Title: KBO: Keep Buggering On
Summary: Amy doesn't want to talk about why she never saw the Daleks. The Doctor, however, won't let it go...
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or anything related to the show.
Rating: K+
A/N: Hints of Amy/Eleven. The Doctor's time line is a little hard to pin down,
so I've used a little creative license and put Amy's age as Eighteen during the events of 'Stolen Earth'.
"Why don't you remember the Daleks?" The Doctor stared intently at Amy as she sat in one of the eighteenth century chairs by the library. Her attention was buried in a first edition of Tolstoy's War and Peace. He'd asked her the question a million times since leaving war torn London. Eventually she had grown tired of his probing and had disappeared. It took over an hour for him to find her, it seemed the TARDIS was helping her to hide.
The fiery redhead sighed as she carefully placed the book back down and turned to stare him in the eye. "Four years ago in my time, right? I was seventeen. I didn't notice the earth move or Daleks or any of that stuff. You want to know why?" She stood up, practically nose to nose with him as she stared him down. Amelia Pond stared defiantly at a Time Lord as easily as she stared at a Dalek.
"Yes." He felt something wrenching deep inside his gut. He was not going to like the answer he received, but that didn't stop his need to know. "Why didn't you know of the Daleks?"
"Because I spent six months in an asylum. Alright? Happy now? I didn't see the Daleks because I was too busy being doped up in a nut house!" She pushed past him, unable to look him in the eye.
"Amy, wait!" He tried to take hold of her hand but she jerked away and slammed the library door behind her. "Amelia!!" He called out to her but by the time he opened the door she had disappeared.
He slumped to the floor, tucking his knees in to his chest. "Oh Amelia...I'm so sorry." He had overlooked just quite how much he had messed up Amy's childhood. She had told four psychiatrists about a raggedy Doctor who appeared in a blue box and ate fish fingers and custard. How many of them had she bitten when they'd told her the Doctor was imaginary? When did they decide the Doctor was no longer an imaginary friend, but a delusion? A sickness of the mind. How many nights had Amy been locked up in a mental institute, waiting for the Doctor's five minutes to be up?
He felt chilled to the bone as he thought of her, all alone and afraid. All because of him. "It wasn't your fault." He looked up as he found himself staring at Amy's feet. She sat down beside him, staring absently at the same wall as he was. "I could have told them that you weren't real...I could have-"
"I'm sorry." His voice was choked and his throat raw. "I'm so sorry." His arms wrapped tightly around her as he buried his face in her fiery locks. Sobs wrecked his body as the events of the last few days finally caught up with him. A few days for him...a lifetime for Amy.
Amy tried to fight back her own tears. She had hated him for not coming back for her, but she had never blamed him for how her life turned out. In the end it was Amy's choice to continue telling her aunt and the psychiatrists that the raggedy Doctor was real.
Her fingers ran through her hair as she whispered soothingly in to his ear. "You came back. You were a little late." She tried to laugh, but the sound died in her throat as his hand caressed the side of her face. "You came back for me. That's all that matters." And she truly believed that.
It didn't matter that she had spent fourteen long years waiting for him. It didn't matter she had grown up with the stigma of being the 'disturbed' little girl who had lost her parents and invented the raggedy Doctor to keep her company. It didn't matter she had spent six months of her life locked up. None of that mattered. Not when she had her raggedy Doctor.
"You're amazing you, you know that?" The Doctor sighed in to her hair, his grip on her still not relenting as his fingers caressed her cheek. Her eyes closed involuntarily as his lips grazed her other cheek by accident. A shudder ran through her entire body. "Why did they admit you?" He had no right to ask. He knew that, yet he couldn't help himself. He had to know.
"I attacked the last psychiatrist with a rubber band and a pencil sharpener."
"Inventive." The Doctor couldn't keep the approving smirk off his lips.
"You'd have been impressed." Amy laughed, still rather pleased with herself. "The stuffy old git deserved it."
"Why though? Just because he said I wasn't real? Surely you'd have been used to hearing that?"
The Doctor regretted asking his question as Amelia fell silent and pulled away from him. She got to her feet and dusted herself off. Her gaze was troubled and distant. "He said that the reason I refused to admit you weren't real, was because I needed you. He said my parents dying had left a void in my life and so I'd made you up. He said I needed you to exist."
The Doctor still didn't understand. "I'm sorry, why did you attack him?" Amelia stood over the Doctor, her chin held high and her gaze determined.
"Because he was wrong. I don't need you. I don't need anyone." For all a twenty-one year old stood before him, he might as well have been looking at a seven year old Amelia Pond. The lonely little girl who trusted no one because a raggedy Doctor had not kept his word. She couldn't tell him how much she needed him. Or how much she wanted him. He had proven that to her when he had left her with Churchill. Left her behind for the third time.
Her eyes were sad as she waited for him to say something. They almost challenged him to argue with her. When he didn't answer she turned away, intending to walk away again.
"If you didn't need me, then why did you need people to know I was real? Why did you keep telling them about me?"
She glanced back at him over her shoulder and shrugged. "KBO." She smiled sadly. "Sometimes Doctor that's all you can do. Just keep buggering on and hope for the best."