-Chapter 41-

"High in the halls of the kings who are gone,

Jenny would dance with her ghosts.

The ones who were lost and the ones she had found,

the ones who had loved her the most.

The ones who'd been gone for so very long,

she couldn't remember their names.

They spun her around on the damp old stones,

spun away all her sorrow and pain.

And she never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave,

never wanted to leave."

"Jenny of Oldstones", Florence and the Machine

The band had finally played their last number, before quietly packing up their gear and slipping away into the night. Undeterred by the lack of music, Rory and Amy still swayed in the middle of the dance floor, simply luxuriating in the joy of being together.

"So all's well that ends well," Rory murmured in contentment, his lips against his new wife's hair, his arms wrapped lovingly around her. "I do love a fairytale ending."

To his surprise and dismay, despite the warmth and security of his embrace, he felt Amy suddenly shiver against him, as if his words had just struck a jarring chord with her. A feeling of foreboding stirred in his heart. They'd just been to the brink of utter destruction and back. Surely he could be allowed to enjoy just this one perfect moment, just for now, just for a little while, before anything else intruded. It was their wedding day, for heaven's sake! Part of him badly wanted to ignore the uneasiness he sensed in her, to just keep dancing and to hope whatever it was would just go away. But he knew that he couldn't. Amy was his entire world – whatever was troubling her would always trouble him, that was just how it worked.

With an imperceptible sigh of resignation, he stopped and gently cupped her face in his hands, looking into her eyes and trying to decipher her expression.

"Amy? What is it?"

"It's not finished," she whispered.

"What do you mean? What's not finished?"

"I'm not finished," she said, her voice suddenly fierce. "There's something still missing...something I've left undone. Can't you feel it?"

"Um...no, actually." Rory gazed at her in puzzlement, tinged with slight exasperation. "What else could there be? You brought me back. And your parents. And we managed to finally get married. And now the Doctor's back too. Happy, happy, joy, joy. Everything's perfect. What could be missing?"

"Everything's perfect for us. But I don't think this is about us," she replied. There was a small distracted frown on her face, as if she was trying to work out a way to explain how she felt so that he would understand. "It's like...there's this door in my head and someone's knocking at it from the outside, wanting me to let them in. But I can't...I don't know how to find the door handle."

"Knocking?" Rory echoed anxiously, his twinge of foreboding suddenly developing into full-blown dread. "That doesn't sound good. Are you sure? Maybe you're imagining it."

"Four times," she said. Her eyes were narrowed into cat-like slits of concentration. "One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Over and over again."

Rory glanced around, not liking the distant, measured tone in his wife's voice. "Maybe we should find the Doctor..."

But she was no longer paying him any attention. Instead, she had turned her head and was staring across the room at Tejana, watching as the other red-headed girl tilted her head back and laughed at something Hart said to her.

"It's not about us," she said again.

Bewildered, Rory followed the direction of her gaze. "Tejana? What are you talking about? She looks happy enough to me. Well, as happy as anyone could be with that bozo as a partner."

Amy had never hidden the fact that she shared his low opinion of Hart. She had definitely never wanted the ex-Time Agent at their wedding. Which was why Rory fully expected her to snort at his words, then make some sort of sarcastic comment about her friend's baffling choice of a "plus one".

Instead, she simply shook her head. "I know how it looks on the surface, but it's there, somewhere, centred around Tejana...something still out of balance...something still missing. I can feel it calling to me, Rory...a gap that needs to be filled."

He had no idea how to respond to that. Worriedly, trying not to be too obvious about it, he flicked his eyes around the room again, still searching for the Doctor. If anyone would know what Amy was on about, it would be the Time Lord. But the only other people in the room were Tejana and Hart. There was no sign of the Doctor anywhere.

"She didn't dance," Amy murmured, the random words seemingly coming out of nowhere. Her eyes were still locked on the Time Lady's face, apparently unable to drag them away.

Rory tried to work out what he should do. With the Doctor inexplicably absent, it looked like it was up to him to handle this new crisis – whatever it was – on his own. Maybe he should start by suggesting that she sat down. Or had a glass of water. Then again, this was Amy Pond. If he suggested either of those two things, he would probably end up receiving a punch in the nose, and that would only make things worse. "What?"

"Tejana. The Doctor danced every single dance, but she didn't. Not once, the entire wedding."

"So?" Rory gave a blank shrug. The conversation was getting more and more bizarre, and he was following none of it. "Maybe she doesn't like dancing."

"You don't understand, she has to dance!" Amy insisted. Her voice was still soft, not loud enough for the others to hear, but her words were as vehement as a shout, and Rory could see her eyes were oddly bright. "The balance has to be restored."

"Okay, Amy, don't take this the wrong way, but you're really starting to weird me out now," he said firmly. "I really think we need to find the Doctor and get him to check you over. Maybe all this excitement has been too much for you."

But Amy jerked herself free of his arms and hurried across the room towards the other couple, her stride determined. Inexplicably, the entire atmosphere of the room seemed to have changed. A moment ago, the low lighting had seemed romantic and intimate. Now, Rory thought he caught shadows dancing out of the corner of his eyes. Swallowing hard, he told himself to get a grip, and followed reluctantly along in Amy's wake.

Bored with waiting around, Hart had produced two large colourful racing beetles from a matchbox in his pocket, and he and Tejana had their heads together, bent over the table like children, each of them cheering their favourite on and exchanging playful bets as the insects scrabbled over the polished wooden surface.

As Amy and Rory approached, Tejana glanced up with a welcoming smile, her eyes warm with laughter. "Hey, here they are, the happy couple!"

But then, seeing the intense, arrested look on her friend's face, her demeanour became instantly alert, the smile vanishing. "Amy? Is everything all right?"

Amy didn't hesitate. "You didn't dance," she said in a clipped voice, without any preamble. "Not once. Why not?"

In response, Tejana suddenly went very still, her face emptying of all emotion. Uncomfortably, Rory had the sense that behind her deliberately impassive expression, the question had deeply disturbed and shaken the Time Lady, although he had no idea why. As if there was some kind of hidden, underlying meaning in the seemingly straightforward query.

"Why are you asking me this, Amy? I... don't dance," she answered evenly. "Not any more. I haven't, for a very long time."

As she spoke, her glossy red beetle, now unsupervised, wandered too close to the edge of the table and tumbled down to the floor, all its legs waving madly as it landed on its back. Hart was slouched lazily in his chair, his eyes half-closed, as if he no interest at all in what Amy was saying. But Rory noticed he didn't bend to retrieve the escaping beetle. Instead, there was an menacing stillness about the man, a poised wariness, which warned Rory that Hart wasn't as indifferent as he wanted to seem.

"Yes, you do," Amy insisted, reaching out and gripping Tejana fiercely, her fingers digging sharply into her friend's bare arm. "You just don't remember!"

The Time Lady gave a small wince of pain and tried to pull away, but Amy wouldn't loosen her grip. Instantly, Hart sat up straight in his chair, an aggressive scowl across his handsome face.

"Steady on, Red!" he growled. "I don't know what your problem is, but if the Princess doesn't want to dance, she doesn't have to."

Tejana put a gentle, restraining hand on his shoulder. "It's all right, John."

"Yeah, back off, John!" Rory added, hovering protectively at his wife's side. He might not know what any of this was about, but that didn't mean he had any intention of allowing Hart to threaten Amy. "This has got nothing to do with you!"

"Is that right, Plastic Man?" Hart sneered. Lithely, he got to his feet and faced off against the other man. The look on his face said that he was itching for a fight. "Then maybe you'd better tell us exactly what it does have to do with? Apart from your wife having some kind of mental breakdown, of course? She's the one who rushed over here to get in our faces!"

Amy ignored the rising tension between the two men and focused on her friend instead. "Please, Tejana, I know it sounds insane, but you need to listen to me. You have to remember! The Doctor says nothing is ever forgotten, not really – but you have to try! The balance still hasn't been restored. And whatever this is, I can't do it alone. It needs both of us."

"The wedding's over, Amy," Tejana said huskily, her eyes shadowed with doubt and confusion. "There's no more music. The dancing's done."

"Not for you," Amy responded. "You're a fighter, Tejana, you can't give up now. The Doctor trusted me to mend this. I need you to trust me too."

There was a long pause, as Tejana simply stared up into her friend's face. The Time Lady's expression was unreadable. Rory had no clue what thoughts were concealed behind the inscrutable clear green of her eyes. Then, just as the silence seemed destined to stretch on forever, her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, and she slowly rose to her feet.

"All right, fine, I trust you, Amy."

With a shock, Rory saw the slight, betraying swell of her stomach beneath the silvery fabric of her dress.

She's pregnant, he thought in dismay. How did we not remember that Tejana was pregnant?

"You don't have to do this, Princess," Hart spoke up, his hand resting on the butt of his blaster pistol. He glared challengingly at Amy and Rory, as if he suspected that the two humans were railroading Tejana into doing something dangerous.

"Yes, John." Her answer was soft, but firm. "I think that I do."

The dance floor seemed to glow gently as Tejana approached it. Spotlights suspended from the roof cast a swathe of light across the expanse of worn parquetry, while fairy lights twinkled around the edges like tiny fireflies. It was, she thought, as far removed from the grand ballroom back on Gallifrey as the east is removed from the west. The cheap wooden floor tiles were scratched from the constant ebb and flow of hundreds, maybe thousands, of human feet. There were no colannades, no chandeliers, no banks of exotic flowers. Even more significantly, there was no music, just silence, deep enough to drown in.

Tejana's footsteps faltered. She could feel Amy's eyes boring into her back, urging her on. In theory, it was a simple enough proposition: walk forward and step out from the darkness into that circle of light. But reality was a different matter altogether. There were gaps in her life – oh yes, as determined as the universe was to repair itself, she knew there were gaps. Some of them had been filled when her father had been restored, but not all. Amy was right, there was something else missing. Someone else? Someone so very important.

I... don't dance, not any more. I haven't, for a very long time.

Yes, you DO, you just don't REMEMBER...

It was as if she had been sleep-walking and the other girl had found just the right words to wake her from her dream, like a key sliding into a lock. Yet, as much as she tried to remember, she couldn't seem to focus. Time kept shifting, determined to close those gaps, to smooth them over as if they had never been. Altering her perception of the tapestry of her own life, re-stitching things here and there, until she couldn't be sure of anything. In a few short hours, she guessed, the process would be complete. The gaps would be gone, the universe would be rewritten, and whatever had been lost would be gone forever.

Every step she took closer to the dance floor was a battle. It felt like she was treading on broken glass, as if she was in Hades perpetually trying to roll an enormous rock up a hill, struggling against the mighty weight of Time herself.

Gritting her teeth, she drew once again on her inner stubbornness, fighting back against the pain.

"Oh no, you don't, you miserable old cow!" she whispered, fiercely concentrating on putting one foot in front of another. "Whatever you've taken from me, you can damn well give it back!"

And then she was there, hearing the sudden clack of her high heels as she walked to the centre of the dance-floor. The lights shone directly down on her head, enveloping her in a halo of white. But around her, beyond that small circle of illumination, she could only see darkness and the shifting shadows. Slipping off her shoes, she tossed them away, feeling a tingle of pleasure up her spine at the liberating sensation of her bare feet caressing the warm wooden floor. Taking a deep breath, she held herself very still, and closed her eyes.

Just dance.

Amy had made it sound so easy. Just dance, the way she remembered doing so many times before, back when things made sense. Like the time she had danced with Jack in the TARDIS, with the Doctor and Rose waltzing nearby. Like the times she had danced at the Imperial receptions with Turlough back on Trion, before the Time War had blown everything to hell. Like the time she had tried to teach Jamie McCrimmon to dance, a direct swap in return for the boxing lessons he had given her, twirling with him, clumsy and laughing, until they had missed their footing and tumbled together into the soft purple heather of the Scottish moors.

But it wasn't Jack she needed to remember, and it wasn't Turlough or Jamie either. And dancing no longer made sense. It suddenly seemed more remote and alien to her than anything she had ever done.

Tentatively, she put out one slender, arched foot. Then, hearts pounding, she gave an awkward little twirl. It felt wrong, so wrong, dancing alone like this. So exposed and vulnerable. Crippling fear trickled through her veins and her chest was so tight, it was suddenly difficult to breathe. She couldn't do this. Whatever Amy was expecting to happen, she just couldn't do it, it was impossible.

Yet, even as the certainty of failure gripped her, her feet seemed to find a rhythm of their own, moving almost without her volition, a flowing, liquid pattern that arose from some forgotten place deep inside. New strength filled her, new breath energised her tired soul, lifting and carrying her, until she was swaying across the floor, each movement a song of delicate precision, each footstep tracing a mysterious, celestial rhythm that only she could hear.

And she could hear it, she realised, despite the physical silence in which she danced. The music that had been part of her since she was born – since long before she was born, passed down through the centuries from Lungbarrow ancestor to Lungbarrow ancestor, since the very beginning. The Great Dance of Otherstide, her heritage, her history, her life – the power and the passion of the Time Vortex – she could feel it calling to her. It wasn't just her imagination, not just inside her head, she could actually hear it. Startled, she realised that it was coming from inside the psychic link, undetectable to anyone but a Time Lord, wild and sweet and unbearably pure, rising and falling, driving and retreating, enticing and resisting. It was soft, barely loud enough for her to register, as if it was coming from a long distance away. But it was there.

Undiluted joy poured through her soul, a feeling of purpose, of passion. Her steps no longer faltered, they were sure and certain, as her lost sense of self slowly began to restore. She was a Time Lady of Gallifrey. She was Tejanakaturadilena, Heiress of the House of Lungbarrow, daughter of Theta Sigma and of Melanakaturadilena of the House of Firestone. Stretching out her arms as she spun, she felt as if she could draw the entire universe to her and hold it close, embracing it as her birthright. Within the psychic link, the eldritch music swelled, becoming louder and louder, pulsing like a shared double heartbeat. She had no idea whether it was real, or some kind of psychic resonance, but over her head, the spotlights dimmed and faded away, their illumination now nothing more than an ugly, garish memory. Instead, wherever her small feet passed across the floor, trails of pure white light glowed, weaving a beautiful, unearthly tapestry, an arcane pattern representing the Web of Time in all its celestial glory. It was a magical experience, one that she knew she could never describe, surrounded by those all those glittering threads, uplifted by the sheer, unbridled power of Time. Nevertheless, despite the potency of the moment, it was also tinged with deep, fundamental sadness, because as long as she danced alone – as long as there was no yang to her yin – the Web could never be complete.

Come on, come on...

The words sizzled over the shining filaments towards her, like electric pulses along a network of nerves. They tugged at her, urging her on, wanting her to push harder, faster, to go further...

Come on, come on...

Even immersed so deeply in the dance, Tejana recognised the voice. It was Amy. The human girl who had slept for years with timefire pouring through a crack in her wall. The human girl who had held a piece of a Weeping Angel within her eye. The human girl who had absorbed the energies of the energies of the Pandorica for over two thousand years.

The human girl she had promised to trust.

Drawing even more strength from Amy's psychic urging, she redoubled her efforts, pouring herself into performing the ancient, puissant steps she knew so well.

She was a Time Lady. She was Tejanakaturadilena, Heiress of the House of Lungbarrow, daughter of Theta Sigma and of Melanakaturadilena of the House of Firestone. But she was more than that, wasn't she? So much more. She was the Executioner of the Daleks. No, not that, she'd left that far behind. She was... she was an agent of Torchwood. No... no... push harder... delve deeper... dance faster... come on... come on...

She was... she was...

She was garbed in a traditional Gallifreyan silver gown, with full skirts as light as a cobweb, her hair flowing down her back and entwined with flowers. And all at once, opposite her danced an shadowy, faceless man, his movements open and overt, full of fire and heat and masculine hardness. Together, male and female, they were two aspects of the same reality; dependent, opposing forces that flowed in a natural cycle, always seeking balance, forever transforming each other. Like an undertow in the ocean, every advance across the floor was accompanied by a retreat, every rise in the dance transforming into a fall.

And as they came together, as they circled and drew apart again, his feet trailed fire, the blaze of red merging perfectly with the pure white web she had woven. No longer broken and incomplete, the pattern shone across the floor, intricate and pulsing with vitality, alive and achingly beautiful.

Raising her gaze, she met his, their steps perfectly synchronised as he twirled her around him in an elegant spiral. His facial features were indistinct, but his eyes were the caramel brown of aged whiskey, dark with passion, drinking in every detail of her face as if she was as precious to him as the very air he breathed.

"Koschei!" she whispered, and even as she spoke, she saw his face solidify, his platinum blonde hair shimmering back into reality, along with the thin, stubbled cheeks, the arrogantly-arched brows. "Amin mekhil."

The music was loud now, dominating the psychic link, rising and rising, as the Great Dance drew to its magnificent crescendo. His warm, calloused fingers enveloped hers, turning her in the last, exultant steps.

Then the final notes faded away into silence, and she found herself in his arms, held closely against him, as they stood together in the centre of the glowing representation of the Web of Time. His breath stirred her hair as he bent his head and murmured into her ear. "My beautiful Ana. Amin tel'Seldarine...amin b'ara."

A tremulous smile parted her lips at the familiar, beloved sound of his voice, joy and hope radiating through her body, memories of a field of myosotis flowers filling her mind and her hearts. Oh, she was more, indeed... so much more.

"I will always be your haven, Koschei," she choked out. "I will always be your home!"

She was vaguely aware of a door being torn open nearby, and the sound of running feet, as in the background her father erupted into the room with a shout. But it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that her life-mate was kissing her and that everything else was falling away into oblivion.