After seeing the prequel mini-episode for Let's Kill Hitler on YouTube, I had an idea for this. I'd suggest you go see it; it's only about two minutes long so it's not like watching it will take a huge amount of time out of your day. Also, since I've never seen the classic Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures or Torchwood, any mentions to characters within will be in passing only, so as to avoid mauling the shows.
I own nothing.
"Have you found her? Because you promised…"
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This is the third time in the month that Amy has called, but it's the first time she's left a message. She doesn't sound as angry as the Doctor expected, to be honest. Anyone would expect Amy Pond, fiery, wounded Amy Pond to be furious, but she doesn't seem to be. She even laughed a little at the beginning. Any attempts at lightheartedness do not fool the Doctor. He can hear the gloom, the grief seeping into her words even at the little trill of a laugh. It all falls so flat.
Rule one: the Doctor lies. He lies to get what he wants, to avoid unpleasant truths, but sometimes, sometimes he lies because as much as he sometimes looks down on humans and seems to consider them "the little people", the Doctor is more human than he likes to admit. Sometimes he is more human than Time Lord, and he just doesn't want to see the fear on their faces when he says he doesn't know.
Sometimes, the Doctor just doesn't have the answers everyone's looking for.
Upon entering the TARDIS and flying away, the Doctor got a list together and started looking up old friends.
His first stop had been to go find the Brigadier and Sarah Jane. He had hoped for happy reunions before serious conversations. What the Doctor found instead was something somehow just as crushing as watching the ganger that had been Amy collapsing into goo in the TARDIS, just as crushing as the way Amy wouldn't let him touch her after ganger Melody went the same way.
They were both dead. They had died within two months of each other, both from cancer. The Brigadier had died at home, in his sleep. Sarah Jane had went in a hospital, surrounded by friends and family. What Luke told the Doctor, when he found him, just sent another knife twisting in his gut.
"She was asking for you at the end."
The Doctor left in shame, running from his past and his mistakes like always. The scene was too real, the wounds too fresh—he put flowers on graves and left.
Thankfully, all of the other people the Doctor went looking for were still alive. Martha and Mickey he found first, debriefing them in the most succinct way possible, asking them to put whatever resources they had to work and to call him if they heard anything at all.
"I don't care how far-fetched it sounds or how frivolous it might seem. If you hear anything, anything at all, call me immediately."
The same was done with Elizabeth X on the Starship UK. The Doctor tracked down Jack to some sleazy planet and took the liberty of fixing his Vortex Manipulator—something that surprised Jack to no end—in order to put him on the case. ("I'm warning you Jack; no side trips."). He even went so far as to go looking for Wilf on his lonely little hilltop—no more visits from Donna—and after convincing the man that it really was him and after doing the obligatory hugging and catching up (Donna apparently has a little girl of her own now) and just asked him to keep his ears open.
If he were just a little more desperate, the Doctor might have risked trying to tear a hole to the parallel universe where he knew he could find Rose and his half-human counterpart, just looking for any help he could possibly find, but no. He could not face Rose with this failure, and he wasn't about to put all the universes at risk yet again just to call in a friend.
He had not stopped to chat with any of them. All the Doctor had been able to bear to do was tell them that Amy and Rory's child was kidnapped, that she might be going under the name of Melody Pond or River Song (but that if they found a grown woman with River Song, it wasn't the same River Song) and that she might be found in connection with a planet known as the Gamma Forest (Given River's familiarity with what the word "Doctor" means there, she might have lived on the Gamma Forest during childhood).
River called once, two days before the call the Doctor's just received from Amy. River, whom the Doctor knows has all the answers, but can't say anything for risk of creating a paradox. Her message was short and blunt.
"This is cruel, Doctor. I'm with them now and they are out of their minds with worry. If you don't know just call them and say so. Don't leave them in Limbo like this."
River's voice is quiet and calm, not the incisive, accusatory tones she adopted with him at Demon's Run. If anything, the Doctor almost wishes she would talk like she did that time again, if only because her accusations can put a fire in him like almost nothing else can.
And the Doctor makes no attempt to contact them. He lets Amy's message play out and makes no attempt to let her know that he can hear her, his throat growing thicker and hotter by each second. It's so hard to breathe, and the worst bit of the message, the one that leaves the tears pricking at the corner of his eyes isn't what Amy would expect it to be.
"I know she'll be okay, I know she'll grow up to be River…"
As River chose to inform him at Demon's Run, the Doctor has screwed up. Badly. He's made too many people afraid of him without ever having met them, and Amy and Rory had to lose their daughter because of it. Yes, River's existence tells him that Melody will live to adulthood, but it also tells him things that the Doctor isn't sure he wants to think about.
River Song identifies herself as a native of the fifty-first century. That doesn't bode well for the idea that the Doctor will manage to get her younger self back to her parents. And that River exists the way she does at all, too knowledgeable with deception and guns and killing to have been raised by Rory and Amy, the Doctor is afraid.
Time can be re-written. I will find a way.
But he's so afraid.
In truth, the Doctor has no idea where Melody is. He doesn't even begin to know where to start looking for her, and Amy is still waiting.
"Phone me back when you know something. Please Doctor, at least do that, as soon as you know, okay?"
The Doctor swallows hard. He breathes deeply, his throat starting to ache with that swollen, wet pain again, and he squeezes his eyes tightly shut as he bows his head.
He's supposed to be the man with all the answers, but he doesn't know a thing.
As if reflecting his state of mind the TARDIS is more dimly lit than she has ever been before. Everything is so agonizingly quiet, and the Doctor can't avoid reality.
On a personal scale, he has made a greater mess of things than he thinks ever has before, and the Doctor has no idea how to make things right again.
He won't call Amy back.
He just can't face her.