Warnings: Angst, Character Study, Introspection
A/N: Written for who_contest's Prompt: Yellow. As per usual, I had an idea for something a little different than this tale when I sat down to write it. A study of the Doctor and how he is so very, very brave, even as he is a coward of the first caliber. The reluctant hero, one might say. Somehow, this came out instead and I figured I might as well let it be, as I am not the best judge of my own scribblings and it likely is better than I feel it is. As a sidenote, I must say that I don't know why this scene of The God Complex haunts me so, but it does. I could do a million fictions off of that one episode and thousands off of that scene between the Doctor and Amy alone. But as always, what I intended and what was actually written seem to be two different things. Kissing cousins to what I had aimed for, but still wildly off the mark of what I originally had in mind. That being said, I can only hope it is coherent and reads well, even as it laid itself across the pages in its usual messy way. Of course, this fic is mostly unbeta'd and written in one go, so please forgive any mistakes and/or blatant vagueness. And (as per usual), I apologize for any repetition, misspellings, sentence fails, grammatical oh-noes and general horridness. Unbeta'd fic is overly-thinky/wandery/blithery and unbeta'd.
Disclaimer(s): I do not own the scrumptious Doctor or his lovely companions. That honor goes to the BBC and (for now) the fantastic S. Moffat. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about!
It was the look on her face that almost stopped him.
It was the need to save her that pushed him forward.
She looked at him with such big, trusting eyes. His little Amelia Pond – only she wasn't so little any more, was she? Nor was she really (not in the ways that counted to humans), even a Pond. That was as it should be, but it didn't lessen nor ease the pain of losing them both to Time and its vagaries.
Which was also as it should be.
"I took you because I was vain," a hard confession made harder by the incomprehension in those big, trusting eyes. She looked as if she didn't understand. No – worse. She looked as if she didn't want to understand. And if she was to live, if she was to remain breathing and laughing and loving, she needed to grasp this. It was only the truth; but then, that was likely why it was so much harder to swallow. "I wanted to be adored."
She was shaking her head now and she shouldn't do that. She needed to know who she was facing. He looked impossibly young (and he was sure he never truly had been this young, even when he was a wee tad), but he was far older than even he could comprehend.
The words 'coward', 'liar' and 'Destroyer of Worlds' flitted through his mind as her eyes welled with tears she didn't dare let fall; not yet. It broke his hearts because they were labels assigned to him that she knew all too well if she only trusted herself (if she stopped trusting him).
What she didn't know was that he gave himself those same labels. Truths he couldn't deny. Even as he wished he could be more cowardly that he already was: wipe away her tears, tell her she didn't have to listen to the lies that were actually truths that spilled from his treacherous lips.
He was destroying her world, her beliefs with his honesty. But it wasn't just for her. It was also for himself. He needed her to know. He needed her to face it. He needed her to be more than what he had condensed her to.
He needed her to know she was more than he ever could be.
"I really am just a madman with a box."
And there it was. The truth he told her all that time ago when his face was new, his hope refreshed. The only thing that could break the fable he had spun around them both. The decayed fairytale that never was.
She would be okay, she would be better.
But they would never be the same.