Almost forgot to update in Angels Take Manhattan insanity. I don't think my feelings will ever recover.
oOo Doctor, oOo
"A Time Lock," you say, feet pacing the clear floor of the flight deck, "Is a very hard thing to break."
"Doctor, what's going on?" Amy comes up behind you, slightly out of breath from the running.
"Fortunately, I set this one myself," you continue.
"What one? One what?"
"Unfortunately, that doesn't make a difference."
"It doesn't make a difference?"
"There's no password or key-code for a Time Lock, or else it would be guessable."
"What are you talking about?"
"Guessable things get guessed."
"I guess you're never going to shut up and tell me what you're on about?"
"It's a shame. But it's also not a shame, because someone would have tortured me to death to get the password by now, if there was one, and I knew it." You stop at the TARDIS monitor, turning a dial until the picture on it whizzes into life.
"That's nice."
"Quite. And it shows you what we're up against. People who'd kill a nice person like me, just to break out of an eternal prison of war and nightmares? What is the universe coming to?"
"So, are we going to this eternal prison?"
"If we want to save Theta - yes."
"How, then?"
"I was telling you that it was impossible, but apparently, you weren't listening."
"Nothing's impossible."
"Oh, mouthy. Okay. What we're up against is a Time Lock. Come here, and I'll show you."
Amy joins you at the screen, and you gesture to a diagram of a thick round shell surrounding a black cloud. "What's in here," you say, pointing at the cloud, "Wants to get out. But I don't want it to get out, because that would destroy the universe. So a long time ago, I put a Time Lock around it. Nothing comes or goes. But now I need in, because I happen to know that the best healer, with the technology we need, is right -" you stab the heart of the black mass with your index finger - "Here. So, what do we do? What can we do that no one inside the lock can?"
"Fly our TARDIS in?"
"My TARDIS had a lot of sisters, once. And those girls are inside the lock. Poor things. No, if it only took a TARDIS to do the trick, the stuff in there would be out and wreaking havoc."
"Okay, so what do we do?"
"If a TARDIS, by herself, tried to go through a Time Lock, she'd die. The energy it takes to smash through would suck the life out of her. People have tried it before - the ship they flew fell apart and everyone inside was killed. So, what do we need? More power. Where do we get that? We'd need a psychic link with the heart of the TARDIS, to feed her life to burn instead of her own soul. Do we have a psychic link? Oh, that's crazy, nobody has a connection that strong with their spaceship! Only people completely without a social life! Oh, look who's had no social life for hundreds of years."
"You have us!"
"You're human, you don't count. No offence."
Amy folds her arms.
"And even dorks like the Doctor," you continue, "Can't get anything through their link. That's unheard of. Time Lord minds don't get that lonely! What if the mind was the only one in the universe, though? Well, then it would attach to the closest thing to a Time Lord out there - a Gallifreyan - a TARDIS. Oh, you see what I'm saying?"
"No. Even if you do have a connection with your TARDIS, how will we give her more power?"
"Well, I've got some regenerations in the back pocket."
"What?"
"A couple more lives. That I can burn up."
"What? Lives? Won't that hurt you? You can't -"
"Maybe. It's a little risky. I can't even guarantee the connection will be strong enough to get the lives through. But it should work."
"Should?"
"Yeah. It should. That, or we all die."
Rory walks in just in time to hear the last sentence, and stops short, eyebrows raised.
"You wouldn't risk that with Theta on board," Amy says.
"Theta will die anyway," you say, mouth stiffening into a grim line, "If we don't make this trip. I'm ready to take the chance. I can drop you off home, though, if you'd rather not."
"No. We're coming," Amy says. "Of course we're coming."
"We're?" Rory grumbles.
You both look at him.
"No, I'm coming," he says. "There's no way I wouldn't. Just - forget it."
"So - now that we know we're putting our lives on the line to get there, where exactly are we going?" Amy says.
Your hands pause, resting on the bar below the monitor screen.
"Gallifrey."