Amelia Pond had been beautiful once.
A girl with a name from a fairy tale. Long red hair that looked like fire when it caught the sunlight just right, eyes that always seemed so bright when she laughed.
Bright and vibrant and beautifully alive, that was what she had been once. A stunning individual with a sarcastic reply on the tip of her tongue, a smile at her lips, and a wanderlust unmatchable by anyone that knew her. But she wasn't like that anymore.
She had always been odd, that was common knowledge in her hometown of Leadworth. It had started out being called imaginative when she was a little girl. She'd come up with the most wonderful story, a man who fell out of the sky in a big blue box. The Doctor, she called him. The Raggedy Doctor. Nobody paid her imaginary friend much attention for a very long time. Not when she started to make crafts of a blue police box in school, not when she drew herself and a lanky man with odd hair, a large chin, and torn clothes. It wasn't until Amelia had turned twelve did people start to whisper.
Peculiar Amelia Pond who couldn't let go of a fantasy, couldn't let go of her imaginary friend. Children teased her at school about her imaginary Doctor, crooning harsh names, even making up games at her expense. She knew about it all, but she did her best to ignore it.
She was thirteen years old the first time someone called her crazy.
It was that word, that one simple word, that opened the floodgates to an entirely new area of insults. Lunatic, insane, mental. Amelia had heard them all, and each one stung. Her aunt was no consolation, as the woman was questioning Amelia's mental health just like everyone else in town, setting her up with psychiatrist after psychiatrist. The only thing that really kept her going was that she knew she was right. She knew that her Doctor was real, and that he was coming back for her.
But as the years wore on and her Raggedy Doctor stayed away, she started to deteriorate. Had she really imagined him? Was she really crazy? Of course not. He was real. He was coming back.
She was fifteen years old when she first realized that her beautiful smile had become forced.
Rory Williams was her only light. Her best friend since primary school, the one who hadn't abandoned her, who hadn't called her crazy. He was the only one who had believed in her Raggedy Man. Rory, the only person who could make her laugh, who brought out her smile when all she wanted to do was cry. It wasn't like he was oblivious to her predicament. Everyone in Leadworth knew. He just didn't care.
Amelia was sixteen when she changed her fairytale name to Amy.
She had to just give up on her magical Doctor. He'd said five minutes, but it had been nine years, and she was tired. In an attempt to grow up, to let him go, she'd decided to start going by Amy. She'd also stopped talking about the Doctor.
She couldn't forget him though. All the crafts she'd made, all the paintings and drawings and figurines, she didn't get rid of a single one. But Amy had completely ceased talking about him to anyone, even Rory. The name calling didn't stop, but Amy suspected that maybe she was getting better, that maybe she was growing up. She hoped that they would begin to see that too.
Ever since she could remember, she had been on medication. Four psychiatrists over the years trying to diagnose her, trying to fix her. She was seventeen when she stopped taking those meds.
Amy was also seventeen the first time someone called her dangerous.
Unstable, they'd said. But dangerous? Many didn't believe it at first, that crazy Amy Pond was also a threat. She couldn't let go of a dream, but she wasn't dangerous, she knew that. But the word spread like wildfire, and soon everyone believed it. The children who had teased her at school, now all grown up, started to make up stories about her. One boy said that she'd nearly broken his arm while another girl swore that Amy had come at her with a knife. No longer on any sort of medication after relying on it for a decade, the cruel words actually made her feel unstable.
She'd thought she was getting better. She wasn't. Amy felt like she was spiraling.
Each vicious word cut like a blade, breaking her apart into a million pieces. All Amy wanted was for it to stop.
In an attempt to do better, she gave in and started to take her meds again. Her aunt told her they would make things better, and Amy was desperate. It didn't help though. It just made things so much worse.
Amy couldn't speak to anyone, not her aunt, not Rory. School was torturous, a place where every day was a battlefield. She found herself taking more and more pills to get through the day. They managed to dull the cruel voices, managed to ease her when she felt fractured. She didn't take them because of her aunt or because her psychiatrist told her they would help, she took them just to cling on to a shred of her sanity.
As badly as she wanted to, she couldn't let go of her Doctor. He was coming back for her. After all that she'd gone through, he had to be coming back. He'd promised. As ridiculous as it was, she still trusted that he would return. He wasn't imaginary, he was real. She had to believe that, at least in private.
No one would leave her alone. Whispers trailed her wherever she went, and they were just as common as harsh, blunt words. Even Rory couldn't make her smile anymore, though he did make an effort. He was the only reason that she hadn't lost her grip completely.
Amy was eighteen years old when she overdosed.
It was an accident. Of course the idea of suicide had entered her mind before, but she'd never acted on it. She was too scared. What would Rory think if he couldn't help her? What would her Doctor think if he returned to find that she'd been buried six feet under? Her aunt would be upset that her niece was gone, no question. No, Amy didn't want to kill herself, she didn't ever try. She'd just been taking her medicine, and she'd accidentally taken too much.
When Amy woke up in the hospital, Rory was there, holding her hand.
He came in to visit her often for long periods of time, telling her stories. Some were personal tales about him, some were about past memories they'd shared. Sometimes they talked about the Doctor, but not often. Her Raggedy Man still managed to make her heart ache. They never spoke of the outside world or the people at school. Amy was grateful for it.
Rory mentioned to her in passing that he'd decided to study medicine for a living. He was a great guy, he would do wonderfully helping others that needed him. Amy couldn't help but wonder if the deciding factor in his choice to study medicine had been her being admitted to the hospital. He didn't say, and she didn't ask, but she always suspected that it was true.
She'd hoped that maybe things at school would get better. A sleepy town like Leadworth, everyone was bound to hear what had happened to mad Amelia Pond. Maybe they would take pity, realizing how cruel they were being. Maybe the whispers would finally stop.
It was a fantasy Amy knew would inevitably shatter in the presence of harsh reality.
People would stop to point and gossip about Amy Pond, the girl who didn't make sense, the girl who still believed in fairytales. The girl who had completely lost her mind. There was nothing she could do except listen to the hushed words and try not to show that she was shattering.
Amy was sinking. Each word pushed her deeper and deeper into a darkness filled with uncertainties and instabilities. No matter how hard she tried to resurface, she just wasn't strong enough when everyone else was pushing her further down. Her Raggedy Doctor didn't do a thing to stop her from drowning.
When Amy was nineteen, he came back.
Everything about him was exactly the same as she remembered. The rumpled hair, the tattered clothes, the eyes always alight with a strange curiosity that she'd once possessed. He had no idea that she'd grown up. No idea how long she'd waited or what she'd gone through. When she saw him again, she hit him over the head with a cricket bat, pretending that she'd called the police on him. He asked for Amelia Pond, saying that he'd promised the girl five minutes, saying that he was late.
He'd promised five minutes, and it had been twelve years.
When she was a little girl, he'd fixed the crack in her wall. When he returned, he brought her along as they saved the world.
She had only taken her eyes off of him for a second, but it had been long enough for him to disappear. By the time she'd made it back to his blue box, he was disappearing right before her eyes. That was okay, though. She knew he would return. He'd mentioned in passing something about having to test out the ship's new interior. He'd be back.
A week passed, then a month, then a year, and still her Doctor stayed away. As Rory returned from medical school, saying that he'd become a nurse and was ready to volunteer at the local hospital in their hometown, she told him about the Doctor's visit. She could tell, however, that he was very worried. She could tell that he didn't believe her.
People got word that Amy had started telling stories again, and the whispers were unrelenting. Crazy Amy Pond, Freakish Amy Pond, Insane Amy Pond. She'd thought she'd heard all the names until one day when she'd heard something new: Amy Pond, the girl who needed to be locked away.
She didn't need to be locked away, she wasn't crazy. The Doctor was real, she knew he was, knew that he had come back for her. She knew that he would return again.
Amy was twenty two when she got in the accident.
She didn't remember it, not one bit of it. Apparently it was a car accident, though she didn't recall being in her car. She woke up in a hospital bed, covered in all sorts of wires and needles (she hated needles), gauze wrapped around her head, the place where she seemed to have obtained the most damage. Her aunt sat dutifully by her side filling her in on what had occurred. Doctors and nurses fluttered around her bedside in a blur, giving her aunt news, news that Amy could scarcely understand. She didn't try to.
It was a week before they could have let her out, but they didn't, and Amy knew why. The dreams had started almost immediately after the accident.
They were wonderful dreams, all filled with such stunning detail that made them feel as though they weren't dreams at all. It was the same one, a repeating dream with her and her Doctor in the midst of everything. She dreamed they went to space, a starship from the future. There were eerite statues that looked like they belonged in a carnival, a mysterious woman in a red cloak, and hushed whispers about some beast below. These dreams were everything to Amy. She stayed in the hospital, drawing dozens of pictures. Even after she knew she'd recovered from the accident she couldn't remember, they didn't release her, and she knew it was because they were observing her. She didn't care though, not really. Her dreams made her feel like she was finally traveling with the Doctor.
Amy had taken to keeping a journal of these dreams, filling them with pictures and memos, all about her time on the Starship UK. It was another week before a nurse found the journal and presented it to Amy's aunt, as well as her doctor. Amy had never seen her aunt look so afraid.
The next day, she went over to Amy's bedside, returning the journal to her niece. Amy clutched the precious thing to her chest as her aunt spoke, telling Amy exactly what she'd feared hearing since she was twelve years old.
Amelia Pond was being sent away to a psychiatric ward.
An asylum. They were locking her away because they thought she was crazy. She wasn't though, she definitely wasn't crazy. The Doctor had definitely come for her, and he was definitely coming back.
The night before she was due to leave, Amy's dream changed from a fairytale to a nightmare. Hideous creatures made of metal who despised all love and emotion. She woke up that night screaming. Her aunt didn't wait until the morning to bring her to the ward.
Yes, Amelia Pond had been beautiful once. The ward took that beauty away from her within a month.
Ghostly pale skin that made her look painfully ill, deep shadows under her eyes. Her red hair fell limp and lank around her hollow cheeks. Her radiant smile had completely disappeared.
Doctor after doctor came to speak with her, trying to diagnose her. Therapists were as common as fruit flies, but none ever stayed with her for very long. Too uncooperative, too unstable, too wrapped up in a fantasy, that's what she was. They tried different medications, but they didn't help Amy. Nothing did.
Her dreams had become an obsession. She had filled three notebooks with them by her second month at the ward. Dreams of starwhales and metal monsters and angels made of stone that could kill you if you even blinked. Those were the most frightening, the angels. The drawings that weren't in her journals were scattered around her bedroom. Some drawings featured her, but most were alien creatures, or a mad man in a bow tie. Her Raggedy Doctor.
During Amy's second month there, one of the nurses came in to tell her that they'd found a new doctor, a man with extensive medical and psychiatric knowledge. A man that they believed could help her. Amy said nothing when they led him into her room, scribbling furiously in her journal as she shaded the dress of one of her feral angels. He would be no better than the last doctor or the doctor before that. He would be no better than any of her therapists. It wasn't until she heard him speak did she look up to see his face, her cracked lips parted slightly, her heart racing.
He looked so different. The well tailored suit and tie were so different from his ragged attire, even more drastically different from his tweed and his bow tie. It complimented his lean figure very nicely, but it made him look so different that it caught her off guard. He looked more solemn than she had ever seen him, but the look only lasted for a moment before it was cleared away by a watchful sort of curiosity. She would know that face anywhere though. After all, she'd dreamed of her Doctor enough times to know his face by heart. His next words, however, cut through her like a warm knife could cut through butter.
"Hello Amelia, I'm the Doctor. Everything's going to be fine."
