"Doctor, I promise you…I just feel that if we waited five more seconds, if we went a little faster…we'd find her. We'd find my baby girl."
The Doctor looked sadly up at the red-headed woman who was leaning on the TARDIS console a few feet from him. Her hair was falling around her round face, her expression earnest. She looked so much like the little girl he'd met, so many years ago. Not that it felt like many years ago. It felt like barely three years ago. Which, of course, was how long it had been.
And one of those years – oh, such a very long year it had been.
Time travel. Such a temperamental thing it was: you never quite knew whether you were facing up or down or in another direction entirely, and measuring the actual amount of time that had passed was such a tricky thing because, after all, you could be in five minutes ago for eternity if you wanted.
"Doctor." Amy's voice was insistent, demanding an answer, her Scottish lilt getting worse.
"Oh. Yes." the Doctor looked up, unconsciously straightening his bowtie. His coat was lying to the side, thrown over his chair. He'd been working obsessively on the TARDIS, trying to think of any other place they could look for Melody. There weren't many places left.
"Well?" Amy insisted.
"Amy, we've been trying." Rory began, trying to explain. "There's just so many places to look, and it's time we moved on from here-"
"Why?" Amy said, her voice breaking, foreboding tears. "We've moved on and on, and we haven't found her."
"There are only two things we know for certain." the Doctor said, breaking into the conversation again. "One, Kovarian doesn't have her anymore, so she's been coming after us. She thinks we have her. That could work in our favor. Two, she's somewhere in the future, that is, after 1960. We've been searching. You said we should come to 2011 first. I'm wondering why."
"No reason." Amy said carefully, avoiding eye contact. "Just, y'know…it was a good time."
The Doctor stared at her for a minute. She was keeping something back, he could tell. But he wasn't going to try to get it out of her, not right now. No sense in that. "Fine, then. We've been up and down, Amy, looking everywhere. We haven't found her. It's time to move on."
Amy's shoulders slumped, and she leaned into Rory. "You said we'd find her," she finally said, her voice hardly louder than a whisper. "You promised. And we saw River. So we've got to find her."
"We will find her. Just not here." the Doctor assured. And with a flick of his fingers, the TARDIS was on its way.