"Is it a feeling?"

"No," she said. "But-"

"Then I'm not sure I understand why you think it's okay for us to split up right now."

She stared at him. For a long moment, she just stared at him. "Because I'm your wife," she finally landed on. "Not your prisoner."

He threw a look at her like it wasn't fair to say that when that's exactly what it was. He and Amy had to do this adventure alone. It wasn't a feeling, it was just something she didn't want to take away from them. She didn't know why it was such an issue that she wanted to stay in the Tardis for this one.

"No, but we do have some trust issues to work out-"

Hurt richocheted through her chest. "You don't trust me with the Tardis?"

"You nearly remade the universe-"

"And I told you, I worked out my grief, I even went to therapy, which I told you wasn't necessary but I did it because I love you," she told him. "And I do want you to trust me, but you've no right to dictate where I'm going to be and when. If I say that I want to be on the Tardis by myself, then I'm-I'm going to do that."

It was so strange. They'd been together for nearly sixty years and rarely had they ever fought. Now, she could sense it about to happen, like a storm on the horizon.

Apparently, he could, too. Apparently, it wasn't something he wanted, either. He had a new companion and the promise of adventure. Apparently, he'd also been tortured by Rassilon and had been given hundreds more lives, if he was to be believed.

She'd been relieved when he told her, but her mistake was in telling him that she wanted to celebrate when they got back. And, there they were, about to possibly have a fight over her wanting to be on the Tardis, of all things.

The storm passed. He smiled cordially at her. "Fine," he said, quietly. "If that's what you really want, I won't stop you."

"Thank you," she said, annoyed that she was thanking him for her freedom.

"But-"

"What?" she cut out.

Annoyance flashed in his eyes. The fight loomed even stronger. "I need you to understand this from my perspective. Your actions made it so that I had to stop being your husband, and instead, turn into the man who stops the monsters."

It was instantly the wrong thing to say. The Doctor knew it the moment that the word left his lips, looking like he wanted to catch the word mid-air and pretend he'd never even thought it.

"Is that what I am to you?" she asked him.

"You know that's not how I meant it-"

"No, please, please keep telling me how I'm such a monster. The one time, the one time, in all of my life that I even came remotely close to shaping the universe-"

"You did! It wasn't the universe anymore, Anna, it was Anna's Universe, and that doesn't make you a monster, but it does make you someone that I need to keep an eye on, at least for the time being!"

"But until when?" she asked him. "When exactly do I get to be free of the man who stops the monster and get my husband back? Because that's what you are, in case you forgot." She held up her ring. "My husband."

He searched her, shaking his head. "I don't think I know how to be both. Not when it comes to you."

She furrowed her brow. "What... does that mean?"

He let out a breath through his nose, taking a step back. "I don't know, Anna. I just know that I can't be the person who has to stop you and the person who's married to you. I can't..." he shook his head, looking down and away. "I don't know how to shift from one thing to the other. So, until I am absolutely certain that..."

Pain flashed through his eyes, but a memory came through next. His resolve steeled over, and he looked at her.

"Until I am absolutely certain that you're not a danger to the universe, the only thing that I am to you is the man who stops you, if need be." He held his arms out. "I'm sorry, but that's just the way that it has to be."

She searched him. She considered it for a nanosecond. "No."

He furrowed his brows. "I'm sorry?"

"No," she told him. "It means you don't get to make unilateral decisions in this relationship."

Frustration and anger flashed through his eyes. "Anna, this is not about us. This is not about our relationship. This is about the safety of the universe-"

"Which I won't endanger again!" she shouted at him. "Which I will never do again-"

"And how do I have that guarantee?" he questioned her. "I thought you would never cross that line, not in a million years, I thought-" he searched her, fear in his eyes. "I nearly didn't stop you, you know. It's an absolute miracle that I was able to-"

"I would've come to my senses," she told him.

"Really?" he asked her. "Seriously, would you have? Because you seemed pretty set in your ways."

Something she hadn't thought about crossed her mind, something she hadn't had a chance to think.

"Well," she said, quietly. "I guess we'll never know, will we? Because you stepped in before we had a chance to find out, you made the decision to right things before giving me a chance to fix them myself."

He shook his head. "I had one chance to stop you. I couldn't take the chance that you wouldn't come to your senses, because your grief..."

"It clouded me for a moment. But, I'm an all-powerful being, and I absolutely would've been able to fix it, no matter how long it would've taken me to come to my senses, because yes, Doctor, I eventually would've." She searched him, amazed. "I don't think this is a matter of you not trusting me now. I don't think you ever trusted me. And that, Doctor? That is a problem." Regret lay in his eyes, but she turned from him, too hurt to even try to work through more of this. "Have fun with Amy."

"Anna, just-"

She continued to walk out of the room.

"Anna, wait!"

She didn't. He didn't chase after her, knowing better than to not give her space when she so clearly wanted it.

It didn't take her long to find her destination. The old console room greeted her like an old friend.

She sat down in her armchair, pulling the blue throw pillow to her chest before she cried.

#####

It took a few hours, but they eventually returned. She looked up at the ceiling but she got a feeling that she should wait, so she did.

Ten minutes later, the Doctor came to her, knocking on her door.

"Anna, can we talk?"

"Fine," she called out to him.

A moment later, he was standing in her room, his hands in his pockets.

"How'd it go?" she asked.

"What? Oh, fine. Amy's brilliant. Met someone new-"

"Nope," she said, and he looked at her, confused. "Sorry, feeling. Not supposed to... know about them, I guess." She frowned, looking down and away. "Wonder who they are."

"You haven't been in here in a while."

She raised her eyebrows listlessly, nodding. "Didn't feel like being in our room," she told him.

"Right. I'm... I'm-"

"I'm not doing therapy anymore," she told him, looking over at him. "I don't need it-" hurt echoed through her chest. "You know what the worst part of all of this is? You made me not trust myself. In my worst, darkest moments, I needed you to believe in me, and instead, you didn't. You turned your back on me, and you made me believe the worst things about myself. And, because of the state that I was in, I fell back into really old patterns... and I believed that you were more right about me than I was about myself." She searched him, amazed. "I didn't trust myself because you didn't trust me, and that's... bullshit. That can't happen. That won't happen. Not ever again. I promise you, Doctor, that you will never have to be the man who stops me, if you swear to me that you will believe me when I say that I have no interest in shaping the universe."

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye before he sighed, shaking his head. "You know it isn't anything as simple as that."

She frowned. "What?"

He didn't look at her, instead, looking at something on the wall. "I wish it were that simple. That I could just be your husband, that I could always know that you would be okay and so would the universe. But, both of those things very nearly weren't. I'm the Doctor, Anna," he said, finally turning to look at her. "You knew this when you married me, just like I knew what I was getting myself into when I married an all-powerful being."

"Did you?"

"Let me finish. Please."

He just looked tired, exhausted, from the day that he'd had. She pursed her lips and nodded.

"But, Anna, we need to be held to a higher standard than other people. And honestly, maybe if it had been anything else, I would've given you the chance to correct your error, to right your wrong, because I did trust you enough to do so. But you reshaped the entire universe, Anna. I had no idea if you were going to come back to your senses and I couldn't take that chance."

She remembered, then, that her husband had been in a different body. That he'd regenerated between here and there, and still, this fight lingered between them. She hated it. She hated that she hadn't been there when he'd been tortured, she hated that Rassilon had kidnapped them... and she hated that some part of her knew that he was right, at least a little.

"I had to act quickly, because I'd no idea..." he shook his head, looking away. "I didn't know and I couldn't take that chance." He looked up at her. "I'm sorry, that the scars your mum left on you still run so deeply that nearly six decades later, her fingerprints are all over your psyche, and I'm sorry that your first instinct when I lost trust in you was to lose trust in yourself." He searched her. "And I think that's why therapy could be beneficial for you." He held up his hands, but she hadn't objected. "I'm not saying it's something that you have to do anymore. Truth be told, I was sort of fumbling for a solution there. But, if you say that you worked out your grief enough, and because you were willing to attend the therapy appointment, then I believe you." He searched her. "There is still a lot of trust to rebuild, but I think we have taken the first steps, and I think that's the most important thing." He glanced down at the bed before he nodded at it, and she looked down at it before she scooted over, letting him sit down next to her.

She snuggled up into him as soon as he sat down, forcing him to raise his arm to allow her to lay against his chest. She reached up and idly played with the bowtie (which she'd snuck the outfit into the wardrobe right before breakfast. He'd been delighted, saying that he'd no idea where this had come from but weren't bowties very cool? He'd spun around, flaring out the tweed coat she loved so much. It was freaking adorable) and then looked up at him. "I love you."

He smiled. "I love you, too. Now, since Amy is sleeping, what do you say to a bit of adventure, just the two of us?"

She nodded, smiling.

#####

So far, Amy Pond had been to the future and the past. She was currently standing in Winston Churchill's Cabinet War Rooms... Or rather, she was standing on top of them, watching an extermination ray being fired from behind the sand bags.

"What the hell was that?" Amy demanded.

She remembered it, the night the planet had been moved, the night that she and Rory had huddled together. This was her chance, she'd thought, to save the world like she'd always wanted to. She'd armed herself with a baseball bat.

But the ever perpetual what about Rory popped up, and he kissed her before he asked her not to do this.

So, she didn't, because if she were going to die, she'd rather die next to the person she loved rather than in a warzone where she'd be a fallen body that nobody would remember.

He proposed to her that night, saying that there was no better time than the end of the world, and she gladly accepted, wondering what had taken him so long (okay, fine, they'd only been together for a year, but come on. It was Amy and Rory) but happy all the same. No, ecstatic even.

So, how could they be here? How could the daleks be here, in London 1941, when they'd died such violent deaths in 2008?

She looked over at the Doctor for answers and realized that nobody could've been more upset than him, in that moment.

He didn't just look upset. He looked... everything. Every negative emotion that a person could feel was clearly printed across his face.

"That was never... Earth technology. Show me. Show me!" he demanded.

She glanced over at Anna, trying to get a feel for why he might be so upset. He was her husband, after all. But, the look on Anna's face didn't clear anything up. In fact, if anything, it made it more confusing. Clearly printed on her face was guilt, but why the hell would she feel so guilty about the daleks?

She frowned. "What did you do?"

Because if an-all powerful being looked guilty, didn't that mean that she likely had something to do with it?

Apparently, the Doctor agreed with her when they walked back down to the War Rooms, because he pulled her aside and demanded that she, "Fix it."

Astonishment shot through her eyes. Amy had many an experience with fights (thanks mum and dad) so she knew that she would be well and truly forgotten. She crossed her arms, watching the display.

"Excuse me?"

"Get rid of them, get them out of here."

She took a step back, raising her eyebrows. Yep, definitely a fight, and she was definitely forgotten about.

"No."

"No?" he asked, astonishment now on his face. "Anna, time is in flux. They don't belong here. Why can't you get rid of them?"

She frowned, though Amy was surprised when she softened. She was also slightly annoyed when Anna caught sight of her and she... well, she literally pulled them through a wall.

#####

"Doctor, I can't. That's not how this works."

"Is it a feeling?" he asked, impatiently.

"Yes," she said, but she wasn't as hurt as she could've been that he trusted her feelings more than he trusted her. They were still rebuilding the bridge that she had burned, even if she hated it.

He rubbed at his forehead before he made a noise of derision, hitting the wall. There was no light in here, but both of them could see in the dark, so she was clearly able to see his anguish and his grief and his rage.

"Can you tell me what they're doing here?"

"No."

"Why they're dressing up as soldiers?"

"No."

"Can you tell me anything?" he asked.

"No," she told him, simply.

His agitation had been building. Probably because of the last few days that he'd been having, and the fact that he was being confronted with daleks so soon after his metacrisis self had committed genocide (because sixty years really did move quickly when one had all the time in the world), he let it explode.

"Well, what good are you, then?" he questioned her.

He stopped, staring at her, all of his agitation and anger deflating immediately to be replaced with panic.

"Anna, I'm-that- I didn't mean that, I'm sorry, I-"

She put her hands on either sides of his face. "Doctor, I know, honestly, it's okay," she told him, nodding. He leaned into her touch, desperate for it as a dying man for water. "Really, it's okay."

He shook his head. "It's not okay," he murmured, quietly. "There are daleks out there. Where there are daleks, there's usually trouble."

She nodded, gravely. "I know," she told him, quietly.

#####

Why can't you do something?

Amy had thought it the whole time. Turned out they didn't even need Anna, in the end, thanks to a bit of Amy's brilliance and the help of Edwin Bracewell and some technology that the daleks had given them, using it against them.

But still. Watching the Doctor speaking to Winston Churchill, Anna smiling as she watched the two speaking, she wondered why she hadn't done something. She was an all-powerful being. Why couldn't she just snap her fingers and clean up the mess?

But, the cost of traveling with the Doctor was not asking questions about Anna, and in all honesty, it was a low price to pay. She wasn't really interested in getting to know her, or be friends with a god, or any of that.

Even if, with each passing adventure, she started to warm up more to the Doctor.

She laughed silently when she watched Churchill try to take the key, though she quickly called him out on it. She grabbed the key back from him with a promise to take care of these two before she, a little dismayed, gave the key back to the Doctor. She was traveling with them, now. Shouldn't she get a key? Like, properly?

She didn't stew on this for long, heading back to the Tardis.

"So," Amy started. "You've got enemies, then."

"Everyone's got enemies."

"Even Anna?" she couldn't help asking. "No, back to the point, my enemy is the woman outside Budgens with the mental Jack Russell," among other people. "You've got, like, you know, arch-enemies."

"Suppose so."

She leaned against the door of the Tardis, her on one side of the Doctor and Anna on the other. "And here's me thinking we'd just be running through time, being daft and fixing stuff. But no, it's dangerous."

Of course she'd known that it was dangerous when she stepped onboard. Hogwarts had taught her that (because the most dangerous thing to a seven year old was never seeing mum and dad again). But, knowing that it would be dangerous and seeing 1941 during the London Blitz was another thing entirely.

"Yep. Very. Is that a problem?"

She would've laughed if he didn't look so bleak. Instead, she bumped him on the shoulder. "I'm still here, aren't I?" She searched him. "You're worried about the daleks."

He smiled. "I'm always worried about the Daleks," he corrected her.

"I'll take time though, won't it? I mean, there's still not many of them. They'll need a while to build themselves up."

"Yeah, probably," he agreed. "But really though. This, us, it isn't just galvanting about time and space, having a lark. It's dangerous stuff." He searched her. "Are you sure you want to keep traveling?"

"I've never been more sure of anything in my entire life."

Well, that was a lie, she thought. She'd never been more sure of anything than Rory in her entire life. Still, a smile broke out on both Anna and the Doctor's faces, Anna's soft and the Doctor's overjoyed.

"Well, okay, then," he said, and he pulled out the key that Churchill had pocketed, handing it over to her. "Welcome aboard."

She smiled.