On the Hands of a Broken Clock

Chapter 4: Scrambled Signal

Swinging from the seat under the console, Amy listens. She's found that navigating the Time Loop is a bit like wading through treacle, tuning into a labyrinth of echoing conscience.

You finished up under there? The Doctor's voice comes to her in a haze.

Hardly. Amy thinks back. You love using this thing, don't you?

Fiddling about with aimless switches, he's metres from her, at most. The glass floor is the only thing that separates them, and she'd hardly call it thick.

So? The Doctor answers. You were the one who decided to go Time Lord, not me, and anyway, I haven't exactly had anyone to chat to like this in a while.

Struggling up from the seat, Amy follows the spiral of the staircase back up the console, and finds the Doctor by the scanner. He's looking at it with all the makings of bad news, but the second he sees her, he lights up, smiling straight at her.

"Alright, Pond?"

Amy eyes him suspiciously. "Yeah, why?"

The Doctor takes no time to shrug, shutting off the scanner with an air of finality. He lopes around the console to face her. "I'm just casually interested."

They're inches apart again, and as clearly as Amy can hear his two heartbeats echoing in her ears, she walks past him, lingering a hand on his arm as she goes.

"I'll believe that when I see it. I don't think you've ever been casual about anything."

"Well." The Doctor tries to take back the high ground. "I have been known to-"

"Is it bad news on the scanner?" Amy nods over it to it from her new-found position on the console jump-seat, changing the subject entirely.

"Not sure." The Doctor appears slightly put out. "Nothing universe-ending, as far as I can tell, but there's seems to be a warning, or a distress call, coming from somewhere."

"You can't trace it?"

"Nope." He runs a quizzical hand over his chin, standing on the glass floor like the ship itself has dared to defy him. "It's scrambled by the look of it, intentionally or otherwise. I can't make head or tail of it yet."

Amy smiles slightly. "Sounds like a future escapade to me."

"Ha." The Doctor matches her. "I don't doubt it."

"I suppose we've spent a lot of time this week just hanging around here." She casts her gaze up to the copper walls, listening to the deep mechanical hum, twisting ginger hair around her finger. "The universe must be getting restless."

"We haven't exactly been idle." The Doctor starts, an expression of acute alarm flashing over his features. "On the contrary, we've been causing some undeniable chaos in this ship over the last few days, wouldn't you say?"

"Problem with that, have you?" Amy offers him a wicked smile.

"Not at all." His demeanour immediately changes. "But I wouldn't want you going off on an adventure so soon in in your... new-found condition."

"New-found condition?" Amy stares at him. "What, you think I couldn't manage it?" There's heat rising in her cheeks again, and before she can hide it, he's staring right at her.

"Amelia," the Doctor says, leaning up against the console with all the makings of an intergalactic professor, "I think you'd manage it perfectly. You would be magnificent, and extraordinary, even more so than usual. My only worry is that I would worry about you."

"You'd worry about me?" Amy's caught off guard. One day, maybe, he might stop baffling her.

One minute he's shouting at the stars in a language she can't even begin to describe, and the next he's pulling her in for hugs and kisses, all kinds of affection she doesn't ever think to expect. With the universe crumbling at their heels every time they step outside, it's not like he hasn't got enough to think about.