Amy's heart was pounding and she thought it was about to break. Rory was storming off in a cloud of rage, throwing his hands in the air and announcing in a broken voice that he wasn't coming back. Even though this was what Amy had been working towards for several months now, and even though she had technically been the one to throw him out, Amy wanted to call it all off, shout for him to come back. But she knew that for his sake this was the right thing to do, the only thing to do. To prevent the stupid noble git from sacrificing his own needs (which Amy had no doubt he would do because he had already started trying to sublimate his desires for hers) she had to give him up. Instead of running after him, then, Amy just remained standing there, tears falling down her face, watching him walk away while her heart shattered inside her, the only sound she made a broken, tearful, 'Rory!' She had nurtured every teeny piece of resentment into a white hot flame over the last few weeks so he would believe her when she said she didn't love him anymore. She'd had to delve into some of her darkest thoughts and feelings to convince him, and she now had so much pent-up rage, agony and bitterness from examining those feelings that she almost hated him. But as she watched Rory disappear into the distance, Amy knew it all meant nothing. She loved him, and nothing would ever change that … not even hate.
Rory was hurt and confused. No, worse than hurt – he was devastated. He had no idea where this had come from. Oh yes, it had been obvious forever that he was more invested in 'Amy and Rory' as an entity than Amy was, but he'd also always, somewhere deep inside him, had a rock solid understanding of who Amy was, that she needed him and that in her own, weird, stuffed up way she loved him too. But Amy had just thrown him out of the house and he didn't understand it. Okay, so technically Rory could have stayed and tried to fight for their marriage, but he'd fought so many times over the last few months, and Amy just grew colder with each approach. So, what was the point, he argued stubbornly to himself, in staying somewhere you're clearly not wanted? He'd been fighting it for so long now, fighting the growing realisation that Amy had shut him out. He just couldn't do it, not again.
Before travelling with the Doctor, Rory had accepted that Amy was aloof and distant, that she kept him at arm's length. That was how the relationship had existed, and it had felt normal then. But since their marriage it had felt to Rory like Amy was just as invested in their relationship as he was. The things they had seen together, been through together – he'd thought they had created a bond which was deeper, which couldn't be broken. Then, inexplicably, Amy had begun to draw away again. Rory had tried to cross the distance to her, but she just backed further away, her emotions once again hidden deep inside where he couldn't reach. It was obvious that there was something black in Amy which she was wrestling with, but she always refused to share it with Rory. After having had access to all of her feelings, her thoughts, dreams … her love; after having access to all of who she had become, the loss left him even more bereft. This … this distance, this need to guess how she felt, didn't feel normal for their relationship now.
In desperation, Rory had tried one last time – and something he'd said, he wasn't even sure what, had set Amy off. The fight today was intense and far-reaching, addressing everything from his selfishness for wanting children to his failure to keep Melody safe. Threading through her accusations was one incendiary bomb, hinted at but never quite articulated – that it was Rory's fault, somehow. His failure to protect their baby had led inevitably to this. His failure, his lack. Every word she'd thrown at him had cut like a knife so, wounded and lashing out, he'd shouted back at her – shouted things he knew he'd regret but couldn't stop himself from throwing at her like grenades while he was so wounded himself. Things that had made her face go white and caused her to explode with 'Get out! Get out of this house!' So here he was now, storming away from the home he had loved, away from the woman he still loved despite the pain of her words ripping him to shreds.
Amy dragged herself back to the house. She couldn't see Rory anymore; his form had blended into the distance so there seemed no further point in hanging around outside hoping he might come back, the way he always had before. The way he never would again. Amy didn't care that her life had just blown up in the middle of the street where every nosy neighbour could see. But she did care that one of them, with concern on her face and a baby in her arms, was getting ready to approach. Amy couldn't bear to go over it again with some barely-known stranger, particularly not one who was flaunting the very thing Amy had lost her husband for. Amy knew the lives she and Rory lived seemed odd and fascinating to those who lived around them – they so often disappeared without comment, leaving the mail to pile up behind the door and the newspaper to accumulate on the street outside. They were the source of endless gossip for the street, she knew, especially now that Amy was becoming known as a model and her face was appearing on billboards all over the city. Something public and titillating had finally happened which would allow curiosity to get past the slight distance Amy had always managed to keep between herself and her neighbours, and she knew they'd all inflict themselves on her if she let even one in. She slid inside the house just as the woman got there, her opening commiserations cut off by the closing door.
Amy sat down wearily, scrubbing her hands over her face as she tried to erase the look on Rory's face when she'd accused him of failing to protect her, and their child. Even though she knew it was unreasonable, Amy did blame him, in part, for the loss of Melody. How could he not have noticed, she thought in her bitterest moments, that she wasn't herself, that he was kissing a substitute? For goodness' sake, they had slept together for several months during that time; admittedly in bunk beds for most of it, but even so – how? How could he not have known? Amy was positive she would have known the difference – she ignored the fact that she didn't notice any differences in the Doctor when he'd had a ganger. That was different, she told herself; Rory was her husband. He'd grown up with her. He should have known. If he had noticed, surely he and the Doctor would have come for her sooner and not given that evil woman the opportunity to take Melody, and with her any hope Amy had of future children. She knew when she'd said it that she'd hit him right where it would pierce him the hardest, and at the time she didn't care. But now … now the memory of his face as it crumpled in shock and heartbreak stabbed at her. She shook her head, striving to get rid of the memories which were starting to flood back.
Amy could pinpoint with bitter accuracy when it was that she'd realised she wouldn't be having any more children. It was a few months after Demon's Run and she'd woken up one morning with a horrible, cramping pain. Blergh, she'd thought, here it comes just when I don't want it. But she'd never bled and the cramps just kept getting worse. Rory, the nurse, was concerned of course and made her go see a doctor. The doctor had been very kind but adamant, after several tests, that there was nothing she could do – Amy's womb had lost its blood supply and was now effectively dead. The cramps were her body's way of trying to get rid of the useless tissue. Before she knew it, Amy was in a clinical hospital surgery having her uterus removed and it was in a state of shock that she found herself in a car next to Rory as they returned home. She'd never thought about kids before, not really. But now that she couldn't have them she felt ... almost relieved. That didn't seem right. In moments when she allowed herself to remember Melody, Amy recalled the gut-wrenching agony when she realised the baby was a ganger. Back then, while she hadn't thought of herself as necessarily maternal, Amy had bonded shockingly fast with the tiny girl – so much so that when she disappeared Amy's screams had been close to hysterical. Now, however, something ugly and heavy disappeared from her heart, and she felt a strange calm as she realised she would never have to deal with a child, never have to hold a baby, never have to raise up a new person. Beside her, however, Rory was babbling. On and on about kids and adoption and how they could find another way and Amy froze in newfound terror at the idea. Her new sense of peace evaporated as she realised what Rory meant – she wasn't escaping at all. He still wanted, and even expected, children in his life. Suddenly resentful that he seemed to think his own wishes were more important than her aversion, ignoring the knowledge that he couldn't know she was averse, Amy stared moodily out of the car window trying not to hear his words.
Rory sat alone in the bedroom he'd lived in as a child, the room he'd been forced to return to when he'd left Amy and the home they'd made together. His father had welcomed him with astonished alacrity, though Rory could tell Brian thought he just needed time, that somehow this would work itself out. Except that Amy had made it obvious that time was never going to fix this – in fact, the more Rory thought about it, the more his grief turned to anger, and the colder his anger became. He wasn't sure he could ever forgive Amy's words to him today. They hung around him, ugly in their truthfulness. Everything she'd said to him was something he had said to himself a million times before, but coming from Amy it all stabbed him in a way his own thoughts never had.
He sighed, his head down, hands scrubbing through his hair distractedly as he tried to work out exactly what had gone wrong. After their last adventure with the Doctor, Amy had seemed cheerful and excited, happy to be with Rory and happily settled into the little suburban paradise they'd carved out for themselves. He'd thought she enjoyed it too. It was, after all, the best of both worlds. They had their own place, a comforting, normal place they returned to between adventuring with the Doctor. It wasn't the life Rory'd dreamed up for them when under the influence of the Dream Lord, but it was pleasant. They got to run away to the stars almost as often as Amy wanted to, while having the peaceful domestic life that Rory had always dreamed of as well. It had seemed to him to be a very nice compromise. But then ... but then, Amy had started with the cramps and Rory had sent her to a doctor and his comfortable life was ripped apart again.
Try as he might, Rory could not find a connection between the cramps, Amy's surgery and the start of her emotional distance from him – he had tried, so hard, to be there for her in the aftermath but she had always been unwilling to talk about it. She seemed to shake it off, returning to her happy-go-lucky self so quickly that it scared the nurse in Rory, who knew she should probably have some reaction to what had happened to her. While he knew the subject of psychiatrists would be a sore point with Amy, he'd asked tentatively, one day, if she wanted to see a counsellor. The stare she turned on him was icy and her refusal was definitive. None of it made sense so he fell back on the explanation she'd eventually given him – she'd grown out of love and wanted to move on. Rory gritted his teeth as agony ripped through him at the thought. He wanted it to not be true, but Amy had always been so hard to pin down that it was something of a wonder that she'd stayed in love with him as long as she had. The things she said today certainly showed just how little she thought of him. You couldn't say some of those things to someone you loved or respected, so Rory was forced to believe it when she said she no longer loved him.
Clear as crystal, Amy could hear Kovarian's voice in her head again. Her unwelcome memories returned her to Demon's Run and she relived the horror she had felt then. Kovarian was explaining, mercilessly, what she was doing to Amy's body.
'First, we're taking your little girl away from you and then we're going to make sure she's the only baby you'll ever have. Your husband, the centurian, isn't going to like that is he, dear? I've been inside your mind; I know how fearful you are of losing him. I know how much having children means to him; how are you going to explain this one, Amy?'
'I'll just adopt; Rory won't mind. He has a heart,' Amy muttered under her breath, 'Not like you, you old bat.'
'You won't ever adopt, Amy. By the time I'm finished with you, the mere idea of children will fill you with terror.'
Amy stared back at her with defiant eyes. 'Never,' she said. 'You will never be able to ruin what Rory and I have, children or no. Rory is the best of men; he'll never abandon me. This will never break him.'
Kovarian gave her a poisonous smile. 'Oh, bless you, dear. You think this is about him? I don't care about him at all.' She looked right into Amy's eyes as she added, 'I'm going to break you; you're the one who will lose the one thing you care about – the love of that ridiculous man. The centurian feeling pain is just an added bonus.' She leaned in to Amy with a cheerful grin, while someone else strapped her body down to the table. Amy screamed.
When Rory woke the next morning he thought briefly about storming back to the house and confronting Amy, but the brief burst of passion leeched out of him when he remembered one of the last conversations they'd had.
'I don't understand, Amy, why you won't talk about adoption – we can't have our own kids, but that doesn't mean we can't bring some up as our own.'
A shudder rippled down Amy's spine as she faced away from him, but her voice was steely when she said, 'I don't want to, okay Rory. I lost my chance with Melody; I can't face that with another child. I'd always wonder, you know, what she would have been like if we'd been able to bring her up ...' her voice trailed off and Rory winced.
'But she was fine. I mean ... River and, well, yeah okay she was a bit mental when she regenerated and that whole mind control kill-the-Doctor thing, but she got over that. Hurrah.' Rory could feel himself flailing awkwardly as Amy turned to him. The look in her eyes was one of pure hatred and he stepped away from her.
'She wasn't fine; she was screwed in the head, just like her mother. And any other child I had to do with would be screwed in the head too. No, Rory; no adoption. No children. Never.'
There was finality in her tone, and even as he opened his mouth to argue again Rory knew it wasn't any use. There would never be any more children in his life, and his wife – his vibrant, alive, wonderful wife – was blaming herself and becoming something diminished. His face fell and he couldn't quite hide his raw sorrow. His pain was more for how Amy saw herself – broken again, missing something inside, 'screwed in the head' – than for the loss of future children, though obviously that was something he needed to come to terms with. He tried to reach for her, to comfort her, tried to tell her children didn't matter, but she flinched away from his touch and left the room without looking at him. Amy had already been distant with Rory, but following that conversation she had become cold. Cold in a way she never had been before, not even when she hadn't been sure, truly sure, that marriage and settling down was what she wanted to do. Even then, she had never shut Rory down in quite this way.
Remembering that day, Rory winced again. Amy had made it clear then, and in the few scattered discussions they'd had over the next few days, that she didn't want him anymore. 'Self-righteous bastard,' she'd called him. Self-righteous because he told her he didn't care about having more kids. Self-righteous because he loved her and wanted her, just her, with no strings. Well, if loving her no matter what was self-righteous then what was the point of even trying to talk to her? She was taking the best of him and twisting it into something she could use as a weapon against him. It was painfully obvious to Rory that whatever had been between them, Amy now didn't feel any of it.
Amy threw herself into her work. There was nothing else left for her now that she had let Rory go. She reminded herself this was the right thing to do. Rory was too damn noble to ever leave her just because she couldn't give him what he so desperately wanted, but she'd seen that deep sadness in his eyes when she'd insisted on no children, ever. He couldn't hide the pain he felt when he realised she was serious and Amy knew it was only a matter of time before he started resenting her and the kid-free life she now had to live. He had tried to close the gap, to pretend he didn't care about children, but Amy was overwhelmed by the memory of that haunted look and terrified that she would back down so she froze him out. Backing out was impossible – one day, she knew, Rory would turn on her. He would throw his sacrifice in her face, she knew. How could he not? Having kids had been his reason for living since before she knew him. Rory had been open about wanting to be a dad from the minute they met when she was eight and crying over something Aunt Sharon had done. In many ways since then he'd played the fatherly protective figure to her lost child, and she knew he would be a brilliant dad. But not with her, never with her. One day he would realise what loving her would mean; what a lifetime of no children would mean, and he would leave her – physically or emotionally – and she would break. Better by far, she reasoned, to make the break herself, on her own terms.
Besides, Amy knew there was something seriously wrong with her. Wrong beyond the useless uterus which had been removed. Wrong beyond any differences that could be attributed to her travels with the Doctor, and she was terrified that she would pass that wrongness onto her children. River. Brilliant, brave, gorgeous River, her daughter, was so screwed up by having Amy for her mother that she was currently serving an extended term in prison for killing the Doctor. She had regenerated in front of Amy's eyes as a parody of herself, and tried to kill the Doctor on the spot – and how could that not be Amy's fault for not being there for her?
Much as Amy had loved Mels, her friend, she was broken in some very dark ways too. Whether that would have been different had Amy been able to bring up Melody she would never know. What she did know was that while she was gallivanting around the universe with the Doctor and her husband, her baby had been starving on the streets of New York and bringing herself up. Amy shuddered when she remembered some of Melody's last words, 'last time I did this I ended up a toddler in the middle of New York' – how horrific that must have been, and her parents had just let it happen. That she couldn't have done anything about it meant nothing to Amy. She should have tried. She had been conditioned to forget her child, to shrug off her loss as if it was perfectly normal to find out you're pregnant, give birth and lose your child all within a mere few weeks.
Amy knew, intellectually, that her memory loss was not her own fault, (she suspected that whatever was used to dampen her fear and worry for her daughter had something to do with why they had been in America in 1969) and yet she still felt sunk in guilt that her child died and regenerated in New York, all alone and so very young – and even because she had been locked up in an orphanage before that even happened; healthy and looked after maybe, but never cared for, never knowing what it was like to feel a mother's love. Worse, she had been conditioned herself, designed to lock onto the Doctor and hunt him to death. Amy's baby had never had a chance at a real childhood, all because no-one had been bothered to save her. How … how could her mother have just laughed that off? What sort of person just went off playing with the universe when her own daughter was missing?
Even if she had known perfectly well that Melody became River and was perfectly fine – marvellous even – Amy felt like she should have been more worried somehow. That she wasn't ate at her; that Rory wasn't, when he'd never been through everything at Demon's Run, infuriated her. Just as he should have noticed that Amy had been replaced, Rory should have been more forceful in searching for their baby. That he wasn't, that he'd accepted the Doctor's decision to let her make her own way to become the River he knew and loved, caused Amy her worst resentment towards him. She at least had a reason to have ignored the loss of her child, as inadequate as she found it. He didn't – just his passivity, his willingness to let others take charge and make the decisions. She'd once loved that about him; now she hated it.
Sitting across from Amy with her lawyer dictating terms in the divorce was possibly the hardest thing Rory had ever done. Harder, by far, than being killed. Harder than facing a new monster every time the stepped onto the TARDIS. He felt angry and bitter. So much angrier than he had when they'd last been in the same space. Whatever pain he was feeling had coalesced into this vicious rage and he almost didn't want to see her again. But masked in the anger was the memory of his old love. As passionately as Rory now hated Amy, he still loved her. And he did hate her for the insinuations she'd made, for shutting him out of the biggest decision of their life, for deciding for him that they would divorce. No, he realised as he looked across the table at her, he didn't hate her. He hated the things she'd done and the things she'd said, but he loved her. If she had, by any flicker of an eyelash, shown that she regretted kicking him out he would have thrown the divorce papers out with the trash, lawyer or no lawyer, disillusioned hate or no disillusioned hate and started trying to heal whatever it was that had torn them apart. But she didn't. She stared him down, her look challenging and distant. Still so distant. So Rory carefully hid his love behind his cold anger and stared defiantly right back at her.
The problem, as Amy had acknowledged to herself after Rory left that first day and which had been heightened by the encounter with their lawyers, was that she still loved him. Despite all those things that made her so angry and resentful, the mere memory of Rory's smile could melt her heart. Even his stubborn, set jaw in the meeting was endearing. It reminded Amy of all the times he'd been stubbornly upset with something she and the Doctor were doing. In fact, the more days that passed since he had left, the more she realised what she had given up when she threw him out. There were no loving arms to fold herself into when she felt hurt. There was no-one she could look at and know his thoughts, no-one she could communicate with just by looking at him. She had forgotten, perhaps from long association, just how much Rory was there as her support, as the one who backed her up. She missed the way he told her how mental he thought her projects were, but followed her through them anyway. She missed the way his arms folded around her, how wrapped up in warmth she felt when his hands cradled her head and tangled in her hair. There was no getting away from it. She missed him, and she regretted the decision she had made.
They met again to sign the last of the divorce papers, and while she strutted into the room with bravado, the sight of him rattled her. She covered it as well as she could, speaking to him in dismissive tones all while trying to gauge how he was feeling. The man with the lawyer had been almost the way she remembered him. Hurt, maybe; angry, definitely, but still recognisably the Rory she had grown up with. This man, however, wasn't her Rory. Something had hardened since that last meeting and this man was cold; he radiated contempt for her. 'I thought you were just pouting at a camera,' he'd spat as he left and she gasped, wounded. It was too different from the loving support he'd given when she first started modelling and she half reached out to him as he exited, but he refused to look at her. White faced, Amy allowed her makeup artist to lead her to the chair to be retouched. The half-articulated thought she'd had that she could call it off was erased in the wake of his cold anger. This man, this not-Rory, didn't love her anymore; that much was obvious. You couldn't look at someone the way he'd looked at her if you still had any good feelings towards them. Amy steeled herself. If he was going to be like that then she needed to nurture that resentment again – she couldn't risk letting him see that she loved him still. The pain of his indifference was slicing at her, but she could ensure he never knew the effect he was having on her. Lost in her thoughts, Amy almost didn't notice as the woman behind her began to transform.
