Author's Note: Set sometime between "Victory of the Daleks" and "The Time of Angels". Title stolen from "Across the Universe", by the Beatles.
Off the southern coast of Venus, the universe comes crashing to a halt.
It's one of those things you watch at home, really: stop, rewind, eyes glued to the television set as it replays in slow motion, the whisper that reverberates around the room - did that really happen?
This is Amy Pond and, nine times out of ten, it really does. The Doctor has a theorem about it –- the law of possibilities, altered to fit the time-space continuum and the fact that most aliens have a special kind of hatred for him. There's his laugh, stretching from child-like amusement to insanity; there's the dancing of his fingers, not quite in time with his two heartbeats as he works it out –- if we go to Hogwarts in 1985, there's no chance you'll get blasted away by any sort of incendiary spell. It means you won't get to meet, who was it, Harry Potter, though. And Amy smiles; like always, her lips stretch shut, halting her sighs. It's too easy to remember when possibilities meant job applications and Rory, not almost-kind-of-certain death.
It's not like it should be a problem - they save the planet, they always do. There could be a best-selling instruction manual if it wasn't for the slight –- it's just down here, Amy, I know it is –- detours and that time the Doctor started herding all the sheep out of town with a kazoo. But the detail's in the little things they can't write about, the Doctor proselytising about bowties and his veins pressing against her skin as he entwines his fingers with hers like an offering; here, have a piece of my heart.
It's not being the heroine of the universe that bothers her – really, it's not. It's the fact that the universe needs saving at all. The Doctor would laugh at that, say she's a little too big for her sneakers –- his grasp of idioms is improving, or so he thinks. Really, it's his fault, it's always his fault; he makes all his companions feel like this.
Caught somewhere between Andromeda and the French Pyrenees, it's so easy to forget that there were others before her. And that maybe, they too felt like this. The Doctor has a past, but it's tucked into his breast pocket like an undying secret, not traipsed like dirt throughout history. He hides the bits and pieces of himself from the universe, with its insatiable need to draw him in; mostly, he hides the bits and pieces of himself from them.
Perhaps, Amy thinks, she should understand this. But the world, like a bracelet made of chains, slips slowly through her fingers. Like sand in an hourglass, it's impossible not to quantify the gentle shifting of these things, measuring impact and abrasion, the way the universe moulds itself to her, slipping slow, slow, slowly out of her control. Around her, the world is still reacted upon by centrifugal forces and gravity; in this world of constants, only one thing has changed.
The Doctor slides up beside her now, fingers fiddling with his bowtie as he hovers precariously on the edge. His joints crack wearily, contorted with exhaustion; Amy knows the feeling. Pressure tugs at the creases of her skin, it stretches to accommodate the truths of her. The world feels so much weightier when it's up to you to save it.
"We did it, Amy Pond," he says, and his voice is like a rainbow, an amalgamation of happiness; it splits into strands, a cacophony of joyousness and something almost like contentment. Rory, the doctor (the other doctor, she reminds herself, as if she could forget), he could dissect these things. But Amy, Amy just marvels and forgets that sometimes, they're fleeting. Sometimes, the stigma of salvation is too much to bear.
"We did," she says. "You, me and a really long hose. I wonder what we could achieve if we really put our minds to it," she says, a finger flush against her cheek in the pretence of thinking. She doesn't have to think about it, she knows. The Doctor and Amy, wonderful, but dangerous –- wonderfully dangerous, like a dying star, all eyes drawn to disaster.
"Well," he says. "Did I ever tell you about that time I singlehandedly fought off a pixie on Callisto? We could try that again, except… maybe not, because I really angered Zeus that time, fiddling with his planet's moon and all, and… Amy Pond? Amy Pond. I know exactly where to take you next. I always forget, though -– is it rude to assume these things?"
"A little," she laughs. "But come on; show me what you've got." It's a little too easy to be the Amy Pond of old, slipping in and out of costumes like a masquerade, her mouth open a little too wide, her eyes lingering just a little too long. Even in 1920s America, it's the twenty-first century somewhere; they called her a homewrecker with the stain of disapproval on their lips.
"What I've got?" the Doctor laughs. "Amy Pond, I've got the world's best spaceship at my disposal - even if some of the circuits are a little… in need of repair, and you're asking me to show you what I've got?" He's an enabler, in even the most basic of terms. Already, he's striding back towards the TARDIS, all gangly legs and exuberant smile as he waves her onwards, upwards, into another dimension, out of control. Sometimes, she feels as though that's the only direction that the TARDIS (and her life) can take.
It's a scenario she knows all too well. Practical and pragmatic, Amy Pond is not.
"Does it ever bother you?" she asks. He's silent. It weighs upon them –- the truth of these things. Like Atlas - she's going to meet him one day, the Doctor's promised - the burden sits awkwardly across her shoulders; she buckles under the strain -– not of the earth, but of consequences and choices. Amy rolls them over in her palms, inspecting each one thoroughly, passing judgement -– the Doctor, Rory, two men who can drive her to distraction.
In their past, in their future, another planet dies, another race is left behind to dig through the crumbling ashes. For the Doctor, the grief that comes with failure - and all too often, with success - rests tangibly upon him, manifesting themselves in his dalliances, in that over-enthusiasm that leaves her gasping for breath, struggling to keep up. Amy almost - almost is the key word, she once was a kissogram and before that she was a girl who had her heart broken; there's little dignity in these things -– feels as though her own moral dilemmas should leave her ashamed.
"Bother me?" he asks, deftly piloting the TARDIS around an asteroid as it plunges in slow motion towards another planet. "Of course not. We saved the world, Amy Pond, with all its daft –- wonderful, but really daft –- people. And," the Doctor adds, dancing on the spot as he searches through the pockets of his coat, "where –- oh yes, here we are – I got the Prime Minister's number. Says it could be a political disaster, but he's going to text me. Imagine, Pond, all of Britain's best keep secrets, in a little three by three inch screen."
"Doctor, they usually keep their state secrets, well... secret," Amy says. "There's a few little things called accountability and corruption –- wouldn't have to worry about those on Mars, though, would we? It's all just space rangers and guns out there." The Doctor sighs. "Oh don't tell me Doctor, don't tell me -– there really are space rangers on Mars?"
"Well, humans do colonise Mars in about 2050 -– I've been there, you know? There was this virus, and it was incredible, Pond, incredible –- these people, they had water gushing out of them, can you believe it?"
She can. It's a macabre thought at best - although it would be even worse if she knew the truth about what happened there. In the midst of her own conflicted feelings about everything –- an image of Rory ebbs slowly towards the surface in her mind - she forgets that the Doctor struggles with his own demons too. In some cases, his are actually a little more real than most.
"But space rangers, Doctor? Space rangers?"
"I hate to disappoint you, Pond, but they're just a bunch of grown men running around in suits. It's hard to take them seriously when they change colours all the time, too. Their costumes would really be improved with a bowtie, or maybe a fedora -– I've always wanted a fedora, Pond, can you imagine it? And they really need to come up with a respectable catchphrase. Something like -– Geronimo!" The Doctor says it several times with different inflictions, and Amy can't help but be reminded: sometimes, saving the world comes down to syntax, the little nuances.
She thinks of Rory, now -– the way he tapped his fingers against the kitchen table, an asymmetrical rhythm, not quite in time with his heartbeat. She misses that about him; like two halves of an orange that don't quite line up, he's a contradiction in parts. But there's also other contradictions, the parts of Rory that ring sharp like a church bell versus the parts of him that are muffled like the cries of mourners; their colour beguiled by the traps of time, it leeches slowly away.
"It's my wedding tomorrow, Doctor," she says. She'll admit, she's not sure what to expect from him -– a reprimand, instant validation. His reaction to her being a kissogram aside, she's not sure where he stands on the big issues.
"I love weddings," he says. "Especially when they have cake. There's going to be cake, Pond, isn't there?"
"Of course there's going to be cake, Doctor," she says. "But seriously, it's my wedding tomorrow, Doctor. I'm tying the knot, getting hitched, or whatever you call it in outer space. Don't tell me," she says, jabbing the Doctor jovially in the chest, "that Time Lords don't celebrate weddings."
Later, she'll understand why he sighs when she says this – somewhere, not too far from here, he met Donna Noble at a wedding -– her own, in fact. Somewhere, not too far from here, the past, present and future will collide with his wedding to River Song. For now, however, she just takes it as an affirmation. For now, all she knows is that there's here and now -– and then there's Rory, at first like an innocent bystander in her mind; now, he pushes himself through the crowd.
Like standing on another planet for the first time, that slight shift in pressure pushing upwards through her, knocking her off her feet - that's what Rory did, isn't it? Little Amelia Pond who was always afraid of falling and couldn't abide by fairytales, he swept her up and set her back down again, the pressure bubbling in the tips of her fingers and in her joints where he touched her, her body swelling towards his as he kissed her.
"Of course we celebrate weddings," the Doctor's telling her now. "I might be 900 years old, Pond, but I'm not a bore." And she's sort of half-listening and nodding, because this –- this is it. This is it. Like a disease, all his companions have caught it really –- Amy Pond, she's got an insatiable taste for adventure. She thinks of her own past, her own present, her own future –- it was kind of inevitable, really; from the day she met the Doctor, the girl with a shock of red hair that couldn't be scared, she was destined for this. The problem: destiny's a little more difficult to predict when the timelines of your life are split into strands and tangled together like this.
It's a little too easy to be a flirt, to act like these things come without consequences when tomorrow's ten thousand light years and a whirring of the TARDIS' engines, and yesterday can be erased in the space of a single heartbeat. Amy remembers Rory, during university, telling her scientific truths about the size and power of the human heart. Truths she found just as fascinating –- still does –- as the planets that lay in wait for her; it's too easy to forget that these days, the world's at her disposal. The heart, she remembers, is a fragile muscle, so prone to exhaustion; and here -– Amy holds Rory's, the Doctor's (and there's a truth here, one that changes everything, and nothing at all), arms outstretched, her palms curling under the force as she struggles to weigh them up. Like Atlas, once again –- such intimate knowledge of the world can be a constant burden.
Two men, and a million choices. Somewhere in the vast outer reaches of the Milky Way, a planet's rotational orbit grinds to a halt and saving its citizens -– Amy Pond, she's good at that, at least. She takes the Doctor's hand in hers, clammy skin and bulging veins rising up to meet her, and all around her, time splits like DNA, twisting into strands again. And as the TARDIS shoots its way back into outer space, there's one thing Amy Pond knows with certainty -spaceship manuals and instruction books don't come with step by step instructions for how to fall into (or out of) love.
(In the latest timeline, this comes later –- sometime before 28th century Paris, but after bowties and weddings, at least. For now, Amy Pond's got a planet -– and her own heart – to save.)