A/N: This is based after the end of Angels Take Manhattan. Amy and Rory are hands down my favorite companions.
blackbird
singing in the dead of night
There is a split second she can't breathe.
Is it a second? It could be an hour. A day. Months, maybe. Time was never normal anymore.
She isn't going to see him again, she is sure, and it is suffocating. They tricked her. She isn't going to see Rory, she isn't getting her ending, and it is too much, too much, terrifying, choking, and she puts her hands around her head and screams.
There is ground beneath her feet again and she collapses onto it, cold stone, letting the tears pour down her face and the sobs keep coming, not caring, nothing matters any more, not now, not without-
A hand.
A shaking hand, or was she trembling before it touched her? She doesn't know, couldn't know, it's all been wild thoughts and a mess of fear and him; she's properly, properly frightened.
She needs him, and the pain in her heart drowns out the pounding in her head and the stinging in her knees.
The hand moves across her back and under her arm, pulling her gently off the concrete, and there's a voice in the back of her mind- or is it real? An actual voice turned to whispers by the blood rushing through her ears and the pulsing of her heart.
How can it still be beating if it's broken in two?
Disembodied arms wrap around her, engulf her in soft sweater and the smell of grass, of the laundry detergent she always buys, and she lets them, screaming, crying, and she doesn't think she'll stop.
After all these years, she's giving up. There's nothing, no one left to fight for.
Someone else is crying too, she can hear it now, and something heavy rests on her shoulder.
The weight of the world, she thinks, and it doesn't help the tears to stop.
"Amy."
The quiet voice is playing tricks on her. It sounds like him.
Him.
"Rory," she chokes out.
If she says his name enough, maybe he'll come back to her. Stranger things have happened in all of space and time.
"Rory."
"You shouldn't have come."
She opens her eyes to nothing but sweater and darkness, but it all comes rushing back.
Raggedy Man and the TARDIS blue, and Melody was there, her Melody, and the Angel with its stone smile, and the "Come along Pond," and she'd cried, but he wasn't there and it wasn't right.
And she was afraid. So afraid.
If she pretends everything is going to be fine, maybe it will be.
"I couldn't have stayed," she whispers, either to the voice or herself, and it is confirmation of what she already knew.
A finger runs across her cheek, wiping the warm tears from her skin.
"Where are we?" she asks because she can't open her eyes, can't check, because if it's not him she doesn't think she'll be okay, definitely not okay.
"New York, 1938, I think. World War II hasn't even happened yet. Good thing we know how that one ends." He laughs and it tugs at the shattered pieces of her heart.
The arms loosen a little and the sky is piercing her vision, the midnight sky, and she remembers that there are no stars in the city. Not like Leadworth at all.
"Where do we go from here?" She hesitates, slowly lowering her head, lowering her eyes. The sigh leaves her soul when it's his face, his face, that smirks down at her, and her heart beats a little slower.
The realization hits them both at the same time: they have nothing tying them down, not even names. Not here, not in 1938. He holds her hand, kissing her knuckles softly. "Anywhere we want, Amelia Williams."
He holds her close, arm wrapped protectively across her shoulder.
They wander into the bright city lights and it feels less like the end of everything and more like starting over.
take these broken wings
and learn to fly.