"Doctor ?"

The radio coughed a few words, choked by the statics.

"my… Amy?"

Then it died.

Amy stood agape, stunned by the sudden and profound silence. She held tighter the little machine in her hand, felt the cold metal slide between her fingers.

"Doctor?" she said again, trying not to think about the slight tremor that had appeared in her voice.

Nothing. The Doctor was gone, and so was any kind of comfort she had had when he was guiding her through the forest. She was alone now.

"Doctor!" she repeated, almost screaming, as if the force of her fear-fueled anger would bring the Doctor back.

Nothing. The radio stayed stubbornly silent, and so did the Doctor.

Amy heard the faint echo of her voice bouncing against the mechanical trees of the forest, and suddenly remembered that she wasn't the only living being here. She took a step back, a useless automatic reflex, and listened carefully, this sense being her only weapon left in her new world of blindness.

Nothing moved… at least Amy thought. She didn't know if she could fully trust her hearing and remained a little bit unsettled, focusing on the unnatural silence that was all around her.

No, definitely nothing. No sounds were disturbing the woods. Slightly reassured, Amy clenched the radio, willing to try one more time, when she felt something. It wasn't her hearing at all, but her instinct. She was suddenly sure, deadly sure even, that something had moved in the clearing, even though her ear hadn't picked up anything in particular. A strange, fluctuating disturbance in the very fabric of the silence.

"Hello?" she said cautiously, turning her head in one direction, mentally picturing the forest behind her closed eyelids.

It was another stupid automatic reflex, completely devoid of any utility, but she couldn't help it. She needed something banal, something common to push away the fear of the otherworldly beings she was fleeing from. The sound of her voice, her own, proper voice, reassured her a lot more than her hearing did.

Another movement, behind the trees. Nothing had moved, nothing had broken the twigs on the ground, but Amy was definitely sure that something had shifted between the trunks. She could almost picture the movement, silent, swift, efficient, and yet insubstantial. She took another step back, smaller this time, and her arms came to embrace her shaking body.

She almost called for the Doctor, out of pure habit, but restrained herself at the last minute. Another sound, and she would permanently be spotted, if she wasn't already. No, she had to act like the Doctor. That was what her first instinct told her. Act like the Doctor. Think, think, think, Amy. What would the Doctor do?

Get moving.

Amy almost stumbled, shaken by the power of the voice inside her head. It wasn't the Doctor's, but her own, pushing her, willing her to survive. Because this was what it was all about now: surviving. With the Doctor, Amy had always had this childish but reassuring conviction that they were safe. At the Doctor's side, she was secure. Nothing could get close to her, nothing could or would even harm her. Amy had never, despite all her previous adventures, even once considered the possibility of not making it out alive. Now she realized, with a chilling logic spreading in all of her body, the reality of the situation she was in. She was not safe, she had never been. There were no guarantees of her succeeding, no divine protection. Amy realized this in a split second, and suddenly understood that she could die.

This realization shook her deeply to her bones and a cold, logical, almost mechanical way of thinking made its way into her head. This was not a game, because, let's face the facts, if it was, she hadn't made a good start toward winning it. Those flickering movements she had so easily dismissed, this unnatural silence around the forest, all of those weren't here by accident. There were clues she hadn't picked, and now her survival was seriously endangered.

Because, let's face the facts, Amy had already been spotted a long time ago, the moment she was left alone with the radio and now she had to get moving, or else she would become an even easier target than she already was.

With this in mind, Amy took a step and another, shaking one forward, feeling the grass bend under her shoes, picturing the Angels in the woods, watching her behind their hidden eyelids.

Slowly but surely, she started progressing in the forest, twigs snapped under her feet, branches sometimes brushing against her face. She was completely disoriented, having no sense of where she was and where she was supposed to go but at this point, Amy didn't even care. All she wanted was to get away, to move, to get out of this stupid forest. A faint sense of claustrophobia arose in her chest at the idea of all of those trees, so alike to the bars of a prison surrounding her when Amy felt another movement, not far from her left. She stopped and listened. She heard the slight back and forth movement of branches creaking, as if something had just brushed past them. Panic burst in her head but Amy forced herself to stay calm, to take slow, calculated steps. Running would be announcing her official defeat, and then she would lose any kind of rationality she had managed to keep.

She continued blindly, turning here and there when she felt this slight, buzzing sound growing in the air, which she guessed could only belong to the time fracture. The time energy leaking out of it didn't frighten her as much as the Angels did, however. She tried to picture the Doctor, the warmth in his voice and the concern in his gaze, the very last things she had seen before closing her eyes, and willed herself to continue. After all, the Doctor wouldn't have brought her along with him if he didn't think she wasn't capable of surviving on her own, would he?

"But the Doctor isn't here. Even he cannot plan everything, and he certainly didn't plan this. Besides, the Angels are already here, aren't they? You feel them all around you," her inner, sarcastic voice told her in its generosity.

Amy shut it quickly, ignoring its last remark, ignoring all of the tiny fluctuations she could now sense all around her. It wasn't as much as the faint sounds of creaking branches and snapping twigs that weren't there before; Amy felt them, felt the stony, empty gaze on her skin.

"Leave me alone," she said aloud, not really knowing who she was talking to.

"But it's too late," the voice said in a genuine, dubious tone. "Amy they're here, it's already too late; there's nothing you can do. And they're taking their time, too. They're just messing with you."

"Shut up," she whispered. "The Doctor will"-

A draft of wind. A tiny, gentle breeze, almost a caress against her skin. Amy stopped. There wasn't any wind in the forest, because it wasn't really a forest but the artificial lung of a spaceship, and there couldn't be any wind because there wasn't supposed to be any in space. No, it was more like something had stopped dead in front of her, creating this tiny spiral of movement.

Tears ran on her cheek as she raised her head, feeling her own breath breaking against something hard that hadn't been there before. Branches rustled. Pebbles rolled. Amy cried harder, because she knew that if she opened her eyes, at this right instant, this right moment, she would meet the face of a Weeping Angel, baring its fangs at her, standing inches from her face, playing with her and her blindness, which Amy was almost thankful for at the moment. She could picture all too well the details of the monstruous features in front of her, meant to be so peaceful when watched as normal statues, and knowing that it was standing there, so close to her, with its hands hooked into claws, ready to grab her face-

Amy broke into a run. Her resolution shattered. It was the beginning of her defeat, she knew, but she couldn't fight off her panic; she wasn't strong enough. Stone dug into her shoulders, in a vain attempt to pull her back. The sound of torn fabric, then the rising pain in her flesh, with new reddening marks. Amy ran faster, faster than ever before, cursing her forced blindness. The world shifted all around her, with a chorus of new sounds filling the entire forest.

It was over. The Angels were here, they were everywhere. Amy felt their electric, swift movement in the air. She was lost. And yet she never stopped. If she was going to die, then she wanted to make it as hard as possible for them.

Wood slashed through her face, and a twisted root made her violently crash onto the ground. Grass caressed her cheeks and Amy groaned, pain spreading rapidly in her chest and ribcage. She desperately felt around, hoping to find a root or a tree to help get her up, when her hand closed on stone. With a shriek Amy jumped back, and her hand met another one where cold, smooth fingers trapped her own.

Amy quickly pulled it back, feeling her skin split itself between the curved nails of the Angel. Blood splattered onto the false grass of the forest as she stood up and dashed between the two statues, hitting her shoulders against theirs. She came out into a clearing; she couldn't explain why, but she was sure of it. Here the air felt… lighter, as if suddenly freed from the grasp of the trees.

Suddenly the radio mumbled something through its static voice and Amy grasped it, bursting with joy. It was over now, the Doctor would find a solution like he always did, and this nightmare would finally be over.

"Doctor?!" she said, almost crying with relief.

Cold, icy fingers laced themselves around her throat, breaking through the mist of shock, and Amy realized that her feet were no longer touching the ground. The radio slipped from her hand, falling in a dull thud on the ground. The empty, unnatural space between her and the soil only increased her fear, chasing away the last remnants of reason she had. She gasped with panic, unable to breath, swaying her feet back and forth when her shoes collided with hard stone in front of her. She cried in pain, feeling her legs circulate the air beneath her and sensing the fluctuations around. The clearing was full of Angels. She was surrounded, of this she had absolutely no doubt.

"Doctor," she cried as the radio continued sputtering words between the statics. "Doctor."

The radio struggled to answer, but Amy thought she could hear the Doctor's familiar tone hidden beneath the unintelligible words.

At this instant, minutes before she knew what was going to be her final moment, Amy was not filled with fear, not really. She was disappointed. In herself, for failing so stupidly in front of statues. For running away, whereas she ought to have been stronger than this. In the Doctor for not being there. It was stupid, of course she knew it was, but she couldn't help it all the same. She didn't hate him, no; she loved him with every bit of her heart. Amy was simply sorry that he could not accompany her in her final moments, to give her the strength she had lacked.

She felt the bitter taste of tears and self-loathing bloom inside her mouth, when suddenly Amy made a choice. If she was going to die, then let not the Angels have this pleasure. She would do it by her own hand. The last courage she had, maybe, but a courage nonetheless.

Amy's eyelids snapped opened, and she stared straight at the Angel's face. It was snarling at her, its mouth open in a silent scream, its hands locked onto her throat, with its claw-like nails piercing her skin. It was looking at her, too, but Amy never ever shut her eyes, defying its soulless, gray orbs with her fiery ones, which were burning with angry tears.

"See ya," she spat at the Angel's face, kicking it and ignoring the cracking in her foot.

Pain exploded in her head, her chest, everything. Stone crawled out of her skin, leaking from her mind as the Angel in her head made its way out, aiming for the windows of her eyes, its face being the very last thing Amy saw before all went dark.