Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, I am not affiliated with the BBC and am making no money from this work of fiction.

Author's Note: I am so sorry this chapter took so long! That shouldn't happen again, and I hope there are still people out there interested in this story.

Rose looked at Rory.

Rory looked at Rose.

Amy flitted off toward the way they came in, and Rose heard the screen door close behind her, undoubtedly intending to spend time finding something to wear to the unmitigated disaster that would be this reunion. The Doctor, surprisingly unbothered, likely too preoccupied with the mystery to think about the signals he was sending or why going to Amy's reunion with her was a horrible idea, wandered off in the opposite direction, screwdriver bleeping as he attempted to figure out why they were here.

Rose was beginning to think the TARDIS hated her.

The man in front of her cleared his throat, bringing her attention back to him. "So you and Amy are close then, huh?"

The question itself made Rose boggle at how ridiculous it was. How could he think that? "Did you miss the bit where she just kicked me?" If her voice was a bit shrill, well it was a very unexpected question.

"Well, no," Rory allowed. "But you were commenting on my job, and the last person who did that had a heel inserted somewhere...unpleasant." He flushed a bit pink. "Amy's a bit protective of me." Returning to the more obvious stream of conversation, Rory shrugged. "And she only kicked you a little, so she must think you're friends."

That stilled Rose's anger for a minute. Were they friends? Amy had saved her life, and they had shared each other's pain about losing parents. Did that make them friends? It was sort of hard to tell. "She make a habit of kicking her girlfriends?" Rose asked instead, trying to get a better feel for the situation.

Rory shrugged at the question. "Don't know, she's never had one before."

"What, never?" Rose asked, gawping at the nurse in his scrubs, still holding the cricket bat.

Rory considered the question carefully. "The mums in town used to make their kids play with her when we were little, but they always used to tease her for her stories and her accent, by middle school she was always pulling pranks or getting in fights, and by high school all the boys noticed her enough to make all the girls hate her...so...not really." He shrugged a little. "As far as mates, it's pretty much always been me and Amy." He paused then, and his face twisted as if biting a lemon. "And Jeff, sometimes."

"That's the one who ruined her kissogram audition, yeah?"

"Yeah." Rory agreed. "And she punched him in the throat, so...kicking girlfriends is not that much of a stretch."

"Huh." Rose managed, still deciding on whether they were friends or not. She wasn't exactly what she normally looked for in a friend, but it couldn't hurt, could it?

"Amy!" The Doctor called from somewhere in the house, making Rose leave the cup of tea Rory had made her after they had moved from the hallway. Making the conscious decision not to be jealous, she pushed her chair back from the mail-laden table, and headed for the door that they had come through and the TARDIS.

Amy was easily found in the TARDIS wardrobe, among a minefield of high heels that had been obviously tried on and discarded. "Amy!" Rose called as she caught some movement behind a rack of evening gowns. "I think The Doctor found something, he was calling for you." Rose picked up a metallic gold high heel. "Did you leave any for me?"

"We don't wear the same size!" Amy called from the depths of the wardrobe, grumbling as she moved toward the door. "Right after I find the right shoes, of course." She sat down on one of the cushy benches near the door and slid off some black, rhinestone-covered heels and put her boots back on her feet. "Have fun in the wardrobe!" She suggested, heading back to the house.

Amy found Rory in the hallway, looking about nervously, but luckily sans cricket bat, while The Doctor was, embarrassingly, in her childhood bedroom. "Are my plastic dinosaurs a danger to reality?" She joked, looking worriedly into the room.

"Amy!" The Doctor said, looking up at her. "There you are!" He was kneeling on her bed, examining the crack in the wall in the sky blue paint. "There's a crack in this wall."

"Oh, it's the crack again." Rory said, coming up beside Amy in the doorway.

"I know." Amy said, firmly ignoring Rory. "I told you before, Doctor, when we were in Dallas."

The Doctor did remember that, and how he had grabbed her wrist from touching the crack. "Amy, this is serious. How long has it been here?"

Amy's brow wrinkled. She knew he wouldn't ask if he didn't think it was important, but she felt defensive anyway. She had been dragged to several psychiatrists over the crack before she learned to shut her mouth and not talk about it. "I don't know, sixteen years at least. As long as I can remember. It was here when I got here."

The Doctor looked at Amy seriously, grabbing her hand and pulling her over to the wall. "This crack, here, just like this?"

Amy wanted to be a smartarse, but she could tell that The Doctor was serious, and even after only knowing him a short time, she trusted him. She took a deep breath and looked right at the crack, and ran her fingers along the Glasgow smile that ran by her old bed. It was unchanged. "Just like this." She confirmed. "It's just a crack."

The Doctor stared a moment. It made no sense. His screwdriver had matched the energy coming from the the crack as identical to the energy from the crack in 1963. Then, something clicked. "You said it used to terrify you, Why?"

Amy shied away from The Doctor as much as she possibly could without moving her feet. "It was just an anxious young girl displacing her abandonment issues from the loss of her parents and anxiety from being displaced from the home she knew onto a perceived imperfection in the strange place she found herself." She said it in a clinical voice, as if it were something she had learned by rote, all in the third person.

"Now, I don't believe any of that." The Doctor said firmly. "You're the girl who made a Dalek grieve and threw her shoes at it. You're dead clever. What was it, Amy?"

Amy struggled for a moment, anyone could see that, from the set of her jaw and the tick in her cheek. "I went to four psychiatrists over that stupid wall."

"Amy." The Doctor said seriously, placing a hand on her shoulder. "I'm the farthest thing from a psychiatrist you'll ever meet."

"Prisoner Zero has escaped." Amy said finally, glaring past him at the offending wall. "Every night, but it stopped ages ago. It stopped by the time I finished primary."

"Never anything else?" The Doctor asked, just to be sure.

"Just that." Amy confirmed.

The Doctor looked back at the crack and pointed his sonic screwdriver at it. The crack gaped open, and for just a moment, there was an echo, the exact words Amy had repeated, but it came out distorted. "Prisoner Zero has escaped." The crack opened into a gaping hole of pure time energy, which was exactly what The Doctor had been afraid of behind that crack. He frowned as he let it snap closed.

"What is that?" Rory asked in amazement. "It really did say it. It was just a game..." He flustered, gesturing with his hands. "How did the crack in the wall just talk?"

Amy looked over at Rory, and smiled at him, which was apparently distracting enough. "Don't you want to go get ready for the reunion, Rory?" She said, twisting a curl around her finger. "Go on, I swear I'm safe."

"Uh...oh...okay." Rory said slowly. "Call me if you need me."

"Absolutely." Amy agreed. "We'll meet you here at seven." She watched Rory leave and sighed in relief, not sure how to explain everything going on in her life to her best friend, and turned back to find herself nose-to-nose with The Doctor.

"You're still here." He said, as if she were a puzzle.

"Yeah..." Amy said, without blinking. "You promised me a planet, remember? I'm not going anywhere until I get a planet."

The Doctor smiled at that, but it didn't reach his ice-blue eyes. "No, I mean...whatever was on the other side of that wall got eaten by the time energy years ago. It's been seeping through that wall probably since you stopped hearing the voice, but the crack consumed at least one person in Dallas in less than a day, but not you. It's been seeping into you, Amy Pond."

Amy felt her throat close up. "What does that mean?"

The Doctor shook his head, unsure. "I don't know. But we'll figure it out. We will."