I can promise you, Jessie had fun answering the questions she got. :) Next up is the Apocalypse's takeover days, either this next weekend or the weekend after.

***

The Doctor stood shellshocked in front of the monitors Jessie had up, her with her arms folded as he looked over the photos she'd taken on her phone and from the TARDIS's scanners, of the Starship UK and the wall from the Blitz and the hull of the Byzantium . . . all of them with the crack from Amy's wall. "Wow," was all he managed to say.

"You said it yourself, it wasn't a crack in her wall," Jessie told him. "It's a crack in the fabric of reality, in the future and in the past."

"Which means this is very bad," he nodded.

She smirked. "Bad bad crack."

He smirked right back at her. "Bad bad beans."

They spent a good few minutes just laughing before the Doctor stopped. "You've got a companion to get to, don't you?" he asked her.

Jessie smiled. "Yeah, I do." She looked up at him. "I hope you don't mind that - "

She squeaked when he kissed her, cutting off anything else she might have said. "I think it's brilliant!" he told her, grinning and pulling back. "It's about time you had one of your own."

She beamed. "Thank you," she told him, kissing his cheek before snatching her phone and heading out the door.

The Doctor sighed, leaning against the kitchen table, watching her go. "I am so whipped," he said out loud.

The TARDIS hummed very loudly in reply, so loudly that - "Shut up!" he complained.

He could've sworn she was laughing at him.

He huffed. "You are not my mother," he muttered.

She just laughed even more at him.

***

Rory was fidgeting in the control room, a little put out that he'd been left alone. Amy had left a little bit ago, claiming to get some sleep, but he was pretty sure he'd seen the Doctor and the Bad Wolf head for the bedrooms down another hallway . . .

"Rory?" a voice behind him asked, and he jumped, startled, turning to see the Bad Wolf come back from a different staircase, smiling at him. "Is everything all right?"

"Fine," he nodded quickly, looking around. "Just . . . trying to figure out . . . "

"How she works?" the Bad Wolf guessed. He nodded, and she smiled. "Well, here's how you can immediately get on her good side." She held out her hand, which Rory took without hesitation, and she laid it on the time rotor. "TARDIS?" she called, and his eyes widened as a few of the lights on the console switched on. "This is Rory Williams. He's my companion." He definitely didn't expect the TARDIS to hum quite so loudly at the statement. The Bad Wolf beamed at him. "Rory, meet the TARDIS."

"Hello," he smiled a bit nervously, patting the rotor. He felt a bit odd, talking to a machine . . .

But the TARDIS beeped back at him, a few more lights turning on, and the Bad Wolf smiled. "She likes you," she told him, patting his hand and stepping back. "Now, don't call her an 'it' and she'll like you even more."

"I think I can handle that," Rory nodded, looking over the controls. "I just hope she doesn't expect me to know how to fly her . . . "

The Bad Wolf laughed. "Nah, that's just for the Doctor and I. Don't worry about it, you won't have to pilot us out of any devastating situations."

Rory blinked. "That was a normal day for you?"

The Bad Wolf sighed. "Rory, my husband is the Doctor. There were no more normal days since I was attacked by plastic mannequins in Henrik's department store."

"That's when you met the Doctor?" Rory guessed.

"Mmhmm," she nodded, before pulling a monitor around and typing in a few things he couldn't see. "So, since this is the first time I've had a companion, I have absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to do. But, since I know how the Doctor handles his, I want to do something different."

"OK," Rory nodded slowly, not sure at all how to handle this.

But she just smiled softly at him. "I want you to know who you're with, Rory," she told him gently. "When I ran off with the Doctor, I had absolutely no idea who he was, what type of alien he was . . . I didn't even know how brilliant the TARDIS was at first. All I knew was that I trusted him . . . and ran off with a man who was 880 years older than me."

Rory was nodding along, understanding what she was getting at . . . but the last statement made him gape at her. "880 years?!"

"And looking good, isn't he?" she winked, making him laugh. "But I don't want you to feel like you don't know me, Rory. That's why I wanted to talk to you about some parts about time travel and what the Doctor and I do."

"All right," he nodded, sitting in one of the chairs next to her. "I'm listening."

The Bad Wolf sat back and chewed the inside of her cheek. "The ground rule, according to the Doctor, is don't wander off," she began. "I've broken that one every single adventure we've gone on, so I don't expect you to follow that rule. I suppose my ground rule is be absolutely careful if and when you wander off."

"Done," he nodded.

"Rule number one in general: the Doctor lies. So always expect that."

"Have been for a while."

"Rule number two: I only lie when absolutely necessary."

Rory eyed her worriedly. "Please tell me that wasn't one."

"It wasn't," she assured him. "I might lie to encourage you out of a life or death situation, so to speak."

"OK," he nodded. "I can handle that. I might prefer it, actually."

"All the better for me to do it," she winked. "But I also wanted to tell you more about Time Lords, about who we are."

"Shoot," Rory told her, sitting up straighter.

The Bad Wolf stood up and went over to the scanner and tapped a few buttons, and Rory's eyes widened at the display of men and women he saw on the screen. Those same ten men he'd seen from the Atraxi incident, and those two women as well . . . except those two pairs were the main ones he saw. "Time Lords have the ability to regenerate when they die," the Bad Wolf explained, folding her arms as she considered not their past selves, but Rory has examined each of them with wide eyes. "The Doctor is on his eleventh, and I'm on my third. I met the Doctor in my first, back when I wasn't a Time Lady." She gestured at the man and woman - though in Rory's opinion, she was more of a girl - all in black. "He was in his ninth then."

"One Doctor for each Bad Wolf," Rory guessed.

"Sort of," she conceded. "That Doctor regenerated saving my life, turned into the Tenth Doctor." She pointed at the man in the pinstripes, the one with his arm around the blonde woman's shoulders. "I died later, before I was turned into a full Time Lady. I was dead for three days, woke up, and regenerated into my second."

Out of all of that . . . there was one thing that Rory was concentrated on. "Three days?"

The Bad Wolf beamed at him, happy that he seemed to be accepting this. "I know, I found it odd, too."

Rory shook his head. "OK, so you can change your faces . . . good to k - "

"I'm not happy with what Amy did," the Bad Wolf said bluntly.

Rory blinked. "I figured that out, actually."

"No, I mean, I'm not." She sighed and paced a bit around the console, Rory letting her go, having a feeling she needed to get this out . . . in front of someone that might understand, since it had been his fiancé, after all. "To know that she'd be willing to risk something that special on a married man . . . after all that we'd done together, all that we'd risked . . . " She shook her head, turning to Rory. "I nearly lost him, Rory."

"How?" he asked with a frown, they could do that regeneration thing, after all.

"After I regenerated, he couldn't believe it was me," she explained, nodding at the blonde woman. "There was a woman we picked up, Martha Jones, and I couldn't help but think . . . maybe he'd choose her over me. Especially after one trip, he was absolutely furious with me for doing something that saved his life." She sat down in her chair, arms tight around her, the first sign of vulnerability he'd seen from the woman before. "It nearly destroyed me," she admitted quietly.

Rory stared at her silently before turning and looking back at the monitor. The blonde woman he saw, the Second Bad Wolf, standing with the Tenth Doctor, both of them looking so happy just with each other there . . . "I can't see it," he finally said.

"That's because it took me to nearly die again to get him to see it," the Bad Wolf told him with a small smile. "We met this alien family, the Family of Blood, and they wanted the life of a Time Lord to live forever. The Doctor hid us in these watches, hid our alien selves away, and we became completely human. I opened mine to save him, but the Son poisoned me with a shot in the back of the neck. The only reason the Doctor opened his watch up was because he saw me start to die right in front of him. Ironically, it was three days later on Asgard that I woke up healed."

"What is it with threes?" Rory attempted to lighten the mood.

It worked. She laughed a bit, giving him a smile. "Three just seems to be our lucky number," she shrugged. "But he finally saw me for who I was, I really was still Jessie Nightshade. That's my real name, my name from before I took the Bad Wolf," she added to him. "But there's still something very important about the two of us."

"Go for it," Rory nodded, leaning against the console.

"There's this bond the Doctor and I have, it's called the metacrisis," she began. "It's sort of a fail safe, like the blood bond we have. If we're separated for any long distance over any long period of time, our minds start to burn. It would kill us straight, no regeneration whatsoever."

"Wow," Rory blinked. He hadn't been expecting that.

"So," she leaned back in her chair. "Any questions?"

Rory thought it over for a little bit before finally asking, "Why me?"

She blinked. "Say that again?"

"Why did you choose me, of all people?" he asked, genuinely wanting to know. "I'm not that spe - "

"Finish that sentence, Rory Williams, and I will boot you out of the TARDIS right now," she told him sharply, and he shut his mouth with an audible click. "The Doctor said one time, there's no such thing as an ordinary human. I thought that about myself once," she admitted, standing up and walking over to him. "You think about humans, they walk about every day, eat, sleep, and do it all over again the next day. Seems ordinary, yeah? People don't look for their potential. It takes someone very special to even stand up to the Doctor like you did." She smiled at him. "I used to be a federal agent. I know potential when I see it. And I saw it immediately in you when you took a picture of a man and his dog instead of the alien in the sky." Rory blinked, and she put a hand on his shoulder. "There is so much you can be, Rory," she promised him. "I intend to bring it all out for you to see."

"Really?" he asked, his eyes wide, so touched by what she was saying.

"Cross my hearts," she nodded, doing just that.

Rory gaped at her, closing his mouth then opening it again. "Thank you," he finally managed to say.

The Bad Wolf beamed. "Now, one last official test . . . " She looked him over before giving him a tight hug.

Rory blinked, taken a bit aback, but then he saw the Doctor standing at the top of the staircase, a small smile on his face. The Time Lord nodded, and Rory hugged the Bad Wolf back as tightly as he could.

"Very nice hug," she smirked, pulling back away. "Officially my companion."

Rory grinned at her, and the Doctor smiled as he walked back away to give the two some time to talk some more.

***

A big focus on Two's life, so the Second Bad Wolf and her theme on the side. :)

So last night, we finally finished up Doctor Who for good, and can I say how excited I am to get to "The Day of the Doctor" for this book? I've got some big plans . . . because what I'm going to do is probably going to mess with every single person in the story and who reads it. I think it's going to be THAT good. ;)

"Amy's Choice" is going to be coming soon!