I, sadly, do not own Doctor Who. Rest assured AmyxEleven would be canon if I did.
Arcadia.
When the Doctor had told Amy that's where they were heading, it had conjured marvelous pictures of Ancient Greece to mind, with columns and togas and other Greek-y things. But, of course, that wasn't what the Doctor quite meant. They were, in fact, going to the moon, Arcadia.
"You'll love it, Amy," said the Doctor, offering her his hand. She took it gladly as he continued to babble. "You think Ancient Greece would have been cool? This Arcadia's like the bowtie to your… your… your Greek scarf!"
Amy raised her eyebrow. "That really didn't instill any confidence in me," she said dryly as he pulled her towards the door. He gave an exaggerated sigh.
"Bowties are cool, Amy," he informed her, his face very serious indeed.
"You really are an alien," she said with a slight shake of her head. He sent her a cheeky smile.
"Uh, yeah, we established that back on Starship UK," he said as he unlocked the door. "Amy Pond," he announced, pulling open the door, his tone changing to lofty and grand, "meet Arcadia!" Amy stepped out of the TARDIS cautiously and immediately stopped dead.
Fires raged. There were bodies littered across the open field and she could see destroyed Daleks, with their cases ripped open, in large quantities. Spaceships, some appearing to have been blown apart, some apparently having crashed, were lying, scattered on the scorched ground as if some deity had just dropped them there. All life seemed to have deserted the barren plain.
"Doctor?" she asked. Her voice was deadly quiet, not wanting to disturb the dead. Hot tears stung at the back of her eyelids as she took in the scene in front of her. "I think we've gone to the wrong place." Her voice was choked and difficult to force out.
"No, we can't be," said the Doctor, stepping out behind her. "I checked the co-ordin -" The Doctor froze. No, that wasn't quite true, Amy noticed. He was shaking. "We're in Arcadia, Amy," he said hoarsely. "We're just too far forwards in the time stream. This is the Fall of Arcadia." As he said this, Amy spotted the tears running down his cheeks.
"Oh, Doctor," she whispered, stepping forwards to embrace him. He wrapped her arms around her, burying his face in her hair. She rubbed his back, her hand going around in small circles, trying not to let her own terrified emotions get in the way of the Doctor's need for comfort. The Fall of Arcadia must have been a battle in the Time War, she realized, and squeezed him tighter.
"I killed them all, Amy," he whispered. "All the Time Lords. After this, I realized what the Time Lords were doing and I put them all into a Time Lock. They're all dying, over and over again, because they're stuck there."
"You did what you had to," she replied, even though she knew it wasn't enough. Nothing she said would ever be enough. "It was the right thing, Doctor."
"But I still killed them." His voice was dull, broken, and it made Amy's heart crack in two. "Just like the Daleks wanted to. I'm as bad as them."
"No," she soothed, stroking his back. "No, you're not. The Daleks are hateful and kill everyone in their path. You save people. You help them."
"But what about all the people I've killed? There have been so many…" He pulled back and out of her hug, just giving her this look. For a moment Amy couldn't work out why, but then she understood. He didn't feel worthy of her or of the TARDIS or of anything. She shook her head, and an idea struck her.
"Find me something beautiful," she said, her voice desperate. "Right now. Just one thing. Tell me it."
The Doctor frowned, studying her with an odd look in his eye. Moments passed, and Amy slowly felt her hope fade. Despite all her psychiatrists, she didn't know how to be a therapist. She couldn't help him. She felt like a failure, with crushing disappointment weighing down on her heart. In a moment, she'd have to tell him they had to go back to the TARDIS and hope that the TARDIS would soothe him. He'd go the moment she asked; he'd do anything for her, his Pond.
"Your hair," he whispered. His expression was wondrous, like he was only seeing it for the first time.
"My hair?" She reached up to touch it, wondering if the fires had reached them and set it on fire or something. But no – it was still up in a ponytail (albeit a messy one), and un-burnt. She looked back to the Doctor realized that hadn't been what he meant.
"It's beautiful. Your hair is beautiful," he said, and she almost collapsed with relief. She didn't know how much difference she'd made, but she could only pray that this meant there was one less nightmare for him to face. His eyes were wide and awestruck. He reached out, hesitantly, to touch a strand that had fallen over her shoulder. She pulled him closer and kissed his forehead gently.
"There, you see?" she asked quietly. "You're not like the Daleks. They can't see beautiful things. But you can. You can see the beauty, and the good, in the world, and you help them." Not that she necessarily agreed with his choice of beautiful things, but she supposed that on a burning battlefield, there really wasn't much to choose from.
"Is that enough?' he asked, burying his face back into her shoulder. One of his hands, she noticed, he kept in her hair: stroking it, fiddling with it, just touching it. Absently, she realized that her shoulder was getting wet because of him, but she wasn't going to comment on it anytime soon.
"It is for now," she whispered, pressing a kiss to his cheek. "It is for now."
Happy Amy/Eleven appreciation day everybody!
So this was very much inspired by a scene in the book Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead (the last book in the Vampire Academyseries, which you should seriously all read, it's not nearly as cringe-worthy as the title makes it sound). The particular scene I'm talking about is seriously brilliant to read and accidentally induced a couple of hundred word essay in the tags on tumblr about how utterly perfect it is when I reblogged a gifset of it. Yeah.
It was also a little inspired by the fact that Ten mentions 'The Fall of Arcadia' and Amy mentions Eleven taking her to Arcadia.