A/N: 'Ello! This is my first Doctor Who fan fiction, which is surprising since I've been watching the show for about five years. Anyway, this story is in the point of view of Amy Pond, and maybe River Song, I haven't decided, but the story itself is about the relationship about the Doctor and River and his past and future. This chapter and the next mainly focus on his past with River (Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead). The events take place after meeting River in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone. I hope you like it. And no matter if you like it or not, please leave a review. They're so helpful to writers. Thanks for even bothering to make it this far.
-cityscapes101
Amy
I wasn't sure exactly if the action I was making, traveling with the Doctor, was a good one, but I think I remember someone in Leadworth telling me that there would be a point in my life where it wouldn't even matter.
It may have been early, but I assumed that this was the time.
The Doctor was a treasure of adjectives, a literal fountain of words that could hypnotize anyone, it seemed. He was…he was handsome and witty and charming and intelligent and passionate and senseless and paranoid. And I think…I think everyone had a moment where they would freeze, and they would look around them in time and revel in the blissful thought of being someone like him. Someone who was bound by nothing. No marriages, no parents, no taxes, no Tony Blairs or Gordon Browns. It was like the walls that we were trapped in crumbled under his stunning eyes, and nothing could adhere to him too deeply.
However, sometimes there were those moments where he would set his jaw and his eyes would sort of blank and everything would seem to freeze again, and you'd realize that the heart may have been gorgeous but the soul may not be as intact. His past. That important part of time that we choose to forget, that he chooses to forget, and I think that keeping it inside of him to grow and ferment and stick wasn't the way to move beyond it. But that was the way of the Doctor, and who was I, average Amy Pond, to tell him how to live his own life when he was supplying the very basis of mine?
On Starship U.K., when I asked him about being a father, the silence he donned was so eerie that I almost shivered from its effects. And when he shook it off and his regular personality returned it was almost like a different person had reminded him of the present situation—sitting on a bench with a ginger girl her nightie. Or when I asked him his name, and he avoided it as if I had thrown a shard dagger of words at his heart.
And River, when he saw her, the look he gave was intensely sad and exhausted, for once, I realized that this man that I was traveling with, this man that I had run away with and left my fiancée for, was not a fun-loving, young human. Time had not been kind, even if, physically, it hadn't shown it.
River was pretty much the sole figure of curiosity with the Doctor after our meeting in the Byzantium. Her athleticism and wit and technological advancements were much to be envied, and her connection with the Doctor didn't arise jealously in me. It was more…a very piqued interest. She confirmed none of my suspicions. And if you don't believe that that didn't slightly irritate me, though I didn't show it, you probably should be fitted with a straight jacket. I liked River, there was something about her air and her unbalanced grace that made me pretty fond of being around her. I missed her, but to the extent of what? How long will it be until I see her face and blond curls again? She killed a man…the best man she ever knew. That could be a lot of men…so why is it that when I think of her statement, all I can think of is the Doctor?
When the Doctor led me back inside of the TARDIS after I kissed him, he pretended as if nothing had happened, which I was very grateful for, because I was worried very shortly after the whole event occurred that our close friendship would be shattered because I was being stupid. However, he didn't linger on the point. Actually, he seemed to have forgotten it all together, because when we went back inside our little home and e removed his jacket and leaned over the console, all he had to say was, "Where next? The binary star system of Zeta Reticuli? Or maybe somewhere closer…like Cardiff?"
I only looked at him and he frowned. Maybe he did remember and he was just masking it, because I could see the flicker of worry behind those eyes.
"I wanted to ask you something about River."
"Oh, what about River?" He threw his arms up and turned away from me, fiddling with the console as if he was doing something important (though it was obvious he wasn't). "Come on, Pond, don't you want to dance in the ballrooms of Titan in the year 20,000? Or get a tan on the man-made emerald beaches of Hamuea? We have a whole universe to explore and you want to talk about River Song?"
He did have a point. But it was the nature of my personality that I never listened to any of those points.
"Yes, I do, actually. And why are you so defensive, Mr. Grumpy Face, if it's so insignificant?" Silence.
I stood next to him and I watched his stoic reflection in the gleaming TARDIS console. "Come on, tell me." A bit of extra silence this time, but mere moments later he spoke.
"I met her the first time recently, when I was a different…face, you know? Things happened…really, terrible, awful things that I would rather not go into explicit detail about, alright?"
I sort of pouted and took a step backwards, just to look at him fully, to take his slumped figure in. He wasn't facing me but this way I could see the way his shoulders would move up and down as he breathed.
Up, down.
Up, down.
Up, down.
With tendons in his hands that were stretched like strips of rubber as his hands tightened, I could tell that he remembered it all, and that none of it was pleasant.
"What happens to River?" I asked, because I find it obvious that something occurred in his past and her future, something unspeakably horrid that the Doctor couldn't tell her for two reasons, 1) that it would affect her future, and 2) he couldn't bear to speak of it.
"She's saved into a computer data banks. She sacrificed herself to save me. To save all of us." And when he said this I could sense a tinge of…regret, I think it was. Regret that it was her to make the sacrifice, her to save the day, not the Doctor, the Doctor who was always there to save everyone except her. He couldn't fully save her. "Before she was fully dead I uploaded her into the computer's hard drive." His breathing slowed, I could tell in his shoulders. "I couldn't stop her. She's hard to stop." Silence. Silence in the TARDIS except for the faint breaths we took and the familiar hum of the time machine. But other than that…silence.
"So!" She spun on his heels and he looked at me and whatever unpleasant thoughts that were overcoming his physical exterior disintegrated within brief moments. He clapped his hands together and grinned that goofy little grin that he has and said, "So…do you want to see it?"
I smile too, a small one, of course, to keep the mystery in the air alive. I take a step forward and destroy the distance between us, but keeping it friendly, all the same. "See what, Doctor?" His eyes twinkled and transformed into little balls of excitement as he paused, as if to make me more irritated, which, it was working.
"The Library."