Title: The Girl With The Fairy Tale Name
Summary: 12 years and four psychiatrists, one of whom needed stitches. Let it never be said that Amelia Jessica Pond doesn't have tenacity.
Timeline: Set during The Eleventh Hour
Word Count: 1036
A/N: This may seem a little choppy so sorry for that. But I didn't want to rewrite the whole episode.
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. I don't even own the miniature Tardis or the plushie dalek I've been waiting for. I also don't own the lyrics to the Paramore song, Brick by Boring Brick.
THE GIRL WITH THE FAIRY TALE NAME
So one day he found her crying
Coiled up on the dirty ground
Her prince finally came to save her
And the rest you can figure out
Brick by Boring Brick
Paramore
'12 years and four psychiatrists.' She tells him, almost like she is proud of the fact.
And she is, a little, because after all those years of psychiatrists, adults and children alike talking down to her, she has been vindicated. Cry for attention her rear end, she was right and she has the alien worm in the spare room she didn't know she had to prove it!
'Four?' Now she shifts uncomfortably and it isn't just because her uniform is tight.
'I kept biting them.' She admits reluctantly.
'Why?' The Raggedy Doctor is amused, she thinks.
'They said you weren't real.' The last psych who told her that was Dr Wilson and after she was done with him he had needed stitches. Admittedly not one of her most dignified moments but he was the most condescending of the four and she had been in a foul mood.
The Raggedy Doctor is definitely amused by now if the smirk on his stupid face is anything to go on. The smirk quickly fades as 'Prisoner Zero must vacant the human residence' crackles from an ice-cream van speaker.
The Raggedy Doctor barges into Mrs Angelo's home like he owns the place and she dutifully follows him. Mrs Angelo questions her about her rapid career changes and she feels two inches tall. For years she fantasized about meeting him again and never did any of the scenarios she dreamt up involve him looking at her like that.
'Who's Amy? You were Amelia.'
'Yeah, now I'm Amy.' She replies defensively.
'Amelia Pond-that was a great name.' he laments.
'Bit fairy tale.' Her voice is scornful and she feels both vindictive and guilty when she sees his eyes fill with guilt and a little but of shame.
And now there is a duck pond that isn't a duck pond and the world is going to end in twenty minutes. This can't be happening.
'This isn't real, is it? This is some kind of big wind-up.' She says desperately.
'Why would I wind you up?'
'You told me you had a time machine.' Oh the hours she wasted with Rory, playing Amelia Pond and the Raggedy Doctor, travelling back in time to meet the Romans.
'And you believed me.'
'Then I grew up.' For someone who was holding on with all her might to "a childish fantasy" she had grown up pretty fast. In an effort to prove the Raggedy Doctor wasn't just some vivid dream caused by an unusual combination of food before bed (apples, yoghurt, bacon, baked beans, bread and butter, ice-cream and fish fingers and custard) she had tried to act more mature for her age. But instead of achieving the desired result it made her look all the more insane and deluded.
She was definitely acting like a mad woman now, yelling and trapping the Raggedy Doctor in a car door by his stained tie.
In her hand she holds a fresh apple with a smile face carved into it. If she closes her eyes she can remember the concentration that went into making that smile perfect. Because it was a gift and it had to be special.
'I'm the Doctor. I'm a time traveller. Everything I told you 12 years ago is true. I'm real.' She can see that. She can see, hear, touch. But to allow herself to believe in him is setting herself up for heartbreak again. He didn't keep his last promise. Why should she trust him?
'Believe for 20 minutes.'
She lets him go.
Prisoner Zero is gone. The Raggedy Doctor saved the world and now he is ordering the Atraxi back to earth. Rory has a problem with that but she is too distracted by the fact the Raggedy Doctor is taking off his clothes as Rory so succinctly pointed out. And the Raggedy Doctor isn't looking so raggedy anymore. In fact he looks quite fit and she hasn't waited all these years just so he can disappear as soon as she turns her back, and maybe because she enjoys watching him strip. She may be acting like a seven year old with a crush but that's exactly what she was even though it was years before she realised it.
Except she does turn her back and he's gone. She gets home in time to watch the blue box disappear, leaving her behind for the second time in her life. She swears this will be the last time she cries over him.
Two years later it is the night before her wedding and she is woken up by a familiar wheezing sound. She runs to her window and there it is. The blue box and standing in front of it is the Raggedy Doctor. Except he isn't the Raggedy Doctor anymore, just the Doctor.
'Amy Pond, the girl who waited, you've waited long enough.' She touches the blue box in wonder, remembering when she was seven and she wanted more than anything to explore it.
'When I was a kid, you said there was a swimming pool and a library, and the swimming pool was in the library.'
'Yeah. Not sure where it is now. So…coming?'
'No.' She doesn't sound very convincing. It isn't that she doesn't want to go, she very much does. But she shouldn't. Getting married in the morning and all that.
'You wanted to come 14 years ago.'
'I grew up.' That's the second time she's said that to him and it sounds weak to her own ears. She's coming. She knows it and he knows it but first she has to put up at least a token resistance.
'Amy Pond there's something you better understand cos one day your life may depend on it. I am definitely a mad man with a box.'
Yeah she's coming.
'Goodbye Leadworth. Hello everything.'
He is no longer the Raggedy Doctor and she is no longer Amelia Pond. But maybe they can be just be the Doctor and Amy, the mad man with a box and the girl who waited.