Author's Note:Blimey guys, I'm so, so sorry it's taken so long to update! Things sort of just exploded into a world of busy and I just had no time to write up the next chapter. But I've had a bit of spare time today, and have managed to write a chapter, which has made me very happy. Don't worry - this story won't be abandoned (in fact, it keeps ending up longer than I say it will be. So ignore any "it's over soon guys" messages I may have tagged onto the chapters...). But updates may be less frequent due to the busy-ness - I have uni exams soon so that's put a dent in the (much more important) world of fan fiction for me. I hope you're all still reading this and are interested in knowing what happens. For those of you who are, here is the next chapter, along with the hope that updates won't be a month (eek) apart again. Enjoy :)

39. Leadworth.

Amy stood at the door to the console room, shivering though she was not cold, swallowing back the nausea that River's tale had caused. He had been tortured. And he hadn't said anything. Amy could understand not mentioning painful things – she for one didn't always admit to everything straight away, but that was more along the vein of "my boyfriend dumped me", not torture. Anything bigger, and she could not find it within herself to hide it; it would eat her alive until she told someone, usually Rory.

But to go through that, for months on end, not knowing that anyone was coming for you, and then covering it all up with tales of meeting Harry Potter, the Weasley twins defeating Death Eaters with stink bombs, and Snape cross-dressing to break into Gringotts…

She felt sick. If she hadn't realised that something was off, that the Doctor was hiding something, and gone to River… She would never have known. And even River, despite being so close to the Doctor, only knew a vague outline of what had happened. Being from the future hadn't helped her this time.

How could he stand it?

Amy closed her eyes, unable anymore to watch the man before her as he fiddled with the console. She couldn't even look at him without hearing River's words.

And Amy felt so cold. Sick. Burning with anger.

And there he was, the picture of calm.

"Amy?"

She opened her eyes with a start, a slight noise of surprise escaping her as her fingers twitched in a quickly aborted natural reflex. River, as though summoned by Amy's thoughts, was standing before her. She looked tired.

"He looks so normal."

River followed her gaze to the Doctor and pursed her lips. "He isn't. Far from it, in fact."

"Why hasn't he told us?"

"He'll have his reasons."

"Reasons?" Amy asked, eyes flashing. "What could possibly justify not mentioning that? We're his friends! We've been through thick and thin with him already, seen him at his worst. If he thinks it'll scare us-"

"I didn't say that they were good reasons," River said, cutting Amy off before she could cause a scene and draw the Doctor's attention. "But yes, it will scare you. What you see with the Doctor, Amy, it can't compare to what he went through in that world."

"Then he needs our help," Amy said firmly, undeterred. "Whether he likes it or not."

River smiled.

Amy sighed. "I just…" she shifted position a bit. "Don't really know how. Rory doesn't either – they taught him psychology at the hospital, but not anything like that."

River nodded. "Just do what you feel is best; there's no manual for this. But remember, the Doctor doesn't do subtle. He could beat about the bush until he died of old age."

"Hang on – you are going to talk to him too, aren't you? We can't do this alone. And," Amy added, raising a finger, "you're his wife."

"He's angry with me."

Amy threw her hands up into the air. "So? Just… do whatever you normally do to make him un-angry again!"

"What do I do?" River asked, raising an eyebrow.

Amy resisted the very real urge to blush and instead replied, in a voice that she hoped was as off-hand as she wanted it to be, "Well, you do know everything about him."

"From an older version. This one doesn't quite trust me enough to talk about something like that."

"Maybe this is what makes him trust you."

"No," River replied, "it isn't."

Amy sighed in frustration. "At least tell me where to start."

"Keep him at your house for a bit," River advised. "He needs the rest, and he's not doing that here now that he's got his gadgets back. And the library should have a book or two about Time Lord medicine so that Rory can keep an eye on him until he's fully recovered. If things get bad, call me. I have to go back to the future. Timelines again."

"Call you? How?"

River held up an earpiece. "Ear pod with benefits. Can call you and receive calls from anywhere, anywhen. Frequent Flyers privilege."

"Ok," Amy said, nodding, not happy with the situation but trusting River's judgement. "Keep him here. Then what?"

"Try to keep him away from the TARDIS, or he'll just leave to avoid dealing with it. You'll have to keep an eye on the Master for him, of course. And hopefully being forced into a slower lifestyle will give him time to recover properly and deal with this."

"He'll go crazy," Amy said, remembering their calmer adventures. The Doctor didn't do calm. Especially not Leadworth.

"Exactly."

oOo

Once River had gone, Amy approached the Doctor warily. He was still fiddling with the levers, buttons and bolts that always seemed to hold his attention endlessly. She peered at him for a moment, not understanding how he constantly seemed to need to repair the TARDIS. Maybe, if it was an infinite ship, it needed infinite repairs? Or maybe it was just so old it was all he could do to keep it together. Either way, neither scenario put her mind at ease.

"Ah, Pond, there you are."

Amy jumped for the second time that day. "Are you psychic or something?" She asked, drawing to his side and putting her hands on the console. "How did you know I was there?"

"Your body heat."

Amy rolled her eyes. "Fine. I didn't really expect a proper answer anyway."

He looked up at her indignantly. "How do you know it wasn't a proper answer? Maybe I really could tell you apart from body heat."

Amy snorted.

The Doctor promptly gave up trying to prove his point, instead turning back to fiddling.

Amy took the opportunity to study him, trying to determine if now was the right time to get him to deal with what had happened. He was pale, leaning on the console for support, his body trembling. Dark bags lay under his eyes and, despite the look of concentration that he was evidently trying to muster, he just looked empty.

Her heart juddered.

"What happened?" She asked him. She had decided to throw subtlety to the wind, knowing that the Doctor would just evade the questions endlessly.

"Oh, just a few minor repairs," he replied. His hands shook as he unscrewed a deadly-looking red button that Amy had never noticed before.

"Can't repairs wait?" Amy asked, going for a different tack. "We haven't seen you in weeks."

The Doctor wavered for a moment, then ripped his gaze from the console so that his eyes could drift slowly up to hers. "That's right," he said, as if to himself, his eyes looking right through her. "The timelines must be different."

Amy tried not to wince. "How long was it for you?"

"A few months."

He was fiddling with bolts in his hands, now, still staring through her. Suddenly, he jolted himself back to reality, plastered a disturbing smile on his face, and went back to work.

"Plenty of time to enjoy Quidditch."

"Except you never played Quidditch."

His shoulders stiffened. "No, I didn't."

Amy suddenly felt nervous; worried that she could take a wrong step and set off a reaction that she had not expected. Why hadn't she waited for Rory?

"Why not?"

"Oh," the Doctor replied vaguely, "more important things to do. V – You-Know-Who to fight, and all that."

Amy stared for a moment, thrown. "Did you just call him You-Know-Who instead of Vol-"

"Don't!" The Doctor suddenly hissed, as though in pain, his entire body shaking.

Amy felt her heart judder again as her throat went dry. "Doctor?"

She could hear him trying to measure his breathing as he forced himself into a more relaxed posture. Finally, he succeeded; still, unnatural, he stood like a statue, a freeze-frame of the more confident, exuberant man who had once whisked her away to see the stars. Amy waited, hoping he would take this lapse as an opportune moment to explain his reaction, but the explanation never came, just the endless quiet that he used when he was hiding something, the endless statue.

She swallowed, raised her hand to his shoulder, and let it lie there lightly, unsure of whether she was doing the right thing or not. The Doctor twitched.

"Doctor?"

"It's nothing, Pond."

River was right; he would evade this until he died of old age. Quite a feat, in this case. She wondered, from his posture, if he was even used to talking about things this personal.

"I know."

Something in her voice must have tipped him off, because his head suddenly whipped up, his eyes boring into hers. "What?" His voice, feigning confusion, wobbled slightly.

"River told me."

oOo

Rory found the door at last, after an hour of searching. Despite River's instructions, it seemed that the TARDIS had deliberately tried to get him lost; he had lost count of the amount of times that he had gone down the same corridor, tried the same locked doors. But at last, either the TARDIS had given up, or he had somehow managed to sneak around her defences.

He hoped it was the former. If he had managed to sneak around the barriers guarding this room from the rest of the ship, he hated to think how easy it would be to sneak out.

He had half expected the door to the aforementioned room to be daunting; made of metal, heavy, possibly with spikes sticking out of it with an unlucky head dangling from it (though he doubted the head was the Doctor's, or River's, style), but it looked fairly normal. Fairly normal for a spaceship, at any rate. It was indeed metal, but it reminded him of the sort of doors that he had seen on the original set of Star Trek: one push, and it could fall off.

"This can't be the right place."

Something nudged him gently forwards.

Ok, so the TARDIS had just allowed him to see it.

Nervously, he reached out and laid his hand against the rickety metal. Something flashed in his mind and he was thrown backwards by an electrical current, enough to stun him, but not enough to seriously hurt him.

He blinked. "Ok then, not a rickety door," he groaned when he got his breath back.

He could almost feel the TARDIS groaning in frustration as a button by the door suddenly lit up, flashing obnoxiously.

"Alright," he muttered to the ceiling, dragging himself to his feet, "I get it now. It's not actually a rickety door."

He looked at the door again. This time, the aura of dilapidation had disappeared, leaving in its place the fortified door that he had originally imagined. Now, he was hardly an expert in these matters, only being from Earth, but he guessed that meant that the first door had been an illusion placed over the real one, so as to convince anyone looking at it that nothing dangerous lay behind it. That way, Rory reasoned, the Doctor could be sure that he or Amy would not go looking for it. Or Amy, at any rate, since it was always her idea to walk into dangerous places, and Rory's clever idea to run out screaming that usually saved their lives.

But he wouldn't dwell on that.

He pressed down on the button, which produced a whirring sound and a blue light that scanned Rory from head to toe. He stood stock still, feeling oddly embarrassed, almost as though he was getting searched by airport security. Finally, the scanning stopped, and the door slid open with a whoosh.

He had almost expected a labyrinth of doors beyond, a corridor of lasers or even a tightrope above a pool infested with sharks. Instead, he came face to face with the stranger that he had been told was the Second Last Time Lord in existence. The Master looked just as surprised to see him.

Rory hovered in the doorway, suddenly hyper aware of his hands and whether or not he was doing the right thing with them. They felt awkward just handing by his sides. He brought them up in front of them, realised that it looked like he was praying, and promptly dropped them again, clearing his throat awkwardly.

"Can I help you?" The Master asked, eyebrows raised.

He was sitting in a plush armchair with a book, his feet stretched out in front of a crackling fire. In fact, if Rory didn't know better, he would have said that he had just walked into the TARDIS library.

"Er…"

The Master smirked. "You didn't think he'd put me in a cell, did you?" He got to his feet and made his way over to the door. Rory took a step backwards out of habit. "Oh, please. You don't even know why I'm dangerous."

"I've been filled in."

"Ohh," the alien said with a tone of fake enlightenment. "Yes, that's right. Mrs Doctor."

"River Song."

"Perhaps I should call him Doctor Song instead, if you're going to be so touchy."

Rory stared; he couldn't help it. The man had changed out of his previous jeans and hoody, and was now in what could only be a black designer suit. The smile that he wore and the way he stood all screamed "predator" and it was all Rory could do to stick to his position.

Seeing the effect his appearance was creating, the Master's smile grew wider. "Why are you here? Come to free me?"

"Don't get any ideas," Rory said in a harsh tone that surprised even himself. "I'm just here to see where you are."

"Oo, look who's acting tough now." The Master took another step forwards and smirked as Rory instinctively tensed. "Oh, relax. There's a force field between us. I can't get out."

The Master walked back over to his armchair and sat down, supremely unconcerned with Rory's presence. "So what brought you here? It wasn't just simple curiosity. The defences wouldn't have let you through if it was."

"It's my job to make sure you stay locked up."

"Oh, really? What happened to Mrs Doctor?"

"River."

That smile returned. "As a jailor, I rather preferred her. She was so deliciously strict."

Rory shuddered inwardly. "Yes, well, she's gone now, so you have me to look forward to."

He regretted his words instantly when the Master pointedly raked his gaze up and down the entirety of Rory's body. "And I thought this couldn't get any more boring," the alien muttered, leaning back and closing his eyes.

"I'll be back later to check on you," Rory said. When the Master didn't respond, he backed out, not fully relaxing until the doors shut behind him.

oOo

"She did what?" The Doctor asked.

"She told me about what happened."

"She had no right."

Amy's hands clenched with the effort of not losing her temper. It was only the reminder that he needed her help, that he wasn't as well as he seemed, that stopped her from losing control completely. "You need help."

"I don't need help."

"Yes," Amy countered, getting between him and the console before he could start tinkering again. "You do."

"I can deal with this on my own, Amy!" The Doctor snapped. "I dealt with it then, and I'm dealing with it now. River's just being overprotective."

Amy stared at him. "River and 'overprotective' don't even belong in the same sentence, and you know it. She's worried about you – we all are – and we want to help you! Why won't you let us?"

The Doctor's jaw clenched into silence.

Amy sighed, knowing she would get nowhere today. "The sooner you ask for help, the sooner we can help you. You can't do this alone. So just let your pride-"

The Doctor's expression suddenly became ugly. "That's what you think this is?" He demanded, his entire tone and demeanour suddenly something else, something dark that Amy had only ever glimpsed and never fully seen. "Pride?"

Despite her rising nervousness, she stuck to her guns. "What else could it be?"

"What do you know about Time Lord psychology?" The Doctor spat. "What do you know of our traditions, of our biology, of the way we deal with things?"

Amy opened her mouth to argue, but he interrupted before she could utter a single syllable.

"Nothing! You know nothing! You," he said, practically shouting now, "are judging me based on human values and have decided that I'm not dealing with this properly, that I need help – that I'm weak, breaking apart – but I'm not, Amy. I'm fine."

"The King of Okay?" Amy couldn't help shooting back, becoming angry herself. "How many times have you brushed me off like this and then come crawling to me for help when it proved more than you could handle? If you don't need help, why are we even here? Why do you take people travelling with you in the first place?"

The Doctor's mouth fell open in outrage. "If you're saying that my friends are actually live in therapists-"

"I'm saying that you need us. You might not realise it, but you do. And I'm not going to let you argue it away and hurt yourself in the process!"

"I think I know better than you what's good for me," the Doctor shot back, "since I've managed to make it to centuries older than you have."

"Yeah, you have," Amy agreed, "but it doesn't take a Time Lord genius to see that you've emotionally constipated yourself in the process."

The Doctor was turning red now, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. "Emotionally constipated?" He repeated incredulously.

"Now," she said in a tone that brokered no arguments, "you're going to stay with us, away from distractions, the TARDIS and the Master, and you're going to get better. And you're going to let us help you. Understood?"

"Stay with you?" The Doctor repeated angrily. "You think I'm just going to stay around in Leadworth, letting my brain slowly rot and talk about my feelings?"

"It's just what Mrs Doctor ordered."

"River!"

The name hung between them like an expletive, giving the room a foul atmosphere.

"Well, she thought wrong," the Doctor snapped, pushing past her to the TARDIS console. He started flipping levers and flicking switches, but nothing happened. The Doctor kicked the console angrily, swearing in a language she could only assume was Gallifreyan.

"Looks like someone's on my side."

"And me," a voice added from the doorway.

The Doctor span around, a mass of furious energy, and found Rory now blocking his exit into the depths of the ship. He couldn't even hide within the TARDIS. Nevertheless, he stalked towards the human, hoping to intimidate him into letting him past.

"Also," Rory added, holding up a hypodermic needle. "I have this."

The Doctor squinted at the label, swore again, smacked a nearby handrail with his fist and then sat down on the steps, feeling utterly beaten, assuming the air of a sulking child.

"What's that?" Amy asked, still sounding angry with the Doctor, who she was now glaring at.

"Sedative," Rory answered. "The TARDIS thought we might need it."

"Right," Amy said, nodding. "Good. Ok. Right, we might as well start now. Doctor, follow me. I'll show you where your room is."

The Doctor glared at her.