Amy Pond was busy. She had been busy since the Doctor had led her out of the Musée d'Orsay and back into the TARDIS and found the monster lying abandoned on the floor of the control room. Why the Doctor had decided to just chuck one of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings around – an original, she might add – Amy didn't ask. She simply picked it up without a word and wandered round the rest of the TARDIS until she found her room. It kept moving, and on days when she wanted to cry herself into oblivion, it was very inconvenient to have to traverse eighteen corridors and two flights of stairs in search of fluffy pillows.
She didn't want to cry for Vincent any more, but she was going to. People had looked at them very strangely in the museum as they stood wrapped around each other, Amy and the Doctor, and she was sure no-one would possibly understand that the reason she was smiling and crying at the sunflowers was because she was the one he painted them for. Her. Amy Pond, a Scottish girl in an English village, sidekick to a Time Lord, almost married to one of the greatest painters of all time. It had been an interesting day.
And that was why she was now in her room with the painting laid out on a table beside her bed. Furniture didn't seem to occupy much temporal space in the TARDIS, in the same way that rooms and libraries and swimming pools didn't seem to stay in one place. The Doctor had told her that if she needed anything in her room to just think it, and it would appear. Something to do with being connected to the old girl's telepathic circuits, according to him – she might not have been paying complete attention at the time. Amy had thought of a chaise lounge because she saw it in a magazine once, and there was one here. Lots of little bits and pieces had appeared, things she never thought she could have, although the TARDIS seemed to have trouble with the 18th century gilt floor length oval shaped mirror she asked for and kept giving her a hideous square relic from the 1970's.
The painting sat in the middle of the table, the black and white a stark contrast to the redwood that surrounded it. The Krafayis growled at her in 2-D, a reminder of what only Vincent could see. She was going to get rid of it, because he had never seen the world in black and white, only in colour, and he didn't deserve to be remembered by something like this.
Still drained, Amy had quietly asked the Doctor if he could put the TARDIS within walking distance of an art shop, preferably in the 21st century. He had nodded and pulled some levers and pressed some buttons as though he knew what he was doing, and after humming and hawing at the monitor, announced that they could kill two birds with one stone. There were some alien eggs causing a spot of bother somewhere; he could deal with them while she went to the shop. Much rattling and moaning of the TARDIS later and they had landed in London on a bright, sunny afternoon.
Amy found a shop that sold all the things she thought she might need. The Doctor had thrown some money at her when he ran out of the TARDIS brandishing a sword, a pair of fins and a tub of margarine, shouting that there were all kinds of currencies for emergencies and to take whatever she needed. The very nice man behind the counter pointed her in the direction of solvents and cloths and a dizzying myriad of tools to choose from. In the end, she bought something that even a complete amateur like herself could use, some brushes, a cloth and an easel to prop the canvas up on. Since the Doctor hadn't told her what kind of situation qualified as an emergency, Amy decided to splash out on a couple of books as well; one on Vincent's life and works, and another one on art restoration.
She waited in the TARDIS for the Doctor to come back, feet propped up on the console in the control room, keeping a tight leash on herself. He rolled in through the front door half an hour later looking like a small boy at Christmas and smelling of lilac – where the sword and the fins went to were never explained. Finally they were off, and Amy retreated to her little place of refuge hoping the Doctor wouldn't start asking questions about what she was doing.
The easel was set up on the table. Jars and pots littered the space round it and everything was tainted by the smell of acetate but Amy didn't care. She had a job to do. She tied her hair up in a ponytail, rolled up her sleeves and consulted the restoration manual. Mixing a little of one lotion with a drop of another potion was easy, and she found herself getting completely absorbed in the task. Finally, everything was ready, and she stood back to take a good look at the painting.
In her mind's eye she could see Vincent, flame haired and eager, sketching as though his life depended on it, the lost, haunted look in his eyes temporarily displaced. Amy sat down on a chair, pulled out one of the cloths and dipped it in the pot in front of her, rubbing gently at the white paint and black charcoal. It dissolved a little, revealing a hint of red underneath.
She worked hard, and as she worked she thought of the artist who had wanted to marry her and have lots of orange-haired children. He was so alive and interesting and wonderful, able to see things that no-one else could, hear what everyone else had closed their ears to. The universe was a magnificent place, and Amy had only seen some of it. Vincent had immortalised it in paint on canvas, to show everyone else what they were missing.
The tears fell, mixing in with the solvent and the paint, making it bitter. She thought they had made a difference, done something good in his life, but nothing had really changed. Shouldn't it have counted for something that he knew what he would become? Her heart squeezed at the thought of the loneliness and despair that led to him taking his own life. What if she had stayed with him? Would that have made the difference?
Amy worked away on the painting, tears flowing freely, her mind buzzing with "what if's" and "if only's" that added to her guilt and blinded her to the truth of the Doctor's words. She had made more of a difference than she realised.
In the darkness of the doorway that Amy never closed during the day, no matter how she was feeling, the Doctor watched her work on the painting. His Amy, mad impossible Amy who remembered things and people that had never existed, was crying and he was at a complete loss as to what to do. In the museum he had hugged her but that didn't seem appropriate now. She was sad, and sad people left. His throat squeezed at the thought of Amy walking out of the TARDIS and never coming back. Trying to be rational, he told himself that he absolutely would not panic over something that hadn't happened yet and might not ever happen because Amy hadn't mentioned anything about leaving. So if he wasn't panicking, why were his hearts beating faster and why had his breathing turned shallow and WHY was he feeling as though that veggie burger was about to make a reappearance?
Ah. He was panicking. That was why. Clenching his fists and willing everything to be normal, he straightened his back and tried to think of all the things to say to Amy to make her not sad. He waited. Nothing. Not a single thing could he think of that would make her tears disappear. In fact, in the museum, he had only managed to make her cry more. Wonderful.
Now that he wasn't panicking quite as much, he knocked lightly on Amy's door and poked his head in, pretending he hadn't been standing there for the last half an hour watching her cry her eyes out. "Amy?" he asked, trying to sound like himself and not some frightened teenager who thinks he might be about to get dumped. That's precisely how he felt, but that wasn't the point. She looked up at him for a second before ducking her head down, trying to hide her tears.
The Doctor stepped into her room, something he had never done before, marvelling inwardly at how like its resident it was. Taking slow steps towards her, he spoke. "We're getting near the Riom system. I thought you might want to take a look… it is, for want of a better word, amazing. No human has ever seen it before…you'd be the first." Amy shook her head and in the most heartrending voice he'd ever heard said "Maybe later. I'm busy." He nodded as though she could see him and then cleared his throat to try and get rid of the lump that had suddenly formed in it. He wasn't sure how much more of seeing her like this he could take. "Alright…I'll be in the control room if you need m-anything," he told her before leaving and resolutely marching himself to the aforementioned control room. He lasted five whole minutes.
With a cup of tea in the best china cup he could find in one hand, and a packet of jammie dodgers in the other, he walked back into her room. As discreetly as he could, he set the cup down on the table beside her along with the biscuits, but she didn't look up. She was getting tired – her head and arms were drooping like some wilted flower. He wondered if he could reach her, find a way to make the connection with her that would ease her heartache and his too. Gently, he reached out and took the cloth from her. "Let me help you, Amy," he half-whispered. He pulled up a chair beside hers and started working on removing the white layer of paint obscuring one of the world's finest masterpieces. The monster was gone, the charcoal completely rubbed away. Slowly but surely, more of the red underneath appeared. The Doctor never noticed time much in general, except when it got lost, so he didn't think to wonder how long he sat there, rubbing at the paint with a very quiet Amy beside him.
The things we do for love, he thought, and then stopped that thought before it ran away down a path that he wasn't wholly prepared for. Finally, it was done, the flowers leaping off the canvas. He could almost smell them. "We have to leave it to dry," he told Amy, and she merely nodded and sniffed. He wanted to hug her or do something to help, but what? "Come on," he said, making a decision. "I want you to see this." He took her hand and pulled her out of the chair. She didn't make any attempt to resist and meekly followed him all the way through the TARDIS to the control room and over towards the doors, still holding his hand. With a glance at her face, the one that he knew so well, he opened the doors.
Amy gasped and stepped forward, careful not to go too close to the edge of the door frame. Her eyes widened, trying to take in everything she saw. There were swirls of light and colour, reds and blues dancing through the blue-black of space, yellows and golds and purples and greens pirouetting in between. As far as the eye could see there was life, a constant loop of wonder. This was what Vincent had seen in the world around him, the wonders of the universe in all its beauty. The Doctor moved to stand beside her and tried not to jump for joy when she took his hand and rested her head on his shoulder. "It's beautiful" she whispered. "Thank you, Doctor." He had never heard her sound so serious or sincere, and tried to answer her in the same vein. "You're welcome, Amy."
For a long moment they stood there, in the doorway of the little blue box, looking out over the Riom system and marvelling at something as impossible and wonderful as their presence here. Amy lifted her head and looked at the Doctor, trying to articulate how she felt. He couldn't resist lifting his free hand and wiping away a stray tear with his thumb. Her eyes closed, and he curled a loop of her hair round his finger.
"Brighter than sunflowers, Amy," the Doctor told his companion.
Amy Pond opened her eyes and smiled.
The End