A/N: Welcome back to a brand new chapter, y'all! This one is a crazy one. I consider it to be the most climactic one of the lot, and it ends on the biggest cliffhanger yet, so stay tuned.

WARNING: mild adult language and mentions of gore and blood.

References to Star Wars' 'Order 66' and quotes from DW episodes "Let's Kill Hitler," "A Good Man Goes to War" and "The Angels Take Manhattan."

Chapter 44: Reaching the End

We navigate through the base in silence, stepping over fallen bodies from both sides of the skirmish. As we go, I sense Dad's guilt and shamefulness the more Homo-Reptilian bodies he sees, knowing that all of these people are—were—his allies being slaughtered mercilessly by the most heartless villains in the universe. We continue onward regardless, our main mission of finding Mom to be far more important. We use our psychic link with her to locate her, even though Mom's psychic link is not as strong as Dad's and mine, what with her being only half-Time Lord.

"We're getting close," Dad says, breaking the silence after several minutes. "I can feel her presence growing stronger through our psychic link."

"Same," I nod as I continue following him nervously through the corpse-filled hallways.

My nervousness increases the closer we get to Mom's location, wherever she is. A large part of me can't help but be afraid for what will happen once we do find her. No doubt, just like in that 'Execute Order 66' scene in Star Wars, she'll automatically try to kill us the instant she sees us. There is also no doubt that Madame Kovarian executed the Order herself (at least before she was killed by my mother), or had one of her goons to do it under her order. Either way, my confidence in finding Mom miraculously back to her normal 'Mom' self, even after Kovarian's death, is exceedingly low.

"What're we gonna do once we do find her?" I can't help but admit my fear out loud. "I mean…the moment she sees us, she'll…you know…"

"Immediately try to kill us, because that's what they've reprogrammed her to do?" Dad says what I obviously didn't want to say, but he evidently felt the need to say it anyway. He then sighs heavily. "I regret to admit it, but…I fear you may be right."

"So what do we do?" I ask again. "I feel like we shouldn't be doing this if what you said is true. If it's only us she's after, shouldn't the Paternoster Gang have gone in our place?"

"What I said is true," he replies, his own nervousness increasing. "I know that's what the Silence have done. Like you said, they've reawakened her programming when they captured her by reactivating that chip in her head. We need to find a way to incapacitate her somehow and surgically remove that chip. Without dying, of course."

I raise an eyebrow at this. So he did hear me before. "Wait, so you actually heard me when I psychically connected with you when I thought of the idea before?"

He nods. "Of course I did. I heard everything. That's the only logical thing to do at this point."

"I didn't sense whether or not we connected properly," I say with a puzzled frown. Normally, I would sense his link with me all the time, but that was one of the rare times when I didn't feel the link between us, much like when he was time-locked on Contraxia.

He pauses and answers in a hesitant tone, "I was…preoccupied with something else at the time. It's not important. I got your message; that's all you need to know."

His statement makes me pause as well, making me realize exactly what he's talking about. What he obviously doesn't want to talk about, and who can blame him? Who in their right mind would actually want to talk about their experiences of being tortured, almost to the point of Death, by their greatest enemies? That's why I couldn't sense him, and he didn't answer me when I first gave him the psychic message. He wasn't in his right mind to have completely focused on my psychic message because he was busy trying to keep himself alive. This realization gives me the disturbing thought that Dad had way worse injuries before I saw him on that stage, possibly with similar injuries as what the space-pirates inflicted on him on Contraxia, and Dad had attempted to heal himself as his 'execution' was being prepared. This makes me want to get back at the Silence even more, and thankfully Strax is on that right now. I just hope he's not stopped along the way, needless to say.

Eventually, I begin thinking back on Dad's speech from earlier, and I suddenly feel the need to talk about it. "Thank you," I admit in a slightly timid tone.

"For what?" Dad asks, puzzled. "Me receiving your psychic message about your mother?"

I shake my head. "No. About…earlier. About what you said back there in the room with everyone else. That speech about how you weren't ready to see me grow up and stuff."

"Oh… That," he says in a slightly embarrassed tone. "What about it?" he asks slowly, giving me a nervous 'did I say something wrong?' sideways glance.

"It's just…I get it," I shrug in a 'no big deal' manner. "Even despite being eighteen, you still see me as that helpless baby you gave up, and that's why you've been treating me like you have."

"I'm truly sorry about that," he sighs shamefully. "I really am."

"I know," I nod in forgiveness, "and I know you meant every word. I could sense it through our link. It's okay, I forgive you. Like you said, you were just trying to do what's best for me, and giving me up was the best thing." I suddenly pause, realizing that there is a much better way of rephrasing that last part. "I mean, you giving me up to protect me was the best thing, not you giving me up because you thought my life would be better without you."

Dad chuckles. "No, I understand what you meant." His statement makes me sense from him that the latter was actually true for him at one point; that was, until recently, when I was brought back into his life when Mom saved me from those Silence members in the alley.

"Needless to say, if you hadn't given me up when you did, we'd be in a much different situation right now," I point out. I don't mention my feeling like in that said 'different situation,' I would be the one trying to kill Dad instead of my mother, or both me and Mom would be trying to kill him together.

"I understand," Dad says again without saying anything else for a while after.

After that long while passes, he speak up again, his sense—as well as my own—of Mom's presence heightening. "We're pretty close to her now. Stay on high alert, Nova. She could pop out anywhere."

"Right," I nod nervously, knowing she, much like everyone else in this goddamn base, is armed with a gun and is trained to use it like a proper sniper. Just the very thought makes me look around at the various fallen bodies with their guns laying carelessly at their sides. I speak up, saying, "Should we find something to defend ourselves with? There're guns everywhere." Since Mom has a gun that she could snipe us with at any time, so should we, right?

"No," Dad frowns and shakes his head, like that's the most ridiculous idea in the history of the universe. "Absolutely not."

"I don't mean use them to shoot at her," I say defensively. "I mean we could use them to defend ourselves—you know, give warning shots or something to show that we're armed too so we don't appear weak." Needless to say, an unarmed person makes for a much easier target; even the dumbest person in the universe would know that.

"It doesn't matter," he shakes his head again. "I'm not using weapons, and I won't let you use them either."

Too late for that, dude, I think to myself, thinking back to when that strange, cloaked boy rescued me and encouraged me to use a gun to defend us, even when I was against using it at first. But this—this is an entirely different situation. This time it's Mom who's trying to kill us, not your typical enemy.

"I don't like weapons either," I attempt to continue defending my earlier remark, "but I'm just saying, if we just—"

"I'm through discussing this!" he grunts in a severely stressed-out tone. "We're not using weapons on my wife, and that's final!"

Whoa, whoa, chill; I said we weren't going to, I think about saying but don't, suddenly feeling embarrassed and ashamed of myself for thinking of the idea in the first place, knowing full well that Dad is completely against violence, especially on his wife, of all people, no matter what condition she is in. An awkward silence fills the air between us as we continue moving forward.

After a few more seconds, Dad suddenly stops in his tracks, sighing heavily and shaking his head. "I suppose there is one weapon we can use," he says, seemingly changing his mind about before, "and by 'we,' I actually mean you."

"What?" I exclaim, puzzled at his strange change of mind. "What could I possibly do?" I can't help but wonder why he would actually want to use any weapon on his wife, and I especially wonder why he'd allow me to go about it. What in the world is he thinking?!

"You can project your thoughts into another's mind at will," he explains, "no matter where in Space and Time they are. It's part of being Deviant. You can use your advanced psychic abilities to connect with your mother."

"Wait!" I frown. "'It's part of being Deviant?' What does that mean? What is a Deviant? Kovarian called me that, and you seemed to recognize the word but didn't say anything. Why? What does it mean? What am I?" The more I ask about the unusual word, the more afraid I feel of finding out the truth about it.

Dad sighs, stopping in his tracks again, turns to me, and places his hands gently on top of my shoulders. "You are…very special. Not just to me but to the entire universe. Your advanced psychic abilities are what make you special. You can do things other Time Lords can't. Things even I can't do. I mentioned that I can also project my mind into other's minds, but I can only do it with people within the same room as me, but you…you can project your mind across all of Space-Time. You mentioned seeing into your mother's and Jenny's minds, even when they weren't in our current time. Only an extremely high-level telepath can do something like that. I'm considered a low-level telepath, so I'm not as powerful as you. That was why you were able to wake me up when the Shada Dämo trapped me inside my own mind. Your psychic connection is much stronger than mine. You are exceedingly rare, Nova, especially for a Time Lord. Growing up in the Academy, I knew very few people like you, and people I didn't get to know for very long. Way back in the day, powerful Time Lords like you, which the Gallifreyan High Council called 'Deviants,' were considered as dangerous to the community, and they were ordered to be executed or taken in for experimentation."

I raise a skeptical eyebrow at this. "By 'experimentation,' you mean like what the Silence did to me when I was born?"

"Not exactly," he shakes his head before continuing in a hesitant tone. "The experiments that the Silence did to you were much different from the Gallifreyan High Council's experiments. In fact, the Silence's experiments were much less gruesome than the ones performed on my planet."

"What do you mean?" I ask, feeling highly disturbed. "What kind of experiments did the Council do?" Or do I even want to know?

Dad shakes his head again, having heard my thoughts. "Let's stay focused. The main point I was getting at was that you could use your psychic abilities to connect with your mother exactly like you connected with me in my dream."

"You mentioned a 'weapon' I was allowed to use," I point out, "but you didn't say what the 'weapon' actually was."

He nods. "Yes, I was getting to that."

"Is it a physical weapon?" I ask curiously.

He shakes his head once again. "No. It is an oral weapon. Specifically, one's way of using words. Words always win wars."

I frown at this. "That doesn't make sense. How do words win wars?"

"Words are so much better than physical weapons," Dad explains. "Physical weapons just instigate more violence. However, with the right words, they can stop the fighting. Stop the killing. Your greatest talent, Nova, is your way with words; you get that from me. I'm confident that, with the right words, you will be able to psychically—and especially emotionally—connect with your mother and break her free from the Silence's control over her…" He pauses. "Much like I did in Berlin with her many years ago."

"How did you connect with her then?" I ask.

He pauses again for a few seconds before shrugging with a sigh, "Well…I died."

I frown, puzzled. "That was it? Your death broke her free?"

"It wasn't just my death. Right before I died, I whispered something in her ear…" He pauses again as if too timid to share what he said, like he'd be embarrassed for the rest of his life once it was revealed.

"What did you say?" I ask anyway.

Before he has a chance to answer, he and I begin hearing rushing footsteps and gunshots in the distance from the battle that hasn't quite ended yet. "Quick, hide!" he exclaims, grabbing my arm to stop me in my tracks. "In here!" He pulls me into a side room with a gaping hole in the wall from the door having been blasted open long ago and holds me against the wall in the darkness as the assailants rush past, luckily not peeking inside the room as they pass. One brief look around the room, and I recognize it to be the abandoned office that the mysterious cloaked boy hid me in before.

"We're running out of time," Dad grunts once the attackers are out of earshot. "We need to hurry and find your mother before that lot do." His statement makes me worry that they may have already found her, but I refuse to even think about what they did to her as a result.

"You told the army not to shoot her, right?" I ask, thinking that to be something highly important for our Homo-Reptilian army to know before their arrival. "And by 'you' I actually mean the Paternoster Gang," I add, believing that Dad asked the trio to pass on that information shortly after finding out that they summoned the army in the first place.

"Of course I told them," he says in an obvious tone. "River may be brainwashed onto the Silence's side, but she's still on our side. Even if they have already found her, hopefully they haven't hurt her and instead have her tightly secure to make it easier for us to pop in and break her connection with Kovarian once and for all."

"Isn't that connection with Kovarian already broken?" I ask, puzzled. "She's dead! Mom killed her; I saw it with my own eyes!"

"Oh, on the contrary, dearie…" a familiar female voice chuckles evilly through the room just as a light turns on in the darkness, projecting a cruel face on the far wall. "I am still very much alive."

It's her. The Wicked Witch herself, Madame Kovarian. She's back.

But how?

"You!" I growl in anger and shock that she is, in fact, still alive, stomping toward her large image on the wall. "How the fuck are you still alive?" This is completely impossible! How the fuck did she not die?

"Nova, language!" Dad chastises me for my choice of words.

"Who the hell cares!" I snap back at him. I stare suspiciously at the projection of Kovarian's face—the face I'd be damned to ever see again, and yet here she is. "This can't be real!" I say, shaking my head in disbelief. "This has to be some messed up pre-recorded message, or something! It has to be because she can't still be alive! She disintegrated right in front of me! In front of everyone! No one can survive something like that!"

Kovarian shakes her head with that typical smirk on her face. "Alas, I survived without even a bruising. And no, this isn't a pre-recorded message, dearie. I am speaking to you live and from a very long way away. Good luck trying to find me because you never will. But I do like to keep tabs on you, especially your father."

"Not creepy at all," I say sarcastically as a response.

"Perhaps by now you have figured out how I survived," she continues as if I hadn't said anything at all. "I know your father certainly has."

"How?" I demand more from her than from him.

"The Flesh," he murmurs with an annoyed sigh.

"The what?" I frown at the strange and extremely gross-sounding name.

"The Flesh," he speaks up louder. "She made a Flesh avatar of herself to be put in her place. That's what we've been up against in the whole time we've been here." I see Kovarian's smirk widen in confirmation at this.

"What the hell is 'The Flesh?'" I growl, rolling my eyes.

"It's a substance that can create Doppelgangers—or 'Gangers' for short—in place of real humans," he explains. "They were used in real humans' places as a way of protecting them from tasks that are deemed too dangerous, such as Acid-Mining. On occasion, a Ganger can become sentient if it separates from its human operator due to a solar storm or electrical disruption." He then glances distrustfully at Kovarian's hologram, saying in a pointed tone, "Or the Gangers can be used for much more nefarious purposes, such as kidnapping the original individual and replacing him or her with an exact copy of himself or herself to take advantage of said person, or to trick others into believing that the Flesh copy is the real thing. This exact thing happened to your grandmother once and your mother twice—the first time when she was just born, and the second time when she was about to give birth to you."

I sigh, glaring contemptuously at her hologram as well. "So you made a Flesh duplicate of yourself…"

"To protect myself, yes," Kovarian nods. "I knew you'd try to kill me in one way or another, but I have to admit that I did not expect your mother to kill me directly, since that chip in her head was specifically designed to prevent her from directly killing me."

I pause, realizing that the only reason Mom was able to directly kill Kovarian was because that wasn't, in fact, the real Kovarian. It was a cloned copy of herself all along. Meanwhile, the real Kovarian was safe who-knows-where, who-knows-when.

You conniving, cheeky, sadistic witch!

Despite everything, I can't help but feel the need to sneak in some last words before she cuts us off, and we have to go through the painful process of hunting her down again before I have another chance. "Clearly your control over her isn't as powerful as you originally thought," I say, crossing my arms in a 'yeah, that's right, bitch; I just went there' tone. "I told you she was still in there! I knew she could still hear me! It's exactly like Mom said when you previously tried to brainwash her: 'you can't control the mind of a Time Lord, no matter what percentage of Time Lord they are. They're too powerful even for your technology.' We are too powerful even for your technology! Like she said, you underestimate us! We can't be controlled or defeated! If you think you can completely control us, you're wrong! We are way more powerful than you can ever imagine!"

Kovarian pauses for a few seconds as if contemplating my words. She smirks again as she seems to glance subtly to the side, specifically toward Dad. "Well, if you believe that's true… Perhaps we should put that to the test. Let's see you survive this." She then speaks softly and firmly into a small microphone in her hand, "Kill them!" before her image disappears, drowning us in darkness once again.

Puzzled as to who Kovarian was speaking to through the microphone, I turn back to Dad for an explanation when I immediately gasp upon seeing my mother appearing in the doorway right behind him, aiming her gun directly at the back of his head.

"DAD, LOOK OUT!" I scream right as she takes the shot.

Thankfully, Dad is quick enough to dodge the shot as it ricochets off of one of the abandoned servers, sending sparks flying.

"NO!" I scream as I immediately shoot a ball of Regeneration Energy at her gun, forcing her to drop it to the floor. I run to it and kick it into the hallway to prevent her from picking it back up. I immediately gasp again once I see her take out a knife—the same knife that she cut herself with before while possessed by Kovarian—from her pocket and begins swinging it at us, though she swings it more toward Dad than at me.

"River, don't! It's us!" he pleads as she goes after him with the knife.

His words have no effect on her as she continues swinging the knife at his chest. Eventually she traps him against a server, and she immediately raises the knife to plunge it into his neck.

"River, stop! This isn't you!" Dad screams at her again as he struggles to hold her arm while preventing the knife's blade from slicing the exposed skin.

"Leave him alone!" I scream as I attempt to shove the knife out of Mom's hand but to no avail. Unfortunately, she is much too strong for both of us as she attempts to stab at Dad's eyes. "Dad! What do we do?" I cry as I desperately try to pull my mother off of him without being stabbed myself. "She's too powerful!"

I guess this is what 'Order 66' is like, I think to myself, just like in the movie, except here it's real and it's actually happening to us!

"Do what I said before!" Dad chokes out as, this time, Mom has her free hand wrapped around his throat while still trying to stab his eyes out. "Connect with her telepathically!"

"How?" I ask as I continue struggling to prevent my mother from killing my father. "She's too deep under their control!"

"You know how!" he growls in pain from his wife's weight pressing him against the damaged server. "Do exactly like you did with me! Help her regain control of herself! Talk to her! Find a way to enter her subconscious! Hurry! I can't hold her for much longer!"

In that moment, I feel a wave of fear rush up my spine. "But… She'll kill me…" I whimper. "She'll kill you."

"She won't kill you!" he continues growling against his wife ruthlessly trying to murder him (again). "It's like you said, she's still in there! By linking to her subconscious, you can bring her out! You can save her! You can save me! You want your chance to prove yourself; this is your chance! You can do this; I know you can! Hurry, before she kills us both!" He says this as Mom squeezes even tighter around his neck, blocking his vocal cords.

I frown, suddenly remembering his conversation about Berlin. "What did you say to her?" I say anxiously.

"What?" he barely chokes out, frowning at me in a 'is this really a good time?' manner.

"In Berlin, when you connected with her last time…" I point out. "Right before you died… What did you whisper in her ear?"

He grunts between chokes of breath as he struggles to hold Mom any longer, staring directly into her eyes. "I told her…that I loved her! That I forgave her…for everything she did under the Silence's control! That I even…forgave her…for killing me. Her realization…for what she'd done…broke her free last time."

In that moment, something seems to spark in her. She blinks momentarily, indicating that she is, indeed, trying to gain back control of herself. However, a second later, she shakes her head as she reverts back to her murderous self, tightening her hold on Dad's throat and raising the knife to his face once again.

"Look! She blinked!" I exclaim joyously, pointing this out to Dad. "She can hear us! We're so close!"

"It's your turn!" he says to me in an encouraging tone. "You're much stronger than me! Connect with her in your own way! Connect with her emotionally like I did! Do it!"

"Mom!" I say as I continue fighting her off, attempting to look right into her eyes like Dad did just seconds ago. "I know you can hear me! I know you can hear us! We know you're still in there! We're trying to save you! The Silence are controlling you! Don't let them! Fight them!"

Again, her words seem to have no effect on her as she continues attacking us; rather, attacking Dad. "It's not working!" I growl in frustration.

"Keep trying, Nova!" he encourages me again. "Don't give up! Connect deeper with her! Go into her subconscious! It's the only way!" At this point, I begin to see him gradually lose his strength to keep Mom away any longer.

I shake my head, still feeling hesitant, scared that I will die. I suddenly think back on that brief conversation with Idris—about how I believed that the only reason she was letting me go to the base against my father's wishes was because she saw something 'big' happening in my future; and I can't help but feel like this—what is happening right here, right now—is that 'big event' that Idris was referring to. She knew that only I am powerful enough—more powerful than even my father—to save Mom because of my so-called 'Deviancy.' I shake my head, thinking that at this point, whether or not I might actually die as a result from this, I don't care what happens here, as long as both of my parents—as well as everyone else I came here to save—are safe.

I am somehow given newfound strength as, this time, I finally manage to pull Mom off of Dad, forcing her to attack me instead. Dad immediately begins coughing and wheezing as Mom raises her knife at me this time. She swings her knife at me, and I dodge it as much as I can, and once I see an opening, I use the opportunity to reach out and place my hands over her temples, prepared to enter her mind, just like Dad taught me how to enter his.

However, just as I manage to hold Mom in position and attempt to enter her mind, I suddenly feel a sharp stab right through my chest, right through one of my hearts, but I ignore the painful feeling as I enter my mother's mind.

Inside her mind, I enter the entryway of what I recognize as The British Museum—having gone there with hazel just a few weeks ago—only this 'museum' is slightly different from the original in London. Aside from the original artifacts in the actual museum, this one holds other artifacts seemingly from other planets, most likely from planets where Mom went on adventures with Dad or on her own expeditions as an Archaeologist. I walk around the space a bit, getting my bearings of the place, and eventually my eyes fall on the tall curly-haired woman standing with her back to me in the middle of the room, swaying slightly on the spot like she's sleepwalking.

"Mom!" I immediately call out to her. However, the moment I do, a metallic taste appears in my mouth, followed by a sharp pain in my left heart, but I ignore them as I approach my mother. Rather, the thing that looks like my mother.

Another strange thing appears to be happening; rather, it is heard all around me, in every direction. Various quotes are spoken in disembodied voices, but the voices sound exactly like my mother. However, the strangest thing about the quotes is that they sound like they are being said to someone—specifically to Dad—in times of anger and hatred:

'It was never going to be a gun for you, Doctor. 'The Man of Peace,' who understands every kind of warfare except, perhaps, the cruelest.'

'The man who can turn an army around at the mention of his name. 'Doctor.' The word for 'healer' and 'wise man' throughout the universe. We get that words from you, you know. But if you carry on the way you are, what might that word come to mean?'

'That was a stupid waste of Regeneration Energy! Nothing is gained by you being a sentimental idiot! … No, you embarrass me!'

The voices carry on, some even repeating, but I ignore them, as well as everything else, as I continue approaching my mother, who continues standing there, still as a mindless drone.

"Mom…" I whisper as I slowly reach out to touch her shoulder. "It's me. I'm he—Argh!"

I suddenly lose my strength and fall to my knees, clutching my chest from the sharp pain. I even feel a knot catch in my throat, and I immediately cough it out, only to see something splatter onto the floor once I do:

Blood.

Feeling my fear skyrocketing, I clutch my chest tighter, only to feel thick, warm liquid covering my chest and hands. I instantly look down at my hands and gasp.

More blood.

Feeling my fear reaching peak point, I look down at my chest.

Even more blood. In fact, there appears to be a stab wound right over the spot where my left heart is, and blood continues to trickle out from it, staining my uniform with red and orange.

A terrible realization dawns on me at that very moment:

I've been stabbed. By none other than my own mother.

My vision immediately goes blurry, and I feel myself falling to the floor, drowning myself in my own blood. "Mom…" I beg, looking up at my mother as my vision continues to blur, and an incessant ringing fills my ears. "Please… Hear me… H-H-Help me…" I weakly reach out and just barely touch the back of her ankle.

In that moment, my vision blurs to the point where I am almost completely blind, yet somehow I still manage to hear my mother's melodic voice whisper, "Nova?" At first, it is so soft that I can't tell if it's just another of her echoes or her actual voice.

I barely have time to decide when I hear my father's voice scream even louder from somewhere in the ether, "NOVA!"

In that moment, my mother's face emerges from the fog, leaning over me with a look of absolute horror on her face, and on each side of her face are two small hands squeezing hard, and I realize that they are my own hands. More than that, I realize that I am out of my mother's mind and back in the real world, yet the sharp pain in my chest is still there; in fact, it now feels excruciatingly worse than it was before.

"Mom…" I manage to choke out before I feel myself falling again, this time into another person's strong arms.

"Nova!" Dad cries as he wraps his arms around me, setting me gently on the floor, and immediately wrapping his fingers around the hilt of a knife—Mom's knife right through my chest, right through my left heart. Blood immediately gushes out from the wound the moment the knife is pulled out, staining my uniform with red and orange.

"Nov—" Mom, now finally back to normal, gasps in fright at what she's done, but she is cut off as a small pink snake-like creature sinks its fangs into the side of her neck, and she collapses to the floor just as the snake-like thing recoils back into the mouth of a green woman—Madame Vastra. She rushes into the room, followed closely by a familiar redheaded woman (my grandmother, Amy) and another man (my grandfather, Rory).

"Doctor!" Vastra exclaims as they all enter the scene, in absolute hysterics. "I came as quickly as I could! I thought you might've needed backup! Your In-Laws insisted on coming with me!"

"Vastra! Amy! Rory!" Dad exclaims joyously, in immense panic, though his voice, much like Vastra's, sounds muffled from the incessant ringing in my ears. "Your timing couldn't have been better! You have to help me! Nova…" The moment he says my name, he immediately breaks down in tears. At the same time, my vision begins to blur again.

"Mels!" my grandmother exclaims upon seeing my mother and me. "Oh God, Nova!"

"What the hell happened, Doctor?" my grandfather asks, sounding just as shocked as everyone else, as he appears to kneel down beside us.

"She was stabbed!" Dad whimpers, wrapping his arms tighter around me. "River stabbed her right through one of her hearts! It… It wasn't intentional! She was under the Silence's control…" He begins choking on his words out of fear of losing me, his only daughter. In all honesty, this is the first time I'm seeing—rather, hearing—him seriously break down like this. It doesn't seem like him at all, not by a longshot.

"It's okay, Doctor," I hear Rory say calmly. "Let me see her." I then feel a different set of hands move themselves over my body for a few seconds before I hear him speak again with an apologetic sigh. "It doesn't look good. She's losing a lot of blood. We need to get her to the TARDIS fast."

"What about Mels?" I hear Amy ask close to where Mom lays on the floor.

"I'll carry Nova," Dad says as I feel him begin sliding his arms gently under my body. "Rory, you carry River. We need to get them both to the TARDIS fast. I'm not losing them again!"

"Okay, Doctor," Rory says with what I imagine to be a nod. "Let me wrap Nova's chest really quick. I can at least stop some of the bleeding." He then begins whispering to me as I feel him wrapping some kind of heavy cloth over my chest, "Stay with us, Nova. You can do this. Don't give up."

"Dad…" I try calling to him as I gradually begin losing consciousness. I use the rest of my strength to lift my hand up in his general direction, and I immediately feel his familiar hand grip mine tightly like a lifeline.

"You're okay, Nova," he whispers, gripping my body even more tightly, desperate not to lose me. "Everything's going to be okay. Just stay with me. You can do it."

"Come on, Nova! Stay awake! We can't lose you!"

Those last few lines, my grandfather says, I can barely hear as I completely lose my sense of hearing, save for the unbearably loud ringing in my ears, but even that begins to fade along with my general consciousness.

"Dad…" I manage to mouth once more before I lose my senses entirely as my consciousness fades to nothing, despite my grandfather's words…

As I involuntarily reach the end…

A/N: TO BE CONTINUED!...

Or will it?

Will Nova even survive? You will soon find out…

Also, kudos to those who guessed how Madame Kovarian survived River's shot before it was actually revealed in the chapter :)