A warning: the two subplots (Doctor/Jack vs Amy/Kate) that run throughout this and the next few chapters may be desynchronised in a big, big way. If it becomes an issue (neither confirm/deny), the date will refer to the Amy/Kate POV (since Amy is the primary major character in this fic, obvs). Hopefully it's not too confusing, but it may get a wee bit messy if you don't pay close attention and read between the lines a little.

Really struggled with a title for this chapter. Went through three before settling on this – one was too simple, one far too cryptic, one just a bit spoiler-y. The chapter itself went through about five very different drafts before it turned into what you see here. Hope you like it, should make up for the lack of action over the last few chapters. Oh, and a nasty cliffhanger ending, some key character work and one big question (amongst many other smaller questions), which I conveniently forget to ask. But you will.

Remember: reviews are writer food.


Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.
~
Anon


CHAPTER 28. What Friends Are For: 22 March 2011

Few things are more unpleasant than being woken up by a phone call.

The man groaned as he jerked out of a pleasant dream, instinctively pulling the covers over him. The ringing of the telephone crashed into his ears once more. Beneath the blankets he could sense the first rays of sunlight creeping through the curtains.

Ugh. Sunrise. Won't be able to get back to sleep. The phone kept ringing.

"All right, all right," he grumbled to no one in particular. His hand reached out for the bedside cabinet, feeling blindly for the phone. He grabbed it mid-ring and pulled it to his ear. "Hello? Yes, it's me... so what if the alarms tripped, the forcefields should kick in automatically. Just capture them before they get cleaned out by the repticore..."

A brief pause, then the man shot upright, throwing the blankets off him. "Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure? I thought they all died... well, yes, there was one survivor, I'm well aware... of course I want to meet him. I'll go there right now." He hung up, all traces of sleepiness gone, and flew to the dresser for the first outfit he could find.

There was a Time Lord to meet.


The science of force-fields was a deep, complex and not particularly well understood. The intricate web of particles, kinetic barriers and little pockets of super-strong magnetic field made for a scientific nightmare, and as a result the main reason they were considered impermeable was because no one had the patience to try and figure out how to get through one.

This meant that even the most basic methods of breaking down the average force-field were more or less unknown. This included methods so simple as a tailor-made sonic wavepacket. From a sonic screwdriver.

Within five seconds, the Doctor and Jack were off and running for their lives again.

"Can't we go anywhere without being arrested, shot at or chased by nasty aliens?" Jack asked, struggling to keep up with the Time Lord's gangly legs.

"Hey, we only got arrested. Or at least someone tried to arrest us. No shooting or being chased by angry aliens yet," the Doctor pointed out.

It was the wrong thing to say, as a four-inch long bony spike sailed right between the pair, embedding itself in a tree.

The Time Lord turned and found himself staring at a three pairs of narrow, blood-red eyes. The creatures they were facing were reptilian, almost snake like in nature, save for their angular, faces which were covered in sharp bone spurs and the presence of arms. They had claws instead of hands, and rather than standing on legs, they seemed to rear up on their bellies like oversized cobras.

"Ah. Right. That would be the 'shot at' and 'chased by angry aliens' boxes ticked too."

The creatures reared themselves up, ready to strike again, when without warning two of the reptilian aliens shrieked and collapsed to the ground, their crimson eyes glassy and lifeless. The third turned its head, searching for the source of its friends' killer but before it it could so much as do an about face, it too had fallen, pierced between the eyes by a foot long metal rod. A handsome, moustached man stepped out from behind a tree, wielding a crossbow.

"Got on the wrong side of the repticore, did you?" He laughed warmly as he replaced the crossbow behind his back, walking up to the pair and extending a hand. The Doctor took it in both of his, shaking it vigorously. "You don't need to introduce yourself – you're the Doctor."

"That's m'name. Can't seem to go anywhere without people knowing me these days, though."

"That's fame for you. And who's your friend here?"

"Captain Jack Harkness at your service, sir." He whipped out a full military salute, which the man half-heartedly returned.

"Greetings, Captain. I used to be a military man myself – long retired, though. My name is Stanley Blood. Welcome to Earthsphere."


To Kate's immense surprise, Amy did turn out to be fairly mobile, darting deftly between rocky outcrops and thick patches of foliage. The wheelchair provided a surprising amount of torque, which mean that even reasonable steep inclines could be scaled with a little help from Katherine. During the afternoon, they – or rather Amy – had managed to work out that the forest was somehow artificial, but she wouldn't elaborate on how. Something about oxygen machines and a forest on a ship called the Byzantium.

Bloody cryptic girl. But then Amelia Pond had always been something of an enigma to everyone in her life.

Neither was particularly keen to head back to a dead time machine, safe though it may be. They hadn't signed up for safety. However, dusk was now beginning to fall, and Kate's body was beginning to object to the endeavour, both in her calves and her stomach. Predictably, Amy accused her of whining when she suggested they had dinner and camped up for the evening.

"How is pointing out that we haven't eaten for something like eight hours whining?"

"That's whining. Try not eating for two days because you're trapped in a hole being chased by great big bat people, then see how you like it. Even worse when you've got two of every organ to fill up."

"That just means you'll be even hungrier than I am."

"Am not," Amy shot back, although a rather inconveniently timed rumble in her stomach indicated otherwise. Katherine saw straight through it, her lip curling.

"Well, do what you like. I'm setting up the tent here." And she did so, plonking herself down on a rock and opening the backpack – which contained all the food. Mild blackmail was a tactic both girls were very familiar with and very partial to using.

That didn't make Amy any more pleased when it was used against her, but she recognised a dead end when she saw one. She turned her wheelchair into a position that indicated that she wasn't going anywhere – whilst swearing rather nastily at the blonde.

"Language, Pond."

"Didn't I ask you not to call me that?"

"You call me Broad. Fair's fair. Can that thing light a fire?" Kate had cleared a small space on the ground and piled up several stray pieces of wood in the centre. They ignited instantly under Amy's sonic.

"I always call you Broad," she replied vocally, pocketing the screwdriver once again. "Think I called you Ka-Ka-Katherine about four times."

"Kate, please. Or Kat. Either one."

"Name change, huh?"

"Just like yourself, although in much nicer circumstances."

"Hah. You have no i-idea."

"You're not gonna put me in hospital like you did the last time I asked, huh?"

"Don't tempt me." Amy paused, watching Kate fetch their 'dinner' from the depths of the backpack. "Actually, out of curiosity, what was that all about? That was the first civil word you'd gotten to me in years."

"You mean the first time I'd spoken to you full stop for years."

"Yeah, that."

Kate waited a moment before speaking again. Time to face up to your past, Kate. "Same reason I'm helping you now."

"What, because you wanted to go explo-explor-exploring?" A nasty stutter was creeping into Amy's speech again, but she ignored it.

"That's not what I meant, genius."

"Oi. Who's the one with the Time La-Lady brain here?"

"That doesn't work properly."

"Oh sh-sha-shut up."

"Never." Kate paused for a moment to hand Amy a sandwich roll, ending the little exchange before continuing. "The reason I helped you was simple. You know how I treated you when we first met."

"D-don't remind me."

"I'm sure you don't need one. I'm sorry, by the way, for that Mad Amelia Pond song I made up – but you know, kids are kids."

"Ma-making excuses a-already?"

"Of course not. It was me who did it, and it was horrible of me."

"W-why'd you do it then?" Amy replied sharply, using her newly reactivated arms to eat normally for the first time in three months – a ham, lettuce and cheese sandwich in a small bread roll. "Not that it per-perma-permen-permanently hurt me or anything, or made me es-esp-espa-especially sad, but I just don't g-get it. Why?"

"You were different. Red hair – although that was dumb, because you look effin' gorgeous now."

"Th-thank you," Amy replied stiffly.

"Welcome. But you know how young kids are with redheads. Fire alarm jokes and all that."

"At least it wasn't just m-me."

"That's not a good thing, Amy. But apart from that – you had a Scottish accent, which was weird. But more than that it was the fact that it was you. You know better than I do that you were just different. You were smarter than all of us by miles, except for Rory, and you knew it too. More than a little cocky, I might add."

Amy would have argued, but economy of speech was probably a good idea right now – especially since she was well aware that Kate was completely correct. Kate took her silence as assent. "Plus," she continued, "you didn't ever bother to be actively friendly with anyone except Rory."

"Be-because he was the only one who be-believed me."

"And then there's that. That, most of all."

"Well, I was right, was-wasn't I? He ca-came back for me." Even after... after I'd given up.

"And don't I know it. If you're trying to make me feel a right fool, congratulations, you've succeeded."

"N-none of this exp-ple-plains why you... you walked up to me to ask me wa-where I'd been for ta-two weeks when I was fif-fifteen." Amy was now seriously struggling to get through her sentences again, but she had resolved to use her own voice from now on. She pressed on, stutter or no.

"Why'd you think?"

"Won't know unless you t-tell me. You're acting p-pretty bla... bloody f-fr-friendly for someone who spent a good f-few years ta-teasing me mer-mersa-merci-"

"Mercilessly?"

"That."

"That's the point. I was already starting to feel pretty stupid over the whole thing – that's what happens when you grow up – but when you came back, and you were like that... it just didn't seem like you at all."

"That's be-because I wasn't. Why do you think I ch-changed my name?"

"I don't think I want to know."

Amy paused, realising just how much she'd been inadvertently opened up. "So y-you just w-want to b-be forgiven."

"Don't we all?"

Amy remained silent. Kate took this as signal that this branch of conversation was over. Think that's the first civil one I've ever had with her that's even slightly personal in nature. Maybe she isn't such a hard-case after all.

"So where do you think he is? We've been looking the whole day, we've found no sign of them."

"Yeah, that's the p-problem."

"I thought you could find him just by concentrating."

"T-too much noise." Something was intefering quite badly with Amy's psychic abilities. This unnerved her deeply. She had no idea why this was happening, and knew that there was only one person who could explain. This made it an even higher priority that she found him, not least because it meant her thoughts were necessarily internalised – and introspection was something she tried very hard to avoid. Disintegrating internal barriers aside, there were plenty of other dark corners in her hearts she preferred not to encounter.

"Couldn't you just ask?"

Unexpectedly, Amy burst into laughter. "You're ra-really new to this, aren't you? You think the da-Doctor would ever give a st-straight answer to that qua-question? Besides which, we're not actu-actually meant to b-be here."

The eruption of alarms all around them at that moment underlined the statement.


Their trip was an odd one – first a brief trek to a forest path (the Doctor pointedly neglected to answer Jack's question as to how they'd manage to miss it), then a horse ride to the edge of the forest, then a roughly 40th-century atmospheric shuttle trip, then horse again. Jack had been very nervous about the shuttle trip, due to the lack of wings, engines, jets or any other obvious form of propulsion, but it flew smoothly enough.

"You lot skip cars or something?" the Doctor asked as they trotted down a narrow street. It was remarkably clean, the polished cobblestone almost gleaming in the mid-afternoon sun.

"Too dirty," Stanley answered. "We definitely have the technology, of course, but we don't need them. For any sort of longer-distance travel, there's always the shuttles, which are free."

"Fair enough." He could certainly see the point – he could see children playing a makeshift form of cricket on the street, their innocent laughter colouring the air. That certainly wouldn't have been possible with great big metal vehicles screeching this way and that. "Am I correct in saying that the shuttle is telepathically controlled?"

"Everything on Earthsphere is telepathically operated. You don't even flick a switch on your food blender, you just think it and out comes a milkshake."

The Doctor was impressed. "Clever. But that doesn't answer my question."

"Or perhaps you didn't quite understand the answer. There's no electricity or petrol on Earthsphere. Psychic energy is our power source. Your minds are what powered the shuttle. We're here because you want us to be. I must say, you must have an exceptionally powerful mind to fly it so easily for the first time, but that's what I'd expect from a Category 6 telepath."

"More of this knowledge about Time Lords – where did you learn all this stuff?"

"Your race may not exist any more, but it left its traces. That was my original calling, learning about the history of the Time War as a young up-and-coming naval officer growing up on a very long way from here. Learning about that was what drove me to originally envisage Earthsphere, as a shelter from what horrors time and space could hold. In some ways you're the inspiration for this place."

The Doctor was doubly impressed now. "You built this place? This, well, paradise?"

"It's not complete. It's never complete. It can always get better."

"You've definitely got the right attitude."

"That's the only reason this place exists. It was my life's dream to build this place, a place where you could come and live the life you wanted to live, not the life you were forced to live. It took me many, many years, but you're seeing it at its best."

"How'd you do it?"

"Long story."

"Even better, love a good long story." Behind him, Jack silently disagreed, but the Doctor was in one of his moods, a twinkle in the eye reminiscent of an eager school-child, so he chose to let him be.

"I'll give you the short version," Stanley told him, chuckling. "First we had to find a stable star with a nice, safe habitable zone. Then we had to build the world from scratch. That took a long, long time, the best part of ten years. Then we had to create a working temporal-psychic equalisation field to get all the telepathic controls operating, tricky since humans obviously aren't naturally telepathic. That took a while as well. But we got there in the end."

The Doctor looked around at the people milling about, going on their day-to-day business. Their eyes were bright, their faces vibrant. He seemed to have created that rarest of things – a pocket of the universe free from pain, suffering and hurt. Except for one thing...

"The repticore. How did they get here?"

The man's face clouded. "No one knows. They were introduced a long time ago, and they're the reason that the forest you were in is closed. It's just about the only law we have – no one goes in the forest, no one interacts with the repticore."

"It's a shame – it's a quite beautiful forest."

"It is, but I'm afraid it's off-limits now."

"That'll be a problem, because my TARDIS is kind of stuck in it, and it can't move."

Stanley turned to him, surprised. "Really? You still have one of those?"

"The one and only. But it's drained, and my bet is that it's your temporal-psychic equaliser field that's doing it."

"Ah. Sorry. We're not exactly experts at this, we learn on the fly. If you could help us fix it, that would be swell."

"It's the least I can do. I can help you get rid of the repticore, too."

Stanley sighed. "They're too well-established. I appreciate the offer, but I think that would be a bridge too far."

The Doctor grinned. "There's no such thing for me."


Kate Broad was a creature of instinct and intuition.

It had been instinct that told her that it would be a good idea to try and earn Amy's forgiveness. Intuition that told her Rory needed her help to recover from the break-up. Instinct that told her to follow Amy on her little plan to find her Time Lord counterpart.

So when alarms filled the air and a red glow descended over them, it was little surprise she moved completely on instinct, her hand moving straight for her hip and the gun she had hidden under her coat. Amy moved on instinct as well, pulling out her sonic in a graceful, flowing arc and disabling the forcefield as quickly and effortlessly as she had disabled the rifles of three unnamed men who had jumped her little group of soldiers many months ago.

Before either girl had even fully processed what had happened, both were fully alert, scanning their surroundings hawk-like, blaster and sonic in hand.

"What the hell was that?" Katherine's voice was quick, high, edgy, adrenaline beginning to surge through her body.

"No clue. We need to m-move. Now."

"Right." She looked at the Time Lady, whose eyes had taken a dangerous, star-bright dazzle but was otherwise she was a picture of vulnerability. The girl made an executive decision.

"Hey – hey! What the hell do you th-think you're doing?" The Time Lady yelled indignantly, hammering on Kate's chest with her fists as the Kate picked her off the wheelchair. She lifted Amy in both arms, one hand still gripping the electron blaster, her eyes darting left and right.

"Sorry, Amy. For your good." She began to back into the forest.

They barely managed to make ten metres than several hissing noises met them, dark-brown creatures slithering out of the forest around them. In the rapidly vanishing daylight, Kate could just make out their lizard-like features, almost snake-like. The evil, crimson glint in their eyes forewarned their intentions as they reared. Kate began searching her surroundings, her eyes roving for cover.

"More intruders," one said, its distorted, menacing hiss carrying over the still evening air. The creatures reared upwards, reaching about seven feet in height.

Neither girl needed an explanation of what their actions entailed. Kate spotted a small gap between several boulders, just large enough to hold two people. She dived for it, taking Amy with her, crashing into the safety of the rocky hole as the first knife-like spines sailed over them.

"You will regret that," Amy snarled, her breathing shallow, her chest having slammed at a quite horrible angle into a jagged-edged rock. A sharp, stabbing pain in her chest informed her that several of her ribs had almost certainly cracked, if not snapped entirely. She clutched at her side with one hand as her chest rose up and down, the other holding the spiral-bound diary that she'd managed to retrieve just in the nick of time as Kate hefted her in her arms.

"Yeah, later. Right now we're being attacked by great big lizards, so there's no time to be gentle," Kate snapped, having zero time for the Time Lady's crap at this present juncture. She poked her head above the rock, briefly scanned her surroundings and fired off an automatic burst with her blaster in a wide arc. A pair of screams told her two of the many shots were aimed true. Hah. All that clay pigeon shooting came in handy.

More deadly spikes sailed rang out over them. They were closing in. God, what is it with us and getting shot at?

Amy closed her eyes, concentrating against the pain. She couldn't sense anything, or launch an attack – there was some sort of psychic mist clouding her senses, and she was finding it difficult to perceive anything beyond the girl next to her. Katherine raised her arm and fired another burst blind, missing by about ten metres. Even having felled two of them, there was no way they could make it out alive.

Unless...

"Ka... Kate," she said in a low, ragged breaths, every syllable a knife to her ribs. "Take... this." She lifted her hand, prodding the girl in the back with her sonic screwdriver. Kate turned, her hazel eyes round as she stared at the device.

"What?"

"Take it. It... it..." Amy coughed, her back reflexively arching as excruciating pain burst through her torso. Hurts too much to talk... fine. Last resort. Using her other hand, she reached up for the girl, her trembling fingers grasping Kate's loose hand. She closed her eyes, concentrating, trying to push through the bizarre block that surrounded her, barging her way into the girl's mind.

Kate, she began once she was sure a connection had been established. Take it and use it. Just point and think. Do it now. Right now.

Kate nodded, too in-the-moment to question why Amy's voice had suddenly appeared inside her head. She grabbed the screwdriver and unfurled her full height, twirling like a ballerina as she activated the sonic, drawing agonised screams from the aliens as their senses were suddenly filled with the sound of fingernails scraping over a blackboard. She deactivated the sonic and fired another arc of electron plasma. She felt an odd pushing sensation in her belly, heard an odd ripping sound, but it barely even registered as she spun, cutting down the assailants. The six aliens went down without another sound, but a distant shriek indicated that they weren't the last.

Amy's palm closed around her exposed ankle. Is that all of them?

"Yeah, but there's more coming," Kate replied breathlessly, her heart racing from pure adrenaline rush. Did I seriously just do that?

Alright. Give me the gun.

"What?" Kate's eyes snapped down to the Time Lady, whose breathing was still heavily laboured and her eyes firmly shut as she tried to block out the pain in her chest. "Why?"

I'll hold the rest off for you, give you a distraction, while you get back to the TARDIS. When he returns, tell the Doctor I'm sorry and I love him. Tell Rory as well. Now give me the gun.

Kate looked at the girl whom she'd teased so relentlessly once upon a time. The girl who now possessed one of the most powerful minds in the history of the universe, contained within a beautiful but battered, broken body. One look and her decision was made.

"No."

What? Somehow, Amy managed to sound offended that Katherine had the gumption to disobey. Do you want to get killed too? Don't be stupid. Give me that goddamn gun and get your stupid bloody face out of here.

"No, I don't think so." Ignoring any further furious protestations and cries of pain, she picked up the Time Lady bodily using the extra strength adrenaline had bequeathed her, and ran. Their little exploratory trip was over.


Pain is fast becoming her companion.

Well, not her companion. But an extremely close acquaintance.

And now it fills her chest, scythes through her with every step the girl takes.

She is in the girl's arms, her mind drifting as she blocks out the pain searing through her chest.

Why is the girl doing this? Why had she risked her own life to save hers, not once but twice? What did she hope to gain out of it?

At once, hot, thick shame washes through her.

This is why she has so few true friends. So utterly self-driven, so internalised is she that she doesn't even know the simple act of unconditional aid when she sees it. Someone helping just because they can, because they feel they should. After all, that's what friends are for, even if neither truly know it yet.

As the girl continues to run, the light in her eyes beginning to flicker and her face paling as her strength begins to give out, she realises that she has found a new one today.

A friend.


"Doctor?"

"Yes! Sorry, what?" The Doctor returned to reality, startled out of his daydream by the voice of Jack Harkness next to him. Well, daydream wasn't quite correct – night had fallen several hours ago.

They had arrived at Stanley's residence just before sunset, a simple but surprisingly luxurious abode on a hilltop overlooking a sprawling city. Jack shook his head. "Was just asking about Stanley. What do you think of him?"

"Seems nice enough. It's not every day you meet someone who knows Time Lord history." As a semi-professional military historian, Stanley displayed an impressive knowledge of the various campaigns of the Last Great Time War, including the Battle of the Gates Of Elysium, the Fall of Arcadia and of course the use of the Moment. Most importantly, he seemed to know the Doctor's personal involvement in all of these campaigns, and did not judge him for it.

One reluctant warrior to another.

Stanley hadn't elaborated on just what had made him leave the military, but the Doctor could see it in his eyes – the most difficult acts to live with were the ones you were forced to do.

Jack didn't look entirely convinced. "Hm, OK. He seems a bit... off to me, but alright. So what's our plan?"

"It's fairly simple. First we need to recalibrate the equaliser, then we need to get rid of those repticore. Or the other way round. Either will do."

"Why can't we just leave the repticore alone?" Jack was no coward, but had little intention of tussling with the evil-eyed reptiles again.

The Doctor didn't answer directly, instead pointing out the window. "You see that horizon, Jack?"

"Yeah."

"That isn't actually a horizon at all. It's just the point at which light becomes too scattered for us to see. This world doesn't curve downwards, it curves upwards. Like a balloon, except we're on the inside, with the star in the middle."

"Wait, like a Dyson sphere?" Jack had heard of the fantastic, almost mythological constructions but had never actually seen one – to build one was considered by many to be the pinnacle of civilization.

"Like that."

"So why does the sun rise and set normally?"

"That's where it gets really clever – the atmospheric shell is coated with a special material with adaptive refractive...ness. So the light is bent so it looks like the sun is rising and setting... just like it would on Earth."

Jack blinked. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. Genius, eh?"

Jack breathed, gazing at the dark horizon. It was hard to tell in the night-time, but he thought the ground did seem to stretch on for an unusually long distance before merging with the blackness above. "How could one person do this?"

"No idea, but it's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And to make everything telepathically powered..." He chuckled. "Even I would've struggled to do that." He thinned his lips, a sombre glint in his eye. "It's a rare thing Stanley has going here. Very, very rare. Pristine. It needs to be protected."

Jack nodded. "So that's why we're taking on the repticore?"

"Exactly why, although 'taking on' isn't what I have in mind. They can be reasoned with, you know."

"And Amy? She'll not be happy about hearing this."

The Doctor's mind flitted back the daydream – Kate was in the forest, running with Amy in her arms from some unknown, deadly terror... he shook his head.

"What she doesn't know can't hurt her."

"What a wonderful boyfriend you are."

"Thank you. I try."

He returned to his silent vigil at the window, watching the twinkling of the 'stars' projected onto the atmospheric shell above.

Just a silly daydream. That's all.


Kate had never run so hard in her life. Fuelled by pure adrenaline, she sprinted away from the campsite. Amy was still lying mostly immobile in her arms, and her eyes darted left and right as she searched for any signs of more deadly aliens.

"Sorry about breaking your ribs. I'll have a look at them when we get back to the TARDIS," she murmured after she'd run full-tilt for about ten minutes. Amy's weight slowed her considerably, and unburdened she would have reached the TARDIS and safety by now but she suspected she was barely halfway. She had begun to feel slightly light headed, and the strength in her arms was dissipating. She was beginning to feel very aware of just how much Amy weighed. All those extra organs... she snapped her mind out of it. This was not the time to be distracted.

"Mmm," Amy mumbled between pressed lips. The pain in her chest was starting to dull as her biological self-repair kicked into gear, but she still felt like someone was stabbing her in a heart every time she bounced upon and down in time with Kate's steps. Kate'll help with that. The girl had taken a nursing internship at the same hospital as Rory worked at several years before, a move which Amy had been deeply suspicious of at the time.

They entered a clearing in the forest. Kate was now feeling very odd indeed, her footsteps heavy and somewhat uneven. She shook her head did her best to clear the mist from her eyes... gotta focus. Get her back. Doctor'll kill me if I don't. Ugh. How much further is – what was that?

She shuddered to a halt, the sudden deceleration provoking another inadvertent moan from Amy's throat. There it was again – a rustling noise ahead of her.

"Who's that? Who's there?" She called out in a strangely wavering voice. Christ, what is happening to me? She decided to give herself a look when they got back to the TARDIS as well. If they got there, of course.

There was no response. She placed Amy against a tree and fired a burst of electron plasma into the trees at what she figured was just above head height. "Hear that? I'm armed, and so very dangerous, so you better speak up and tell us who you are."

This time there was a response.

"You know," came a rough, gruff male voice, "it's really quite rude to greet someone by shooting at them."

She relaxed her iron grip on the blaster, but she didn't lower it. "Yeah, well, I'm not in an ask-questions-first-shoot-later mood," she shot back.

"Funny, could have sworn you asked before you fired," came the amused reply. Another rustling in the trees and a dark-eyed man in military greens emerged, his arms raised in an open, harmless gesture. He had a wry smile on his face as he stepped into a clearing, which rapidly faded as he caught sight of the two girls. Kate lowered the gun at last, her heart finally beginning to slow. She felt very light-headed now.

"Do you need a medic? You look hurt."

"That'd be great. My friend here is paralysed and has a few broken ribs."

"I can get help for that as well, but I was talking about you, personally."

"What?" Kate looked down for the first time, and saw that beneath her night-black coat, the lower part of her cream shirt was a bright crimson. She moved her hand to her lower abdomen, feeling a four-inch long spine embedded in her body, her fingers sticky with blood.

She'd been hit and she hadn't even noticed.

The adrenaline rush had been the perfect anaesthetic for the wound whilst she'd fought and ran, but now the pain was returning – with a vengeance. At least she knew why she felt light-headed now.

"Aw, crap." Her legs buckled and her vision blackened.

Her last memory was Amy Pond screaming her name as the darkness took her.


Fear. Anguish. Pain. Physical and mental. Guilt.

Unfathomable guilt.

The man loads the pale, bloodied body into the atmospheric shuttle before coming back for her.

"Can you talk?" He asks business-like but still with an undertone of sympathy as he helps her inside.

"Y-yes," She gasps, gritting her teeth against the pain in her ribs. "This isn't per-permanent, don't worry about m-me. Worry about her."

"Who is she?"

"My f-friend. She saved m-my life. Twice."

And now it looks like her friend might pay with her own.