Two Streams starts for Amy with one week alone in a shinning white room; white walls, white table, white doors, white chair, white light and one large empty magnifying glass communication device she cannot turn on. Only two large red circles draw the eye and break the monotony.
(It will not be until much later she starts thinking of everything in absolutes – the time before, the time after; Earth, home, the TARDIS versus the interface, the hand-bots, red waterfall; life and death; happiness and hate; heaven and hell)
Her boys on one side, Amy on the other – confusing things have happened before – but the image flickers.
"Uh, Doctor, something's happening…"
And he disappears. She had seen a robot, Rory's voice edging toward that 'oh god not another alien' tone with the sound of mechanics off the screen then blurred empty space. She stares at the glass, taps its surface, tries to find an on switch. Surely there must be a button or a lever or something? She only touches smooth sides, golden metal, no indentations or cracks or slots, nothing to help.
"Okay… so… Doctor?" She tries though she is fairly certain he can't hear her now. "Doctor, come on."
It feels like she was switched off.
She sits in the chair, stares at the glass, wills their faces to reappear. She stands, paces, turns the chair around with her fingers. She makes circles around the room, counts to 100 as she rounds the table again and again. She bites her finger nails, feels the walls, looks for something there – maybe a hidden panel with an instruction manual. She inspects the magnifying glass closely, looks under the table, under the chair, but finds nothing.
She stares as the hands tick around the gold watch on her wrist and a whole day passes by.
"Doctor!" She shouts, banging her hands on the table. "Rory! Where are you? What is going on?"
They were all just together, walked into the same room (or so appearances implied) and now she waits here alone. She feels scared, worried – what if something has happened to them – annoyed, worried again.
"Come on…" She taps the glass over and over. "Come back!"
Two days, three days – it's ridiculous, it's insufferable, it's terrifying. Four days.
She sits in the chair, peers at the glass, the edges, the empty space; Amy watches and watches.
"Where are you?" She screams.
She does not cry; she holds it in. The Doctor always comes back – Rory would not leave her – the Doctor always comes. Sometimes you just have to wait.
Seven days, hunched against the wall trying to believe that her watch is wrong and maybe it's really only been an hour, a minute, something alien or spacey messing with her internal clock, then the magnifying glass pops back to life with a robotic voice:
"Will you be visiting long?"
Her head slides up and she wants to smack them both in the face. "And where have you been?"
A problem, yet again, of how to reunite Amy and her boys. So she receives one instruction from the Doctor – "Wait."
She walks through the door and before turns into after.
Hours pass with running through corridors, standing in a self imposed cage until the hand-bots vanish and finally ending when she no longer holds the tears back. She hides for five hours, five and a half with still no word and tears begin to leak down her face. She stands now in what must be close to the engine or something which involves huge groaning machinery and inhospitable gloom.
"Where are you?" she says quietly to herself.
The tears fall and she feels like a little girl again, all alone with a crack in her wall, (alone in her room with parents down below or without parents or one of many lives which crowd her head). She sniffs, she cries, and suddenly she talks to a vision of herself through that same absurdly large magnifying glass suspended in air.
She sees herself, she sees her own future.
Amy sees hair unkempt, plastic across her chest like armor and lines on her face. Her first thought is 'how' and her second thought is 'why?' But she speaks to herself and it is not hope she receives from the one who should know her best – it is desolation.
"That's why old me refused to help then, that's why I'm refusing to help now and that's why you'll refuse to help when it's your turn. And nothing you can say will change that."
Amy swallows slowly, stares at herself. "Nothing?" She shakes her head. "You're condemning yourself? Condemning me?"
"Yes." The other her tilts up her chin and her face expresses only pain, time, and cold certainty. "You will learn as I have that hope is a luxury and you do not have it."
"How can you say that? To me? To yourself!" Amy snaps, hears the crack in her voice.
Her future self's eyes peer off to the side, to what must be Rory, to something beyond Amy's small circle of sight. Then her future self looks back and there is no mercy in her gaze. "When you reach this point you will feel the same way."
"No…" The glass sides down over Amy's chest and legs as though she is dropping the magnifying glass. "No, wait!"
Then the image disappears, only empty air left behind. Amy blinks, stares at the gray walls in front her. Her knees shake and she slowly slips down to the floor, the feeling of betrayal more weight than she can bear.
'It cannot be true.' She tells herself over and over. 'They wouldn't leave me. They would never turn around and leave, they would not leave me.'
She knows Rory loves her, loves her to the end of the earth, through all of time, through more than one lifetime. Rory would always - no doubt - come back for her.
"It's not true," she says out loud quietly to the dark, back secure against a wall and eyes peeled for any flash of white. "They will be back."
The Doctor would not abandon her.
Amy decides to explore the facility further.
(A month of waiting in the dark only led to madness and the words of 'the other Amy' growing stronger inside her head).
Amy previously snuck around the garden on her first day but that pair of hand-bots ended the 'outing' prematurely. If Amy treads carefully emerging from her hide out should be possible. Plus, she learned a trick or two to stop the hand-bots.
"Welcome to the entertainment zone," the interface intones as Amy cautiously enters the room.
"Do you have a section with no hand-bots?"
"The Two Streams Facility has a variety…"
Amy sighs and steps up to the column in the center of the room. "Of course not, let's see then."
Amy taps the circles one at a time around the top. "Aquarium."
Tap. "Garden."
"No, thank you."
Tap. "Spa."
Amy pauses. "Weird."
Tap. "Gallery."
"Gallery?" Amy presses down on the button.
The door across from Amy opens and she sees white space within, quite a change. Amy rounds the control column and enters the gallery. The door slides shut behind her and she steps forward. The gallery turns out to be the museum section of the entertainment zone. Works of art sit on pedestals and easels, paintings, sculptures and something oozing out purple slime.
Amy walks slowly among the pieces, a statue looking very Greek, some sort of alien impressionism.
"The Mona Lisa!" Amy gasps as she suddenly recognizes the painting. "How have you got that?"
"The Mona Lisa," the interface begins, light shinning right onto said painting, "Earth origin, painted in Earth time –"
"Yeah," Amy interrupts, "but is it the real one or is it a copy? Did you steal it?"
"The Two Streams Facility does not condone, participate in, or conceal the theft of items of any kind from sentient, pre and post technological zenith, races and planets.
Amy peers nose to nose with the painting. "You definitely stole this."
Suddenly, Amy hears a sound like a teleport engaging, funny how so long traveling with the Doctor allows her to recognize such interstellar, sci-fi sounds. Amy whirls to her right to see three hand-bots marching down the aisle toward her.
"You have an undiagnosed infection. Please let us help you."
"Oh no."
Amy pivots and races back toward the entrance to the gallery. Amy hears a sound like exhaled air and drops flat to the ground. Three needles sing through the air above her nearly catching her as she falls. Amy rolls and jumps back to her feet to the sound of mechanical feet closing in behind her. Amy slams into the door, bounces off it, and presses the button to open it. She runs through the opening and nearly collides with the center column.
"I need the entry way, the main hall – whatever you call it!" Amy shouts, pressing buttons randomly.
"Garden. Library."
"No… come on!"
Suddenly the door to the gallery opens. Amy glances over her shoulder to see an extended white hand reaching, palm forward. She slams a button down without listening to the location and the door to her far left slides open. Amy twists around a hand-bot nearly at her arm and leaps through the doorway.
Amy's boots echo off the glass as she runs down a blue corridor. Above her the ceiling curves enclosing water on all sides, brightly colored fish, sharks, turtles, and some creature which resembles a peacock with platypus feet swim in zigzags up and down.
"Aquarium," Amy gasps.
The Doctor planned the three of them a trip to the planet of the glowing fish once; "Fish that glow, even in the sunlight! Glow blue, red, qualish and even rainbow!"
"Qualish isn't a color, Doctor," Rory had said.
Amy spots a clownfish, what appears to be a pink tiger shark, and then the door behind her opens again. Amy increases her speed then skids around a bend in the water tubeway. She keeps her back against one wall of glass, breathing hard. Amy sucks air in and clenches her fists. She hears the robotic footsteps drawing closer and closer.
Amy counts silently, 'one, two, three.'
Amy whirls back into view, two hand-bots in front side by side. She ducks down and grabs one arm each, crashing their palms together. The hand-bots stop moving with the slow drone of failing power.
"Three…" Amy whispers as she hears the last hand-bot coming up.
She stands straight, keeping the two dead hand-bots in front of her like a shield.
"Something, there has to be…" she looks down at the floor, up at the curved blue glass.
"Do not be alarmed. This is a kindness."
Amy's instinct kicks in like a switch and she rams into one dead hand-bot, smashing it into the other nearly upon her. Sparks fly, one arm from the moving robot cracks loudly and both tumble to the floor with Amy on top.
Garbled speech filters out of the last robot. "Help – it…. To – help."
Amy grasps the smooth white face and smashes it down against the floor until it stops speaking.
She does not repeat an outing to the 'entertainment zones' for pleasure again.
Amy chose her place to hide, down among the gas and the vents, in the engine room with tall ceilings and relative safety from the hand-bots. It remains her places of refuge even after she looks into other options than just 'sit and wait' as the Doctor instructed. However, it's so open, so empty, just tall engines with pipes and hissing steam and nothing like a bed or a place of rest. She needs a home, some sort of bastardized hotel room, some place to call 'her own' while she's stuck here.
So, she picks one dark corner far at the end of the tall tank-like temporal engines. Casa-de-Amy.
"Like my own flat." She tries to smile as she pulls big, flat broken pieces of metal into a pile. "Walls and a door. Maybe it'll be cozy."
She finds piping, thick metal sheets, what feels like plastic, and heavy rubber then strings it together, not really sewing just looping with wire; add some chains from the engines and what kind of look like hubcaps. It's all a hodgepodge of parts and feels a bit like the wall of some back alley mechanic's shop. She uses a blow torch-like tool she retrieves from a supply shed in the garden to melt parts together then secure her make shift curtain to the top of her arched door way. She lines the inner side with strips of plastic, similar to the thick sheets one sees in the doorways of meat fridges.
"Not so bad." Amy stands on the inside now giving the final appraisal of her days of hard work. She smiles, an ounce of cheer. "I have a door."
Behind her she has a few metal boxes, one for a table and one for a chair. She pulled in a standing metal grate, tall to hang her tools on while she worked. It feels a bit like furniture now though the gray metal boxes on the wall do give the impression it's still just a janitor's closet.
She clears her throat and puts down a spare loop of wire. "It's fine. It'll do." She looks up at the ceiling, looks around at the light coming from the power grid shining through one of her plastic walls. "A place to wait."
Amy spends most days in the engine room, hidden away. Once a day she ventures out to check if anything has changed, any sign of Rory or the Doctor. Amy creeps around the reception area but steers clear of any entertainment zones. Every time she opens the white doors to the under belly of the facility her fingers linger on the smudge of lip stick marking the outside.
Amy's stomach constantly churns and her body aches from the tension which refuses to ease. The dark – the steam, the grit, the rumbling noise – slowly changes from foreboding to comfortable.
Amy fixes pieces which fall off her 'door;' twists the rings on her finger; Finds new supplies to reinforce the walls on either side; braids and unbraids her hair; learns the exact layout, down to every detail, of the engine room.
"Five months." Amy counts in her head but decides not to write tick marks on the wall as if she lives in a prison film. "Really late this time, Doctor…"
Every squeaky sound or rusty turning gear or sudden noise sends shivers up her spine, jolts through her body, and spasms to her legs so she jumps and twitches. Amy devises distasteful and disparaging jokes about Parkinson's to pass more time.
"Come on, Doctor, come back."
Her fists clench and her fingers tap over every surface a rhythm which sounds like the hum of TARDIS engines, a call to hurry up and reward Amy's faith. Do not let her down now.
The interface, her only source of conversation if she desires it, only helps so far. It would love to show her the cinema or tell her about the wonderful beaches available, hardly a comfort. Amy learns through careful trial and error how to ask the right questions.
"Is there a way out?" Not a question which receives a solid answer.
"Do you have a phone?" Another question on the list of 'do not ask.'
Amy works on creativity, "If someone wanted to go outside and enjoy the fresh air?"
"Our simulated landscapes…"
Amy tries asking in different rooms – if she seems relaxed in the spa perhaps the interface will slip up? She tries leading up to the big question with numerous innocuous ones about films available or mountain hiking routes. Always the answers veer down wrong paths from her goal with flight attendant smiles in the tone of voice.
Day after day: 'How do I escape?' 'I'm not sick!' 'Is there a real exit?' 'I have people looking for me!' 'Show me the way out.'
Every plea ends with failure but Amy has always been clever.
"Are the hand-bots always there to help? Do they have some sort of schedule where I can find them… you know, if I need them?"
Questions are not always without success.
"The Automated Medical Assistance Robots are available at all times for aid. Daily rounds are made to all of the entertainment areas on a preplanned schedule.
"Could I get that schedule?" Amy checks her watch to ensure it still works. "With times?"
However, the interface never budges on the most important question of all, providing all the information she would ever need to fill days and weeks with activity and fun – if she wasn't in danger of medical murder at every turn – but never the way to escape.
She never asks if the interface knows the location of a certain rouge Time Lord.
Amy learns about the extra abilities of the robot's fleshy hands and gains a limp in the same near death clash.
She runs down the arrivals corridor – and why did they make it look like an airport – with at least four hand-bots chasing her. They started out so slow and ponderous but Amy is convinced they've gained speed, learned to adapt to her.
"Like the Borg…"
Amy rounds a corner and slams into a large mental case – a box or a machine housing, who knows? She falls and nearly knocks her head into a pillar just to her left. At this rate the robots won't need to inject her to kill her. Amy scrambles to her feet and chances a glance over her shoulder.
"You are carrying unauthorized –"
"Shit!" Amy gasps and ducks just as a hand-bot far too close stabs out with a needle in his hand.
Amy kicks at the ankles of the robot as she ducks doing less damage than hoped but the robot does falter and knocks into the one beside it. Amy takes the five second window to roll to the side and get back to her feet. Then suddenly two more robots materialize in front of her.
"No!" Amy shouts and whirls her head around trying to find a way out.
Not now, not after she's waited so long; they can't kill her now when she knows the Doctor will still come for her!
Amy switches her weight and takes the offensive instead. She ducks down and rugby smashes into the chest of the new hand-bot (it worked once, it can work again) knocking it back into its partner. However, the second hand-bot must have learned her moves because it keeps balance and instead the first hand-bot wobbles back and collapses forward onto Amy. Amy falls with the hand-bot on top of her, the needle in its hand barely missing her arm. The hand-bot makes buzzing, squeaky noises then jolts upright and smashes its heavy metal foot down on her leg. Amy screams as pain shoots through her.
"You are injured. Let us help you."
Amy grits her teeth and wrenches her leg out from the foot of the malfunctioning hand-bot. Tears sting her eyes and the pain increases. Amy slides back toward the wall, tries to get away but too many hand-bots cluster closer and closer.
"Stop!" Amy pleads. "Please, don't!"
She hits the wall and uses it to brace her back and stand up on her good leg.
She puts up her hands. "I'm warning you, don't! You'll kill me!"
"This is a kindness."
Then Amy notices a handle in the wall down and to her left. She is leaning against a door. Amy grabs the handle, yanks open the door and smashes the closest hand-bot in the head with it.
Suddenly a hand touches her neck. Everything around her fogs in an instant; white bleaches out her vision, her hand clenches reflexively on the edge of the door, and a thought flashes through her mind, 'the Doctor should have saved me.' Then she falls back into the blackness.
When Amy wakes up she sees only darkness. Amy shifts and pain erupts in her leg. She gasps but does not cry out. Sitting up slowly, she allows her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She sees a closed down in front of her and hears the gentle hiss of engines.
"Hello? Interface?" Amy asks quietly.
Amy turns and notices she lies on a metal grid. She looks down and sees the tops of the temporal engines far below. After walking the engine room so many times, Amy instantly realizes she is in the opposite corner of the engine room from her own hide out, the upper exit to the south side of Red Waterfall's maintenance section. Amy gasps in astonishment. The hand-bots do not work and neither does the interface this close to the engines.
Suddenly, she touches her neck, remembering the touch of a hand. She tries to recall how much time has passed. Then a switch flips.
"Oh god, the hands." Amy never considered what else the hand-bots might be capable of other than stabbing her with a needle. "The hands make you sleep…"
Amy drops her hand from her neck, looks up at the door – it must have closed behind her as she fell – and down at her injured leg. The notion hits her like a freight train: she only lived just now because of plain dumb luck.
Three years pass before Amy pulls three computer terminals together, shuts off Interface security and changes the rules of the game.
Amy assembles her computer command center in a far corner of the lobby, soft white chairs configured around her as a fort to hide her from view of the hand-bots. (She would gladly have set up base in her own nook but the temporal engines disrupt finer computer work).
"Interface, interest." If she asks the interface for pleasure, for a pass time, then her request is more easily granted. "Computer programming."
"The Two Streams Facility provides reading materials –"
"Got it, download all texts to terminal 22B1," Amy commands.
"Downloading."
Amy pours through screens of data, electronic pages of books, simple programming knowledge, C++, three dimensional out put, user connected communications, APA. Amy digs deeper in to the interface's hard drive to find non-advertized edocs on computer hacking and reformatting. She learns how to crush firewalls and crumble all defenses. Amy instructs herself, Professor Pond of Two Streams: PHD in ingenuity. Her classes last all day and attendance is mandatory.
The interface's clock ticks down slowly toward a changing of the guard.
"Time for the captor to become the captive!"
When the Doctor worked on the TARDIS, sparks flying and wires falling from brand new compartments, his knowledge of 'how to' already existed ready for access in his limitless Time Lord brain. Amy requires some prep but she emulates the fervor, skips sleep which this place denies her regardless. Amy works like a Time Lord, crazy and maybe haphazard but determined to succeed.
Amy types quickly, fingers on three keyboards. "And Amy Pond succeeds."
When Amy breaks through the top layer user interface the first line of data she deletes is 'present resident: designation Amy Pond.' She turns herself into a ghost in the machine.
"How about that, Doctor?" Amy types command: x/y – 2d, command: execute. "Your little Pond is all grown up."
Two weeks of typing after five weeks of class room study; information blocks removed, hand-bots previous file uploads wiped, warning bells deactivated, 'administrative level access' made public; she asks one question:
"Interface, how can I leave the Two Streams Facility?"
A pause, the light shines on her face, "no information available."
Amy visits the last of the entertainment zones known as the 'cultural zone' and gains what becomes the most important tool at her disposal.
The cultural zone contains 'noted' cultures from hundreds of worlds throughout the galaxy. She could learn about the nation of Zalpath from the planet Trifon where the sentiments hatch from tree eggs as adults and de-age into children. Also, a large section tells about the fish of Bloxon who carry on conversations through size and shape of air bubbles. (Amy thinks of the unexplained Jim the Fish). Then there is the section on the Samurai warriors of Japan, Earth.
So, Amy takes a sword.
Amy practices fighting. At first the moves are parry, thrust, block but katanas don't really fit with fencing fancy. So, she watches the videos provided by Two Streams (obviously erroneous as they are) and begins to slice and turn and stab.
"How do you do that, interface?" She stares at the video screen. "That move is not possible! It's al legs."
"The Shanjow move of the ancient…"
"I don't think that's a real word. That contortion is not human; you added that in!"
But she does not stop trying despite how many times Amy trips her self up or cuts her own arm (She quickly wraps wounds and runs for cover should the hand-bots smell blood). She knocks over entertainment stands, ribs her shirt, stumbles too many times from the limp in her leg but will not stop swinging the sword through the air until she gets everything she sees right.
Amy slashes up bushes in the garden when the hand-bots are absent. A number of metal poles in the engine room take beatings. However, Amy learns and learns and the sword becomes comfortable in her hand – like something which should have always been there – becomes just an extension of herself.
"If you could see me now, Doctor," Amy says to the sword in her hands. "You'd probably give me a speech on sword making in old Japan or about the time you met Emperor whom-ever."
The first time Amy interacts with a hand-bot with her sword the fight ends before it even begins. One slice through the legs and the robot crumbles, face plants and winks out. Amy stares at the sword and feels for just a moment as though she has some control over her existence here.
"Fight back…" she mutters.
She stares down at the robot, unforgiving of its fate. Amy pushes the still form with her boot, barely moving the robot despite the force she puts into in. Amy leans over and taps the white shell. She turns to the sword in her hand then back to the robot.
Down in her hide out in the engine room, Amy uses the tip of her sword, a hammer, nails, and thick rubbery thread to make herself a new bit of clothing. It takes her hours of hammering to punch holes in the plastic and metal-like material but she is able to get to get through. A tiny pattern of holes around all the edges allow her to sew the bits together over a mesh grid, pulled taut and tight, so the pieces form an actual chest plate. Amy makes one more smaller piece to support her weak leg. She feels a bit like a knight in the new outfit, the white knight to save the damsel in distress – two parts in one person.
Amy runs a hand absently through her hair then abruptly grips her head – open, exposed, vulnerable. "There must be something…"
Amy combs through scrap metal – copper and tin and bits of piping and chunks which would work well with her door but not her face – until she finds some curve metal mesh. She screws the mesh to a metal circle, adjusts the size to fit snugly around her head. Amy has to marvel at how much of a mechanic she has become, a master at forming scraps into use. Lastly, she butchers her poka dot purple shirt into a soft covering her creation.
She slips the newly made helmet over her head, checking for any blocks to her sight with the new head wear.
"Interesting fashion statement." Her voice sounds robotic and cold through the alien material. "But safer." Amy holds up her sword, stands like a warrior in any action film – legs apart and arm stiff at the ready. "Much safer."
Maybe the Doctor resorts to methods other than violence, would frown dramatically at her home made armor and Samurai sword, would refuse to condone her choice. The Doctor, however, is not here. Amy prioritizes survival over the Doctor's absent, unnecessary approval.
She makes a sonic screwdriver.
"Interface?" Amy crouches behind the counter in the main entry way, as she calls it, back against the reception desks which never have living beings behind them. "Do you know anything about sonic technology?"
A light shines on the glass across from Amy, just above her head at the only angle where the interface can reach her.
"Sonic technology," the voice intones, "used on over 1,000 sentient planets. Scope and level of use varies with the technological advancement of the –"
"Got it," Amy hisses, still fearful of the interface's voice drawing the robots out. "I don't need statistics."
The interface falls silent, waiting for the next question. How unlike a real person, no need to fill the silence or to ask 'well, what do you mean then?' No, just a machine – question and response.
"Can you teach me how to make something?"
The interface, when it comes to anything other than exit doors, is now extraordinarily helpful since her 'reboot.' Amy pulls up schematics, pages through types of technology – she didn't realize there were so many different words for the Doctor's toys – and finds the one that fits.
"Okay. Not so hard." Amy looks up every ten seconds from her computer terminal and her vulnerable position. "I just need parts."
Mobile phone for the base, chip technology – basic to start. The mobile needs some extra oomph though, needs a power crystal, needs a converter to take her battery power and sustain it, change its frequency to sonic instead of electric. Wire. Power. Sonic crystal. Tools.
When she has something to focus on, a task to complete which isn't solely 'stay alive and wait' she feels calm. She spends her thinking moments on 'where could I find this piece' or 'I need some thing to keep the power alive without a wall socket.' She follows the semantic step by step, one thing at time and keeps focus. She does not think things like 'where are you' or 'please come back.'
The first thing she tests the completed screwdriver on the door – message fading with time – to the engine room where she hides; lock and unlock for greater protection. As the edges of her lips quirk up slightly in satisfaction, she peers down at the thing in her hand.
What did the Doctor do with his screwdriver? The end glowed blue, scanned people, scanned rooms, failed to unlock dead bolt doors. Screw drivers pull out screws, take things apart or tighten screws, and keep things captive. The Doctor threw his sonic screwdriver around like a toy, like something he could cast aside and it would not mean the difference between life or death, like something which could easily be got or replaced, happy luxury of a playing child. The mutilated and rebuilt mobile in her hand does not look like a screwdriver at all.
"Sonic probe." She points it at the door again, locking it behind her as she walks through. "A probe. That's what it really is."
Amy learns how to reprogram the robots by accident.
For years the game has been duck and run or stand and fight; not the farce of the Doctor's scampers and flees – just real life versus death. The hand-bots knew she lived there so they arrived far too quickly when ever she ventured far beyond her hide out or the entry way.
Then during one fight Amy takes down two hand-bots. One she slices in the chest while the other she slams to the ground and stabs in the neck. The fall dislodges some connector in the robot because its chest plate pops open. Amy crouches low and inspects the wiring inside.
"Interface?" Amy asks. "How do the hand-bots work?"
"The Automated Medical Assistance robots run on autonomous drives independent from the interface system. Each robot contains standard medical knowledge and facility logs in –"
"Independent…"
Twenty minutes of guess work and poking around through robot guts leads Amy to the robot's black box. The box stays impenetrable at first but Amy takes a chance and sonics it. The data scrambles, asks for input, then starts to give a read out of the robot's recorded memory.
'Resident. Pond, Amy. Incident, OFFLINE: Hostile.'
"I don't think so." Amy sonics it again, tries to erase the whole memory, blank slate.
Then a new option comes up in the 'incident' category: accidental.
"Perfect."
Once Amy reprograms one dead robot she gets an idea. It's a silly idea, sentimental, emotional and soft but she is still sensible enough to know humans are social creatures. Living in solitary confinement leads to madness so company could help.
Amy hunts, for once, instead of hides and when she finds her prey Amy slices clean and quick.
Amy brings the robot back to her hide out and spends a few hours removing the stock of needles in the robot's arms and head, just in case. She reprograms the robot's definition of 'help' to mean 'help her' by listening and obeying what she says.
"Sit. Stay." Amy would laugh at her joke but humor only registers in an academic sense now.
She looks the robot up and down as it stands still in front of her; no hands, no needles, waiting for instructions.
"A good pet but you still look…"
A light blub flickers on in her head and Amy ventures out again on a short quest. She returns with paint. Five minutes later the robot smiles at her.
Amy tilts her head. "Rory. Robot Rory." She breathes in. "Rory is your name, all right? Remember that."
She inspects the robot's face and tries to imagine a different one – pale peach ski, brown hair, perfectly imperfect nose.
"Is this what it was like for you, Rory?" she whispers, "2,000 years, my last centurion, guard to my black box?"
She trails a hand along the curved edge of her robot – white plastic, metal Rory. She imagines Rory's cheek, real and alive man who wore her ring and shared her bed; this face feels hard, cold, empty. Her mouth streamlines and her hand falls away. Rory's painted face does not change.
"But you had a choice, Rory." She closes her eyes. "You had a choice."
The way time passes in this place defies normal day by day time. Night and day are only constructs and Amy ends up using the interface to collate Earth standard time so endless moments turn into years and months and weeks and days.
(She feels a line on her forehead deepen and wonders how Rory will wrinkle and gray, where the creases will appear on his face).
Despite the passing time, like Amy's first week in her tiny white room, she does not eat. Two Streams boasts no restaurants or beautiful banquet halls. The interface never asks about her food preferences and hunger never bothers Amy, yet she misses eating.
"Fish and chips." Amy scouts out the Aquarium and mentally buys three tuna for twenty pound. "With ketchup and mayonnaise."
She sits in the garden, back to a large hedge, deactivated hand-bot by her feet. "Pizza. Extra cheese, tomatoes, olives." She rips a wire and cracks open the black box. "Green peppers and extra oregano and a pint of beer."
"Sheppard's pie." Amy sharpens her sword on a metal rod in her hide away. "Every other Sunday like mum made, burnt edges but still delicious."
She scouts a mechanical closet, prying open a panel in the floor – a chance route to freedom.
"One hot cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit."
Instead of eating Amy slices the head clean off a hand-bot who catches her by surprise. She cannot afford fantasy, no chips or beer or chicken, no fish fingers and custard shared with an imaginary savior.
Robot Rory lives permanently down with her in her home by the engines. At first she thought she might take him out with her as a body guard. However, the robot moves too slowly and without his hands Rory retains no real power. The best her de-hand-bot could do is shield her from the flying needles and she wears armor for those events. Thus, Robot Rory stays home like a house dog.
She returns from scouting missions – rotates through the entertainment zones just behind the scheduled hand-bots to search further for any changes, any crack in the defenses which could allow her escape – and talks to Rory.
"Rory, I'm back."
Sometimes, she hands off her face mask, drapes it over his arms to put away on the tool rack.
"Nothing new today, like every day." She nods as though giving an official report. "Wasn't spotted by any hand-bots this time around."
She sits down on the metal 'couch' and watches Rory slowly reach up and let the mask slide off his arm onto a hook on the rack. Some black paint flakes off his right eye vanishing into dust almost instantly. She needs to repaint his face, not today though. Rory rotates in place, mask put away and faces her. Amy stares at his black painted smile then abruptly stands up.
"Rory, come here."
Rory plods over then stops in front of her when Amy touches his arm.
"Let's try something, copy me, all right, Rory?"
Amy slides her hand up Rory's arm to his shoulder and takes his one arm in her hand. She puts his other handless arm down at her waist, a parody of holding her close. Amy side steps to the left, trying to pull Rory with her but he clunkily steps left against her.
"No." Amy stops. "No, okay, not copy, follow me. If I go left, you go right."
Rory stands still, face impassive. Amy moves over so they stand facing each other again. She steps left with a little dip of her shoulders to imaginary music and Rory steps with her. Then Amy steps forward to continue the box step but she knocks her nose into Rory who hasn't moved.
"Rory!" she snaps. "Back and forward too!"
She tries to step backward instead to complete the square but Rory pulls back a step as well.
"No, no, it's like the left and right. Opposites."
Rory steps forward.
Amy breathes in slowly as her blood pressure rises. She tightens her grip on Rory's arm then steps right, then forward, left and back. Rory follows with awkward, jerky robot steps.
"There," Amy gasps out, "a dance. You can dance, Rory."
She stops and stares at Rory, not her Rory, just a broken robot dolled up. Amy stumbles backward and manages to grab the edge of the metal crate beside her and collapses on top. Tears sting the edges of her eyes and slide down her cheeks. She sniffs, refuses to wipe them away and leaves them to drip off her chin.
This place – the Doctor – even stole dancing from her. She never cries again.
When Amy reaches year twenty-three a bell rings somewhere far back in her mind. She has survived at Two Streams longer than she has lived outside it (crossed time streams and pandorica boxes discounted).
She thinks perhaps she should mourn, should be in pain but she only feels numb.
Amy imagines what might have been.
Amy chooses the green button instead of the red and walks in to find the Doctor and Rory, a boring and white room then a hasty exit on to Appalapachia.
"Ridiculous name for a planet…"
After the Doctor returns and crashes their wedding because she believes him back into being, Amy and Rory spend their honeymoon at the seaside. Amy digs her toes into the sad, blisters with sunburn. Rory practices swimming like a person instead of a three month old puppy. The two of them have sex on every surface in their hotel room, even the balcony – especially the balcony.
"Mai tais or beer, Rory?"
When she and the Doctor return from their beginning days of travel to the day of her wedding instead of the doctor in Rory's stag party cake, Amy jumps out and does a strip tease down to her panties, nearly loosing the bra before Rory pounces on her. Rory's friend complain, shout, then laugh up a storm as they all do rows of shots on the bar to the shouts of 'To Amy and Rory' over and over. They both end up so pissed they nearly miss their own wedding and both sets of parents refuse to let them live it down for years afterward.
"Blood shot eyes and his hair stuck up in the back because he forgot to comb it."
At ten years old Amy wishes for a pony maybe or for a bright blue bike to match her perfect, uncracked walls. Ten year old Amy looks at the stars and thinks of Peter Pan not a flying blue box.
What might have been if not for him.
"A life unaltered by the Doctor."
One day – robots at her back and running because there are four at once and she won't risk an attack so out in the open – a switch flips in her brain. All the resentment, the anger, the fear, the loss of hope suddenly swirls into one large, encompassing emotion: hate.
Amy skids, slams against the wall, sonics open the door and sonics it behind her. She breathes deeply, gasping, not as young as she used to be. She leans heavily on the door and stares into the dimness.
She sees the Doctor, the TARDIS – landing in unexpected places, running for their lives, always the wrong time and always some mistake, barely escaping with their lives. The Doctor who always thinks he's right, who runs around like a child free from the adults, babbling about this fact and that planet and 'oh how amazing.' The Doctor who arrives when he pleases and leaves as he pleases. The Doctor who never thinks about the consequences. The Doctor who makes grand speeches then fails to follow through. The Doctor who saves them only to throw them right back in the path of danger.
The Doctor who always comes back too late until he never comes back at all.
Everything pools, condenses and it's a wonder the switch hadn't clicked over years ago. She is not worried for him, angry with him, or hopeful for his return. No, she hates him. The man who led her here and left her here; she hates the Doctor.
Amy keeps her lipstick.
She never writes with it again, doesn't refresh her message on the door or, for any ridiculous reason, paint her own lips. If her lips shine redder, bright against her pale, sun starved flesh then she could appear sicker to the hand-bots who know nothing of human physiology. She could have used the cylindrical case, made another sonic probe, certainly could have found some use for it.
Yet she keeps the lipstick, years and years intact, fresh. Usually it sits in the back, slid in a corner, lying on its side, dusty. Forgotten.
But once in a while – maybe on one of those rare days when she allows herself to feel wistful and her pulse slows – she picks it up, holds the cool metal next to her cheek and thinks of lips to kiss.
Amy considers ending it – drop the sword, stand still, let the terrifying tender flesh white hand touch her neck, let the 'kindness' come and end her imprisonment. One second, one touch, one injection and it would all be over. She imagines the feeling of slow falling, sweet blackness pulling her under just as the white hand-bots bend over her with needles exposed. She could close her eyes and tell the world goodbye. Leave the constant fight, duck, slice, run, hide – the loneliness – leave hell behind.
She cannot.
All she has is to survive; keep breathing, keep living, fighting, surviving because only she can save herself. And if – if they should come back, if the raggedy Doctor should come back, she wants him to know. She wants him to look at her face, at the lines, the age, the endless time – she wants him to see just what he has done.
Somewhere along the way part of her truly gives up. She stops asking the interface ways to escape, to leave, stops trying to trick it's programming into giving something away.
This is her world now; nothing beyond the hospital halls, rooms for 'pleasure,' and one dark, dirty hide away of safety.
After so many years Amy knows just how to avoid the hand-bots, where they will be when. The horror and fear of her life has turned most things to numbness – empty hours marked only by when she runs and fights and when she does not. So, many days, she will only sit in her little hole, her little prison. She sits beside her robot Rory and thinks of home.
Tall trees with green leaves, with fall leaves – red, yellow, curling brown at their edges; green grass below wet with rain and squishy dirt that gets in the cracks of your shoes.
Sky – blue and gray with clouds, small and puffy or crowded together until it's a classic English day, gray and cold but constant and familiar.
Her little village, her boring village, her village which is brighter than any image. The staircase in her house, the doors, the door knobs, windows, kitchen, the broken chair beside her bed which always wobbles to the left.
Rory playing hide and seek in her house and always finding him behind some door – the closet, the cupboard, the pantry. The boy just thinks doors are best closed with him inside.
Tesco, buying simple things like a coke or two bags of crisps. Bottled water which she should not buy but she's thirsty. Aisles of chocolate biscuits, boxes of cakes, bright packaging in artificial oranges and yellows and blues, all covered in large letters with tiny nutrition facts on the back.
"Macarena…" she whispers into the half light.
Rory who danced better than expected but still with that clumsy gait, more legs than torso.
Driving. Who'd have thought about missing cars? Turning the wheel, the feel of making a familiar piece of machinery move faster and faster, taking those well known village roads too fast. Wind slipping through the window and tossing hair in her face, sunglasses protecting her eyes and the scenery a blur of green and bright light.
Rory with his tight jeans and those poufy vests he never stops wearing, blue, brown, and does he really own one in every color?
London because everyone in the UK goes there at some point even if Scotland beats England in all aspects. Shopping, too many bags to carry but sometimes one just cannot buy enough clothes. Hailing taxis before remembering the underground really is cheaper. Big Ben because tourist photos have to be taken and trying to run the bridge over the Thames in one breath – obviously impossible – and make a wish.
Rory swimming in the lake down the road and pretending it's not really a public park where anyone could see them behaving like pre-teens. Cool water over her whole body, seeping under her swim suit, soaked up in her hair. The feeling of dirt at the bottom, between her toes then accidentally swallowing some water. Splashing Rory in the face just because she can.
Rory under bed sheets – warm and cotton and tangled up. Rory walking over cobblestone, tripping over micro cracks. Rory who's skin felt like a blessing. Rory who she can never hate despite the years, despite the pain. Rory who is so human, so Earth, who is (was) home.
Amy hears his voice.
It sounds far away, another room, another section, not the sort of far away it has always been in her dreams, whenever his voice saying 'I love you' would echo as memory in her mind. No, this is his voice here in her private prison. Rory Williams, her husband, her thin trail of pale hope has come.
She runs. She runs toward danger, toward insanity because she certainly gave up that thin trail of hope years back. She knows she's running for nothing, taking a risk of a needle in the back but she runs anyway, face mask down against the enemy. She rounds a corner, enters the gallery and there he stands across the white expanse as clear as the garden hedges, as her shinning sword, that large magnifying glass she'd nearly forgotten hanging at his side.
It is him. It is truly him – Rory, her Rory.
She stalks silently, closer, right up to his back, just in case. This could be a trick, the robots could have learned, (like Terminator changing appearance to deceive her in the guise of a familiar face) the interface could have been betraying her all along using her own memories as a slowly woven plot to 'heal' her. Sword up, defenses set, ready to fight even the image of the one she loved.
But then, "I come in peace! Peace, peace, peace!" and a tumble of limps in that graceless fashion which always came off endearing instead of clumsy, someone you wanted to hold out a hand to help up without a moment of ridicule.
He looks so very young.
She stares down at him, sword against his neck, disbelief fading cautiously into realization of truth. Her heart beats against her chest, rush of adrenaline in preparation to attack and there in her heart – a dark hole where the warmth, the feeling should be. So many words press at the back of her lips: "I hate you," "I love you," "where were you," "how could you leave me," "don't leave me…"
Instead she says through robotic vocal mechanisms strapped across her face, the protection and form which has taken over her life, she says:
"I waited."