Amelia Pond, age seven, was never one for fairytales. She believed in Santa above all things. She knew fairytales were not real—all about Princesses and Happily Ever After.
Santa was real. If she was good, she would get what she wanted—and hopefully he would acquiesce to her emergency plea eight months prior to his usual Christmastime rounds. Luckily Santa still loved her, because that night he gave her a mad man in police box to fix the crack in her bedroom wall. Santa worked in mysterious ways, he did.
The mad man called himself 'The Doctor.' He didn't look like one—he looked raggedy, acted strange. He spouted words about how he wasn't him yet and she didn't understand how someone couldn't know who they were. He often got jittery and then stiff with what seemed pain; he demanded food and she agreed only because it was worth fixing the Raggedy Doctor some food if he could get rid of the crack. She put up with his indecisive taste-buds, and waste of perfectly good yoghurt, bread, beans, butter, and bacon until he had his fill of the rather odd combination of fish fingers and custard.
She studied him while eating some ice cream—she could since her aunt was not home—it was the only time she could get away with it for dinner.
He dipped a fish finger into the bowl of custard and gleefully lapped at the make-shift dressing. The mad man was a handsome bloke, if he cleaned himself up properly—with the kind of looks her aunt always talked of marrying but never found. Instead, she found loud, unsavory men from the pub to keep her company and Amelia usually spent time in her room when that sort of company was visiting. Her and the crack together, alone.
She would wake up at night hearing voices float though it, faintly, speaking adult language about prisoners. She had to wonder about her head, did people usually hear things from cracks? She didn't suppose so and it made her the tiniest bit afraid which felt unnerving because she had been brave about most things her entire life but yet something as simple as a crack broke into her fears.
The Doctor knew it too.
He talked nonsensical, and clever, and quickly—it was a bit hard to keep up with his adult language but she tried. She had watched him try to listen for something at the crack, pressing his ear against it, his fingertips tracing the laceration of wall. A quick flick and flip of a pen-shaped object had him off in a babbling frenzy. She stood by holding the apple he had bit into before rejecting earlier that night. She could understand why—she thought apples were rubbish until her mum carved faces into them. She received a prick of sadness at her thoughts, still paying no mind to the mad man's mad babble. Using her thumbnail she etched the skin away, leaving a face—maybe now the Raggedy Doctor would like apples too.
She offered it to him and he tossed it into a pocket for later, so maybe there was still hope for that apple.
He said he could fix the crack, but she heard in his voice he wasn't sure.
Then he offered his hand.
She took it.
Amelia felt safe at once, even as the crack widened.
That antagonizing crack that supposedly split not only her wall but the universe—whatever that meant. She was learning about the solar system in class. Could that be Neptune on the other side of her wall where a giant eyeball roamed a view over them?
It was a very strange night already, so she had no apprehension in asking the good man if she could come with him in his time machine once he explained the nature of the box with a supposed library and pool.
She had seen him exhale fairy dust and use a wand to close that wicked crack. He was her good wizard and she believed...
She believed that he could take her to far places. Instead of imagining, playing pretend with Rory and Jeffery after school that they were in greek mythology or roman soldiers, now she felt it could all be just as real as Santa.
He said she could and promised to return.
She knew then that he wouldn't come back, no adults would.
He leaned in close and with a serious air for once, "Trust me, I'm the Doctor."
A goofy smile of a promise changed her mind, and she wanted nothing more than to travel away with the good man.
She had a suitcase ready, just in case Santa or whomever should appear to her one day and take her away from Leadworth—that dull little village she lived in. She added to her case—it consisted of clean knickers, a few change of clothes, her stuffed bear 'Nogs', and fresh paper and pencils for drawing.
Her fear was now replaced with giddy excitement. A proper holiday! She never got to go anywhere, well except the history museum if she asked nicely. The Doctor still was gone but told her he would return in a few minutes so she plopped her case down in her lawn and sat on it waiting for her white knight and for once Amelia Pond could believe she really was the girl in a fairytale.
She woke up in her bed.
Rubbed her eyes. Was she in a time machine bed? No. It was only her room. She flipped the covers over, slid out of bed and looked out the window to see if the Raggedy Doctor had returned but there was nothing but her play-set and backyard.
She had waited though. Why hadn't he returned? He promised. She hoped he didn't get into any trouble. She entered the kitchen in a slight disorientation to the morning and the events of the night before.
Her aunt was in the kitchen getting coffee and looked quite cross at her entrance.
"What were you thinking last night Amelia? I come home to find you missing, nearly call the police when I see you sleeping on your suitcase in the back? What on earth is in your head child?"
"There was a man, Aunt Sharon!"
Her aunt's frown became a thin, concerned line, "What man?"
"The Raggedy Doctor."
"What?"
"He said he was a doctor anyway. He came last night—had a torn blue shirt and a tie with squiggles..."
"What did I tell you about strangers? You are never supposed to let them in the house! Did he steal anything?"
"Not really," she answered. Only because she thought of all the food she had given him.
"Did he hurt you?"
"No."
"Amelia, are you telling me the truth, was there really a man here last night while I was out?"
"Yes! He had a metal wand and he closed the crack in my wall! He drove a blue police box that was a time machine!"
Her aunt stared at her, suddenly very alarmed.
"Look I will show you!" she insisted, grabbing her aunt's hand and running up the stairs. She pointed to her far wall and stared at her aunt insistently.
"What are you on about dear? The crack is still there, this old house has always had it."
"No, but—" her head swiveled immediately to the wall and she couldn't help but to gasp. Her aunt kneeled down and held her niece's shoulders seriously, "Look, I do not know what nonsense you are trying to pull, Amelia but you must stop it. Do you understand?"
Amelia didn't answer, she kept looking at that crack. She had seen it closed with her own eyes! Still the menacing zag ripped a hairline through the wall. She dared approach it and carefully pressed her ear against it.
Silence.
"Amelia, do you want to play tag?"
Amelia sat in the school yard, using a piece of chalk to draw the blue box she had remembered seeing that night so many weeks ago.
"Not now Rory."
"What about after school?"
"Can't. Have an appointment."
"Oh. Well what are you doing now then?"
"I am drawing, can't you see?"
"Oh, OK. What is that?"
"It's a time machine. It has a pool and a library."
"Well that is fancy but I don't think you could fit those into a box and anyways there's no such things as time machines."
She looked up at Rory with a doubt. He was a silly eight-year-old boy, with an oval face and permanent look of confusion plastered on it.
"The Doctor says it's real."
"Who?"
"The Raggedy Doctor. He's my friend."
Rory looked around them, expecting something, "I never met him, where is he?"
"He had to leave."
"Where did he go?"
"Oh shut your stupid face Rory, I can't answer every question ever!" she threw her chalk piece at him. She was reminded that the Doctor didn't like stupid questions.
He did shut his mouth before shuffling off back to play tag with some other of the children.
She felt kind of bad for yelling at him, but she was also angry that no one would take her seriously. She had to walk to a building after school to talk to a man about her 'imaginary friend'. This man was a doctor but not her doctor—he was a head-doctor and it was her 'appointment' that her aunt scheduled after she was caught stealing clothes pins to paint on the likeness of the raggedy one. It had been many weeks and Amelia hadn't stopped the Doctor Nonsense, as her aunt called it.
She wasn't afraid of walking alone or being by herself. She was used to it and Leadworth was so tame there were no worries about children-snatchers. She wasn't afraid of the crack anymore either. It seemed to be just a crack now, no voices. She did hear noises outside her door sometimes and told her aunt but her aunt assured her it was just the old creaks in the house. Sometimes she thought she saw things out of the corner of her eye, a movement maybe too fast gone when she looked fully. She never wanted to look fully anyway, fearful of what she might see.
She scuffed the toes of her trainers on the sidewalk, begging her feet to drag even more as she got closer to the quaint building where the head-doctor was.
She sat down in the waiting room until she was called in. Her aunt would come some days but her work schedule conflicted with the head-doctor.
"Amelia, how is time travel possible?" the doctor, but not her doctor asked. He seemed very curious how she thought it up but she tried explaining she hadn't because it was what the Raggedy Doctor said.
"I don't know, the Doctor does. He time travels."
"Watch this," the head-doctor instructed and started a video tape of a movie. She watched it bored-like. An old man and a boy—Americans—were planning to time travel in an odd car. They watched it until the car disappeared leaving a flame trail.
"Now, what do you think of it?" the head-doctor stopped the video tape.
"Well it was neat I guess but it isn't real."
"Exactly Amelia—you know the difference between reality and make believe so why do you insist your imaginary friend and his time machine are real?"
"He is! I saw the box," she objected, " and he is not imaginary!"
"You must understand that he is an entity of your imagination, and he's no more tangible than those characters you saw on screen."
She didn't like those big, know-it-all words he used and was growing infuriated that he tried telling her that what she saw wasn't real.
"Here, real things you can taste, touch, hear, smell and see in this dimension. This around us is Reality. Your doctor is all fabricated. He doesn't exist and the sooner you realize that the better off you will be." The man held his hand out for her touch to make his point and she did take hold.
With her teeth.
He shouted in surprise or pain and Amelia jumped up at once and ran as fast as she could. Her back pack bounced on her shoulders, and it wasn't very far to run home to her big empty house. Her aunt was working; the telephone rang - probably the office to tell her aunt what Amelia had done. She picked up the telephone and shouted into the receiver, "He is real!" and then slammed it down before pulling the cord from it's outlet so it couldn't ring again and make a recording on the answering machine.
She shut herself away in her room and sunk down next to her bed, grabbing Nogs and cuddling him for comfort. A few tears came but never fell, just blurred her vision when she squinched her eyes. They were made of the disappointment that her fairytale had vanished and didn't seem to be coming back but yet she knew it was real. Her eyes landed on the crack in her wall. Just a harmless crack now, but she wondered if Neptune was still on the other side. She had already asked Santa for a favor at Easter, she knew she would be pushing it to ask for her Raggedy Doctor to come back. Maybe he only showed up when there was trouble. Still, he promised to come back. She still believed.
"Why are you making me wear this tie?"
Amelia stepped back and studied the perplexed boy. She had him dressed in one of her father's collared shirts that had been tucked away in the darkness of the closet...it was too big on him. The tie wasn't right but the hair was messy enough.
"It's what the Doctor wears," she answered, "And Jeffery, you know your lines?"
"Prisoner zero has escaped?"
"Good! You've got it!"
She grabbed Rory's hand, "Okay we're pretending that you are the Doctor and Jeffery is a giant eyeball on Neptune."
"Amelia, you have the weirdest head," Jeffery mentioned.
"Why Neptune?" Rory wondered
"I just like Neptune," she mused and then took off, "Come on Raggedy Doctor! You have to find Prisoner Zero before that guard catches us!"
"What does he look like?"
"Who said it was a 'he'?"
"Sounds like a 'he'."
"Could be a 'she'!"
"What girls go to jail?"
"Wicked ones probably. Like witches and vampire ladies."
"Vampires aren't real!"
"They could be."
She waited for him to say the doctor wasn't real but he didn't, he just started playing by running after her lead. Jeff followed them repeating his lines. The rules were he could only walk to 'chase' after them. They looked in the bushes and climbed the tree in her back yard. Finally they found Prisoner Zero licking herself atop the fence.
"That's a cat."
"It's Prisoner Zero!"
"It's Mrs. Fletcher's cat."
Rory was no fun.
Amy plucked Prisoner Zero from her perch and chided her, "You escaped! I must take you back to your prison guard!"
She then handed the cat to Jeffery who was in the middle of saying his lines but dropped the cat immediately with a scream when she presented it to him. The cat hissed and fled to some hiding place.
Jeffery sneezed and then teared, "I'm allergic to cats!"
"How was I supposed to know?"
"I don't own any cats!"
"Neither do I but that doesn't mean I'm allergic!"
He sneezed again, "I have to go home. Grams has my allergy pills!"
"Sorry Jeffery!" Amelia called after him. Well that was the end of the day's play.
"We can still play," Rory insisted.
"We lost Prisoner Zero and the guard went home."
"But what else can the doctor do?"
Amelia smiled, remembering that weird man and how he had saved her from the crack—closing it or killing the voices—either way she wasn't afraid anymore.
"The Raggedy Doctor can kill monsters."
"Like a Ghostbuster?"
She walked backwards until she ended up on the swing of her play-set, kicked back and swung, sending her copper hair flying after her.
"Except he doesn't need a vacuum. He uses a metal-wand."
"Like a magic fairy?"
"No, it didn't sparkle or anything—just glows at the end."
Rory climbed up and sat atop the slide, fiddling with his tie. He was pondering or something. Amelia kept swinging, glad that she didn't have to see any more head-doctors, not for awhile at least. She had gone through two, so maybe her aunt would give up on trying to convince her that her doctor wasn't real.
Rory slid down the slide and ran into her house, "I'll be right back, have to use the loo!"
She thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye, a movement. She heard a crunch or rustle and turned—saw nothing. Perhaps it was Mrs. Fletcher's cat.
Rory came back and he was holding a metal stick-like thing.
"What is that?"
"A metal wand! It's the toilet tissue holder. I saw it in your bathroom. So what does the Doctor do with this?"
Amelia jumped up, "It makes a funny noise like, 'zoy-oy-oy-oy-oy'."
Rory pointed it at her and tried imitating the noise but ended up spitting at her.
They continued to run around for an hour more, Rory pointing the metal wand at various objects and then trying to be clever but he wasn't a natural—not like the Doctor.
It wasn't until her aunt emerged in the back, looking for her, did they stop. She saw the little Williams boy that her niece had made dress up like her painted crafts and toys—like the 'Raggedy Doctor'.
Amelia didn't know but her 'Raggedy Doctor' was becoming a known joke among the adults of Leadworth. Her aunt was being scrutinized. She claimed Amelia had an overactive imagination but still the drawings of 'time machines' and the 'man with a metal wand' were prevalent in the school yard tarmac and her class artwork. Amelia even drew little comic adventures of the Doctor and her out on odd adventures and showed them to whoever would listen. Her teachers were concerned. The kids called her 'Odd Pond' at school.
"Amelia Jessica Pond!" her aunt's voice rang across the yard.
That moment was when Amelia knew she hadn't escaped the head-doctors entirely.
It wasn't the fourth psychiatrist that convinced her.
It was herself; it wasn't real, never had been.
She didn't know why she gave up believing that day. Perhaps it was the day Amelia turned into Amy.
The day Amy Pond Grew up.
She had waited so long.
She looked out her bedroom window to the place she remembered so vividly—where a box had been on it's side. The shed was replaced, her aunt assumed rambunctious teenagers had demolished it and not a crashing time machine. A mad man had emerged.
But it wasn't reality. A walking dream maybe. Imagination.
Nothing extraordinary like that had ever happened to Amelia again. All it was, was a memory. A wish to Santa—who as it turned out wasn't real either which had broken her heart. Reality was the only thing she could count on now. Not Fairytales and not imaginary wizards.
She was fourteen, and she was late for a school dance. Rory had asked her to go with him—all bumbling and nervous and could barely get the words out. But she agreed to go with him. He was an awkward thin boy, growing into his nose but she thought he was kind of cute.
She forgot why she had looked out her window.
She reached down and grabbed her trainers to put them on, planning to carry her dress shoes. She was walking to the school because anyone could walk across Leadworth in ten minutes it seemed. Her bicycle had a flat tire anyway. Her trainers looked funny with her skirt, but after checking herself out in the mirror, she rather liked the look and didn't care what anyone else thought. Her dress shoes were left on her bed.
Poor Rory probably thought she had stood him up. She made sure to walk faster than normal.
The door was unlocked.
She felt a swell of nervous. It was Leadworth, there were no robbers in Leadworth! But why was the door open?
She heard foot steps above. Someone was in her house—not her aunt. Would it be foolish to call out or sneak in and see who was intruding?
She grabbed the cricket bat from the broom closet just in case.
A man was in her house, he was yelling quite loudly and standing at the top of the landing and he was down and out before she could let him explain himself. Beaten in the face, knocked out and now her prisoner. She felt a chill creep up her spine and a tug of intrigue in her far side view. But she didn't look. She had stopped that—giving herself little alarms. Anyway Strange men in her house was not acceptable. She managed to lug him to the hallway radiator and use her play handcuffs to keep him there until he woke up.
She checked to make sure there was no runs in her stockings. She had been called to entertain Mr. Spalding on his birthday. She giggled, remembering how red his face got when she pulled out the cuffs and told him he was naughty. All in fun—the work of a kiss-o-gram was never dull.
The man moaned and she straightened, not knowing what she would say. She was little angry to be honest. Was he trying to rob her? She fumbled with her radio prop and pretended to be reporting him, after all she was dressed as a police woman for that job—but a rather scanty one. Maybe he would believe her, at least she hadn't decided to dress as the french maid that time.
He looked at her, fuzzy in thoughts. He was handsome. The kind of handsome her aunt liked and always talked of marrying but never did. Only if he cleaned up properly, combed his hair and changed out of that torn blue shirt. She could see how he would be fanciable, but not if he was a thief or pervert.
But he wasn't.
He said in great urgency that he was looking for the little Scottish girl and that he was only gone for five minutes.
Fish-custard, cracks, prisoner zero, sqiggle tie, police box, apples.
Amy Pond's reality collapsed.
Fairytale.
A/N: Look into the hours between the five minutes, the slow route Amy had to take as she struggled with reality, and using little tidbits from the Eleventh Hour to expad on what she did while being the girl who waited. I tried making it British, using British terms since it is a British show, so if anything seems off on wording, let me know. Thanks :)