Something Was Wrong
Something was wrong.
It was at the tip of Amy's tongue. The corner of her mind. Dangling, waiting for her to grasp it, to catch it. It had been there since the TARDIS left the subterranean world of the Silurians
And the Doctor was no use. He knew something; he always knew something. Amy was almost certain that he knew what was causing that feeling in the back of her mind, but was waiting until the last moment before he had to reveal what it was. She had tried asking him. She had tried bringing it up in conversation. She had tried tricking him (not that that ever worked – the Time Lord was far too clever for anything she could come up with.) Despite all of that, his lips were sealed, and most of the time he responded with anger to her prying.
It was bothering him. Whatever the wrong-thing was, it weighed heavy on the Doctor's mind, more-so than all the other heavy things that he usually sat and brooded about. This wrong-thing – it was more than just his usual brooding. Usually, he didn't try to mask his more sour moods, but this? When she was there, everything he did was covered by a paper-thin veil of fake excitement and false smiles.
There were little things, too. Occasionally, when the Doctor thought that Amy wasn't looking, would look at her as if she were some sort of puzzle. He would start to say strange things, then catch himself midway and stop. Most of these almost-statements were about her, she had noticed.
Then there was that little red box she found on the floor. The Doctor immediately snatched it up and wouldn't let her look inside. It looked suspiciously like a ring box. Amy had jokingly asked if he was going to propose to River. Instead of the normal outrage that he should have displayed, the Doctor had given her a curt "No" and then left, not another word. He had later told her that the box contained some sort of Time Lord-y thing that her human brain couldn't possibly comprehend. Amy wasn't sure if she believed him or not.
Frankly, it all was getting on Amy's nerves.
She played with the food on her plate, pushing it around with her fork. It was some sort of pasta-esque dish with very purple vegetables and some sort of orange meat that tasted like nothing back on Earth. She had never heard of any of the food on the menu, so the Doctor had ordered for her. The food wasn't bad – just odd. Amy didn't have much of an appetite. The wrong feeling was there, infuriatingly out of reach.
At least he hadn't gotten me what he had ordered, Amy thought as she looked up at the Doctor, loudly eating what looked like bluish grilled fish covered in tapioca pudding. It was obviously a strange enough request, even on this planet, that the waiter had had to come back twice to make sure that the Doctor really wanted his tapioca fish, and the restaurant's chef had even emerged from the kitchen, curious as to what kind of man would ask for such a bizarre dish.
"Ugh – do you have to eat so loudly and with your mouth open? It's disgusting," Amy complained.
"It's" -munch- "good manners" –chew chew- "on the planet" –slurp- "of Domadar." –smack- "It's considered customary."
"Well, I hate to break it to you, Doctor, but we're not exactly in Domadar, are we?"
The Doctor wiped his mouth with a napkin, having somehow managed to get the pudding all over his face. "I hate to break it to you, Amy Pond, but actually, we are."
Amy sighed.
"What's wrong, Pond? Don't like your food? I've always thought that Domadar's always had some of the best cuisine in the universe. Maybe even better than fish custard!"
"No, it's not the food. Food's fine. Very…" She pushed a purple vegetable around with her fork again. "… Colourful…"
The Doctor took another bite, but chewed it with closed mouth this time, out of respect for Amy.
"So, what seems to be troubling you, then?" he asked.
She put the fork down. "I don't know. For the past few days, everything's just felt wrong. There's something going on that shouldn't be, or something not happening that should be. I don't even know what I mean, but things don't feel like how they should be."
The Doctor sunk in his chair a bit. "This again?"
"Yes, 'this again.'"
He sighed.
"But, Doctor, you have to know something. What are you hiding?"
"Me? Hiding? What could I possibly be hiding?"
"Doctor…"
"Amy, you're probably just feeling a hiccup in the time vortex or something. Happens all the time – something shifts the time stream a bit; things happen that wouldn't have happened otherwise – and you, a time traveler, feel the brunt of it. You get used to it."
"Then why aren't you feeling it?" she asked, not buying his explanation.
"Like I said – you get used to it. Don't forget – I'm nine hundred and seven and a lot more sensitive to time than you are. I've had a lot of time to get used to a lot of hiccups. If I got uneasy at every little bump in the timeline, and, trust me, there's a bunch of them, I'd be continuously bedridden."
Amy giggled a bit at the concept of the Doctor being confined to bed – he barely slept for more than a few hours at a time as it was – she couldn't imagine him stuck in bed for any extended amount of time. He'd go mad from inactivity.
"So why am I only feeling a hiccup for the first time now?" she questioned.
"… This hiccup was probably a little closer to home for you than the usual little bump. Something changing on Earth in your own timeline would probably affect you more than, say, something happening on Domadar a few hundred years in the future. Since you're not there to personally experience it as it happens, you feel it here. The more personal it is, the more you feel it. Similar concept to the whole Weeping Angels thing back on the Byzantium. You could remember the clerics after the time energy destroyed them, but the other clerics, the ones in their own, natural timeline, couldn't. That's not to say that something was erased out of time on Earth in the twenty-first century; could just be as simple as someone turning right instead of left and meeting one person instead of another." The Doctor was a little slower in replying than usual. He knew something else about the source of the wrongness-feeling, she could tell.
"So, what changed on Earth, then?"
"There's no way to track it down, but it's nothing that would change the entire course of history. I'd know if it were something like that; I'd probably fall unconscious on the floor or something. I told you – I'm a lot more time-sensitive." That response came a tad too fast, now. The Doctor definitely knew something.
"Well, can we go back and see, then?"
"No, it wouldn't accomplish anything. If the hiccup occurred in your specific timeline, you probably wouldn't even notice anything being off, because it would have always been that way for you."
"But, Doctor, I've had this feeling for several days now. It'll at least calm my nerves."
"No. We are done discussing this."
"But Doctor-"
"I said, we are done discussing this topic!" The Doctor angrily dug his fork into his tapioca fish again and chewed loudly. Amy went back to pushing her food around her plate.
They sat in silence for the rest of their lunch.
Eventually the waiter came by with a small, flat black box that Amy could only assume somehow was the bill. The Doctor accepted it, and, only after the man left did the Doctor say anything.
"Amy – we need money to pay this," he whispered.
"Well, how else did you expect to pay for it?" she whispered back.
"I don't know – I don't think about these things. And I don't have any money!"
"What? Well, I certainly don't!" she struggled to keep her voice low. "What are we gonna do?"
"I think there was a cash machine outside. Don't leave – I'll be right back. I just need to give it a buzz with the ol' sonic screwdriver."
Before Amy could say anything, he leapt out the chair and out the door.
Curious, Amy reached over, onto his plate, and grabbed a bite of his tapioca fish with her fork. She hesitantly put it in her mouth. Almost immediately, she had to take a big gulp of water to wash the flavor away. That man has the weirdest taste in foods, she decided.
It took twenty minutes for the Doctor to return. Twenty minutes of sitting there with the wrong-thing going at full-force. Something told her that she shouldn't be sitting here alone while the Doctor was gone. It wasn't a feeling of being in danger, or even feeling lonely. She just felt that there should have been someone there with her.
The waiter hovered impatiently. Amy had to explain to him that the Doctor had gone to get some money. In an attempt to make the wrong-thing pass, she tried chatting him up, even a little flirting was thrown in – after all, the man seemed human enough, and was even a little cute, to boot.
The wrong-thing only intensified. She felt like she was betraying someone. She wasn't sure who, though. Couldn't be the Doctor – he had made it clear enough that he didn't see her that way at all. There was no one back at Leadworth that she felt attached enough to warrant these feelings of being unfaithful, either. Whatever had caused the wrong-thing, she did not like it.
When the Doctor came back, Amy was so relieved to see him; he could distract her mind.
"What took you so long?" she asked, pretending to be cross that he made her wait.
"Turns out, the cash machine wasn't right outside like I had though it was. It was a few blocks over. Seven blocks over, actually." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a long, thin, plastic stick and inserted it into the side of the black device that the waiter had left on the table. The box pinged, and the Doctor removed the stick and put in his pocket again.
"What's that?" Amy asked.
"Credits. It becomes the currency of most of the universe somewhere around the year 2893."
"What happened to the pound?"
"Same thing that happened to the euro, the dollar, and the yen."
Part of her hated it when he did that – the whole talking-but-not-giving-any-real-information thing – but another part of her knew that he just wouldn't be the Doctor if he didn't. She let it slide. "I didn't know you had a bank account. I thought you said that you had no money."
"I don't."
Amy looked at him funny. "So, how did you get it, then?"
The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and wiggled it around a bit, before putting it back into this jacket pocket.
"You're kidding me," Amy said. She leaned over the table and whispered, "So, what? You just stole it?"
"It's not stealing, we're not planning on keeping the money with us. More like… borrowing…"
"That is the loosest definition of 'borrowing' I've ever heard."
"Well, we're not keeping it. We're going to give it back to the society. If anything, we're helping the economy!"
"So, we're 'borrowing' like art thieves are just borrowing, because they sell it too, right? They're not keeping the art, they're giving it back to the art world."
The Doctor just stared at her momentarily. She assumed that no one else had ever berated him for sonicking an ATM.
"Well," he began, "since there's still some money left on this, and since I noticed a department store a little ways down the street, I was going to propose that I treat you, Amy Pond, to a day of shopping, but since you seem to think that we should go steal art, instead…"
"Shopping's good. I like shopping." Amy got out of her chair a little too enthusiastically, almost knocking it over. They had paid. If there was shopping to be done, no need to still be in the restaurant.
The Doctor smiled. "I thought you would."
He got up, and as the two of them headed towards the door, the waiter stopped them.
"I think you dropped this," he told Amy with a wink as he handed her a folded piece of paper before going back behind the kitchen.
"What's that?" the Doctor asked, holding the door open for Amy, who was busily unfolding the paper.
Once Amy managed to open it, she laughed. "It's a phone number!"
The Doctor snatched it out of her hands. In outrage, he told her, "Amelia Pond! You shouldn't be flirting with strange men! You're get-" Midway through his sentence, something occurred to him, and the anger on his face slowly melted away into what Amy thought looked a little like sadness. "No, never mind." He handed her back the paper.
Amy looked at the Doctor, the wrong-thing pounding away in the back of her mind. Unsure what to do, she found the nearest rubbish bin, tore up the paper, and tossed it in. The Doctor watched her with a raised eyebrow.
"I'm a time traveler from Leadworth in the twenty-first century. He's a waiter on Domadar in the thirtieth. It would never have worked out," she said with a smile.
The Doctor smiled back, but it didn't reach his eyes. It was because of the wrong-thing. Amy was willing to bet money on it.
He clapped his hands together "So! You ready to do some shopping in the future on a different planet?"
"Well, since it doesn't look like we'll be doing much art-thieving here, I guess it's our second-best option." Amy grinned, latching onto his arm.
"Second-best, it is!" he declared.
Amy's grin turned coy. "You're being incredibly nice – unnaturally so. A girl might think that you're taking her on a date."
The Doctor tried to look unamused, but couldn't fully keep a boyish grin off his face. "I'm always incredibly nice. Get those thoughts out of your head. I just figured that you deserved something fun after…" He scratched his jaw line, thinking of how to phrase things.
"After constantly running for my life?" she volunteered.
"Sure. That works." His mind, obviously elsewhere.
Amy let her mind wander, not knowing what to make of the Doctor's erratic behavior as of late. She was looking forward to this little shopping excursion; it was their first relatively normal trip anywhere. No monsters to run from, no civilizations to save – just good ol' fashioned consumerism. She wished that… someone… was there with them… Someone. She wasn't sure who it was that she wanted, but there was a definite longing. She mentally cursed that wrong-thing.
Pushing the wrong-thing out of her mind and bursting with excitement, Amy and the Doctor turned a corner and entered the alien department store.
After fighting their way through the perfume department with held breaths (why did they always put it right at the entrances or exits?) Amy and the Doctor found themselves at the jewelry department.
"Look at that one, Doctor! Isn't it beautiful?" Amy pointed through the case to a gold bracelet covered in some sort of large, blue gems.
"We don't have that many credits, Amy."
"I'm just looking!" she went back to looking at the case full of fine jewelry. "Oh, wow! Check out this ring!" she pointed to a thick, large ring with an even larger emerald sitting on it.
"Looks like it would weigh more than your entire arm," the Doctor said.
"I know, right? If I saw someone walking around with that one, I'd accuse them of stealing the crown jewels," Amy joked. She pointed to another one. "How about that one, there?"
"Whoever buys that one that has far more money than taste," the Doctor replied, smiling.
Amy pointed out a smaller, but still very tacky ring. "I think my aunt has one a little like that."
The Doctor playfully made a face in disgust.
Amy laughed. "I agree. Never did care for her taste in jewelry."
The Doctor pointed to one this time. "How about that one?"
"I feel sorry for the poor girl who gets THAT on her wedding day!"
The Doctor paled, although Amy wasn't sure why. "What made you say weddings?"
"Well, I mean, just look at it. It's meant to be a wedding ring."
"Are you sure that's what it is?" He was looking at her like a puzzle again.
"Yeah – you're a guy. You don't understand this stuff. It's obviously a wedding ring. The one right next to it's the matching engagement ring," Amy said, getting more than a little pissed off; the Doctor was acting strange, and the wrong-thing was back.
Before the situation could escalate any further, the clerk appeared from behind the jewelry displays. "Can I help you?"
"No, we're fine. Just looking," the Doctor assured her.
Amy saw the clerk take a quick look at their ring-less hands. The clerk smiled. "Do you need some help finding an engagement ring?"
The Doctor narrowed his eyes. Whatever it was that bothering him, she had somehow struck a nerve. Fortunately, Amy swooped in to save the day.
"No, we're not together. We were just looking at some of the more ridiculous rings and having a laugh."
The clerk's face fell at the realization that they weren't going to buy an overpriced piece of jewelry after all. "Oh, I'm sorry. I just assumed…"
"Well, maybe you would be better off if you didn't, because you seem to be so awfully bad at it!" the Doctor said, before stomping off.
The clerk looked dumbfounded. "Wait, what?"
"I'd hate to see what other things you've gotten wrong by making assumptions with no facts!'" he called back, shouting over his shoulder.
Amy apologized to the woman before catching up to the Doctor. "Oy! What was that about?"
"I have a lot on my mind, and she wasn't helping." The Doctor didn't slow down his pace.
"What's been on your mind that's bad enough to warrant you being a jerk to some misinformed clerk?"
"The cracks." Once again, he answered too quickly.
"No. That can't be the only thing. I'm a girl, you're a bloke, we came here together, and we were looking at rings – most people might make the same assumption she did. Normally, you would be laughing off what that woman said, not blowing up in her face and insulting her. What gives?"
The Doctor stopped and put his hands on her shoulders. He looked straight into her face with intensity. Underneath the forcefulness of his gaze, Amy could see pain, anger, a deep melancholy, but, most of all, a deep compassion. Just a glimpse of the weight of the world resting on his shoulders.
"Amy, you know that thing I do when I don't tell you everything, and, as much as you hate it, you know that I'm doing it to protect you?"
Amy nodded. The Doctor simply patted her shoulders twice and started walking again, leaving a baffled Amy behind.
Amy ran to finally catch up with him. "Does this have something to do with the time-hiccup?"
The Doctor spun on his heel and ignored her question. "So, where do you want to go to now?"
Amy sighed, she wasn't going to get any information out of him at this rate. "How about we just wander around?"
Amy wasn't sure what she expected from a department store in the future on another planet, but once she made up her mind that it wasn't that different from the ones back on Earth, she's see something that would completely change her mind. When she decided that it was too different, she'd notice something familiar and change her mind again.
"Doctor! Check out this crazy clothing," Amy said as she held what looked like an amorphous mess of fabric on a hanger.
The Doctor grinned.
"Look – they all look like this." She sifted through another rack of clothing. Then another, and another. "Even the different brands look like this." She sifted through even more. "I didn't see anyone wearing this stuff out on the street. Is this the fashion of the future?"
The Doctor coughed, but Amy paid no notice, too engulfed in her searching.
"I mean, look at it! What's with all sleeve-looking things everywhere? Are you supposed to wear it over something?"
He coughed again.
"How would you even put this on, anyway?"
"Amelia Jessica Pond, I am trying to get your attention."
"Whaaaat?" Amy said, irately. She did NOT like it when the Doctor used her full name.
He simply pointed upwards. Her eyes travelled the invisible path of his vision to a sign hanging overhead.
"Garfenroidian department…" she read aloud. "What the hell is a Garfenroidian?"
The Doctor nodded towards the left. Amy turned her head to see a creature with considerably more limbs than herself sifting through a sale rack. She looked to her right, only to see another. Actually, everyone besides some the sales clerks, the Doctor, and herself was one of the multi-limbed creatures.
"Oh. That's a Garfenroidian. Huh. Wonder how I missed that," she mused aloud.
The Doctor affectionately rubbed the top of her head. "You never cease to surprise me, Amy Pond. I'm going to find the Humanoid Men's section. I'd advise you to find the Humanoid Women's, that is, unless you want to start a new fashion trend with Garfenroidian clothing."
"What would you be looking for? You're always wearing the same thing. Bow ties and tweed."
"Well, yeah, that's what I'm wearing now, but you never know what I'm going to want to wear in my next regeneration. I like to have a large variety of clothing to choose from."
"Your next what?"
"Regeneration. You need to listen better. I don't like repeating myself."
Amy crossed her arms. He was so difficult sometimes. "Alright, how much time do you think we need?"
"I'm thinking we meet back here in about an hour, then decide if we want to stay longer or check out."
She nodded. "An hour's good." The Doctor was already walking away. Something told Amy that he was more-than-likely to do more brooding than actual shopping. She shook the mental image out of her head – she wasn't going to let the Doctor's moodiness affect her day. And with that, she went in search of clothing made to be worn by humans.
These thirtieth century outfits: as intriguing as they were, Amy had only found one article of clothing that appealed to her; a little belted black dress with blue flower print around the bottom. It was also the only thing that would have been seen as socially acceptable by twenty-first century standards. Still, she liked it, and had had fun mentally mocking the other pieces of clothing. She didn't care what century it was – leather and canvas looked TERRIBLE together.
An hour had come and pass, so, here she was, back at the Garfenroidian department, holding her dress, waiting for the Doctor. For a creature called a Time Lord, he certainly seemed to run late quite often. Very untimely.
Eventually, the Doctor showed up. As soon as Amy saw him, she had to shake her head in disbelief. Clutched in his hands, slung over his shoulders, hanging off his neck, and even tied around his head were numerous bow ties, braces, and a tacky striped slipover on a hanger.
"How many of those do you need?"
"Twelve braces and twenty-one bow ties. You can never have enough!"
Amy pulled the hanger out of his hand, examining the awful slipover dangling from it. "Please don't tell me that you plan on wearing this thing…"
The Doctor snatched it back. "No, of course not! I haven't paid for it yet. Besides, it clashes with the tweed. No, this one's going into the wardrobe."
"So, are we ready to check out?" Amy asked, hoping to never see the slipover ever again.
"There weren't any more bow ties; this was all they had, so I'm good here. What about you? Do you need anything else?"
Amy held up the little black dress. "No, I've found something I like. Besides – most of the fashions here aren't really my thing. Although… there is one little bit that I still want to see, just for fun. If it's alright with you."
"Of course it's alright, Amy Pond. It's always alright!"
Amy beamed. "Great! 'Cause, I was just thinking – if most of the dresses here were so atrocious, how hideous do you think the wedding dresses are?"
Amy couldn't quite place the expression that the Doctor's face contorted itself into, but it had to be somewhere between outrage, pain, surprise, longing, and shock.
"They don't have one," he replied a little too angrily.
"Doctor, look at the size of this place! There has to be; after all, they have a Garfenroidian department." She was getting pissed; the Doctor had been acting odd all day, and she was still no closer to finding out why.
The Doctor started walking towards the nearest cash register with his mess of bow ties. "No, and even if they did, we wouldn't go."
"What is with you today? It's been a roller coaster! First, you're all smiles, then you get all moody, then you blow up, and then it's back to smiles again! I'm dancing on an invisible tightrope, here! Something is wrong, and you won't tell me what it is!"
"Amy, when I don't tell you things, there is a reason for it!"
"Oh, because that explains so much. Why can't I see the bloody wedding dresses? It's a simple question!"
"BECAUSE!" he roared, "I CAN'T BEAR TO SEE YOU LIKE THIS!" He snatched the dress out of Amy's hand and slammed it, as well as his bow ties, braces, and slipover, onto the checkout counter. "BECAUSE YOU'VE BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH LATELY, AND YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW IT! BECAUSE, YOU DON'T NEED YOUR HEART BROKEN AGAIN!" He turned his back to Amy and handed the confounded - and slightly frightened - cashier the credit-stick.
Amy just stared at the Time Lord, her mind grasping for any sort of coherent thought.
"Come on, Pond," the Doctor said, the cashier handing him the bag of bow ties and the bag with Amy's dress. "Let's get back the TARDIS. I think we've spent enough time here."
Amy just nodded, trying to push away the hurt, and finding only the throbbing wrong-thing.
"Did I do something wrong?"
It had been a silent walk back. No playful banter. No closeness. No touching, no laughing, no smiling. Amy had followed a couple steps behind the Doctor, hugging her arms and keeping her head low.
The Doctor turned to face her; his face blank, so that Amy couldn't tell what he was thinking.
"No. No, you didn't do anything wrong. You're marvelous, Amy. Brilliant, fantastic, wonderful – that's what you are, Amy Pond. I was the one out of line."
"You? Admitting that you were wrong?" She tried to sound strong and self-assured, but, right now, Amy just felt small and hurt.
"I didn't say that I was wrong; I just meant that I conducted myself poorly… and, well, I'm sorry." His face softened, showing remorse.
"Is this all because of the time-hiccup that you won't tell me about?" she asked, not wanting to incite the Doctor again, but feeling that she was entitled to some sort of answer regarding his blow-up.
He put an arm around her shoulder reassuringly and smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, you could say that. You've been through something incredibly difficult recently because of a time-space anomaly, and immediately forgot it. I'm pretty certain that the physical memories are completely wiped, but something is still in there." He lightly poked her forehead. "In the subconscious. Open that up, and you'll have all the raw emotion, but no memories attached. Tremendous amounts of grief and sorrow that you won't understand why you're experiencing, but very real, all the same. That's what I'm not telling you; I didn't want to trigger anything… Most of the hiccup stuff I told you was a lie, anyway, to make you stop talking about that feeling of something being wrong. You're human – you wouldn't feel anything happening in the timeline outside of what you personally experience."
"… So, did I get married?"
The Doctor gave a hollow laugh. "I can see why you'd think that, what with the wedding dresses and wedding rings. No, you're still unmarried. Now, don't try to pull anything else out of me, because, like I said, I'm not telling you everything for your own good." He planted a tender kiss on her forehead.
Amy nodded, not fully satisfied with the Doctor's explanations, but glad that he was opening up and volunteering at least some sort of information.
The rest of the walk to the TARDIS, parked in a dirty alleyway, was in silence, but it wasn't as uncomfortable as before.
The Doctor gave his ship an affectionate stroke before unlocking the door and entering. Amy would never say it because she knew that he'd deny it, but after the incident with the Silurians, she had noticed that the Time Lord had been giving the time machine a lot more love. He bounded to the control platform.
"So, where do you want to go next?" he asked her, flicking a switch.
"Actually, Doctor, it's been a long day. I think I'm just going to go to bed."
The Doctor frowned, a little disappointed, but that was one of the drawbacks of travelling with humans – their gratuitous need for sleep. He flicked the switch back. "Alright, then. I guess I'll just go to the wardrobe and put my bow ties away. Here, catch."
He tossed her the bag containing her dress.
"Thanks," she said. "I guess I'll see you in the morning."
"Don't sleep for too long – all sorts of adventures await."
"And they can wait a little longer; we have a time machine. You're just impatient," she said with a smile, a little more back to her usual self.
The Doctor laughed. "Goodnight."
"G'night!" she called back, leaving the room.
"… Wait, Amy," the Doctor called out.
"Yes?" She came back.
"The… what did you call it… the… the wrong-thing." Amy blushed when she heard him say the stupid name she had been calling that feeling in her head. Sometimes she wondered if the Doctor was telepathic or something – she couldn't even remember ever saying it out loud. "It might not fade for a while, and it will be strongest for the next few days. You might want to take it easy. So, just…"
"Just what?"
"Just… trust me. I'll keep you safe, Amy, but you have to trust me. Trust that everything I do, I do for a reason. If I tell you not to look at something, not to do something, not to go somewhere, can you do that?"
"Y-yeah. Sure." She was a little uneasy, not sure what the Doctor was getting at.
"If I could bring back the memories, Amy, believe me, I would in a heartbeat, because, no matter how much pain it would cause, that's what you would have wanted. But I can't, and, tucked away in there is the turmoil. I'm just trying to avoid causing you heartbreak. The subconscious pain that you don't even know you're feeling – that's what's causing the wrong-thing. The only thing that will make it fade is time, even if it's brought to the surface. So, just promise me that, for the next few days, at least, you'll listen to me. Please?"
Amy nodded, not knowing what to say.
"Goodnight, Amy." And, with that, the Doctor left, bag of bow ties and braces in tow.
Amy walked down the corridor to the bedroom that, on the first day, she had declared as hers. With so much on her mind, the walk to the end of the hall felt a lot longer than usual.
Lost in thought, she almost missed noticing it. Almost. The door to the Doctor's study was open. She had been inside – it wasn't like the room was much of a secret or anything – but there was an unspoken rule that the room was one of the Doctor's personal areas. Much like she had her bedroom, he had his study. Frankly, she wasn't sure exactly the purpose of the room, other than being somewhere that the Doctor could brood out of sight, but he generally left the door closed.
Curiosity got the better of Amy – she went inside. The walls were lined with books and various odds and ends all the way to the high ceilings. In most situations, she would have considered the room to be an expansive private library, but having seen the room that he considered the library… no, this was more of a study. Her eyes panned over to the large, messy desk. Sitting on a stack of papers laid the small, red box.
She walked over to it. The velvet-covered box looked so familiar, beyond when she found it on the floor. The wrong-thing wiggled in the back of her mind, stronger than she had ever felt it before.
Amy picked the box up, cradling it in the palm of her hand. The wrong-thing flared, roaring to life. The Scottish girl bit her lip, trying to quiet it down, but to no avail. Every second she held the box caused the wrong-thing to swell. Her vision blurred as tears welled. Soon, they began to spill down her cheeks.
She examined the box, trying her hardest to ignore the rush of emotions beginning to wash over her. It was like a long-lost friend; something that she felt that was very near and close to her at one point, but now she barely knew. The little red box was a familiar stranger. She certainly had no recollection of having ever seen it before the day after the Silurians, back when she had noticed it on the floor. The pain building up within her only heightened her confusion.
Amy choked out a sob, her hands beginning to shake. Her knees began to buckle, and she had to sit down in the desk's matching chair. Emotions rushed through her: love, hate, anger, joy, and strong, stifling grief. It was as if the core of her very being ached. She grasped the lid of the box, yearning to know what it was that brought about such deep and sincere feelings.
As she began to open, she remembered the Doctor's words, remembering the promise that she made him. Did she trust him? She knew that he meant well, and that there was reason even in his most erratic and eccentric of behaviors. That crazy, incredible, moody, unpredictable, impossible man. He might not love her in a romantic sense, but he did love her, and he had proven that he would protect her and stand by her, regardless of the situation.
The Doctor had warned her of this. All day, he had been trying to avoid this. This… Amy hadn't felt this much turmoil since her parents died. She didn't even know what warranted this pain, but it was too much. It just hurt too much.
Yes, she trusted the Doctor. She already trusted him with her life, now she would trust him with her mind.
Amy shut the box before she could look inside and placed it on the table. Immediately, some of the pressure from the wrong-thing dissipated. It was still there, but not as strong. Amy wiped away the tears and rubbed her nose on her sleeve. Her eyes felt red and hot. Pushing herself out of the chair, she picked up the shopping bag that she hadn't even noticed she'd dropped. Legs a little unsteady, she left the room and closed the door. Every step away from the box causing the wrong-thing to lessen and lessen.
As Amy entered her own room, she felt empty, completely drained. She entered the spacious walk-in closet; it wasn't as big as the Doctor's own wardrobe, but he was over nine hundred, she was only twenty-one – he'd had more time to accumulate a larger collection of clothing. She took the dress out of the shopping bag and hung it up, tossing the sack in the dustbin.
Not even bothering to change into pyjamas, Amy collapsed onto the bed. She tightly wrapped herself in the duvet, needing the feeling of security, and slowly fell into dreamless sleep.
I'm sure that cannon will somehow prove something in this fic wrong as the last four episodes of series 5 air.
Oh, man – I'm not much of an emotional person, but during "Cold Blood," I cried. I love Rory. He's one of my favorite characters, and he and Amy were so adorable together. It's rumored that he'll be in the finale and season 6, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed!