When Rory comes to school that day, he expects nothing out of the ordinary. He'll sit in class, bored stupid because he already knows how to borrow and do long division, he's always been pretty quick with numbers. He thinks he might want to be a doctor someday, a proper doctor who wears a white coat and saves people's lives and, you know, sews on legs and things. A doctor. Doctor Williams, sounds rather good, he'll have to stop going by Rory, who ever heard of a—
And then it's like the eclipse when he was young, because all the light in the room seems to go out and this round little redhead comes in, scowling and brilliant and perfect, and Rory Williams is lost for all of time and space when the teacher sits the redhead next to him and Amelia Pond opens her mouth and that beautiful Scottish accent shines out at him, "Your nose is big."
"Yes, it is. Mum says I'll grow into it, though."
"You won't, it's always gonna be big."
"Oh. All right."
And that was that, and he never leaves her side if he could help it. They always sit together and Amelia doodles all over her papers and copies off of Rory during maths and Rory begs her to help him with history, she's an encyclopedia almost. Says she'll need it all someday, when…
"When what?"
A glower he loves more than breathing. "You'll make fun."
"No I won't." He might, but then she might punch him and she hits harder than anyone he knows.
"When the Doctor comes back." She takes a deep breath and barrels through her words like she's opening a floodgate. "He's a time traveler, an alien time traveler, and I'll need to know what happened before so I can help him, and if I don't know history I won't be able to help him at all."
"Help him do what?" He skips over the time travel, Amy's imaginative and clever and creative, he loves her too much to remind her that it's impossible.
She shrugs, her face still guarded. "Dunno. Whatever he does. Saves people, I guess."
"Brilliant!"
Peers closely at him. "Are you making fun of me?"
"No." He's really not. It sounds like a brilliant game. "I'm going to be a doctor someday."
"Not like my raggedy Doctor."
"No, a proper doctor."
At the word "proper" she storms off and doesn't speak to him for three days. For an eight-year-old, three days of silence from the girl you want to marry is like hell. Eventually she comes back — he's waited, quietly, in their normal spot every day. They continue on, and she draws him pictures of the Raggedy Doctor and the Blue Box so he can play with her. And they play and Rory gets very good at gagging down fish fingers and custard, which is apparently all the Raggedy Doctor ever eats.
And then they're seventeen, and Rory is madly in love like he's always been, and Amy is shagging that horrid Jimmy who used to call her a freak, like she doesn't even remember now just because he's tall and… Okay, yes, he's very handsome and much better about pretending he doesn't hate Rory now than he was in lower school, but that doesn't make it all right.
"Look, he's just a shag, all right, I'm not in love with him or anything!"
"I'd bloody well hope not, Amy, because—"
"Because what? Because I'm crazy? Because you think he's going to whisk me away like magic and we'll never be friends anymore? What?"
"No, you idiot, because I'm in love with you."
A long, electric silence. When Amy Pond gives someone that stare, it's usually a pitched battle between running away because she's going to punch you, running away because she's going to start crying, and running away because she's going to turn on her heel and leave. But Rory's never run away from her before, and he has no plans to do so now. He waits.
"You're in love with me." She doesn't believe him.
"Always have been," he mutters, looking at Amy's shoes. "Since my big nose and that row when we first met."
She stares at him some more.
"I don't expect you to feel anything, Amy, all right? Just. Wanted you to know, I guess."
Amy Pond is a fantastic kisser, it turns out.
And then they're nineteen and it turns out that the Raggedy Doctor is real, and Rory sort of shunts it aside because he can't really make it jive with the whole reality idea, and he proposes to Amy the week after the Doctor leaves because, well, he might as well try something impossible after seeing an imaginary friend turn real.
And then they're twenty-one and it's the night before their wedding, and sometimes Rory doesn't think it's true. Can't be true, can't be happening, because really, Amelia Pond fell in love with him, boring old Rory, and wants to be with him, and it seems impossible, doesn't it? Almost like a dream. So when the Doctor's head pops out of a cake, it almost makes a sort of strange sense: Amelia Pond existing, being his friend, letting him be hers, kissing him, agreeing to marry him, and now taking him on a trip with her and her imaginary friend to who knows where. Just one more impossible thing to add to the list.