Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. I can't even come up with a witty way to tell you that.
AN: Spoilers if you still haven't watched The God Complex.
A Little Bit Fairytale.
For a while after he leaves, they aren't sure how to be around each other. They order take-away most nights and watch crap telly together in their bedroom (which is miraculously free of bunk-beds), but they don't really talk about what to do next with everything. It's awkward and yet surprisingly comforting, as if nothing has happened, but they both know everything has changed. They stay in and they do nothing, and Amy doesn't let herself cry over the Doctor, no matter how much she wants to.
He did what he had to do, after all. He let them go. She ought to be able to do the same for him, rather than miss the snarky banter and ache for adventure.
She loves Rory, more than anyone could possibly imagine. She knows that really, he's all she'll ever need to feel safe and loved and wonderful.
The whole of space and time open to the pair of them is just something it takes a while to get over.
An old friend with a penchant for bowties and odd hats takes some getting over too.
After two weeks of this end-of-the-world monotony, Rory has had enough and he phones the hospital to get back to work, where he's doing something, at least.
He's a litle worried about Amy – not everyone spent 2000 years waiting for their other half, which makes it so much easier to get along so long as they are by your side again – and he asks her just before he leaves for work if she'll be okay on her own, but she just grins and pushes out the door and tells him to go. He drops a kiss on her forehead and says he'll see her later on. Within two hours, everything is far too quiet for her liking, and one thought starts creeping in: without the Doctor, what is she going to do all day?
To shut it up, she goes for a walk and she visits her parents, and has what she's sure is a perfectly nice time, but it reminds her of Melody, River, her daughter, and she misses her quite badly. What upsets her is that even though they grew up side by side, she never really raised her and looked after her, and she knows she'll never get that back. She wonders how her daughter would be different if she'd been brought up by Amy and Rory in a house like this on Earth.
She's back home by the time Rory gets back from the hospital, but there is all sorts of lonely wanderlust in her eyes, like dust you can't rub away. He kisses her and she holds him, her Lone Centurion, and she explains to him how she feels between helpless sobs.
"It'll pass," he tells her. "You'll see."
...
She gets a job in a antiques shop just outside of Leadworth to pass the time, working with a girl called Alison who's a bit of a laugh. They have some fun, as it turns out, but every now and then Amy still can't help but think what the Doctor would have said about somehing that's in stock, and a sort of fond sadness hits her that gets gentler over time.
Sometimes she goes and has a quick cry in the room in the back, when Alison takes her break.
She's not quite sure that this is moving on.
...
After the first four months, River drops in. She's making herself a cup of tea when Amy walks into the kitchen and sees her, and she smiles and goes, "Do you want one too?"
Amy jumps a little bit, then runs up the stairs to yell to Rory that their daughter's home. She doesn't even stop to wonder how she got in.
They spend a wonderful afternoon, reminiscing about times with the Doctor and River telling them some stories they haven't heard before, and Amy decides they should probably cook rather than order in. After tea, River smiles at her parents and say she'd better get going.
"Are you sure you don't want to stay? There are more rooms than we need here, to be honest." Rory smiles hopefully.
But she shakes her head, and explains that she's in a teensy bit of trouble with an alien planet's justice system and she really must run or else they might just figure out she's been here.
As River waves, Rory rolls his eyes at her story, and whispers in his wife's ear, "She gets that from you, you know."
Amy smiles and hits him on the arm, and she feels really happy for the first time in ages.
River had called her Mum. She'd never really registered how that felt as the previous time that had happened, River had been jumping out the window into the streets of Berlin..
She was a little surprised to find how much it meant to her, and a little sad to remember the weight of that small bundle of baby in her arms which had disappeared for so long.
...
It takes Amy six days to sort out what would make her happy again, and as she spys a second-hand brooch engraved with the words "To my child, with love" she realises exactly what she wants.
For two days after that, she frets and paces and wonders what Rory will think of it, and if maybe it's a stupid idea, and then she just tells him.
"I want a baby. I want us to bring up a baby together."
He wants it too, of course he does, but what about River?
She reminds him how often Melody moaned about being an only child when they were growing up – all of them were, which was why they were so close with each other.
And then he smiles, and he kisses her on the forehead again, and he whispers, "Let's make a baby, then."
So they start to try for one every month. The first month nothing happens, which is disappointing but understandable. Nothing happens the second time either, and this time Amy crys. A week and six days after the third try, she is looking at the tests in the drugstore with Rory by her side when a madman with a bowtie comes around the corner and they forget all about it and go to spend five days in 1950s Paris which turn out to be slightly life-threatening.
They can't believe it, but the Doctor isn't gone for good, as it turns out. He'll pop in every now and then.
When they get back, Amy realises her period is late, so she takes a test and finally it's happened.
She and Rory are ecstatic.
...
She works until she's four months down the line and then she stays at home. She doesn't mind being at home all day now, and she watches TV or reads or talks to the baby, because that's supposed to help.
Once a week, River or the Doctor show up for the day, which is nice, although she tells the Doctor several times that he better not even think about putting that screwdriver anywhere near her child. River seems very happy for them, and every now and then Rory comes home from work to find his wife and daughter sat together looking at baby-related things online. It's nice, but strange at the same time.
...
The day before her due date, she goes into labour, and stays that way through most of night. At three in the morning, she gives birth to a healthy baby boy. Because he was born exactly on the due date estimated, the nurses exclaim and Rory jokes that his birth was a fixed point in time.
They both decide to call him Noah, which means comfort, and Amy chooses Tarrant as his middle name, which means traveller.
They don't even want to know how the Doctor and River snuck onto the maternity ward, but they're there in time to visit a two-day-old Noah just before he and Amy are sent home. The two of them are holding hands and wearing matching rings – the Doctor points to his and mouths, "Don't mention it". River asks if she can hold him, and she crys a little.
"I've always wanted a little brother," she says, and she probably has ever since she first met Rory and she and Amy bossed him around as kids.
They aren't a normal sort of family, but it works for them.
...
A year later, Amy realises that she doesn't want to go back to work and leave Noah with a childminder all day. He's walking and talking and she can't bear to miss a thing, not when she missed so much of Melody's – River's – life.
Two weeks after Noah's first birthday (all of his grandparents came, and his sister and brother-in-law showed up once the others had left), he is being stroppy and difficult about bedtime and Amy is trying to keep her patience as he shakes his head at every book she holds up for his story.
"Isn't there any book that you want me to read?"
He shakes his head again, stubbornly, and she grins as a flash of inspiration hits her.
"Would you like a brand new story, Noah?"
He nods, so she tells him about a blue box falling out of the sky and a little girl and a crack in a wall.
He listens, enthralled, and she says she'll tell him more the next night if he goes to sleep for her tonight.
She doesn't know if he'll put the pieces together and figure it out just yet, but he loves the stories, and that's enough, even if he isn't old enough to really understand.
Every night between that first time and the week he turns three, she tells her son about the Doctor and monsters and her Lone Centurion and other things each night. It strikes her that this is what she wants to do, so she starts to write down the stories.
...
Amy remembers as much as she can, asks Rory to explain parts that are hazy, but mostly she gets it down on paper or a computer screen. She snatches the little moments when Noah is asleep or playing happily or when Rory is home to keep an eye on him.
She writes things up, doesn't tone them down to take away the raw edges but simply puts the sad and the scary into words that children will understand, and she sends out a covering letter to a publisher saying that she's written a story about a crazy, clever man who saves the world and stops whenever there are children crying, who's very old and very kind and the very last of his kind, but most of all about the girl he sometimes took with him.
It takes a while, but finally she sees that book cover in the shops, and she's proud of herself and thrilled to pieces all at once.
The Girl Who Waited by Amelia Williams. She's going back to Amelia now, because that's who she is.
And after all, it matches, because everything in her life is just a little bit fairytale.
AN: This is my rewrite of it, so hopefully it's improved some where it needed to.
Leave a review to let me know if you liked it or not. Of course, it's been rendered completely AU by the Closing Time episode, but that's writing fanfiction for Doctor Who on a Saturday, isn't it?