Amy clears her throat. "All right, I'm going to bed, then."
The Doctor peers up at her from his seat on the floor. "What, just going to leave me here to fix this?" He gestured at an incomprehensible tangle of wires. "Your fault, this mess you made, I'm not the one who can't keep her balance." He's frowning, but he's not really mad, not anymore. Hasn't been mad at her for weeks, for whatever reason.
"Well, I'm not the one who leaves all these bloomin' wires laying out where anyone can trip over them, now am I?" She makes a triumphant face at him and flounces away.
Her bedroom has felt odd ever since they'd fought those lizard people. There's a great bloody bunkbed in the room, which is strange enough on its own, and for the first few days there had been an extra sink in her bathroom. But the TARDIS did that, sometimes, added or took away things because the Doctor thought it was funny, so Amy eventually just…got used to it. Slept on the top bunk, only used one of the two sinks, and just chalked the other weird things up to the Doctor being an alien.
The dreams were something else, though. Sometimes she'd dream stupid things from their adventures, just little things like running in Venice, chasing a vampire. But instead of just her and the Doctor, sometimes there was something else. Hidden in the corner of her eye, like that thing from her house, but without the same sense of fear. Instead of wanting not to look at it, in the dreams Amy kept turning sharply, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever it was. It felt vital, in the dreams, that she see it, whatever it was, that she find it.
Sometimes she dreamed about being a kid; she'd watch little Amelia Pond playing the Raggedy Doctor all by herself. She'd never had friends, really, not until puberty hit and she suddenly became foxy Amy Pond instead of strange little Amelia. The younger her would turn to someone in the dream and call a name, and Amy would strain to hear it, because something made her think that the name was very important. But the dream was filled with this dull chant she could just barely hear anything over — sometimes she thought the chant said Remember, sometimes it said I love you, sometimes it said other things she couldn't quite catch. And so she never heard whatever name Amelia Pond was saying, and always woke up with tears on her face she wasn't sure of the reason for.
And really, besides all of that, she should have made a move on the Doctor by now. She remembered kissing him once, his sort of adorable panicky flailing when she'd tried to snog him again. But after that, she'd never made another gesture that way. And she wasn't sure why, really; she was Amy Pond, after all. If anyone ever loved a good snog it was her, there wasn't anyreason for her to not go after the Doctor. But she just…never tried. And never really thought about why, not very hard anyway, because it felt almost as though she'd be breaking a rule, or like she'd be doing something wrong. And most rules she didn't care about at all, but this one felt different. Almost like she'd be cheating on someone. But that was nonsense, of course, she'd thrown off Jeff years ago, right before the Doctor'd come back that first time.
There it was again, the nagging feeling that something had sort of slipped her mind. Or that there was something she was supposed to remember and had just barely forgotten. She tossed and turned a bit in her bunk bed, trying to think through all the things she'd told herself to remember:remember the Daleks' weak spot is the eyestalk, remember that the lizard people were here first, remember that the third door on the left corridor heading to the library is a trick door and it drops you in the swimming pool— one ruined jacket was all it had taken to etch that rule in her head.
Remember that the Doctor loves sweets but not jelly babies, remember that he sometimes chases down older chubby redheaded women and apologizes when they're not whoever he thought they were, remember that the brown jacket has a tear in the front left pocket so don't put anything in it, remember that the TARDIS really, really hates muddy shoes and will sometimes "accidentally" misplace them if you don't clean them right away.
Remember, remember…there is something else, she knows it, she can feel it, right in the corner of her mind and her eye and her heart. Someone, someone little Amelia Pond calls out to in a dream, someone who lurks in her peripheral vision in Venice, someone who'd be upset if she snogged the Doctor now. There's something Amy Pond is forgetting, and it burns in her dreams every night.
