So, we're going to get a bit wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey here – because I am a bad Doctor Who fan. Stay with me.

We're going to be playing in two different AUs. One slightly off from ours, and one slightly off from the Doctor's. Why? Because when I started writing this, I had only seen up to halfway through season eight, and hadn't rewatched in ages. As I wrote, I rewatched, and caught up, but the timeline of our main protag and the show is off. I've made it so Season Eight didn't air, and we're going to pretend the accidental years-long breaks are totally normal. Please.

I know how important trigger warnings are. I'll post that there's a trigger warning in the author's note. If you have triggers you're worried about, scroll straight to the bottom and it'll be in the closing author's note. That way no one who hates spoilers will see it, but hopefully those who need them will feel a bit safer.

This fic is complete at 60 chapters. Updates should be weekly.

One last thing, for anyone who might have me on author alert for fics I haven't updated in years: I am not planning on leaving any fic unfinished. I've been doing work on them, though slowly. Don't give up on me!

TL;DR: There are two alternate universes to cover my mistakes, trigger warnings in the closing AN's of chapters that require them, my other fics will be finished.

See why this fic is so long? I'm wordy as hell. Enjoy.

(trigger warning below)

Emerald Green

Chapter One

Start Off With A Bang

New York City

Her pale eyes glanced at the dark shop window as she walked by the glass, and the man that had been following her from across the street wasn't in the reflection. Her relief faded when she turned her eyes ahead again: he was now standing down the block ahead of her, blocking the sidewalk with his wide frame. Trying to look nonchalant, Emmy paused to glance into the window of another store to examine the sequin skirt on a mannequin, fake checked her phone, frowned, and turned around to hurry back the way she came. Don't make a scene. That would be a bad idea when you were trying to get away with maybe, possibly, breaking the law.

She couldn't really be sure if she had broken the law. Was following someone around and taking secret pictures and searching their trash for evidence of organized crime breaking the law? Having worked as an investigative journalist for so long, she really should have known by then. Maybe the picture thing was illegal, or maybe the trash thing. Either way, she had to get away from this man she could only assume was a bodyguard sent to put a quiet stop to her stalking. Sending his bodyguard instead of the police told her one thing: the aspiring congressman was definitely up to something he didn't want the public finding out.

But before she could find the secret and write the exposé and save her professional life, she first had to get away from the burly bodyguard while looking like she didn't know she was being followed and save her actual life.

Seeing a green walk light up ahead, she half-jogged across the street, and then spotted a path leading into the park. Perfect. Fewer people meant fewer witnesses to his potentially murdering her, but more space to try to shrug him off was ideal, rather than following the sidewalk and being funneled in a straight line. And she lived almost straight across the park from there, in the one-bedroom apartment she shared with another failing journalist. All she had to do was get there without leading her new friend there.

Not a problem.

It was a problem. Not so much because of the big, burly bodyguard, but more because of the wedding reception taking place right in the way of her path. She could go around the long way, but she'd just managed to shake him, and the longer she was in the park, the more likely she was to run into him again. She'd have to cut through, but in case he was catching up, she had to do it without sticking out, so if he asked questions no one could mention which way she was headed, or if he ran by, he wouldn't even see her.

Emmy watched people mill about the reception. Long dresses, neckties, big hats. She looked down at herself. Short shorts, exploding TARDIS tank top, trusty emerald green leather jacket. At least she had some good heels on, though walking across the grass in them seemed less than desirable. Still, she had to try.

So off the sidewalk she stepped, and she moved across the grass to where tables were set with pale pink tablecloths and blue Mason jars filled with peonies. A photographer wandered through them, snapping photos of women snacking on petit fours, teens trying to wrangle smaller children who ran around singing a nursery rhyme about rain and a man bumping his head, and groups of men standing around probably talking about boring stuff, like banks and elections. Seeing an abandoned big floral hat, Emmy grabbed it and set it on her head. A few feet away someone had left a long white trench coat tossed over a chair, and she grabbed that and slipped it on. If the owners didn't spot her, maybe she could slip across unnoticed.

Unnoticed except by the photographer, apparently. "Hey," he called out. "Smile."

"I hate my picture being taken," she used the automatic reply she always had ready.

"Too bad," replied the photographer, raising the camera.

There seemed to be no avoiding this one. Well, at least she'd be a mystery in the couple's wedding album. She flashed a bright smile and a peace sign. "Great couple, huh?" she commented. That was something people said at weddings, right?

"Yeah. You a friend of the bride?"

"Sure." She didn't have time to chat, so Emmy kept walking, but her heels were sinking into the ground, and that was going to slow her down. "Can I borrow you for a sec?"

"What do you need?"

Emmy set a hand on his shoulder and reached down to take off one heel, then the other. "Thanks," she commented, and ignored his confused look as she continued moving forward, quickly, but not so quickly she'd be obvious. She saw phones out everywhere, and assumed she'd be in the background of a lot of pictures. She usually avoided photos as often as possible – it was her safest option – but this couldn't be helped. Hopefully no one followed any of these middle-aged, middle-class, middle-everything people on social media. Being discovered was the last thing she wanted.

"Hey!" she heard a woman shout, and inwardly groaned. She knew what was going to happen before it did. "That's my hat!"

Emmy turned with a smile and a lie about mixing up their hats on the tip of her tongue she hoped would be believable, when she spotted something significantly worse than an angry old woman.

Mr. Burly was barreling through the crowd at her. Shit. Emmy turned to run, having to shove a server aside in order to move forward. "Sorry!" she cried, then danced around a chair a little too far from the table.

"Thief!" the woman cried. Of course, she thought Emmy was running to get away with her ugly hat. The thing flew off as she picked up speed, at least, so she hoped that would stop all the attention being drawn to her, but the woman kept screaming, "Catch that thief! Help that man catch that thief!"

"Awesome," she muttered to herself, shrugging off the coat and darting to the left. Dodging between tables became easier, though, as apparently no one wanted to mess with a dangerous hat thief. Still, she needed a way to get the bodyguard off her back. He was taller than her, and quickly gaining. She saw out of the corner of her eye a table with a large, intricate cake on it, and groaned. She knew what had to be done.

Making a beeline for the cake and spotting the table of throwing rice packets behind it, Emmy's mind skipped ahead a few steps. Cake, rice, gazebo, shoes. That would be the ticket. Cake, rice, gazebo, shoes.

She dashed around the table and spun around to see that the bodyguard had made it to the other side of it. He began to move one way, and she moved the opposite. He paused, and tried moving the other way. With each step, she shifted backwards a little. By the time he realized what she was about to do, it was too late. With a strong dancer's leg, she kicked the table forward hard, causing the cake to fly forward and up, straight into his face. She turned, tucked her shoes under her arm, grabbed a handful of bags, tore them open, and ran back around the table. At that point, he'd wiped the buttercream and chunks of cake from his eyes, just in time for her to fling the rice into them. Then she ran back the way she'd come.

Everything was chaos. Ruining a wedding cake was a tragedy. People were screaming. Kids were crying. The groomsmen and bridesmaids ran to try to salvage it. Just enough people moving and screaming around her that she managed to dive under the gazebo without being seen. She crawled to the other side on her stomach, keeping her head low beneath the gazebo floor. She tossed both shoes out, then crawled back to the middle, and waited. While she watched for Mr. Burly's shoes, she tried to catch her breath, and keep her heart from beating so painfully.

It was only now she noticed the fear. It was only now, in a moment of tense stillness, she let herself absorb what would likely happen if she was caught. If the aspiring congressman really had connections with organized crime, well – he would probably do anything to stop that from coming out, and his connections would make it easy for her to disappear. She took in a slow, deep breath, and whispered to herself her mantra, her philosophy, her oath: "Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla." She risked closing her eyes for a moment in the hopes it would help slow her racing heart. "Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla." She had to escape. For them.

When she heard heavy footfalls, Emmy opened her eyes. The bodyguard's mud-caked boots were in front of her, but the heel was facing her, not the toes, thank the stars. She watched his hand go down to pick up a shoe, and then pick up the other one and take off in that direction. What he was going to do with the shoes she wasn't sure. What a weird Cinderella situation that would be.

She turned her head to the other side. The wedding was still chaos. She thought she heard the bride crying. "So sorry," she muttered, as she crawled forward and slid out from under the gazebo. She was caked in filth, but didn't have time to worry about it. Emmy ran as fast as she could forward, straight for home.

With sticks in her hair, rice down her shirt, and filthy feet developing blisters, Emmy finally made it to the seventh floor, and slid her key into the door. She stepped inside, leaned against the door to close it, and repressed a laugh of relief. She tossed her keys at the hook on the wall, and when they missed and hit the floor, she shrugged, too exhausted to care.

"What the hell happened to you?"

Emmy finally noticed her roommate sitting on the couch across from her, laptop unsurprisingly on her lap, a pen holding her blonde hair in place, a bowl of green grapes beside her.

"Long story. Don't ask."

"But-"

"No, really. It's safer if you don't." Emmy moved to sit in the beige chair she'd dragged up from the dumpster one day, but Isla threw a grape at her. "Hey! What?"

Isla glared. "Don't sit. You're filthy. You'll get mud and – is that cake frosting?"

Emmy looked down at her TARDIS tank top, and frowned. Apparently at some point some of the – was that Italian or American buttercream? – frosting had managed to get on her, despite kicking the cake the other way. "Great. This is my favorite shirt."

"Get in the shower."

"You're not my real mom."

"Your real mom should've tau-" Isla froze, her mouth still hanging a little open. Emmy braced for the wave to hit. "Sorry. I wasn't thinking."

This time, the grief just barely got her feet wet. The images stayed where they belonged: locked in the back of her mind. "It's fine. Is there any hot water left?"

"Might be."

Emmy turned and walked down the hall, ignoring Isla's shouted question about where the shoes Emmy had borrowed from her were. She leaned into the door to get into the bedroom, since the door got a bit stuck when shut. Inside were two twin beds, two dressers, and a shared bookcase. There wasn't much room for anything else. She went to her dresser, set the half-stale bag of sour gummy worms on top of the dresser instead of still sitting in the already-open drawer, and then started tossing unfolded clothes on the floor, looking for something she liked. She tried to concentrate on not letting the clean clothes mix with the dirty, but that concentration was interrupted by her phone going off.

Emmy sighed, reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone, and looked at the number. She then very slowly stuck the phone into her underwear drawer and buried it, grabbed leggings, and a green tank crop top, and went to the bathroom. After twenty minutes of scrubbing and another twenty of fighting a comb through her long, thick hair, she went back to her bedroom. The phone was ringing again. She grabbed it and saw that she'd missed six calls. Well, there wasn't really any other choice, was there?

"If it isn't my least favorite cousin," she greeted.

"I'm your only cousin," Aiden reminded her.

"And still managed to be my least favorite." Emmy threw her dirty clothes approximately where her basket was, which was dangerously close to the clean clothes she'd just pulled out and dropped on the floor. "What can I do for you? We're not due our yearly phone chat for another two months."

"Glad to know you count the hours until I call."

"With an impending sense of doom."

She didn't have to see him to know that Aiden rolled his eyes. "What happened?"

Emmy turned and collapsed on her bed, then wriggled to get the scrunched up blanket a little flatter under her back. "Context might help."

"Mom called me. She said she was at a wedding reception you destroyed."

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," she groaned. "Aunt Loren was at that wedding?"

"Yeah. She's pissed. Wants to uninvite you for Thanksgiving." Tragedy, Emmy thought.

"Someone was following me," she muttered into the phone as she pressed it tightly against her ear. "Again."

"Did you deserve it?"

"I might've," she admitted. "But you're my cousin, you're supposed to be on my side."

As she waited for her cousin to finish laughing at the absurdity of taking her side no matter what, she glanced around the room. On her side, worn out posters of Doctor Who and Sherlock stapled to the wall. On Isla's, a copy of Monet's Water lilies in a golden frame. Isla was the niece Aunt Loren would have killed Emmy to have.

Aiden finally took a breath. "That's very wholesome of you to think, but considering I know what you do for a living-"

"Journalism is totally legitimate."

"If you call a weird mix of National Enquirer-level trash writing and vigilante justice to be journalism, I think I know why you couldn't cut it."

"Bite me," she responded. "Aren't you wondering who was following me? Aren't you worried I'm about to be murdered?"

"If you were going to be murdered, you would have called the police. You just want to show off. Show off what, I don't know." The next slow, deep breath told her he was about to say something she didn't want to hear. "Molly-"

"Emerald."

"Emerald, don't you think it's time you gave up and came home? Your writing career went from bestseller to e-magazines no one has ever heard of. You're being arrested every other month. Sooner or later, one of the people that starts following you is actually going to be dangerous."

"Look, just because Isla put up a 'Days Since Emmy Was Arrested' sign…" Emmy chose not to tell Aiden that this time might be a bit more dangerous than the usual. Then she set aside the thought that being followed probably shouldn't be considered 'usual'. "Came home to where? To what? I lived with you and your mom for what, a year and a few months, about ten years ago? What's there for me, besides a pet chicken?"

"…about Henrietta-"

"What's there for me, besides a dead chicken?" She corrected. "I know I've hit a rough patch in my career, but I've been busy. I'm trying to save the world, you know."

"One mildly environmentally harmful small company, homeless woman needing a tent, small time meth dealer, crying child lost in Central Park at a time? Please, Emerald. This one-woman crusade act was cute ten years ago, but you're almost thirty now. Grow up."

And convincing investors to open a free clinic by tricking them into a meeting, and pinpointing exactly who it was who'd been sending a local pop star threatening messages, and helping make a small non-profit popular with celebrities. "Remind me why I keep talking to you."

She heard Aiden throw something on a counter, frustrated. "I just mean that, at your age, with a real job, making real money, you could put a lot more good into the world then digging through dumpsters and stealing tents from Walmart. I mean, you could have been a real ballerina instead of just teaching a ballet workout class along with whatever this mess is that you do, before you got distracted."

Emmy leaned her head to hold the phone against her shoulder, so a hand could go to her wrist and trace the faint almost-white line across the top of it with her fingertips. 'Distracted' was one word for what had happened. "In my defense, I was broke, and Walmart fucks with their employees." She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of pointing out that calling what had happened being 'distracted' was needlessly cruel.

"How did you get the tent out without getting caught, anyway?"

Emmy decided it was time for a change in subject. "Please tell me you didn't eat Henrietta."

Aiden drew in a slow, deep breath, and Emmy ended the call and tossed the phone aside. That was enough catching up until their next yearly chat, if she really was uninvited for Thanksgiving.

And yet, as much as she hated to admit it, she needed him. And Aunt Loren. Besides Isla, they were all she had left in the world. She rarely saw any of them, but humans needed other humans. Social contact was necessary to survive. Necessary to stay sane - as sane as she could be, anyway.

So now she had to update her To Do list: One, not get thrown into a river with concrete shoes. Two, write the exposé on the potential congressman and win back a decent career. Three, get her aunt to invite her back to Thanksgiving.

Well, she might manage one of those. She hoped it was the one where she didn't get killed.

Two Months Later

So far, she hadn't been killed. Of course, she hadn't found solid evidence that would hold up in court, either, and she'd been followed a few more times, but still – not killed. That was a good start.

Less good, maybe, was the fight up the stairs with her arms full of something struggling. Opening the door was difficult, but she managed it, and shut it with her hip. "Hey! Isla! We have a duck now!" Slowly, she set the waterfowl down, where it promptly bit her ankle and ran off to hide under the couch. On the couch sat an unfamiliar young woman with dark hair and darker eyes.

"Oh. Hey. Sorry," she apologized. "It's got a broken wing. I'm just keeping it until I can find a vet."

The woman stood slowly, pulling her large dark bag onto her shoulder. "I was waiting for you."

Emmy's stomach dropped. She looked a little official, in trousers and a sweater set. Was she someone there about a legal issue? But Isla hadn't come out to the living room upon hearing the word 'duck' yet. Isla wasn't here. How did she get inside? "Oh. Sorry, not sure who you are. Are you a friend of Isla's?" she asked.

"Yes. But for you, not for her." Her voice was ragged, almost desperate.

She'd befriended Isla to get a spare key, and came inside to wait for her. Someone sent by the future congressman? Or, given the desperation, someone he was threatening who needed her help, maybe? "What are you talking about? Where's Isla?"

"At work, I expect," said the woman. Her eyes grew angry. So. Didn't need help. "It doesn't matter. I'm here for you."

Exits. One behind her, but the stairs were narrow and long and too easy to get trapped in. The fire escape was out the bedroom window, but that window got stuck a lot. Bathroom window, but she'd have to hang off the edge and try to drop onto one of the balconies on the fifth floor, two floors down. Her phone had been broken in pursuit of the duck; barricading herself in a room and calling for help wasn't an option. The neighbors weren't the kind of people who called the police, and she didn't need to get them involved. Besides, the only lock in the apartment that worked was for the front door.

So, she was talking her way out of this. "What do you want from me?"

"I read your book, Emerald Grace. Except it's actually Molly Phoenix, isn't it? Or do you prefer Molly Quinn? You have so many names."

Shit.

Emmy didn't try to play it off. If this woman knew her name and knew about the book and had taken the time to find her, there was no pretending she had the wrong person. And if she took all that time to get a way in while Isla wasn't home, there was only one thing she could want.

After a moment of trying to find a way to ignore the sharp pain in every quick beat of her heart, Emmy asked, "Which one was yours?" She hoped for a confused response.

"Ivy Noelle." Fuck.

Emmy nodded at the confirmation of her worst fear. "How did you find me?"

"People posted photos of you at a wedding reception where you stood out quite a bit." The woman's anger was moving closer and closer to the surface of her voice. Her hand went into her bag.

Emmy's heart begged her to say something; to give condolences, to plead for understanding, to explain that they were the same. But her mind knew better. There was no mercy to beg for. She turned for the door.

She never saw the barrel, but she would never forget the sound of the gun.

One Year, Four Months Later

London

A new country, a new home, and a new Molly Quinn. Or was it a new Emerald Grace? A new Alice Liddell? Whoever she was, she was brand new.

Well, that had been the plan, anyway. Now, she wasn't so sure. She'd wanted to be someone with no past to speak of, but she didn't feel like someone new. What she felt were the old scars that were carved deep into her body and soul.

She glanced around the hotel room. It had the average things, the bed, the TV, the minibar. Her empty carpet bag sat on top of the dresser, her clothes a mess in the drawers. Her dark wood cane leaned against the minibar. Two boxes of hair bleach and two boxes of blonde hair dye were waiting for her in the bathroom. Her hair – somewhere between carrot and fire engine red – was too recognizable, but after her flight, she was too jet-lagged to do anything with them.

Molly sat in near-splits on the bed, beige floral bedspread pushed aside, and all her new papers spread out before her. IDs and a birth certificate and even fake tax information, all with the name Alice Liddell matched with her face. This time, she'd done it right. Trash journalism had given her the right connections to pull off a fully new identity, along with papers to move to England. At first, she'd felt lucky. Now she longed to see her real name beside her face again. It had been so many years.

With a sigh, she collapsed backward, and reached behind her head for the TV remote. As much as she wanted to let the sound of her comfort show fill the room with calming vibrations, the neighbors likely didn't appreciate the sound of a Fan Favorite Doctor Who Episodes marathon so early in the morning the sun was still down quite as much as she did. She put the TV on mute with captions, and glanced up now and then as she gathered the papers, organized them, and placed them back into the bedside drawer. The originals – both Molly's and Emmy's – were tucked under her mattress.

Molly reached for the phone, deciding that she'd rather eat the bill than sit in silence. She dialed, reached for a sour gummy worm from the bag on her nightstand, listened to two rings, and grinned for the first time in days when her old roomie answered.

"Hey, cutie," she greeted Isla. "Having fun without me?"

"What the FUCK, Emmy?!"

Molly knew it was coming, but still she winced. "Yeah. I know. That wasn't very nice of me."

"Not nice? Where the hell did you go? You've been back from the physical rehab center for two weeks, and now you're gone? You didn't even leave a note, Emmy!"

Molly shifted her body to lie on her stomach and hang a long, thin arm over the edge and reach under the bed towards her real name. "Uh. London."

"What the f-"

"Can we skip ahead to me explaining myself?"

"It better be good. I come home and all your furniture is here, but most of your clothes are gone, your suitcase, your secret money stash. You even left Fred."

"Ah. Well, Fred's dead anyway." Molly gave a moment of silence for Fred the Fern.

"So are you, if you don't have a good reason for this," Isla said. Her voice had exchanged fire for ice. "Explain. Now."

And so, she did. All the secrets Molly had never told Isla, no matter how much she begged while Molly lay in the hospital bed. It all spilled from her like tears, one story after another, until she could make Isla understand why she had to become a new person, for the second time in her life. And why she was never coming back.

"Now you know," Molly sighed. "If you're still mad, go ahead and scream. I deserve it."

"Emmy…" Isla breathed. "I'm so sor-"

"Please don't," Molly cut her off quickly, her voice tight. "Don't. I can't hold your empathy and my trauma at the same time without breaking right now. I'm just barely keeping myself taped together." She had lost everything, again.

A long silence followed. "Why London?"

"You saw my posters," Molly reminded her. "That first set of foster parents should never have introduced me to Doctor Who."

Isla laughed. "Well, at least I can stop going on your stupid adventures and finally get some real work done."

"My adventures are not stupid," Molly protested.

"Your 'adventures' are either aquariums, zoos, or museums. That's not an adventure, that's a field trip."

"We went hiking that one time," Molly reminded her, but even she knew the argument was weak.

"You didn't even make it to the end of the trail. You were scared of the bugs."

"You're just being mean because you miss me."

"Whatever," said Isla, but she said it with a laugh. "I've gotta go to work. Try not to die without me. And call me sometimes."

"Hey, you can call me, too."

"No." Isla ended the call. Molly put the receiver down, almost grateful she was alone. She didn't want anyone to see the childish disappointment on her face, that the only person she had left had to stop talking to her and go to work. They'd had a hard enough time finding moments they could talk when they'd lived together. Now Molly lived on the other side of the world. Eventually, she knew, their connection – what little connection it was - would fade for Isla. And then Molly would be really, completely alone.

Trying to shake the melancholy, Molly turned the TV volume back on. She disappeared for a moment in the lights and the words and the music, but she turned it off before the end. The Eleventh Doctor was giving his farewell speech to Clara at the same time Matt Smith was saying his goodbye to the Doctor and to the show. Like the Doctor, Molly hated endings. She'd seen too many of them.

She finally got up and went into the bathroom, and peeled off the green tank dress she'd worn to heal her anxiety on the plane, since her mother had taught her that green was healing. She took a bath, sinking into the hot water and trying to keep her mind on how much she wished she had her honeysuckle bath oil, and not on how desperately alone she was again, in a country that was a stranger to her, filled with a sea of strangers. And then her mind would wander back to the face of the woman who'd tried to murder her standing trial despite Molly's objections. Or the solid wall of reporters that had met her on the steps of the courthouse she'd never wanted to be in, so much so that she'd refused to name the woman that shot her. She cut her bath short, and then she tried to dry her hair the best she could, pulled on a red t-shirt with holes in the collar that just reached the tops of her thighs, and crawled under the blankets, cool against her water-warmed skin. It felt good, despite her traditional hesitance to sleep. The nightmares always waited.

On that thought, Molly turned the TV back on, and another Doctor Who rerun was on. It would ease her into sleep, like a lullaby. She stretched out across the bed.

"Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla." Every morning, every night, like a prayer.

After a moment of thought, she decided to try a real prayer. She hadn't said a prayer since that night when she was thirteen, but what harm could there be? She let her eyes rest on a crack in the ceiling that almost looked like the TARDIS, if she squinted and tilted her head and pretended there were enough lines.

"Hey, it's me, Molly Quinn. Whatever kind of god or goddess or, like, pantheon you are, or the universe, magick, fate, even Santa Claus…" Like Amelia Pond. She smiled for a moment. "Whoever you are. You've kind of fucked me over a lot, and I feel like you owe me one. No offense." She took a deep breath. "I can take being shot, the spinal damage, and being a twenty-nine-year-old who has to use a cane. I don't care about that. I can even endure losing my ability to dance, though it's been my only form of self-expression all my life. What I can't endure for much longer is the grief, the anger, and the guilt. I really think it's killing me. My heart races and aches all the time. I've been holding it all for too long, and picking up more and more pieces of pain along the way. Let me have some time in my life where I don't have to be someone else or look over my shoulder or see faces every time I close my eyes, or hear names in my sleep. Just grant me that. That's all I want." She paused, and wiped a couple tears from her freckled cheeks. "Well. That and not being so alone anymore. But between the two, I'll take the first one."

She felt ridiculous. She felt adolescent. She felt exhausted, and so she set aside her dramatics and went to sleep.

?

?

Cold. Cold, cold, cold. Pain from the pinpricks the cold left in her skin. Something hard and cold, pressing all along against her side. Her neck bent oddly. The scar in her back throbbing with fury.

Molly gasped, and sat up from the floor quickly. The world blurred for her eyes for a moment, creating lines and swirls of pale blue and silver, but soon everything settled into a solid, impossible form.

She leapt to her feet, hissed in pain, and fell back onto her knees, creating a loud 'thud' noise she was sure would leave a bruise, if she were actually awake. Her knees ached as though she were awake, and it felt like her spine was vibrating, but being awake wasn't a possibility. A dream, a breakdown, some hallucination she was having before dying like the nerdiest white light ever – all possible. Being awake and in reality, and staring at the inside of the TARDIS? Not a thing.

This was the most realistic dream she'd ever had, and usually they felt realistic enough that she never even realized she was dreaming. She stood, slowly and carefully this time, grunting at the sharp pains in her spine. She looked up at the blue lights swirling in the pillar of the circular center console, up to the spinning display of circular Gallifreyan. All around her were lights and hexagons and blue, blue, blue.

The reveal of this TARDIS interior in the Christmas special, the contrast to what it had been before, the lights, the Gallifreyan, and most of all the swell of music had always felt like one of the most beautiful and powerful moments of the show for her. And it was nothing – nothing – compared to this. Here, standing in the room surrounded by blinking lights and brightly colored buttons and switches, language like a work of art, gentle electrical humming, and the oddly sweet and metallic scent in the air, she felt almost lost in a paradise.

She probably shouldn't have named herself after Alice if she wasn't expecting to go to Wonderland.

Deciding that since it was all a dream it wouldn't hurt to look around, she meandered around the console to take it all in, spinning to see each side. The more amazed she felt, the faster she spun, until she was practically twirling around the console like the ballet dancer she once was, and then she saw a blur of dark purple and gold she didn't have time to process before she bumped into something soft and cold.

Molly looked up, and when she saw that familiar face she thought – of course. Why wouldn't she dream him up, too? After all, Eleven had always been her Doctor. Her comfort character.

Except, why would she dream this expression? It was a familiar one – a dark, dangerous look; a response to a threat, meant to intimidate. The blood flowing through the back of her neck ran like ice water, making her shiver, both for the cold and for the sudden twinge of pity she felt for all the enemies he'd fixed with those eyes.

Why, in such a beautiful dream, would her mind give her this?

He leaned down, those green eyes that froze her meeting her blue. "Who are you? How did you get on the TARDIS?" His voice was low, and curious. She'd heard him speak to mysteries with this voice before. She opened her mouth to answer, but hesitated when his eyes widened a fraction of an inch, and he pulled back suddenly, looked her up and down, and frowned. Then, a second later, he gave her a light-hearted smirk that made her more on edge than his deliberate intimidation had.

His voice lightened considerably. "Oh. It's you." He raised his eyebrows and adjusted the dark purple and gold bowtie around his neck. "I love your show."

(TW for chapter: gun violence, drug mention {meth})

There was more I wanted to say, but the beginning note was holding up the story. Now you're stuck with me here.

This fic was started when I moved to a new apartment and I didn't have internet for two weeks. It started as a way to entertain myself. After about three chapters, I started to wonder if I should share it, and then about chapter ten decided I would. That's why the quality goes up around there.

This story was my main companion for about three years. I poured a lot of my own grief and isolation and pain into it, and the hope that someone out there needs to see they aren't alone, or maybe learn something that helps them heal from reading this - the way I learned from writing it - kept me going.

I really enjoyed writing this. I hope you enjoy reading it.