Marion had grabbed something to eat not long after the Doctor brought Baby Grant back to his apartment. It was something she found in the fridge labeled as human safe with a big M on it.
She warmed it up in a device that was kind of like a microwave. It was some kind of thick soup, that tasted vaguely of spinach and basil, with a hearty amount of what Marion was pretty sure was chicken, but was unable to confirm on the basis of so many things tasting like chicken.
For all she knew, it might've been Alligator or something.
She figured that she should go back to sleep. She didn't quite feel tired, but she knew that if she didn't sleep now, there was a big chance she was going to get to sleep later. She finished eating as she absentmindedly made her way back to her room, trusting that the TARDIS would lead her on her way and ducked into her bathroom to brush her teeth and rinse out her mouth so that she could go back to sleep. On the way, she ducked back into the M drawer to see if there was anything.
There was a small polaroid camera.
She thought about how useful the thing might've been the last place she'd gone. She glanced over at the bulletin board. It was a constant over her head, but she'd never really gotten a close look at it. Largely because something about the board made it hard to focus on anything except for the handful of sketches she remembered putting up on it herself.
But she was pretty sure when she stared at it out of the corner of her eye, it was covered in polaroids. She tucked the camera into her purse and didn't think too hard about the fact that there wasn't a visible lump or bump that should be there when that bulky item was dropped into a messenger bag. She climbed back into bed and went back to sleep.
A few hours later, she woke up, and slipped into a pair of slippers and then, of course, she took a step forward and tripped over nothing and was gone before her nose could hit the ground.
Marion landed on her side and slid for a bit before hitting a wall.
The clothing that she was wearing stopped her from getting much of a friction burn, but when she touched her side, and hissed. There was a definitely a bruise on her there, and that confirmed what Five had said about her not healing inside of the TARDIS.
That would have to heal later. Marion pushed up to her feet and rubbed at her side.
A quick look around told her that she was with either Nine or Ten. It could have been either. The ship had a sort of melancholy to it that made Marion hesitant to take the time to change out of pajamas.
As long as they weren't going somewhere cold or wet, she would be fine. The slippers were serviceable. The pajama pants weren't the kind of pajama pants with a waist too big to remain on her hips. And while the T-Shirt WAS slipping down her shoulder, but it wasn't too bad, and she was wearing a bra, so it would probably be fine.
Oh but what if it wasn't fine.
Marion didn't have time to do a full change, she didn't think. But she found a dress in one of the drawers. A black and white striped tank top, one, probably designed to be worn on the beach over a swimsuit. It was decently lightweight, and long enough to cover the fact that she was wearing fuzzy pajamas, buttons and slippers. She wrestled it over her head as she ran out of the door.
Marion pressed one hand to the wall, and ran her other hand through her hair, trying to get her hair shaped and serviceable.
"Honey?" Marion called.
The TARDIS emitted a stuttering hum.
"Honey, why do you sound like that?"
It emitted the hum again.
"Honey? What's wrong?"
A hum that Marion couldn't identify and then another that Marion knew meant "Follow me."
The console room was empty and it was silent. And after a moment, Marion finally identified the noise that she was hearing. It was a song. Marion couldn't hear the words or much of the melody, but she could feel the tune in her feet. Marion wiped the side of her eye and then stared down at her now wet thumb.
She was crying.
Finally, there was a noise and Marion turned towards the source of the noise to see the TARDIS door open.
The Tenth Doctor, dressed in his brown suit, staggered into the console room, most of his weight being supported by a her Marion recognized, but not from the mirror.
Her tortoiseshell patterned hair was held out of her face by a blue scarf tied into a headband and dangling behind her head and she wore a pair of black pants and a grey cable knit sweater. When the woman noticed she was staring at her, she looked up at her. The light from the TARDIS made her orange eye seem to glow like a cat's.
When she looked at her, the Associate didn't say a word. She smiled softly. A sad sort of bittersweet Doctor didn't seem to notice her at all as he was led there one step in front of the other, occasionally wincing. And when the Doctor had steadied himself against the console, the Associate flipped a few switches and the TARDIS began to move. And then she suddenly fell back and she was gone with a crack of displaced air.
Marion couldn't get over the look she had seen on the Associate's face.
Perhaps it's because she'd had time to accept the Doctor's death? Because he was dying. And that explained why the TARDIS felt the way that it did.
At the sound of the noise, the Doctor whipped his head around. He finally noticed her, and in the process. Marion didn't know what expression she had on her face was, and she was certain that the Doctor knew it better than she did.
"You're-" and then he cut himself off, "At least I'm not alone at the end. I heard you disappear but you're-" he didn't finish. "You're here. For this last one." the Doctor took a deep breath and then had a wobbly kind of smile and Marion wondered why she couldn't have gotten into that damn radiation box in his place. She was certain that there had to be a reason. And it couldn't have been some "I'm afraid this is your journey" bullshit.
There was a reason. There had to be one.
Marion looked at the Doctor and it suddenly occurred to her that she didn't want to see him cry, and she didn't want to turn away, and so she realized that she only had one real option.
She hugged him. Tight. And she was so thankful that she wasn't as strong inside of the TARDIS as she was outside because it meant she didn't have to worry about breaking him.
She could hear his hearts stuttering under her ear. The smell of something tickled her nose. She resisted the urge to sneeze.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
She wasn't sure what she was apologizing for. She wouldn't know for a long while yet. And she wasn't even sure that she was apologizing for something that was actually her fault. The Doctor's arms stiffened on either side of her. Marion loosened her grip as if to let him go, but the Doctor was suddenly hugging her back and somehow even tighter than she had. The thing tickling her nose grew stronger. The Doctor felt warm, a way that would be nice and comforting if he wasn't the Doctor. She could see something yellow and floaty out of the corner of her eye and she knew that the Doctor's regeneration was going to happen soon. A couple of minutes seemed like a stretch.
"Marion," he whispered.
"Yes Doctor?"
His chin rested on the top of her head, no doubt her hair was tickling his nose, and she thought she felt something wet.
"I don't want to go."
The line had made her cry when she had heard it on TV, hearing him whisper it to her, just over her head, only just barely audible was worse. And there was nothing that she could say. And so she said nothing. She just hugged him tighter. The Doctor was getting warmer and warmer to the point where he had gone past feeling feverish and was starting to feel like he was boiling. But Marion wasn't going to be the one to let go.
When it was time to let go, that would be up to the Doctor to decide.
And then something in the Doctor's posture changed. He froze and then he pushed her away and took a big step back and away from her.
"Doctor?"
"GET DOWN!"
Marion tripped over a chair dropped to the ground and then the Tenth Doctor exploded.
The ozoney smell that had been tickling her nose as she had hugged him was almost overpowering and she realized how fortunate it was that Three hadn't had this kind of regeneration in the lab.
His arms were splayed out and light poured from his exposed hands and head and it was so bright that if the Doctor was grimacing she couldn't tell and the TARDIS began to smoke and spark with a terrible smell like burnt metal and a campfire.
The TARDIS suddenly buzzed loudly next to her, and Marion, on instinct ducked to the side just as a flaming piece of coral suddenly fell from the ceiling, and Marion, for the first time in a while, felt a genuine spark of fear for her safety.
She could die here. Couldn't she? The TARDIS had clearly shown that it would warn her if she was in danger, it just had. But still.
"Thank you Honey," she whispered. She got to her feet and got as close as she could to the Doctor, her arm lifted slightly to shield her eyes. The TARDIS buzzed on her left and she ducked to the side just as another part of the ceiling came crashing down.
Marion hissed and stared up at the ceiling, trying to check for anything loose and unstable. Then the Doctor let out a low groan. Marion turned her head back to look at him. The light was beginning to fade just enough that Marion could make out the Doctor's features for more than a second without a migraine.
When he groaned, his eyes shut. His hair pushed out of his skull, and his face morphed from in a way that brought to mind a time lapse video of a plant growing. The Tenth Doctor let out a final scream that sounded more like effort than pain and then the light faded away and Marion was staring at a wide eyed Eleventh Doctor.
Marion opened her mouth to say something, and then something just out of her field of vision crashed to the ground.
It sounded very breakable.
For context, it's important that you know that Amelia Pond is seven years old.
It is also important that you remember that being a child is a series of weird and confusing experiences that occur while you are surrounded by adults who assure you that what you're experiencing is normal and natural.
And the adults who say this mean well. And they don't know that they've forgotten how it was like to be your age. In fact, they think it's the opposite. They look back to a time when they experienced something that was frightening in the moment and that they realized that there was nothing to fear at all and they crouch down so that they are eye to eye with you and they assure you that there's nothing to fear, that everything is normal.
People forget what it's like to be a child once they become adults. Even when they think they don't. It's similar to the way it's impossible to get the same experience out of reading a book with a twist in the middle the second time you read it.
Amelia Pond is seven years old and there is a crack in her wall.
She didn't know how long it had been there. She remembered the day she had first taken note of it, but the harder she thought about it, the more she was sure that it had been there before. But if she thought even harder, well it was a huge crack. She was certain that she would have noticed when she first moved here wouldn't she?
Her aunt thinks it's just a normal crack. The house was old when they moved in. The thing is that Amelia KNOWS it's more than that.
But her aunt doesn't get it. Her aunt remembers being a child. And she remembers being frightened by spiders and shadows and the creaking of the pipes behind the walls and she remembers them all turning out to be nothing. And so she assures her dear niece that there is nothing to fear.
It's just a crack. Something that formed when the house was settling, and the house is old enough that if the crack was going to cause structural issues, it would have already.
She's not cruel or dismissive. If she had known the truth about the crack, she would have left right away. But the thing is that she didn't and she didn't.
And so having tried getting help from the adults over her, she tries to go for the adults above the adults. The one who shows up every year to do what the adults never can.
"Dear Santa." She begins. She is kneeling on the side of her hands with her hands clasped together. "Thank you for the dolls and pencils and the fish." She doesn't want to seem ungrateful. It's good to be polite when you're asking for things. Especially important things like this. "It's Easter now, so I hope I didn't wake you, but honest, it is an emergency. There's a crack in my wall. Aunt Sharon says it's just an ordinary crack, but I know it's not, because at night there's voices, so please, please, could you send someone to fix it? Or a policeman. Or a-"
There was a loud whooshing noise. For a moment, she thought that it might be coming from the crack but, no, the sound was coming from the garden. It grew louder and louder until he heard a distant crash. She opened her eyes, and then stared out her window for a moment, and then she shut them again.
If Santa was still listening in, she didn't want to be rude.
"Back in a moment." She said, and then turned around away from her bed and pushed aside the curtains, grabbed her red and white flashlight, and rushed towards the window, she pushed aside the curtains.
There, lying on its side, having crushed the garden shed, was a dark blue police box. The kind that she'd see in old TV shows. It was smoking visibly.
She stared at the bright yellow letters on the side.
"Police"
Amelia didn't know Santa granted wishes in April.
"Thank you, Santa." Amelia said, not one to be ungrateful. And then she took a red jacket and ran down the stairs with a flashlight in tow.
Childhood is a series of weird and confusing experiences and one of the benefits of being a child is a lack of perspective. Everything is weird and confusing, but it's all about the same level of weird and confusing and it's a level that most children are used to.
Outside of the hissing from the box, the garden was still and quiet, as if all the birds and bugs were holding their breaths.
And then, as Amelia walked closer and her face was bathed in a warm yellow light, the doors suddenly swung outward.
"Step to the side!" A woman's voice called out. She sounded tired, yet cheerful.
And after a moment, a rope with a metal hook flew out nearly missing her and latched onto the metal structure that the hose was wrapped around. And then, something from inside of the box yanked at it.
A few moments later, there was the sound of exertion and then two pairs of hands emerging from the white smoke and grasping onto the side, one pair larger than the other. A couple moments later, two heads peeked over the sides, their owners bracing themselves against the entrance.
Both of them were dripping with water and smelled like a pool, and both looked out of breath. The first one was a man with a rectangular face with a prominent chin and wide pale green eyes. The second was a woman, and Amelia figured that it had been her voice that she heard. Her curly dark brown and light brown hair hung to the sides of her head, weighed down by the water and her brown eyes focused in on her. Amelia turned her flashlight to shine in the woman's face.
She blinked.
"Oh," the curly haired woman said with a strong American accent "Hello. You didn't get hit by the grappling hook did you?"
Amelia stared at the woman. "No."
"Good!" the woman replied, "I didn't think that you would, but, well, you know."
Amelia didn't.
"Excuse me!" The woman said. The woman pushed herself up on her hands and then she leaned forward. And rolled over the side landing on her feet in the ground in a low crouch, before standing back up and leaning back against the side. She wore a black and white dress that was both soaking wet and lightly scorched.
"Oh you're showing off!" the man called down at her.
"I-" the woman shook her head. "Okay."
"I bet I could do that!"
The man began to push himself up the way that the woman had previously.
"Doctor…" the woman said, stepping close to the man. She looked concerned. "I don't think that you should-"
The man, Amy supposed, froze in place.
"Really," the man replied, "Alright."
The woman stared at him. "Huh." She leaned down a bit towards Amelia as if sharing a secret. "It's normally a little bit harder than that to stop him from doing silly things."
"I heard that!"
"You were meant to. Maybe you should hear me about more things. Like apples."
Amelia finally spoke.
"What about apples?"
The man swung his leg over the open side of the box.
"Could I have an apple? All I can think about. Apples. I love apples. Maybe I'm having a craving? That's new. Never had cravings before."
"For the fourth time, you won't like apples."
"You said that about those yellow and pink cherries. They were just a little bit spicy."
"I am almost certain that you were allergic. You are describing a fairly common mild allergic reaction to types of fruits."
"Ah-" the man waved his hand and started to swing his leg over the top side of the book. "Well-" he cut himself and started looking down into the box. "Whoa look at that."
Amelia looked up at the woman, who she was now realizing wore no shoes.
"Is he okay?" she asked.
"Just had a bit of a fall." the man answered, "All the way down there, right to the library. Hell of a climb back up."
"You're both soaking wet."
"There's a swimming pool in the library." The woman explained as if that were normal. A big part of childhood is adults saying strange things as if they were normal. This is because a part of adulthood is realizing that things can be simultaneously weird and normal and forgetting that children haven't figured that out yet. The woman reached into her bag and retrieved a camera. She pointed it at the man and the ship and there was a brief flash of light. The picture rose from the top and the woman looked at it for a moment and shook lightly as she spoke. "He fell in. And then I fell in pulling him out. Lost my slippers."
Amelia looked back at the box with the letters on the side.
"Are you two policemen?"
They were strange. But that had come at the behest of Santa. Maybe the way that they acted was normal for Policemen from the North Pole. The box could maybe be their version of a sleigh. There weren't any reindeer, but the box was also on its side and smoking. Maybe there were supposed to be reindeer and their absence was why there was no longer a garden shed.
It was near Easter. Santa's best were probably doing other things.
"Oh. Absolutely not." the woman said quickly. She had that tone of voice that adults used when she had said something rude, they weren't going to tell her what, but she wasn't going to get in trouble because it was an accident and she was a kid.
"Why?" The man turned his legs around so that he was sitting at the edge of the ship looking down. "Did you call a policeman?"
"Did you come about the crack in my wall?" she shined the light in the man's face.
"What crack-"
The man cut himself off. His body seized. And he started to lurch forward off the side clutching at his chest. The woman rushed towards him before he could hit the floor with her arms held out. The man crashed into her and to Amy's surprise, neither of them fell over. The woman's arms shook for a moment but then she was holding him up as if he weighed nothing at all. The woman crouched down slowly, lowering them both to the ground.
The woman stopped looking up at Amelia and was focused on the man's face.
She looked focused, but not necessarily worried. This was something that was normal, or at the very least, expected.
"Are you all right, mister?" Amelia asked the man.
The man held up a hand and waved dismissively as if he wasn't lying on the grass in his friend's arms after collapsing. "No, I'm fine. It's okay. This is all perfectly norm-" he convulsed again. The woman started to lightly rub at the man's back. The man leaned back his head, and coughed up something golden and glittery that looked like pixie dust.
The two of them were strange from the start. They had crashed into the garden and destroyed the shed. But this was the first time that one of them had done something that was fully inhuman.
"Who are you?" Amelia asked.
"I'm Marion," the woman said looking up at her.
The man sat up so not all of his weight was leaning on the woman and held up his hands. They glittered gold with the same pixie dust.
"I don't know yet. I'm still cooking. Does it scare you?"
"No, it just looks a bit weird."
They were strange, but they didn't scare her. And it made sense that if anyone could fix the strange crack in the wall, it would be people who were strange.
Well, the man was strange. Marion was seemingly normal, but just because she hadn't done anything strange didn't mean that she wouldn't. In fact, her seeing normal made her stranger.
"Of course it doesn't" Marion replied, "Not with that crack in your wall A-" the woman cut herself off, "Not what that crack in the wall. The crack scares you though. Doesn't it?"
"Yes."
Marion stood up off the grass. And the man hoped to his feet. He was much taller than the woman, and was dressed in a raggedy looking suit.
"Well then, no time to lose." the man leaned down at him, "I'm the Doctor." She wasn't frightened, the man's eyes looked unfocused for a moment. "Do everything we tell you, don't ask stupid questions, and don't wander off." The man began to march forward. Marion grabbed him by the hand and yanked him to the side.
"Marion, what was that for!"
The woman kicked at the old tree the Doctor had nearly slammed into.
"You nearly walked face first into this." Her palm slapping against the bark.
"No," the man shook his head, "Really? Well, it's the early days. Steering's a bit off. At least I hope it's just a bit off. Marion, I will get more coordinated won't I?"
"As far as I know."
The Doctor nodded, "Well, you know pretty far, don't you?"
Amelia's first impression of Marion and the Doctor was that they were both very strange. But, they were just the right kind of strange. And when she told them she was worried about the crack, they didn't tell her that it was nothing.
They listened.
That's another thing adults forget. How much it means to children that adults listen.
As Amelia led the two of them inside of her house. It didn't escape her notice that they hadn't stopped holding hands.
It was hard to remember things that happened moments before a regeneration. It had gotten easier and easier each time, except for his Eighth face, but he suspected that might've been an issue with the face itself rather than the regeneration, but he still couldn't remember everything about his last moments as the man with the spikey hair.
But there was one thing that was fresh in his mind. Something that was so strong in his mind that perhaps it had bled from the man he was to the man he is.
He hadn't wanted to let her go and he certainly hadn't wanted to push her away.
If he could have held her and let her hold him until the change was done, he would have.
But he knew that he couldn't. He could feel the energy bubbling under his skin and he knew that the change was violent and he was inside of the TARDIS and there were some risks he wasn't willing to take, especially when she didn't seem to know that she was taking it.
And so when she didn't let go and just held him tighter and he could feel the man he was to become smoking under his skin and could feel Marion herself go from being comfortably warm to cool as night he knew that he was going to have to be the one to do it.
He pulled out of her arms and shoved her away to get some distance and shouted at her to duck down and then he was-
He was.
He was?
Was he?
What is a was?
What did it mean to be? What did it mean to be him? He still wasn't quite sure. He was walking (for the most part) and talking (as always) but he still wasn't the man he would become yet. And the man he had been before had burned away.
Something else had been burning, but he'd only paid attention to it long enough to know it wasn't burning meat and so he had stopped paying attention to it in favor of seeming more pressing issues.
It was too early to tell if his lack of focus was because his regeneration hadn't finished or if that was just a new trait of his.
The change got quicker every time he did it, and it made sense that this would be the quickest of all. His body had used up the last bits of the regeneration energy it had for this one final swan song.
He hoped that this one was a good one. That he'd finish out strong. That she would like him still.
The man who he had been before hadn't thought to ask. He'd been too focused on himself. He let out a scream of frustration and then he realized that his voice was not the same as it had been.
He stared at Marion- and hey, that was a good sign. He knew that the woman standing there, her eyes flickered between himself and the oddly warm (a warmth he still hadn't realized the source of) console room in pyjama pants and a dress with wild finger combed curly hair was Marion without having to think about it. He always recognized her, of course. Sometimes he didn't know her name at first, just that he could trust her and he knew her, and that her name would come to him if he just gave it some time, but time wasn't something he had in abundance.
This was his last regeneration after all.
Oh.
This was his last regeneration.
This was his last regeneration, wasn't it? His body's final attempt to tug him away from death's door using the last of the energy within him.
This was the regeneration where the consequences were supposed to happen. Little moments from his younger years using a bit of energy here or there unnecessarily, not to mention the incident in the London Underground.
They always said to be careful with how you use your regeneration energy lest you wind up on your Thirteenth face with shorter than you would've been otherwise and missing limbs.
Of course, if anyone asked he was on his Eleventh. But between that spikey haired egotist using up two whole regenerations so he could remain the same and Him, this was technically his Thirteenth. If his recklessness had consequences, now would be time for them to show.
He stared at Marion for a moment.
Marion didn't look any taller, which meant that he hadn't gotten any shorter.
He quickly looked down.
He was standing upright, but it didn't hurt to confirm that yes, he had legs. He might've said that aloud. He didn't know. But he had two of them. Well in working order. He tapped the sleeves of the brown pinstripe suit (one of the worst parts of changing is when he came to himself wearing clothes that fit him, but didn't Fit him).
"Good arms!" he stated. Mostly to himself. He was certain that was out loud. Marion could listen in too if she wanted he supposed.
The room felt so warm. And it was loud. Not overbearingly so, but it was absolutely louder in here than it should have been.
The reason why this was was obvious, but he wasn't focused. She would tell him if it was important enough for him to not figure it out himself.
The Doctor looked down at his hands. He wiggled his fingers. All ten of them.
Ears, two eyes, a nose. Not as bad as it could have been.
Chin-
Well, it certainly was a chin.
To the side of him, he heard a shout and a loud crash, and when he looked, Marion was on the ground. There was a chunk of flaming coral right where she had been standing a few moments prior.
There was an unfamiliar expression on her face as she stared at it with wide eyes and then started back at him.
"Marion! Are you alright?"
"What-? Me?" She looked around, "I'm fine. Nothing burned yet."
"Good. Now, Marion, how is this face?"
"I don't- fine? "
"How do I look. Is anything wrong? Is anything missing?"
Marion squinted at him. "There shouldn't be."
Sometimes when Marion said "There shouldn't be" that was a no. Sometimes when she said "There shouldn't be" that was a yes and it was something that she was worrying about. And he couldn't tell which at this moment so her statement wasn't helpful.
"I know there shouldn't be!" he replied, "But is there?"
"N-" there was another loud noise that made Marion flinch and look off to the side before looking back at him. "No."
The Doctor nodded at her. That was good. He reached up for his head, to see what kind of hair he had this time. It wasn't curly this time. He could tell that right away just from touching it. But it was long. It went down to just above his shoulders.
"Marion, am I a girl?"
"Do you think you are one?"
The Doctor thought for a moment, and considered himself.
Herself?
No. That felt wrong. He was still a he.
"No. No, I don't think that I am."
"Well," Marion had said if it was that simple, "there you go then."
The Doctor pulled down his hair in front of his face. It was brown. A fairly nice shade of brown all things considered. But-
"Still not ginger. Marion, when will I-,"
Well, this was his last shot he supposed. He was never going to get to be ginger. Perhaps he could dye it. Marion might know how to do it, if he still wanted to do it later.
There was the sound of something else shattering against the ground. Marion inched herself towards the TARDIS door. Her eyes were still flickering around the console room.
Speaking of things Marion might know, there was something he was forgetting. Something obvious. But he couldn't quite figure it out. Luckily, Marion was here.
"Marion!" Marion stopped staring up at the ceiling with her muscles coiled like she was about to dart away and she looked back at him.
"Yes Doctor?"
"What am I missing? There's something wrong, I know it."
Marion stared at him. She blinked slowly, in a way that she did when she was surprised or annoyed or frustrated. She opened her mouth to say something.
"No wait, Marion, don't tell me. I can figure it out myself. Can I get a hint?"
"Doctor, look around."
"Look-" The Doctor swiveled his head this way and that. "Oh."
The TARDIS was on fire. Something off in the distance crashed, the Doctor ducked down, covering his head. He lurched forward. The TARDIS suddenly lurched to the side.
"We're crashing!" This was an exciting way to break in a new face. They had all been exciting. Never a dull moment especially when he was new! The Doctor started down at the TARDIS screen. Words flashed and numbers changed and he knew he had his work cut out for him. He laughed as the console burned apart around him. He let out a cry of excitement and then he was at work, flittering around the console attempting to keep it on course to somewhere.
And then a series of events happened that he was sure had something connecting them, but they had happened very fast. He knew the doors had opened, and the ship had lurched to the side, and that he had grabbed his screwdriver as she had grabbed him and shoved them both to the side, ending up against the wall instead of dangling over the London skyline. And then the TARDIS lurched to the side again and they fell for a while and then he ended up in the library and landed in the swimming pool.
And then he vaguely remembered Marion reaching in after him to help pull him out and him accidentally pulling her in after her with a shout, that was without a doubt a cut off curse. When the two of them finally were back on the tiled sides, they could see the door out of the TARDIS and the night sky.
Unfortunately, the door was on the ceiling.
And that was when the two of them came face to face with the young ginger girl (lucky) who had a crack in her wall so frightening that a pair of strangers crash landing in her garden was barely worth concern. There was such a lack of concern that she had invited the strangers inside of her house and offered them towels to dry off with.
The girl in question was handing him the apple that he had asked for. It was a shiny red, about the same color as the girls ' jacket. Marion stared at him and the apple suspiciously.
Despite what Marion insisted, the Doctor was pretty sure that this new mouth liked apples. Maybe they were just spicy.
As Amy retrieved the apple, the young girl began to ask Marion questions.
The child was incredibly curious and seemed filled to the brim with questions, that Marion seemed filled to the brim with patience to answer.
Was he impatient now?
"If he's a Doctor, why does your box say Police? Does the box belong to you or something?"
"Well, it could be argued that the box doesn't belong to us as much as we belong to it. It can look like a bunch of things. It just turned into a police box once and got stuck." Marion replied to the girl with a smile.
He pointedly took a big bite and then spit it out just as quickly.
It was crumbly rather than crisp and somehow simultaneously too sour and too sweet.
"That's disgusting!" he shouted, "What is that?"
"An apple!" the girl replied.
That could not have been an apple. He had had apples before. Multiple apples. He would not have eaten apples if they tasted like that.
"Apples are rubbish. I hate apples." he handed the apple back to the girl.
He should have listened to Marion. Speaking of Marion, the woman was staring at him with a look that could not have more clearly conveyed "I told you so" without her eyebrows wiggling.
"You said you loved them!" the girl replied, rubbing salt into the wound.
"No, no, no. I like yoghurt. Yoghurt's my favourite."
"No you don't," Marion replied quickly.
"Of course I do. It's my favourite."
"It WAS your favorite. Your taste buds are different."
Yes. Yes. She was right of course. She would probably know. And she wouldn't steer him wrong in this situation.
Marion joked around with him, sure, but she rarely did the same when he had just regenerated.
"Do you have any fireballs?"
Marion stared at him strangely, "I don't- you mean the cinnamon jawbreaker candy? No."
Shame. Cinnamon had been hit and miss, but he distinctly remembered her giving him one the first time she had regenerated, and it had given him something at last to focus on.
"Then what do you expect me to-" he let out a shout as every muscle in his body began to seize at once.
This might have been the most active he had ever been after regenerating now that he thought about it. He didn't think this body liked that very much.
"Doctor? You good?"
Marion was by his side again. Her arms were raised up but not touching him, as if she was worried about him collapsing.
The Doctor nodded. His hand on his head as the last of the spasms stopped.
"What is it?" the girl asked, "What's wrong with you?"
"Wrong with me?" There was nothing wrong with him. His behavior was perfectly normal for someone who had just regenerated. "It's not my fault. Why can't you give me any decent food?"
"Doctor-" Marion nudged his arm.
Was he being rude again?
"Sorry."
"I know just what you want to eat." She took a step forward, and then she paused and looked down at the young girl. "Sorry, I should ask, do you mind if I take a quick look through your fridge and freezer. I didn't want to assume."
"It's fine," the girl said.
"Thank you A-" Marion cut herself off like she did when she said something that showed she knew something she couldn't have logically known.
"Well." Marion replied, "I think that after all that's happened, I think you should have yourself some ice cream. Doctor, you should take this time to towel off maybe, while I cook.
Off to the side, Marion took a small glass bowl out of a cabinet and then took something out of the fridge and something else out of the freezer and she put something in the microwave. After a few moments, she pulled whatever she had put out and poked it slightly before being happy with whatever she found.
"Here." Marion sat down the glass bowl in front of him and poured a carton of what the Doctor was realizing was custard. And then set down a plate of fish fingers next to it at the same time she set out a dish of ice cream for herself and placed the whole container in front of the girl with the scoop still inside.
"Fish Fingers and Custard?"
"Yeah." Marion nodded at it, "Try it, you'll like it. Just, you know, dip the fish s- fingers in the custard like it's a sauce."
"That sounds gross," said the girl.
Marion leaned down next to her. With her chin in her palm.
"That's because it is Amy. But that doesn't mean he's not going to like it."
Marion took out that camera again. The Doctor didn't know why she was insistent on snapping photos of him tonight.
It didn't taste gross now that the Doctor was trying it. The sweetness of the custard might have been what he was looking for when he asked for the apple. And then he realized that the girl was staring at her.
"It's Amelia," the girl said as if on reflex, and then she stopped, the ice cream scoop halfway to her mouth. "How did you know?"
"How did I-" Marion stopped talking abruptly. "Ah. Yes. I know a lot of things. It's part of my job."
"Do you work for Santa Claus?"
Marion squinted at him, "Well, it's not impossible. Although I wouldn't work FOR him so much as work with him."
"How did she know what?" the Doctor asked, not following.
"She called me Amy. My name is Amelia Pond. I never told her my name."
"Oh, that's a brilliant name," the Doctor said with another bite. "Marion, are you sure you don't want a bite?"
"I'm sure. It looks gross."
"Then why make it?"
"Well, because I knew that you would like it. I just didn't want you wasting the food in this house when none of it tasted right."
That sounded possible. He could make a list of foods that he was just as confident that he would have liked as the apple. And he had hated the apple. He brought another bite of fish finger to his mouth to forget about the taste.
"Amelia Pond." He hummed thoughtfully, "Like a name in a fairy tale. Are we in Scotland, Amelia?"
"No. We had to move to England. It's rubbish."
"So what about your mum and dad, then? Are they upstairs? Thought we'd have woken them by now." He supposed that Marion might have mentioned something if that was a concern. But it was equally possible that she could have forgotten. Marion knew a lot, but she couldn't possibly remember everything. And her memory tended to get especially finicky, when he had recently regenerated and her attention was almost entirely on him unless there was a direct danger.
"I don't have a mum and dad." Amelia said quietly, "Just an aunt."
The Doctor swallowed uncomfortably. "I don't even have an aunt."
He wasn't sure if he had ever had an aunt.
Amelia took another bite of ice cream, and the expression on her face told her that outside of not saying a thing, he had gone with the best course of action.
"You're lucky!" she said simply.
"I know." Of course, he was lucky. He was alive, wasn't he? "So, your aunt, where is she?"
"She's out."
"And she left you all alone?"
The Doctor was fairly certain it wasn't normal to leave a child home alone at night when they couldn't be older than ten. Then again, maybe her aunt had expected her to be in bed the whole time she was gone. Or maybe she thought Amelia would be able to fend for herself.
It was tricky to guess these sorts of things about humans.
"I'm not scared."
"Course, you're not. You're not scared of anything. Box falls out of the sky, a man and a woman fall out of a box, man eats fish custard, woman knows your name without you telling him and looks at you, just sitting there. So you know what I think?"
"What?" Amelia asked.
Marion leaned down, "That crack is pretty scary."
"Marion," the Doctor asked her as they walked into Amy's bedroom. It was a nice bedroom. There was a desk covered in various art supplies, a dollhouse, and a bed. "What do you think?"
Marion had felt weird when she had landed in Amy- Amelia. She was a kid, she still called herself Amelia) Amelia's backyard. She didn't feel sick or anxious- well, she didn't feel supernaturally anxious. She wasn't a huge fan of the way the Doctor kept seizing, but she was fairly certain that that was normal-ish.
In any case, Marion had felt strange and now she knew why.
Marion couldn't imagine what it would be like to sleep in the same house as that crack in the wall, let alone in the same bedroom.
It looked normal. Like the kind of thing that could come from drywall not being installed properly, or a small earthquake shaking the foundations, but it felt bad. She could feel the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She didn't get the urge to run when she stared at it, but it was something similar. There was a faint breeze coming from it.
She felt the urge to watch. To keep it in her line of sight. To never turn her back to it.
"Feels Bad." Marion said quickly, "I mean, it's not- Amelia's not in any danger of dying. Or, you know, worse. But the crack feels bad."
"Hmm…" the Doctor ran his fingertips along the crack on the wall, and the lack of fear and anxiety she suddenly felt was probably a good sign. She still felt unnerved.
Amelia walked over to the two of them with an apple in her palm.
"I used to hate apples, so my mum put faces on them." She held the fruit out to the Doctor. It had a smile carved into it, presumably with a butter knife or something else not especially sharp. The Doctor looked down at the apple. He tossed it in his hand.
"She sounds good, your mum," the Doctor replied, "I'll keep it for later." The Doctor stared at the wall. She wondered what the Doctor was feeling. What he was getting off the wall. She knew that her assessment was purely vibes based, and he probably had some legitimate sixth and seventh sense that was some fusion between smell and hearing. "This wall is solid and the crack doesn't go all the way through it. So here's a thing. Where's the draught coming from?"
The Doctor whipped out his sonic screwdriver and waved the blue light along the crack.
Marion took a couple steps back and retrieved the camera. She took another photo and tucked it into her pajama pants pocket with the other three.
"Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey. You know what the crack is?"
"What?"
"It's a crack," said Marion, "But it's not just in your wall. It's, um-" Marion had the urge to find a sheet of paper and fold it to a visual metaphor, but she wasn't sure how she would place it.
"If you knocked this wall down, the crack would stay put, because the crack isn't in the wall."
"Where is it then?" Amelia asked.
"It's like-" Marion. "It's a split in everything. Time, space, it's through everything. Like, if you stabbed a knife into a book. The cut's on every page, but not in the space between?"
"Really?" Amy asked.
"Maybe? I don't know. It's tricky. And complicated. And I'm not a cosmic genius like this guy over there-" Marion nodded his head to the side.
"It's sort of like that," the Doctor replied, "except, not at all."
"Of course."
"Two parts of space and time that should never have touched, pressed together right here in the wall of your bedroom." The Doctor pressed his ear against the wall. Sometimes, can you hear-"
"A voice. Yes."
Marion could hear a rumbling on the other side of the wall. She couldn't make out words, but there was a clear growl. The Doctor quickly walked to Amy's side table and dumped out the glass of water she had by the side. While Amy stared at him in annoyance. The Doctor pressed the cup to the side of his ear and pressed the other end against the wall. The Doctor's eyes widened and then narrowed in focus.
After a few moments, Marion could hear a growling and gravelly sort of voice.
"Prisoner Zero has Escaped!"
"Prisoner Zero?" the Doctor asked slowly.
"Prisoner Zero has escaped. That's what I heard." Amelia looked around, "What does it mean?"
"It means Prisoner Zero has escaped," Marion replied.
"You need a better wall," the Doctor picked up the dark desk and moved it to the side against the young girl's dresser. "The only way to close the breach is to open it all the way. The forces will invert and it'll snap itself shut. Or…"
"Or what?"
"Or well, it'll probably be fine!" The Doctor turned to stare at Marion, "It'll be fine, right? Not going to send an influx or radiation and kill us all. You'd say something if it was wouldn't, you, or if you couldn't say, you'd look- well, you'd look a certain way that you don't look now. So it's fine!"
"Yeah," Marion replied, "Fine, in the sense that it's fine not in the sense that I'm saying it's fine when it's not."
"Great! Perfect! Just what I wanted to hear! Let's give it a try!"
Marion and the Doctor each grabbed one of Amelia's hands and the Doctor raised his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the wall. For a moment, nothing happened. And then along the line of the crack a brilliant white light began to glow.
There was a nothingness to it. It wasn't particularly cold, nor was it particularly warm, but it was bright like sunlight from behind black out curtains. The crack began to widen like a mouth, the light shining into the darkened and widening gap like intangible teeth.
The gravelling voice grew louder and louder as the gaps widened.
As Marion's eyes adjusted to the white, she could see that it wasn't just pitch black. She could see prison bars far in the back.
"Prisoner Zero has escaped!"
The Doctor took a step closer towards the wall, angling himself so that Amelia remained where she was.
"Hello?" the Doctor asked, "Hello?"
There was a gust of air and then a huge eyeball suddenly appeared from the other side of the crack, and Marion couldn't help but notice that its eyes were a shade of blue to the blue of the wall. Marion let go of Amelia's hand. She stepped next to the Doctor and pushed the girl backwards a bit, at the same time the Doctor shifted himself to the side as well.
The eye stared at them for a moment.
"What's that?" Amelia asked.
Their eye twitched back and forth for a moment, staring at the three of them.
The eye blinked and two beams of light shot towards them. One of them shot at the Doctor's side pocket and the other shot at Marion's bag, nearly missing her hand. Mairon jumped in surprise and the Doctor doubled over.
The eye continued to flip black and forth until the cracks in the wall shut abruptly with a lingering white light.
Marion reached into her back and retrieved her wallet fold. It was glowing with a soft blue light. The Doctor pulled a similar glowing ID case out of the pocket he'd been shot at.
"There, you see? Told you it would close. Good as new."
"What's that thing? Was that Prisoner Zero?"
"No," Marion said, slowly, "that's the guard."
The Doctor flipped open his glowing psychic paper. "Whatever it was, it sent us a message. Did you get it too Marion?"
Marion rummaged around her bag until she found what she was looking for.
There in messy thick black handwriting were the words "PRISONER ZERO HAS ESCAPED". Marion shut the billfold and dropped it back.
"Prisoner Zero has escaped. But why tell us? Unless…" the Doctor's eyes started flickering from shadow to shadow.
"Unless what?"
"Unless Prisoner Zero escaped through here. But he couldn't have. We'd know. Wouldn't we? Marion, we'd know, wouldn't we?" Before Marion could answer, the Doctor raced out of the room and flew down the steps so quickly she was worried that he would end up falling down the rest of the way.
"It's difficult. Brand new me. Nothing works yet. But there's something. Marion, am I missing something?"
Marion stared down the hallway of the house slowly. She knew that there was a missing doorway, but she didn't remember where it was, and she couldn't see it. Well, she knew that she'd be unable to see it, but there was supposed to be something that she could only see out of the corner of her eye. Something that was drawing her attention away. Something like the bulletin board in her TARDIS room.
But there was nothing. It was just a normal hallway.
"Doctor I-"
The TARDIS cloister bells began to boom with a noise that wasn't nearly loud enough for her to have felt them in her bones the way she did. Both Marion and the Doctor turned their heads, and then the Doctor started shouting and took off. Marion took out the four photos from her bag and she placed them on the bannister where Amelia could find them. Just so that she'd have proof that people were there that night, if for no reason else than so no one would try to tell her that she had been just dreaming or that she was crazy. Marion followed close behind him with Amelia trailing behind.
"We've got to get back in there!" the Doctor shouted, "The engines are phasing. It's going to burn!"
"But it's just a box." Amelia asked, "How can a box have engines?"
"Like I said. It's just shaped that way. It's a time machine."
Marion held the rope steady as the Doctor untied the grappling hook from where it had landed.
"Not for much longer if I can't get her stabilised. Five minute hop into the future should do it."
"Can I come?"
"No," Marion said quickly, "It's not safe. And it might end up being more than five minutes. Much longer. But we'll be back."
"Promise?"
Marion crouched down to be level with Amelia and stuck out her pinkie.
"Pinke Promise! It might take us a bit, but we'll be back!"
"People always say that!"
The Doctor climbed down from when he had been perched on the side of the TARDIS. "Am I people? Do I even look like people? Trust me. I'm the Doctor."
"And I pinkie swore."
Marion and the Doctor sat on the edge of the TARDIS and smiled at the young girl.
The Doctor smiled, leaned forward
"GERONIMO!"
Marion watched him land in the pool. Marion took a deep breath, and followed after them. The TARDIS doors shutting just behind her as she fell backwards into the water.
Next Chapter: Then you get older.
Amelia Pond: Those two were a couple, right?
Amelia Pond: Right!
Narrator: She was in fact, not right.
I hope that you guys enjoy this chapter! I enjoyed writing it.
Apologies to anyone who followed me on Tumblr for Doctor Who reasons and not Dragon Age reasons.