AN: Completely forgot to put this in the last chapter, but if you haven't seen yet, my Christmas chapter of Spook Watch titled "A Very Spooky Christmas" is now up and I put a lot of effort into it and it's pretty much the most Christmassy thing I've ever done for fic since it started (including the time they actually had Christmas randomly even though to them it was July) and is the heartwarming story of how Sally Sparrow learns the true meaning of Christmas.

Tunnel Vision

Eleven

Within minutes, he had a limp. He had a limp and reminded himself of his sister-in-law, and it was a similarity he was keen to be rid of. The abominable wound on his leg was far from fatal, but it was hot and walking on it was almost agony. Just because he wasn't going to die didn't mean it wasn't a hideous turn of events. And there was a wedding to go to in a week! He couldn't have a limp for that, couldn't look like he was some sort of defective consolation prize in comparison to his younger self. He was going to do his best to get his hands on some 'Miracle Medicine' when they returned to the ship, and if that failed, he might even have to waste his regeneration energy on a frivolous wound. Perhaps he could have the whole matter sorted before Clara noticed he had gotten into trouble – it was a ghastly business.

"I'm starting to understand why Jenny is getting so worried about her health…" he grumbled. Nobody had any sympathy for him, which he did not understand. It hadn't been his idea to come to Egypt, and it hadn't been him who fell down the hole in the ground full of snakes to begin with. Yet apparently, he was a blame-magnet.

"I wouldn't worry if I were her," River said.

"If you were her you'd already be dead."

"Sorry if you're still ungrateful for me using up the rest of my regenerations to heal you," she quipped. She was at the front of the group and he was at the back, shuffling, with the Ponds sandwiched between them as though they were children who needed to be kept from fighting. "She was quite alright on Rospaonus."

"Yes, by some miracle; it's only one of the most hostile planets in the known universe."

"What were you up to on a planet like that?" Amy questioned River, as though she were concerned for her wellbeing when – as Eleven had already pointed out – she was dead and buried.

"Looking for something. Crawling through ruins for the second time in a week – we might as well be back there," River quipped, but he didn't want to talk about Rospaonus or what had been found there. "It was this enormous Time Lord ruin, built into a mountain, and-"

"Enough of that," the Doctor interrupted, "Jenny already told me all about it."

"What did she do with the Singularity?"

"Asked me to destroy it," he said stiffly.

"And did you? Or did you just hide it somewhere on the TARDIS?"

"I said, enough of that. I don't want to talk about my dead species and the ridiculous things they built on other planets," he said it like it was an order, and really, it was. It finally got River to shut up, at least. Jenny's 'adventure' on Rospaonus was the last thing he wanted to talk about, and especially the Singularity.

The Doctor was aware, faintly, that they were heading down. Down a narrow passage way which was twisting ever so slightly, just too slight to visibly perceive, but enough that he was sure they were descending in a vague spiral formation. Going deeper and deeper into the Pyramid of Khufu, now underneath the desert itself.

"Stop, stop, stop," Amy said very suddenly and very quickly, she herself stopping dead in the passageway so that Rory walked into her. She did not appear to notice this, and had her face scrunched up in an expression akin to pain.

"What's going on?" River asked urgently.

"It's one of her visions," Rory explained, "You know, she has premonitions about the immediate future." In all honestly, Eleven had forgotten.

"I'm always surprised by how rarely anyone actually uses these superpowers," he commented.

"I think they're more hassle than they're worth," Rory muttered, then he gave the Doctor a very telling look, "The things I hear at night…"

"How many times do we have to apologise for that? Honestly. She's not even that loud."

"She is when you have super-hearing."

"Stop listening!"

Then Amy gasped and stumbled, and was about to fall into the wall but she directed herself to fall into Rory, instead.

"Don't touch the walls," she ordered them.

"Why?" asked River.

"I don't know. I saw spikes come out of them." Eleven was filled with an overwhelming urge to touch the walls, but he resisted, instead settling for looking at them. But they didn't have any openings with which spikes might come through. "I told you there would be booby traps. And then after that thing with pushing a trick brick in the wall, and a snake pit?"

"Everyone makes secret doors and traps," said the Doctor, "The Ancient Egyptians did it, territorial cavemen did it, and the most advanced settlements in the galaxy do it. Nobody's free of things they have to hide, don't go thinking this is a wonderful coincidence that you've seen it before in a hundred different blockbusters. There's nothing new under the sun, as they say." When he finished exerting the effort required to talk, he flinched and repositioned himself on his injured leg, wishing he had some a walking aid.

"He's right. It's all very run of the mill," said River, "Let's just carry on. I'm in front, after all. The traps won't work on me." She had a fair point, and they now proceeded even more cautiously. "This tunnel network is enormous," she said only a minute later, "I'm surprised it's never been found, it wasn't too difficult to track down. Sati is already out there trying to dig. But I've only ever seen the incredibly limited maps of the interior of this pyramid."

"So you're the only one clever enough to figure out that you should push a brick on a wall?" Amy asked incredulously.

"Maybe. Aren't you proud of me?" River jibed.

"No, no," said the Doctor, "That makes no sense. They do x-rays and thermal imaging of areas of pyramids in the future, and I've never heard anything about these tunnels, either. Not in any place I history. I think it's a very good point that we found this lost section of a pyramid much too easily, and-" There was a clicking noise suddenly and then a whoosh of air over his head and a crash. He froze. He was at the back of the group, yet somehow he had triggered one of the traps Amy had warned about, and now his fez was impaled on a rusty metal spike wedged into the opposite wall. It was mere inches away from destroying his brain. He had stepped on a pressure plate, he realised.

"I told you to be careful," Amy hissed at him through gritted teeth.

"I was!" he protested, "Why are all the bad things happening to me?"

Rory cleared his throat, the Doctor ducking away from the spike before another one shot out and tried to kill him, "You're not the one who fell into the snake pit."

"We all ultimately fell into the snake pit," he snapped, "And I'm the only one who got bitten."

"Jenny's bad luck is rubbing off on you," said River. He didn't find that funny, not in the least because Jenny had died twice in the last six months, "Although, she managed to survive Rospaonus."

"I wish you two would stop mentioning that since he won't talk about it," Amy grumbled.

"He wasn't even there," said River, looking over her shoulder at the Doctor, bookends of their convoy. It was a telling look, a knowing look, one that went beyond suspicion to accusation, and she knew she was correct in what she was accusing him of. He scowled and avoided her gaze, but the memory of it clung to him. He didn't like her smugness sometimes, nor did he like the way she still managed to work out what was going on in his head.

"What were you saying about it being too easy? You know, before that spike nearly got you?" Amy asked.

"I still think it's too easy."

"Don't jinx it," Rory told him.

"Jinxes aren't real," he said, and then he watched his feet and braced himself for another trap. This time though, no trap came.

"People don't think this secret entrance to the pyramid is real, either," said Amy.

"Well, Sati couldn't find it," the Doctor pointed out, "He's resorted poisoning people en masse and filling wells with sand in order to drive them out and dig up their homes. How did you know which brick to push?"

"I pushed a fair few of them," said River, "I was about to resort to saying open sesame. Although, I…" The corner sharpened somewhat, no longer the gentle curves they had gotten used to, and River disappeared from the Doctor's sight just as she also stopped speaking, "…I'm not sure open sesame will get us through here…"

"Oh," said Amy, next to see.

"This is a problem," said Rory, third.

Finally the Doctor, scrambling, saw what they meant. Imagine his surprise when he came face to face with a rippling, yellow forcefield. It looked like a mirage, buried down there under the Sahara, bristling with energy. Just looking at it made his hair stand on end, the air riddled with static charge. A forcefield. Inside the Pyramid of Khufu! Very purposefully, Eleven stepped towards it and cleared his throat, then he said loudly: "Open sesame!"

Absolutely nothing happened.

"You're an idiot," said River.

"It was worth a try."

"No it wasn't," said Amy, "Should we start pushing bricks?"

"No, no," the Doctor laughed, and in a moment he had drawn out his screwdriver, "Should do the trick. Doesn't look like a particularly complicated forcefield." It shimmered, looking like a waterfall made of golden syrup.

"How would Ancient Egyptians have made a forcefield…?" Rory asked carefully.

"There's only one solution," said the Doctor, "The Ancient Egyptians didn't."

"Oh, god…" he began as the Doctor went to sonic the walls, "You're not telling me…? That thing about how 'aliens built the pyramids'…"

"How has this never been found?" River said, staring at everything. It was really exciting her in her capacity as an archaeologist. "The energy readings alone – how is this being hidden? And we found it so easily – it doesn't make any sense. There was only one real trap." The forcefield flickered and disappeared.

The Doctor limped through on his sorry leg first. How long did he have until a fever set in? Before his limbs began to stiffen? Blasted neurotoxins, he thought to himself. Already he felt his ankle going rigid. But perhaps, now that he thought about it, and now that he remembered River Song's smugness, there was a way he could connive that he might heal himself without sacrificing anything… except his principles…

He had to say, he agreed with everything River was pointing out. It was all too easy and too unusual, like they weren't even really in Egypt, they were on one of those Earth copies. Maybe they were on New Earth, had been all along, or it was an elaborate theme park, and they were going to find a roller coaster buried down there. A roller coaster and a McDonald's – there was always a McDonald's. At the end of the universe there was probably a McDonald's, somehow.

"What do you think is going on? … Doctor?" River had to reiterate because he didn't respond initially. They were in more dark corridors, but he was beginning to notice that these walls were not made out of sandstone. They were glossy and black, like marble, and were so smooth they were nearly mirrors, reflecting ghosts of themselves in the flickering light of the torches.

"Perhaps aliens built the pyramids. Perhaps it was humans from the future coming back to play a joke. I know if Clara were here, she'd suggest maybe there was a civilisation on Earth before humans, other than the Silurians. But she did do her dissertation on H.P. Lovecraft, so she's bound to think that," he said.

"Could it have been Silurians?" Amy asked, "We're going very far underground."

"I don't know," he admitted, and he really didn't. He was as excited to find out as River was; it was better than a birthday. "There are a lot of races, really, who have claimed influence over the pyramids. They're famous around the universe, and I know plenty of alien tourists sneak over here to get a look at them. The Osirans always said they had something to do with it, and they wandered around dressed up like mummies half the time. Of course, you can't ignore the Anubians either, with their pyramid spaceships and their jackal-heads. And then Scaroth – that fiend – kept saying he influenced Earth culture greatly. All he's ever influenced is me staying away from spaghetti for a good few years."

"Maybe it was the Time Lords, all this time," River remarked.

"We would have never interfered with another species. Well, I would, but the rest of them wouldn't – sticks in the mud, the lot of them. I'm glad that…" he stopped talking. He was going to say something about how he was glad that Jenny was the next generation of Time Lord, and possibly even the last generation of Time Lord, but his pride in his offspring paled in comparison to the treasure trove of secrets they found deep beneath the Pyramid of Khufu. When they emerged into a cavern of astonishing size, simply more enormous than he could rightly put into words, all of the mysteries of the Great Pyramids looked to be on the precipice of revealing themselves, and all thoughts aside from wonder disappeared from their heads. Amy Pond even forgot about her Sphinx.