A/N: Right. So. My brain has been invaded by this idea for a Doctor/OC story. It's equal parts intense UST, things blowing up, and high stakes poker games. Oh, and musings on the nature of reality. The damn story won't leave my head. It's eating my brain. It's holding this story hostage. I'm not even going to write a single word of it, though, until I finish posting Part 1 of this story. This story's currently standing at around five full-length parts (~15-20k words each) with four smaller (2-3k words) pieces in between the big parts. So we're talking roughly 80-110k words in all, 40k of which are written. On that note, here's your semi-regular fix of story. As always, thank you so f-ing much for reading my story. I mean that. :)


Part 1, Chapter 11

Amy grinned at Rory as he held the door for her. "How gallant of you," she remarked. She stood waiting for him in the small vestibule that led to the main part of a large and noticeably empty atrium. Most of the room was softly illuminated by the city lights shining through the elaborate glass ceiling.

"I just didn't want to be the first one through." Rory replied. He was only partially kidding.

Amy rolled her eyes. "And the romance is dead," she joked.

Rory let out a soft snort, and the two of them peered out into the room. Empty.

"They've got to be around here somewhere," Amy says to Rory, shining her torch into the corners of the room, which only managed to cast bizarre-looking shadows against the walls. Rory began to feel the beginnings of a good old fashioned case of the heebie-jeebies coming on.

"Yeah. What then? It's not like we can defend ourselves."

She scoffs. "You're so sure we're going to be attacked."

"Um, yeah, yeah I am."

"Amy, we're walking directly into a hostage situation. A hostage situation in which someone died. Let's just go find the Doctor."

"We're not looking for the hostages."

"No?"

"We're looking for Jennifer Smith."

Then he figures out what Amy's motive actually is. She wants to save this girl's life. It's a noble move, and he can't help but admire his wife, but at the same time, every science-fiction movie Rory's ever seen is telling him that this is a spectacularly bad idea. "I'm not really sure about this plan," he says.

Another thought strikes him. "Wasn't Jennifer Smith the one who saved the hostages?"

Amy doesn't respond immediately. She just takes a few steps to the left and shines her torch into another corner of the room.

Rory continues. "So what exactly is your plan? Grab Jennifer Smith and run? What about the hostages?"

It's times like this when Rory wishes he could grab Amy and shake her. He knows she's probably going be angry with his question, but seriously, someone's got to think these things through.

Like he expected, Amy whirls around, eyes blazing. "What do you think? Of course we're going to help the hostages."

Rory crosses his arms. "How?"

He's sure that on some level, Amy's aware of what he's doing, but that doesn't make him any less frustrated with her decision-making process. Or rather, the lack thereof. He's half decided to just leave her to it, to head back to the TARDIS, but he knows that she'd almost definitely go on looking for Jennifer Smith anyway. And if she found the hostages...

He sighs, turns around to see his wife with her hand on her hip, clearly indignant but also clearly thinking.

"My plan, Rory," she says, with not a small amount of annoyance, "is to find Jennifer Smith as quickly as possible, help her do whatever she did to free the hostages, and keep her alive. Not impossible, just difficult."

In fairness, it's about as concrete a plan as any they normally have. Of course, the Doctor's generally involved, and he's a walking statistical anomaly, so they never really need a plan. When you're around the Doctor, things just tend to work that way. Everything happens at the exact moment you need it to happen. Maybe it's a Time Lord thing.

Amy, thinking aloud, says slowly, "But what if she's with the hostages? How will we get her out? How will we keep the hostage people from noticing us? What if they have guns or something. That's pretty likely, considering they're taking people hostage..."

She trails off, realizing exactly what she had just said. At seeing her fallen expression, Rory has a momentary desire to erase the last few minutes, to keep that look off her face.

Amy switches off her torch. "Why don't we just go find the Doctor?"

"You sure?"

She sighs. "Yeah, I'm sure. You're right."

Rory pulls an exaggeratedly shocked expression. "Wait, hold on, can you repeat that? I need to record this," he says, fishing for his phone in his pocket.

Amy cracks a smile in response, which was, of course, the entire point. As they approach the door they entered the room in, she rushes ahead and holds the door open for him.

"How gallant of you," Rory says.

"Hmm. And you said the romance is dead," she replies.

"No I didn't. You did-"

Amy would have undoubtedly had something to say about that, had there not been a loud shattering crash behind them. Something the size of an articulated lorry was falling through the glass ceiling, sending shattering glass around the room. Rory dives to the floor, grabbing for Amy's arm, which is wholly unnecessary, seeing as how she's already crouched down, covering her face with her hands.

After all the glass falls to the floor, they lower their hands and take a look at the scene. The thing that crashed through the ceiling is almost definitely alive. Maybe. It definitely was alive at some point.

Rory's about to ask Amy if she's alright when the animal makes a keening noise. It's alive, and clearly in pain. It shifts a limb and makes a pained sound that bores through Rory's heart.

On the far side of the room, a door opens. The Doctor races in, holding tightly to the door's handle as he nearly loses his balance on the glass shards underfoot. He stops to recover his balance and someone slams in into his back.

Doctor!" Amy screams as he comes into view. He runs to her, clasping the hand of the girl who slammed into him, and the three of them watch the large animal as it writhes on the floor, glass shards scraping loudly against the marble floor as it moves. On the other side of the room, Rory slowly stands up and brushes the glass off his jeans.

"Everyone OK?" the Doctor asks.

"Fine," Amy replies, checking her hands for cuts.

"We're all fine. Well, except for that thing," Rory answered. He gestures to the large animal in the centre of the room. They all stop to look at the strange animal.

It's a bit smaller than an articulated lorry, more like the size of a minivan. Its pale loose skin reminds Amy of an albino lizard she had seen once, but that's where the reptilian similarity ends. It's clearly a mammal of some sort, albeit a giant yellowish hairless flying mammal from space. It stretches out a leg in an attempt to get back up, and she notices the claws. The animal stretches out its bat-like wings, making it seem much bigger, and Amy reasoned that it must have been using its wings as a parachute as it fell.

The Doctor walks slowly over to it, girl in tow, and reaches out a hand to kindly pat its snout. It snarls. The girl shrieks. He takes that as an invitation to get her well outside of biting distance.

The animal manages to regain its footing, and lifts its nose and sniffs, making oddly canine snuffling noises. It obviously finds something interesting, because it abruptly begins walking unsteadily through the rubble, in the direction of the door. Rory bounds over to pull Amy out of the way, as she's standing directly in front of the door. The animal smashes through the door.

"Where's it going?" Amy asks, as it gallops away.

The Doctor grimaces. "I don't know," he replies, "but I do know it's going in the direction of the TARDIS."

With that, he dashes off, still pulling the girl along behind him.


The four of them stand in the room with the boulder. Rory reaches out to touch it.

"Don't touch it!" The Doctor shouts. The girl beside him points with her free hand to a sign that states 'DO NOT TOUCH'.

The Doctor grins down at the girl. "Funny how I didn't notice that before."

The girl smiles at him. "Would you have cared?"

His grin grows even wider, threatening to overtake his entire face. The girl's grinning back at him. It's obvious that they're having a bit of a moment. Amy, at that moment, realizes something.

"You're Jennifer Smith," she states.

"She's Jenny," the Doctor corrects.

"I'm his-" Jenny began, but she was immediately cut off by the Doctor.

"She's my daughter!"

There's a brief pause while Amy boggles. "Your what?!"

"My daughter!"

"Yup," Jenny adds, swaying slightly with her hands in her pockets. The Doctor briefly marvels. It's a bit like looking at a tiny version of himself. A tiny female version of himself. A tiny female version of himself with a purple anorak. A tiny female version of himself with a purple anorak and a plait.

"Who's her mum?" Amy asks.

Jenny winks at her. "Don't have one."

Amy boggles. Again.

Rory, on the other hand, is unsurprised. Disgusted, but unsurprised.

The giant hairless yellowish flying mammal from space then decides to amble over to the boulder and lift its leg.

"MOVE MOVE MOVE!" The Doctor yells. He's more freaked out than Amy or Rory have ever seen him.

They immediately bound to the corner of the room, near the case of palaeolithic weapons. Amy gets there first, followed by Rory. The Doctor, with Jenny in tow, plows into them, forcing Amy and Rory against the wall. They cower there for a moment, watching the animal starts clawing at the boulder.

"Is he marking his territory?" Rory whispers.

"No," the Doctor answers. "See how he's only clawing at the one spot? He's actually being quite careful."

"He wants the inside!" Jenny says. Amy shushes her.

"No, no, the inside's alive, it's organic, and it's all sucky! It sucks in organic material!" she continued excitedly. "It's hungry!"

"Again, Jenny, good thinking, but entirely wrong," the Doctor says. "Think about it. What else is hard on the outside and gushy on the inside?"

"Mollusks?"

"Jelly moulds?"

"Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop?"

The Doctor stares at them in amazement.

"Eggs!" He nearly shouts. "Eggs, an egg, it's an egg!"

"Oh," the three of them quietly chorus.

"Thought you knew that, Jenny, seeing as how you knew not to touch it in the first place," the Doctor noted.

"How could I know that? I knew that everyone was gone, and that the only thing new was that rock."

"You were sleuthing, weren't you?" he says to her, grinning.

"Why yes, yes I was."

"Good girl." Jenny beams.

The Doctor steps out from the corner, grabbing Jenny and pulling her along with him. "The thing is, I think I've figured out what type of egg it is."

"And?"

"It's unfertilized."

"So he's trying to-"

"Yes."

"And there's people inside."

"Yes."

Jenny's head tilts. "That's disgusting."

"Yes. Well, that's reproduction for you. Messy."

"But there's people in there!"

"That's the first stage. Dissolve the organic matter. Hence the clawing. He's going to inject the egg with acid."

Jenny's eyes widen. "We have to save them! When he gets the egg open, we can pull them out!"

He's silent.

"We have to save them!" She repeats.

He regards her for a few seconds. "Do we?"

Jenny looks up at him, shock evident on her face.

"All he wants to do is preserve his species. He doesn't want to hurt anyone. He easily could have killed us all earlier."

"But-"

"For all we know, he could be the last of his species.