Reposting this 'cos I discovered that all my little story breaks had disappered... didn't matter so much in this chapter, but some of the later ones got confusing!

Learning

Tick tock, goes the clock, he cradled and he rocked her,
Tick tock, goes the clock, 'til River kills the Doctor

Melody ran, again.

The air was humid, muggy, the thin cotton of her dress sticking to her back and legs.

She couldn't even remember what she was running from, only that if felt like she had run many times before, though she could never remember doing so.

Her feet hurt, angry raw skin in patches where her ill-fitting shoes rubbed. Her chest hurt, burning from her efforts to take in more air, to get far away from the orphanage as fast as possible.

She looked over her shoulder and screamed at the sight behind her… but as soon as she looked forward the memory was gone. All that remained was her sense of panic.

Far ahead she saw the nose of a space shuttle rising against the horizon. Cape Kennedy, she'd heard people call it. America was sending a man to the moon. Melody wasn't exactly sure what America was, but it must be powerful to send a man all the way up into the sky to the moon. Maybe, she thought, just maybe America could help her escape from the spaceman.

Ahead there was a warehouse, standing at an intersection. There, that was the place she would be able to hide. As she ran through the doors and ducked behind a counter she had a brief flash of dejá vu. Surely she'd been here before? But of course she hadn't, she'd never escaped the orphanage before… or had she?

There were all sorts of other things she didn't remember properly. The classes they gave her, in which all of the teachers wore eye patches. She didn't quite remember what she learnt in her classes, only that they punished her for failing to learn her lessons well. What were they teaching her? Why weren't there any other children with her in the orphanage?

She looked around the warehouse once again. It looked so familiar. She heard noises come from the door and moved quietly back away from the entry. A space suit walked through the door, visor open to reveal that the helmet was empty. Melody screamed, knowing somehow that although she'd never seen the space suit before it was coming for her. She ran towards the far door, but found it closed and locked. She looked around in a panic, then scrambled up onto the bench, ran along it then jumped up on to the cupboards at the end. Surely up here the spaceman couldn't reach her.

Being unable to reach her didn't stop the spaceman walking slowly towards her, arms reaching out for her. Melody cowered into the corner, then glanced down and stopped in shock. There was a knife at her feet, and words scratched into the wall next to her knee.

"You've been before Melody. This is where you run every time. If you've run here again make another mark on the wall." There were marks next to the writing, dozens of scratches, some of which looked brand new, but others looked much older. Melody looked around the room again. She could see footprints in the dust, footprints the same size as her own. There were other signs too, signs that seemed quite clear. A clear path of debris cleared between the entry and the corner in which Melody was hiding. Scuff marks from large, heavy boots.

Melody looked down at the spaceman walking towards her. Then she looked up at the roof and saw the dark clad, pale faced forms hanging upside down from the ceiling. Suddenly she remembered everything, all the times she'd run here. The fear; carving those words into the wall; writhing away from the mechanical grasp of that empty faced space suit.

She grabbed the knife and made another mark in the wall, then felt that plastic hand grab hold of her ankle and pull. She dropped the knife as she fell, fingers scrambling at the edges of the bench, trying to get enough hold to pull away from her captor.

It was only as she felt the suit closing around her that she realised there had been another way. She'd had the knife, it was no use attacking the spaceman, but she could have turned the knife on herself.

There's always another way out.

Melody only vaguely recalled her mother trying to shoot her. The panic and confusion in the room would be enough to muddle anyone's memories, and with dozens of the Silence added into the mix it was a miracle that she had any memories of that time in her childhood.

That was the first time she saw her mother. Sometimes she thought she could almost remember something even older: her mother holding her in her arms in a sterile white corridor, whispering that she loved me; then seemingly without a break in time Melody was alone in the cot in a dirty orphanage. The cot she recognised, it was the room she lived in for years, the orphanage from which she would run and run and run as the Silence twisted my mind. The sterile white corridor Melody wouldn't understand for a great many years.

Melody did remember seeing her father, the Doctor and another woman running into the room which had been mine. She didn't recognise her father, she only learnt that it had been him much later in life. She only saw the woman in silhouette, but the sight made her gut clench in anxiety. Of course, Melody attributed that visceral reaction to the Doctor. Even though she didn't know yet who he was she had already been conditioned to hate him.

Shortly after that the orphanage was truly deserted. The caretaker sat in his office, muttering about how the orphanage would close soon, but he forgot about the little girl who had to be taken care of. The Silence were gone, and the space man no longer chased Melody when ventured out.

So she ran, as far and as fast as she could manage on young legs. She made it a long way, but not without a price. Melody died in a back alley in New York on New Years Day. She was reincarnated as a toddler, a very young black girl. The police found her almost immediately, a three year old in vastly oversized clothes, and put her into an orphanage.

Another orphanage, but at least this was just your ordinary, miserable, state run childcare facility. Even without the benefit of special training any child who spent a second childhood in such a place was unlikely to be completely without any kind of psychopathy.

Melody spent 12 years in that place before they took her again. She couldn't remember the lessons, but by the time she broke free again she was an expert marksman, could hit a fly with a knife from 20 metres, and found herself in possession of, but immune to the effects of, both hallucinogenic and poisonous lipstick.

She didn't know what they had done to her. She was so grateful to not remember.

Melody thought she escaped them. For some reason she'd taken her age backwards, and was physically about 8 years old when she found myself in a small village called Leadworth. She found a nice looking lady who had no children, gave her a childish peck on the lips, and convinced her that she had adopted her.

Melody thought she'd escaped on her own until she met Amy Pond and realised that they'd sent her there.