So. The Angels Take Manhattan, eh? Still can't rewatch, just a wee bit too intense for me right now. At least the Ponds, and Amy, got the send-off they deserved. Still far too much in love with this character for my own emotional health – and far too much to rewatch the episode, haha.
Good time to point out that this is an early S5 AU in totality; the additions to Amy's backstory that occur in S6/7 do not occur in this story. In particular that very last shot.
This is another chapter where we see a little bit of both ends of Amy's character. And one big... well, I'll let you read on.
CHAPTER 40. The Fire Burns Within: 2 April 2011
Earthsphere did not sleep easily that night.
They didn't know who he was. They didn't know where he came from, why he was here or what he wanted.
All they knew that this man, this Doctor, had come with a dream. He'd told them of vast, sweeping plains, rugged mountain ranges and wide, vast oceans of the sparkling blue. He'd spoken of blood-red sunsets, of raging summer thunderstorms and, above all, the people.
He'd told them about the young shop assistant who'd had her eyes opened to the universe, about the temp who'd learned to believe in herself, the journalist who had saved her people more times than he could count, and a girl.
A seven-year-old girl, patiently waiting in her garden.
"Night after night," he had said, "She would sit down on the grass, wrapped in her blankets, and watch the stars. Every day she would wait there, hoping for something more, yearning for the things that only lived in her fantasies. Her dreams.
"Every night," he told them, "She would lie in her garden and reach for the stars."
That night, Earthsphere dreamed.
It was a lovely town, Esther's Falls.
Founded during the first wave of colonisation after Earthsphere was completed, it had been mostly settled by the outcasts of the universe – the poor, hungry and oppressed. The ones who needed Earthsphere's safety and tranquility the most. As a result, though, it meant that the town had grown sideways, not upwards – they couldn't really afford skyscrapers around here. It also meant that the centre of town was now somewhat abandoned, being much too far from where the people actually lived – it was over ten miles to many of the suburbs, quite considerable given that cars were banned.
The upshot was that the once-thriving town hall had become the perfect place for the Windcatcher to set up his local base of operations, unnoticed and unheard. On the other hand, however, the chances that anyone would have so much have seen the Time Lady was remote since there were thousands upon thousands of people around here. Finding a specific person around these parts, especially one who was as good as hiding as she was, was borderline-impossible.
Unless, of course, that person wanted to be found.
"Amelia Pond," the Windcatcher murmured into the microphone, half to himself.
"That's my name," came the cool, firm reply from the speaker. "Glad you got that right at least."
"You sound younger than I expected."
"Twenty-two, not two hundred and two," Amy replied.
He paused briefly at the news. He knew she was young, but... that young? Little more than a girl, he mused – before banishing the thought. It wouldn't do to be disquieted by the whole thing now. Even if he increasingly was.
"You're barely more than a child by Time Lord standards."
"I'm not an ordinary Time Lord, as you're well aware since you know so much about us. After all," she paused, seemingly for effect. "You did fight in the Time War."
The Windcatcher froze, his knuckles whitening around the microphone.
"How the hell did you find that out?"
"Oh, here and there," she replied playfully. "Apparently you even fought alongside the Doctor – though I guess you tried to kill him, too."
Not really, no.
"Not important, anyway," he said instead. "Why are you calling us? You know perfectly well what I want."
"And you know I'm not about to give it to you."
"I'm well aware," he replied, humouring her. He glanced sideways where his men were busy at work trying to pin down her location. The blinking red dot from Alpha One's tracker had vanished, making that task even harder than before.
"You won't find me like that," Amy suddenly interjected, an amused lilt to her voice. "I've scrambled the signal from that bloke's tracker. You'll be miles off if you try, especially in the town you're in."
His fist tightened even further around the microphone, bending it out of shape. "You can hear our thoughts?"
"I can filter the thoughts of your goons if I concentrate, yes. You lot aren't subtle."
The Windcatcher opened his mouth to reply, but hesitated, struck by something. If she can hear our thoughts, then she knows where we are and has access to our minds. If she has that...
What other cards did Amy Pond have to play?
More importantly, why wasn't she playing them?
"Very well," he replied, not vocalising the curiosities that had just sprung to mind. "You've made your point."
"You're being mighty civil for someone who's trying to kill me."
"Since you seem to know so much about us, you should already know that we don't do kill contracts." Not yet, anyway.
"And yet your orders were changed to say kill-on-sight. Or do you not play by your own rules?" Amy asked in a slightly sing-song tone. The Windcatcher frowned. First that alarming tidbit about his own past, and now this. How did she know so much about – ah.
Alpha One.
"What have you done with him?" He asked after a moment's pause, in a low, mildly dangerous tone. Professional though he was, Alpha One was his friend. If there was one thing he'd learnt in his twisted, dark universe, it was that loyalty mattered.
"Nothing permanent," came the easy reply.
He furrowed his brow in surprise. "You haven't killed him?"
"Would you like me to?"
He pursed his lips, well aware of just how delicate the situation had become. If the Time Lady had scoured Alpha One's brain for information, she would have near total control over his mind and could end him in a heartbeat.
"No. Now, what do you want?"
"An offer beneath the trees," she told him. A moment later, the red blinking dot from the tracker appeared on the screen once more.
"Come alone."
The call ended.
Twenty miles away, Amy Pond pocketed the mobile phone. She smiled, watching the quantum link she'd taken from Iverson's house blink in her hands.
Time to come and get me, raggedy man.
Jack didn't have the foggiest idea what the Doctor was doing up there, but he wasn't sure he liked it.
He'd been trying all night to shut the equaliser field-slash-electric-tree, without success. The whole damn thing seemed automated, harvesting whatever latent psychic energy there was around and turning it into fierce arcs of electricity crackling through the air around him.
And there was a lot of it.
He'd had to beat a hasty retreat as the arcing electricity had begun to work its way around the room, forks of lightning discharging into the walls with a deafening thunderclap. He'd been narrowly missed once, which was more than enough for him to make himself scarce.
He stood behind the doorway, his aged, clever eyes searching the chaos within for something he could use. But there was nothing – it was far too dangerous a place to loiter for more than a few seconds, lest he get zapped by several million volts of electricity, and there was no sort of control panel that he could see. He'd searched the nearby rooms, hoping to find something of note, but apart from what looked like a teleport landing pad – wouldn't have that saved some time – there was nothing of note.
He was seriously beginning to consider giving up and flashing back up to the surface to try and give his findings with the Doctor when he was blinded by another star-bright burst of electricity from the tree. He flinched, covering his eyes – but left a little gap between his fingers to peek through.
The bolt of lightning arced upwards, wildly gyrating through the air as it reached its destination – a pylon of lights, suspended fifty feet above the floor.
The lights exploded, showering the room with sparks. The pylon supporting it seemed to fare better for a moment, wavering under the electrical assault, before it too let out a metallic screeching as the metal sheared from its support.
For a moment, the scene was oddly tranquil, silent, as the steel pylon fell gracefully from its former abode.
But a second later, Jack was forced to dive for cover as the metal beams hit the ground, sending dust, shards of glass from the floor and steel shrapnel hurtling through the air.
He waited for a few seconds behind the wall, breaths heavy, listening through the silence for the sound of further destruction – hang on, he thought suddenly.
Silence?
He poked his head back through the door cautiously, glancing around the room.
The arcing lightning bolts were gone. Their flashing, dancing streams of blue-white electricity had vanished, leaving the room dark, silent, and peaceful – save for one thing.
The bulk of the pylon, mangled and twisted, had come to rest in the middle of the room – right on top of one of the metre-wide, black-brown branches that fed the main trunk of the enormous, sky-high tree. Jack's eyes widened, letting out a small gasp, as he saw what was happening to it.
It was glowing.
Pulses of soft blue emanated from the metal, its dull silver-grey surface now a luminescent, almost sky-blow glow. Jack watched, transfixed, as the pylon brightened, the soft blue light increasing in intensity until it was too bright to even look at.
Amazed, he came out from behind the door frame and took a step into the room. There was complete silence, save for a low hum from the gently vibrating pylon. It was almost as if all the rage and fury that had been present moments before had been forced into this twisted piece of metal.
Almost as if...
He never got to finish the thought, however, because at that moment the gentle blue glow was replaced by a scorching, infinitely bright white light, and Jack thought no more.
To a first approximation, everyone was asleep. It was only natural, after all – it was coming up to an hour so late it was actually close to early morning, so those still awake were few and far between. To a man, however, they were all doing the same thing.
Namely, they were cursing angrily at their TVs, wondering why they'd blanked out for no apparent reason. They wanted to know more about the magical utopia they'd only ever heard of in far-off fantasies, and about this girl, this amazing, magnificent girl, the dreamer the man had spoken about.
After a minute of worldwide abuse and angry fists hammering on the television sets, the inexplicable blackout ended, the image flickering back to life.
"...I have a species to save, Doctor," Machariam was saying. "I do not care about the playthings of humans."
The Doctor stopped dead in his tracks, pausing his relentless pacing around the clearing to stare at the lizard. They had spent the last hour moving to the hidden teleporter riverbank, the Doctor having made several detours to the TARDIS first. He had returned with an assortment of objects – some to help prepare the repticore ship, some to attach to the teleporter, some whose purpose he hadn't told anyone about at all. Right now, however, no one was particularly concerned about that. He looked the repticore dead in the eye, not the slightest bit intimidated by the towering lizard.
"Playthings?" He asked, low and quiet.
He took one, two steps towards the repticore. When he spoke, his voice started evenly but soon rose higher and higher. "How about the elderly grandmother, shivering at home as she slowly freezes at night because her heater died, hm? Are those playthings? How about-"
"Doctor!"
"-the sick person in hospital, whose life support system just lost power because-"
"Doctor!"
"What?!" The Time Lord spun around, his eyes flashing.
Michael almost stumbled backwards when he saw the ferocity of the expression on the Doctor's face. The man had been slightly unhinged ever since...
Well, ever since spotting that diary, now that he thought about it. He wondered once more what exactly it contained, what was inside – but that was for another time.
"The power's on. We're back," he said, pointing to his camera which had the 'record' light blinking merrily once more.
It was as if a switch had been flicked. At once, the Doctor's demeanour became bouncy and light once more, a boyish grin creeping over his equally boyish features.
"Brilliant! Let's not do that again, eh?" He laid an arm across Michael's back. "Blackouts tend to be bad."
"So that's what happens when the equaliser field goes off?"
"Well, that and the fact that the pent-up electrical energy will build up until we all get blown to smithereens."
"What?!"
"Well, something like that, anyway. The specific type of psychic energy harvested by the equaliser-field-tree-thing is very... temperamental. Doesn't like to be trapped in one place. Claustrophobic, if you will."
Michael had to raise an eyebrow. "Claustrophobic psychic energy?"
"If you think about it long enough, it makes sense," the Doctor assured.
"Right. So now...?"
"Now we stop it happening again. Which, luckily for you, is your job."
"Alright. But how?" Michael asked.
"No idea. My bet is that whatever's on the other side of this teleporter-" the Doctor motioned at the tree, whose central column glowed an eerie blue in the darkness, "-will tell us what's what."
"So I-"
"So you simply just have to go through, find my friend who I'm guessing is down there somewhere, and get him to stop whatever he's trying to do. Simple eh?"
Michael nodded. It sounded simple – though the lack of detail was somewhat troubling.
"Good man," the Doctor said, patting him on the back once more. "Now, if you happen to come directly across the tree-field-thingamajig, use it to fill up these and get them back to me, would you?" The Doctor took the camera from Michael's hands, replacing it with two rather spiky-looking objects. They were two of the objects whose purpose the man hadn't explained, though based on what he'd been told about the field's workings, he could make an educated guess.
"Are these...?"
"Yep. Batteries. Stick 'em in, fill 'em up, get 'em back to me. I'll use them to recharge my TARDIS and get lizard boy here-" he jerked his head back towards Machariam "-off and running."
Michael nodded once more. The Doctor beamed at him. "Well, time to get cracking, eh?" He whipped out his sonic screwdriver, pointing it straight at the the teleporter. The symbol engraved into the hollow interior immediately glowed a vibrant gold.
Michael opened his mouth, his eyes widening, but didn't have time to ask what was going on as a solid crimson sphere of light surrounded him. A second later, he was gone.
Once silence and darkness had returned to the starlit forest again, the Doctor turned to face Machariam, his sky-blue eyes cool and his expression hard.
"You really think you can reverse the polarity of the psychic flow?"
The Doctor shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. Worth a shot."
"I suppose so," the repticore said.
"Don't think I've forgotten, by the way," the Doctor warned the repticore coolly. "You could have killed a lot of people tonight."
"Me?" Machariam made an odd rasping noise, its version of laughter. "I think, Doctor, you should be telling that to the humans who swept through the forests, massacring my people. You should be telling that to your friend Stanley Blood, who encouraged the mobs, the riots, the murderers."
"This is a refuge for the lost and the helpless, a place to hide from violence – frightened people. Frightened people do frightened things."
"And so that justifies murder?"
The Doctor's eyes flashed dangerously once more. "And so your response to a genocide is to commit another genocide? "
"My first and only duty is to my people, Doctor," the repticore replied, its eyes shining with conviction, yet shot with the weariness of age. It sighed. "There is nothing here for us. My people's freedom – our freedom – is all that matters to me now. Otherwise, all those deaths will have truly been in vain."
The Doctor's expression softened, his voice lowering. "I understand. Truly, I understand, and I only wish I had the opportunity you have now. But I still need your help."
He paused for a second, gauging the repticore's response. However, there was nothing to be read in its scaled, angular face or its clear light-blue eyes.
He sighed. "After all, I have a species to save as well."
Though the woodland was relatively sparse, there were enough trees within that it was hard to see more than a hundred feet or so into the forest. It was a good place to hide, despite it being so open.
The downside, though, was that it terminated rather abruptly at the edges, going from temperate woodland to grass almost instantly. It wasn't natural – the area had been cleared, years before, so the town could expand around the shiny new spaceport that had been built. That had gone nowhere, so instead there was a half-mile or so of thick, overgrown grassland in the gap between the woodland and the busy spaceport.
The Windcatcher stood at the edge of the forest, gazing up at the thick canopy of golden-brown leaves above him. It was autumn in this part of the world, and he could see leaves falling in the pre-dawn light.
"This is exceptionally dangerous," one of his men told him. "Alone, in there-"
"I don't have a choice," he replied.
"And if she kills you?"
"She won't. Though it would be very, very easy for her to kill the rest of us if she wanted to," he pointed out.
"So why hasn't she?"
The Windcatcher paused for a moment, gazing into the semi-darkness of the woodland beyond, as if trying to peer into the secret held within. This was a lot of risk and danger for what seemed a simple task – though simple and easy were very, very different things.
However, it also sounding increasingly... wrong, catching a powerful yet oddly benign alien who was far, far too young to have been an actual threat to anyone. He'd hunted Time Lords before, he'd fought them before. He'd never fought one as powerful as this – but he'd never fought one as young as this either. What, exactly, did her employers intend with this girl who really was just a girl? He still had a moral compass, as twisted and skewed by cynicism as it was.
It simply didn't add up and that, increasingly, was a problem. But one he could ignore for now.
"Good question, and one that I suspect we'll have to find out in due course. However, there's only one way to do that."
"Very well. Are you going in now, sir?" The black-coated mercenary asked.
"Yes," the Windcatcher replied. He gave the trees one last searching look before stepping beyond the threshold and into the falling leaves. "Keep a lookout," he called back, "Until I say otherwise. Make sure no one else enters this place."
"And leaving?"
The Windcatcher stopped dead in his tracks. He'd forgotten about that – the other little complication. The girl who he'd tried to use against Amelia to pin her down.
"Our goal is the Time Lady. Do whatever is necessary to make that job easier, but otherwise, leave her alone."
"And so if they try to escape together?"
The Windcatcher replied slowly, carefully, articulating every word.
"Whatever is necessary."
White.
Just white. In every direction, as far as the eye could see, just white. Pure, unblemished, infinite whiteness surrounds her, fills her vision.
She stands up.
Where the hell is she?
She isn't supposed to be here, she's sure of that. Even disregarding the fact that she's never, ever heard of anywhere like this, she simply isn't supposed to be here.
Last she remembers, she was... she was...
She rubs her head, frowning. It's like her memories have this odd sepia filter on it, like she's viewing them through a bad TV with mountains of static. If she tries, if she really tries, she can recall glimpses of a village house, of a worried aunt, of a majestic walled city and a spreading white malaise. But they're all distant, vague, and oddly ephemeral, like water slipping between her fingers.
After a moment, she realises that she can't really remember where she's supposed to be. So why shouldn't she be here?
Even now, when she thinks about this place... even though she's never seen it before, never heard of it before, it seems oddly familiar. Even though every good sense within her tells her that this is completely impossible, it's as if this place is... part of her, somehow.
She can't explain it. But it doesn't matter, as there's no one else here to explain it to.
She turns around, surveying the whiteness around her. There's nothing here, completely empty, completely... white. Everywhere. Everlasting. There's no discernible horizon, and her own figure doesn't even cast a shadow on the perfectly blank floor.
Well, that's strange, she thinks. Is she dreaming? But dreams don't usually feel this real.
A sudden reverberation runs through the floor, and she spins around to gaze at the source of the noise. Her eyes widen to saucers, her heart racing as she takes in the newcomer.
It's a box.
A police box, ten feet tall and the bluest of blues. The box she's been dreaming of for eight years.
She takes a tentative step towards it, afraid it might vanish, fade from her life again.
"Raggedy man..." she whispers, fearful that the mere sound of her voice will blow it away.
It doesn't. It just stays there, stable, steady, unmoving. She breaks into a sprint, crying out joyously.
"Doctor! Raggedy Doctor!"
She reaches the still-closed doors, readying herself to meet the man she loved as much as she resented, the man who had been her greatest source of strength and her most fatal weakness.
Her Doctor.
She places a palm on the door, wanting to feel its texture, wanting to confirm that this really is just as real as she needs it to be – then gasps, jerking her hand back as she feels her skin burning. She looks at her singed, blistering hand in horror – which doubles when she moves her gaze back to the box.
The point where she had placed her hand is ablaze, the wood charring under the dancing, spreading flames. The fire moves outwards, consuming the box, destroying it, turning it to fine, powdery ash which vanishes into the infinite white surrounding her.
She lets out a scream, falling to her knees as her dream burns before her eyes.
She was still screaming when she awoke, eyes sightless to the sudden darkness around her. The only thing she could see was the scorching white light, the only thing she could feel was that single, terrible moment of despair and horror.
She kept screaming until she felt herself being grabbed roughly, a voice shouting in her ear.
"Katherine! Katherine!"
The sound of the Time Lady's voice brought Kate back to reality at last, her wildly roving eyes settling on the fiery emerald above hers. Amy gently wiped away some of the sweat on Kate's forehead, the Time Lady's face pale with anguish and her eyes watery.
"I've been trying to wake you up for the last minute," Amy told her softly. "Didn't quite work."
"What... what was that?" Kate couldn't remember being so utterly petrified by a dream before.
"That was me."
"Y-you?" Kate gazed at her in disbelief before the penny dropped. "Wait. That thing when we were at school. When you were away."
Amy averted her gaze. "Yeah."
"That was it?"
"That was just the start," Amy whispered, a single tear rolling down her cheek. She'd fought so very, very hard to keep it locked inside, and the fact she'd siphoned off some of these memories into that little piece of metal had convinced her that she'd won the battle.
How wrong she was.
"I'm sorry," they told each other simultaneously. Amy gave a low, sad chuckle, squeezing her friend's hand.
"It's only a dream."
"I'm sorry," Kate repeated with more emphasis. "I mean, I've had bits of that dream all week, but..." It wasn't even the dream itself that had so frightened her. It was the raw, naked terror that had accompanied it. The emptiness. The despair. She'd never felt anything like that before.
"But now you understand, don't you? Just a little bit. You've seen enough... you've seen that there's this part of me, somewhere inside, which I have to lock away. This bit of me that I can't let anyone see, but that he..."
Amy didn't continue, but the pregnant silence she'd left behind left a gap that had to be filled.
"He's only trying to help," Kate told her. Amy turned away to gaze out into the driving rainstorm outside. It wasn't unlike some of the driving rain showers she remembered from when she was young. Back home.
"Amy?" A trembling hand against her arm.
"I know," she replied quietly.
"He's just scared for you, that's all. And what's the harm of letting him see?"
Amy didn't turn or move, head bowed, her knuckles tightening visible against the windowsill.
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"I can't," Amy repeated, her voice firmer. "You've seen it. You know."
Kate didn't relent. "Amy, you love him. I know you love him, with everything you've got. So let him see you for what you are – open up to him," she said, her voice firm yet with a subtle pleading note. Damn it, this was her friend, one she counted closer than she'd have believed possible not long ago. She would not let her self-destruct.
I won't let you do that.
"The more you try to protect other people from yourself, the more you end up hurting yourself... and he wouldn't want that," she implored.
Amy still didn't move, her fists clenched, clear knots of tension between her shoulders. Kate reached up nervously, unsure how the Time Lady would react, unable to penetrate the myriad defences Amy had put up around her emotions, unable to peer into the deep recesses of her friend's once-human mind.
When Amy felt Kate's trembling hand grip her own, however, she didn't snap, or scream, or do any of the many horrible things she was capable of. Instead, the Time Lady turned and stared at the pale, trembling fingers wrapped around hers. Kate's skin was soft – like hers, yet so unlike.
She squeezed back, smiling at the human girl. A warm, summer-filled smile that reached her eyes, those same emerald-green eyes which were lit with kindness, shot with ferocity – yet with that deep, unmistakeable undercurrent of loss.
The story of her life.
"Doesn't matter now," she told her best friend. "It'll be daylight soon, you'd better get up."
"Oh?" Kate pushed herself upright, gritting her teeth against the sparkle of pain in her ribs and the dull headache she could feel coming on. "Where are we going?"
"Home."
And that, if you hadn't spotted it, is basically the conclusion of a long-running subplot. Kate's character has evolved some distance from how I originally envisaged it, but the role she plays in this story is still fundamentally the same.
We're getting to the pointy end of this long-running plot arc, I promise.