Author's Note: So I think I said I would post the second chapter of An Interrogation, but I've written 3000+ words since then and scrapped 2900 of them, so it will probably be a few more days. I am finally into the swing of it, though so it should be done soon.

This is a little ficlet that is actually the first DW fanfiction I ever wrote, and I don't love it so it's been sitting on my computer for three months now. But, considering it's not doing anything and I want to take my time with this second chapter, I am publishing it.

Also, it takes place in that same slight AU established by "Earth To" that I've been writing basically everything in, though you don't need to know that to appreciate it, necessarily.

Stupid bloody idiot.

After he pushes into one of the gas lakes of Iota Draconis B, where the murky mauve cloud layer turns to liquid the moment it brushes her skin, soaking her to the bone though it's not a real lake even, she swears very loudly and stomps off, leaving him to deal with the small army of Iotans whose priceless cave temple he's accidentally destroyed with an errant Frisbee.

The TARDIS is sitting on a wide, rocky plain, she recalls, but that's most of this planet so it takes her two hours to find it. When she does, it's locked, and she's enraged anew.

Stupid bloody idiot,she repeats, and starts stomping again, this time to nowhere in particular. She lets her resentment be the navigator and concentrates only on the sound of her feet making contact with the gravel in rhythmic pattern. She's still a little bit damp from the lake, though most of the liquid seems to have evaporated off her into the purpleish gas from whence it came and she leaves it in tufts on the ground as she walks, which is foreign, frightening, and only serves to further tax her nerves.

Night falls and she's still walking. But night here is just dusk, because the sun is large and the planet is small, she recalls. It doesn't make much sense to her, but very little he tells her does and any clarifying statements are usually followed by except no, it's not like that at all, but if it helps you, then yes, it is.

She finds a rocky crag jutting upwards like a skyscraper in a cornfield. It reminds her of the big cliff that they hold Simba from so she settles down in its shadow and tries to sleep despite the hardness of gravel earth. Her mind wanders. She starts thinking about proper nouns, and how she's stopped using them. There's just 'me' and 'you'. Her, and him. And space. Like they are the only two things that exist. Every once and a while it hits her square in the stomach, how far away from home she is. Home isn't even a place she particularly likes—home is boring, and home is getting married too young—but out here, when she isn't with him, she's alone. Really, rightly alone, and human beings weren't built for that.

Perhaps Time Lords were. But what's a Time Lord, anyway? Looks like a human, talks like a human. Smells cleaner than most human men. She tries to remember what Rory smells like, and can't, but it probably isn't that different. She tries to remember his face but it comes out all a jumble.

She starts nodding off, when there's a scuffling sound.

"Do you have a preference for sleeping on rocky surfaces? Not my personal cup of tea, but the TARDIS could fix you a deserted rocky plain bed, if you'd like. Or perhaps we could just set your mattress to very very firm—"

"Shut up," she says finally, rolling over. He's standing above her with his hands in his pockets, and she's not sure whether it's the rock or the massive careen of his hair that sets his face in shadow.

"Are you cross, Pond?" he asks simply.

"Stunning deduction."

"The temperature of this planet will drop to about 250 Kelvin in an hour." She glances up at him, not understanding. He's speaking in a predictably haughty monotone, his face inscrutable. "Roughly negative twenty-three Celsius," he elaborates flatly.

"Why?"

"Sun's setting."

"You said it doesn't," she protests.

"I said not exactly."

She sighs but doesn't move. "How'd you find me, then?"

"The Iotan Sub-Leeches," he replies, and glances around until he spots one of the gas tufts she had shed earlier, floating aimlessly a few inches above the ground nearby. Gently, he cups it in his hands, and lowers himself to the ground beside her. He exhales into the gas and it springs to life, a little creature now, a line of color that curls up and about one of his hands and swirls round his wrist. "They're alive," he explains, and she sits up to watch. "The lake is actually a school of Sub-Leeches—called that, by the way, not because they take blood. It's heat, actually, which is their food. Pure heat energy, like plants do with photosynthesis. They can attach to heat sources in condensed forms, as they did to you, or absorb is directly, as this one just did from my breath. They don't need much, obviously, so they tell off you after a while, completely stuffed, and you only slightly chilly." It dances through his fingers and slithers up his arm, and as it returns he lets it dribble back to the earth, where it slides off into the almost-darkness. "Brilliant creatures. Very beautiful, and very harmless—which cannot be said of all pretty things." He throws her a disarming smile, and falls silent. She can't stop thinking about the leeches. After a minute he inquires hesitantly, "Are you still cross, Pond?"

"Yes, and getting crosser!" She shoves him. "You fed me to the leeches."

"To save you from the Iotans!"

"I don't need to be saved," she declares. "I'm just as capable of fighting off a bunch of religious zealot aliens as the next person."

"The next person isn't capable," he replies, sounding Aunt-like, again.

"Yeah, well." With a shrug, she turns away. "I could've."

"Right." He gets to his feet and puts forth a hand to her. "Back to the TARDIS?"

Ignoring his offering of assistance, she clamors to stand on her own, glare fixed. "You just had to bring a Frisbee, didn't you?"

"Frisbees are cool!" he replies automatically, and then sighs, frustrated. "So, you're cross. Alright! Sorry for the lake and the Frisbee—only sort of sorry for the Frisbee, actually—so what shall I do, Pond? Shall I take you home?"

Her tone is more offended than ever.

"Of course not!"