She'd been trying to avoid the place all season, but eventually she'd ended up at S&Gs anyway; there were some gifts it was hard to find anywhere else. In the swirl of holiday shoppers, though, she'd forgotten all about it until she'd turned a corner and...
There it was.
Or rather, there he was.
Santa Claus, sitting in all his red-and-white glory between two sparkling Christmas trees. A long queue snaked through the store in front of him, the shrill voices of excited children filling the air, punctuated by the occasional cry of an infant or the scolding of a frustrated parent. Something twisted deep inside her at the sight and she had to force herself to breathe. Slowly. In-and-out.
She should have been there, she and Rory, somewhere in that line. Because it would have been... should have been – was,she corrected herself firmly – Melody's first Christmas. They should have stood there in the queue with all the other parents, trying to keep her quiet through the long wait, hoping she wouldn't spit-up all over the red velvet and lace of her dress before they got to the front. Hoping she'd sit still long enough for the photographer to snap a picture of her as they sat her on Santa's lap.
Amy took another long breath and held it, forcing away the images of her baby. Replacing them with those of her daughter fully grown. She was getting good at it.
And it did help.
At least a little.
Something crashed against her legs, interrupting her thoughts and threatening to throw her off-balanced into the nearby crowd. "What the-"
"Oh! Sorry!" Amy looked down into the startled brown-eyes of the little girl who'd run into her, a cascade of loose chestnut curls bouncing across small shoulders as the child quickly took a step back and away. "Are you alright?"
Amy was nodding and opening her mouth to answer when a man's voice called out from behind the child, "Amelia?"
Both Amy and the little girl turned towards it. "Yes?" they said in unison. Looking back up at Amy over her shoulder, the child asked, "Is your name Amelia, too?"
Amy nodded. "Yes."
"Cool!" Then, turning back in the direction of the voice, whose owner, a man in his mid-forties Amy didn't recognize after all, was quickly approaching them. "Hey, Daddy? Guess what? Her name's Amelia, too."
"Really?"
The child nodded. "Yeah."
"Well, did you apologize to Amelia for crashing into her like that?"
"Yes, she did. Quite nicely, too." Amy smiled at the little girl. "Didn't you, Amelia?"
The child returned her smile before looking back at her father. "Yes, Daddy. I did."
"Good. I hope you're okay, then...?" he asked Amy, taking his daughter's hand in his, but his expression held more than simple polite concern as he looked at her over the child's head.
Feeling suddenly strangely uncomfortable under the intensity of his gaze, Amy nodded again. "Yes, I'm fine. Really."
"Good. Then, come along, Amelia. Let's go find your Mother and Jackson."
As her father was tugging her away, the little girl glanced back one more time at Amy. "We came here on purpose today just to see Santa," she explained. "Daddy says this is the only true Santa in the whole Universe...except for the one on the Planet of Christmas Trees, of course, where it's Christmas five-hundred and twenty-one days a year and the snow is actually spun sugar made by tiny alien elves, but that one's really an android so he doesn't count –"
"Amelia..." her father warned but Amy couldn't help but laugh at the child's imagination.
"Have a happy Christmas, Amelia," she said as the child's father pulled her quickly away.
"You, too... Amelia," the girl called back over her shoulder before being swallowed up in the crowd.
Daddy found Mummy and Jackson easily even though it seemed to Amelia like everyone else in the world must be waiting to see Santa. Which made sense, cause they probably knew the other ones were just fakes, too.
"What took you guys so long?" Mummy asked Daddy as they joined her and Jackson in the queue.
Daddy still had that same funny look on his face he'd had since talking to the other Amelia. He peered at the watch on the inside of his wrist and tapped it once before looking back at Mummy. "This is 2011, isn't it?"
"Yes, of course it is," Mummy answered.
"Why?" Amelia asked.
Daddy smiled down at her. "Because, sweetie, I'm fairly certain you just, quite literally, managed to run into your own great-great grandmother. You were named after her, you know." He tapped her on the nose. "Our own little Amelia Pond."
Amelia giggled. "Cool!" Then, looking back in the direction they'd come, she added, "Well, then, I really hope she has a happy Christmas, too!"
