An Honest Misunderstanding

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who.

"Amy, may I speak to you for a moment?" Rory requested after he had finally managed to track down his wife in the TARDIS after her latest kidnapping. He was thrilled that she was alright and yet he really did have to wonder about something and figured that enough time had passed for him to be able to ask her about it without being insensitive.

Amy swam over to the stairs and climbed out. "Course you can. What's up?"

"Do you remember when the aliens that kidnapped you had you read off a ransom note?" Rory asked her.

Amy nodded, a small grin forming on her face. "I remember."

Amy, being Amy, had decided to completely ignore what she was supposed to do – after assuring them that she was fine – and had instead started telling them all about the man who she knew would come to save her.

"You were talking about me being the one who you knew would come for you, right?" Rory asked uncertainly. Every other time Amy had been in a position like that it had ended up being him she was referring to but this time it had sounded so much like the Doctor that it was ridiculous.

"Of course I was!" Amy assured him. "It's always your stupid face I'm waiting to see coming to take me back to the TARDIS."

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Rory said slowly. "Only…"

"Only what?" Amy asked curiously.

"Do you really have no idea just how much it sounds like you're talking about the Doctor?" Rory demanded.

Amy frowned. "It doesn't sound even remotely like I'm talking about the Doctor."

"Amy, you told them that 'he has died again and again but he hasn't let that stop him'," Rory pointed out.

"And?" Amy asked blankly.

"That obviously means the Doctor with his ten and a half regenerations," Rory told her.

Amy looked confused. "I'm sorry but did you say 'ten and a half'?"

Rory nodded. "Yeah, the Doctor told me about this one time that he almost regenerated but fortunately had his own severed hand just lying around and channeled the regeneration energy into that, thus turning it into a human clone of him. If he hadn't and regenerated then then we would have met a completely different Doctor when he died again and regenerated right before he met you."

Amy stared at him. "The Doctor's life is really weird. It seems a lot less weird when you're actually there but when you just hear about it after the fact…weird."

"I assure you, the story of how I died, never existed, was reborn as plastic, accidentally murdered you, and waited two thousand years until your younger self's touch brought you back to life after which we rebooted the universe and I was human again sounds just as strange if not more so," Rory replied.

"But we were there and it really wasn't that weird," Amy argued.

"We rebooted the entire universe," Rory repeated.

Amy shrugged. "These things happen. And anyway, I wasn't talking about the Doctor's regenerations at all," she insisted.

"Then what were you talking about?" Rory asked skeptically. It wasn't that he didn't want to believe her, it just really sounded like she'd been referring to the Doctor.

"Rory, you must have died at least have a dozen times by now," Amy pointed out. "And look, you haven't let it stop you!"

"Most of those 'deaths' didn't really count," Rory countered. "They were either dreams or fake-outs or I was brought back through normal means."

"They counted to me," Amy disagreed. "And I was quite upset by them. I've only seen the Doctor die once and he didn't get a chance to regenerate so why would I be thinking of him when I said that he wouldn't let death stop him? You're clearly the person I was talking about."

"Well, what about when you said 'and I love him no matter how many years I had to spend in therapy because of him'?" Rory challenged. "Your Aunt Sharon – or your parents, depending on the universe – put you in therapy because you wouldn't stop telling everyone about the Doctor."

"Actually, Aunt Sharon – and then my parents – needed a babysitter because they were going to be gone for an entire weekend and your mum suggested Karen," Amy reminded him. "She came into my room and saw all my Doctor dolls and drawings and then when she saw us playing Raggedy Doctor she asked you if I really believed in all of that and you told her yes, thus causing her to talk my guardians – whoever they were – to take me to a psychiatrist."

"What was I supposed to do?" Rory demanded. "I was just a kid; I didn't want to lie to an adult!"

"And that is why when I think of someone whose fault it was that I had to spend years in therapy, I think of you," Amy concluded.

"Me?" Rory still couldn't believe it. "But what about whoever took you to therapy in the first place? Or Karen for talking them into it? Or the Doctor for taking so long to come back?"

"Don't be silly," Amy said serenely. "My family and Karen were only trying to help me and they were grown-ups anyway so of course they wouldn't understand. And the Doctor is absolutely terrible with time and never ends up where he wants to go. Plus, there were a few years when I didn't even believe in him anymore. You were supposed to be my friend and to believe in me!"

"You know I've never had much of an imagination," Rory said apologetically. "The Doctor says I see things as they are, not how they should be."

"And I spent years in therapy because of it," Amy said tragically.

"You could have just, you know, not told everyone about the Doctor once they didn't believe you," Rory tentatively pointed out.

"I was a child!" Amy exclaimed. "How was I supposed to know to do that?"

"But…but I was a child, too, and-" Rory stopped and shook his head. "Never mind. What about when you said that 'no matter what happened, I never regretted running away with him on the night before my wedding'? You ran away with the Doctor on the night before our wedding."

"Well yeah," Amy admitted. "I can actually see how that might have confused you but since I was clearly already talking about you, I didn't think it would be a problem. Plus why would I ever regret running away with the Doctor? If I did, I wouldn't still be here, after all."

"So it was only me that you might have regretted running off with," Rory realized, not pleased. "Not that we even really ran off…"

"But we did!" Amy insisted. "I ran away with the Doctor but then we came back and the Doctor went to go find you and then we ran off together again. I never regretted taking you with us, even though it all went so wrong for awhile. That's all I meant."

"What about 'I was a child when I first saw him, already grown, and already knowing exactly how to make an entrance'?" Rory inquired. "Because I wasn't an adult when we first met and the Doctor crashed his TARDIS into your shed."

"And in that alternative universe where everything was ceasing to exist, I first saw you when you shot that Dalek that was going to kill us," Amy explained. "We all thought you were just a security guard and we needed to protect you but you protected us instead and older me and I had just heard all about the Last Centurion…I was definitely impressed."

"What about 'I never had much faith in people once my parents were gone but he helped give me my faith back when he kept his promise'?" Rory asked her. "You started believing in people again when the Doctor eventually came back. I saw the change in you over those two years after Prisoner Zero before he took you with him. You finally started admitting that we were together and agreed to marry me."

Amy shook her head yet again. "But he didn't keep his promise. He said five minutes, it took twelve years. He may have come back eventually but he didn't promise me eventually."

"Then what…?" Rory wondered.

"You," Amy told him earnestly. "You're the one who promised that you'd never leave me and you never did."

"I did die," Rory pointed out.

Amy rolled her eyes. "I'm not so unreasonable that I'd count that. And even then, you still found your way back to me and found your way back into my memory."

"I…well then," Rory said awkwardly.

"You really thought I was talking about the Doctor with any of that?" Amy asked incredulously.

"Strange as it sounds, I really did," Rory told her dryly.

"Well don't next time because unless I specifically say that I'm talking about the Doctor, know that I'm talking about you," Amy said firmly.

"Should we really be planning on a next time?" Rory asked her. "That seems a little morbid."

Amy shrugged. "Better morbid than unprepared."

Amy may have the most bizarre way of describing him, but just the same (and though he'd never admit it to her) Rory liked the fact that he was the one Amy had chosen to threaten the aliens with. He just hoped he could continue to live up to her faith in him.

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