a/n: Tried to keep this one as canon as possible...It's pretty damn hard. Oh, the woes of Amy/Eleven. And the joys.
like a name from a fairytale
In her very last moment alive, Amy Pond thinks of the doctor, and realizes there is no escaping it. It was always supposed to be him.
Rory's grasping her hand, kneeling by her side. She can't quite see his face, can't quite make out the familiar, mild lines of his cheekbones, his nose, his chin. He is so simple, so…Rory. Funny thing, Amy thinks, that if she had to pick one word to describe him it would be "down-to-earth." He should never have left Earth, really. That was her doing. Her destiny had gotten tangled up with his at some indistinguishable point, and he'd been hauled along on an adventure only she'd been meant to take.
He'd done well, Rory Williams. He'd done so well.
And she felt a wave of love for him, for the boy who saved her from her own teenage angst. He'd done nothing dramatic, nothing to sweep her off her feet—she'd not once in her life been swept off her feet by Rory Williams—but he'd been there, unfailingly, from the start, and consistency was something Amy could use a little of.
No, Rory Williams was not destined to hold the stars in the palm of his hand. But Amy Pond was.
He'd dropped from the sky on an uneventful midnight in Leadworth, England. The wind swayed the branches of the trees with no real ambition, and the grass was cool, growing wet with dew. Amy remembered. She remembered quite a bit about that front lawn—she'd spent some time there.
"Amelia Pond," he'd said. "Like a name from a fairytale." It had taken her until now to realize that's exactly what she was: a character in a fairytale, one who featured, but was not orchestrated by, the Doctor himself. Everywhere he went he created a fairytale, his blue pumpkin carriage gallivanting about scattering fairy dust.
But it was not all him. He did not choose his co-stars, his Cinderellas and, perhaps more fittingly, his Belles. They were chosen, somewhere along the way, by the gods of time. Their names, their lives, were a fixed point, woven into the fabric of time. Amy Pond's especially.
The crack in her wall was there for a reason. All those piles of crimson curls, those seaside green eyes, the face dotted by the Sun himself, the pale, unblemished skin of a swan…A lonely orphan, living with a neglectful aunt, precocious but insecure, sometimes the receiver of odd, confused and/or vexed looks from friends at school…She must have been too much for the time gods to handle, too hard to resist, all of her story-book potential bursting from within. Thus, her fate was carved; yet time is bendable, and so, obviously, was her fate.
The whirring sound of that night, just after she'd said a prayer to Santa—what she now knew to be the scrape of the Tardis' brakes—the odd thing was that it sounded familiar. Like when she was in her room, facing away from the window, and she knew which car pulling in was her aunt's just by the sound of it. Until this very day, as she lays here dying, Amy thought she must have heard it somewhere before. Things don't always happen to her in the right order, you see, so recalling a linear timeline is considerably more difficult.
But—no. That night was the first time in her short—oh, much too short life that Amy had ever heard the whir of the Tardis engines. And yet she could've sworn it was a sound, a song, she'd heard whispered across the treetops one summer's day. That's why she hadn't been wary of him, the strange man who destroyed her shed and devoured all their fish fingers and custard—his vehicle had sounded, well, friendly. Amy supposes the time gods know their stuff.
Amy forces her eyes open once more—they're so heavy, all of the sudden—and once again sees Rory's face, earthly, a reminder of the simple joys in life, of home.
But the thing is, Amy never much cared for home.
On the other hand, the Doctor's very face seemed otherworldly, and Amy knew he hadn't always looked that way, and couldn't forever, but she could not see him any other way. His face, his body, his mannerisms suited him, and Amy thought for a moment now how ridiculous that sounded—of course a person's mannerisms suit them, they are them—but everything was different when it came to the Doctor. His jaw was never quite straight, his face always a bit asymmetrical, like it, too, had no patience for routine. And his hair—well, Amy had once scavenged his bathroom secretly to find Axe or Old Spice or some kind of men's super-duty hair gel, but to no avail. The Doctor's hair was what it was, and she'd never come across anything quite like it.
Where is he, anyway? Amy wonders, and it's surprisingly how idle, how lacking in originality her thoughts are at such a moment (Is it like this for everyone? Dying, that is?). She remembers where they are, then, and what they're fighting, and of course the Doctor's off doing the fighting—winning, hopefully…probably…certainly. It is then that Amy realizes he doesn't know, he has no idea, and she feels a surge of panic. If she cannot live without him, and she never has, not since she was seven (but no, before that, he'd been there—the time gods had made sure the fairy-tale was set in place), then surely she cannot die without him. And he didn't know. He had no idea that his mad, impossible Amy Pond is dying, will be dead, not five or ten or fifty years from now but now, right now. He has no idea.
"Amy," Rory's saying. His words are blurrier than his face. "Amy, please, no…stay with me…" She can feel something wet, something warm on her face, and she hasn't the slightest clue where it came from. She tastes salt on her dry lips, and knows these are tears. Her tears? No, his. Rory's. Rory of Earth. "Amy, no…"
And suddenly he is there. His face hovers above hers, and everything snaps into focus, clearer than she'd like, sharper. He isn't crying like Rory—his child's forehead is frowning, creased with the ruts of a thousand years' misery. She feels pressure, something strong…he's holding her face on both sides.
"Amelia Pond," he says sternly, and she can see him so much better than she ever could before. How did she never notice his eyes? Were they always like this, deep and darker than shade of blue should be, torrents of angry waves rumbling beneath the surface, and below, a pond—pond—of resignation? A motionless pond of sorrow, the bitter acceptance of an unjust fate? Yes, Amy knows, they have always been that way; but it's stronger now. "You will not." It's an order.
But she's surpassed him now. This is the one thing she understands, the one thing she's experienced that he never has. Everything makes so much sense now. Doctor…She smiles.
"Oh, Doctor," she whispers, searching for his hand still holding her face, but her grip will not tighten, her hands won't respond to her brain—everything is shutting down, and it feels restful, like the waters are calming. So she just lays her hand over his, her fingers curling over his as best they can. And as she looks up at him, her vision blackening at the sides, but his Face of the Universe still flawlessly clear, his composure starts to break, and he's no longer stern, no longer in control. He begins to look desperate, clinging to her head, stroking her hair, shaking her a tiny bit. And he looks angry, angry at her, but that's all right, she doesn't mind. He just doesn't see, that's all.
"Oh, Doctor," she sighs. "You were always supposed to be mine, weren't you?" And for the first time since all of this started, the contentedness is smudged and she feels sad, truly sad. She frowns. This clarity comes with a price, and the price is regret. How could she not have seen? The time gods must've had to bend a lot of rules for her, but there was one rule they could never fully break. She'd just been too blind to see it.
"Amy, Amy, Amy," the Doctor whispers, shaking his head; the first tear in the gallows of his eye geared up for battle, but he held the army at bay. "I always was."
His words make her smile. She pats his hand, his warm hand, and feels the first tear fall; and like the beat of a drum, keeping time to a song that cannot end, the time gods shift their story once again. Their fairy-tale is over now, and its ending means it never was.
She takes one last look at him, her raggedy Doctor, the man she's broken, the man she's fixed, the man who's torn her, the man who's repaired her, time and time again, and now she is at peace.
She dies still holding his hand.
a/n: I think there will be one more chapter. I know it seems like it couldn't possibly go on, but I have an idea in mind. We'll see.