It was four years two hundred and seventy-two days since his death, and that night they ran together amongst the stars.
Their hands were entwined in the constellation of their palms and fingers. In her dream they were young once more, his flesh rosy and hair parted and windswept. He laughed at her, kissed her, his lips tasting like sweet, sweet memories of a bygone age. She twirled and whooped and pressed her face against the stars; she dived and jumped, pulling her husband up up up –
The stars faded into a blur as they rode on the back of a towering blue mountain. Her name was Tardis and she sang to them. The music was silent and omnipresent, joyous and mournful. It reminded her of the future, of those she had already lost, that were yet to be lost. Tardis weeped and Rory flickered from existence and back again, and she fought with all her being to stay asleep.
Please, Amy,he called to her. Please. Please.
I love you, she told him, over and over and over again.
The Doctor cartwheeled out of the depths of the cosmos and swept a great, sweeping bow, tipping his hat of galaxies at them. His smile was childish and oh so bright, and it was reserved only for his Amelia Pond.
You're a ginger! she exclaimed.
I'm a ginger, the raggedy man agreed, and pulled them off the Tardis so they were falling, falling, flying –
She could still feel the cosmic winds in her hair as her consciousness jammed into her stiff, cold body. The last of the Tardis' song rang in her ears and Amy Williams opened her eyes to bright light and muffled shadows. She kept silent as the real world settled into her senses. Down the corridor, she could hear the whirring of the coffee machine and clatter of surface on surface as the smell of bacon and eggs wafted through her bedroom door. Was it already the twenty-first? Anthony always came to check on her when he was in town, and he'd promised his business trip would only take him a week, tops. The boy was as good with promises as his father had been. He'd give even the Doctor a run at his own game, she thought, remembering the man who kept his word and kept her waiting.
In her dream, her boys had been everything she remembered and more. They'd been as they were in life, alive and not just figments of a wearied mind.
"I wish I'd gone before you, Rory," she whispered, turning towards the empty place at her side. "Then you'd be the one caught up in reminiscing. Sighing really suits you more."
Unlike in her dream, he made no reply. Amy sighed, caught herself in the act, and instead sat up to push herself off the bed. She shuffled to the door and allowed herself one last minute of grasping at the fading threads of her dream.
"Mother? Are you awake?" The clattering in the kitchen paused momentarily as Anthony's head popped into view at the end of the landing. "I just came in an hour ago and thought you might like breakfast. Bacon and eggs sound good?"
Amy grinned at the sight of her son's apron-clad form before waving him away. "Don't be silly, we'll have those for lunch. I packed something in that basket there. Come here son, and give your old mother a kiss and a hug. Then we'll go have a picnic in the park."
They sat at the family's usual spot, the resident chess players making room for them at the very summit of the hill. Anthony took out the paper-wrapped sandwiches, smiling at his elderly mother.
"No fish fingers and custard?"
"That is no teasing matter, Tony," she chided gently, but since she'd been dragging him out to this hill for most of his life, often without explanation, she had taken care to spread an extra layer of marmalade on his cucumber bite-sized sandwiches, just like he and his father always liked.
When Tony was younger and believed in fairytales, he had been full of curiosity and unending questions. "Where are we? Why are we here? Why are we here again? I want to play baseball. You brought my glove! I don't want to climb that hill. Why's it always this hill?"
"Well, Tony," Amy had said, pulling her son towards her and into her lap, "this park, this hill, holds special memories for your father and I."
"Do those memories have to do with your Doctor?" His nine year-old head bobbed with the effort of reconciling the stories his parents always told him with the idea that this place meant something he couldn't quite wrap his mind around.
"You're right, buddy. This park is where your father and I have been happy and sad, and –"
"How can someone be happy and sad at the same time?" Anthony piped up, but before his parents could construe an explanation that would make sense he'd already moved on. "Mum, Dad, tell me the truth. You guys are actually making your Doctor up, right? Just like you made up Santa Claus?"
"Who told you Santa Claus isn't real?" Rory was indignant, meeting his wife's raised eyebrows with a subtle shrug of his own.
"All my friends, Laura and Samuel and David. Laura even saw her parents putting presents under the tree…"
"Well Tony, your friends don't have a Doctor, do they? One who was friends with their parents and brought them on adventures through space and time?"
"Well, no… But it doesn't make sense! You can't travel in time, that only happens in stories!"
"The Doctor may just be a story, but we're all stories in the end," Amy whispered, and looked up at her boy. The same chestnut eyes, curious with the ways of the world, peered out at her from a face framed in thinning sandy hair. Her boy was a boy no longer.
Anthony swallowed his first round of sandwich, shaking his crumb-filled hands at a pair of warily-approaching pigeons.
"But his is one of the better ones, isn't it? It's like you always said, mother. The Doctor is a fairytale come to life. His is the story of our universe."
One that you do not believe in, because you think you're too old for stories, she thought, but aloud she said, "Stop feeding those pigeons, Tony. Your father never liked them, you'll only indulge their laziness."
Rory didn't like pinecones either, or ice. They hindered his every movement, almost as if the universe had placed them specifically there to trip him up. Oh, and heights. Neither of them had been fans of heights. Or American architecture.
"Mother?" The look he gave her was one she was familiar with, one that reminded her that she could no longer be mad, impossible Amy Pond. Her life was good, but the days of fairytales were over. At that moment, her ache for Rory was more poignant than ever before.
"Yes, dear?"
"Happy Angels Take Manhattan Day."
Happy 2057th anniversary, Rory.
"Happy Angels Day, Anthony."