I found writing Twelve quite hard this chapter, but hopefully he sounds okay! Thank you for reading, and I really love any reviews I get! Thank you :)

The young girl shrugged off her rucksack, in clear wonder of her new surroundings, and it scaled down her back, slumping to the floor with a nasty clatter. The Doctor seethed quietly, felt the telepathic nudge of his TARDIS; she was not sparking as he had assumed - he felt a gentle warmth from her presence, a mental sedation.

'If I throw a stick, will you shoo?' The TARDIS whined curtly at his discourtesy. What? He made a note to check her wiring.

The girl still looked upon him for an answer, steadfast in her approach.

He decided to match her antics. 'What are you doing?'

The child puffed proudly. 'I'm running away.'

This made the Doctor pause. Her words remarkably paralleled his life's wrinkled mantra, and he felt the soft threads of a tie between them entangle themselves in a intricate web of feeling. His head ached with empathy, with connection. His raised hackles jarred, as his eyes thawed from beneath their frost.

He'd started his running away back on Gallifrey, and he had never stopped.

'So am I,' he murmured gently. The girl settled down on the steps, and the Doctor hitched up his slim trousers before he did the same.

'But the difference between you and me, kid, apart from the whole super-intelligent Time Lord element,' he added as a side thought, 'is that you're wanted there,' he pointed to the dark blue doors, 'and I'm wanted here.' He brought back his arm.

The child shied away from him a little. 'That's not what Jim says,' she whispered.

'Why are you humans always so vague? I'd put you down for plain stupidity, if it wasn't for your microwavable lasagne. King Jimmy the third... Jim Carrey senior... Rosie and Jim... Oh no, why are your eyes doing that? Stop it. Does that thing you're doing come with an off switch?'

Red rimmed and terribly drizzly, the girl's gentle, auburn eyes looked up at him. The Doctor squirmed.

'Did it stop? I can't tell. Did you always look like that?' The girl sniffed, wiped her nose.

Silence skulked between them once again, the soft throb of the TARDIS core blanketing the hush.

'What you getting from Father Christmas?' The child offered up, after taking such a small amount of time to yield to the pressing ennui; it was like strong steel hands on her shoulders.

The Doctor sighed exasperatedly at the blonde creature.

'Your thingy looks like it needs some special medicine,' she advised carefully, transfixed with something just above his right shoulder.

'And there it is - the ambiguity! You have a developed left prefrontal cortex, don't you? Why don't you use it once in a while? The only difference between your species and the great apes, and you dress it up in,' he grimaced spectacularly, 'fancy hair and repulsive headwear. Well, bully for you if you have an 'evolved' intellect, but you knuckle draggers stumbled through history with your prominent proboscises wedged right up - wait, what are you babbling on about?'

He locked on to her pathway of sight, and flipped round. There, on top of the blackboard that said-

Oh Gods. The scrawled, phantom-ashen script scribbled, whether by his own withered hand or another's he did not recall, or dare to, rather messily in chalk sent a slinking shiver through his binary spinal cords. He struggled over to the word, caressed the small hooks of the R's graceful legs, and the smooth curve of its underbelly.

Rose.

The TARDIS column blinked at him, as his mind whirred through a million possibilities. He was sure the void was impenetrable now - the walls of the universe were closed. Forever. He knew that all too well. No! He shook. Those thoughts were more pinstripes and leather - now he was grumpy, rude and definitely not ginger.

'Did you do this?'

The child barely cowered under his tough stare, for she was still drawn, unblinking, to the object atop the blackboard.

'Is this a batch of selective hearing?'

With no response, he swiped his eyes back to the point - a softly glowing rectangular prism. He frowned, momentarily wondering why on earth his superior senses hadn't picked up its incessant humming.

He snatched the thing down, grasped it tightly. And then it hit him with the force of a thousand battle fleets.

He remembered why he was really here.

He had to get the kid out.