Author's note:
Thanks for taking the time to read my first Doctor Who fanfic! I write urban fantasy and paranormal YA novels for a living in that strange place known as The Real World and welcome feedback.
My only other fanfiction endeavors occurred when, stuck with a pair of bored children one summer, I introduced them to my favorite childhood cartoons. This led to that magic question, "What happens next?" Echoes Through Glass is my first fanfic based on a series for grown-ups. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I do writing it.
Although I love Rose and 9/10, I am an even bigger Amy/11 fan. This fic was born from the idea that the Doctor did indeed return for Amy immediately following their Prisoner Zero adventure, and that the pair had two whole years together before the Doctor returned Amy to the timeline we all know from the series. So why would the Doctor take his Amy back to Leadworth after two years together? Because he's going to break all the rules, and he knows it.
What? Tell you more? Spoilers, darling! (There is no River in this timeline, Amy isn't yet engaged to Rory, and I do not own Doctor Who. Although I did get a model Tardis for my birthday!) Enjoy!
Chapter One:
The Doctor Lies
"I know what you're thinking," the note mocked in the rounds and spirals of long-dead Gallifreyan script.
"Impossible," the Doctor told the scrap of vellum, waving it in the air in case it didn't hear him. "How can you know what I'm thinking? I'm the Doctor. Even I don't know what I'm thinking half the… oh. I… see."
More Gallifreyan writing flared into life, the letters brilliant as banked embers when his fingers brushed against the ink. He leaned against the console to read, thoughts racing faster than his double heartbeats. "Do not go back for Amelia Pond. Return for her in two Earth years." The Doctor tugged absently on his bowtie. "Your lives depend on it," he whispered, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he finished reading the note.
A note in his own handwriting. A note he'd obviously left for himself. "But how?" he demanded of the empty air. "And why? Did you have anything to do with this?" he asked the Tardis suspiciously. There was no answer, of course, only a swirl of warm air around him and a faint whining noise from the console.
The Doctor thought of Amelia Pond, alone and asleep in that empty, wrong house. The fierce, red-headed Girl Who Waited had no doubt decided he had lied to her again, abandoning her without a thought while he raced off to the moon. But the Doctor had come back for her, even if he was a few hours late. He had every intention of snatching her away from a life that had clearly gone wrong.
He wasn't sure how or why her life was wrong, only that it was, and it was probably his fault. Most things were, after all. But he was here now to make things right for the seven-year-old girl he'd abandoned five minutes and twelve years ago. "Twelve years and she's kissing strangers. For fun! Or money." He ran long, unfamiliar fingers through even more unfamiliar hair. "Or fun and money. Five minutes! And she's dressed as a policewoman, dating Beaky the Nurse. How could I possibly have let this happen to a brave little Scottish girl?" The Tardis doors swung open, filling the room with clean Leadworth air. He gave the note a suspicious glare before letting it slide to a rest on the console. "And after all that Prisoner Zero, saving the Earth nonsense. In which she was brilliant, I'll have you know," he told the empty room.
The Doctor inched out of the Tardis, one finger held up in the night air. He was three hours, twenty-four minutes, and six seconds late. The air was temperate to him, but his body temperature ran cooler than a human's. Amy might need a jumper, or perhaps his own coat. "Can't have her running around in her nightie," he practically hummed to himself, bounding up the crumbling walkway that led to her too large home.
But then he stopped dead, remembering the note. "Your lives depend on it," he repeated, hesitating. He thought of Rose and Donna, and his own still-unfamiliar new form. He knew that Amelia Pond wasn't the only one who'd been waiting. His own life was one agonized, empty waiting room that he filled with adventures and dangers and lies. The worst lie of all was that waiting was just another word for passing time, when he knew it was a different kind of death. A slow but terrible death by inches that pretended to be kind, that pretended to have hope, but was full of nothing instead.
He'd been waiting since Gallifrey, since The Moment, since countless genocides that were still going on, would always go on, sealed inside a time lock like a drowning creature that begged for death and got eternity instead.
"So in a way, we're dead already," he told the quarter-full moon almost cheerfully. "Rule one: the Doctor lies. Even in notes written in Gallifreyan. Glad that's settled." Then, so softly even his alien ears barely caught it, he whispered, "Amelia Pond, get your coat," before letting himself in.
*11*
Rory was about to die.
Rory was about to die because Amy was going to kill him.
Her sort-of boyfriend was an intelligent young man. He knew better than to wake her up after a Prisoner Zero sort of day by poking her on the shoulder. And he certainly knew better than to let himself in without her knowledge or consent, making the bed creak and dip with his weight, poking her again and muttering things like, "Fascinating," before doing it two more times. He knew better than to point flashlights that made strange noises at her and poke her a third and fourth time.
"Rory!" she finally snapped, burying her head beneath her pillow. "You. Are. So. Dead." Amy reached out blindly and swung hard, connecting with a muscled forearm that neither flinched nor pulled away. "Go 'way!"
"Rory. That's Beaky, your boyfriend?" Amy froze at the familiar voice. "Sorry to disappoint. Definitely not Rory. And did you know you snore? Just a little bit, really. Like a tired puppy that's eaten too much. Kind of cute, actually."
"You're not Rory," Amy said, rolling in one smooth motion to the far edge of her bed. She held the pillow to her chest like a shield. "You're… oh my god, you're back." He grinned maniacally at her, palms out as if in surrender. "The Raggedy Doctor is back." She dropped the pillow, not caring that nothing now separated them but cotton sheets. Lightning-fast, she snatched his arm, pinching him sharply on the forearm. "You're real."
He shrugged. "Real enough. Sorry I didn't cry out, but that didn't hurt. Would you like to try again?"
Suddenly Amy felt enraged. Twelve years of abandonment, of being teased about him, of going to see doctors who insisted she was crazy, came flooding in. She smacked him with her pillow. "No, I would not. What are you doing here? In my bedroom?" She smacked him again. He grinned widely. "I thought you left me. Again." She barely choked out the last word. At that, his grin slipped entirely. Instead, he pulled the pillow from her hand and replaced it with his own.
"I came back," he whispered. "Come with me, Amelia Pond?" In the faint moonlight streaming in through her bedroom window, Amy thought he looked almost desperate. "I'll make it up to you, I promise. I'll take you to see stars and planets and alien races until you forget all about these past twelve years."
"I can't," she snapped, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed until she sat parallel with the Doctor. "I'll never forget it. Never. If you knew what my life has been, you wouldn't say those things." She swallowed hard, letting her long red hair obscure her face. "You wouldn't want me."
His too-bright eyes flared when she said that, then narrowed into a look she would learn as well as she knew her own face. "Are you telling me what I can and cannot do, Amy Pond? Are you telling me I'm wrong? I'm the Doctor, and I'm never wrong." Then he smiled at her again. Amy realized, with all the force of one abandoned soul suddenly recognizing another, that she would do almost anything to make him look at her like that again. He swept her red hair from her face with one long finger. "Trust me, Amelia Pond."
"Let me get my coat," she said simply.