Amy Pond stood on the porch, waving goodbye. A young man in a tweed jacket waved and grinned out the window as he drove away, the backend of his car swerving crazily before straightening itself out and following the rest of the dented blue metal quickly down the road.
Rory stood beside her. She saw the question in his eyes. The ever-present Should we stop him?
No.
The answer was no. Their friend was happy, as happy as he could ever be. And it was incredible, Amy thought, the amount of happiness he had in him. The amount he could bring to those he met, those he knew, and those who never saw it coming.
Amy remembered when she had met him. He had been John Smith, then. He was in the fifth grade when she was in the first, and he was clever. Very much so. He built tools to build more complex tools to build… things, which did nothing strictly necessary, but were beautiful in their complexity and pointlessness. John would show her how they worked, and how they were made. His hair would flop into his eyes and he would laugh with delight as he technobabbled on. And Amelia would stay; because she thought he was rather wonderful. He had nobody, because his parents wanted him to become some sort of politician, and he wanted to look at the clouds and build things. He had no friends, because he was to mature and to immature, in all the wrong places. They began to chase girls, and he began to wear suspenders, just because he could. Amelia had nobody, because her parents had left. She had no friends, because she liked to bite people. So, afternoon after afternoon, they sat in John's garage and told stories.
There had always been a Doctor in him. He had told her about the Time Lords, and the Daleks, and the wonderful planets they had destroyed. He told her about the one man from Gallifrey who escaped, but only by destroying everything. He would take a screwdriver and wave it around, and be the Doctor for her. He put on a scarf and a floppy fedora, and made his voice deep. And they ate jelly babies and he would build things.
Amelia's aunt did not like it. John has troubles, she would say, when Amy was ten, and John was fourteen. He has problems, and you're too young to hang around with him, when there are girls your own age. Amy didn't understand what Aunt Linda meant; John was always kind to her. He was kind to everyone. She knew he was strange, but so was she. She was young and open, and she saw what she wanted to see.
One day, when Amelia was twelve, John was gone. Just like that. Aunt Linda sat Amy down again, and told her again about John's troubles. Amelia still didn't understand. She was old enough to be told, she yelled, in plain English what had happened to her friend. Her best friend. Aunt Linda had shook her head.
Amelia had gone to John's house. She'd never been inside. She knocked on the door and asked to see John's parents. His mother came to the door, and let her in. Amy had demanded to know what they had done with John. She was told. In plain English.
John had broken down, they said. He had begun to scream one day, to speak of monsters and aliens and god knows what else. He had always been strange, his father said. He had had episodes, where he saw things. They thought he had an overactive imagination. He had always been different, alone. He barely noticed, his father explained. When there's that much wrong with a person, they don't realize it. And he hadn't tried, his mother said sadly, to change it. He didn't even mind that he was different and alone and stupid. They should have done something long ago, they said. They blamed themselves a bit, in that regard.
Amelia's eyes blurred with salt and wet and she had screamed at them that they were not sad. They were glad to see him go. They had said no. They were very sad that their son could not live to his potential. That he had had such a problem.
He didn't have a problem, Amelia had screamed louder. John was just himself, and he was brilliant. She had sat in the garage, far on the end of the drive, and cried. She had cried for a long time, and she came back there often, for a while. She took some of his contraptions and put them in her attic, and when she remembered, she kept them clean. But she moved on, because that's life. She made two friends, to wonderful friends. One was a wild child, a juvenile delinquent named Mel. One might have ben gay, and he had a very large nose. His name was Rory. They were strange enough and wonderful enough for Amy (Amelia, she decided, wasn't pretty after you were about thirteen), and she was mad and fantastic enough for them. None of them were popular, but none of them was ever alone.
One night, many years later, she heard someone in her garden. She had looked out the window to see a car, battered and blue, sitting nonchalantly in the middle of the yard, with one headlight blinking hypnotically. Amy crept out, cricket bat in hand, and cracked the man getting out of the car square in the skull, and he dropped like a rock. He didn't look much different at all from when he was seventeen, once she sat him up. He looked… handsomer, perhaps, better proportioned. When he woke up he asked to see Amelia Pond. He said that he was the Doctor, and he had to speak to a little Scottish girl named Amelia Pond. She had said that it was her, and he had stood up, looking thunderstruck. No, he said. He could not be that late. He could not possibly be that late. He had promised himself, he said, that he would be back to see her in five minutes.
Amy had asked him if John was he all right, she was so sorry she didn't recognize him. He had smiled and talked, about prisons and prisoners, and escapes. The morning came, and he drove away. He was back, but he only answered to the Doctor, now.
He came every so often, always skinny and dressed in something tweed. He would eat some custard, and hug Amy and her husband, and tell them about the places he'd been. He would take them on drives in his car. He'd speed off, get lost in the countryside, and show them a new world. He lived in his car, though he technically owned the house his parents had died in. He loved it- no, her, he'd insist. You're offending her. And she likes it when I call he sexy.
"People are going to think you're mad, Doctor," Amy told him as he shut he door.
His hair flopped into his eyes and he beamed.
"Haven't you noticed? I am mad."