Disclaimer; I don't own Doctor Who. Some italics you may recognise are qoutes from the show and property of the BBC. The extract from the book 'Summer Falls' that we saw a teasing glimpse of in 'The Bells of Saint John' (As if the Ponds departure wasn't bad enough-Moffat!) belongs to Dr Who BBC.
This thing that goes on
"Everyone else has stopped reading. Apart from you. It is just you, isn't it? I knew it would be. I knew that one day you would find an old, jam-stained copy of this in a second-hand bookshop, brown pages smelling of caramel. I knew you'd pick it up and smile that little smile (the one that does Fond while your eyes are doing Three Moves Ahead). You'd check the last page and then you'd just wonder if there was anything else meant here for you, you lovely, silly Raggedy Man. Well, there is."
Extract from an introduction to Summer Falls By Amelia Williams (1st Edition, 1954) -Dr. Who BBC.
They were living well. All things considered.
They find a house, a neat little detached on the outskirts. This was after Rory finds a job at the hospital (as a doctor, because men just weren't nurses), and after she starts writing. Before this, it was a grim little apartment on Seventh Avenue, up three flights of stairs (the lift was broken. Even if it wasn't they're not sure they could have brought themselves to use it anyway), that was forty minutes from the hospital, and smelled of damp.
That first while, they didn't have anything, so Rory had to walk and she cleaned the apartment block so the landlord would let them stay (climbing up and down all six flights every day.) The name of the road does not escape her notice. But there were no little girl hopes to rely on, only her and Rory-together- relying on themselves to try, keep trying-we'll get there, it will be better-
It's called marriage.
Waiting.
It does get better. Rory struggles with being an intern again, adjusting to this time they have to make theirs. But he slowly moves upwards, caring, blundering, wonderful Rory, and they earn and save and live off air and each other. She finds a column at magazine about domestic life to write once a week, and they get a bit more.
Then they find the house. It has a garden and windows in the kitchen that get the sun. Best of all, the elderly owner left her car with the deal. Rory drives now, puts in a few more hours while she digs through every thrift store (thrift-one other thing to get used to, so many more to adapt) and secondhand shops; curtains, rugs, lamps and small bits of furniture. She is hanging the latest drapes up when Rory comes in one Tuesday evening. They have been here for a year now.
"I've been promoted" and they smile proper smiles for the first time in awhile.
The pieces of furniture get bigger and she does feel better.
Rory has kept climbing, never stopped caring. Sixty years later, there is a tribute in the newspaper to the city's most esteemed doctor; 'Ahead of his time.' Oh, the irony. If they had known, they would have put a message in it somehow, for him.
She enjoys writing now, putting together advice and travel articles and maybe a novel for kids (but more like memories on paper). They have also discovered gardening- "I can keep plants alive, thank you, Rory." (She punishes him with a grin and a sharp aim from the hosepipe). One day, she gets a brown envelope with a manuscript inside. So she has to think about the things she cherishes, and will never forget, but wishes they didn't hurt so much. Rory does not want to write. "This is for you and him."
This is their life now. The enormity of what this meant; All I have to do- the blink allowing an Angel's touch.
She loves Rory. The most beautiful man I've ever met, but she loved him, too. Off to see the Universe. She knows how important they both are, two focal points of her life. It was a long time before she got over that day. The wrenching horror of it. I'll be with him-And the nightmares; but it's my best shot, yeah? and the guilt –just come back-
Grief and horror-Pond, please-old stones and tweed and then-
Dark street. Cold-RORY! She doesn't think she's ever been so terrified in her life. Terror wasn't even the word. If she was here, in this now, and he was not-I don't know, nobody knows!-
-But he is. Rory.
So They are Here, and He is There. Everywhere and everywhen. Every time except this one. Their time, now. River won't stay. She'll travel with him, -you look after him- but she won't stay. Never let him see the damage. River loves him, but she knows this (Mother's intuition).
Rory.
This is why she did it. She knows he would not want her to feel guilty, that he did understand. She knows that this won't have made him hurt any less.-You're my friend. My best friend. Twenty years later and she will still wake up at nights, the ring of his voice, ancient eyes and that stupid bloody bow tie stinging her eyes with tears and a lump in her throat so hard and painful she can't speak.
-I remember. I can bring you back, too!
Except she can't.
II. We're all stories in the end
Sometimes in the city she longs to hear an English voice, thinks of Scotland, left so long ago. They miss telly in the evenings of the long winter. They gripe good-naturedly about the way people say Fall instead of Autumn. It feels strange when she has to remember to write her surname beginning with a W instead of a P. (Because that's how it is, in this time.) She's not sorry, doesn't dislike it, but it's strange. That's a brilliant name-like a name in a fairytale-
Most of all, she wishes for fish fingers and custard. She gains a new insight into his wild exuberance, terrible fashion sense. Goofy grin. That look in his eyes sometimes that made her realize she is so tiny against all his lives of travel and running.Because you are all I ever remember. Joyous to dangerous in less than two seconds flat-He is alone. Moving through Time, Madman in a box.
The most important thing you should know about me.
A soft day in July of the year they arrived, Rory is out in the little veg patch putting in canes to train the sweet peas. She rushes out the backdoor, then tries to gather herself.
"I wish it hadn't come yet" she says, everything rushed, chaos emotion.
He leans back on his heels, puzzled then concerned.
"The book. Melody's-River's book." She goes and sits on the bench. Rory brushes off his hands to follow.
"All that time we were with him. It was so… we couldn't choose between this or that…He was so happy to see us, then he stayed that time, for…days and-" She doesn't think she can explain with words. She gestures, encompassing the garden, the house. And everything else. She knows Rory sees that. "He felt-feels- like…this all the time. The other day, that time when Robert asked about the cars you like, and you couldn't say-If I had known that this is what he feels all the time, I would have put…more in the Afterword, so he knows that we know. What it's like to be…outside of a place. But, Rory, I have you. And he doesn't even have a planet anymore, or people."
It has taken this, her own experience out of time of just more than a year, to understand why he is who he is. And he is over a thousand years old and she guessed, but never really saw how much he suffered.
The only girl in the universe to whom the Doctor tells everything?
So she lets go.
If he hid it from her, he can keep going, has been going. Another thousand years. She stops wishing, waiting.
Here. Now.
III. Summer Fell
Rory comes home one day, puzzled when she is not there. (They will still find themselves digging in a pocket or bag for a mobile phone, nearly twenty years later). So he changes out of scrubs and starts dinner. That is not how it's done, in this here and now, but he doesn't care.
"Rory!" his wife bowls in, all bluster of autumn (fall) wind and excitement, cheeks flushed, hair wild. Her sudden arrival-electricity presence-is so reminiscent of the way someone else he knows (knew) would enter a room that for a moment he is frozen. Memories of another life? He must be getting old. He pushes away from his desk, rising to greet her. But she slaps down a sheaf of papers burrowed from her handbag. He tilts them round the right way up, pushing his glasses up his nose-
Adoption papers.
She comes in one day from getting groceries to find Rory at the desk with a mug of tea and the rat-a-tat-tat of her typewriter (she still misses Biros). When he finishes the letter to Brian, neither of them say what they know the other is thinking; Half wondering if maybe he has already been, but she knows he won't have. They would like, secretly, to put something in for him, but they have no idea when or where he is.
There's one thing you should know, because your life may depend on it-
She sees sunflowers at the market one mild afternoon on a Sunday, and buys them all. She and Rory stand and admire their vibrancy in the window. He knows about that trip, of course.
They are happy now. Together, like it should be. As happy as can be, wrenched from him, so sudden, so cruel.
But; Amy's choice.
She knows that there were others before her. She hopes he has someone now.
We will love you, always.
She does, after all.
Don't be alone, Doctor.
FIN.
So, my first fic! The Angels episode was so sad, I thought the Ponds were brilliant characters. I liked the Afterword Amy wrote though. The idea of adoption papers in this came from the unaired short 'P.S', set post-Ponds that you can find on YouTube.