Tardis lands. I wait for the usual noises of interest, the little heads poking round the doorways, sniffing their way into the console room like curious forest animals. What with the current state of relations aboard the old box, this is almost certain to be something a difficult trip. No more difficult, though, than living with them the last little while. It actually hasn't been very long at all, in straightforward linear time measurements like minutes and seconds and oh God, hours. Hours of them! Straightforward is the slowest way to go, you know, it really is, hours. Hours and hours of all the looks, and the not-talking, and the awkward brushing in corridors and apparently 'I'm washing my hair' isn't just an empty excuse composed solely of words, because Amy's done it twice in a matter of hours.

Hours. Have I mentioned the hours of all this I've had to live with? In that creeping forward-progression time-ish way.

It's a good thing I'm already mad, or that would be on their consciences. All three of them. Pond, running about being clean and pretending not to cry under the sound of the hairdryer in distant rooms, and Mr Pond, glaring at me all the time and putting stitches in Jessica when she's probably going to heal up anyway if her arms are anything to go by, just to make a point. And Jessica's no better, you know. She's got even less to say than the other two, and while that may not strictly be her fault that doesn't make it any easier on me.

That sounds selfish. I freely admit that that sounds selfish. But they all forget whose roof they're living under, whose good graces their continuing adventures depend upon, who it is that, should he be driven unfortunately insane by their inconsiderate behaviour, could be the end of us all.

And hence, I hereby renounce all of that difficulty, which has lasted so and threatens to be even more greatly prolonged given half a chance, in favour of this, one lesser, briefer difficulty, in getting everybody all happy and fun again.

Only nobody's coming.

I'm still standing here and nobody's come looking to see where we are, what scrapes and shenanigans we're going to get into. And so help me there will be shenanigans this day.

Bored of waiting now. It's that linear time thing again. "Ponds! Jessica! Oh, no… Anyone who's near Jessica let her know she's wanted down here!"

Pond appears first, and leans like a sullen child at the end of the hallway up from below. With wonderfully shiny hair, though going a little bit flyaway with all the blow-drying. "What?" she says, just as blunt as all that, "What do you want, that we should all come running?"

I am not angry or frustrated or astounded by this ingratitude. I am not angry or frustrated or astounded by this ingratitude. I am not angry or frustrated or astounded by this ingratitude. I am full of joy and life and am a pleasure to be with, so I gesture with one arm opening out towards the door and I tell her, "Adventures."

Amelia Pond shuts her eyes and bites out at me, "I have a headache." Then turns to leave.

"Don't take one more step, you moody so-and-so, or there'll be consequences." Oh, I didn't think that one through, did I? Hard to make the word 'consequences' sound light-hearted. In fact I rather fear there might be consequences to my use or indeed misuse of the word 'consequences', if only Pond were not distracted by Rory's appearance at the top of the stairs.

"I was summoned?" He has a horrible, aloof way of snarling. Should take him back to meet Noel Coward. Hold the mirror up to nature, as it were. And hopefully scare nature back into a better mood with it…

"Amy's already used that little joke, thank you."

And that annoys them both because, had I mentioned? They're not really talking to each other either. They haven't been. For hours.

"What do you want?"

"We're off on a jaunt," I tell him. "It's wonderful, I've chosen a place where we can't possibly be bored and time is sure to simply fly by, and where it's always mega-party-fun-time, and everyone can be happy again."

"You think you can fix this with a party?" Pond balks. Storms back up that hall, right up the steps this time, to say it to my face. "You kick my daughter out on some nowhere planet, and-"

"Alpha Centauri is a very well-respected and long-established human colony from which most of Earth's connections to the farther reaches were made and-"

"You think you can fix it, with a party. Why am I not even-?"

"-there is no place in the universe where she will be better provided for in terms of setting off on adventures, like the one which has just landed at your feet and you don't even look-"

"-surprised!"

That is as near as I can render two people speaking in almost perfect unison, and absolute disharmony on every other level.

"Besides," I go on, to reassert who started this conversation and who, one way or another, is going to finish it his way, "it's not a party per se. It's just a really great place. There are more alien races represented living in perfect harmony and peace and perpetual mega-party-fun-time than anywhere else in the universe."

"Okay, stop saying that," she demands, eyes closed again.

"Stop saying what, Pond?"

"'Mega-party-fun-time."

"Why, Pond!" and I stop to check my watch, "Indeed it is! You know, I hadn't noticed, thank you for reminding me. Let's away, and catch up on the minutes we've missed." Before they turn into more hours…

"Yeah, well," Rory snorts, pushing off the rail, even waving, as if he's going somewhere. He has no idea. "Enjoy yourselves."

"Oh, we will!" I say, and I am not angry or frustrated or astounded by this ingratitude, I'm not, I'm just not, nothing of the sort, I'm chipper and cheerful, and I sonic the door down in front of him. "And so will you! And Jessica… Where's Jessica? Didn't I tell somebody to bring Jessica?"

"She's having a shower," Rory informs me. Were I listening more carefully I would catch a little earlier the sharpness in his tone, and I would neglect to go on in the same tone that nearly got me into consequences over 'consequences'.

"Why? Why is it every time I need her for something she's bathing in some way? It can't be good for her, all that hygiene, she'll wash all the Jessica off…"

"I know, Doctor, it's a pain. Might have had something to do with getting all the blood off the front of her after the whole stabbing thing, but I don't know. You'll have to check with her when she gets out."

"Don't do sarcasm, Rory, it doesn't suit you."

"I'm good at sarcasm, Doctor."

"That doesn't mean it suits you."

"Yeah," says Pond. Because she's not really thinking about the fact that she's not talking to him. This is a good sign. This means, at heart, there's nothing really deeply amiss. "You're too, like, nice or something."

"Oh," he murmurs. "Well, thanks, I suppose."

Then they remember they're not talking to each other and she murmurs back, "Shut up, Rory."

I, on the other hand, am an endless font of joy and enthusiasm and the thought of just dumping them back at home and letting them fight it out and River will probably be there and they'll all just shut up, as Amy so pointedly put it, hasn't even crossed my mind. Lately. In the last twelve seconds. Except for when I thought it just then to get it down. That's not really thinking, though, that's just what happens when you're recording something. That one doesn't count. Fifteen seconds, now, since I thought that.

"Then we shall wait for Jessica!" I say that through a grin, by the way, not through gritted teeth. "And then we shall have mega-party-f-"

"Doctor…"

"Yes, Pond, you're quite right, I did promise." I didn't, but I'll give her this one. Keep her quiet.

Unlike the Tardis, who decides it's her turn to complain, as something clunks against the outer shell. Honestly, you'd think the inside size of her would compensate when that happens. Matter of fact, based on how seldom it happens, I presume it does. It's just that she's choosing to make a point. Everybody, it seems, has a point to make at me today.

Oh, heavens, don't think of Jessica now just don't don't go down that crooked dark narrow little alley of thought about Jessica making a point at me, dammit, I'm not sixty anymore, I'm not a child to be scared of the bogeyman… Girl. Bogeygirl.

"Doctor?" Pond questions, which finally a touch of the old, companion spirit, "What was that?"

I stick my head out the door to find out. Into fine, balmy night air full of light and life and glorious cacophony. Open the door a bit wider so they hear that, so they get a glance out, as I shoo an amorous couple off the wall of my home in much the same way that one shoos pigeons. The fact that I've just appeared out of a box always helps. I don't even have it in either heart to properly scold them. Getting all sentimental over the Ponds, you see, and how they're supposed to be and currently aren't really.

Then duck back in, and shut the door.

Rory doesn't want to ask. He really, really wants to know, but doesn't want to ask. I take absolutely no pleasure whatsoever in his obvious torment.

Then he asks. Of course he does, who could resist?

"Where was that?"

"What? Out there?" Neither of them are in the mood for that old game, but they're both edging closer. Grudgingly, each being aware of the other doing the same. "New Orleans," I tell them. "Circa 1860, but that's incidental, it's still full of aliens. Just thought we might stop in and see Marie, if I got the date right."

Pond, lingering in some strange hinterland between curious and deadpan, "New Orleans is full of aliens?"

"Pond, it's run by them. Spend an hour on Bourbon Street and tell me I'm wrong."