Important: Having talked to people about the length of chapters in this story, I've spent some time doing a restructure of this story so the chapters are now of a reasonable length. The result should be no more soul-destroyingly long chapters, but instead a lot more shorter chapters (by "short" I mean max 5-6k words, so not short at all). That'll be how I do this story from now on too. So if you see a massive rush of apparently "new" chapters in your inbox, only to find that it's actually just the same chapters as before, this why. It might make the update frequency higher too.

I drop a sizeable revelation near the top as to exactly what happened to Amy all those years ago - but there are no details here yet. It's a hint. That's all.

CHAPTER 39. Some Brilliant And Crazy Idea: 1-2 April 2011

She's never run so fast in her life, driven by little but hope.

Houses, roads, gardens flash past as he bolts to the disappearing mass of tweed jacket ahead of her, slips through her own gate in the house that she never truly believed was her home.

He surely couldn't be. Maybe he was just...

She hears the sound of a slamming door. He's not leaving her. A voice in her head tells her that he's not. He's not. He's not...

A deep, gong-like reverberation and a whirring noise gives the lie to the thought. Like an old nightmare, the scene replays itself once again – the little girl, sitting in her garden, as the mad man with a box leaves her once again.

"Doctor..." she whispers as she runs, hoping against hope that it's a lie, that the fading box before is an illusion. That he would come back. The voice tells her that he'll come back for her. Whatever it took, the Doctor would come back for Amelia Pond.

"Doctor, don't leave me..." But he's gone, taking the better part of her with him. The blue box is fading, fading. She closes her eyes...

"DOCTOR!"

Amy wasn't even aware that she was awake, sword in hand and ginger hair half-covering her face. After a minute or so, her breathing evened out again and she began to take in her surroundings properly. Her Gallifreyean yell hadn't woken Katherine up, exhaustion still keeping the human girl blissfully unconscious.

They was still in that cabin that Amy had dragged Kate into yesterday after the horrible... don't think about that, Amelia. She was already rapidly losing her mind, she didn't need to make it worse by thinking about what might-have-been. Might still...

Once again, she'd decided to deal with her problems by, more or less, running away from them. As usual.

At least her dreams were getting a little better now. Well, by better, she meant that her mind had been mercifully clear of everything she'd dumped into her memory storage. On the flipside, they were getting also odder by the day. As if – and she almost laughed out loud at the thought – she was watching the dream play out, and commenting on it. As if she was... aware of the dream somehow, in some weird way. Moreover, the dreams had become tainted with images of places she'd certainly never seen or heard of – but ones she suspected the Doctor had. As if the two of them had become subtly mind-linked too.

As if she was losing the plot, basically.

Most importantly, she'd finally cleared her mind of that awful, horrendous experience when she was fifteen. Finally understanding what had happened, finally knowing how she'd been trapped inside her own mind had been no comfort. Neither was the realisation that the white space was actually just the deepest, most despised pockets of her own mind, where she kept all her fear, all her anger and all her insecurities in a little box. After all, it had gotten out before – there was no reason it couldn't get out again.

She shook her head, rubbing her forehead with her palm. It had been a week now. A full week since she'd last seen her Doctor. And to think that she'd once told herself that she didn't need him... well, technically, she didn't. If she wanted to be, if she really, really wanted to be, she knew she was effectively invincible.

But at what cost?

She pulled out her sonic screwdriver, rereading that one and only scan she'd taken the previous evening. Kate really didn't get it, just how frighteningly close she'd come to never waking up again. It was just one of the many things Amy didn't understand, why the girl cared so little about her own well-being. Didn't she realise how much she still had to live for? Back on Earth, with Rory, living a full human life, rather than-

-this.

Amy admonished herself silently. One week. That's all it had been. One short week. She'd see him again. They would get back to exploring the universe together. That's what they did. He'd take her to Space Florida like he'd promised, or he'd finally teach her to fly, or they'd visit Ancient Greece, or something. Their life would go on, their life would be amazing. And if she wanted to, if she really, really wanted to...

No.

The possibility of finally accepting the offer the Doctor had made to her by Kate's fireplace had been dancing around the edges of her mind now, and up 'til now she'd stubbornly refused to entertain it. She hated herself for even considering it. She didn't need his protection. Goddamn it, she was the second last Time Lord in the universe. She could take care of herself.

The last week had all but confirmed that – but not in the way she'd expected.

No, she didn't need protection. It was those around her, the ones she loved, who needed protection. Rory. Katherine. Even the Doctor, to an extent – though she'd never admit it out loud. That was why she had broken up with Rory. Protection. And that would be what drove her now.

OK, so she'd almost ended the life of one of her few friends, but she'd saved her as well, hadn't she? Who else could have done that? Who else was capable of the last-ditch solution that she'd come with, forcibly inserting her consciousness through the mindlink, controlling what was left of Kate's overloaded brain? She'd brought her back from the brink.

A newfound energy filled her, as the understanding born in that cave so many months ago finally reached fruition. At last, Amelia Pond, lonely Scottish girl and Time Lady, had a purpose.

She would get back. She would get Katherine back to the TARDIS, and get her the medical attention she needed to repair whatever damage had been caused when their minds had briefly merged. They would both live, happy and safe. It's what the Doctor would do.

And he'd do that with a plan. Some crazy and brilliant idea that only he could come up with...

Well.

Maybe it was time that Amelia Pond gave it a shot.

Michael wasn't entirely sure which was the more unnerving – the crowd of flint-eyed, sharp-clawed lizards around him, or the fact that the Doctor was paying no attention to them. Instead, the Time Lord kept flicking through the book that he'd found on the forest floor, muttering to himself and brooding more generally.

An hour or two ago, he'd have certainly gone with the former, what with the sharp claws and all. But the Doctor had told him that the repticore weren't necessarily hostile – just territorial, and so long as you made it clear that you meant no harm, they'd leave you alone. Possibly.

"Only one way to find out," the Doctor had replied cheerily when he'd voiced his ambivalence about the whole thing. "And I haven't had a chance to say that in a while."

Either way, they hadn't touched either him or the Doctor in the hour or so that he'd been in their midst. As a result, Michael had begun to suspect that they were actually okay. Even if many of them had been giving him looks which, frankly, he could only describe as evil.

Unfortunately, he'd also begun to suspect that the Doctor was not so okay.

They had been taken deep into the forest and into a clearing of some kind. Night had fallen, with the only light coming from the skydome above and an array of twisted heat-emitting columns surrounding the clearing. They were ochre coloured, but had a deep red light emanating from them. More and more repticore had gathered in the clearing as time went on, mostly surrounding something in the middle, whilst Machariam watched and the Doctor paced.

Though he hadn't moved, Michael had looked around a little. Apart from the shape of the clearing, which was suspiciously close to a perfect circle, he'd also noticed how flat the ground was here. As if it were simply a floor that had been covered with leaves and earth.

"It is complete."

"Hm? Sorry?" The Doctor jerked out of his reverie, pocketing the little book and peered curiously at the congregation of repticore. They all seemed to be working on something, along with small, caterpillar-like creatures that ferried small odds and ends to and fro. Whatever it was, it was small enough that the Doctor couldn't see it, even in the odd red glow.

"The machine. It is complete," Machariam replied. The repticore slid back, revealing what they'd been working on. It was about three feet tall, and a rusty reddish-brown, close to ochre in appearance. Though it looked vaguely cylindrical, its surface was covered in small divots and wrinkles, akin to an aged, shrivelled tree.

"Ooh. Brilliant." The Doctor, whose face had brightened instantly upon seeing it, whipped out his sonic and hopped over to inspect. "Jury-rigged, organically grown helmic regulator, temporal biosynthesiser and an ice-cream maker – you're building a time machine. An actual time machine." He spun around to face Machariam, a huge grin on his face. "That is, if I may say so, rather brilliant."

"It's not ready," the repticore replied. "Studying your TARDIS has from afar has given us the last pieces in the puzzle, but it is not yet ready."

"Of course it isn't," the Doctor muttered, continuing to take readings with the sonic. "You seem to have applied all the necessary shielding, locked on to the Vortex – but where's the matrix? Oh – of course. Bio-link, distributed neural processing. Advantages of home-growing your own time machine and hooking everyone up to it." He tapped the sonic on the regulator. "Also quite brilliant. How's it powered?"

No response. The Doctor looked around, but none of the surrounding repticore seemed to be interested in giving an answer. He turned his gaze back to Machariam, whose face had remained impassive.

"Well? Without power this thing won't do a lot beyond making ice-cream. Very nice ice-cream, but I'm guessing you're not interested in that – and where'd you get plans for a time machine anyway?"

Still no response. "Oh, come on. What, you're just saying you found the bits and pieces of a time machine just lying around? Or they just ended up here?"

"No," Machariam replied in firm, gravelly tones. "The machine is an ancient piece of repticore technology. Older than any of us can remember. It was given to us in the long-distant past, at the dawn of our history as our world was burning," the repticore informed him, a distant look in its eyes. "We had been wandering the universe for a long, long time, seeking a new home. We were attracted to Earthsphere long ago, believing that its size, tranquillity and stability would be perfect for us. We believed we could coexist with those who lived here – after all, humans tend not to live in forests."

The repticore hesitated for a moment, remembering the immediate aftermath of the arrival. Riots, 'clean-up squads', guns, death... the near-extermination of his people. Luckily for them, he managed to gather what was left of the repticore and concentrate them all in the forest in which they'd landed. In their element and fuelled by a desperate drive for survival, they'd managed to hold on – but the costs were staggering.

For every ten repticore that had come to Earthsphere, only one had survived.

"We were wrong."

The Doctor didn't need to say anything, didn't need to ask any more questions to know what the pain in the lizard's eyes represented. He'd seen it all before... far, far too often.

"I'm sorry. If I'd known..."

"I appreciate it, Doctor, but I know of no cure for ignorance or hatred."

The Doctor smiled warmly at him. "Oh, you'd be surprised." Having finished the aside, he returned to inspecting the machine behind him. "Now. Based on that, I'm guessing you ran into the same little pickle that I did when I ended up here." He spun around, facing the repticore once more. "The field."

"Yes. It drained all of our power on arrival, just as it did for you. Why someone would configure it to do so... that is not my concern. Once it is gone, we can refuel and leave. Or, at least, once it is ready. And that is where I need your help."

"To..."

Machariam blinked, unsure if he really should give such an obvious answer. "Make sure it's ready."

"But you haven't answered my question – where will you get the power? With the field in place, you need to flip the polarity somehow and even then, you have to give it a kick first."

"I've sent someone to deal with that."

"You mean you sent the person I sent to – ah." The Doctor's face paled suddenly, his mind having raced ahead of his speech. "You told Jack to destroy the field, didn't you?"

It was Machariam's turn for his eyes to widen in surprise. "How do you-"

"Friend. Old friend. Plan was for him to do what I'm about to do now, though I may have been less than clear about my intentions," the Doctor replied rapidly, having begun pacing again. "This is bad. Very, very bad. In fact, I'd say we've made a great big detour in the middle of bad-ville, and we need to find a way out," he muttered to himself. "Come on, think."

Michael, having followed – and filmed – the conversation in silence, didn't like the way the Doctor's mood had changed so rapidly. "Doctor? What is it?"

The Doctor span around at his voice, his face brightening suddenly. "Ah! Michael! Forgot you were there. Sorry 'bout that. Just a little problem that we need to solve – potential planetwide blackout and all, nothing major."

"What?!"

"Earthsphere is actually built on a enormous world-tree. Well, I say tree, but it lives in space, feeds off psychic energy and converts it to electricity. It's what your equalizer field is built around, what your entire world is built around. So you can see, destroying it would be rather... unfortunate."

Michael rubbed his eyes. "Brilliant. How do we stop it?"

To his surprise, the Doctor smiled. "Thought you'd never ask."

One of the things that Stanley had been very keen on was authenticity. Right down to the last detail, everything about Earthsphere was to reflect old Earth in the right way. That included the weather, although obviously the designers were careful not to avoid creating conditions for tornadoes, hurricanes, bushfires and the like. Even so, Earthsphere had a proper climate and proper weather.

Which meant that said weather was not always pleasant.

The storm had rolled in with startling rapidity, the wind lashing through the trees, stripping them of their foliage and snapping off any halfway-loose branches. What had been a calm, clear evening had suddenly turned into rolling sheets of near-horizontal rain, and a continuous rumble and crackle of thunder reverberated through the landscape. Not the easiest of conditions, then, to be looking for someone.

Not that would stop Alpha One. No. He was a trained mercenary with a decade's fighting experience, in multiple theatres of war in all sorts of timezones. He'd taken part in assassinations, rescues, invasions... the lot. That was why the Windcatcher had hired him, and that's why he didn't have one of the killswitch implants the Windcatcher liked to use to keep his toys on a leash. He was too good for that. They'd fought too many battles, side by side, for that.

But even he, good as he was, couldn't see through torrential rainfall. His nightvision goggles weren't particularly useful, either, turning a sea of dark into a smudge of dark green. There was almost no chance of seeing anything short of a bonfire in this light, let alone a dangerous, semi-mythical warrior demi-goddess.

He'd had to double check his brief when he'd got it. A Time Lady? Really? To the best of his knowledge, they were just a story, a myth from a long-lost past. Superhumans with unseemly power over all of time and space, whose dominion had fallen chiefly due to their own hubris – made for a damn good story, but those stories tended not to be true.

Apparently, however, this one was. All he knew had a name – Amy Pond – and a warning. Approach with extreme caution. The mark is highly dangerous and may be armed. Psychic protection is mandatory. Beyond that, he was told that she'd been detected late in the afternoon in the area around Esther's Falls via the equalizer field and he'd been assigned to patrol one of the woodlands to the north. He'd found nothing since.

It was now well past two in the morning, singularly miserable and, professionalism aside, his focus was starting to waver. He really should be finding somewhere dry to get a bit of shuteye, but he couldn't until he could be sure the woodland was clear. After all, if she was as dangerous as he was told she was, then it could be the last-the hell was that?

He tensed instantly, on alert and trigger finger itching. He was sure that the loud crackling noise hadn't just been the rain.

"Alright, missy. You've got my attention, now show yourself," he muttered, carefully walking ahead. He didn't dare move quicker than a creep, firstly because the terrain around here was by no means flat, and secondly he had his ears pinned for any more unusual noises such as – that.

Unmistakeable. Footsteps crunching leaves underfoot. And a second later, a soft swishing, someone moving through the forest, barely audible through the downpour. He still didn't have a visual but he was sure – this was it.

All tiredness banished, he raised his gun to shoulder level, ready to shoot on sight. His orders had been clear – alive was better, but take no chances. He halted on the spot, turning his head slowly to try and find his mark. He had been sure he'd seen something, but there was nothing ahead of him but trees. And rain. Lots and lots of rain.

"Come on," he muttered, scanning left and right again. "Show yourself already."

"Okay."

The mercenary let out a tiny gasp, spinning at the sound of the voice whilst simultaneously raising his gun. But he was too late.

Katherine jerked awake with a gasp, yanked to consciousness mid-dream. Her eyes roved wildly in their slots before settling, her breathing taking a few seconds longer to level out. She quickly surmised that it was still night, based on how dark it was, and there was a hell of a storm outside, based on the ceaseless thrum of the rain and the howling wind. She quietly thanked Amy for finding somewhere indoors for them to sleep at night.

It was hardly comfortable on the hard wooden floor, though, and the fire had almost died. She sat up, diving into her backpack (which she'd been using as a pillow) for something a bit warmer.

It didn't escape her, however, that she was alone.

That Amy had been acting weirdly was no surprise – 'Amy acting weirdly' was a pretty good way to sum up the events of the whole week – but what could she possibly be doing in this weather?

She rested her head against the wall, closing her eyes and frowning in concentration so she could sharpen her mind enough to send her one-word message.

Oi.

There was no response – but she hadn't expected one. Amy, though more than a little bit bonkers nowadays, knew what she was doing with the inhibitor. She'd barely heard a squeak from the Time Lady's mind since. That didn't mean, however, that Amy couldn't hear her – assuming that the Time Lady was still alive.

Her pulse quickened as the thought crossed her mind.

Ames. Can you hear me?

Still nothing. Though she didn't try to get up, she could feel the first onset of panic beginning to set in.

Amelia, please...

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time."

Kate sighed in relief, opening her eyes again. She shuffled upright as best she could, trying to ignore both the crackles of pain in her chest and the fact that her head felt like it'd been filled with lead. She smiled as Amy re-entered, closing the door behind her. She was absolutely drenched, a fact that made Kate raise an eyebrow more than a little.

"The hell were you doing out there?"

"Oh, you know," Amy replied off-handedly as she did her best to squeeze out some of the water from her hair. "Stuff."

"Stuff meaning...?"

"Getting us home. We'll be off this rock by mid-morning."

Kate raised an eyebrow. "Sure?"

"Sure. Cross my hearts."

If Kate was sceptical – and she was, very much so – she hid it, giving Amy a relieved smile. There was something slightly different about Amy, she could tell – an energy, a liveliness that hadn't been there all week. As if she'd finally found something to focus her brilliant, chaotic mind.

"Fair enough. Looking forward to seeing him again?"

Amy's eyes snapped up to hers, her mouth curving upwards in a warm smile. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am."

"I'm still amazed it took you so long to work it out."

"It wasn't that. We've both known for ages."

Kate snorted.

"I'm not lying here. But I wanted Rory too – and he wanted me to be with Rory as well. Still does, I think," she finished quietly, a note of sadness in her voice. It would never really fade, she knew, the knowledge of just how one-sided their relationship had been. He'd tried to give her everything, and in return...

"But that's gone now," Kate told her quietly. "You can't live that life."

"Yeah. Except-" She hesitated for a moment, not sure whether she should give voice and life once more to the thought that had been rolling around her head for the past few days. "Except I could always go back."

Kate's eyes widened. "What, back to Leadworth? Where everyone thinks you're dead, and everyone is human?"

"Only for a short while. Y'know, while I... work things out."

"Short meaning...?"

"Short to me, not you."

It didn't exactly sound convincing. "I'm not seeing it. You still want Rory in your life, I get that – but you have the Doctor."

"I know. And I want him so badly, Katherine. But I'll have him for all of eternity. A few years is nothing to me, and I'm good at waiting."

Kate shook her head. "Still not seeing it."

"I don't expect you to – it's complicated. It's only an idea, I don't actually expect to be going back any time soon." She smiled down at Katherine that, a week ago, neither would have believed remotely possible. "Anyway, it's not important. More important is that we're ready to get picked up by the Doctor in the morning, and that I'll be here to save you. Get back to sleep, Broad."

Kate rolled her eyes. "Yes, ma'am." She shuffled back down, folding up the thick woolen jumper she'd pulled to use as a pillow and closing her eyes. She was back under within minutes.

The moment she sensed that Katherine had fallen asleep again, Amy snapped into gear. She dove into Kate's open rucksack, quickly finding what she was looking for – Kate's phone. The Doctor hadn't upgraded it so it had been useless in this environment. It had remained off for the entire week week.

But that was about to change. She peeled off the back casing, exposing the circuitry within, and got to work with her sonic.

There was a chance that this could backfire, of course. There was the chance that, the moment she turned the thing on, she'd be found and all manner of hell would converge on her. She didn't even know if what she was about to do was possible – this phone wasn't designed for this. It was meant to be used with early 21st century wireless networks, not a pervasive quantum-telepathic web whose workings even she didn't understand.

Then again, it wasn't as if her phone had been designed to be converted to a sonic screwdriver, yet she'd done that too.

After a few minutes of tinkering and sonicing, she was done. She replaced the back cover once more and flipped the phone over and placed her thumb on the power button, taking a deep, steadying breath as she did so.

Moment of truth.

She turned the phone on.

"Alpha One. Do you read?"

The operator clicked off the transmitter, waiting for a response. After five seconds of silence, he decided to try his luck again.

"Alpha One, this is Control. Do you read?"

"Save it," the Windcatcher told him, watching the display in his shuttle pensively. "He's trained not to break silence unless absolutely necessary."

"What about the tracking link?" The operator pulled up another screen, where there was a single blinking red dot amidst a black-and-blue map of the area. "It's not moving."

"Doesn't matter. Wait for him to report."

This was just the latest in a series of complications, starting late yesterday afternoon. The equaliser field had picked up a truly colossal psychic spike from somewhere near Esther's Falls a few hours before sunset. However, it had been so brief and so anomalous that the software had immediately filtered it out, not relaying the information to the Windcatcher. It was only one of the his operators sifting through junk to recalibrate their hacking software that he'd found the spike. The operator had been sceptical, but the Windcatcher was immediately convinced.

Unfortunately, the spike was so brief, and Esther's Town was so heavily populated, that it become rather lost in translation. As a result, they'd had no success at all at pinning down a precise location – which meant the Windcatcher had to send his men to find her the hard way.

That was both inefficient – they were looking for one, possibly two, people in an area of over fifty square miles – and dangerous. Dangerous because it left his resources nastily overstretched, but even more so because if they did run into the Time Lady, he had a bad feeling about what would happen to them. These were good men, not cheap thugs. He didn't want to throw them away – but increasingly he had the feeling that that was exactly what he was doing.

And if Alpha One had run into trouble... he cleared his mind of the thought. Alpha One was a professional, and so was he.

"What about the Doctor?"

He had to smile at himself. The Doctor seemed to be concocting some mad scheme to recharge his TARDIS, involving the repticore somehow, and filming it. All that was likely there is that the equaliser field would crash, stranding the time machine permanently. Unless, of course, he could reverse the polarity somehow and have the equaliser field direct its energy towards the TARDIS, rather than away – but that was impossible, surely?

"I wish him luck," the Windcatcher replied dryly. "He's not our concern. The Time Lady is."

"But Alpha One-"

"If he doesn't respond within the hour, we'll move."

The operator opened his mouth to respond, but he was cut off by a flashing alert light on the screen in front of him – the incoming call they'd just been talking about. The operator and the Windcatcher glanced at each other, before the bounty hunter reached forward and clicked the call on.

"Hello," came the voice through the speaker. Not Alpha One's voice – a girl's voice. Soft, gentle and melodic – while at the same time being as cold and imposing as a glacier.

"My name is Amelia Pond. I believe you're looking for me."

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