Amy blinks. One moment, she's standing before the Doctor, with tears in her eyes and a sour fairway on her lips and the next she's standing alone, arm outstretched towards a drab white wall.
Bitterness, that's what she feels. Pain. Anger. Betrayal. The Doctor's always saved them before. The Doctor's always brought Rory back, so why couldn't he now, when it really mattered? And why couldn't he save her too?
No. That's not what bothers her the most. He was watching the angel too, he could have held his eyes open, he could have not blinked. He let her go, he didn't even try to stop her. Her raggedy man, her mysterious hero who came to answer her prayers. The madman in the blue box who had taken her across the universe and back again. Through time and space, through heartbreak and the best of times. She had been his companion and he had just let her go.
She loves Rory. Amy knows this from the depths of her heart. She chose him over the Doctor, but there's always been the part of her that wondered why.
A hand comes up to her lips, recalling that kiss they had shared. Years ago now, but it feels as if it's been only minutes. She misses it, chaste and warm and clumsy with his jutting chin and wobbly limbs in the way, pulling her off and saying no even when she could feel his lips saying yes.
Warm liquid slides down Amy's face, following the trails of the tears who've come before tem. The hand moves from her mouth to her cheeks and Amy rubs them away slowly, savoring them. These had been the tears she'd cried for the Doctor and what they could have had.
"Amy?" A hopeful voice asks from behind her. Amy knows this voice, she loves it, she lives for it. She gave up the Doctor for it.
"It's alright now. We're together." Rory's arms are warm around her but it brings little comfort to her aching chest. A different ache from when she had seen Rory die. Then, it had felt like someone had ripped out her heart and smashed it on the floor. This is different, this is worse. There's a giant gaping hole in her chest where the Doctor used to be and there's nothing in the universe that can fill it back up again.
Amy clutches Rory tighter, breathing in the smells of a hospital that always seem to linger on his clothing, his skin. The scent of her husband. So different from her Doctor who smells like moth balls and the country. She misses that smell so much now that she know's she'll never smell it again. She'd never hugged him goodbye, it had been too short; a bittersweet memory of a time of youth and adventure.
She was Wendy and he was her Peter Pan, whisking her off to Neverland in a wheezing blue box.
"I'm so sorry." Rory says into her hair. His breath mists across her ear and Amy imagines that it's the Doctor who's holding her close, who's saying he's sorry. Sorry because he knew this was coming, sorry that he couldn't save Rory. Sorry that he'd left her behind.
Her heart and Rory's beat out of sync. Why don't they beat together like they had all those nights they'd lain awake holding each other, content in each others arms and in the comfortable silence of a love that had endured for two thousand years?
They aren't the same people they were then, Amy can see that now. But she still smiles when Rory pulls away and pretends that there aren't tears falling down her cheeks. He brushes them away, clumsily of course, as always. Rory never knows what to do when his wife cries.
Amy takes a shaking breath and pulls Rory close again so he can't see the tears she's struggling to hide. She's made her choice-she's chosen Rory.
It doesn't stop her from laying awake that night, unable to sleep long after Rory has drifted away peacefully in her arms. She's still waiting, hoping, praying for that stupid sound the TARDIS always makes when the Doctor's coming. She can see him now, spinning out of the double doors with a childish grin on his face and another adventure that will blow her mind.
She dreams of him that night-dreams of the first night they met. The yogurt and the beans and the toast. She dreams of smiling apples and fish fingers and custard. Of the hopeful feeling the Doctor had left in her chest when he's promised to come back for her and that sad noise the TARDIS had made as it disappeared, knowing she would wait for several years.
That beautiful, stupid sound of the blue box should have come. The Doctor had promised her that years ago. He had promised to be there till the end of her. From that day she found herself in the drab yellow room she'd seen once and never wanted to see again to her very last breath, Amy waited for that sound.
But the Doctor was a liar-he'd said so himself and that sound never came.
Even if you don't love Amy Pond and Rory Williams, I believe that it's always hard to watch the Doctor lose a companion. The'd been together for so long, shared so many adventures and tears that they could have never had a clean goodbye. No matter who wrote it, or which way it happened, from the Eleventh Hour we always knew this goodbye would hurt. The Pond deserve better. They didn't deserve to live and die in a room knowing the wonders of the universe that's out there and as fans of this show we know it too. It doesn't matter if you love Amy and Rory or the Doctor and Rory. What matters is that you understand that bad things happen to good people and vice versa. Personally, I'd have loved to see Amy and the Doctor together in the end, but I think I've always know that it wouldn't happen. I wonder if you did too.
So this the last goodbye of the ginger and the timelord who could have never been.