Amy's Choice.
It was just one night, a day to let her hair down, a day to do whatever she wanted. She licks her red red lips and tosses her red red hair. Red nails tap on the bar, and her hips move in time to the sweaty music. He's looking for her-she'd run out on him the other day in the shop, horrified and ashamed of looking at him.
He'd seen her with someone else.
It had been a mess of red hair and exhaled sighs, a kiss -
but the look on his face -
She swallows.
It's not that I don't love him, she tells herself, it's just he's so Leadworth. I want adventure and excitement.
And sex that lasts longer than the time it makes to cook microwavable rice.
Flushing now, she turns to the bar tender and orders herself some indistinguishable drink - something quite like vodka but somewhere between, she doesn't know - or care. The first sip is heady and exotic - the second she's out in the throng of the bodies, and then she doesn't know.
She's sitting on the bed, with her arms folded across her chest. Her nose is red and her eyes are puffy - her lips are chapped and dull, far from red and beautiful. He's looking at her, between disappointment, anger and fear.
"What -"
"I don't know," she says automatically. "I don't know what to do."
He contemplates sitting down on the bed - their bed - but decides against it, the feeling of nausea (which was becoming increasingly familiar to him, now) rising up in his chest. Instead, he continues to stand awkwardly by the door. He feels like crying, but half of him just wants to get pissed to hell and forget about it.
But he's never been that man.
He loves her, this woman before him. He'd die for her, he'd do anything. However, he'd never really thought she'd do this.
"Was it him?" he asks feebly, fingering his shirt (the one she bought him last year). "That guy who … who - " he can't get the words out right - kissed you. The man, who isn't me, who kissed you, who you kissed back, who - even for just one second - you loved in some way you don't love me.
In some way you'll never love me.
"No," she says finally, sniffing. She doesn't want him to see her crying. "It was just some guy."
"Some guy," he says, incredulous, his pent-up anger rising, "who fucked you and hasn't called you back. Some guy who - who - "
He breaks.
"You're - married - to - me," he whispers, clutching at his shirt, feeling claustrophobic, angry, afraid, nauseous, jealous. "You're married to me," he repeats, slamming his fist against the door, making her jump. He rushes towards the wardrobe and tears out his t-shirts and jumpers and trousers, she watches him, red lips open in shock, silent tears streaming. He makes a mad attempt at stuffing them into a bag and lets out a frustrated scream.
"Please," she says, "don't leave me."
He turns and stares, hands grasping a polo neck.
She whimpers and buries her head in her hands. He hears her sob and his anger dissipates. It's his duty to make her happy. That's all he wants. "I love you," she sobs, "I love you so much I - I made a mistake, I - I -"
He gives himself to her, succumbs. He can't imagine life without her anyway.
The bump starts to show soon enough and he feels sick looking at her.
It seems to be taunting him. I'm not yours, you're not my dad, I'm not yours, I'm his -
But he manages to restrain himself and ignore it.
Their marriage is strained. She's quiet and shy around him, tentative and awkward, wondering when he was going to leave her - if he ever would - and what she would do with a baby and an empty house.
She approaches him whilst he's reading Phillip Pullman and sits next to him on the sofa. She tugs gently at his hand and rests it on her thigh, then presses her lips to his.
He doesn't pull away, just tenses. She continues to kiss him, gently, softly. "Please," she begs. He kisses her back. "Please."
They make love and she smiles at him. "It's yours. It'll always be yours."
He tries to believe that.
He knows she still thinks about the Doctor occasionally. He'll find her whimsical and distant, thinking of distant stars and exotic planets and she'll snap out of it when he calls her name - but she still thinks.
She had been in love with the Doctor. It was unspoken, unconfirmed - but true. It hurt him to think of it, the looks the touches - how distant she had been with the man she was meant to be in love with, how at ease she had been with the man she wasn't.
Finding her - the thing inside her was four months now - in the garden, shovelling plants into the soil with the garden kit he bought her not last week, he smiles. This is his wife. This is the woman he loves.
But she has that look in her eye.
The look that says: you made me leave him, the man I loved, the man I think about all the time when you don't notice, the man who I wish spent his life with me instead of you -
so he retreats slowly, abashed and glowing red. She has this whole other life in her head, this life she still wants to live. And he stole it from her.
Now she lives in sleepy Leadworth with an unborn bastard and a pathetic husband. He sniffs, and drinks a beer.
He still loves her.
He starts to grow the ponytail and she lets him. She owes him at least that.
They flip through baby books together. He's shy around it at first, awkward - even, but she smiles her smile and he sits next to her, cooing over 'Emma's and 'Stanley's - they weren't sure if it was a boy or a girl yet. She's colour-coordinating colours for the nursery. Finally she decides on yellow, a "neutral colour" as she puts it, "no boy or girl affiliation." He pokes her and they kiss and it's happy, and he loves her, and she's eighty-percent-sure she loves him back, but it does and it's happy, and happy is all she ever wanted. All they ever wanted.
She thinks about praying to Santa again, she's been having withdrawal pains. She doesn't let him come near her anymore, finds herself sickened to look at her body in the mirror. She'd cried when her figure was totally lost, to be replaced with her bastard baby, her stupid, stupid mistake. She feigns happiness when she sees him with that look in his eye, knowing that baby isn't his, would never be his. But she still thinks she loves him and deludes herself into happiness.
It gets better, after a while. They'll keep the baby and call it David or Emilia, and she smiles. It gets better.
The cravings are ridiculous. Hurriedly, she reaches for the icing sugar, and, placing a wet finger into the white packet, licks off the powder with a pleasant sigh. She continues devouring the powder-sugar happily, watching Countryfile with her legs in his lap, her bump big and heavy, but beautiful.
It kicks occasionally and she gasps and whoops when it does. She rests her icing sugar packet on her stomach and rubs it experimentally, feeling rewarded when a kick responds. She loves it, her child, her beautiful baby, her baby, oh.
She wants a muffin.
Fuck, she needs muffins.
"Buy me flour?"
The next morning she gets up and up and ready for the day. Her stupid muffin craving had gone on relentless to the icing sugar - and her dutiful husband had popped off in the morning to buy butter, milk, eggs and flour - the only food in the house was microwaveable rice and ketchup.
She spends an hour making cupcakes - according to Nigella Lawson, and finds herself making double the amount of icing. Shrugging, she pours a few drops of yellow food colouring into the thick white mess and licks it with her finger and grins.
Tired, with the cakes iced and a bowl of icing resting on her baby bump, she hums along to a tuneless song and then -
oh.
A pain, so excruciating and blinding and -
"Rory!" she screams, clawing at the kitchen tops. It's coming, oh God, it's coming and -
The pain dissipates slowly, tentatively and she chokes back something like surprise but remorse as well. She can't wait to see her beautiful baby girl or boy. Even more tired now, she succumbs to the chair and balances her yellow icing on her bump, hearing him pattering through the front door.
"False alarm," she tells him, swallowing down icing. He stares, incredulous and she defends herself, pouting.
"What?"
"I don't know what it feels like, I've never had a baby before."
She feeds him icing and he forgives her and rolls his eyes.
And then it happens.
He's watching the television, distracted. But her heart leaps and sputters and she jumps to her feet, pushing the bowl aside.
"No …"
But the sound is unmistakeable, he's here he's here and her heart thumps, hot and wet and loud.
"I know," he agrees without thinking, "leaf blowers. Use a bloody rake!"
His eyes rest on the television, and she feels like hitting him. "No, it's -"
She doesn't need to finish the sentence, he can hear it too now and he looks at her, feeling cold at the pure excitement and happiness in her eyes, a look she'd never had talking about him.
"I knew," she whispers, "I just knew."
His mouth drops open and he rushes out ahead of her, determined to see him first. Maybe he's older, uglier, and stupid and still wears bow ties, maybe she won't love him anymore.
She hurries out after him, hobbling along, determined to see him. Then she pauses. What will he think of her? Pregnant with someone else's baby. She swallows back her doubts too fast and hobbles out once more, catching snippets of his voice.
I love you. I missed you. Oh god, Doctor.
Her life is fake.
The words stop in her throat, impede shrivel up and die. Her baby isn't real. She looks down at her flat stomach. Her baby is gone. Her real, kicking baby, David - Emilia.
"No."
That can't be right.
How can that be right? How can five years of memories not be true - she can still remember the feeling, the weight of the baby, the happiness of it kicking, the joy -
No, that can't be right.
Rory's gone and her heart is thumping uncomfortably. She saw him crumble before her eyes, and her lashes are wet and air catches in her throat -
she can't breathe.
The Doctor is there and she can feel him behind her and she wants to hold him but she wants Rory and and and -
Look after our baby. Look after our baby. Look after our baby.
Her eyes swim with tears and she shakes her head, "No no no no no" she doesn't believe this isn't real, this - isn't - real.
This is the dream. This is the dream.
Her thoughts swim and her mind blanks and her head hurts and Rory Rory Rory is who she needs, who she loves.
Rory who she betrayed, and Rory who she thought she was bored of but she always desperately clung to because he knew her and Rory, the real father to their unborn child and -
She looks up at the Doctor.
"Then what," she breathes, "is the point of you?"
Her stomach feels empty. She feels cold. Life has been leeched out of her, stolen. Her child is gone.
Or never was. She can't tell the difference and she doesn't care.
She can still picture his face, so crumpled, so destroyed. Her Doctor, broken by a sentence.
He finds her in her room and knocks on the door.
She feels light-headed and sick.
"Rory's asleep in the other bedroom, I told him you didn't feel well -"
"I could have told him that myself."
She feels disconcerted. Part of her wants him to hold her - the part who thought it hadn't seen him for five freaking years - and the other just wants to him to leave. She doesn't need any more complications.
He stands awkwardly at the door.
"Are you sure you're okay?"
"Never said I was."
She turns her head to look at him and he walks towards her. Swallowing her pride she lets him put his arms around her, one hand protective in the small of her back, the other around her shoulders, stroking her hair. "I didn't mean what I said," she says, slowly.
"It's you. It's always been you."
He doesn't reply.
"I love him, but I don't - I'm not -"
He shushes her and she falls silent, presses her face into his shoulder.
When he kisses her, her automatic instinct is to twist her fingers in his hair and press herself closer, but turns his face away as she does. She flushes and makes to move back, but he pulls her closer. Keeping eye-contact, he kisses her, his lips just touching hers. Her hands stay by her side until his fingers find hers and they interlock. He continues to kiss her gently, and brushes away her silent, accidental tears. "None of it was real," she says in a small voice. "My baby."
"No," he says, "it wasn't."
"And you, all I wanted was to see you for five years and I just, I can't, I -"
He kisses her again, his slow, gentle, calming kiss and she relaxes. "Go to sleep, Amy."
But the words frighten her and he immediately realises his mistake. "Stay," she says quietly as he makes to leave, fumbling with his bow-tie and heady thoughts of her lips and her hands and her -
"You have Rory."
"But you have nobody."
He watches her cautiously, as she walks up to him and takes his hands away from his bow-tie, pushes off his jacket. His eyes never leave hers as she, trembling, takes off his braces and starts to unbutton his shirt - his fingers reach up and help her as she shakes, silent, still crying, still nervous, still awkward - so far from confident, brave Amy Pond -
She manages to take his shirt off and he's still watching her, not moving, chest heaving, hearts beating - and she bites her red red lips and he kisses her forehead. "You don't want this."
"I do," she counters quietly, "I need this."
She takes off her own shirt and his eyes look away as she reveals her body to him and he sighs softly. He continues to look away as she fumbles with her trousers but then he relents and does it for her. Then she's standing there in her underwear and he's still wearing his trousers and she's still crying and he knows this is ridiculous. Walking past him, she reaches for her nightie, which is resting on her bed, and takes off her underwear, aware of his eyes burning into her back. Slipping on the white cotton, he coughs uncomfortably and she turns to look at him.
She's breathing heavily.
Then he puts his hand on her forehead and she gasps.
She's sitting waiting for him on her suitcase, wrapped up warmly, tightly. She's so sure he'll come back, so sure he'll return. This strange, mad, magical man: the Raggedy Doctor -
"What are you doing out here!" Her aunt is back and raving and mad, telling her off about the ice-cream and the beans and the yoghurt on the floor and -
First psychiatrist. She's young and fresh and weird, called Angie or Angela or something like that. Thinks the Doctor is just a figment of her imagination, someone to talk to her, an imaginary friend that will pass her by as she gets older. She bites her. Hard -
Rory is staring at her bemused as she recounts the Doctor to him, but Geoff seems onboard, imitating her blue box noise and running around pretending to be the Doctor. He's better at it than Rory but Rory decides that he should be him anyway, and Geoff can make the sound effects -
Second psychiatrist. She's ginger ("Like you, love") and old and wears glasses with thick rims and cheap lipstick. She tells her that this 'Doctor-man' isn't real, a childhood longing for someone to talk to - a father figure, of sorts - and then her teeth are enclosed around her wrist and ginger woman is screaming and pushing her out -
She keeps up the game with Rory and Geoff, exploring the prison. She makes most of this part up but doesn't tell them, expands on her adventure with the Raggedy Doctor with Prisoner Zero. Geoff plays the giant eye and Rory attempts the Doctor (Geoff is still better, but she doesn't have the heart to tell him) -
Third psychiatrist. She's thirteen now. This one is a man, who keeps a stubbly chin and smells of smoke but keeps his fingernails weirdly clean. His accent is pronounced and enunciated in a way that makes her uncomfortable, patronized. She goes to three sessions with him. He's convinced she's longing for a father figure too, but she argues she's never needed a dad, doesn't need one, doesn't want one. She bites him too -
First kiss. It's with Geoff and it's awkward and weird afterwards. He watches idealized porn and it freaks her out, so she declines his offer of going to the pub to watch him smoke after school. She's fifteen -
She tells Rory and he's heartbroken. Figured as much. Ignoring him, focuses on exams. She's taking French, Art, History and Music. Romantic subjects, as she calls them. Her aunt's gone half-mad, doesn't even notice when Amy climbs out of her window to see her new boyfriend Tyler -
Breaks up with Tyler after he fucks her and she gets all Bs for her subjects. She grits her teeth and smiles but hates it. She wanted to be a teacher, teach French or Science - she's pretty good at science … -
She still thinks about the Doctor. She's still waiting for him, still wondering -
Fourth and final psychiatrist. She's pushed into the doors, seventeen and glaring at the relatively handsome guy asking her why she keeps up this façade. She doesn't answer, and leaves -
Then he comes back. And she hits him with a cricket bat and then he leaves her again and then -
Rory. He's still here, he's always been her. First kiss on a park bench. Sex is awkward, but gets better. She adores him, he's cute and awkward. But she's still waiting -
Kissogram. The outfits are ridiculous, at first it's awkward and embarrassing, but she needs the money. She hates it -
Rory proposes. She has to say yes -
Wedding preparations -
Then one night, she hears the splutter of the engines, the noise that drones and jars her hearing -
He's back.
He takes her to all these amazing places. Beaches in far galaxies, spaceships hovering the moon, the past the future the anywhere and anything and she loves it -
Then the angels and she feels so dark ad cold and afraid and she just needs someone and she kisses him and he pushes her away. She's just a child to him. So stupid, so so stupid. But she loves him -
She opens her eyes and his are closed and then a flash of something - a blonde girl, laughing, smiling, her lips, oh her lips - then he gasps, and pushes and then -
He's called Mike Jenners, a tall guy. Cocky and good-looking, but always charming around the women - especially when they're hammered. And it's just a kiss and she's laughing into his mouth but then the door is opening and creaking and Rory -
The club. She's downing that drink and there's this guy near to her who's whispering in her ear and making her feel good, like a way Rory never has and she lets him and she knows it wrong but she lets him and that's the worst part and then -
Sitting on the toilet seat and her face is in her hands. Three minutes is too long, three minutes three minutes three minutes … Finally she spares a look and her heart crumbles -
Her face collapses as she notices the bump the first time, her hands hovering over the miniscule thing. Then, without warning, a hand flies out and hits it. Hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to do any damage. She wants to hurt it, hurt someone, hurt something - but not her baby …
She keeps thinking about him. The stupid man in tweed with too long legs and too long hair and that massive chin. His gentle touches and lips in her hair, on her forehead, hand in hers -
Rory keeps giving her a look that says, "I hate what you've done to me" and she resents herself. Hates the baby inside of her, hates it, hates it, hates it -
But then they're over it and he's forgiven her somewhat more than before and she thinks its okay that they'll be happy and good now, that everything will be fine -
He releases her and she wriggles away from him, slightly horrified and confused but embarrassed he saw all of it, her feelings her thoughts her past -
But it wasn't real. Surely that picturesque town should have disappeared with the Dream Lord and her baby, her baby …
And then she runs
and runs
and runs
down the long, metallic corridors, her blood pumping and chest heaving and she doesn't want him to see her like this - no, not ever, not ever like this.
She's so exposed.
He's following her and she can hear him behind her, his footsteps undeterred and unfailing. She pushes open a random door and finds herself in the library. She can hide herself between piles of books and manuscripts. She hears him step into the library, the carpet twitches and groans.
She thinks flittingly of Rory, asleep, naïve, unknowing -
This is her choice.
Not between the lives, no. Not her baby and her muffins and versus her Tardis and her excitement. Between the men, her boys, Amy's boys -
Amy's choice.
She wonders how it looked to the Doctor; blinded with grief and loss and pain - how it seemed. He knew all along, it had been him, the Dream Lord. He knew what she was feeling, this confusion this anger this jealousy. Stuck halfway between Home and Danger - Rory and the Doctor.
Rory and their baby, the Doctor and …
She loses her train of thought. The Doctor. What could he give her? She bites her lip, hard. His affection, his adoration, his loneliness, his grace, his smile, his charm, his kiss. His tweed, his bow-tie, his smell, his touch, his embrace. His kisses on her forehead, his hand in hers, his collar against her cheek -
"Amy."
He finds her at last, and her eyes are closed, hands gripping the bookcase. It was so much more than just Rory and the Doctor. It was more than that. It was, it was …
He's watching her carefully, his eyes betraying his feelings - they were aghast, dark and guilty.
She was tearing them apart.
The tension the awkwardness - its all her fault. She could just take herself out of the equation; erase her from taking his life apart. She could leave.
She could leave here, with Rory and leave him behind.
But she's never been that person.
She spent all that time waiting for him. All that time.
"Please don't leave me," she says, the déjà vu making her feel ill.
"I could say the same thing."
She falls to the floor, sliding down along the bookcase. He sits next to her, and she rests her head on his shoulder. His hand moves across her forehead, and she falls asleep whilst he watches her dreams.
I wrote this too long ago, about a week after Amy's Choice actually aired. So, it's been growing dusty in my Documents and I thought I'd put it out … Comments are appreciated, I know it doesn't entirely make sense, BUT it was fun to write. I heart this triangle.