Doctor Who: Panic Moon Rising Ch. 06

Author's Note: This series builds off of elements of the previous Panic Moon series. To get the full experience, it is recommended, though not necessary, to read that one first.

Okay! Whew. After a stint of health troubles, I am back, back home, back writing... back! This is the first thing I've got for you, but it's not the only thing: now that I'm- as far as I can see- in the clear, you'll be getting works from me with far more regularity than before. I've learned not to give firm dates, as life tends to conspire to put a stop to those one way or another, but I'm now in a much better place to be producing things. Please, do keep an eye on my profile for news there; I had some plans in the making before my life got derailed that I can get back to work on now, which I'm sure you'll enjoy.

Have fun, folks,

Kurokami

******************

Sander usually enjoyed journeys; going somewhere meant that, eventually, you would arrive. There were possibilities there, things one could do.

Except Sander was heading into the center of Leadworth. There was something depressing about that.

He did have Amy beside him, that provided him some hope for the immediate future. Here, she was a destabilizing element, a fissure in the otherwise featureless normalcy of the little village. The one thing that would break out of the strictures this place wrapped around every person here.

It struck Sander quite suddenly that that might include him, now.

'So you spend the last day or so telling me about how you shouldn't do anything to disrupt events here, and now you want to go out?' Amy prodded him with her elbow, looking at him out the corner of her eye. Outside and fulfilled after their dalliance in the shower, she was back to her old confident self. They had finally reached an agreement and with it, equilibrium. The uncertainty remained, but at least they had a goal now. She believed him, that was the important thing; he wouldn't be needing to kidnap her this time. That was a relief.

'Well, yeah,' He said, taking a deep breath of the fresh country air. 'Nothing's going to change if I just hide myself away. It's time to make a little noise, I figure. If it puts me into established events, that just means I'll be easier to find by those who are looking. Besides, it's not like I need to worry about altering history any more, now is it?'

'You're the expert here, not me,' She shrugged. 'You're just lucky I don't have to work tonight.'

'Yeah, I do not want to have to go out here alone,' Sander said, noting as he did so how sad it was that, to him, Earth was just as alien as any other world. More so, in fact; in his day, technology could be reasonably expected to pass across cultures with ease, but here, there was nothing but isolation. Oh, there were certainly pockets of alien technology that had landed on this world over the years, only to be snatched up by UNIT or Torchwood, or any of the other myriad agencies that concerned themselves with such things, but it wasn't the same.

He knew next to nothing about how his own species' home planet operated. For all that he was back home, here he was useless.

'You understand this means I'll have to introduce you to my friends, right?' Amy said, and in doing so dragged Sander back down into the more mundane events of the present. 'They'd find me out and about anyway, so we should just get it over soon. Do you need, I don't know, a cover story or something?'

Sander blinked, 'I can't just remain a mystery?'

'Not here you can't. People talk. Imagine what that'd look like, Sander.'

'Yeah okay, fair enough,' He paused here, unwilling to display his own ignorance of the way of things, even when it was necessary. In the end, he supposed he would need to trust Amy at least as much as she was trusting him, 'You wouldn't... happen to have something in mind, would you?'

Amy stopped, looking him over. She remained in quiet contemplation for a moment, before shrugging, 'Backpacker.' She moved on.

'I'm going to need more than that!' He called after her. 'Come on, I'm useless at this!'

'You're a traveler!' She walked backwards, feet tracing confident paths on the ground. 'That's not really a lie, is it? You're looking for a place to settle down here in Leadworth for a while for... I dunno, artistic inspiration. Say you're a writer or something, here for the peace and quiet. Believe me, there's lots of peace and quiet.'

'Yeah, but that still presupposes I can find a place to settle down,' Sander insisted. Theoretically he knew he had that little secret room at the back of Amy's house, but he didn't want to have to live there unless he was forced to. Prisoner Zero could very easily go back on its word, and Sander didn't want to be easy to find if it did. Besides, that place was creepy as hell.

'Aunt Sharon's renting out a couple of our spare rooms, why not try that?' Amy said. 'I mean, if you're going to need to be close to me, why not? We've got so many rooms just staying empty, she can hardly say no.'

'I don't think she likes me so much,' Sander said.

'She thinks you're trying to do untoward things with her niece, is why,' Amy couldn't help the goofy grin that spread across her face at that. She blushed, 'And you are, but she doesn't have to know that. Be on your best behavior in front of her, prove her wrong. I'm sure that won't be too hard for you, will it?'

'How come you have this better thought out than I do?' Sander frowned.

'I live here,' Amy shrugged. 'Trust me, you either learn to think really fast, or really slowly. Either way passes the time.'

They walked in silence for a little while, as Sander mulled over his options. Amy had presented him with a perfectly good plan, certainly better than anything he had thought of so far, and denying her now seemed like a bad move. Whatever else she intended from all this, just volunteering the information she had so far was a great gesture of trust; if he didn't accept it, what kind of message would he be sending?

'... Okay,' He said finally. 'Let's go with that.'

'I knew you'd see it my way,' She said, as they reached the edge of the town itself. Leadworth sprawled out in front of them, but not in the sense of being expansive. In the sense of being lazy. The little village seemed to drape itself over the landscape like a teenager on a couch. Sander caught himself eyeing the duck pond and thinking that the ducks had gotten the right idea by leaving.

Rory and Mels were waiting for them- for Amy, really- at the end of the road, and by the looks of it Mels had been harrying Rory about one thing or another. But then, this iteration of Rory, young Rory, had a sort of aura of being perpetually put upon, anyway. Like he was used to being background noise in his own life. He was the human avatar of Leadworth.

He frowned when he caught sight of Sander following along in Amy's wake. Sander locked eyes with him for a long moment, allowing a confident little smile to grow on his face before, in a moment of pure, dripping arrogance, he turned his eyes away, ignoring the younger man. What reason was there to do otherwise? Rory was no threat, and besides, Mels' reaction would be far more interesting, given what they had done earlier.

Sander didn't think that River's previous regeneration would tell Amy what had happened; she was too proud for that, and beyond it all, no matter how the girl acted normally, Amy was still her mother. No matter what the half-breed had been raised to believe, there would still be a cringe at that.

She did, however, shoot Sander a wink when Amy wasn't watching. Rory might have been, but that didn't matter. Sander found himself intrigued; there was no embarrassment there, no sense that she at all regretted the peek into her innermost desires he had been given earlier. Some lascivious part of him wondered whether he might be able to talk himself back into her pants, assuming he could do it in such a way that Amy never found out. Certainly if he had to choose then Amy won out, but there was an evil and bewitching allure to seducing the Doctor's wife away from him, over and over.

Sander quite liked the idea that he could look the Doctor in the eye and smirk, ensconced in that knowledge.

'You brought the drifter!' Mels grinned from ear to ear, apparently delighted at this turn of events. Of course, she was the member of the group most likely to take as many interesting things as possible and smash them together just to see what fun resulted, so having a mystery man involved in the night's proceedings would be very much approved of.

'Drifter?' Rory looked askance, very blatantly questioning Amy's judgment. Before he could react further, Sander stepped up, taking the reins of the conversation. He'd always been good at this; one didn't become adept at business without learning how to manipulate social structures.

'They found me sleeping under a tree,' He broke out the Assertive Handshake, leading through the gesture from start to finish; his hand dipped, gripping Rory's before he even knows what's happening, bringing it up into the open, giving the younger man a shot of deeply confident eye contact once he looked up from the greeting itself. Sander wondered whether the young mister Williams even understood what was happening, 'Hi, I'm Sander Hackett. And you must be Rory P- Williams.'

He tried to stop himself from frowning, at that hitch in the linguistic centers of his brain. He had almost said Rory Pond. Bad. Amy and Rory would undoubtedly take it as a simple slip of the tongue, but would Mels? At the very least it would put her on alert; she was a deep cover agent here, after all. Suspicion was in her nature. In quick succession his mind cycled through all the amazingly violent things he had watched the various incarnations of Melody Pond perpetrate, coupled with his inability to forget that Mels was probably the most unhinged of her regenerations; in a moment, he resolved to be much, much more careful.

'Yes, that's... me,' Rory paused, unsure of where to go next. Sander had to physically restrain himself from teasing the younger man further. It would have been so, so easy to do; after all, Amy was still under the impression that Rory was gay. He could have brought it up, made the poor little man blush and stammer and all those other things a lifetime in Leadworth had made him so good at...

But then, Sander's analytical mind had already leaped ahead, following the chain of causality back to the root; if Amy's misconception about Rory's sexuality was cleared up now, the two of them might start dating earlier. After all, that was the moment all that had started; kickstarting the Pond's relationship would throw the schedule off, perhaps they would end up marrying earlier, which would do some interesting things to their time with the Doctor, in the end.

'I asked Amy if I could tag along with her, since I'm kind of new in town,' Sander opted to simply move the conversation along, but couldn't help himself from adding just one more quip. 'I'm renting a room from her aunt.'

He observed the slight downturn of Rory's mouth with no small amount of troublemaking glee, as the four of them took to walking down into the town. As they did so, Sander stuck as close to Amy as he could, partially as an additional irritant for Rory, but mostly because he had no idea what a normal person did, least of all during this version of the present day.

'So, what's the plan?' He gave in to his natural curiosity in the end, and broke the silence.

'To begin with?' Mels shot him a lopsided grin. 'Pub. We shall see where the night goes from there.'

*************

The whole planet was like this all of the time, he soon realized. Nobody was in space at this moment in time; every last human being was here, landlocked and trapped, Earth's gravity acting like a smothering hug. The entirety of the human race was down here, sitting in pubs or in office cubicles or traffic, living normal twenty first century lives, with no idea of the swarming, warring, living universe just beyond the reaches of their atmosphere.

The thought was somehow distressing, and the notion that, somewhere out there, there was a man or a woman named Hackett living exactly the same kind of life, carrying his life's potential locked up in those painfully normal genes, only intensifying the feeling.

No wonder they all seemed to drink so much...

'This can not be all there is in Leadworth,' Sander deadpanned, leaning back on his chair. Suddenly, Melody's penchant for creating her own fun made a lot more sense.

'I dunno, I've never been short of something to do,' Mels grinned, winking suggestively. For a moment, the notion of tempting her into an extended crime spree sounded almost attractive, in a Bonnie and Clyde kind of way, but in time Sander thought better of it. By the look of things so did Amy, given the black look she shot her erstwhile daughter.

'Could we skip that part tonight, Mels?' She said. 'I still remember the last time. I still have bruises from the last time.'

'Hey, I could handle a little doing,' Sander couldn't help but stir the pot a little, but more realistically, his cover depended on not displaying his foreknowledge of these people too overtly; a normal newcomer wouldn't be aware of Mels' penchant for destruction, after all.

'Not her kind of doing,' Amy nudged him, speaking under the low drone of the background noise.

'Your kind of doing, then?' Sander murmured back, cocking an eyebrow. He grinned, as Amy blushed in return. This was tempting fate and he knew it, but he couldn't help it; their time together earlier was still fresh in his mind. He wondered whether she felt the same skittering pulse of arousal, whether it was something they shared, perhaps even a product of the parasite within her.

Best to tread carefully around that, what with Rory here, and the overwhelmingly human presence around them. Who knew what kind of trouble that alien could get Amy into if it kept filling her with impulses she couldn't control, out in public? Suddenly, this day became very dangerous.

'Are you going to be okay?' He added quietly, feeling oddly protective of his charge. He supposed there might be some purely pragmatic reasons involved; Amy was his entire hope for getting home at the moment, after all, but they were hardly the only reasons.

'Honestly? Bit dicey,' Amy bit her lip for a moment, shooting a momentary- but undeniably hungry- glance at Rory. Not good; of all the people in Amy's life that she could end up seducing on behalf of her alien passenger, Rory was by far the worst, from a purely temporal standpoint. Of course, he was also one of her closest friends, bound to spend an inordinate amount of time with her, and crushing on her hardcore besides. There needed to be a tighter leash on Amy's proclivities, here; allowing her to get biblical with Rory would be entirely too troublesome to clean up.

After all, if Amy and Rory hooked up early it could have untold effects on their timelines, even up to the point of their second meeting with the Doctor; what would happen to Sander then? No Amy in the TARDIS meant no Amy at Trismestigius, after all; no Amy at Trismestigius meant Sander would never have made it here, either. Who knew where he would end up?

And that was even discounting the presence of Mels... though of course, that was a teachable moment in and of itself; narrowing down the species of alien Amy was hosting was an important part of the process of ridding her of it, and part of that was determining the nature of the attractions it evoked. Even with all the extenuating circumstances, Mels was still Amy's daughter, and the more discerning of alien brain worms would avoid untoward behavior with family, if just to avoid attracting attention. It was at least a little clue.

For the rest of the night, Sander found himself watching Amy, observing the slow ramp up of the hunger in her eyes, the subtle shifting, squirming of her hips, and the flush in her cheeks. He was perpetually on the edge of his seat, ready to intervene at a moment's notice to redirect any untoward intent on her part, even to bring it on himself if need be; it was an arduous sacrifice he was solemnly prepared to give in order to maintain some structure to the timeline.

In the meantime, life happened; it felt strange conversing with Rory in particular on relatively equal terms- after all, their first and only prior meeting had been nothing but confrontational- but this iteration of Rory was different enough from his eventuality as the Last Centurion to make the point almost moot. Nevertheless, the three of them had an ease of interaction and repartee forged from years of closeness, the kind of thing Sander could only replicate through his observations of their past; this was Amy in her natural habitat, shielded from the vagaries and low level hostility of Leadworth life. This place could be entirely unwelcoming for the young woman, but here, with Mels and Rory, her flights of fancy could take wing in relative safety, and the grounded English town couldn't even touch her.

The smile on her face made Sander feel a tad guilty over what would happen to her in the future.

When Rory flitted off, obviously reluctant but unable to stay out with his college courses looming in the morning, leaving Sander alone with a pair of young women, both of whom he had slept with in the last day. It wasn't a feeling he was unfamiliar with- after all, he had lived more than a few days on a moon with several captive girls- but this situation had a lack of surety to it; for the first time in a while, he was left with only his own charm and personality to make things happen. How interesting...

How they ended up in the field, Sander wasn't entirely sure; the fact was, they had, and for the first time he felt completely happy with being stuck on Earth. They lay side by side, grass rising up around them in chaotic stalks, swaying in the breeze in such a way as to occasionally occlude the stars twinkling above. The moon -Earth's moon- hung above, shadows eating into one side, creating its thick, crescent shape.

They all loved those stars. The attraction was built in from birth; all three were born to step among them. Sander and Melody had been gifted with childhoods that presented such travel as fact, and yet it was Amy's hunger for flight that yearned the strongest. The Girl Who Waited had such conviction in this, forged from over a decade of keeping all of this close to her chest; resentment had only turned her need to be proven right into an incandescent flame.

Amelia Pond had turned those stars into a point of pride.

And then, in time...

'Well, as relaxing as this has been, I think I'm going to toddle off,' Mels said, stretching languorously before bouncing to her feet with characteristic energy. 'Don't stay out too late, children.'

'She's going to end up arrested by the end of the night,' Amy waited until Mels was far enough away that she couldn't hear, before speaking, her tone flat and vaguely expectant. It was a prophecy borne of experience, and Amy's resigned voice, acknowledging her responsibility to dig Mels out of whatever trouble she ended up in the following morning, made Sander grin.

'Let her,' He said, shifting into a more comfortable position. 'It's a nice night out, let her enjoy it and find someone else to stump up bail money afterwards.'

'She'll call me for it, though.'

'And I guarantee you I'll make you hang up on her,' He shot Amy a sideways glance.

'Just how do you think you're going to get into my room to do that?'

'Look at recent history, Amy. You tell me,' Sander said. 'Besides, I've got nowhere to stay tonight, before I take a run at your aunt for that room tomorrow.'