A/N: Hopefully, everybody had their fill of pie. For those of you who have citrus allergies and chose to forgo it, Chapter 18 can be recapped pretty accurately by saying, simply, our two main characters should be very pleased with each other, life, the universe, and everything right about now. Also, the Doctor is legendary in more ways than were previously known (even though, as far as we know, he doesn't have a spiffy moniker to go with this particular set of skills. Unless one of you has cooked one up, that is...). So everything is hunky-dorey. Or you'd think so, anyway, wouldn't you?

To find someone who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness.

~Robert Brault

Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

~Robert Heinlein

I.

She awoke warm and snug, stirred slightly, felt his arms tighten around her to draw her closer to him. He murmured softly, shifting, words that were not English slipping from his lips, and subsided into continued slumber with his face pressed against the curve of her neck. She felt the slow steady rhythm of his dual heartbeat against her, ran a gentle, soothing hand down his back, careful not to wake him.

At some point, he'd managed to pull the red blanket off the couch and drape it over them. Between the warmth of the fire which burned low, emerald flames barely flickering, and the shared heat of their bodies, she felt completely comfortable.

Might never move, in fact...

"Mmm. Good plan. Bordering on brilliant. I highly approve, in fact." His voice was half muffled as he spoke into her hair.

She smiled, brought her hands up to thread through his hair, gently pulling his head back so she could see his face. Lazy, heavily-lidded summer meadow eyes met hers.

"Hello," he grinned. "Kiss?"

She rolled her eyes but shifted so her mouth could meet his, let his head go, and enjoyed the peaceful melding of their lips, soft, undemanding.

He pulled away to settle his face back in the curve of her neck again with a sigh, and once again she stroked her hand down his spine. He arched his back a little into her caress with a little rumbling noise of pleasure, and she was reminded of nothing quite so much as a giant cat lying by the fire being stroked. They lay like that for a long time, and she thought he was asleep again, was almost asleep again herself when she heard his voice come to her through the bond.

*'Course, there is a bit of a problem with the brilliant plan, Pond.*

She stirred slightly, smiled as she came back awake. "And that would be?"

*Hungry... Next time, you should bring food when you come looking for me. You know, pack a hamper. Be prepared for...whatever might happen.* She felt him smiling, felt him kiss her tenderly.

She snorted and pushed him away gently, rolling over to begin trying to find her clothes. "Ha. Next time you run off to be a stubborn moody bastard hiding in the depths of the TARDIS, you bring a well-stocked picnic lunch with you yourself. I think it's the least you can do."

He continued to lay where she'd rolled him, watching her move around the reading room and grinning like a madman.

"What?" She paused in the process of trying to locate her jeans. "What's got you smiling like the Cheshire cat about that statement?"

*Ah, Pond...can't you guess?*

I wouldn't know where to start to try...

*We're already planning for next time...*

She snorted and threw his shirt at him. He simply lay on the floor and laughed as it draped itself lightly over his face.

II.

As she finished pulling on her pants and sweater again, her toe bumped into the heavy volume she'd spent so much time reading. It had gotten knocked under the edge of the couch what with one thing and another. She extracted it and sat down to wait for the Doctor to finish fussing with his clothes so they could go forage in the TARDIS kitchen before getting cleaned up and deciding what to do next. He was talking about something, but she was only giving him half her attention as she ran her hand over the elaborate design of the cover and smiled.

He became aware of her lack of attention when her only responses were "Mmm" and "Um-hmm" and turned away from the mantel to see her thumbing through the book. He came over to sit beside her.

"What've you got there, Pond?" He craned his neck slightly and looked at it in her lap. "Oh. That. Right." His tone was completely dismissive, bored, even. "Ready to go find some nourishment, eh?" He clapped his hands together, rubbing them, made as if to rise.

"What, Doctor? You don't like fairy tales? This from my own personal wolfie, sharp teeth and all?" She just couldn't resist...

He grinned. "It's not that. I rather like fairy tales. Some more than others, obviously." He gently stroked the mark he'd left on her neck, took his hand away again. "No. Really, though. I've always found them both entertaining and useful. Legends, folk tales, stories of myth. Good stuff. Great fun. Learn a tremendous amount about a people by looking at their fairy tales, what they value, what they choose to pass along to their young. Powerful little capsules of culture, they are. That, however, is not what is in that book in your lap, you know." He made to slip it out of her hands, but she yanked it back from him slightly before he could.

She blinked at him. "What do you mean, that's not what's in this book? What is it if it isn't fairy stories? They sound just like the fairy stories from when I was little..."

He looked at her patiently. "That, my dear Pond, is a historical chronicle of a planet called Rishell. You know how researchers and folklorists believe that there's a little tiny seed of truth in the fairy tales and myths of every culture? Well, on Rishell, that seed sprouted, grew roots and leaves, and turned into a giant tangled vine."

She looked down at the book again, ran a thoughtful finger over one of the illustrations, one showing a winged maiden and a handsome man, both of whom had pointed ears and sharp features such as elves on Earth are sometimes given in some portrayals.

"No and no, Amy. I'm not bloody taking you there, especially not during that particular period. So don't ask."

"That's not fair, Doctor. Have you ever been?" She scooted a little closer to him on the couch in her curious eagerness.

"Yes." He stubbornly did not elaborate.

"Oh, come on, then. You have to tell me about it, at least. Do they really have wings? Can they fly with them? Is this just a costume? Do they really look like the elves from Lord of the Rings?"

Those movies... He held up his hand. "Pond. They're not a planet of ….of...oh good Lord, that I'm about to say this, even...Legolases...or maybe that should be Legolasi, anyway, blonds running about in tights with bows making friendly on quests with woodland boon companions if that is what you've got in your mind. Yes, they look a bit elfy, for lack of a better working term at the moment, but at certain periods of their history, they're spectacularly not very nice to be around."

"Well, you haven't taken me anywhere like that, so far, now have you?" She thought loudly at him Daleks/Weeping Angels and also threw a couple of other scenes of nearly-tragic adventure in for make-weight.

"Um. Well. Those times were accidents... I had no idea there would be danger to you..."

"Mmm..." She let him fidget and twitch a moment more, and then she reached out and smoothed down his lapels. "Besides, Doctor, isn't what you've just said probably true of every planet, every group of beings at some point in their history? Maybe you just visited...um...when they were having...a bit of a rough patch?"

His stubborn, pouting face was on. "No."

"No, what? Not a rough patch or something new? What are you objecting to now?"

"No, every group of beings does not have a rough patch. I can name ten, no twenty races, right off the top of my head who are just as sweet as custard and have been from the first moment they became sentient. Let's see there are the..." He gestured for emphasis, brought his hands up to begin counting off the individual species he'd promised her.

Her hands on his lapels wrapped around the fabric to tow him forward slightly so she could shut him up in the way she'd found most pleasant and effective. After a moment, he wrapped his arms around her. They gently moved apart some time later.

"So of all the places you can take me, this one, this teensie, tiny place you've already been and know all the pitfalls of, this place it would make me so very happy to go to, you won't do that, then?"

"Amy..." He knew a guilt trip when it was being laid on him, knew she knew he knew it, but that didn't stop it from being damnably effective.

"Even though I can't possibly be less than perfectly safe with you anywhere I go... You still won't take me here, not even for a short little trip so I can see the fairy tale empire?"

"'S not Disney World, y'know..." he muttered, turning it over in his mind.

Foreboding shot through him, but she was smiling at him so hopefully, wanted it so much, and really, Rishell was beautiful. He thought again of moon melons and golden castles. There were periods he could take her to where there weren't serf/slaves working the fields. Yes. He could do this. He would just take the greatest of care about when they arrived.

Because as always, there was something he was keeping back. Something he wasn't telling her. What he wasn't telling her this time was how the High Empire of Rishell ended. There was a great prophecy about it, that it all ended in destruction and ruin, that the Great Lords fell, were crushed utterly, and then Rishell had picked itself up and rebuilt to become something different, something new. That had all happened long after his last visit. Only the prophecies about it had been in existence. He'd been much younger then, cavalier and careless in a way that made him shudder to think about now, a man who never assumed that the prophecies of any world had anything to do with him. He wasn't sure now whether it was his sometimes admittedly-overinflated ego or a simple numeric analysis of the statistics of situations in which he found himself, but whenever he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that any place had a doomsday prophecy hanging over it like the Sword of Damocles, he'd begun to feel a tingling itch between his shoulderblades and the urge to look up.

He looked at the face of his Mate again, felt her hopeful excitement like champagne bubbles through the bond, and he knew he couldn't resist her. He reached out and gently stroked her cheek.

"You want to go that much, do you, Amelia Pond?"

She nodded, biting her bottom lip softly, watching him carefully. He felt her trying to listen, trying to learn to focus on him through the bond.

Clever little Pond. You and I are going to have to sit down and talk about a few things related to that, soon...

"Okay, then. Let's go."

"Really?" She started to grin, bouncing on the couch in excitement. "I'm going to get to meet real elves?"

He felt a corresponding grin stretch his mouth. "Going to be impossible to live with, aren't you? Yes. Sure. Let's go see the wonders of Rishell. What could possibly go wrong?"

Hark! There was a bit of plot here. Who knew? There will be more of the things you were promised previously in the next couple of installments. This was transitional. They will talk of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and king...just not quite yet in this chapter... As always, your comments are welcome.