Amy Pond dyed her hair brown twice.
The first time she was in high school. She'd been tormented as a kid. Brutally, mercilessly, and unrelentingly. The cruelty of children would still sometimes strike her. She'd been teased for being Scottish. She'd been teased for being ginger. But mostly, she'd been teased for the Doctor.
She was the weird girl who saw things. Who had an imaginary friend whom she wouldn't let go of. Most of the adults tolerated her with trepidation. But their children taunted her, and, on some level, feared her.
She went through all of middle school with things thrown at her, with her hair pulled and her clothes laughed at. Her first day of freshmen year, someone pushed her down a flight of stared and called her a schizo Scottish freak. Miraculously, a nice boy was at the bottom of those steps who didn't want to hurt her. His name was Rory Williams, and he would become her best friend.
They were sitting in her room when she thought of a way to lessen everything. "I'll die my hair brown!" she said cheerily to Rory. "That'll be one less thing they can go off on me about, and I'll blend in better!"
Rory was troubled by this. Like anyone who'd ever loved Amy, he adored her hair with a passion. He tried to talk her out of it to no avail. The next day, she bought a box of brown dye from the local drugstore, and promptly changed her hair color.
The next day at school was one of the best she'd had in years. No one recognized her, or noticed her. She could shrink into the background, a little brunette wallflower.
Rory didn't say anything, but looked on with sadness.
Her hair color lasted for approximately six months, when she realized if the Doctor tried to pick her out in a crowd, he wouldn't recognize her. For the next three hours, she frantically looked for a way to get dye out of hair before giving up and buying a coppery shade that was almost identical to her original one.
Rory approved of the change, but not for her reasons. One, he wouldn't recognize her anyway, considering it had been seven years. And two, well, they all knew there wasn't really a Doctor.
When Amy Pond dyed her hair brown for the second time, she was thirty five. She was sitting in a PTA meeting on her own when she heard the whispers. Those perfectly made up, snotty mothers were talking about her.
They started small. "Do you remember how weird she was in school?" Then bigger. "I hear she ran off with another man before her wedding." Then bigger. "And that imaginary friend of hers."
Amy shifted uncomfortably. She wanted to say something, but she had no idea what or how.
"You know, she used to be a-," this was cut off to a low murmur, followed by shocked giggles. "A fallen woman," one of the mothers muttered.
The ring leader leaned in a bit closer to her companions, and with an obtrusive whisper said, "I hear that's not even really her husband's daughter. The man she ran away with-"
Amy couldn't take it anymore. She got up and walked out, leaving even more gossip in her wake.
She complained about it loudly to Rory. He just sighed, and tried not to remember what it was like before. When they'd been free, and only had to worry about saving the world, not about PTA meetings and gossip and petty things that were somehow so much harder to bear than all of time and space.
"I could be proper," she said, pacing. "I could be one of them. If I just . . . blended in more, they'd lay off."
Rory didn't say anything. He doesn't want to point out how far brilliant, individual, herself Amelia Pond had fallen.
"If I looked more like them," Amy whispered.
This time Amy went to a salon. She asked for a respectable brunette. The second her hair was done and dry, she put it up in a respectable bun. She went through her closet, throwing away all her short skirts and hipster scarves. She bought respectable dresses, and donned a pair of pearls. At the next PTA meeting, no one said a word.
Rory felt awful.
"What would the Doctor do if he saw you now?" Rory pleaded.
He should have known better.
"I stopped caring what the Doctor would think," she spat, "a long time ago. In fact, I hope he wouldn't recognize me."
Rory didn't try and get her to take it back. He just hoped she didn't really mean it.
Their daughter cried when she saw her mother's hair. They were no longer identical. Amy held her daughter and cried to, for what was lost and what little Sophie would never have to know about.
Amy became different when her hair was brown. She worked harder, laughed less. Rory stopped finding her standing in their garden in the middle of the night, staring at the sky. She still didn't sleep well, but started taking pills for that.
Rory wanted to tear the Doctor to bits, for fading Amy's hair to brown not once, but leaving her, and fading everything about her a second time.
A year after she had dyed her hair, he found her in the garden again. She was eating fish sticks and custard, which meant things were really bad.
He sat next to her on the empty suitcase she'd laid out. He wrapped an arm around her thin frame, and she leaned into him in silence.
"Do you think he'll ever come back?" she said finally.
"I hope not," he said venomously, the first time he'd let his bitterness show in years.
Amy turned to face him, silent tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. "Don't say that," she said thickly.
He held her against him, and let her cry into his chest.
The next day, he went searching for a different town. London was too busy, Oxford too academic, everything else too far. Finally, he settled on the Wales city of Cardiff.
Amy didn't cry when she left Leadworth, and left her Doctor's garden. She knew he'd never find her now, and she wished that didn't hurt so much.
They were happy in Cardiff. Rory got a job as a Doctor. Amy went into police work. Sophie made real, true friends she could trust. And Amy dyed her hair red again.