Thought I was gone, eh?

Not quite. I've been exceptionally busy over the last few months – anyone who sees what I'm studying will understand why – and plotting difficulties have made this a long, slow, grind. But at no stage did I ever think this wouldn't go up, and I still have plans. Big ones. That will get fulfilled.

Nonetheless, I apologise for the delay, and I apologise again for any future lengthy delays that may take place.

Next, name change. For no reason other than the previous one was a bit silly, frankly. Fourth, this chapter is on the long side of 'really long'. But that's fair enough given the delay.

Finally, on a random note, I seem to be getting a hell of a lot of quite brilliant ideas at obscene hours of the night – like, 2am, 3am – and then forgetting them (obviously). Possibly an issue...

CHAPTER 36. Looking For a Time Lady: 1 April 2011

The Windcatcher was a man of simple pleasures. Walks on the beach, swimming in the sea, hiking through the forest – those were his ideas of fun. Not that it made him simple in any way, but after so long in this damn universe, seeing as much of its complexities, dark patches and rough edges as he has, he'd take what he could.

He liked this woodland too. For one thing, it was huge – it'd take several days to cross at its widest point, which was just the way he liked it. It was almost completely silent, too, with naught but the gentle breeze rustling between the leaves on the tall but sparse leaves, or the occasional melodic birdsong to act as counterpoint to the tranquillity. He could spend days here, just walking through the woods, feeling the occasional ray of sunlight on his face, hear the crunch of leaf underfoot.

Unfortunately, today was not that day.

Noon sharp, here. That had been the message after he'd sent the code-word that informed his employers that he was on Amelia Pond's trail. Well, he was here, and so were they.

They had, however, been expecting a bit more.

"The code-word was for tracking, not capture," he replied tersely.

They're aware of that, however. They were just making a point.

"Are you trying to set me a deadline?" He asked, eyes narrowed.

No was the reply. In any case, that's not the modification to the contract they wish to propose.

"I'm listening..."

There was a hesitation before they give their proposal. It's not been an easy one. They know he won't like it. However, given the nature of their target and the nature of their task, they feel they have no choice. Operational security, as always, was king.

So they tell him.

"No." The Windcatcher replied firmly. "I don't do kill operations."

He doesn't have a problem killing mercenaries, they pointed out.

"They know what they're getting into. Operational security."

And so is this. And if he has such an aversion to killing, why did he take a shot at an innocent girl? What was his intention there if not to kill? His eyes narrowed, his temper rising.

"I know what I'm doing, I wasn't using lethal rounds. I don't do kill operations. Period." His voice is beginning to tremble.

Technically, though, it's a kill or capture contract, he's perfectly free to achieve his original directive. But if he can't...

"Are you threatening me?"

His employers assure him that they aren't. They'll just cancel the contract, naturally, stopping the flow of money and supplies to his little pet project and, well, wouldn't that just be such a dark outcome for anyone?

They'd hit a raw nerve. "Now wait just a minute-"

But they'd already gone, leaving the Windcatcher alone in the balmy woodland air.

"The police have finished their investigation, Mr Blood."

"Thanks, Louise. Leave it on my desk."

Once Iverson's secretary had deposited the thick, spiral-bound report on his desk and shut the door behind her, Iverson glanced at it pensively for a second. Not because he was interested it in – goodness, no. He was just deciding whether to throw it straight in the bin. On balance, he decided against it; he could always use some more scrap paper.

The hospital had quietened down ever since that day. That meant plenty of spare time where he had frankly nothing much to do. Part of him kept wandering back home to his villa in the hills where those two strange girls were staying under his protection, but he managed to keep his focus somehow.

Either way, he knew that the police report into the attack was basically useless to him. He knew who was behind the attack – knew more than any cop could tell him, anyway. He knew what their aim was, who their target was, and Amy (or was it Amelia?) was beyond their reach for now. As for why...

Well, that was what he was spending so much of his spare time finding out.

A friend working in one of the big universities had kindly given him access to the archives, and he'd spent much of his spare time reading up on her species, and her specifically. It was odd, thinking about her as both a rather sweet young lady and at the same time a universal figure of serious importance, but anyway.

Far stranger was the fact that compared to the rest of the Time Lords, and particularly compared to the Doctor, there was almost no information about her at all. Barely a whisper. Hardly the sort of record someone who had given the Dalek Empire such a huge shock (they hadn't reacted well to the news that there was a second fully-grown and rather dangerous Time Lord running around that they'd had no knowledge of). It was if someone had carefully gone through history, deleting all references, any clues to her identity that nasties could latch onto... and it didn't take him long to guess who that someone might have been.

But he was persistent and, thanks to the little hints Amy had inadvertently dropped (such as the fact that she grew up in a little English village in the late 20th and early 21sts century), he'd managed to piece together a picture of Amy's past, sketchy though it might have been.

She had grown up alone. That much was abundantly clear. He'd found records of letters mentioning Leadworth's school asking for special assistance for an orphaned little girl. The girl's name was listed as Amelia rather than Amy, but he trusted his intuition enough to know who it really was. Apparently, she either had no extended family to take care of her, or whatever extended family she had wasn't exactly putting their heart and soul into the task. So that explained one thing.

She'd been in psychiatric care several times, based on some more letters he'd discovered attached to old medical records. A few of them mentioned an unnamed 'ginger terror'... again, he didn't need to be brilliant to work out who that was referring to. There were a range of theories presented on what precisely had been afflicting her, from ordinary childish delusion to ongoing psychological disorder, but he wasn't interested in that. She definitely wasn't normal, that much was clear.

OK. So she'd been orphaned, and she was a little bit mental. That definitely matched up with the girl he sort-of-knew. Rough, hard and with a ruthless, cold streak on the outside. Vulnerable, sweet, compassionate – surprisingly so – inside. A disconnected, lonely girl, waiting for something or someone to complete her and put her back together.

Just what, he wondered, has the Doctor done to her to make her like this?

Anyway. Nothing he could find would tell him that, and he immediately ruled out Amy ever telling him. He lived in the here and now, and the here and now was that he had an extremely dangerous Time Lady being chased by an extremely dangerous whatever-the-Windcatcher-was. And whilst he liked Amy and he'd do his best to make sure she got home safe and well, his primary concern was for the less-capable humans around her whom she might inadvertently hurt.

Katherine.

He switched off his screen, letting out an inaudible sigh. There, too, he was powerless, but for a very different reason. No matter what anyone said to her – and both he and Amy had dropped more than a few hints – the girl absolutely refused to leave her friend's side. They all knew that she could just ask and she'd be returned to the TARDIS by herself, completely safe from harm. But she point-blank refused. They were friends, yes, but when Amy was all but begging her to get the hell away, Iverson was at a loss to explain why she stubbornly refused.

Really, selflessness was one thing. Selflessness was often good. But this was just flat-out reckless. Even Amy, for all her flaws and insecurities, had a self-preservation instinct. Katherine simply didn't seem to care. Not caring was bad. Not caring usually equalled dead. Dead people were, in his experience, useless. He could only hope the same didn't happen to the sharp-tongued blonde.

Not least because he feared that Amy wouldn't survive the experience if she did.

It's their third trip to Paris in as many weeks, though it's the first in a timezone Amy is familiar with. If she were to choose between the three, this would definitely be her favourite, though the World's Fair was rather lovely. The tiebreaker is the fact this is the only time she'd actually got what she'd originally wanted – namely, a cruise on the Seine.

At the moment, however, she's not thinking about how wonderful this is, how amazing this is, as the little boat drifts idly down the river, the Notre Dame passing them by. Her face is clouded and her thoughts are elsewhere, as she absent-mindedly slurps on some ice-cream the Doctor is feeding her (she still can't move her arms, annoyingly).

Doctor, she suddenly thinks, can I ask you something?

"Shoot, Pond." he replies. "Ask away."

She hesitates before she asks her question. It's a deeply personal question, and one that she's not even sure she wants answered.

She wants to know how he'd feel if she died.

"What-"? He splutters, taken aback. "What do you-?"

He's misinterpreted her. She knows how he feels about her, how important they are to each other. She knows that he'd lay down his life for her, and she'd do the same in return. But, well, his friends have always been such tiny parts of his life, haven't they? Just flickering in and out, barely noticed. Though 'friends' doesn't quite cover whatever the hell their relationship is now.

"Amy. You are all enormous parts of my life. And you..." He rubs the back of her slightly slumped shoulders encouragingly. "You are all I ever remember."

She's not convinced. She isn't the first Time Lady he's travelled with. She's not the first lonely, lost girl he's travelled with. What makes her so special? Is it her abilities? Her troubled past? Is he just guilty about what he'd done to her? Or was it simply the fact they were the last of their kind?

What makes her so different from the rest of his friends?

"You like the same flavour of ice-cream as me," he replies, smiling. "That's something."

She groans inside. Seriously, Doctor.

"Being serious."

For what has to be the hundredth time, she promises to smack him when she can use her arms again. She means it, she wants a straight answer from him. This is important to her. Really, really important.

With one hand, he upturns her chin so he can look straight at her. The smile on his face is soft, gentle, and pure, weathered by centuries of loss and guilt, his eyes shot with wisdom, hope, and love. Amy's breath hitches in her throat, and she realises that he's given her his answer.

"I know, Amelia. Now, how about some more ice-cream?"

It's not that she's special or unique. He doesn't need her to be.

"Doctor?"

He tried to open his eyes, but they didn't seem to be responding.

"Hurgh..."

"Doctor!"

Slowly, as if weighed down by bricks, the Doctor's eyelids slid open, revealing a harrowed-looking face above him. It took him a moment to realise that he'd been unconscious. It took him another moment to realise he was now awake – and yet another for him to realise that he was on the floor.

He bolted upright, so rapidly that Michael jerked back in alarm, only narrowly avoiding banging a head on the ceiling.

"Yes! Right, so that's... sorry, what were you saying?" The Doctor, as always, tried to restart the flow of conversation from before, but it didn't quite fly. "Just dozed off for a moment, that's all."

"You were muttering to yourself," Michael told him with a still-worried expression. He was still holding the cloth he'd been using to wipe the cold sweat from the Time Lord's brow.

"Was I?" The Doctor sat up, dusting himself off and straightening his bow-tie. "Well, that happens occasionally. If you start to hear me sing, though, that's probably a sign you should run away – there are at least twelve viruses on four planets that will do that, including one that also makes you dance and wear funny hats. Anyway, I'm sure this all had a point, but I've forgotten – what were you saying again?"

Michael shook his head. "Come on. The shuttle's ready."

It soon transpired, however, that in Michael's language 'ready' meant that all the stuff the Doctor needed to set up the tracking link was dumped unceremoniously on the shuttle's floor, which was not quite what the Doctor had intended. He didn't really mind, though – no one else had any clue what the man was doing, let alone why he needed the a small store's worth of whitegoods to get it out.

"Er, yeah – when I said 'ready', I meant-"

"Not a problem," the Doctor replied chirpily, inspecting an old, broken hairdryer as if it were the most fascinating the thing in the world. "Means I can just set up everything from scratch; probably easier that way if we're being honest."

"Setting up what, exactly?"

"Tracking link," the Doctor mumbled through a mouth full of cables as he got to work dismembering a vacuum cleaner. "I can backtrace the signal to the communication link that Stanley told us about – here, hold this – and with a little luck, that'll tell us exactly where we need to go. Some other handy things I need to set up too."

Michael turned over the camera the Doctor had just thrust into his hands, wondering what use it could possibly have. "Er-"

"It's a camera. It films stuff. So film away, film-man. That's your job now."

"What, film right now?"

"No time quite like the present. Unless it's Monday, of course."

Michael frowned sceptically – so, he had gone from hospital receptionist to sidekick on a quest to a cameraman. Nevertheless, he did as he was told and pressed the record button. After all, the Doctor did seem to know what he was doing. "So where are you from, anyway?"

"Me? Oh. Odd little place by the name of Gallifrey. You won't have heard of it."

And Michael hadn't, though his answer had sprung up another question in his mind. "You're alien, aren't you? I mean, you look-"

"Yes and yes. Time Lord to you. We came first. Hold this thing still for me, would you?" The mess on the floor had been cleared up in double-quick time, with most of the pieces of junk scattered around now piled up in a rather precarious-looking tower that almost reached up to the ceiling of the shuttle.

"You sure this thing will hold up?" Michael asked in a voice that clearly indicated that he himself certainly wasn't, gazing up and down the unsteady heap. He had to be careful not to lean over on his free hand too much, lest a stray movement topple the whole thing over.

"'Course I'm sure," the Doctor replied cheerfully. "Solid as a rock, this thing – and that was meant to do that," he added as one of the canisters he'd jammed haphazardly onto the side tumbled away.

"Right. So are there more... what did you say you were called again? Time something?"

"Time Lord," the Doctor corrected him from the base of the tower, which had begun to whirr a little.

"A bit conceited, isn't it?

"Hey, I didn't make it up. I'm just the Doctor."

"Mm-hmm. So how many more of you are there? Or is it just you and your friend?"

The Doctor paused from wiring his contraption for a moment, eyebrows raised in surprise. "Spot on, actually. How'd you guess?"

Michael shrugged. "Just a feeling I had." He recognised loneliness when he saw it – or, at the least, someone who was desperate to avoid it. "So what is she like, really?"

"Didn't I tell you already?"

"I don't do riddles, Doctor." He paused for a second, studying the Time Lord as he beavered away at the device. That the Doctor was being deliberately evasive was obvious; it was why he was interested. "Did you two grow up together or something?"

"Amy and I? No, no," the Time Lord answered, momentarily distracted. "We grew up on completely different planets, at different times. Not to mention the fact that I'm a little older than her."

Michael poked his head around the device, curious. "Oh? How much older?"

"Oh, just a little," the Doctor replied casually, running his sonic up and down the length of the device. In response, the whirring increased in volume by several notches, with the tower-like structure beginning to spin like a drill. Michael jerked back in mild alarm, but the Doctor seemed rather pleased with himself.

"And off we go," he declared brightly, confirming his satisfaction. "Let's go and find ourselves a time machine!"

"What are you doing?"

Amy didn't so much as look up. "What does it look like?"

Kate rolled her eyes. "You've been packing for a few hours at least. You've even skipped lunch." Amy had disappeared to her room the moment they'd returned to the real world, only coming out to raid the kitchen for canned food. And wine. Most of which was now gone.

Amy shrugged and continued to cram tinned food into one of two camping rucksacks. Given the amount of stuff already packed into them, Katherine suspected some sort of bigger-on-the-inside trickery going on.

"Not hungry."

"You haven't eaten for ages," Katherine pointed out.

"Yeah, 'cos I'm not hungry."

"Amelia..." There was a hint of exasperation in Kate's voice.

"Shut up. You're not my mother."

Kate pinched her nose – the Time Lady really could be a hard-case at times. "Fine. So what are you doing?"

"We've been in one place for too long," Amy told her brusquely. "We need to leave."

"It looks as if you're planning a hike," Kate mused, planting herself on the bed next to her friend, surrounded by tinned food, folded clothing and little odds and ends she didn't recognise at all.

"I can't take a shuttle, I'd get blown from the sky in an instant," She reached over and grabbed a map she'd found in the sitting room. "There's a spaceport not far from here. It shouldn't take more than a day or two's walk to get there."

"That's bloody dangerous, Ames," Kate warned, using the nickname she'd concocted that morning. Though Amy hadn't said anything to the effect, she couldn't mistake the odd flash of, well, distaste that rippled through her mind every time she'd called her by that name she'd adopted. Amy.

It had only started recently – in fact, it had only started this morning, once Amy had cried into her shoulder for a good twenty minutes. After that, she'd smiled sheepishly, mumbled a thank-you-for-being-here-for-me and then carried on as if nothing had happened. It was more than a little jarring – and more to the point, wrong, because Kate could tell that something had happened, inside, where it counted.

Katherine didn't have the knowledge, the insight – hell, she just wasn't smart enough full stop to understand what was going on inside Amy's mind. That she was alien didn't help, but a lot of it was simply because she was Amy. Nonetheless, she'd never really bought the flirty-kissogram thing (mostly because Amy had never tried it on her) and she'd always suspected that the ginger was a little more messed up than she'd let on. Now she was convinced.

She'd sort of wondered – how had Amy got through those years, convinced she was mad and stupid, consigned to a dull, pointless life in a village she quietly despised? By not thinking about it, Katherine now knew. Can't do that any more, though. All those years of thinking Amy was stupid and mad... was it that much of a surprise that part of Amy had started to believe her?

She shook her head, clearing her mind of those thoughts. Why was she thinking about this? She had problems of her own, and besides, if she ever voiced her worries, Amy would shoot her down for being stupidly melodramatic. Back on point. "So this is your plan? Walk to the nearest town and hope to catch a flight somewhere?"

Amy didn't miss the scepticism. "I'm not asking you to come along. If you want, get Iverson to take you straight back to the TARDIS. It'll be safer there."

"You know what I'm going to say."

"And I know that you're going to end up dead if you keep sticking around me," Amy countered.

"In the long run, we're all dead," Kate muttered, recalling one of her favourite quotes. "Look, I'm not a runner, Amelia. That's not what I do."

"I wasn't asking you whether you wanted to or not," Amy pointed out.

Kate folded her arms across her chest and glared at her. Didn't Amy know enough about her by now to know what her answer would be? And why the hell couldn't Amy look at her? "And yet you're packing two bags."

"Well, I might not be hungry but if you're going to tag along, I'd rather not listen to you moaning all day." Amy's eyes shot up to hers for the first time, a wry smirk on her face. "Come on. Help me pack and we'll be off."

Kate smiled, laughed, and shuffled over to join her friend. "Guess you know me a bit better than I thought."

Amy punched her companionably on the shoulder. "And don't you forget it."

"Six-point-oh-four-two!"

"Four-three?" The Doctor glanced up, voice muffled by the pens he was keeping between his teeth on top of the several in his hand.

"Four-two!"

"Right, sorry." He took out the pens from his mouth, placing them on the large, unfolded map he had below him.

Michael ignored him, continuing to concentrate on the gyrating device before him and the stop-watch in his hand. The task was simple enough – measure how long it took for the spinning tower the Doctor had constructed to, well, spin. The idea was simple enough – the tracking device was coupled to the quantum beacon link Stanley had set up for them. The closer they got, the stronger the signal, the faster the tower spun around. Take enough measurements and they'd have a fix on where exactly the beacon was. Simple. If a little weird.

Another ten revolutions of the spinning... thing, and another measurement later, he glanced down at the Doctor, who was busy drawing large, oblong shapes all over the map.

"There!" The Time Lord jammed his finger down at a spot on the map, exclaiming in delight as he did so. "Or, at least, somewhere around there. There plus or minus a bit of a walk and a five quid taxi ride."

"So is that where your friend is?"

"Possibly. Maybe. Almost certainly where we'll find a few bread crumbs, though."

"Bread crumbs?" Michael wasn't exactly clued-in when it came to traditional Earth fairytales.

"Never mind."

Less than ten seconds later, a jolt ran through the shuttle as it suddenly tipped downwards. Startled by the craft's change of direction, Michael had to grab onto the nearest object to regain his balance, and henceforth had to be careful not to be whacked on the face by the metal rods attached to the tower.

"Ah." The Doctor too had been a little surprised, though he quickly regained his poise. "We must be close. Time does fly when you're having fun, eh?"

"Close to where?"

"You'll see."

Half an hour later, and Michael was standing outside the shuttle, parked by a riverbank in a lush, thick forest of some kind. Unfortunately, despite having reached their destination – a large blue box of some description – he was none the wiser as to what their destination actually was.

"Right, so what exactly am I seeing here?"

Michael looked the deep blue box up and down, eyebrows raised. He couldn't help but glance sideways nervously either, as if some terrifying demon was threatening to break out of the treeline and strike him down. His complexion had turned a rather sickly green colour when the Doctor had mentioned that he'd parked his 'time machine' in the Phi Forest. The last of the one-vast subtropical reserves, the place was spoken in rather hush-hush tones now, with few who dared going in ever making it out again.

But the Doctor had laughed off the concerns, waving them away. And either way, it sure beat paper-pushing at the dull end of a hospital. Mind you, this big blue box was not exactly he saw in his mind eye when he thought about what a time machine might look like.

"Like, is this it?"

The Doctor stopped and turned to face him, having been busy taking scans of the general area with his sonic. He had a quizzical look on his face, as if somewhat surprised by the question.

"'Course it is. Why, what were you expecting?" He pocketed the sonic and stood against the TARDIS, leaning on it, eyebrows raised.

"Well, you know. I was thinking that your time machine would be a bit..." Michael decided not to finish the sentence, knowing that even in his head it sounded churlish.

The Doctor, however, just smiled and clicked his fingers.

"Bigger?"

"So I'm pretty sure I've seen this before," Jack commented as they reached their destination. It was morning in the forest, though still rather gloomy owing to the thick, bone-chilling fog. He wondered for a moment how Machariam was keeping up, away from the warmth hubs deep in the forest at the colony, but he decided not to ask. The repticore seemed to be doing fine, at least, protected by its thick, scaly hide.

"I imagine you would," the repticore replied with an amused tone, "You were here a week ago, no?"

They had come to the same bend in the river where the Doctor and Jack had first been trapped in the forcefield. Or at least so he thought – they all looked basically the same. Apparently those were actually repticore inventions that had been copied and repurposed by Earthsphere Maintenance. Or something. He'd asked curiously about those strange, heat-emitting warmth hubs he'd seen in the forest too, as his instincts hinted at them being somehow linked to just how messed up time seemed to be around this place, but he'd only got a paint-stripping glare for his troubles.

Either way, they were here now, standing in front of the same 'tree' that the Doctor had taken such a keen interest in days before. It still had a bark panel removed, exposing the hollow interior, with the centre still occupied by those glowing tubes which extended down and out of sight.

"What is this thing, anyway? Oxygen machine?"

"No, though the rest of the trees here are. There are enough here to provide air for an entire planet, but for the most part their main purpose, I suspect, is to convince anyone who cares to look that there is nothing to see here."

"What do you mean? I thought the equaliser field was common knowledge here."

"Almost no one knows how it really works. Think, Captain – thought to electricity? Do you really think your thoughts alone are powerful enough to power tools and machines? Wishful thinking at its finest, Captain, as I told you."

"Then what? I'm still not quite across what it has to do with time travel."

"As I tried to explain, Harkness," Machariam began in equal parts exasperation and amusement, "Time is not just a line. Time is akin to a cosmic ocean, flowing, uneven, with an inherent essence and energy. Accessing the Vortex requires that energy."

"And there's none around here, because the equaliser field has taken it all?" Jack may not have the intellect of his two Time Lord friends, but he was sharp enough.

"Precisely."

"So what does that have to do with you? Or are you lot pining to see the universe?" He asked with a wry smile.

"I'm about two hundred years old, Captain," Machariam reminded him with a gravelly undertone. He certainly sounded like he was a few hundred years old, unlike the Doctor who half the time sounded like he was about twelve. "I've seen enough of the universe to last a lifetime."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "I'll remind you who you're talking to."

"But of course." The gold-scaled repticore moved forward and traced his claw down the central column. At once, the ambient light filling the hollow interior changed from a light blue to an angry scarlet. "There. It's active now, so you should be able to get down."

Jack frowned, puzzled at how, well, easy this all seemed. "Hang on – if you're able to activate the teleport, why can't you go down yourself?"

"It's DNA-locked, human access only. I would think that it is simple enough, however. Just disable the field. Your machine will be refuelled once it has access to ambient time energy, and we will be long gone."

He raised an eyebrow. "You lot can time-travel?"

"We have our methods."

"Uh-huh." He stepped towards the tree and placed his palm on the central column. It heated at his touch – a good thing, he supposed. "So, if all goes to plan, when I come back I won't be attacked by any more of your scaly friends?"

The giant lizard bared its rows of teeth in what was presumably amusement – though it only made chills run up Jack's spine.

"If."

The gold-scaled repticore pressed his claw to the symbol, and a sphere of crimson light surrounded Jack as the teleporter activated.

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