|morpheus|
(she's dreaming of fairytale worlds)
[hekate]
"Dreams are like magic, Amy Pond," he tells her, over a carton of ice cream, a bowl of custard, and a box of fish fingers. She's staring at him with a kind of amazement, this strange, raggedy man who popped out of a police box which apparently has a pool inside that he fell into, and who is now eating fish custard in her kitchen. It's surreal, absurd, fantastical, and utterly ridiculous, but he's funny.
"Do you believe in magic?"
"I've been around for quite some time," he says with a wink. "I've learned not to make assumptions about things I don't know."
She wrinkles her nose in thought. "You don't look that old to me."
Popping a fish finger into his mouth, he tweaks her on the nose. "That there, Amy Pond, is an assumption."
She giggles. "But you really don't look old. You actually look rather young."
"Things are not always as they seem." Conspiratorially, over his bowl of custard, he adds, "A police box may look small at first glance, but oh, there are many things that can fit inside if you know how to look, where to look, and when to look. Self-contained galaxies that reside within the tiniest bits of dust. Time that doesn't progress in straight lines, but in vast seas, and we're the fishermen- or, in your case, fisherwoman -that drop our nets in and take out what we want."
[hermes]
For her, time moves fast, too fast, and she is an adult, having abandoned the fairytales of her youth and moved on to the fairytales of adulthood which, suffice to say, are not quite as endearing as tales of princesses in towers or dragons slain by heroic princes. But she does have a prince, and he's not entirely as prince-y as a fairytale would suggest, but she loves him and he loves her and that's all that matters.
(the clocks have wings and they're flying high, high in the sky, past the layers of the atmosphere and into dark, dark space)
Then, he reappears, and her adult fairytale notions are shattered.
"How long have I been gone?" he asks her, looking slightly befuddled with his bowtie askew and his jacket rumpled.
"Twelve years!" she cries, but she is soon laughing-sobbing because he's here. Her fairytale prince is here, and he's come back in that bizarre box of his and they're going on an adventure. On many adventures.
It's the three of them: the Doctor, herself, and dear Rory, adrift in the seas of Time with no set course, but a billion possibilities with which to scoop up in their fishing nets.
[ares]
But the seas are rough, and there are all manner of sea-monsters lurking in the depths below, waiting to spring upon them when they aren't being careful. She finds herself mesmerized by the sights she is able to see, but also terrified by the darker things on the edges of her vision; scary things, frightful things, things that defy human comprehension and which she struggles to wrap her mind around. Impossible things, horrible things; her nightmares, the witches and sorcerers and Maleficent and the evil stepsisters brought to life. Aching, wretched life.
There are the Daleks, those tank-like entities with their hideous robotic drone, their desire for conquest, and their ability to kill at a whim, should they choose to do so. The angels- statues, really -with their gnashing teeth and ugly claws and their slinking, slithering gait, moving soundlessly through the shadows and bearing down on her in all their stony, dead glory, wings upraised and eyes narrowed. The Silence, whom she can't turn away from because if she does, she'll forget, and if she forgets, then she enables their success in taking over the world. Her eyes feel as though they'll fall out of their sockets with all the staring and not blinking she has to do, but she can't look away. She can't, because the night has a powerful allure more potent than any paradise these alien galaxies and temporal universes could offer; because, in her heart and in the heart of every living thing, she knows that the unseen things, the illusions, the monsters are the most compelling of them all.
Her skin is stained with tallies drawn in ink. Her ears hum with a thousand discordant voices. Her hair is a flame, and she is burning brightly in the confines of the TARDIS, before she dies and becomes ash.
[hades]
There is death. So much death.
But she thinks that she will die herself when Rory passes. Unexpectedly, suddenly, without a single bit of warning.
Her prince is dead. She can't bear it. She buries her head in his chest and cries, cries out bitter, salty tears that taste of the sea and the fish and watery graves and rust. Her fingernails are cracked and dirty, her mind is full to bursting, her flesh is rotting from the inside out.
Magic dies when no one believes.
And then, when he drags her to her feet, tells her that they have to go, that Rory's sacrifice can't be in vain, that she has to do it for his sake, she grabs the lapels of his coat and holds on tight like he's a lifeline. In Manhattan, in a deserted alley filled with the stench of smoke and blood, she cries and cries and cries, cries out the anguish of her soul onto her Raggedy Man's soot-smelling shirt, her hands clawing at his back, and he simply holds her and smooths back the red spitfire tangles of her hair.
And then, he tells her, "We have to go. Now."
She obeys meekly, running with him through an apocalyptic wasteland, running with the stars and the sun and the moon, running until she is flying and her mind has nothing to do with it because running seems so natural, so right that it's like an ingrained aspect of her being. Concrete crumbles, dust plumes, saltwater splashes. A galaxy of dying planets.
"Amy, hurry!" he screams. "Run, run like you've never run before!"
His hair is coated in grit, his jacket in tatters, but she runs like the wind, like a goddess, and when she reaches that familiar blue door, she pulls it open, jumps inside, and doesn't look back to see the end of the world.
[chronos]
Time doesn't heal. It only lessens.
The fresh wound of loss still burns, held in an impossible stasis like the apple she gave the Doctor so long ago. Years have passed; decades, centuries, millennia, aeons, an infinity moving on turtle legs before her eyes.
It's just the two of them, now. Rory's gone, but he lingers in her every breath, in her every thought, in her every fantastical dream. Dreams of moonmen and supernovae, of clocks winding to finite stops and speeding up to infinite speeds. Of a time-traveler with a telescope, a screwdriver, and a strange fixation with seemingly trivial things.
Sometimes, in her worst moments, when she can't even speak because her throat is raw and burning, he takes her by the hands like he would a child, and he rocks them both back and forth, back and forth, swaying like ships on perilous seas in faerie lands. They're adventurers, and the adventure must continue, with or without a character.
Slowly, she falls back into the routine of things. She learns to smile again, to laugh again, while retaining that sadness inside of her, where it festers and scratches at her lungs like an imp in a glass jar.
He's there with her, always by her side.
Time doesn't fix, but it can try.
[poseidon]
She remembers that night as a little girl, remembers the crack in her wall, the police box, the Raggedy Man, and waiting for an eternity until he came back.
It's odd how she whacked him on the head with a cricket bat and handcuffed him to her radiator. Vaguely kinky, even.
But her days of being a kissogram are long behind her. She's not sure she can ever quite return to that life; not anymore. After all, she's a time traveler too. Not an official one, but one in spirit, and isn't that what counts? She's seen aliens of strange and wondorous shapes, but also bestial and monstrous ones, too. She's glimpsed parallel worlds, multiple realities, alternate versions of people she once knew and people she knows and people she doesn't know. The threads of time are interconnected, a shifting, wavering tapestry as wide and vast as the seas.
She's said that before, but she likes continuity.
Life goes on.
And, she isn't quite sure when it happens, or how it happens, but she begins to see the Raggedy Man in a whole new light. The mop of hair that falls across his forehead like a wave, the fast-paced way he has of speaking and walking, how he eats the strangest things and dreams a thousand dreams in that brain of his.
She's carved out a new life with him, here in their cozy time machine. The future is theirs. She's his. He's hers. It just takes time to acknowledge that.
She'll never forget. But she always has more room to remember.
His fingers are entwined in her own scarlet strands, their noses are touching, and she's hanging onto the lapels of his jacket again, standing on her tiptoes. This time, she isn't crying.
Their lips are touching, and just like that, a new memory is forged. The human mind is a resilient thing, weathering the effects of time and space and death and devastation. The sea is theirs to swim in. The skies are theirs to fly in.
Somewhere in the stars, there's someone who's watching. She can see him, but she can also see the Doctor sprawled next to her on the cold, dewy grass, arms and legs akimbo, his jacket draped over her like a blanket.
They look at each other and smile.
(here in the sea of all things past, all things that are, and all things to come, she's sailing on a sailboat with him, her prince, and he's taking her into a bright future and a happy past, and her arms are in the air and she's floating on a cloud, her hair streaming behind her like a sunset
time can't fix, but it can improve
and the oceans are endless, and they're sailing into the sun)
a/n: please read and review!