A/N: Since watching Girl Who Waited I've felt that Amy and Rory have a romance that is ripe for fiction, and is in fact so ripe that it deserves being explored and written out. So here begins my attempt to do this beautiful pair some justice, chronicling their love from the day they met to even past River's Wedding. Yes, it will be original, and at the same time I will keep it very canon whenever there are details from the show that can be used. So here's to the Boy and Girl Who Waited, and I hope you enjoy my take on the Glorious Ponds!)

Prologue: (A.D. 102 - Stonehenge)

"Will she be safer if I stay?" Rory was walking over to the Doctor now, his voice rising with his agitation. His face was right in front of the Time Lord's, wide-eyed and serious. "Look me in the eye and tell me she wouldn't be safer."

The Doctor sighed as he shook his head, wanting to stop Rory from being…so human. For crying out loud, sometimes they were just so wonderful and yet impossibly difficult at the same time to deal with. "Rory…"

"ANSWER ME!" Rory shouted, strangely daunting in his Roman garb. There was an intense desperation in his eyes; no doubt left over still from the guilt of what he had done.

The Doctor closed his eyes."Yes. Obviously."

"Then how could I leave her?" Rory turned back to gaze at the box that held Amy, his Amy, barely alive. "This box needs a guard. I killed the last one. And she'll be all alone."

He'd made up his mind. He wasn't going to leave with the Doctor; he wasn't going to take a shortcut and jump to the future while Amy sat alone in a prison for centuries on end. It was all his fault, after all. There was just no way.

The Doctor was sighing and shaking his head again; no doubt at what he viewed as a terribly impossible plan. As he turned up the Time Manipulator, he began talking fast once more, trying to squeeze in as much information as he possibly could in a short amount of time. "Listen to me. This is the last piece of advice you're going to get in a very long time. You can't heal or repair yourself. Any damage is permanent…I have no idea how long you'll last."

Rory put on his helmet as he tried to listen, but as always, some of the Doctor's rambles got lost on him. And all too soon, the Doctor was gone with a strange sizzle and a flash of blue, bowtie and tweed jacket all gone. As Rory turned to look around the ashen tomb he was standing in, realization of what he had just chosen to do hit him full force. The blank and grey faces of all the petrified aliens around him gazed back at him coldly; the dusty cobwebs dangled above his head without any sign of life. Even the head of the Cyberman he had killed seemed to peer at him with hollow eyes, and feeling uncomfortable, he kicked it over to the side. Now he was standing in the middle of nothing but a black, dim, silent world, and he would be waiting forever with just this cold metal box. A tiny shiver began to creep up his spine.

But no, he wasn't alone, that was right – because right behind these dark and impenetrable walls sat Amy. Amy Pond, with her beautiful locks of fiery red hair, her smile and her zealous energy, and she was worth protecting. Yes, she was worth doing anything for. He would never forget that.

"Plus, it's my fault you're here in the first place, isn't it?" Rory said with a half-hearted chuckle to the chilly emptiness. He drew his sword and sat down, feeling the icy cold from the Pandorica immediately seep through his cloak. "I can't forgive myself for shooting you, and I don't expect you to, either. So now I'm going to do anything I can to make it up to you. I will protect you. I'll always protect you. I promise."

(A.D. 1995 - England)

Rory Williams never forgot the first day he saw Amelia Pond.

It was a warm summers day, one of those comfortable afternoons when it's neither too hot nor too cold. Leadsworth was peaceful and mundane as always, and Rory was outside kicking a ball aimlessly. His shirt was dirty on one side with cherry juice from a melted pop, and he was trying to figure out what to do about it when his mother had driven up to the house and gotten out, carrying a bag of groceries. Rory immediately ran to the other side of the car in a feeble attempt to hide his shirt, but his mother barely noticed. Instead, her attention was focused elsewhere. "Oh look," she remarked, slamming the car door shut, "it looks like the new neighbors have arrived." She stood on the driveway for a few minutes, squinting against the sun as she surveyed their house, her bag held close against her side. After a couple minutes where she had no doubt thoroughly evaluated the new neighbors, she finally turned around and said, "Well, they seem nice enough. And there even seems to be a girl about your age. Isn't that nice?"

Rory peeped around from the other side of the car nervously. He was always shy with people, and new people would just downright render him speechless. He glanced at the house down on the corner of the street, bustling with activity as the family and their movers carried huge boxes of furniture and objects all over the place. They didn't seem too exciting or crazy, but they were also all old; he didn't see any little girl at all. Rory returned to kicking his ball. "Yeah, it's nice, Mum," he mumbled.

Mrs. Williams smiled. "Why don't we go over there later, give them a nice proper welcoming treat? I've just bought this cake, I think it would make a perfect gift. And maybe you could make a new friend. That'd be nice, yes?" She beamed indulgently at him, and after holding the cake up for him to see, drifted away into the house.

Rory slunk around the car again, moving the ball slowly along between his legs with tiny kicks. A new friend would be nice, sure, but that was assuming if anyone would ever want to be his friend. And girls especially, he knew, usually did not want to be his friend. He highly doubted this girl would be anything new.

He squatted down to sit on his ball, plucking away sullenly at a blade of grass. He couldn't even see any girl at all; for all he knew she was strange and even more reclusive than he was. But then he saw her, just for a short blinding moment. There was a flash of a red sweater, and even redder hair, as a little girl his height went running out of the garden excitedly and into the front door. Her face was nothing but energy and happiness, and even from where he was sitting he could hear her happy giggling drift down the street. "Mummy, mummy!" she was shouting, "have you seen the garden yet?"

Rory nearly rolled off of his ball. Even before the front door had swallowed her up, he knew he had felt something… weird. This girl seemed different from all the other ones, though exactly how… he wasn't quite sure. But he knew for certain that in the single instant he had seen her, he had noticed nothing else, as if all of time and space had ceased to exist.

Little did he know how often she would eventually be making him feel that way. It was going to be a feeling that would never leave him, nor one that he could ever get enough of. And even though she had now disappeared, and was doubtlessly jumping around with joy on one of the new beds, the burning flash of her orange hair as it flew behind her was still burning like a bright afterimage in his mind.

(A/N: So this is just the beginning! :)

This story may eventually grow to M - I thought I would just give fair warning early on. Of course, if any of you feel that it shouldn't be made M, please leave comments and let me know, and if enough people feel that way, I will not go there. Possibly. Likewise, if you WANT M (oh tsk tsk :P) let me know too, and I will also take your opinions accordingly. But most importantly, R&R! It's the best motivation for any author. ;) )