Hey, guys!(: Here with another update! I know some of you reviewers might be confused, because I didn't send a sneak peek, but it's only because I made a last minute decision to post this on THE last day, seeing as December 21st has definitely been a huge part of this story! Also... I thought you might like some good fan fiction to read while you're... Y'know... Dying(:

ANYWAYS. This is from the song "The Calendar Girl" by Stars, which just happens to be one of my favorite bands... As you can tell from the songs I steal from to use as my chapter titles(:

Remember that I own absolutely nothing. Also, if you've reviewed the last chapter, I will still send you a sneak peek to the next, but you can still review if you'd like. I'd love the feedback(: If you DIDN'T review to the last chapter, you now have another chance at the next little peek! So... Yeah! Enjoy now(:

"Where the hell are we?" Rory asked. He still wasn't entirely sure what Amy had asked of him, but as he looked around him, he knew it wasn't anything good. They hadn't just used the time vortex to jump through time. They were on a completely different planet! Rory looked up at the red skies that stretched rolling blue hills to a tall city that, even from many meters away, looked dead and dilapidated. Something told the man he was wrong about that last part, mainly because Amy was always getting herself into trouble, and there wasn't any way to not stir up trouble without there being hostile aliens involved.

"Trenzalore," Amy said, turning her head to look at her husband and gave him a confident smile. If she acted like she knew what she was doing, then she knew that he would feel just a tiny bit more at ease. And it worked. She could visibly begin to see him start to calm, but still observing . "The Doctor's somewhere around here and we need to find him."

Rory frowned, starting to walk alongside her towards the grey city. "What's he doing here, then? Does that mean he left you?" It didn't seem so appealing to have Amy around now that it had only been the Doctor that made the decision for her.

Amy quickly came up with a clever lie. "No, the TARDIS was stolen," she replied, "And the Doctor was taken with her, but he managed to leave me a clue on where he was before they'd gotten away."

"Which was?"

She stopped fully, Rory screeching to a halt. Amy met him with a serious look. "211212, Rory," she said, "There's been a message written through all of time and space, and I just know it's him. It's coordinates."

"To… Here…" Rory finished, pointing at the sapphire blue grass beneath their feet and looked at Amy for clarification.

"Exactly." There was a moment of hesitation in them both. Amy hated lying to Rory, but she had to do it if she wanted his help, and she did. She also knew that the Silence would kill him if they saw him, and it was better to keep Rory where Amy could see him. "Now, come on, Stupid Face," Amy continued. Rory smiled at the term of endearment, suddenly not caring that he was risking his life again. It was better than being alone at that empty house, the one that Amy couldn't ever call a home with that blue box around. But she still loved him, he knew it. And that was enough to make him follow her into whatever mischief they would most surely get into.

"Right," Rory said with a simple nod, "We've got a Time Lord to save."

The majority of the people in the TARDIS hadn't expected the sudden loss of gravity as the Doctor launched them into the time vortex. Luckily, there were only a few scrapes and bruises, grabbing onto something to hold onto.

Jack clung to one of the bars surrounding the console and looked at the Doctor, obviously confused and irritated with that fact. "Doctor, what do you mean? How do you know they have Amy?"

"Remember what I told you about the messages being written all throughout time and space?" the Doctor asked, his tone low, but still panicked and fast, "It's Amy. I know it is. I don't know how they took her, maybe after I left her. All that matters is that they have her and I need to save her."

Their old plans didn't measure up anymore. The Doctor had parked the TARDIS just outside Trenzalore's atmosphere. He needed to update their operation. It was a whole different thing with Amy involved. Everything had to be perfect, certain, clear, and concise. The Doctor couldn't take any chances anymore. The stakes were now as high as they could possibly get. Everyone was piling into the console room, filling up and spilling into the couple of hallways. They had an army of maybe three hundred here, personal friends of the Doctors, or, like in the case of the WWII soldiers' cases, borrowed warriors. He didn't know if it was good enough to match the Silence, but it would have to be enough, because gaining numbers wasn't the priority anymore.

His past companions looked at him, concerned. Most of them had never even met this Amelia girl, but it was clear that the Doctor cared for her very much. It was in that moment when they really realized that he wasn't their Doctor anymore. He was someone else's, some leggy redhead that was apparently captured on the planet right below them. The Doctor wasn't the big-eared, bald-headed soldier in a leather jacket with a Northern accent that Rose, Jack, and Mickey had met, nor was he the spiky-haired, pinstripe-suit-wearing, charming, ridiculous man that Martha, Rex, and Gwen had met, the one that Rose had truly fallen in love with.

"So, if your friend is down there," Rose said, trying to grasp what the situation fully was, as were the rest of the companions, "What does that mean? "

"It means the stakes are higher," the Doctor replied quietly, but there was rage in his voice. How could he let this happen? Why couldn't he just have one companion that listened to him and stayed safe? Especially Amy. Couldn't she see why he'd had to leave her behind? Didn't she realize how fragile a human could be with their wimpy one-hearted cardiovascular system, and see how much she meant to him? Of course, it wouldn't be his completely impossible Amy Pond if she had actually listened. "It means we have to be more careful now."

"So, the plan is still the same, right?" the blonde asked again.

"Correct." Rule one: the Doctor lies. "Will you gather up everyone up? Tell them to get ready for D-Day."

"Doctor, half of the people here haven't heard of D-Day," Martha pointed out, "It hasn't happened yet."

The Doctor rolled his eyes, but managed to smile. Good, old Martha. She was always really good with feelings, despite being so logically-minded. He always thought it was because she had so many herself. She was like him in a way. They bottled things up until it all just exploded. His old companion must have known that was exactly what he was trying to do now, bottling it up and waiting for it to break and crack into a burst of rage when he came face-to-face with the Silence.

"Well, they'll get it eventually! Now, go on!"

Everyone left, except for John. The Doctor stared at the man, remembering when he had looked like that, with the pinstriped suits and the spiky hair that defied gravity. He didn't mean to toot his own horn, but he could see why all his companions, with the exception of Donna, had been attracted to him. This wasn't what the Doctor was focusing on, though. Instead, he looked at John expectantly, but the look was only returned. "Need something, John?" the Time Lord asked.

"You're lying." It wasn't phrased like a question, though they both could kind of hear it in his voice that it was one. The Doctor didn't answer for a moment and John cracked a half-hearted smirk. "Hard to convince yourself that you're telling the truth, isn't it?"

"Don't know what you're talking about," the Doctor said breezily, looking away and crossing his arms. It was completely true, but he was in no mood to admit it.

"I can see that brain of ours working everything out," John explained, "You're changing up the plan. My question is what you're going to do now."

He turned his head and looked at the meta-crisis Doctor. "Do you still feel like we're the same person?" he asked, referring to the "our brain" bit.

"Don't deflect."

"Technically, telling me that I'm deflecting is in a way deflecting," the Doctor pointed out.

John shrugged and sighed, copying the Doctor's posture and leaning back against the bar, crossing his arms. "Wouldn't be the first time we found ourselves being hypocritical, don't you think?" He gave the Doctor a stern look, which was strange because he most definitely was younger than him, even if appearance-wise it didn't seem like that. Actually, if the Doctor had the math right, and he most certainly did, John was about two years old. Still, he was a two-year old with the knowledge of eight centuries, still the man that the Daleks called the "Oncoming Storm" out of complete fear. "Now, tell me what you're up to."

He didn't say anything for a few moments, opening his mouth once just to shut it again. The Doctor stared down at his brown leather shoes. He took a breath and said quietly, "I'm going to die here."

"On what authority did you hear that?" John asked, scrunching up his eyebrows in confusion. He knew what the Doctor and everyone else did. He's the man who gets out of every trap, even death. The only thing those two men knew that most didn't was that the Doctor could only get himself out of death. It meant nothing for a companion. And even when he escaped, it'd take another decade or so, but there death would be again, waiting for the Time Lord.

"It's in a prophecy of sorts-"

John snorted, then cleared his throat when he realized it might be a tad unsensitive. "Sorry, but when did we start believing in prophecies?" The Doctor smiled softly. Of course. John wouldn't know. He wasn't there to see the return of the Master, didn't know about the four knocks that signaled the Doctor's death. He wasn't there to figure out the identity of River Song and meet his "death" on Lake Silencio on that early evening in April 2012.

"Trust me, we're still a bit skeptical," the Doctor chuckled, "I had to double check with the Ood before I even started to take it seriously."

"Love a good Ood," John mused.

"I know!" the Doctor agreed, smiling. This reminded him of that day that he had a ganger. It was quite refreshing to talk to someone who understood and agreed with most of what he said. Plus, it wasn't as weird as when he actually talked to himself. "They're civilization is thriving," he continued, "They're working rather fast at rebuilding it, but they're the ones that knew when I was regenerating and they knew about this prophecy, too."

John pursed his lips, brow furrowing even further and his fingers dropped to his pocket, twitching and hesitating on whether he should grab his glasses. He was obviously trying to wrap his head around the prophecy thing, but the Doctor knew that if he believed it, then so would the man beside him. It might just take a little while. The human opened his mouth. "So!" John said suddenly, "You're going to die. What are we going to do about that?" He knew that the Doctor had to be saved. He had a vital role in the universe, no matter how many times the Time Lord forgot that in his times of self-loathing.

The Doctor sighed and closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead. "I'm not getting out this time," he replied, "This is it, John. It really is D-Day." He hated to sound like he was giving up, but it wasn't like John didn't have memories of the Doctor feeling like this before. Still, he decided to explain a little further. "Silence will fall when the question is answered. That silence… It's mine." And it needed to be. The answer to that question… It was dangerous, not just to himself, but to whole planets and galaxies, all of time and space.

"We don't share the same mind, Doctor," John reminded him, then twisted his face up as he corrected himself, "Well, I suppose we do. But there's definitely not a wide, direct feed. I can't read all of your thoughts. What's this question?"

"Wait!" the Doctor exclaimed, catching onto a bit of what John had said, "You can't read all my thoughts?"

John rolled his eyes. He was starting to realize how cryptic and mysterious he could be, and how that could easily annoy someone. Not that he'd admit that to Rose anytime soon. "Oh, will you just answer the question, Doctor?"

The Time Lord stared at John, green eyes meeting brown. "Doctor Who?"

John was about to tell the Doctor that he should stop playing around, but the way he was looking at him, the seriousness and danger in there. He caught on quickly and his mouth slightly in understanding and fear. "Oh, no…" John remembered. The question they'd been running from their whole life, the question that Rose still asked John sometimes. The Doctor's real name… It was finally catching up with them and he was starting to realize why the Time Lord was giving up. And there was no way he was going to talk him out of it. He couldn't even if he wanted to try. So John said the only thing he could, patting the Doctor's tweed-clad shoulder gently. "I'm sorry."

The Doctor, who was more affectionate than his tenth regeneration pulled the man into a fierce hug and squeezed his eyes shut. It felt better than most people could have managed at a time like this. This man knew everything about him, and he was the only one who understood that this was the Doctor's last trip. He never truly escaped death. It was his constant companion, after all.

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