Hey guys :D So, this is really just silly fluff. I just started writing - and this happened. This is set just after 'The Beast Below' in Series Five, but before 'Victory of The Daleks.' The Doc and Amy are having some down time before they go to visit Churchill - and conversation ensues. I hope you enjoy it.
Trivial Topics
The Doctor flicked off the telly and Tom Cruise's tortured expression disappeared into a void of black. He yawned and stretched, wincing as Amy let out a little groan and shifted slightly in her sleep. She was curled up on the sofa, resting against him, a curtain of her fiery red hair falling across her face. She was still wearing her nightie. They'd really have to sort that. He vaguely wondered where he'd last seen the wardrobe...The Doctor smiled as he regarded the girl. He found human beings immensely fascinating - their lives, their habits, the way no one human mind was identical...it was all so interesting! Gallifreyans, while being a mentally heightened kind of people, were taught from a young age how to behave and think exactly - the education system was little more than glorified brain-washing and the rules had been so strict. Too strict for him. Too strict for his TARDIS. Human beings were frankly brilliant. And he had to admit that he had picked a pretty special one this time around.
Amy had done him proud that day - she had saved a Star Whale, where he would have killed it. She had seen what he had missed and he knew that he could never thank her enough for what she had saved him from having to do.
He sighed in something close to contentment, thinking about how the day had panned out.
They had done pretty well - him and Amy Pond.
That's when the Doctor noticed that Amy had cracked one eye open - which was now staring up at him.
"Hey," she mumbled, face half covered by his jacket. Her gaze fell on the blank television plonked in the corner of the room. "Tom Cruise went away?"
"Into the void I'm afraid. There's no saving him now," said the Doctor.
Amy made an unimpressed sounding noise. "Doctor," she groaned. "The whole point of watching television at night is that you fall asleep in front of it...then you wake up and you watch it some more. No need to get up, no need to find the remote...do you see how useful that is?"
The Doctor made a face. "What a complete waste of electricity that is! ...It's no wonder the human race has to fall back to turbines in twenty-fifteen."
Amy narrowed her eyes - well, he assumed it was both eyes. He could still only see the one. "Wait -"
"And anyway that film was a load of rubbish and - depressing. And -" The Doctor held up a hand.
"Yes?"
"Stupid."
Amy snorted. "This coming from the bowtie wearing alien?"
"Hey," said the Doctor. "Bowties are cool." He adjusted the offending item as if to highlight this fact.
"Ah, don't go getting all snippy just because you wanted to watch that cartoon about the fish."
"Finding Nemo is a beautiful adventure about family and love and -" The Doctor stopped mid-sentence, as Amy groaned and pressed her face tightly into his jacket.
"Please not this lecture again. That bloody fish. You're in love with that fish."
"I'm not in love with him!" spluttered the Doctor, "I just like him. Like a friend. A little fishy friend, swimming about -"
"Doctor," warned Amy.
"Fine," huffed the Doctor. "As long as we can watch it next time."
Amy rolled her eye. "Fine."
"And it's not a cartoon, it's a computer animation. Totally different."
Amy sat upright, shot him a look and leaned against the sofa cushions. Her hair was sticking up at odd angles on one side and the Doctor repressed a laugh.
He thought fondly for a moment about tiny Nemo and smiled to himself. That fish was such a little adventurer. He sort of reminded him of himself. ...If he were a fish. And in the sea. And orange. Hey now, that would be brilliant! Imagine that - having fins. Being orange. Excellent.
"Hey, Doctor?" Amy asked suddenly, snapping the Doctor out of his wonderful underwater reverie.
"Yeah?"
"Have you ever had anyone else on here? On the TARDIS, I mean?"
"Oh yeah, loads! ...Well, a few."
"Oh ok," Amy said, nodding. Thinking. "So you just go around then...collecting people?"
"Special people," the Doctor emphasised. "And I don't collect them - that would be weird! I just...find them. It's the people with that gleam in their eye - that...imagination. The people who think beyond the stars. And who can see - it. The things that I can't see anymore."
"But then they always end up leaving? ...I haven't seen anyone else wandering the halls."
The Doctor nodded, almost sadly. "Yeah - they tend to go eventually. They have lives, you know? It's like - they put all that rubbish adult stuff on pause for a bit, but there's only so long you can keep stuff on pause, I guess. So they go, and I keep going. It's the way it's always been."
"Ok." said Amy. "But then why would they want to go back? I mean - what I've been seeing, this stuff - it's amazing. Just outside the TARDIS door right now is Space, like, literally Space...why would anyone ever want to leave that?"
The Doctor was getting a bit uncomfortable with this line of questioning - they were heading to a guilty place. It was time for an aversive manoeuvre. "Oh, you know, this and that - stuff crops up. Crops pop up. Stuff. Crops. Life moves. Upwards. Onwards, etcetera."
"So people always have to go, do they? That's just inevitable? The way it is?"
"It can all get a bit dangerous," the Doctor said quietly. Thoughts were coming up to the forefront of his mind. Thoughts he didn't much like. He clapped his hands together - loudly - causing Amy to jump. "But anyway - who cares about all of that, eh? We're in the TARDIS right now, and there's a whole load of places to explore! Brilliant places filled with things and stuff and other brilliant...things."
Amy smiled at the Doctor's enthusiasm, but she seemed determined to continue her questions. "So all of these other people...they were women then, were they?"
The Doctor pretended to ponder this for a moment, eventually weighing out both hands in front of him. "Fifty fifty," he said.
"Right," drawled Amy.
"Maybe forty sixty," mumbled the Doctor.
"So basically," said Amy. "You're an old man picking up young, impressionable women and whisking them off to Space?" Hey eyes glimmered with amusement.
"Hey whoa, hang on there," blustered the Doctor, rocking to his feet and spinning to meet Amy's gaze. "Firstly, it's not like that - and secondly...that is extreme coincidence...about the women thing - and they weren't all impressionable!" The Doctor curled up his lip as if he were a wounded kitten.
"Oh Doctor," smirked Amy. "You're so easy to wind-up. So is flying around with all these girls the only thing you've ever done with them?"
She raised her eyebrows. The Doctor frowned.
"What exactly..."
"Come on, you know."
There was a silence in which the Doctor stared at her very, very hard.
"You do know, right?" asked Amy.
The Doctor made to answer, raising his finger in front of him, but then quickly retracted the finger. "Ah - ah!... No, not really. Not a clue. No."
Amy giggled and stretched out across the entire sofa. "Doctor!" She shook her head. "How can you be so old and so smart - and not know what I'm talking about? ...You really are an alien."
"Yeah. Well...yeah," said the Doctor, walking forward and plonking himself down at the edge of the sofa, close to Amy's head.
"Did you ever fancy any of them?"
The Doctor made a straggled noise. "Amy! Honestly, are you always this nosey?"
Amy appeared to think about this, resting her chin on her knuckles. "Um...Yes." She smiled at him sweetly.
The Doctor smirked and ruffled her hair affectionately, making the whole 'sticking up at odd angles' situation even worse. She laughed, but smacked his hand away and attempted to smooth down the mess.
"I can tell you're going to be one of those types that always asks 'why,' aren't you?" The Doctor said.
"Only when I disagree with you," said Amy, innocently.
There was a beat and then -
"Hey, Doctor?" asked Amy. "Have you ever, like...ok, say that you met...um..." Her eyes scanned the room. "Tom Cruise -"
"I met Tom Cruise?"
"Well no, not you, just...a person. Hypothetically."
"Ah, ok, so hypothetically, a person meets Tom Cruise."
"Right. And, they really like Tom Cruise, but they can't stay with him because, well, Tom Cruise is busy doing...actory things."
"Right."
"Ok, yeah. But then they meet someone else who sort of looks like Tom Cruise - like, he shares similarities, so they're like 'ok, yeah, I'm happy, I can live with this.'"
The Doctor was nodding along. "Ok."
"Yeah. But then, say Tom Cruise came back and suddenly that person was having second thoughts - like they might have just settled, because they thought they had to, but now with Tom Cruise here...I mean, non-Tom Cruise is a perfectly lovely guy, but..." Her words stumbled to a halt. She sighed. "Do you know what I'm saying?"
The Doctor, having been listening intently, was thrown at suddenly being expected to speak. He thought that this was just going to be one of those rambley things, where all he had to do was nod and say things like 'Yeah' and 'Go on.' "Um, well..." His eyes grew wide. "Uh...not really. Um, no."
Amy smiled, but it lacked anything real and didn't reach her eyes. She almost seemed sad actually. There was another silence, but the Doctor didn't really understand why. He wasn't sure what to do. He fiddled with his fingers for a moment, feeling awkward, but without knowing what had caused it. He turned to look at Amy again, but she was staring determinedly at a spot on the sofa.
"...Would you, um, would you like to meet Tom Cruise then?" The Doctor asked. He hoped it would help. The mood of the room had suddenly become really weird.
The randomness of the question forced Amy to look up. Her eyes were a bit red. "...What?"
"Well," said the Doctor. "You're going on about him quite a lot, I was wondering if you'd like to actually meet him."
"You could do that?"
"Oh yeah," said the Doctor, sounding completely blasé about it. "We can meet anyone we want to! Amy...we have a time machine. We can go whoever, see whenever and talk to wherever!...Wait..."
Amy laughed and the Doctor smiled. That was more like it. "Yeah, so Tom Cruise after Winston, eh?"
Amy wiggled her feet. "So, we're actually going to see Winston Churchill. ...For real?"
"Of course!" said the Doctor. "Honestly Amy, you not go the hang of this yet? Whenever, whoever...and all those evers. All the time! Any time. Whichever time. Backwards, forwards, frontways, downways...upways. It's all right here!" He stood up and did a little twirl on the spot. "Now go and get changed or something - I think we've probably kept old Churchy waiting long enough. And you can catch a few more shut-eyes before we land, ah - excellent stuff."
Amy got to her feet, and before the Doctor knew what was happening he was suddenly enveloped in a giant hug. He smiled. He liked hugs. Human contact was good. He pressed Amy against him, head over her shoulder.
"Thank you, Doctor," she said. "You're just...you're brilliant."
"Well, of course," said the Doctor. "But you know, you were pretty brilliant today too."
Amy pulled away a little, tilting her head. "I was pretty brilliant, wasn't I?"
She beamed at him and then flourished away, heading to the door of what the Doctor liked to call 'The Relaxy Room.'
"And Amy," called the Doctor. She turned. "If you find the swimming pool anywhere, let me know eh? I'm dying for a swim."