"If I say something do you promise not to get upset?" I asked the Doctor from the bench in the console room while swinging my legs back and forth in the air. He gave me a studying look.

"I suppose," he said slowly.

"It's not that I haven't appreciated all the lovely picnic dates on uninhabited planets. It's just that I miss talking to people and seeing new cultures." I paused to raise a finger up as the Doctor frowned and opened his mouth. "And if I am feeling a little bit restless, then you must be rapidly approaching feeling downright antsy."

"Emma," he started gently, still looking very uneasy. I slid off the seat to stand beside him to cut him off before he could talk me out of this.

"I know why you're nervous, but the nightmares haven't been so bad recently." I still had them nightly and woke up every time with my heart pounding and adrenaline racing through my system, but I could never remember them, so they didn't haunt me as much. My left wrist throbbed a little as I thought about the nightmares, so I used my other hand to massage it gently.

"Also, before you suggest just going to Earth, I'm vetoing that because I know that you just mean going to hang out with Lillian or Mom and Dad," I added. He stared at me for a few moments.

"I love you." The Doctor's eyes were sweeping all over me as if he was trying to memorize me while he said it and I stiffened at his tone. The way he said it sounded so final, like he was resigning himself to something. His eyebrows furrowed slightly.

"What?" He requested.

"Sorry you just said it the same way my dad did before he left," I explained shakily. He shut his eyes and smiled like he was trying to cover up pain before pulling me against him. I wrapped my arms around his waist in return.

"I don't say it enough. I know you probably think that I say it plenty, but you deserve to be told every time I think about how much I love you. And that was one of those moments where you make sure that I can see things outside of my own head." He kissed me fondly on the tip of the nose. I scrunched up my nose because it tickled, and the Doctor chuckled.

"So, does that mean that we're going somewhere inhabited today or not?" I asked and fluttered my eyelashes at him innocently. He gave me a suspicious look.

"You and the TARDIS have a plan if I say no, don't you?" He questioned. I bit my lip to try and lessen the smile that was spreading over my face.

"We might have had a discussion," I answered. He groaned loudly and gave a glare to the console while I giggled.

"I guess I could take you to Innergie. I have been planning to take you there anyways." He sighed as he pulled away from me and moved towards the console. I skimmed my fingers along a few buttons idly.

"See I told you we could talk him into it," I told the TARDIS.

"You two need to stop conspiring with each other. It never goes well for me," he replied. I bumped my shoulder into his.

"But that's no fun. Besides the TARDIS and I have conspired against you maybe three times. Why Innergie?" I asked, carefully copying his pronunciation as we landed, and he grabbed his overcoat on his way to the door.

"About three hundred years ago, this planet had a very nasty civil war. Made the one in America seem like two kids fighting over a toy in a sandbox. Anyways, after the war was won both factions agreed that nothing like that could ever happen again, so they laid out some very stringent laws regarding weapons and peace keeping," the Doctor answered as he pushed the door open and held out his hand towards me.

"Cool." I linked my fingers with his and followed him outside. We stepped out of the TARDIS into an alley.

"Looks like Benzoate," the Doctor stated idly as I dragged him out of the alley and into the main streets.

"Is Benzoate the name of this city?" I asked as I took it in. The buildings themselves looked sort of Spanish, like the old areas of Barcelona, but the market down the street reminded me of a bazaar in the Middle East.

"Yep. It's not the capital, but still pretty big." This time the Doctor took the lead and began gently steering me down the streets. As we walked he told me that we were in the oldest part of the city, the only part that hadn't been decimated during the civil war and had to be rebuilt, and that we were heading to the fountain that sat in the exact centre of the city.

"Ready?" He asked as we stopped just before rounding another corner. I nodded enthusiastically.

"It's beautiful," I breathed as we rounded the corner. The fountain was much smaller than I was expecting, but there was still something about it that was humbling, probably because the evidence that it had been through a war was still obvious, but was still delicately sprinkling water out of it's top. I walked towards it until my foot twisted on a cobblestone. I snapped my gaze down to help catch my balance and cried out in alarm.

There wasn't any cobblestone under my feet. Instead I found myself looking down at what looked like part of a torso. I scrambled backwards and looked back up at the fountain. The previously clear water was now running red with blood and bodies were slumped throughout the square and the buildings were on fire. I could hear someone, probably the Doctor, yelling my name, but even through the deafening gun and cannon fire that was resounding through the square he still sounded like he was miles away. I felt a tug on my left wrist and looked down to the bloody face of a young woman mouthing the word help to me. Then her voice got louder and louder until she was shouting and sobbing.

"Emma!" I didn't realize I was screaming until the Doctor's desperate shouting and his hands shaking me bodily by the shoulders jerked me out of the vision. I stared at him as the woman's pleas faded into echoes in my ears.

"Make it stop," I whispered as I covered my ears with my hands and realized that everyone in the square and what seemed like half the market were staring at me. "Please make it stop." The Doctor scooped me up in his arms, carried me back to the TARDIS and didn't speak a word until we were drifting in the time vortex and he'd shoved a cup of tea into my hands. I haltingly explained what had happened, everything I'd seen and from the way he paled I could tell that I'd just described something I shouldn't have been able to describe.

"We are not leaving the TARDIS until we figure this out." His tone made it clear that he expected me to argue with him, but that he wouldn't be talked out of this. I simply nodded and sipped my tea slowly because my hands were starting to shake.

"I'm not angry Emma," he said, misinterpreting why my hands were shaking. I looked up at him and gave him the best smile I could manage.

"Yes, you are. You're just not angry at me. You're angry at yourself for not being able to help," I said softly. "Not that this is your fault in any way, shape, or form."

"Going to take back what you said about me not being crazy?" I teased after he was silent for a few minutes while giving him a weak smile and he shook his head.

"No, I won't. There has to be an explanation for this," he muttered as he flopped down to sit next to me.

"I think being crazy is an explanation," I mumbled into my teacup. The Doctor fixed me with a harsh look so I bit down on my lip because my attempts to be a bit flippant were not appreciated at this moment.

"It could be because of the time energy," he suggested.

"I would think that a symptom like this would have demonstrated itself before now," I pointed out. He ran his hands through his hair, and he was starting to look like he was only just managing to not tear his hair out.

"You're making me nervous," I admitted quietly after a few tense seconds had passed.

"I'm sorry," he said as he exhaled harshly and seemed to shove his tenseness away as he did so. "I'm sorry, but it was—Emma you just stopped dead and started screaming. It was terrifying."

"I know. I'm sorry I scared you today." He laughed roughly.

"Today? Emma, I don't think I have stopped being scared in weeks. I haven't been normal since the moment I couldn't make you stop having nightmares. But this!?" He waved his hand around. "This is way beyond that."

"Well then I don't know what to say," I said, and he laughed as he reached up to weave his fingers into the curls at the back of my neck and pulled me forwards slightly to rest his forehead against mine.

"Tell me you love me," he begged, and I laughed as I rubbed my nose against his. If I couldn't give him any verbal comfort, then I was going to give him some physical comfort. It wasn't as good, but at least it was something.

"That's it?" I teased. "I love you."

"I love you."

XXXX

I was really hoping that that would be the worst of it, that whatever was happening would just go away now that we were staying on the TARDIS. The Doctor had taken as many blood samples as he dared to run tests, though he hadn't found anything.

"Emma?" The Doctor asked as he poked his head into the library. I looked up at him from the photo album that I was putting together.

"Are you sure you aren't a vampire?" I teased even as I shrugged the blanket off my shoulders and held my arm out towards him. He laughed.

"I'm not, but I really think I'm onto something. Sorry I probably would have had this figured out earlier, but the time energy made things complicated," he said as he walked towards me and I shrugged as I smiled up at him.

"That's all right the time energy came with a pretty big positive," I said.

"Oh?" He asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah now I get to love you as much as you deserve forever," I said as he squatted down next to me and his face went soft.

"I love you Emma," he said and reached down to cradle my elbow in his hand.

The 'I love you' I was going to give in response was cut off by a vision flooding over me, like it had in the market on Innergie except this time it was different. It felt more real and I recognized the location this time. It was Gallifrey right before the Doctor used The Moment to end the war. But there was something else that was different too, this time I could feel how terrified everyone else was as their world burned around them.

I stopped screaming when the Doctor ripped his hand away from me and scuttled away from me in horror as his face turned a deathly pale. I stared at him, trying to catch my breath, as he scrambled to his feet and ran out of the room.

I clapped a hand over my mouth as I tried and failed not to sob over the fact that him running away was the most terrifying thing I'd ever experienced.