Episode: The Lives and Times of the Raggedy Doctor and Amelia Pond
Chapter: The Man Who Crashed [1/5]
Summary: Amelia wanted someone to fix the crack in her wall. Rory wanted someone to look at the pictures. The Atraxi wanted to recapture Prisoner Zero. Eventually, everyone got what they wanted, though not in the way they wanted it. They got the Raggedy Doctor instead. Or the one where the Master wanted to fix the TARDIS but ended up saving the Earth.
Rating: T
Amelia Pond is not stupid. She knows she has to say her prayers every night, and that if she has anything she wants to say to Mum and Dad, that's the time to do it. She can tell God all about her day, and God will tell her parents, because that's how it works. But she also knows that if she wants something, she can't ask God, because God takes care of dead people and the weather and the angels, but that's it.
No, if she wants something, Amelia Pond asks Santa Claus, because Santa delivers.
She's a bit worried he won't be able to help her this time because it's Easter, but then again, she doesn't know if he can't or if it's just a matter of people not asking Santa for things until Christmas, so she tries.
The crack in her wall is scary, really scary, and she needs Santa to send someone to fix it. Maybe a policeman, they help people in trouble, and they are really cool on TV.
And, as expected, even though it isn't Christmas, Santa delivers.
It's noisy, and right in the middle of her prayer, but when Amelia looks out of the window and sees a smoking blue box with the word 'police' on it has flattened the shed, she knows she did the right thing.
"Thank you, Santa," she tells him politely, finishing her prayer, because, if Santa has made the effort to send this police box in the middle of Easter, the least she can do is be polite and say thank you.
Then, she grabs her torch, puts on her lucky red boots and red jacket, and goes out to the garden to see just what, exactly, Santa has sent.
It's a big blue box, smoking like it's on fire, but there's no fire and the smoke is white. It's really scratched and looks a bit broken, so, for a moment, Amelia worries that whatever it is got damaged when it fell on the shed.
That's not like Santa, Santa leaves all the presents well-organized under the tree… Maybe it's because it's Easter? Was he in a hurry? Was the box so heavy that it fell off the sleigh?
But then, the doors on what is now the top of the box open, more smoke going out, and a hook flies out of it to snatch a heavy metal thing that Amelia is too startled to recognize. The rope tenses, and, after a moment, Amelia hears some puffing—and a hand grabs onto the edge of the box, followed by a second one, and a head pops up.
"Argh! Point that thing somewhere else!" the head scoffs, and Amelia immediately points the torch at the ground.
Between the garden lights and the lights from inside the box, she can see well enough, anyway.
The man in the box climbs out with a grunt, sitting on the edge and looking back inside with a scowl. He's dressed in ripped black trousers, a ripped high-collared sweater missing a third of a sleeve, and scruffy-looking shoes. His hair is blond and he has some stubble on his jaw, and his eyes are pale but Amelia is not sure if they are green or brown because of the yellow light from the box and the way he's glaring at it.
And he's soaking wet.
"Oh, look at that! Do you know how long that's going to take to fix? And you couldn't just give me a warning, could you? No, better to just break down right in the middle of the flight! I was taking us to a mechanic! I could have just called to have them pick us up! Now we're stranded!" he shouts into the box, gesturing madly with his hands before throwing them down as a deep groan of broken machines, like in the movies, echoes from inside. "But noo, you prissy thing. No warning for the bad—What are you looking at?" he asks once he realizes Amelia is staring at him, cutting his rant but still scowling.
Amelia is really confused and a bit unnerved, but she just can't find it in herself to be scared of the man, no matter how much he scowls. He looks like Jane's puppy after she fell in the pool, all wet like that, and that is not scary at all.
"Are you okay?" Amelia asks slowly, trying to figure out what to do now.
She asked Santa for a policeman to deal with the crack in her wall, and Santa sent her the box and this man. Only, the man is really weird, talking into the box and climbing up a rope and all wet like that, so she thinks it's alright if she's a bit confused.
Maybe Santa picked him up from the shower and put him into the box to send him to Amelia, and he's shouting at a screen or a phone in the box. But who showers with their clothes on? Was it raining wherever Santa picked him up from?
"What do you think?" he scoffs, pulling his other leg out of the box so he can sit on the edge facing Amelia, his scowl looking annoyed rather than angry. "My ship broke and I fell all the way to the library. And let me tell you, that's not an easy climb, least of all with all this smoke."
"Is that why you're soaking wet?" Amelia asks, because if his ship broke and he fell into the sea, that would make sense.
Santa must have rescued him because he knows he's a good man and can help Amelia. She can feel herself warming up to this man at the thought, weirdness aside.
"Of course not, who ends up all wet in a library? I was in the swimming pool," he answers, looking down at her like Derrick did that once, when he called her silly because she said fairies started hiding the unicorns when the people decided to try to catch them, and he said that unicorns and fairies weren't real.
She had kicked Derrick really hard in the leg, and he'd bounced like a clumsy frog before falling and crying like a baby, and the teacher had told Amelia that she was a bad girl and shouldn't kick the other kids. Amelia kind of wants to kick the Boxman too, but she decides to take a deep breath instead.
Santa saved him from his broken ship and put him in a box and sent him to Amelia. It must be like falling asleep in the car, she thinks, and being all confused when you wake up and you're at home. So, she decides to forgive him for being confused and looking at her like she is the one who doesn't make sense.
"You said you were in the library," she tells him, pointing that tiny detail out, and he lifts an eyebrow with a look that almost says 'yeah, so?'.
"So was the swimming pool," he answers simply, and hops off the box.
As soon as his feet hit the ground, he doubles over and ends up on a heap on the dirt, grunting in pain and curling up.
"Are you alright, Mister?" Amelia asks him with a frown, wondering if maybe the reason he doesn't make sense is that he hit his head when his ship broke, instead of just being confused.
"Yeah, yeah," he huffs, pushing himself to his knees and spitting dirt while he uses his clean sleeve to rub the rest of the earth off of his face. "Balance is shot after all that tossing in the crash," he adds, sitting on his heels and glaring at his sleeves for a moment before he pushes them up.
Ah, well, that makes sense too. As long as he's not hurt, just dizzy, he can help Amelia.
"Did you come about the crack in my wall?" she asks him, just to make sure, because maybe Santa saved him from the broken ship because he can help but didn't tell him why.
"My trousers are not low enough to be a laborer," he scoffs, twisting the hem of his sweater to get some water out, and Amelia frowns.
"What do your trousers have to do with the crack in my wall?" she asks, trying to figure out if he's just talking nonsense again or if maybe it is actually important.
Policemen wear uniforms, don't they? Is he talking about that? But the policemen on TV, the cool ones, they don't wear the uniform…
He looks up at her, once more with the 'you're silly' look, but stops himself before he can say anything, his scowl vanishing. He has no expression on his face for a moment as he looks Amelia from head to toe, before he looks around and turns back to her with a small confused frown.
"How old are you?"
"I'm almost eight," she tells him proudly, and, when she sees his eyes go wide in a 'I don't believe you' look, she decides to lower her chin and be sincere. "Well, seven and a half."
"Where are your parents?"
"I don't have parents."
"Other relatives? Guardian?"
"I have an aunt."
"And, where is she?"
"Out," Amelia answers simply, cheering up, because he's asking a lot of questions and policemen ask a lot of questions, she's seen it on TV. "You're a policeman, right? Are you going to check on the crack in my wall?"
He goes very still, frowns softly, and looks around really slowly, focusing on the house for a bit, before turning to Amelia again. His eyes look really green this time.
"Why do you need a policeman to check on a crack in your wall?" he asks really slowly, like he's confused or thinks Amelia doesn't understand him.
Amelia is seven, not three, she can understand him easily, so she glares at him for a bit. Then, she remembers he feels really dizzy because of his ship breaking down and Santa sending him here in a box, and decides to not glare at him anymore, and to give him simple answers that he can understand without problems.
"Because it's scary," she tells him slowly, leaning forward a bit and making sure her voice is not too loud to not give him a headache.
His frown goes from serious to confused, despite her efforts, but after a moment, he looks back at his smoking box and slumps where he's still sitting on his heels, letting his head fall back with a groan.
"Ugh, alright. Get me something to eat and I'll check that stupid crack in your wall."
And Amelia finally gives him a big happy smile.
The policeman asks Amelia to get him a towel once she has shown him to the kitchen, and she finds him frying some bacon on a pan, while some beans simmer in a pot next to it. A couple of slices of toast pop out of the toaster when she comes in, startling her, and he immediately turns when he hears her gasp.
"Ah, there you are! Want something while I'm at it? I could probably eat everything in the kitchen, but I'm not so bad as to leave my generous host without food," he tells her with a wide grin that looks a bit like the 'you're silly' one, dropping the toast on a plate before going back to the stove to flip the bacon. "Oh, almost ready."
"You are not supposed to cook, you're the guest," Amelia tells him with a frown as she hands him the towel, which he rubs on his hair with a hand while stirring the beans with the other.
"You're seven and a half. No grownup stuff until you're eight," he tells her as if it was the most normal thing in the world, and Amelia pouts with her arms crossed against her chest, because she has been doing grownup stuff for a long time now. "Seven-and-a-half brats get to set the table, though," he adds, not looking away from the food, and Amelia sighs but decides to be a good host and do as she's told.
After a moment of hesitation, she decides to set the table for two, because he said that Amelia could eat if she wanted something. She doesn't want bacon or beans on toast, but maybe…
"Can I have ice-cream?" she asks when she grabs the cutlery, taking a fork and knife for him and hesitating on taking a spoon for herself.
"You have ice-cream?" he repeats, a bit startled, and, with the towel around his neck and the fire out, he opens the freezer and looks inside. "Oh, you do. What flavor—Ugh, don't like it. All yours," he tells her, handing her the whole carton of ice-cream while he reaches for something else. "I'll take the fish fingers. When was the last time I had fish fingers? Too bloody long ago, apparently."
"Bad word!" Amelia scolds, trying to sound like Aunt Sharon, though she's smiling widely as she carries her carton of ice-cream to the table.
She wonders if she should take a bowl, but finally decides to just grab the ice-cream scoop and eat from the carton instead.
"Ooh, busted," he snorts, and though he doesn't sound sorry, Amelia decides to leave it be, because he's a grownup and a policeman and he's letting her have ice-cream, so it's fine.
He finishes drying off while the fish fingers are frying, but eventually joins her at the table with his beans on toast and bacon and the half of a box of fish fingers that was left in the freezer. The pots and pan are in the sink, waiting to be scrubbed once they're done, but Amelia doesn't worry about that.
Food first, then the crack in the wall, and then they can worry about the pots.
He's looking at the fruit arrangement on the table between bites, scowling at the apples, so Amelia doesn't feel too bad about interrupting whatever he's thinking about. Apples aren't her favorite either.
"Why were you in a ship?" she asks, curious about that part, because policemen go on police cars, not police ships.
Do police ships even exist?
"I was traveling," he tells her simply, taking a really red apple and sniffing it before he makes the same face Amelia is sure she makes every time someone tells her she has to eat an apple. "Don't you have anything other than apples? Definitely not what I want right now."
"We have carrots."
"That's even worse," he says with his nose all scrunched up, before he puts the apple next to his plate and keeps eating his beans on toast.
"Where were you traveling to?" she asks, ignoring his comment about carrots, because if he doesn't like them that means she can eat his share.
"Scotland, apparently," he mutters under his breath, and before Amelia can scold him for speaking with his mouth full, he swallows and straightens, looking at her. "Where in Scotland are we?"
"We're not in Scotland," Amelia answers, glaring down at what's left of his beans on toast. "It's England and it's rubbish."
"To think I would ever agree with a little human girl," the policeman groans, dropping his head back for a moment before finishing his food, and Amelia's glare turns to a startled frown.
"But you sound English. Are you from the North Pole? Do you work for Santa Claus?" she asks him, surprised, because she didn't know Santa had policemen, she only knew about the elves.
He said he was traveling to Scotland… Maybe he was coming to check on the crack in the wall, got the wrong place because Amelia's Scottish but they moved, and that's why Santa had to drop him on the shed in the box?
"Do I work for—I don't work for anyone!" he protests, face all scrunched like he's angry, but also as if he just took a bite of Aunt Sharon's gravy and mash. "Where'd you get that idea?"
"You're a policeman, and policemen work for someone, like the Prime Minister or the military."
"I'm not a policeman."
"You have a police box."
"That's not a police box, it's a doctor box."
"Then why does it say police?"
"It's a disguise. Do you know what a disguise is, little girl?" he asks her with that 'you're silly' smile, like he's talking to a three-year-old, and Amelia glares at him.
"I'm not a little girl, and my name's Amelia. Amelia Pond."
His eyebrows rise up again, and the look he gives her is no longer 'you're silly', but more like 'oh, yes, that's pretty, now go play with your friends'.
"Amelia Pond. Sounds like something out of a fairytale," he tells her, and Amelia blinks in surprise before she lifts her chin with a serious look.
"I'm the princess that kicks the dragon out of the kingdom and rescues the silly knights. Armor is heavy, they shouldn't go against a dragon with heavy armor, because then they can't run," she tells him, waiting to see what he'll say, because everyone always says that princesses have to sit pretty in their towers and wait for the knights to save them.
But Amelia doesn't like those princesses, she can kick really hard even when she's in a skirt, and she'll let no dragon stop her from playing outside, knights or no knights. Besides, the Romans were really cool and brave and strong and they wore skirts, so there.
To her surprise, though, the policeman-who-is-not-a-policeman-because-the-police-box-is-not-a-police-box-but-a-doctor-box-in-disguise laughs at her answer.
It's not a 'you're silly' laugh, either, it's an actual 'that's really funny' laugh, and so Amelia smiles widely too. She also decides that she'll just call him a doctor, because policeman-who-is-not-a-policeman-because-the-police-box-is-not-a-police-box-but-a-doctor-box-in-disguise is too long. Also, doctors are cool too, they cure the flu and chicken pox, and invent really cool stuff like TV and cars and rockets, so maybe what she needs to fix the crack in the wall is a doctor instead of a policeman.
"You tell them! Now that's the kind of attitude I like. Do what you want, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You are the master of your own destiny, not those know-it-alls who think they know what's better," the Doctor tells her, his smile very big and very toothy, like the bad guys from the cartoons, but Amelia decides that it's alright, because he's on her side and let her eat ice-cream just because she wanted it.
And maybe, just maybe, she needs something scarier than the crack in the wall to scare the voices away.
"I know," she tells him, something that makes him let out a loud and happy ha!
"Right! Now that I've got some food in my stomach, I believe I promised you I'd check on that crack in your wall," he finally says, standing up to drop his dirty dishes and cutlery in the sink with the pots.
While he's doing that, Amelia reaches for the apple he left in front of his seat, and decides that, since he's a nice guy after all, she'll show him her Mum's trick for eating apples.
Once he's done putting the ice-cream back in the freezer so it doesn't melt more, Amelia shows him her work.
"I used to hate apples, so my Mum put faces on them," she tells him when he looks bemused at the smiling face on the apple, but his expression turns to surprise and then to a smile that is almost sad as he finally takes it.
"Everything's better with a smile," he says softly, more to himself than to Amelia, before he puts the apple in his pocket and looks at her with a big smile. "Now, where's that crack of yours, Amelia?"
She grabs his hand and pulls him up the stairs, telling him that her room is upstairs and she chose it when they moved in because it has a really pretty view of the garden instead of looking at the street, which is boring, and that this is how she realized he was there, because she heard a weird noise and then a crash and saw that his doctor-box-in-disguise had crushed the shed.
He's really quiet as they go to her room, and his hand is cold and very stiff, but after a moment, it curls around hers a bit like Dad's used to, holding so that Amelia's doesn't slip away but without hurting. His grip is a bit softer, though, so Amelia can easily take her hand back when they arrive to her room. She's sure it's because Amelia is older than when Dad had to take her hand, and the Doctor knows she won't just run away like a little kid, so she doesn't pay it any more attention, focusing instead on the crack.
The Doctor steps forward, frowning softly, before running a hand over the crack, and Amelia decides to be quiet and let him concentrate. He whispers a bit under his breath, too soft to understand, before he takes a blue-tipped metallic cylinder from a pocket, fiddling a bit with it so that the blue tip lights up with a soft whine and he runs the light over the crack. He steps back to look at the cylinder, frowning in both confusion and curiosity, and finally looks at Amelia with an expression that looks a bit like surprise.
"It's a crack."
Amelia is really disappointed.
"I know it's a crack. I told you," she tells him, because she doesn't need a doctor or a weird torch to see it's a crack, but the Doctor shakes his hands almost madly as he approaches her, going as far as to bend down to look her in the eyes.
"No, no, it's not just a crack, it's a crack. Not a crack in the wall, it isn't in the wall at all! It's a spatiotemporal fissure," he explains, and when Amelia frowns in confusion, he huffs and looks away for a moment. "I can't believe just how blind some species are, how do you even survive, seriously… Let's see. Amelia, this crack of yours, it's like a scratch, a cut, a deep one. It's what happens when you cut yourself and the wound itches, because air and flesh were never supposed to touch. Only, instead of a papercut or a scrape, it's a wound in the very fabric of space and time, of the universe. That's why there's a draught and that whispering coming from the other side. That crack is connecting Earth with another world," he explains, and this time Amelia is wide-eyed in surprise.
"You mean, like Martians? Or fairies?" she asks softly, looking at the crack with different eyes.
The Doctor scoffs and straightens, and Amelia's hopes are dashed. That is the 'you're really silly' scowl, but the way he's glaring at the crack tells her that there's nothing as good as fairies on the other side.
"Definitely not Fairies, Fairies are from Earth and that thing feels nothing like Earth. Can't be Martians either, it's uninhabited at this point in time. No, whatever planet is on the other side is not Earth, but it's contemporary. Not that it narrows things down that much, anyway," he muses, glaring at the crack with his head tilted in curiosity. "If only I could figure out the language, that would give us a better idea of what we're dealing with here."
"Prisoner Zero has escaped," Amelia tells him, and the Doctor startles and turns to look at her. "Prisoner Zero has escaped. That's what the voices say."
"And you understand them? Bollocks. They must be using a universal translator then. Narrows the list down, but still… Wait. Prisoner Zero has escaped?" he repeats, turning to Amelia, who nods in confirmation, and his eyes narrow as he turns to the crack once more. "So, prison, with translators, which means intergalactic… Shadow Proclamation?" he hums, before slapping himself in the forehead and twirling around. "Ack, what am I doing?! Here I am, trying to figure out 'a mystery', dealing with the Shadow Proclamation—What am I thinking! I should be getting back to the TARDIS, fix the engines, leave this disgusting place—"
"But I gave you food!" Amelia interrupts, worried at the scowl on the Doctor's face and the way he steps towards the door, and he stops to look at her with anger and something else on his face. "You said if I gave you food you would fix the crack!"
"No, I said I would check it out. And I did. It's a spatiotemporal fissure, congratulations! The house won't fall on your head, because the wall is intact! And you've got nothing to worry about, that's an alien prison at the other side, probably one of the most secure places in the universe."
"Probably?"
"Prisoners escape all the time, you've heard them," he adds in a deadpan tone, pointing at the crack over his shoulder with his thumb.
"So, you're just—leaving? You can't just leave, you have to fix it!" she asks him, eyes wide and breathing fast, but he scoffs with an eyeroll.
"I don't have to do anything. I told you, I don't work for anyone, I don't follow orders. Besides, aren't you the princess who kicks dragons?" he asks her with a 'you are silly' smile, and Amelia glares at him – and his smile drops, something like worry in his eyes before he slowly kneels down in front of her. "Hey, calm down. This crack really scares you a lot, doesn't it?" he asks, though it doesn't feel like a question, and Amelia finds herself sniffing and blinking tears away even as she nods.
The Doctor looks at the ground, at the crack, at Amelia. Then, he grimaces and lets out a huff, shoulders dropping, before getting back to his feet, serious once more, with a nod.
"Alright, Amelia Pond. I'm going to fix this crack in your wall," he tells her, voice sure yet soft, and Amelia sniffs once more, eyes wide, before rubbing away her tears and nodding back. "Now, I need you to stay behind me. To seal the crack, I'll need to widen it first – like a rubber band! Think about a rubber band. When you pull it, it always goes back to normal as soon as you release it, doesn't it? So, right now, something is pulling the crack just the tiniest bit. I'm going to pull some more on it, until it finally unsticks and goes back to normal. Which means, it'll be completely gone," he explains as he turns to the crack, pulling her night table away from the wall and fiddling with his blue-tipped torch.
Amelia nods once more, rubbing her nose to stop any more sniffles, and takes a step closer to the Doctor, careful to stay behind his back. When he finally drops one arm, holding the torch with just one hand, she latches onto his free hand, earning herself a surprised look over his shoulder. A moment later, though, the hesitation on his face vanishes, and he gives her a tiny smile and a squeeze of his big cold hand around her own.
Then, he points the torch at the crack and turns it on, the humming changing in pitch for a bit – and the crack lights up before opening, big and dark like a smiling mouth, and Amelia thinks for a moment that it should be full of jagged teeth, like a shark's mouth.
But it isn't. It's just a crack, big and glowing white at the edges, but so dark inside that Amelia can barely see what look like bars, like a prison cell, on the wall across them. Or, well, what should be the wall across them.
"Prisoner Zero has escaped," the voice from the crack says, over and over, and far louder now that the crack is open.
"Oh, spare me the dramatics," the Doctor huffs, looking the torch over and shaking it a bit before listening to it. "Isn't there a setting to close this thing, or do I need to open it more?"
He's probably just talking to himself, but neither him nor Amelia have a chance to answer before a giant blue eye appears on the other side of the crack.
Amelia gasps and pulls back, away from the crack and the eye, and the Doctor immediately pulls her further behind his back as he also moves backwards.
Still, this is Amelia's room, her crack, and no way is she going to miss what is happening, even if it's scary. So, she pokes her head past the Doctor's side, squeezing his hand tighter as she does so.
The eye just watches them, no one talking, not even the voices calling at the other side of the crack – and then a ball of light rushes out of the crack and into the Doctor's pocket, who yelps and lets out a curse that would have earned Amelia a good slap, but Amelia is too startled to say anything this time.
Before anything else can happen, the crack starts to close, glowing blue-white all the while, and, when it finally presses together and the light goes off, there's nothing in the wall anymore.
"See? Told you the crack would close," the Doctor tells her with a laugh, pulling his hand out of hers so he can rummage in his pocket to get that blue light.
Amelia's hands are still shaking, though, so she clasps them together.
"What was that? Was that Prisoner Zero?" she asks the Doctor, looking between him and the fixed wall every now and then, as if the crack could come back any moment.
"Nah, that was probably the guard," he answers with a shrug, putting the torch away and taking a thin leather wallet out of the pocket the light went into. "And he sent us a message," he tells her, sitting in her bed and waving the wallet, so Amelia quickly climbs up the bed and leans over his shoulder to see.
He tenses when she puts her hands on his arm to keep her balance and only for that, because she's not scared, but after a quick look he gives her a smirk and opens the wallet.
Right in front of their eyes, the blank paper inside lights up in the same blue of the light that went into it, and letters start to appear.
"What's that?" she asks very quietly, almost as if her voice would scare the letters writing themselves in boring book-like print.
She had expected something curly and pretty, like in the movies about messages in bottles, but these are ugly letters.
"It's psychic paper. Shows you what you want to see, what you want other people to see, and takes little messages," he explains with an 'I did something amazing' smile, but turns serious when the letters stop appearing. "Prisoner Zero has escaped," he reads with a soft voice, almost like he's thinking and not noticing what he's reading, but when Amelia turns to him, she sees he's staring at the wall where the crack used to be, eyebrows furrowed and eyes bright as if he was almost afraid. "Oh, you have to be kidding me."
"What? What's wrong?" Amelia asks him, squeezing his arm a bit, and he quickly puts a cold hand on hers to pull them off so he can stand, rounding to face Amelia.
"The only reason they would send this kind of message is if Prisoner Zero had escaped to here. It ran away from the prison, yes, but they warned us because it's here," the Doctor hisses, and there's anger with his fear as he straightens and shoves the paper back into his pocket, taking out the torch once more. "I saw it when we came up but I didn't do anything! Amelia, stay here. I don't know what we're dealing with or how a sonic screwdriver will affect it—oh, how I wish I still had my laser—so you stay here. Understood?" he asks, meeting her eyes after fiddling a bit with his torch-screwdriver thing, and Amelia nods. "Good. Now—"
A bell tolls.
Both of them startle, because everything is really quiet in the room and the street since it's nighttime, but Amelia also startles because that doesn't sound like the church's bells.
The Doctor's eyes go really wide and he shouts something Amelia doesn't understand before he runs out of the room.
"Wait! What's happening?" Amelia calls, rushing after him and remembering only when she's already halfway down the stairs that he said not to leave the room.
But he's not listening nor does he seem to care as he rushes to his smoking box, shouting 'no, no, no' all the while, so Amelia follows.
"You can't do this to me now!" he shouts inside the box, leaning over the edge, before he slams his hands on the wood and hops back to the ground. "I can't believe you! Oh, yeah, at least you're warning me now, much appreciated. Damnit!" he curses, untangling the hook from the metal thingy that he used to climb out in the first place, and looping the ropes around the door handles.
"What's wrong?" Amelia asks, watching worriedly, and he looks at her almost as if he'd forgotten she was there, before falling to his knees in front of her and grabbing her shoulders.
"Look, Amelia, my box, this box? It's a time machine in disguise. It's damaged, and it needs fixing, and I'll get to most of it later, but there's one thing, just one thing, which I have to do now or the box will burn. I'm going to jump five minutes into the future, and I need you to stay here, wait for me. Alright?" he explains, breathing fast but making sure his words are clear, and Amelia frowns, feeling her chest ache a bit.
"Can't I come with you?"
"Too dangerous right now, too much damage. And it's just five minutes, who cares about five minutes? You can go make yourself a sandwich and I'll be back just as you're done, how does that sound? I go fix this, and you can be a good seven-and-a-half-year-old helper and get me a sandwich. No butter, that's just sticky, how about ham and cheese?" he asks her, and, this time, Amelia nods, because she can definitely do that. "Excellent! Just, don't go into the room next to the stairs, I'll be back in five minutes."
"People always say that," she tells him, trying very hard not to let the tears in her throat fall, and he scowls like she's just insulted him.
"Do I look like people to you? Ew, gross," he gags, making Amelia laugh a bit, before he tightens his grip reassuringly for a second. "I fixed the crack, didn't I? And you'll make me a great sandwich, which is more than enough for me to come back."
Before she can answer, he jumps onto the edge of the box, higher than she has ever seen anyone jump, and grabs the ropes tied to the doors.
He gives her a big smile over his shoulder, and jumps into the box.
"See you in five minutes, Amelia!"
She thinks she hears a splash before the doors close, but she can't be too sure. A moment later, though, the box starts to disappear with the same weird noise she heard in the bedroom, until the only thing left is vanishing smoke and a soft wind.
Amelia takes a deep couple breaths, calming down, and rushes back into the house to prepare the best ham and cheese sandwich ever. And to get a dry towel too, just in case she did hear right and he landed in the swimming pool in the library again.
Five minutes later, the sandwich is ready, the towel is on a chair, and Amelia is nibbling on a carrot because she actually likes carrots, and all that running up and down the stairs made her hungry.
Ten minutes later, she puts on her thick jacket and hat and gloves, because his hands were really cold and that maybe means that the box is cold inside despite all that smoke, and takes the towel and the covered plate with the sandwich outside, just in case he has to do some more repairs on his time traveling box before he can come inside.
The Doctor is not back yet when she reaches the broken shed, but that's fine. He fixed the crack, like he said, even if he didn't really want to in the first place, and he said he would be back in five minutes to see if Prisoner Zero really is in her house and catch it, so he will come back. She's not sure which room he was talking about, though, maybe the one Aunt Sharon uses as an office, right across the stairs to the first floor? Well, it's either that or the guest bedroom, and Amelia is not allowed in one and has no reason to go into the other, so that's fine.
So, Amelia finds a clean spot of grass, gets comfy, and waits for her Raggedy Doctor to come back.