EDIT (3-20-18): New readers can ignore this. It's been so long, I'm not sure I have any old readers, but just in case, I wanted to let people know I'm sorry for being so terrible with updates. Basically, I'm sorry for not updating at all in . . . a year? Again. I didn't want that to happen but it couldn't be helped. As of about six months ago, most of my free time has been spent watching my nephew when my parents are at work, and I really do have to watch him, otherwise he gets into EVERYTHING, and the rest of my free time, what little I actually have now, is spent trying to sleep or just trying to relax because trying to keep up with him is exhausting. It can be very stressful, too, for reasons (I really don't want to get into it). But now that he's starting to settle down a bit, I'm finding more time to myself. I plan to use some of that time to write but I won't make any more promises. I don't want to jinx myself. Anyway, since I've had more time, I came back to Riley's story and decided to make a few changes to the prologue, which is now just the first chapter: I added scene's from Amelia's perspective and made some minor changes to Riley's backstory. I'm going to update the next chapter with a few changes soon and after that I hope to finally put up a new chapter.

New readers! I know this isn't an original idea, but I hope you enjoy the story anyway. Also, I apologize if you're hoping for weekly updates, but with everything that's going on in my life right now I'm probably going to be restricted to monthly updates. It depends. I might be able to update twice a month but as mentioned above I'm not going to make any promises.

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who, just my OC, Aurelia Clarke, and all the people she knows from "our world."

Chapter 1:
The Vanishing Act

Leadworth was a small town, quiet, peaceful, dull. It wasn't the sort of place one would expect anything interesting to happen, at least it hadn't seemed that way to Amelia Pond when she first moved into her new house with her parents, but now . . . things were different now. As she lowered herself to her knees, she kept a wary eye on the main source of her problems, a crack in her bedroom wall, then she shut both her eyes tight, knowing she had to do this right or it wouldn't work, and clasped her hands on the bed in front of her and began to pray:

"Dear Santa, thank you for the dolls and the pencils and the fish. It's Easter now, so I hope I didn't wake you. But honest, it is an emergency. There's a crack in my wall."

Here she paused, allowing herself another glance at the crack, but a sudden, horrible feeling of dread prompted her to shut her eyes a few seconds later and continue.

"Aunt Sharon says it's just an ordinary crack, but . . . I know it's not, because, at night, there's voices. So please, please, could you send someone to fix it? Or a policeman? Or . . ."

She was trying to think of anyone else who could possibly help her when a strange warping noise filled the air. It sounded like it was coming from outside. "Back in a moment," she added as she heard a crash and the sound of glass breaking, then she ran to the window, pulling back the curtain to investigate. Her eyes went wide as she saw a big blue box in the garden. The words 'police box' were in big white letters above a set of doors. Smoke was rising from the doors and the remains of the shed were scattered all around it, but she didn't care. It seemed to her that her prayers had been answered. Smiling, she looked up at the sky.

"Thank you, Santa," she whispered.

Her smile vanished as soon as she turned around. There was another crack. It was a bit smaller than the one on her bedroom wall but this one was hovering in midair and it hadn't been there when she started praying. Terrified, hoping whoever had come really was there to help, she edged her way around it and fled from the room, barely remembering to grab a jacket and pull on some boots before running outside. She went back a moment later to grab a torch. She reached the garden just as the doors flew open and a grappling hook was thrown out. It latched onto a lawn mower. A moment later she watched as first one hand, then another, and the head of a man drenched in water popped over the edge. It took him a moment, the light of the torch shining right on his face temporarily blinding him, but he smiled when he noticed her.

"Can I have an apple?" he said. "All I can think about – apples. Maybe I'm having a craving. That's new," he added, peering down as if speaking to someone, "never had a craving before."

He frowned then, pulling himself out and shifting to sit on the edge of the box, facing her, and it seemed to her that he was sulking. He also seemed like he might be hurt: his clothes were wet and ragged and appeared to be torn in places.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

The man smiled again, waving off her concern. "Just had a fall. All the way down there, right to the library. Hell of a climb back up."

Amelia frowned. "You're soaking wet."

The man nodded. "I was in the swimming pool."

She narrowed her eyes. "You said you were in the library."

"So was the swimming pool."

Amelia took a moment to try to wrap her head around this, failed, and glanced down at the box again. "Is there someone else in there?"

"Not anymore." The man was sulking again.

"Are you a policeman?"

"Why?" the man said sharply, eyeing her with concern. "Did you call a policeman?"

"Did you come about the crack in my wall?" she asked hopefully.

"What cra – agh!" The man suddenly fell to the ground, twitching violently.

"Are you all right, mister?" Amelia asked, watching him in concern.

The man was on his knees, trying to stand. "No, I'm fine, it's okay," he assured her. "This is all perfectly norm -" He broke off as wisps of golden light came out of his mouth.

Amelia could only stare. "Who are you?"

"I don't know yet," the man told her, staring down at his hands as more gold light flowed out of them, "I'm still cooking. Does it scare you?"

"No, it just looks a bit weird." Amelia had seen far scarier things besides – the cracks, for instance, especially the new one that came out of nowhere.

"No, no, no, the crack in your wall," the man corrected. "Does it scare you?"

"Yes," she admitted. "So does the other one."

The man leapt to his feet. "Well, then, no time to lose. I'm the Doctor. Do everything I tell you, don't ask stupid questions, and don't wander off."

He promptly walked into a tree, knocking him to the ground.

"You all right?" Amelia asked, shining the torch in his face again.

"Early days," the Doctor said, squinting at her. "Steering's a bit off."

He didn't seem to be very coordinated, but somehow he managed to get in the house on his own two feet and he only hit his head once more on the frame of the kitchen door. He just stood there, looking a bit awkward, water pooling at his feet as she went to get him an apple.

"If you're a doctor, why does your box say 'police'?" she asked, after she found one and handed it to him. He didn't answer, watching her as he took a bite, started to chew, and spat it out, coughing and sputtering. She made a face, backing away to avoid the spray.

"That's disgusting," he declared. "What is that?"

"An apple."

"Apples are rubbish. I hate apples."

Amelia narrowed her eyes accusingly. "You said you loved them."

"No, no, I love yogurt," the Doctor insisted. "Yogurt's my favorite. Give me yogurt."

So she got him some yogurt, but he spat that out, too.

"I hate yogurt," he said, wiping his mouth, "it's just stuff with bits in it."

"You said it was your favorite."

"New mouth, new rules," the Doctor told her. "It's like eating after cleaning your teeth, everything tastes wro – agh!" He started twitching again and slapped himself on the forehead.

"What is it? What's wrong with you?"

"Wrong with me?" The Doctor looked offended. "It's not my fault. Why can't you give me decent food? You're Scottish – fry something."

She did, but first she went to get the Doctor a towel. He used it to dry his hair as she fried up some bacon, then let it hang around his neck as he tried the bacon and various other foods, none of which he seemed to like after he tasted them but which he initially seemed to approve of: He accused her of trying to poison him when he tried the bacon, spat a mouthful of beans into the sink, and he found the bread and butter so offensive he actually took the whole plate and threw it outside, apparently hitting a cat. Soon he was left to pace as she looked in the fridge for more food, the towel left abandoned on the floor, but so far nothing seemed to be good enough.

"We've got some carrots," she suggested finally.

"Carrots?" The Doctor shot her an incredulous look. "Are you insane? No, wait, hang on. I know what I need. I need . . . I need . . . I need . . ." He poked his head around in the fridge and freezer until he pulled out two things. "Fish fingers and custard."

And so they found themselves sitting across from each other at the table, him with a plate of fish fingers and a bowl of custard, her with a tub of ice cream. The Doctor had been dipping the fish fingers in the custard, but suddenly he just took the bowl and drank it all up, leaving behind a mustache that he wiped away with his hand.

"Funny," Amelia remarked.

"Am I? Good. Funny's good. What's your name?"

"Amelia Pond."

"Ah, that's a brilliant name," the Doctor said. "Amelia Pond, like a name in a fairy tale. Are we in Scotland, Amelia?"

"No. We had to move to England. It's rubbish." She'd only seen Leadworth, of course, but childishly she reasoned that the rest of the country couldn't be any better.

"So what about your mum and dad, then?" the Doctor said, glancing up at the ceiling. "Are they upstairs? Thought we'd have woken them by now."

"I don't have a mum and dad. Just an aunt." Amelia had been on her own for years before Aunt Sharon came to look after her. She had no memory of her parents.

"I don't even have an aunt."

"You're lucky." Aunt Sharon liked to go out a lot but when she was around she could be very bossy and had little patience to answer questions or to play with her. She sometimes wished she didn't have an aunt, then she remembered she didn't have anyone else.

The Doctor picked up another fish finger. "I know. So, your aunt. Where is she?"

"She's out."

"And she left you all alone?"

Amelia didn't like his tone. "I'm not scared!" Not of being alone, at least.

"'Course you're not," the Doctor agreed, dropping the fish finger and shoving his plate aside. "You're not scared of anything! Box falls out of the sky, man falls out of box, man eats fish custard, and look at you, just sitting there. So you know what I think?"

Amelia leaned forward. "What?"

The Doctor leaned forward as well. "Those cracks in your wall must be scary as hell."

She tried to stall, but the Doctor insisted, so they abandoned their food and Amelia led him upstairs to her room. She lingered in the doorway as he walked forward to examine the new crack, reaching out as if to touch it, though he was still a few feet away when it began to stretch and the gap widened, enough for a shadow to fall though. Biting back a scream, Amelia jumped back, and then to her shock the crack snapped shut and disappeared, leaving behind nothing but empty air, as if it had never been there. Empty air and the shadow.

Amelia backed herself into the hall, stopping only when she hit the railing, but the Doctor stayed in the room, watching the shadow closely as it began to move.

"Aurelia?" he said finally. "Aurelia! Are you okay? You're not hurt, are you?"

When the Doctor threw his arms around it, Amelia realized it wasn't a shadow:

It was a girl.

Earlier, our universe, somewhere in London . . .

One of the first things Aurelia Clarke planned to do the day after she arrived in London was be a tourist. She still wasn't sure whether she would stay in the area or not so it might have been her only chance to see the sights. Her hotel wasn't exactly the nicest London had to offer, but it wasn't filthy or crawling with cockroaches like the last hotel she'd spent the night in and that was all that mattered to her. She was just leaving, fighting with her scarf to get it to stay loose around her neck without threatening to fall right off, because she knew she would need it but she didn't like to wear it, when suddenly her plans changed and all because of a crack in a wall.

It looked just like the cracks in time from Doctor Who, tendrils of eerie white light slithering out of it as it opened wide like a mouth, attracting a small crowd. Thinking it must be some silly stunt, but curious despite herself, Riley went to join the crowd, standing next to a random stranger who was recording the whole thing on his phone.

"What is it?" she asked. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," the man told her, "it just appeared . . . out of nowhere. It was like magic!"

Yeah right, she thought, repressing a scoff, but then she felt something on her leg, an odd tingling sensation, and when she looked down, one of the tendrils was wrapping around it. As she watched, frowning, another one wrapped around her other leg. She tried to move away, but it was no use: the light continued to wrap itself around her legs and latched onto her arms. The more she tried to pull away, the closer to the crack she seemed to get to the gaping hole in the wall. "Let me go!" she demanded. "Let me go right now!"

People were muttering to each other behind her, but they sounded more excited than worried, clearly thinking it was all part of the show.

It's not! Riley wanted to say, but it was too late: She felt a sharp tug behind her navel, then she was blinded by the light as she fell into the crack. A moment later she landed hard on something solid. It took her a moment to get her bearings. When she did, she noticed she was in what looked like a child's bedroom – there were a few stuffed animals laying around and there were crayon drawings on a desk nearby, not to mention a little ginger-haired girl standing just outside the room, half hidden by the strange man standing there in wet clothes, a strange but familiar-looking man with floppy brown hair and a rather prominent chin.

Riley did a double-take as she started to look away from the pair. For a moment she could only stare at them like they were staring at her – they looked almost exactly like Amelia Pond and the Eleventh Doctor, very subtle differences setting them apart from the actors who had portrayed them in the show – but as the pair began to recover from her sudden appearance, it occurred to her that she must be dreaming.

She had only dreamed about waking up that morning, but really she was still sleeping on a slightly lumpy mattress in that room she'd been renting. Why she was dreaming about this Doctor, especially this early in his timeline, she could only guess since the last she'd seen on TV, the Doctor's most recent companion, Clara Oswald, had just seen him regenerate and the Twelfth Doctor, who was much older than the past three, hated the color of his kidneys and seemed to have forgotten how to fly the TARDIS. Still, people didn't just go falling into fictional worlds, and they certainly weren't dragged into them against their will.

Yes, Riley nodded to herself. She had to be dreaming. It was the only logical explanation.

"Aurelia?" And now she had her arms full of Doctor, who apparently knew her. Great. "Aurelia! Are you okay? You're not hurt, are you?"

"I'm fine," she said, awkwardly patting him on the back. Dream or not, she wasn't really comfortable with the sudden invasion of her personal space.

He pulled away. "What was that? Where did it come from?"

Riley shrugged, tugging off her scarf as she got to her feet and put a bit of distance between them, making him frown. "I don't know," she told him. "I was in this hotel, in London, and there was a crack in the wall and this light came out and dragged me through it."

The Doctor looked alarmed. So did Amelia, who now stood only a few feet away.

"Is that what's going to happen to me?" the little girl asked, paling as she looked at something behind Riley, drawing the brunette's attention for the first time to the crack that spanned the length of the bedroom wall. Unlike the one at the hotel, this one was still shut.

"No," Riley answered when the Doctor hesitated.

"How do you know?" Amelia demanded, clearly frightened.

"Because I just know things," Riley told her. She looked back at the Doctor, who was watching her carefully, and frowned. "Now why don't you stop worrying about me and prove it."

The Doctor looked torn, but only for a moment, then he looked down at Amelia, seeing how scared she was, and he nodded, jumping to his feet.

"Right," he said. "Where was I?"

He held out the battered-looking sonic screwdriver in his hand, pointing it at the crack, and a loud buzzing noise filled the room. Amelia darted forward to hold his hand as it opened wide and a robotic voice informed them that Prisoner Zero had escaped.

"Prisoner Zero has escaped," the voice repeated.

The Doctor took a hesitant step forward.

"Hello?" he called. "Hello?"

At first, all they could see was a row of prison cells, then a giant blue eye appeared, blocking them from view, and looked around at them.

Amelia gasped. "What's that?"

"That's Prisoner Zero's guard," Riley informed her. At that same moment, a ball of light shot out of the crack, striking him in the chest and knocking him to the ground, then the crack snapped shut, not even leaving a trace behind as it vanished.

"There," the Doctor said as he got to his feet. "You see, it's shut. Good as new. And Riley was right – you're fine."

"By the way," Riley said, "Prisoner Zero has escaped. That's what the message says."

"But why tell us?" The Doctor frowned. "Unless . . ."

"Unless what?" Amelia asked, looking between them.

"Unless Prisoner Zero escaped through here," he said. He looked at Riley. "But he can't have. We'd know."

"Check the hall," she told him. Not wanting to miss anything, she didn't hesitate to follow when the Doctor ran out. Neither did Amelia.

At once, Riley started searching for the extra door she knew was at the other end of the hall, looking out the corner of her eye. It only took her a few seconds. The Doctor, on the other hand . . .

"It's difficult," he was saying as he looked around. "Brand-new me, nothing works yet. But there's something I'm missing . . . in the corner . . . of my eye."

His eyes were at the other end of the hall, almost where the extra door was, when the sound of a bell echoed through the house. He sprinted and ran downstairs.

"No, no, no, no, no, no!"

"Come on!" Riley said, and she and Amelia ran after him, the scarf falling to the floor.

"I've got to get back in there!" the Doctor said once they were all outside, running into the garden. "The engines are phasing, it's going to burn!"

"But . . . it's just a box!" Amelia protested. "How can a box have engines?"

The Doctor freed the grappling hook from the lawn mower and started gathering up the rope.

"It's not a box," he said distractedly. "It's a time machine."

Amelia stared at him in disbelief. "What, a real one? You've got a real time machine?"

"Not for much longer if Riley and I can't get her stabilized," the Doctor told her, and Riley, who had been looking at the TARDIS, stared at him, surprised at being included, while he looped the rope around the door handles. "Five minute hop into the future should do it."

"Can I come?" Amelia asked hopefully.

"Not safe in here," the Doctor said, not sparing her a glance as he worked. "Not yet. Five minutes. Give us five minutes, we'll be right back." He hopped onto the edge of the box and held out a hand expectantly. "Riley."

The brunette slowly approached the box and allowed him to pull her up.

"Hold onto me," the Doctor instructed.

Riley hesitantly put her arms around him, not comfortable being so close to him since she'd only just met him, no matter that she was convinced she was dreaming and that she'd been watching his adventures on TV for years. To distract herself, she glanced down into the TARDIS, eyes widening as she saw the old console room with the coral beams and the gold grating on the floors. The console itself was starting to smoke and beyond the open doors behind it was a wide corridor that stretched and twisted out of sight.

On the ground, Amelia's face fell.

"People always say that," she said glumly.

The Doctor pulled away from Riley and jumped down to talk to her.

"Am I people?" he asked. "Do I even look like people? Trust me, I'm the Doctor."

As Riley turned to look at them, Amelia managed a small smile, then the Doctor jumped back up next to the brunette, pulling her to him. Once her arms were around him again, he got a good grip on the rope and jumped, although not before giving Amelia one last glance.

"Geronimo!"

Shortly after . . .

Amelia dashed inside and up the stairs to her bedroom, unknowingly running right past the extra door, and grabbed a suitcase to put everything she thought she might need inside. She liked the strange, raggedy man who helped get rid of the crack, and that girl, who the Doctor seemed to know, had seemed nice enough, and although she didn't know either of them very well – or at all, really – they had a time machine. They could take her on all sorts of adventures and bring her back before Aunt Sharon noticed she was missing or, better yet, they could take her away forever and she'd never have to see boring old Leadworth again!

So excited was she, Amelia couldn't seem to pack her things fast enough, but soon she was ready. She went running back outside, pausing only once in the hall to pick up the scarf Riley had dropped, intending to give it back to the girl when she and the Doctor returned, but she still couldn't see the extra door and didn't notice as she passed it again that it was wide open.

As she waited outside, scanning the stars for a sign of the box, she didn't notice a shadow pass over a window in the house behind her.

A/N: So, there it is. Let me know what you think in a review.