On the Hands of a Broken Clock

Chapter 2: Vota

The next day, when the Doctor's gone back to being a loveable idiot, Amy's terrified. She has no idea how he manages it - to flip switches so easily, to shut emotions out without a care in the world. Everything he'd confessed is still firmly at the front of her mind, and try as she might, she can't think of anything else.

Desperately, and more than anything, she wants to help him. As convincing as his façade is, she'd rather him discard it entirely – have no need for it. She wants to make sure he can be as open and as free as he has been, forever. To make that happen, she needs to stay with him forever.

Quite by chance, Amy comes across the secondary library. She doesn't know whether she's been inadvertently drawn to it, like Lucy and the Wardrobe, or some kind of room of requirement; but whatever the reason, it's right here. An oak doorway, a big shining lock and handle. It's a lot smaller than the main one, although a fire still burns at the end of the room, and there are clutter piles of all kinds of things. Countless rugs, chairs, and ticking clocks - if she wasn't so wrapped up and uneasy, Amy supposes she might find it peaceful.

She can't quite shake the tingling feeling at the back of her neck, the one which tells her she's not supposed to be in here. The Doctor's never mentioned it, never waved an enigmatic hand at it on his grand tour of the TARDIS, the very first night he showed her around.

Despite the warning signs, something catches her eye at the end of the room. Tucked away at the back of a shelf there's a small wooden box, with Gallifreyan symbols carved into the latched lid. Granted, she doesn't know much about it, but it seems too good to resist. Certainly, if she wants to help the Doctor, handling something from his home planet might be the right place to start.

When Amy picks it up, she's immediately surprised that it hovers. It's Time Lord science, she supposes, the stuff that gets inches from her fingertips and up in the air like some kind of dazzling outer-space grenade. Well, if anything were to sum up the Doctor...

She watches as the little box unlatches itself with alarming sentience, filling the room with a beautiful auburn mist. It's like a thousand suns all beating down on her at once, offering peace and serenity, and probably heaven on Earth if she had any mind to ask for it.

"I am the Vota. The granter of wishes."

Amy wrenches her jaw apart eventually, but it's only after the box has spoken to her; like properly actually, communicated with her inside her mind like some kind of weird one-way telekinesis. She gapes at it, just hovering there.

"You- You what?"

The Vota repeats itself.

"Granter of wishes?" Amy tries to pull herself together. "Like a genie?"

The Vota says nothing. Amy's never got a disapproving look from a sentient golden glow before; but she senses it all too well. "The Time Lord version, at least?" Hastily, she tries to save the situation. The Vota speaks.

"I was designed for the battlefield. For the wounded and the dying to make their final requests."

I'm not dying." Amy raises an eyebrow, hoping she's not about to be told otherwise.

"It seems not."

Amy stifles a laugh. Trust the Time Lords to create a sarcastic interface. "What can you give me?"

"Anything you desire."

Amy doesn't even have to think. "The Doctor." She can feel the disapproving look again, but she ploughs through. "He's so alone."

"He is the last of his kind."

"Right; yeah, but-"

"I cannot revive the Time Lords."