Going to be super honest, as of right now, I don't know if Chapter 84 will be out on time.


When Marion was young and had gone to summer camp (the same summer camp where she had decided she wanted to learn judo) something had gone wrong with the car. One minute, they had been driving along just fine, and then the next moment, they were pulling into a side street with the hood of the car smoking something that was white and smelled vaguely of pancakes.

Marion had of course, been eight years of age, of age, did not know how to help her-

Well, the point was that she had been able to hand him tools and hold things that he didn't feel would burn her to hold onto.

Fixing the TARDIS was like that. Marion knew very little about the TARDIS's inner workings, but the Doctor did. He knew what to do to stabilize the TARDIS enough to make the one quick jump that would put the TARDIS into reboot and Marion knew how to listen to him. She would hold out her hand when the TARDIS weakly hummed through her feet and held various odds and ends and wires and pressed buttons and flipped switches when directed.

She did all this blindly. Both in the figurative "just doing what you're told" sense and the very literal "it's far too smokey for me to see" sense.

Luckily, this time, the smoke didn't contain mercury.

Probably.

Hopefully.

It was probably fine.

The Doctor continued to talk through the smoke. Marion did her best and stared in the direction of the six foot moving shadow she was fairly certain was her friend.

The Doctor had a respiratory bypass and was still within the hours of his regeneration where he could lose a hand and get it back and poisoning probably wouldn't matter as much as soon as they got out of the TARDIS for her specifically.

"I know there was something wrong there, out of the corner of my eye!" the Doctor said quickly. "There was something that was turning my vision away. And whatever it was you didn't notice. The Doctor paused.

"You didn't notice-" Marion heard the thud of the Doctor slamming down a lever. "You didn't notice!". The tone of the Doctor's voice told Marion that he had realized something, but Marion had no idea what it could be.

The TARDIS finally landed. The Doctor flipped a lever and the door to the TARDIS, right side up this time. The Doctor stood around the other side of the ship and he ran out of the ship.

"Doctor, wait-" Marion coughed.

Marion let the TARDIS guide her out of the exit without tripping over anything, and by the time she got out, the Doctor was already at the door shouting after Amelia.

"-know what I was missing! You've got to get out of there!"

"Doctor!" got the door opened and rushed through the door.

"For the love of-" Marion ran through the now open door and followed the Doctor as he raced up the stairs back to that hallway.

"Amelia? Amelia," Are you all right? Are you there?"

Marion ran up the stairs towards the bedroom, nearly colliding into a woman a little bit less than a foot taller than her, dressed kind of like a police officer if you ignored how short her skirt was, carrying a cricket bat swung ready to hit the Doctor in the back of the head.

It's not that Marion didn't understand that as a reaction to a strange man breaking into her house and calling her name. But she still didn't want to see the Doctor get knocked out.

"Amy. Hey! Put the-"

"Ah!"

As the cricket bat collided against the side of her head and she stumbled backward towards the top of the stairs, Marion considered that maybe she shouldn't have startled the woman with a cricket bat so close to the top of the stairs.

"Shit." Mario hissed as she started tumbling.

"Oh my god!" the woman called down.

The back of Marion's head slammed against the bottom step. Marion wasn't hearing the sound of clocks, so she was fairly certain that she hadn't "died," but she could feel something wet on the side of her head and also like she was going to throw up.

"Marion!"

"Marion?"

Marion heard the sounds of two sets of footsteps running down the stairs after her as she pushed herself up. Marion lightly rubbed the side of her head. Her fingers came away tacky with blood.

Her pajama pants were a dark color. Marion wiped her hand off and hope that no one would notice.

The Doctor shouted up at the woman.

"What the hell are you doing swinging around that cricket bat like that!"

Marion winced. "Doctor, please. Lower your voice. My concussion isn't fully fixed yet."

"Concussion?"

"I just got knocked upside the head with a cricket bat and fell down a flight of stairs. Give me a moment. You've got one hell of a swing!"

"You were breaking and entering!"

"That is true!" Marion replied with a nod of her head. Bad idea. The room was spinny. "Luckily, I'm fine!"

"You fell down a flight of stairs and you're fine."

"Nothing against your swing. I'm just rather sturdy."

The Doctor helped Marion to her feet. Marion tilted her head to the side.

"But what are you doing here?" the Doctor asked, staring at the woman, "Where's Amelia?" He turned his head to look at Marion. "Where's Amelia?"

"Amelia Pond?" the ginger woman who was most certainly not a police officer asked. She was staring at their faces closer this time.

"Yeah, Amelia. Little Scottish girl. Where is she? I told her we'd be right back. I was aiming for five minutes but the engines were phasing I suppose I must have gone a bit far. Has something happened to her?"

The woman's eyes widened.

The women stared back at him.

"Amelia Pond hasn't lived here in a long time."

"How long?"

"Six months."

"No. No. No. No. What happened to her? What happened to Amelia Pond? I promised that we would be right back. She promised too!" the Doctor gestured to Marion, "She doesn't make promises she doesn't think she can keep!

Amy turned her back to them and whispered down into a radio on her shoulder that Marion didn't think was connected to anything.

"Sarge, it's me. Hurry it up. This guy knows something about Amelia Pond."

Marion knew that the woman in question was Amy Pond. But far be it from her to stop another woman from impersonating a police officer. It was hypocritical.

Marion leaned over to whisper to the Doctor.

"Amelia's fine. She's alive and well,"

"But Marion, where is she? This is her house isn't it?"

"It is!"

"It's my house," said the woman in the police uniform.

"But you're the police," the Doctor shot back.

"Yes, and this is where I live. Have you got a problem with that?"

The Doctor's eyes flickered around the hall.

"How many rooms are there?"

"I'm sorry, what?" the not-policewoman asked.

"On this floor," the Doctor said seriously. His screwdriver spun between his fingers. Sparks flickered from off it. It hit the ground and started rolling until it rolled under a door before Marion could grab it. "How many rooms on this floor? Count them for me now."

Marion followed his eyes. She looked around and there were six. None of them were hard to focus on. She wondered if that meant the perception filter was so strong that she didn't even notice her perception being filtered away.

She knew how perception filters felt. She was pretty sure that there was one on her bulletin board on the TARDIS. She couldn't feel anything.

"Why?"

"Because it will change your life."

"Five." Oh. "One, two, three, four, five." The woman pointed around the room at every door but the one against the furthest wall.

Marion looked around for a moment.

"No, there's six. I counted six."

"Six?" the woman looked around.

"Look," the Doctor replied.

"Look where?"

"Exactly where you don't want to look. Where you never want to look." the Doctor said quickly. He was staring in the general direction of the door, but his iris kept flickering, "The corner of your eye. Look behind you."

The woman stared at a door right next to the door at the top of the stairs.

"That's-" she swallowed, "That is not possible. How's that possible?"

"There's a perception filter all round the door. Sensed it the last time I was here. Should've known when Marion didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. A perception filter's got to be incredibly strong. Otherwise, it won't draw Marion's attention and they won't even notice something's trying."

"But that's a whole room. That's a whole room I've never even noticed."

"It might've helped that it was right next to another door." Marion mused, "If you ever went into that room, you'd remember going into the other one instead."

"The filter stops you noticing. Something came a while ago to hide. It's still hiding, and you need to stop walking towards the door!"

The Doctor held out his hand to stop her, and Marion held out her arm to stop him from moving forward.

"Amy, piece of advice. Don't walk towards mysterious doors that have been doing their damndest to keep you from noticing. Sometimes, even when a hiding spot's obvious, you don't want to look unless you're sure it's not going to hurt you for looking."

"And is it going to hurt us for looking?"

"It's going to want to."

The slow burn of anxiety was turning into a low-level nausea.

Marion walked past Amy and towards the door.

The Doctor's sonic screwdriver had gone under the side.

"It's this one right?" Marion said, knocking her knuckles against the side.

"I think you two should leave the house right now."

"You two should be the ones leaving!"

"The Doctor's screwdriver slid under that door."

"Why didn't you grab it?" the Doctor asked.

"Well, I didn't know which door was the right door. I thought there was a door whose filter was so strong I couldn't even see the space of the wall where it should have been." Marion said, creeping forward, "Anyway, if you want it back, I'm going to have to go in there."

"I thought you said it was dangerous?" the woman in the policewoman's uniform asked.

"Well, yeah. But it's fine if I do it."

"Why?"

"Same reason I'm not currently on the ground bleeding out from a head wound after getting hit upside the head by a cricket bat and falling down a flight of stairs," Marion said over her shoulder as she turned the knob.

Oh wow she really could have died.

She could have died a bunch of times.

That-

Marion pushed open the door more forcibly than what was strictly necessary.

That wasn't something she was going to think about now or at all. She was going to think about the alien convict that, hopefully, didn't fully realize that she could tell was there.

The room looked like a room no one had been inside of in twelve years. It smelled of mold and staleness. It was full of old wooden boxes. There was something thick and black and worrying under the windowsill. Marion didn't look behind her out of the corner of her eye. She could hear something behind her. It sounded like it was covered in thick, nearly drying slime, and its coating cracked whenever it turned its head.

Marion didn't look. She breathed slowly through her nose and mouth and looked to her right, where she could see the crate where the Doctor's sonic was.

It was stuck to the table with something that was slimy and sticky. There wasn't enough resistance for it to be hard to pull it off the table, and just touching it for a moment, Marion felt the need to wash her hands.

The slime made her skin tingle. She wondered if she was allergic to it.

"Marion?" the Doctor called out.

"Yes?" Marion replied, keeping her voice as even and calm as she could.

"Is everything alright?"

"Oh, yes," Marion replied. She kept her vision focused straight and a bit to the right. "I found your screwdriver. It was on top of a crate!"

"I thought you said it slid under the door," the Doctor replied.

"I did!" Marion said. She needed to creep her way towards the door. But she couldn't fully look around because there was a creaking to the left of her head, which she was certain was the direction of the door. She looked down at her feet.

"And then it what, jumped up on the table?"

"Maybe!" Marion replied.

"Really?"

"Nope!"

Marion caught a movement of something mottled grey and white and blue and purple and ridged and turned her head away to stop looking but it kept shifting this way and that. And she knew that if she touched it, it would kill her. And they might get to the Doctor and Amy.

Maybe it was because of her trip to the realm of fiction had brought horror to mind. And maybe it was a stupid idea. But it was the best idea she had. Plus, didn't Amy need to know what Prisoner Zero's true form looked like?

Marion rummaged at the top of her bag and took out the camera. If she was remembering correctly, it had a pretty bright flash. Hopefully, close up, it would be bright enough to blind Prisoner Zero for long enough for her to dart away? She hoped that it was. Just in case.

"Doctor?" Marion said, "Amy? I am about to do something."

"Oh dear."

"If you hear a loud thud, you need to start running out of the house."

"Marion! What are you doing!"

"Hopefully, something smart!"

Marion took a deep breath and held up the camera in the general direction of the thing that was shifting and clicking and pressed down on the top. There was a bright flash, and she heard a hiss of pain.

Marion ducked down to keep from slamming her head against Prisoner Zero's body on the way out and started to run. She could hear movement behind her as she did. She almost slammed face-first into the Doctor, who had been standing awfully close. Marion felt a flare of vertigo. She shoved the Doctor backward and pressed his screwdriver into his hand.

"Come on. What's the bad alien done to you?" the Doctor whispered to it. More and more sparks flew off its side.

"Slimed it," Marion replied. "Maybe don't put it in your mouth."

The Doctor outstretched his arm towards the door, and the screwdriver flickered on and off as he tried to lock the door.

Something loud and angry thumped against the side, making the wood shake.

The woman in the police outfit was standing back near the radiator, watching the two of them.

"What is it? What was that noise!"

"That-" Marion replied, trying to subtly herd them towards the stairs. "Was Prisoner Zero."

"Will the door hold it?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah," the Doctor replied. Following along with Mario,n moving him towards the stairs. The woman in the police uniform remained still. "Of course. It's an interdimensional multiform from outer space. They're all terrified of wood."

A noise like a finger on a half-full cup started to come from the sixth door as a bright yellowish white light poured from its size.

"We should be somewhere that isn't here right now," Marion said quickly. "Come along. Let's jet."

"What's it doing?"

"It's a mutiform. It's got, well, multiple forms."

"When is your back up arriving?" the Doctor asked, "They need to know not to come here. No one should be here."

"There is no backup," replied the woman.

"I heard you on the radio. You heard her on the radio. You called for backup."

"I was pretending. It's a pretend radio."

"You're a policewoman!"

"I'm a kissogram!"

The woman took off her hat and shook her head. Her seemingly short hair fell down to just below her shoulders.

"This is a great talk!" Marion said from near the stairs, "But you aren't handcuffed to the radiator. We should go before-"

And then Prisoner Zero kicked down door six.

For all the bright lights and the loud thuds, if Marion hadn't known better, she might have expected something big and eldritch.

Instead, it was just an older man. Anywhere between a rough late 40s and a fairly decent all things considered early 70s dressed in a blue workman's uniform with a bright yellow tool belt around his waist. In his right hand was a short leash connected to a black dog that was dark brown near the muzzle.

The most important thing about the man and the dog was that they were blocking the way to the stairs.

Technically speaking, they could jump the banister. But that was risky for people whose ankles couldn't quickly mend themselves.

"Ah fuck."

Mario knew that this was Prisoner Zero. And because she knew that there was something wrong, there were more wrong things to see.

The kissogram didn't seem confused. "But it's just-"

Marion crept closer to it. Her main priority was to keep herself in between Prisoner Zero and the Doctor and the woman.

"Look at the hands," Marion said quickly. "The fingers on the hand holding the leash are half melded into the chain, and the fur's weaving into the skin."

"And look at the faces," the Doctor added.

The hallway was filled with the sound of a dog's growl, but the dog's face was still. Instead, it was the man who opened his mouth and began to bark.

"I'm sorry, but what?"

"It's all one creature," the Doctor explained. As Prisoner Zero's heads flickered around the room in sync with each other. There was a sickening noise as they did so. Like the joints in its necks were partially glued in place and stuck and unstuck with every shift.

Marion tucked the camera back into her bag and passed the photo to Amy.

"What the hell is that?"

"What it really looked like. I used a camera flash to distract it and ended up taking a photo along the way. You know how it is."

"One creature disguised as two. Clever old multi-form. A bit of a rush job, though. Got the voice a bit muddled, did you?" Prisoner Zero turned to face him directly, "Mind you, where did you get the pattern from? You'd need a psychic link, a live feed. How did you fix that?"

The man-shaped part of Prisoner Zero's lips curled into a snarl.

Marion's arm burned. Her hand lowered halfway into her bag. She fumbled for her knife. Just in case.

Stabbing him wouldn't hurt the man lying in the hospital bed. Would it?

The Doctor was still standing here and talking.

"You-" the Doctor said, holding out his hand, "Aren't going to come any closer. What to know why? She- sent for backup."

"I didn't send for back up!" Amy said quickly.

"I know. That was a clever lie to save our lives. Okay, yeah, no back up. And that's why we're safe. Alone, we're not a threat to you. If we had back up, you'd have to kill us."

"Doctor." Marion was pretty sure her voice was getting high. "Stop talking. Please."

"ATTENTION, PRISONER ZERO. THE HUMAN RESIDENCE IS SURROUNDED." Prisoner Zero's necks twisted this way and that with the same sticky sound. "ATTENTION, PRISONER ZERO. THE HUMAN RESIDENCE IS SURROUNDED!"

"What's that?"

"Well," the Doctor said slowly, "that would be backup. Okay, going to stop talking. Now. Marion, you talk instead".

"PRISONER ZERO WILL VACATE THE HUMAN RESIDENCE OR THE HUMAN RESIDENCE WILL BE INCINERATED."

Prisoner Zero's heads twisted to the side, staring through an open door, and then walking towards the window in sync.

Marion grabbed ahold of the two people's arms.

"Right! Let's go! Now. Run. Run."

Without a moment to lose the three of them raced down the stairs, taking them two or three at a time and out the door.

Marion turned the little thing on the knob so that it would lock as soon as she shut it and waved her hand silently ushering them to gogogogogogo.

Marion slammed the door shut. Her arm pain changed into a mild, but easy-to-deal-with sense of dread.

Once they were somewhat far away from the door, the Doctor spun his head around.

"Kissogram?"

"Yes, a kissogram. Work through it!"

The Doctor did something with his sonic screwdriver along the edges of the door.

"Why'd you pretend to be a policewoman?"

"You broke into my house. It was this or a French maid. What's going on? Tell me. Tell me!"

"There's been an alien hiding in your house for the past twelve years."

"Right now, it's disguised as a man and a dog, and some other aliens are about to incinerate your house. Any questions?"

"Yes!"

The Doctor ran to the TARDIS. Smoke poured from the cracked windows.

Marion shook her head and pulled him away, "She's repairing herself. Can't get in."

From the window, Prisoner Zero barked at them from the open window.

"Oh, why now of all times!"

"Doctor, when you regenerated, you set most of the console room on fire."

"Well, that's hardly my fault is it! I can't exactly help the mechanics of late-stage regeneration now can I?"

"PRISONER ZERO WILL VACATE THE HUMAN RESIDENCE OR THE HUMAN RESIDENCE WILL BE INCINERATED"

"Can you two stop bickering! We need to leave!"

"She's right!"

The Doctor started to run past the fence, and then pivoted and ran towards the now-repaired stairs.

"No, wait, hang on. Wait, wait, wait, wait. The shed. I destroyed that shed last time I was here. Smashed it to pieces."

"So there's a new one," Amy replied, "Let's go."

"Yeah, but the new one's got old. It's ten years old at least," the Doctor sniffed the weathered wood, "Twelve years. I'm not six months late, I'm twelve years late."

The barking got louder.

Marion's vision started to spin slightly, and she stumbled.

"We can walk and talk."

"This matters. This is important. Why did you say six months?"

"Why'd you say you'd be right back!"

"What?"

"What?"

"Come on!" Amy grabbed the Doctor's arm, and then the three of them were running down the dirt path.

Prisoner Zero stood in the doorway, but seemed to make no attempt to attack them.

Eventually, they came to a paved road with stone walls on either side. A boy passed them on a bike.

The Doctor slowed.

"You're Amelia," the Doctor said, staring at the woman, "And you knew. You called her Amy!"

"I waited for you to come back," Amy said, she continued to purposely walk further down the road.

"Amelia Pond. You're the little girl."

"I waited outside every night. And then every week. And then every month."

"What happened?"

"Twelve years."

"You hit Marion with a cricket bat!"

"Twelve Years!"

"No hard feelings, by the way," Marion added, keeping in stride with Amy.

They were far enough away from Prisoner Zero, that she was fairly certain that it wasn't going away what with the whole "alien prisoner guards wanting to set the planet ablaze" thing.

"She fell down the stairs."

"I'm fine!"

"Twelve years and four psychiatrists."

"Four?"

"I kept biting them?"

"Why?"

"They said you weren't real."

"Didn't you show them the photos?"

"The photos?"

"The photos I took with the camera. I took them, so that you'd have something to point to and say. See, they're real!"

"They thought I made them up."

"The fuck you mean they thought you made them up!"

"The ambient radiation could have affected the film," the Doctor brought up.

Amy turned away from the Doctor and she glared at Marion.

"You knew that it would be twelve years!"

"I said it would be longer than five minutes! Much longer! That's why I gave you the photos. That apparently didn't change anything!"

"You couldn't be more specific?"

"I had a lot of things on my mind."

"You ha-"

Amy abruptly stopped talking. From two yellow bell shaped speakers near an ice cream truck, the same announcement poured outwards.

"PRISONER ZERO WILL VACATE THE HUMAN RESIDENCE OR THE HUMAN RESIDENCE WILL BE INCINERATED. REPEAT"

A man dressed in a white suit and hat was fidgeting with wires, producing a loud and high-pitched feedback noise Marion felt directly in her skull. She winced and brought her hands to the sides of her head.

"No, no, no, come on. What? We're being staked out by an ice-cream van."

The Doctor ran forward, nearly bumping into the truck.

"PRISONER ZERO WILL VACATE THE HUMAN RESIDENCE OR THE HUMAN RESIDENCE WILL BE INCINERATED."

"What's that?" the Doctor asked quickly. "Why are you playing that?"

"It's supposed to be Claire De Lune."

Marion grabbed the radio, and pressed her ears against the speaker. The same message was coming from the speakers. A jogging woman dressed in blue was staring down at her mp3 player in taking in and out her headphones. Whenever she unplugged it, a tinny "PRISONER ZERO WILL VACATE THE HUMAN RESIDENCE, OR THE HUMAN RESIDENCE WILL BE INCINERATED" could be heard, and an older woman dressed in purple lowered her cellphone and squinted at it.

"Doctor, what's happening?" Amy asked.

The Doctor took off in a run towards a nearby house, his long legs letting him leap over the white picket fence. Amy ran around the other side, through the actual gateway. Marion went the same direction the Doctor had, although she had needed to use her hands to brace the top in order to launch herself on the other side.

The Doctor ran through an unlocked door with Amy and Marion close behind him.

It was an older woman's house, and it was decorated in warm shades of pale pink and brown and cream.

"Hello! Sorry to burst in. We're doing a special on television faults in this area." Amy ran in next to the Doctor, sounding a little bit out of breath, "Also, crimes."

The woman from the house was dressed in purple and staring down at her television.

The only thing on the screen was the blue eyeball that had stared at them when the Doctor had expanded the crack in the wall.

"Let's have a look!" The Doctor walked towards the TV and picked up a remote. He started pressing buttons and slapping on the side of it. The TV flickered, like the channel was indeed being changed, but the only thing on air seemed to be the Eye Ball Show Presents: the Prisoner Zero Hour.

"I was just about to phone. It's on every channel." Marion, just to see if it did anything, started pulling the TV antenna this way and that. "Oh it's coming through the phone lines too." he actions halted for a moment, "God. Do you think they've gotten into emergency services too?" she murmured half to herself.

"Oh, hello, Amy dear." The women greeted Amy behind them, "Are you a policewoman now?"

"Well, sometimes."

"I thought you were a nurse."

"I can be a nurse."

"Or, actually, a nun?"

"I dabble."

"Amy, who are your friends?"

"You called her Amy, too. I thought you were Amelia."

"Yeah, Now I'm Amy."

"Amelia Pond. That was a great name."

Amy's smile turned into a line. "A bit fairytale."

"I know you, don't I?" the woman said, "I've seen you somewhere before."

"Not me. Brand new face. First time on. Could be her's, she's only got the one. And what sort of job's a kissogram?"

"I go to parties and I kiss people." Amy swallowed, defensive, "With outfits It's a laugh."

"She's not a little girl anymore, Doctor."

"She was a little girl five minutes ago."

"You're worse than my aunt."

"I'm the Doctor. I'm worse than everybody's aunt." the Doctor leaned down to speak to the older woman, "And that is not how I'm introducing myself."

"Brain's still cooking?"

"You've said worse and your brain's all done. What's your excuse?"

The Doctor lifted his sonic screwdriver to a radio on the table. The same voice as before rang out. At first it was in French, and then when tried again it was in German, and on both channels she had to listen carefully in order to realize that they hadn't been in accented English.

"Okay," the Doctor lowered the device. "Okay, so it's everywhere, in every language. Marion, are they broadcasting to the entire world?"

The Doctor ran towards the window and looked up to the sky. "Marion, the human residence isn't just Amy's home, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?" Amy asked as the Doctor stuck his head out of the window. "What's up there what are you looking for?"

"Okay?" the Doctor looked ducked his head back inside and started to talk.

"Planet this size, two poles, your basic molten core? They're going to need a forty percent fission blast."

Another man walked through the doorway with a computer bag.

"But they'll have to power up first, won't they?" the Doctor stood nose to nose with the newcomer. "So assuming a medium sized starship, that's 20 minutes. What do you think, twenty minutes? Yeah, twenty minutes." the Doctor looked down and away from the man, "We've got twenty minutes. We can fix this in twenty minutes, can't we?"

"Twenty minutes to what?"

"Nothing great."

"Are you the Doctor?" the man asked.

"He is, isn't he? He's the Doctor! The Raggedy Doctor. Oh! And she's Miss Marion. All those cartoons you did when you were little. It's them!"

Amy looked down. She shook her head. "Shut up!"

"Cartoons?"

"Can I see them?"

"Shut up."

"Gran, it's them, isn't it?" the Doctor sat down on the couch staring up at the giant eyeball on the TV, "It's really them!"

"Jeff, shut up." Amy turned her head. "Twenty minutes to what?"

"The human residence," Marion said, leaning on the back of the couch. She blinked away vertigo, but was left with a sinking nauseous sensation in her stomach. "It's not your house. It's not even the village. It's the whole planet."

"Somewhere up there, there's a spaceship, and it's going to incinerate the planet."

"In twenty minutes, either everything's going to be fine or the world's going to end. You know, depending."

"Depending on what?"

"Well, depending on what we end up doing in the next twenty minutes." Marion started walking towards the door and the Doctor got up from the couch. She looked back, "Amy, you coming with? It's your planet after all. Don't you want to help save it?"


The village Amy grew up in was pretty. The three of them passed gorgeous stone facades and walls topped with shrubbery. People walked and biked around the area, and Marion hadn't seen a single car. The cobblestones were cool against her feet.

"What is this place?" the Doctor asked quickly as he looked around the room. "Where am I?

"Leadworth," Amy replied.

"And where is the rest of it?"

"It's a small English village." Marion replied, "No airport, no nuclear power station, and the nearest town is half a hour away by car."

"We don't have half an hour. Do we have a car?"

"Nope."

"Well, that's good. Fantastic, that is." the Doctor didn't sound like he thought it was good at all. "Twenty minutes to save the world and I've got a post office. And it's shut. What is that-" the Doctor was pointing to a small pond surrounded by a short rope fence.

"It's a duck pond."

"Why aren't there any ducks?" the Doctor sounded almost accusatory when he said that. And it vaguely reminded Marion of the way he had spoken to Harry.

"I don't know. There's never any ducks."

"Then how do you know it's a duck pond?"

"It just is. Is it important, the duck pond?"

"I don't know-" the Doctor's body suddenly jerked as if something was trying to burst out of his chest. He sat on the ground before Marion could help lower him and he clutched at the front of his chest, hunched over in pain.

Marion dropped immediately. She didn't want to crowd him, but she still wanted to be close.

"Doctor, are you alright?"

Marion knew the answer, but she wasn't sure what else to ask.

"This is too soon. I'm not ready, I'm not done yet."

Marion was trying to think, and she couldn't think of a Doctor that had, at this point, done as much excitement and movement directly after regenerating. It wasn't that they hadn't had action directly afterwards, but they had least gotten to spend some precious time unconscious as their bodies fixed themselves the rest of the way.

Eleven hadn't been out for a moment. And his TARDIS was exploding and everything was on fire and there was a crash.

"We save the Earth, the TARDIS will be done. You can go in there and sleep until everything is how it's supposed to be."

"Promise?"

"'Course! We can-"

The sky suddenly got darker and everything got a couple degrees colder. In the distance, Marion started to hear a few very confused crickets.

"What's happening? Why's it going dark?"

Marion stared up at the sky. The sun was big and dull.

"Oh you know," Marion replied, staring upwards, "Alien forcefield blocking out the sun." It became brighter again. The sun looked too big and too orange and too close.

"They've sealed off your upper atmosphere. Now they're getting ready to boil the planet."

Amy stared down at them in understandable horror.

The nausea grew stronger in addition the pain in her arm. She had never felt those things at the same time. Marion thought for a moment.

"Oh." Marion said after a moment of thought, "I think I'm angry."

That's what the nausea was. She was so incredibly angry. It wasn't the same kind of anger that had caused her to zone out, and she didn't think that she was going to hit something or someone, but then again, there wasn't an Atraxi close enough for her to attack, but it was hard to tell.

"Marion?"

"They're threatening to blow up a whole planet full of mountains and deserts and oceans and plants and animals and so much life, and they're willing to snuff it all out in order to catch one convict." Marion realized that she was shaking a little bit. She lightly tapped her knees and stood up. "Those-" she hissed, "It's fine. It'll be FINE!" Marion was speaking to herself as much as she was speaking to Amy and the Doctor. "I mean it's not fine. They're going to- AHHH. No they're not. We've got what, eighteen minutes? Do you know what can happen in eighteen minutes? So much!"

People walked towards the fields with their phones in their hands, pointed up towards the strange-looking sun.

"Oh, and here they come. The human race. The end comes, as it was always going to, down a video phone."

"You sound like an old man!"

"Might I remind you, Marion, that I am nine hundred and seven!"

Marion was pretty sure that the Doctor before the Doctor she had just been with had been in his early 900s.

This Doctor's age was probably somewhere in the mid thirteen hundreds if she was doing her math correctly, but she had been raised not to call out that kind of thing.

Amy shook her head and folded her hands.

"This isn't real, is it? This is some kind of big wind-up."

"Why would I wind you up?" the Doctor asked.

"Even I wouldn't commit to a bit this hard."

"You told me you had a time machine?"

"Because we do. Doctor, you still have the apple she gave you, don't you? It didn't get caught in the fire did it?"

"Right! Yes!" The Doctor took it out of his pocket and held it out to her.

"I'm the Doctor, that's Marion. And we're time travellers. Everything we told you twelve years ago is true." Amy stared down at the apple in the palm of her hand. "We're real. What's happening in the sky is real. Look at it. Fresh as the day you gave it to me. And you know it's the same one. Amy, believe us for twenty minutes."

Amy stared at the two of them. Something in her expression changed.

"So what do we need to do?"

The Doctor looked over to the side. "Stop that nurse!" And the Doctor rushed forward and yanked a very confused Rory Williams' phone out of his hand.


Next Chapter: …and Adulthood Is Weird Too


Amy: You Can NOT tell me that these two aren't a married couple.

The Doctor: Well, not on purpose.