Title: "The Doctor Lies"
Author: Me, Dori, the brokenheartedshipper
Characters, Pairings: Amy, Eleven, Amy/Eleven, Rory, Amy/Rory
Summary: "Amy Williams, it's time to stop waiting," he'd said. The Doctor lies.
Warnings: A "God Complex" fic; includes additional scenes from that episode; includes a take on Amy's future, a take on her childhood
Rating: T for themes
Notes: I wrote this, of course, after seeing "The God Complex." I'm just another of the countless authors who are dying to share their take on that wondrous, aggravating episode.
*/*
"Amy Williams, it's time to stop waiting," he'd said.
The Doctor lies.
*/*
Years later, Amy looks back on that day and their words blur together. Words are really so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. What Amy remembers is the sweet, musky, Doctor-y scent of him as she held him close to her; the scratchiness of his tweed jacket against her cheek, a roughness she'd come to love; the warmth of his breath as he let out a choked sigh, and the weight of his head as it fell against her shoulder, burrowing into her hair; the beating of his two hearts, strong, steady...Amy remembered wondering how long those hearts would go on beating, just how much time he had before his fateful end at Lake Silencio. She remembered pulling him closer, and for some reason she recalled curling her hand against the nape of his neck, grasping at air, clutching something that wasn't there anymore.
More words. Words that have faded now, like grayness creeping into old wedding photos. It's the touch, the solidity of a being held against her, that Amy tends to remember most.
And then. Amy recalls staring out her bedroom window, up towards the sky, but it's not the sky she's looking at, really. Once you've traveled with the Doctor, you don't think of it as the sky anymore, you think of it as Beyond. Once you know how much is out there, how many stars are shining, how many planets are turning, how many trillions of lives are being led, the sky seems like such a small thing, a bore. On nights to come Amy and her husband would sit out under the stars with their ever-expanding circle of family and friends, and Rory would bump his shoulder against hers and say,
"It's beautiful, isn't it?"
And Amy's throat would close, and she would whisper, "It's not enough."
Enough, for Rory, was family, and love, and a cottage in Leadworth and a lot of friends gathered round a table at nightfall. For Rory, that was more than enough—in fact, it was the goal. Of course he had been in awe and adoration of his exciting travels with the Doctor, but it was never something he craved or aspired to. He aspired to the small-town life, of simple love and friendship.
Amy was different, and always had been. Sometimes she wondered if she was really so different, or if it only felt that way because the Doctor had given her a taste for adventure ever since she was seven. But she'd realized this was not the case. Even before then, she was a mad little thing. Always getting into trouble with her aunt, wandering off into the woods and getting up at night to investigate suspicious thumping noises. This was Amy Pond. She was an adventurer, a wanderer, an explorer. She was curious. As a teenager she'd longed for so much more than what her friends wished for. They'd dreamed of a nice husband, a sizable house with a white-picket fence and two beautiful children with names like Danny and Maisie. For a while after her sixteenth birthday, Amy had been intent on joining the Peace Corps and moving to Africa to learn Swahili and build schoolhouses for little girls. By seventeen she planned to move to London, and by eighteen it was New York City. At nineteen, he came back.
(How ironic it was, that now Trina was in Korea, teaching English to children, and Peggy lived in London writing a column for The Guardian, and Amy had ended up with exactly what they'd wanted and she'd condemned. Sure, she'd taken a mind-blowing sabbatical, but waiting for that sabbatical had left her with no options but the one she'd wanted least. She wanted it now, of course. Of course she did).
On the day he left, Amy ended up in her room—their room—gazing out the window. And anyone could tell what she was doing. He'd said it would stop, but here she was. Waiting.
"Amy," Rory said gently as dusk traced its silvery finger across the windowpanes, "it's been hours. Won't you come to dinner? We could go to the park, even. Or Marcus and Lizzie's."
"I don't want to go to Marcus and Lizzie's," Amy mumbled. She could not begin to fathom how she could ever possibly go to Marcus and Lizzie's.
"Amy," Rory lulled, his hands resting against her shoulders; it felt nice, momentarily, to have him there: good, solid, reliable Rory. "We'll see him again."
Amy whirled around, fire in her eyes. "Yes, Rory, when he bloody well dies!"
Rory looked taken aback, and Amy immediately felt sorry for snapping at him.
"I'm sorry," she amended a bit tetchily as she turned back around to resume her stare. "It's just...it's been a long day." A long week. A long month. A long year. There she was, already using sensible units of time again. Maybe readjusting wouldn't be so hard after all.
Amy did not sleep that night. She couldn't possibly. The image of herself, the younger Amelia Pond, was stirring around in the back of her mind. After a while, it became not an image but a reminiscence. She no longer looked on from a distance as Amelia Pond waited; she herself joined in. Physically, she waited at age twenty-two, in the master bedroom she shared with her husband who was downstairs sleeping. But in her mind, she became seven years old again, watching and waiting for her raggedy doctor. She drifted in between the two Amys on a raft in her mind, feeling the rock of the waves against her skull, twisting her in different directions.
The next day Amy tore herself from the window. She couldn't wait forever, she said.
Amy proved herself wrong.
*/*
Years later, when she was tidying up the master bedroom or cracking open the windows in the summertime, she'd let her eyes linger by where they had so long ago, when she was young and he was coming back. It takes her so long to notice. She can't believe she's let it slip past her all these years. She is dusting one day (against her will, but when visits from mothers-in-law are involved, it is unavoidable), and while grumpily shoving the feather duster into the window crevice, she leans closer and notices something…
DOCTOR I'M WAITING.
It was carved into the white windowpane by her very own long, sharpened fingernails, years earlier. She does not remember doing it, but now she smiles. She puts down the duster for a moment, and suddenly the smile is gone and it's nothing but anger and hurt and sadness, so much sadness. She slumps against the bookshelf, eyes closed, brows furrowed. She can almost feel his lips against her forehead.
*/*
After that first day, when Amy stayed up all night at the windowsill, she sees him again. "He always comes back," she'd insisted once before, and she was right. He always came back...for Amy. For mad, impossible, glorious Amy Pond.
He came back for Amy Pond, but Amy Williams was a different story.
*/*
"Amy Williams, it's time to stop waiting," he'd said. The wait is over. But the Doctor lies, and Amy was the girl who waited. For the life of her she could not stop.
She liked to stare out windows, watching, waiting. Rory was no fool. Forty years and eleven grandchildren later, he said, "You're still waiting for him," and it was not a question. "You always will be."
Amy's eyes did not leave the Beyond. "Yes," she whispered softy, after a moment's hesitation. "I suppose I always will be."
"I'm not enough," Rory said.
Amy turned around to look at him tenderly. "Rory, you know that I love you more than anything. I would give the world for you. I would wait thirty-six years and even go along with your claim of band membership." She was telling the truth. She smiled at him, so fondly. "But you're right, Rory...it's never been enough."
"I just can't tell, though," Rory went on, his forehead creasing; there were wrinkles there now where there hadn't been before, "what you're waiting for him for." Now he met her gaze steadily, and he said, "Tell me that you're only waiting for the excitement, for that...that rush I know you love so much, and that's why your life feels a little empty. Tell me you just miss his friendship, and the crazy, wonderful things he showed you."
"Rory," Amy said, moving away from the windowsill and crawling into bed beside him, kissing the top of his head. "Of course. I miss his friendship, his fireworks." She held his hands firmly in hers, looking deep into his eyes. "You know it's only ever been you."
*/*
"Amy Williams, it's time to stop waiting," he'd said.
The Doctor lies. But so does Amy Pond.
THE END
Thank you for reading. This is actually one of the only DW fanfics by me I don't hate. Please review.