seen before hadn't exactly made me feel all warm and fuzzy. They'd caused my hair to stand on end and locked me into a confusing battle between fight and flight responses. In other words, something I would much rather avoid, not go looking for.

But, here we were. The Doctor was here, and even though he was trying to be nice and supportive about it, I knew that he wasn't about to leave me with a choice.

So, I closed my eyes and tried to focus. Other than terrifying, how had the distortions felt?

Tingly. They made the hair on my arms stand on end and made my skin crawl with a sense of wrongness. Like something wasn't quite right with the world. Like when you walk into your house and find that your furniture has all been moved two inches to the left. Or when you're alone in a dark, empty house, but you can swear that someone's there, just around the corner. Just the sense that something's off, but you're not sure what.

I opened my eyes and looked up at the Doctor.

He raised his eyebrows questioningly. "Got it?" I nodded and he grinned. "Right, then! Lead on."

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We wandered down narrow alleyways, turning corners on whims and trying to dodge the people our erratic path encouraged us to bump into. But I was pretty sure I was on the right track.

Well, I thought I was.

Frustratingly enough, whatever impulse-signal thing I was following was in no way strong, constant, or easy to follow. I kept doubling back, losing the signal and getting turned around so often that I had just about convinced myself that it was all in my head and that there wasn't actually any kind of feed at all. There had been some mistake. I wasn't actually sensitive to this stuff at all and wouldn't be of any real help to the Doctor or anyone at all, for that matter.

The Doctor didn't seem concerned though, which gave me at least a small shred of comfort. In fact, the Time Lord looked quite relaxed, meandering around behind me lazily, exploring and enjoying the late afternoon sun while occasionally offering reassuring words every time I backtracked out of a dead end, flustered and confused.

And he did have a point. I was extremely new at this and we were 'both still learning how it all worked' so there was 'no need to get frustrated'. Despite that, I was getting more and more panicky with each passing second, so much that I was on the verge of tears by the time I actually managed to find what we were looking for.

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The air around me was vibrating, and I wasn't sure if I should be scared or relieved. My eyes scanned the street corner uncertainly, trying to pick out the surroundings through the tumultuous haze that was so thick that I could hardly see the road and shops on the other side. It was like trying to look at stuff through someone else's glasses, more than that, it was like I had just been staring at one of those gifs that you were supposed to stare at for thirty seconds and then look at a still picture of swirls or Starry Night; the afterimages of the swirls distorting the rest of the world long after you'd stopped looking at them.

I squinted at the distorted mass, rapidly getting a headache but determined to not let the Doctor down. I was so absorbed in trying to find the most messed up section of the space in front of me that I didn't notice the Doctor coming up to loom behind me.

"What do you see?" The Time Lord's low voice rumbled softly into my ear, causing me to jump.

"Don't know," I admitted, unnerved and slightly embarrassed. "It's weird."

One of the Doctor's large hands rested heavily on my shoulder. "Think you've found it?"

"Maybe?" I said uncertainly.

"Fantastic!" The Doctor said cheerfully, circling around to stand at my side with a one of his goofy grins. "Feel up to checking it out?"

The relief I felt at finding the damn thing vanished. Would it have really been so bad to just act like I wasn't sensitive to this stuff at all?

"I still don't understand what I'm supposed to do," I whined piteously.

"That's alright," The Doctor continued happily, clapping me on the back, clearly not at all affected by how frightened I was. Again. "Just have a go at it, have a good look, an' experiment a bit. Go on."

He ended by giving me a firm shove in the back, causing me to stumble forward into the distorted mass. My blossoming headache tripled in strength and I turned back to stare at the Doctor's distorted image.

The Time Lord stared back at me with cool expression, eyes icy and blank as he waited for me to vanish with his arms crossed.

I fished the medallion out of my shirt shakily, feeling like a science experiment or a lab rat.

Stuck between a crack in the universe and a determined Time Lord… I really didn't have a choice, did I?

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The same jerk forward I had felt before yanked me through the cobweb-like substance and I found myself standing on the Otherside, feeling more lonely and lost than I had since I'd met the Doctor.

Because… I didn't really have much of a say in all this. I didn't want to be responsible for all of this. What would he do if I told him that?

I shivered against the cool fog and blinked back tears. As much as I wanted to believe the Doctor would be okay with me not wanting to 'stitch' or whatever… I honestly wasn't sure.

My headache still hadn't gone away, either, so that wasn't helping. Though I guess it gave me a reason other than being rejected by the only kind-of friend I had to close the crack.

The anomaly in question was sitting a few yards away, a bright scar carved into the screen that marked the edge of the universe.

You know, the thing I couldn't get to the last time because it was always the exact same distance away?

I let out a growl of frustration. How the hell am I supposed to fix something I can't even get to?

I tried walking towards it again, but quickly gave up, more in favor of keeping the Doctor's outline in sight. But now what?

My first instinct was to go back and ask the Doctor, but he'd already made it clear that he didn't know much about all of this. What if asking him again just annoyed him? No, I couldn't do that.

The Blank-Ghost of a person walked straight through me, the chill of it passing through sapped away the last of my resolve.

I flopped to the ground and drew my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them and resting my chin on top, feeling completely hopeless. The crack hovered a few yards away, mocking me with its blindingly white light that just seemed to eat and suck away the energy of everything around it.

I glared at it hatefully. The cracks weren't even supposed to be an issue until season 5, with the Eleventh Doctor. What was it even doing here? Better question: what was I even doing here? Was the crack here because of me? Or was I here because of it?

No good answer there.

And GOD… why ME?

Why not someone that was actually good at all of this? Someone like Rose Tyler, Martha, Donna, Amy, Rory, Clara, Bill, or even Mickey or Nardole, would be better at this than me. Hell… why not just assign this shit to a companion? And even if that wasn't an option for whatever reason, why not someone brave like them? An adrenaline junkie who was brave and take this kind of thing in stride? The Doctor met plenty of those in his travels.

I wasn't any of them. I wasn't anything like them. Not even close. Someone like them would be figuring out how to fix this, not wallowing on the ground in a side dimension because she wasn't sure how to even get to the problem, let alone fix it.

I reached for the medallion, pulling it off and letting it dangle in front of my face by its chain.

This is what made me 'special'. A piece of metal. All of the people the Doctor asked to travel with were special because they just were. They were brave and compassionate. People the Doctor wanted to have around him. But me?

He wanted me around because he had to. Because I showed up, knowing too much with this STUPID PIECE OF METAL. Is that what it would be like? The Doctor babysitting me until I was useful? Because I didn't want that. I doubted the Doctor did either. Babysitting a human for God-knows how long couldn't be fun. The Doctor didn't want or need those kind of humans. He didn't like them. They only got in the way.

Would I get in the way? I hadn't really… yet. Though we hadn't actually gone anywhere too dangerous so far either. What would happen when we started going to REALLY dangerous places? Daleks and Cybermen and Slitheen?

The sick feeling that I hadn't felt in a while, the one that plagued me every minute of the fourteen months I'd spent in London, was back. I could picture it now, me screwing up and getting people killed… the Doctor snapping and telling me he was sick of looking after me… I was more trouble than I was worth… I couldn't take care of myself… didn't belong on the TARDIS… dump me back where he found me… all alone again…

I took a few shaky breaths, chewing on my thumb nail anxiously. I didn't want to be alone again. The very thought of the Doctor leaving me on the streets of London… the sound of the TARDIS dematerializing, echoing throughout the empty streets, was enough to make me light headed with fear.

What if he dumped me of where and when we last left Rose? Just pushed me out, stern scowl changing into a goofy smile as he welcomed Rose on board.

I gagged. That was one of the cruelest things I could imagine.

Well… no it wasn't…

I bit my hand roughly, trying to snap myself out of it. I was being stupid again, right? The Doctor wasn't cruel. Not to simple humans, anyway. In fact, the only time I had seen this Doctor be cruel was to Cassandra, and even that wasn't a black and white situation.

Besides, we had been getting on pretty well so far, hadn't we? We'd had fun at the fair in San Francisco. And let's not forget the hug.

The image of the Doctor's soft smile replaced the cold, blank stare he'd fixed me with a few minutes before. He'd gotten visibly upset when he noticed the bruises and even tried to kiss them better.

I took a steadying breath and looked back at the Doctor's blank form. He was pacing now, from one side of the street to the other, hands shoved into his pockets, kicking at loose stones while he waited for me to come back.

The frightened and empty ache in my chest eased somewhat. The Doctor was nice. Too nice to leave me behind like that. I had to remember that even though he was real now, that he was still the person I'd admired on tv. He was still the Doctor. No matter what.

It was stupid of me to think I would get used to it, adapt like Jack said. I just wasn't cut out for all this. I needed to make my peace with that. But, if I only had to listen to one thing Jack had said, it was that the Doctor seemed to care for me. I mean, I hadn't known the Doctor for long, but I was pretty sure I could count him as a friend… my only friend, actually…

I took one last, deep breath and stood up shakily. I had to solve this pretty quickly, before the Doctor got too worried. He would probably blame himself if he thought something had happened to me. God knows he blamed himself for enough as it was.

So. First problem. How do I get to the edge?

I drew a blank and started chewing on my fingernails again, shivering as another blank person passed through me.

Problem solving. I could do that. I'd done it before in… you know… math problems and stuff. I'd done it for sci-fi things too.

What was the first part of problem solving?

Alright. What all did I know?

1. I was on the edge of the universe.

2. I was trying to get to the very edge, which I could see.

3. The edge of the universe moved with me, which meant it was everywhere at the exact same time.

4. That made sense (sort of) because the edge is a dimensional thing instead of a physical one.

5. I had a manipulator thing.

6. The manipulator responded to impulse-ish commands.

7. The manipulator was a dimension handle-thing.

8. So if it was a handle that I could use… then maybe…

I tightened my grip on the medallion and thought hard.

I wanted to get to the edge… did the manipulator know what the edge was?

I stared at the impenetrable gray wall of mist. That's where I wanted to go. I wanted it to stay still so I could walk over to it.

For a few seconds, it didn't seem like anything changed. But the red jewel was glowing brightly at the center of the golden circle, so I figured that it was doing something.

I took one step, then another, and another, towards the edge. For a moment, I didn't notice a difference. But then I noticed I was definitely getting closer.

My chest swelled with elation. I was doing it. I'd figured something out on my own. So what if I was thinking like a little kid that had just figured out how to ride a bike? I was moving through dimensions TO THE END OF THE UNIVERSE. How many companions could say that?

Then I was there, gazing into the misty grey void. Only inches away, the fringes of the veil tingled at my cheeks. I reached out tentatively, curiosity overcoming fear, and brushed my fingers through the fog.

Instead of parting around my hand, the veil stood firm and my fingers vanished into it like they'd never existed at all. It didn't feel like anything at all. I'd never been in a sensory deprivation chamber, but I was pretty sure that's what it would feel like. Just a bunch of nothing. I might as well have not had a hand attached to me. What hand? No hands here. Never any hands here.

I blinked at the spot where my appendage had been and pulled my hand away, relieved when all the fingers reappeared where they were supposed to be.

Blank space. I shuddered. The edge of the universe really was the edge of the universe. It was so surreal, like a cartoon character walking into the emptiness of a blank page. Just… nothing.

I glanced a few feet to my right, where the crack hovered at head height. Even its blinding light couldn't light up the emptiness around it.

I hardly noticed my feet moving as I stepped closer to the crack, but suddenly it was right in front of me. Unlike the veil, the crack pulsated heat and energy. It felt alive. A single, giant eye peering out at me from an ocean of nothing.

Should I touch it?

My fingers wiggled inches away from the gash.

Rory was absorbed by a crack in the universe, and then he never existed. The soldiers at the Byzantium went into the light, and the same thing happened to them. Not to mention the angels, and very nearly the Doctor…

Maybe not. I pulled my hand away.

Now what? I had to… fix it? How do you fix a crack in the universe?

Things I know:

9. What I was doing was called 'Stitching'.

Great. How did I do that? It could just be a fancy title. You'd expect that from a people that called themselves 'Time Lords'. Or it could refer to one of the other abilities that the Doctor had mentioned.

Whatever it was called, I wasn't getting any closer to fixing it standing here. Assumingly it would have something to do with the medallion.

I turned the object in question over in my hands for what felt like the millionth time today. I nibbled at my fingernails again before holding the medallion out to the crack.

The crack came to life. Light reached out from it, reaching for the medallion and my hand.

The light lapped at my hand like white fire, but it didn't burn. Tendrils of light seeped out, wrapping up and around my forearm. Seeing that I thought it was going to pull me inside and make it so I never existed, you'd have thought I would've tried to pull away. But common sense was never my forte. I stood there, frozen with terrified fascination as the light seemed to consider me for a moment, tasting me like a snake would taste the air.

Then it recoiled, all of the strings of light retreating back into the crack. All except one. One of them attached itself to the red jewel.

I stared at the medallion in breathless wonder. The whole thing had lit up. The jewel was glowing, many times brighter than I had seen it do before. The gold part had come to life as well; the previously still designs were spinning around each other like clockwork.

Apparently I had done something right.

Right. Stitching.

Evidently I had a thread. And the medallion was a needle.

So…

I lifted the medallion up to the top of the crack and the thread followed. When the manipulator came into contact with the veil directly above the crack, there was a whirring sound, like a drill. When the sound stopped, I withdrew the object to see that the thread had been embedded into the veil.

Exactly like sewing… well… with dimensions and the skin of the universe. But I continued, despite how strange it seemed.

The thread of light stretched as I continued to use it, not thinning or weakening in any way as it got longer for my needs.

In no time at all, I had the thread zigzagged across the crack. Did I need to tighten it? How did I do that?

At the thought, the medallion started spinning again, like some kind of crank.

My heart was pounding excitedly as the thread started tightening, and, slowly but surely, the crack began to close.

When the gash was within inches of being pulled together completely, I chanced a glance back at where the Doctor had been. The Time Lord Blank was standing near where I had last saw him, but there was something different about his posture. The relaxed aura he had been giving off fifteenish minutes ago was gone, replaced by the 'alert dog' one that I had seen before.

I glanced around nervously, trying to figure out what was bothering him. The other Current-Blanks were responding to whatever was happening as well, but unlike the Doctor's composed attention, they were dashing about in a panic, streaming around the Time Lord like a river would around a rock.

What were they running from?

A half second later, I had my answer. Other people were dashing down the street, except they obviously were not running away from something. And they had swords. Not to mention they were swinging them, too.

"Doctor!" The Time Lord's name ripped from my throat when one of the sword-bearing people took a swing at him.

The Doctor dodged the blow easily. I tore my eyes away from the struggle and back to the crack. It was almost closed, but I didn't have time to finish. I had to help the Doctor. I doubted he would leave the street without me, but there was no way he could hold off the attackers for long.

"Let go!" I spat at the medallion, tugging at it desperately. I needed it to get back to the other side. "Come on! No! Wait! Not like that!"

Instead of just releasing the thread like I wanted, it started unthreading itself, each individual stitch snapping out of place, tearing the veil surrounding it.

And it kept tearing, ripping the crack out of its stereotypical shape, shredding the edges and making it even wider than before.

I turned just in time to see the Doctor get hit with the hilt of one of the swords. He stumbled, stunned just enough for two of the Blank people to haul him away.

"Doctor!" I shouted again, redoubling my efforts to free the medallion from the thread. I was so desperate to follow after my friend that I hardly noticed the now tattered crack continue to widen. Didn't register the deep, rumbling creaks and snaps as the surrounding veil began to shatter.

Then the thread snapped, most of it just falling away to be reabsorbed by the crack, but the remaining few inches seemed to get sucked into the medallion.

I figured that was probably bad, but honestly it was the least of my concerns at the moment.

Deep feelings of horror settled in my heart at the sight of the crack. Before it had been only a foot wide and about five feet long, but now it was almost tripled in height and must've been somewhere around fifteen feet long with other cracks spiderwebbing off of it like damaged glass.

But I couldn't worry about that now. I had to find the Doctor.

I spun around and dashed away from the edge of the universe.

I was so preoccupied by thoughts of something happening to the Doctor that I barely registered the tug of being yanked back across the dimensions… or the resonating snarl emanating from the crack behind me as I jumped away.

Rocks and dirt scattered everywhere as my feet scrambled for traction on the side of the street. Usually I might've worried about a bystander seeing me and panicking about the girl that appeared out of thin air, but right now that was probably the least attention grabbing thing to be happening on this particular street at the moment.

Everything was on fire. The buildings. The carts. Even some of the people. People were running, screaming and begging as they were chased and harassed by the sword bearing people I had seen before. Except they weren't Blank anymore. They were dirty with rotten teeth and long, dingy beards.

Through all the noise and chaos, the distinct sound of footsteps running up front behind me reached my ears. The last thought I had before everything went black was 'pirates'.