Fixed Point
It wasn't supposed to happen like this, but it did, and it has, and there's no changing it now, I suppose.
In another life, he whispers into my hair, words spilling over my temple and brushing my eyes shut, in another universe, with an alternate reality and a different you and a different me, we would have been together.
In this life, though, my entire existence has been racing towards this point.
And there's no changing it now.
[*]
His name is John Smith.
I'm seven and he's moved into the house behind mine, and as I'm swinging in my backyard he climbs the tree overhanging our fence. His hair flops in front of his eyes and he tears his shirt on a branch of the tree and doesn't even seem to notice.
He asks what my name is and I tell him, because he's the first new thing in Leadworth since me and that's definitely something to be exited about.
Amelia Pond, he repeats after me, tasting my name on his tongue, like a name in a fairy tale.
I like him immediately.
[*]
He's the new boy at school and I feel important because I'm the only person he knows and that means I get to show him around and answer any questions he has. It goes really well, until he tells me I have funny hair and I stomp on his toes.
He still sits next to me in art class, but he points out all the mistakes I make when I try to draw my family. I glare at him and work even harder to prove him wrong. Miss Peters says I've done the best work in the class, but John whispers that I still got the nose wrong. I scratch a line of red crayon right across his drawing of his new house and call him stupidface, but he just laughs.
[*]
That night he climbs the tree again, making sure not to rip his shirt this time. He calls out to me and I studiously ignore him, still seething over the art incident. He stretches onto his stomach and rests his head on his folded arms, staring at me with curious blue eyes.
When I ask him if he's alright he completely misses my sarcasm and mistakes my words for an invitation. He tries to jump out of the tree but falls instead. The bones in his left arm crunch painfully as all of his weight lands on them alone, and he makes a weird sort of howling noise as soon as he hits the ground, clutching his arm to his chest and scrunching his eyes shut.
He gets a bright yellow plaster cast and as all the kids at school sign it he tells them I broke his arm like it's something I should be proud of.
[*]
The plaster comes off five weeks later.
He climbs the tree and drops into my backyard every night after that.
[*]
He doesn't like bread and butter but he does like fish fingers and custard because he's weird, but neither of us like apples unless my mum's carved smiley faces into them, so I can forgive him his strange taste.
We play dress ups and I make dolls out of toilet rolls and icy-pole sticks and John invents fantastic worlds for them to visit. He plays a character called the Doctor and my title is The Girl Who Waited.
Waited for what, I have no idea, but I have more fun playing these games with him than I've ever had before.
[*]
He wants to be an astronaut when he grows up. He wants to travel through space and see the whole entire universe.
I tell him that that's silly, because it's much too big and he'll never have time to see it all.
He tells me that time must go slower in space, because otherwise the planets couldn't be as old as they are, and I believe him because it seems to make sense.
When he asks me what I want to do when I'm an adult, I tell him that I'm never going to grow up.
[*]
A few weeks later I ask him where he comes from and he scratches his cheek nervously and laughs, but it's not a proper laugh at all.
He mumbles something silly before changing the subject, asking if I want to play football with him. I say yes, even though I know I'll be terrible at it, and when he wins 5-0 I let him brag for a full hour before I kick him in the shin.
[*]
John is popular at school, always regaling the other students with madcap stories of adventures he had before coming to Leadworth, in far off fantastical places.
Everyone thinks his stories are great, but they don't know that he saves the best ones for me. He sits in my tree and spins tales of fairies and princesses fighting dragons and saving worlds, and I fall in love with every word.
[*]
We're nine and sitting across from each other at my kitchen table eating ice-cream straight from the tub when he tells me that he thinks I'm the prettiest girl in school.
I just roll my eyes and tell him to give the tub back to me, but inside I feel a sort of warmth I've never experienced before bloom and spread throughout my chest, along my extremities and up to my face, which suddenly feels uncomfortably hot.
John smiles knowingly and takes his time in passing the ice-cream.
[*]
He wears stupid jumpers with the weirdest patterns knitted into them, stitches of off-white and navy blue crossed with evergreen and shockingly bright crimson.
Red, like your hair, he tells me on a day he's wearing a particularly garish one.
I scoff. My hair is not that colour.
No, you're right. It's much uglier.
[*]
For his eleventh birthday I buy him a bow tie, because I saw it in a shop window and thought it was just as ridiculous as him.
It's dark blue, my favourite colour, and it turns out that he loves it so much he goes out and buys himself a matching burgundy one.
All he needs now is the tweed jacket, and he'll look like an old man trapped in a young boy's body.
[*]
To my horror I start to grow up, no matter how much I try to fight it.
My limbs stretch, until I'm all long legs and thin arms and flat chest and I feel awkward being half a head taller than John, but then a week later he's caught up again, almost as though he willed himself to grow to catch me.
[*]
We're a right proper duo for all our adolescence, never one without the other.
It's always Amy-and-John, John-and-Amy, as though we no longer exist as beings in our own rights but have become one.
I draw him a picture of us stitched together in one of his worst jumpers, making a point to colour my hair a much nicer shade than the pattern. When I give it to him he tells me it's lovely but I still can't draw noses, and I punch him in his.
[*]
He pulls me to him like a magnet, like he's the sun and I'm a lowly planet orbiting him, round and round in circles but never close enough to touch.
The attraction thrums in the air whenever we're in the same room, a tangible thread tied around our souls and tugging us together.
[*]
Every year for my birthday he gets me a bouquet of sunflowers.
I don't remember ever telling him that they're my favourite.
[*]
One day we're walking home from school when it starts to rain and we have to run for cover. He nearly slips on the wet concrete and I grab his hand to stop his arms from pin wheeling and help him regain his footing, and I don't let it go until we're safely under the cover of my front stoop.
The cloud of fog from his breath hits my lips and I can almost taste him, and my heart is beating so loudly surely he must be able to hear it and oh god is he really going to kiss me and –
He pulls back and clears his throat and scratches his cheek.
I blink.
And then he runs away, back out into rain and around the block to his own house.
I don't feel angry, I feel disappointed.
And everyone knows that's a million times worse.
[*]
We wile away our afternoons with useless things like television and procrastinating over our homework, because we're both clever and we know that we'll get it done, in the end.
We pretend that things didn't come dangerously close to changing completely that night outside my front door, and we manage for the rest of term.
I go away for the Summer, back to Inverness to see my extended family, and John calls every night while I'm away.
I tell him about when I saw Nessie at the Loch and he tells me that he saw a meteor and then we fight over whose story is more plausible.
It's the same as always, really.
[*]
We're going to travel the world, John promises when I get back and Leadworth feels even smaller than before.
He steals – borrows – an blue van from the junkyard, and while he acknowledges that it's old enough to be a museum piece he assures me it still has life in it yet. He affectionately nicknames it Sexy, and he starts working on it whenever he has a spare moment, fixing it up with the aim of having it roadworthy by the time we finish school.
I offer to help but he insists that I just watch, so that becomes our routine for a while; John fixes the van and I perch myself on the bench in his garage and watch him work, and we sing whatever songs we can think of to pass the time.
I tell him he looks cute with grease smeared across his cheek and he tries to pretend he isn't pleased.
[*]
The other times I broke John were okay, because the breaks were physical and minor and his nose looks cute with that bump in it, yeah, much better than it did before.
This time, when I break him it's a total accident, but I think that just makes it worse.
[*]
Rory has been in my class for years but he got a haircut and grew a few centimetres taller over Summer and suddenly he seems really interested in me.
John grumbles about how all the girls are interested in Rory simply because they don't know better, pointing out that he has a rather large nose and can't seem to walk too far without tripping over his own feet.
When Rory finally asks me out I almost say no, but then I realise that John's had years to make a move and hasn't yet, so I tell him sure, I'd love to go on a date with him Friday night.
John trips over a chair when I try to nonchalantly tell him, and makes a rude comment about how I've always had a thing for noses that aren't quite right.
I yell at him to go look in a mirror as he stomps off, and only realise once he's gone that my meaning may have been easily misinterpreted.
[*]
Where John is all sharp angles and moody browns and burgundies offset by shockingly intense blue, Rory is all warm, bright yellows and soft, welcoming features, and I find myself opening up to him quicker than I imagined.
He's quite nice, really, and so when he starts calling me his girlfriend I don't correct him.
Until John mentions that it's weird that I'm someone's girlfriend now, and the way he says it makes my stomach twist unpleasantly.
Sort of girlfriend, I correct quickly. I'm only sort of Rory's girlfriend. It's not really official, or anything.
He tries to hide it, but I see him smile at that.
[*]
Until it is official.
We're nineteen and school's done and John's signed up for and dropped out of four different undergraduate degrees, Rory's become a nurse and I'm a kissogram.
Everyone's disappointed but no one more than John, who shakes his head and tells me that I was a little girl, five minutes ago.
I'm definitely not a little girl anymore, though, because Rory proposes and before I can think too much about it I say yes.
John takes Sexy and disappears without warning, and I stare out my window and wait for him to drop into my backyard again, but he doesn't come back.
[*]
He does come back though, the night before my wedding.
He falls out of the tree again, crashing onto the shed we built underneath it years ago, and the noise startles me awake.
It's been two years and I can feel every single second of his absence like an individual hole in my heart and I can also feel an unbearable joy at his return and all the possibilities he brings with him.
When I get out into the backyard I'm still in my nighty and he's wearing his blue bow tie and he's waiting for me. He tells me Sexy is out the front and he's ready to go. I have no idea what he's doing or what any of this even means, and when I tell him so he looks at me with a mixture of smugness and nerves that I didn't think was possible. It means, well… It means come with me.
But I can't, I have – I have things I have to do and responsibilities and I grew up.
John looks wounded. He shakes his head and says, not to worry, I'll soon fix that.
And then his hands are around my waist, curling around my ribs and pressing the bones together until it feels as though they're interlocking, creating a cage around my heart to stop it from jumping right out of my chest, which it could be prone to do at the rate its currently beating.
His lips brush against mine and I exhale and he breathes me in, and my skin burns beneath his touch until we're melded together. He tastes like smoke and stardust and now that it's started I can't stop it.
I don't want to stop it.
[*]
John drives us out of Leadworth and I stick my head out the sunroof and reach for the stars shining above us, and John steps on the accelerator until we're flying along, the entire world zooming by in the blink of an eye and yet going so slowly in comparison to us.
His hand holds my ankle steady, keeping me grounded. He's my only connection to the rest of the Earth and the only thing stopping me from floating away.
I laugh as the wind catches the sound, throws it over my shoulder and lets it tangle with my hair. John laughs too, a noise that starts out as a low rumble and spills into a joyous chuckle.
He laughs and laughs and looks up at me, tugs on my ankle to pull me back inside the van. He's so focused on me he doesn't see the turn coming up, and that's when we lose control.
[*]
The world tumbles over itself, twisting in and blurring out of focus and swirling into a shining nebula of screeching tires, crushing asphalt and screaming metal, crunching in around us until I can't breath.
I fold in to John's arms and he holds me tight, cradles my head and smothers my screams in his jumper as we roll and roll and roll until I'm overcome by my fear.
There's a particularly loud crash, drowned out by John's erratic heart beat in my ear.
And then there's nothing.
[*]
Red.
Red-red-red, like the colour of my hair, the fire burning in my soul and down my limbs, like John's jumper, a scratch of crayon over a crudely drawn house, like metallic blood pooling in my mouth and sticking to my skin.
It's ugly.
[*]
I scream, but no sound comes out.
John is above me, blurred at the edges and with a crooked nose, but there nonetheless, and I feel his hands cupping my face but they seem detached, somehow, like they're a natural part of me rather than a part of him.
Oh, so this is how it works, he's saying, words slow and sad and dripping with regret. Even when you choose me I don't get to keep you.
I want to reply, to tell him that of course he can keep me, I'm his forever, I've always been his. Since I was seven and he dropped out of the sky and into my life I've been lost to him.
But I can't because Time's running out and there's too much Space between us even as he presses himself against me. His heart beats quadruple for every single beat of mine, and I know that that's wrong but I can't remember why.
He gasps, as though the oxygen is leaking out of his lungs too, Come back, Pond, please.
[*]
Twenty-one years all building up to this one defining moment, the very last page of my life, lived in the cozy cocoon of John's embrace with the reassurance of his lips against my forehead.
I don't want to say goodbye, but I do, because he deserves at least that.
Maybe next time I'll be reborn into one of those lives where we get to be together.
a.n. i've been reading a lot of amy/eleven and matt/karen au's lately, and i guess you can blame this on that. it's a bit weird and yeah, i can't really decide if i like it not. let me know what you think, please?