River laughed in desperate relief. "You think?" she demanded.

Rory gave her a stern look. "Allow me a moment of levity, my dear," he requested. "I have a feeling we will be getting little more than a moment soon enough.

Martha took that as her cue. "Alright. Question of the hour is: does the Master know we're here?" She looked at Rory.

"He likely knows our general location," Rory admitted. "But it won't be anything specific."

"He doesn't need anything specific," River cut in.

Martha snarled under her breath. "Wonderful. Just wonderful. Question two: How soon will the troops be here?"

"Three days," someone said from the door.

As one, three heads turned to face the intruder. It was Mihail. He was leaning against the door jam, smirking a bit, but also shaking.

Rory's eyes hardened and narrowed. "How do you know that?" he asked suspiciously. Martha's fingers tightened around the pistol strapped to her thigh, just in case.

Mihail shrugged. "I sent a message to the village down the mountain," he explained, his voice barely shaking. Martha had to give him credit for that, seeing as Rory was looming over him. Rory was good at looming. "They're about four days from here, and they said the army was a day away from them."

"That's excellent," Martha said, forestalling Rory's reprimands. "Question three: Toclofane. How close are they? How fast can we get away?"

"I don't believe there will be any," Rory asserted. "The Master is coming after me, not you. He is insane, yes, but not stupid. Until he knows, or believes he knows, what I am capable of, he will not send Toclofane."

Martha nodded. "In that case, I think our best option is to leave tomorrow. That way, we'll have time to prepare and still be able to stay ahead of the army."

Rory wrinkled his nose. "No point leaving if we don't know where we're going," he pointed out.

Martha clapped her hands and grinned enthusiastically. "Well, we've got plenty of time to find out."

That proved to be the easy part. Somehow, without any of them noticing, Mihail had managed to set up a communications network with the Resistance. Their de facto leader was a middle aged British woman by the name of Sarah Jane Smith.

She had managed to patch into Archangel Network and contact any other potential freedom fighters mere weeks after the Master had taken over. Martha had only been able to contact her sporadically, but Sarah Jane's ability to get her where she needed to be as safely as possible was utterly flawless. Martha owed Sarah Jane her life.

Now, Sarah Jane was more than willing to help out yet again. She gave them an impossibly large wealth of information; troop movements, progress on the rockets, even news from the Valiant. They knew a lot of it, but not even Rory's mystery sources could spy on the Valiant. To Martha's relief, although Leo had finally been captured, her family was safe. That knowledge lifted a weight that Martha had forgotten she carried and she was bursting with excitement for the next move.

After a few hours deliberation, it was decided that Mihail would travel south into India alone while the others would spread the word in China. Rory was convinced that Mihail was ready to go his own way, and the fewer mouths they had to feed, the better. Martha might have been upset at how callously Rory had made the decision, but it was actually Mihail's suggestion.

He left soon afterward with as many supplies as he could carry, hoping to take advantage of the pre-dawn hours to sneak past the scouts sent ahead.

Martha wasn't religious, but she still prayed to anyone who would listen to help him. The kid had grown on her, even if she barely saw him.

"You really ought to go to sleep," Rory advised after Mihail had left. River had already taken that advice, although she slept with one eye open. Martha wasn't quite sure how, given the bright lights of the main room, but she decided not to question it.

Martha snorted. "I'm fine. I just woke up a couple hours ago. Besides, since you're the only one who actually knows where we are, I'd rather you not sneak off just yet."

Rory looked like he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "What makes you think I'd do something like that?" he inquired.

Martha gave him an incredulous look. "You mean you aren't convinced that you're bringing danger down on my head by your mere presence and if we split up the Master will be more concerned about tracking down the guy who irritated him than the person who could topple his empire?" she asked sweetly.

Rory grimaced. "That was a bit...presumptuous of me," he conceded. "How did you guess?"

Martha shrugged. "You're getting all Roman again. As I recall, they're not quite as egalitarian as our society is today."

Rory shrugged. "Fair enough."

"So will you stay?" Martha prompted.

Rory nodded once.

"Wonderful," Martha said, plopping down into the velvet armchair that most definitely had not been there earlier. "Since we've got time to kill, and I don't really feel like sleeping, why don't you explain to me how this place works?"

Rory sank down into a matching love seat, stretching out over the full length. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"How exactly that a place is 'only conditionally possible'?" Martha asked. "Even the TARDIS most definitely exists."

"Ah, yes, that," Rory commented. "The Armory in and of itself is nothing particularly peculiar. It is simply a place to put weapons. What makes it unique, even dangerous, is my presence."

"Oh?" Martha prompted, leaning forward.

Rory took a moment to collect his thoughts and went on. "As I am sure you are aware, this reality is but one of many, all lined up next to each other."

Martha nodded. "Continue."

"Most of these realities are only very slightly different. Most of them contain some version of me and, by extension, some version of this room." He paused for a moment. "Now, of course, that wouldn't be a factor if it weren't for my temporal mass."

"Temporal mass?" Martha asked when it became clear that Rory had no intention of explaining further.

He smiled sheepishly. "The older a being becomes, the greater their temporal mass. I am just shy of two thousand years old in the universes I remember and who knows how old in the ones I don't. Anyway, the temporal mass created by such individuals as myself presses into the walls between dimensions. Normally, it is barely enough to create any sort of impact, but with as much temporal mass as I have, and in a place where I frequent in all of my universes, as far as I am aware, the walls between dimensions can stretch to the point where they are touching, allowing for the overlap that manifests as extra information or a change in size."

Martha mulled over his explanation briefly. "So why doesn't the TARDIS have that much temporal mass, then? I've never run into anything like this with her."

"First of all, she does," Rory explained. "But you never see the results because she never stays in one place for very long. The dimensions are meant to stay separate, you know. Crossing over rarely ends well, especially after the damage done in the Time War. Second of all, the TARDIS and the Doctor are still within a normal age for their respective species. Temporal mass is measured in relation to a typical lifespan; a mayfly that had lived for a month would have more temporal mass than me."

That explanation more or less made sense, except for one small flaw. "So what did you mean by 'conditionally possible'?"

Rory looked confused for a few moments. Then his face cleared. "It exists only on the condition that I need it to. You see, I never actually built an Armory in this timeline. The timeline the Armory is from was erased a long time ago. There are Armories in other, nearby universes, but I never got around to having one built here. Thus, I can only call the Armory into existence when it must be found."

"But you didn't bring up the Armory," Martha pointed out. "River did."

"River doesn't experience time in the same way most people do," Rory went on. "She was conceived in the TARDIS and born with Time Lord DNA from fully human parents. There is no doubt that she knows a great many things that the rest of us cannot remember ever existing. Before she mentioned the Armory, it did not exist. Once I had recalled it, it had always existed."

Martha buried her head in her hands. "Wibbly-wobbely timey-wimey," she groaned. "Don't tell me anything else. I don't want to know."

Rory stood up in one fluid motion. "In that case, I'll wake River and we can start preparing to leave," he said graciously.

River jerked twice and stood up herself. "I'm awake," she said.

Martha's mind refocused on the mission. She wasn't looking forward to traveling with someone else who had a target painted on the back of his skull, but Rory wasn't the only one who had walked through time and Mihail wasn't the only one with connections. She picked up Carnwennen. A Cyllenian Rose dagger. How fitting.

A/N: I know, I know. This really doesn't make up for how long I've gone between updates and I really don't have an excuse. Honestly, I just lost most of my inspiration for Doctor Who a while back. Who knew a crippling hatred of Moffat could be so... crippling. Anyway, the 50th brought it back, and I am ready to go. I even know where I'm going with this now. Sadly, I'm going to be ending this sometime soon, but this is the longest thing I've ever written, the biggest project I've ever undertaken, and the only one I've ever come close to finishing. This started as a one shot with room for more and it turned into...this. There's a whole lot more I wanted to do, but really I just can't. I've got maybe three or four more chapters at most. So. Thanks to every single one of you for being amazing. I couldn't have gotten here without you.