A/N - Every chapter brings us closer to Twelve and Elise. You are not ready. I can't wait to play with two Scottish hot-heads.

"It was Tasha who shielded the planet. But you could sneak me down there, couldn't you, Tash?" the Doctor told them.

"I have confidential matters to discuss with the Doctor," Tasha said. She turned to Elise and Clara. "Would you excuse us?"

"Anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of Clara and Elise. Well, quite a lot of it. Probably about half. Maybe a smidge under. Actually, Elise, Clara, would you mind waiting out here, please?" the Doctor asked them.

"No worries. You two get yourselves a room," Clara said.

"Yes, quite. No, stop it."

"Boss of the psycho space nuns. So you."

The Doctor pushed past Elise's mental barriers. Keep an eye on Clara.

Elise rolled her eyes, but gave him a mini-salute.

Tasha and the Doctor went into her chapel.

Elise and Clara turned around and saw a Silence at the end of the corridor.

"Doctor?" Clara asked.

Elise took out a marker and put a mark on her arm. "I see you," she told the creature.

"What is it?" Clara asked.

"It's called a Silence."

The Silence disappeared behind a screen and then reappeared.

Clara blinked. "I saw you and then I forgot you. How does that work?"

"It tells your brain to forget it. That's how they work."

"Confess," the Silence rasped.

It appeared behind Clara and Elise.

"Confess." A group of them descended on the girls. "Confess. Confess."

They backed up against the chapel door.

"Can't you sonic them?" Clara asked.

"Sonic a Silence? Are you insane! I can't sonic a Silence!" Elise snapped.

Clara grabbed the door handle and opened the chapel door.

"You two okay?" the Doctor asked.

"Fine. Yeah, fine. Sorry," Clara said.

Tasha walked over to what look like a confessional. "Right. This is my personal teleport. I can put you down just outside the town. Find the source of the message and report back to me in one hour. And on your life, Doctor, you will cause no trouble down there."

"When do I?" he quipped, shutting the curtain. He pulled it back. "Don't answer that." He shut the curtain again, but Tasha walked over to it and pulled it back.

She held out her hand.

"What?" the Doctor asked.

"I'm not an idiot. Everyone in this church is trained to see straight through holograms."

"Ah. Great," Clara groaned.

"Give now. You are taking no technology of any kind down there," Tasha said.

"What can I do with a key?" the Doctor asked, "You two, in, now."

Clara and Elise walked over to the teleport.

"You could summon your TARDIS."

"The TARDIS doesn't work by remote. Fine. If it makes you feel any better, there we are." The Doctor handed his key to Tasha as Clara and Elise stepped into the teleport.

"Remember. I want you back in one hour."

They landed in a snow covered forest.

"Oh, cold. Very cold," Clara said, bouncing up and down.

The Doctor rubbed her arms. "Okay, don't worry. There's a heat loss filter in your hologram shell. It'll kick in, just give it a moment." He wrapped his arms around Clara, lightly twirling her around.

Elise would almost describe the moment as cute.

"So, sweet little town covered in snow, half the universe in terror. Why? Why?"

Clara looked over and saw a hand sticking out of the snow. "Oh, my God!"

"What?" the Doctor asked.

"There's something under the snow. It's..."

"What is it?"

Clara walked over to it and touched it. "It's cold."

"Okay, just stand back please, Clara."

"It's stone. It's just stone. It's only a statue." The Doctor finally turned to her and saw what she was standing by. "Clara, step away from it!" The stone hand grabbed her ankle.

"AMY!" Elise screamed.

The Doctor ran over to Clara. "Clara, keep looking at it. Don't look away. Don't even blink!"

"What is it?"

"There is a Weeping Angel under the snow. It looks like a statue, isn't a statue. Can you get your foot out?"

"Only if I get it out of my shoe."

"You're not wearing a shoe."

"Good point."

"Okay, pull hard. One, two, three!"

They both tugged and went falling back into the snow.

Angels were starting to come out of the snow.

"They're climbing out of the snow. Oh, God!" Clara cried.

"Keep looking at the...At all of them," the Doctor said.

"Why?"

"Quantum locked lifeform. It can only move if it's unobserved."

"What is it doing here?"

"Same as everybody else. Must've got past Tasha's shield."

The trio was surrounded.

Elise's mental shields dropped and the Doctor could hear and feel her terror. He could hear Amy's goodbye in his head.

"Keep looking!" the Doctor told them.

"I can't. I can't see. The snow's in my eyes," Clara said.

"I just need to bring the TARDIS down."

"You can't fly it remotely."

"No, but it can home in on the key."

"But she took your key!"

"She took one of them." The Doctor pulled off the wig he'd been wearing to reveal a glowing TARDIS key.

The TARDIS materialized around them.

"The old key in the quiff routine. Classic," the Doctor said. He set the wig on Handles. "Okay, homing in on the mysterious message. Ooo yes, I like that. The mysterious message."

"You've shaved your head?" Clara asked.

"Yep. Clever plan to get us past the shield."

"You got bored one night, didn't you?"

"Yeah, tiny bit bored."

Clara turned to Elise. "You knew about this?"

Elise shrugged. "Didn't seem really important."

Clara turned back to the Doctor. "Is that what happened to your eyebrows?"

"No, they're just delicate." The Doctor touched his eyebrows. "Right, setting us down near the signal source. I'm going to turn the engines on silent. Don't want to make a fuss."

Clara grabbed the wig and tossed it to him. "Put it back on."

"Why?"

"Your ears are like rocket fins."

"I know. You think these are bad, you should've met my ninth regeneration."

They stepped out of the TARDIS (after changing into actual clothes).

"Oh, it's good to be wearing clothes again. That's so much better, don't you think?" Clara asked.

The Doctor scanned everything with his screwdriver. "Now, what do we make of this place? It's two o'clock in the afternoon. Must be very short days here. The message is coming from that tower."

Two people walked towards them.

"Hello! Hello, there. Right, we're a couple from the next town. My name's probably Hank or Rock, something like that," the Doctor said.

"Or Daisy?" Clara asked.

"Shut up." The Doctor addressed the couple. "Hello, good to meet you. Nice snow."

"Most pleasant to meet you too," the man said.

"Most pleasant. Most pleasant," the woman said.

"I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. I stole a time machine and ran away and I've been flouting the principal law of my own people ever since. I also kidnapped a child and I've been raising her as my daughter." The Doctor slapped a hand over his mouth. "That wasn't quite what I was meant to say!"

Everyone laughed.

Clara tried introducing herself. "I'm an English teacher from planet Earth, and I've run off with a man from space because I really fancy..." Clara slapped a hand over her mouth as well.

"I think, perhaps, you should stop talking till you get used to it," the woman said.

"Used to what?" the Doctor asked.

The woman looked at Clara. "What did you say your name was?"

"Bubbly personality masking bossy control freak." Clara covered her mouth with her hand again.

"I'm wearing a wig!" the Doctor said. He covered his mouth again. "No, ah, I see. Yes, of course. It's a truth field. Oh, that is so quaint. I haven't seen a truth field in years. I'm wearing a wig."

"No one can lie in this town. Especially this close to the tower," the man said.

The couple walked past them.

"Doesn't that make life a bit difficult?" the Doctor asked.

"Not at all," the woman said.

"Yes," the man said.

"This town, what's it called?" the Doctor asked.

"It's Christmas," the woman said.

"It's July." The Doctor checked his watch to be sure.

"No, the town. The town is Christmas. That's what it's called," the woman told them.

"Be happy here. Be well," the man said.

"How can a town be called Christmas?" Clara asked.

"I don't know. How can an island be called Easter? Maybe it's just nice here. I almost hate to find out what's wrong," the Doctor said.

The signal was coming from the Tower.

"Earlier, you yelled a name," Clara said to Elise.

"Did I?"

"Yeah. You yelled for Amy. Who's Amy?"

Elise looked at the Doctor.

"No one, just an old friend," the Doctor answered for her.

They went inside and followed the sound of the signal.

Elise stopped when she saw it. "It's not possible. How is that possible?" Elise asked.

"There you are," the Doctor said, "What took you so long?"

"What's wrong?" Clara asked, "It's only a crack in the wall."

"I knew. I always knew it wasn't over." The Doctor shrugged off his jacket.

"What is it?"

"A split in the skin of reality." The Doctor touched the crack and Elise grabbed his arm.

"Don't. What if you disappear?"

The Doctor patted Elise's hand. "A tiny sliver of the 26th of June, 2010. The day the universe blew up," the Doctor explained.

"Missed that," Clara said.

"I rebooted it, put it all back together."

"That's good."

"Well, it was my TARDIS that blew it up in the first place. I felt a degree of responsibility. But the scar tissue remains. A structural weakness in the whole universe. Whoa! And someone's trying to get through it from outside our universe, from somewhere else. Of course. Of course. It makes sense."

"It does?"

"Yes. If you were trying to break through a wall, you'd choose the weakest spot. If you were trying to break into this universe, you'd choose this crack, because... No. If you were trying to break back into this universe." He walked over to Handles and picked him up. "You said Gallifrey. Why did you say Gallifrey?"

"Analysis of message composition indicates Gallifreyan origin, according to TARDIS databanks," Handles said.

"You said Gallifrey was gone," Clara told the Doctor.

"No. I said it was in another universe. The message is coming through here. The truth field is too, at a guess. If it's the Time Lords... If it's the Time Lords..."

"Gallifrey is trying to come back? Back into this universe?" Elise asked. She dreaded to think what would happen if the Timelords returned to their universe.

Would the Time War begin again? Would her birth father try and find a way to get her back?

The Doctor took out a round object from his pocket. "Seal of the High Council of Gallifrey. Nicked it off the Master in the Death Zone." He put the seal on Handles' forehead. "There is an algorithm imprinted in the atomic structure. Use it to decode the message."

"Message decoding. Message analysis proceeding. Information available. The message is a request for information," Handles told them.

"It's a question. Why can't you just say it's a question?" the Doctor snapped.

"It is being projected through all of time and space on a repeating cycle."

"The oldest question in the universe, hidden in plain sight."

"Warning. Translation will be available to all lifeforms in range. Translation follows. Doctor who?" Handles repeated the question.

"On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked – a question that must never ever be answered," Elise recited, "Silence will fall when the question is asked."

Was this the end?