Like Nobody's Watching
It was the same noise as before. Amelia raised her head, forgetting the stiffness of her dawn-chilled bones, her face lighting up in an eager smile.
The box appeared out of thin air, wheezing fitfully, but still looking a lot less harried than it had the previous night. No steam, no fits of shaking, no strange bell-sound: it just faded in, then out (leaving Amelia's heart in her mouth), then in again, and then it just sat there, pristine and untouched by the morning dew.
Amelia stood up, schooling a frown onto her face. It was hours since the raggedy man had promised to come back, and if you gave a grownup an inch, he'd try to take a mile. But the box just sat there, obdurately inert, until the little girl's temper began to give way to disquiet--
--and then, wouldn't you know it, the doors finally parted and the Doctor poked his head out and looked around.
Amelia nearly stepped back -- the man's tattered shirt was gone, replaced by a tidy tweed jacket (and was that seriously a bowtie?), and his hair was, if not neat, at least consistent in its disorder. But then he saw her and it was him after all, lean and peculiar and delighted and appalled.
"What are you still doing out here?" he demanded. "Didn't your aunt come home yet?"
"You're late," she said sharply, and would have stomped right up to the box if he hadn't nipped neatly out and pulled the doors shut behind him. "You said five minutes! Does it take that long to get dressed?"
"You've been waiting," he said, as if he'd thought she'd do the sensible thing and stay indoors.
"And you're still late."
"But you're still outside!"
"That's not important."
"It is," he insisted.
"It's as important as you being late!"
A brief, indefinable expression crossed the Doctor's face.
"You talk that way to your aunt?"
"Yes," she said sternly. "Don't change the subject. I'm not easily distractable, you know."
"'Course you're not. It is you, after all, Amelia Pond." There it was again, that odd sense that he was really listening, that he believed what she said and cared that she knew it. Real grownups so seldom did.
"Got caught up in events," he told her, hunkering down to her eye level and reaching back to pat the box's doors. Their blue paint was glossy, deep enough almost to glow under the sunlight. "Couldn't get her back here until now. She didn't mean to; she was still hurting, and now the timeline's stuck in place and I can't shift it. And you're still outside. Why're you still outside?"
"You said five minutes. -- Aunt never gets home this early; we'd better go before she does--" Amelia reached back for her suitcase, and then stopped, because the Doctor, the new non-ragged Doctor with no dirt on his face and the adventure all leached out of his eyes, had rocked back on his heels and said, "Well."
The excitement that had surged back into life with the reappearing box plummeted down into Amelia's shoes. Suddenly she didn't want to hear the excuse -- the words that would bring this man down to the level of all the other grownups in her life.
"What happened to my apple?" she interrupted, before he could start.
He accepted the segue with somber gravity. "I gave it to someone who needed it. You could make me another one."
"I don't feel like it."
"Well, cheer up," he said softly, and poked her forehead.
"Don't feel like that, either." She ducked away, shoving her mittens into her pockets. The morning bird-song had gone dull and she felt cold all over, and wretched, and fierce, and alone. "You're not going to keep your promise."
"Can't," said the Doctor, still quietly, no evasions or reluctance or guilty sugar-coating. "It's 'can't'."
Amelia took a breath of damp morning air and backed off again, careful not to trip over her suitcase. She wobbled a bit as she picked it up, but pretended nothing had happened. "So this is goodbye. Don't worry, I'll get along. You needn't stop to visit. I'm sure it's out of your way."
"I'm a Time Lord," said the Doctor. "Nothing's out of my way."
"Th-that would be nice, wouldn't it?"
A yawn had split the words. Horrified, she struggled to blink away the stinging in her eyes. She had tried so hard to believe, to hold out for as long as it took.
The Doctor looked stricken, and to her complete surprise, he pulled her into a hug.
She tensed, unwilling to forgive; his skin was cold and he had way too many heartbeats, and he picked her up to his own height with her head against his shoulder and chided, "You were about to run off in time and space with me. It would have been so nice if everything would always go our way...." and somehow his voice was more sad than bitter, and more wondering than sad, like someone who had grown up and come out the other side and still remembered all of it.
Her little body shook, but she hung onto his neck as she might have done to a parent, stubbornly refusing to cry; and he stooped for her suitcase and carried her toward her aunt's house, where the custard bowl was still congealing on the table and the ice cream had all melted away.
"You won't remember any of this. Your aunt came home early, and she would look after you better if she could, but you know how it is with people. And you never saw me this morning -- you can't have, or you'd have remembered this part later -- don't bite, I know you'd never let go of last night. Fish fingers and custard and a crack in the wall. Nothing could ever take those memories away, Amelia Pond."
They were on the stairs, and all the fear and tension had gone out of her at once; she was too tired to lift her head, but of course she would remember; how could anyone forget...? Sunlight was streaming in from outside and it seemed that they paused on the landing, in front of the wrong door; the Doctor was still talking, but not making any sense.
"It's timelocked now," he said, and his voice rolled into the shadows around them, into the bones of the house. "That means I'm giving you a pass. But you don't touch the little girl. You don't touch anyone who lives here with her. You keep a low profile and you might have months here, years even, but you leave that child alone." (What child? she thought, wondering hazily who he was talking to.) "You'll know when I get back. I'm the Doctor."
She was back in her old room, with the desk still moved over and the crack all gone from the wall, and he pulled up her quilt and tucked her in with her shoes still on, which would annoy her aunt to no end. His fingers brushed over her hair. The stray thought came that he was making her fall asleep; it might have been true, and she decided she would get him for it the next time he came back.
His tall form filled the doorway, a dark patch in the dim light, and he was saying something else.
Sinking into oblivion, she strained to catch the words.
"See you later, Amelia Pond," the Doctor whispered. "You're gonna have an amazing life."
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