A/N: Wow! Such review goodness! I am humbled. Because you asked for more, I'm going to continue this for at least for one more chapter and see where my temperamental muse takes me. I hope you enjoy this peek into Amelia.

Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak.

~William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Women are afraid of mice and of murder, and of very little in between.

~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

I.

She'd been napping in her room because she was tired out from working a party the night before, and then she'd heard it. It was the unmistakable noise, the noise she'd prayed for as a child, been told she'd never really ever heard at all by all those concerned adults for so many years. She'd risen, run to the window, and impossibly, there he was dressed in that same old tattered and untucked shirt running frantically across her overgrown garden yelling something. For a long moment, all she'd been able to do was stare out in tingling disbelief.

Echoing hours spent on the varying upholstery of four different psychiatrist's couches had rushed up and choked off her brain's higher functions in an almost-Pavlovian reflex. She could practically hear the combined modulated, soothing, patient, and well-meaning voices of all those experts circling in her head like a flock of degree-laden harpies telling her that she was having another delusional episode, saying without, of course, saying that she was "crazy Amelia Pond" again. Panic rose hot and fresh in her throat, clawed at her sharply, and, as it always did when she was made to feel afraid, anger was hot on its heels in defensive response.

No. I will NOT be "crazy Amelia," pitiful joke of the village, ever again. I've worked so hard, come so far to leave all that behind me. I am Amy now, and I make my own choices. Always. So. Right. I'm stopping this right now. Remain in control, they said. Confront the hallucination, they said. That's the way through, they said. So here we go...

She could hear footsteps pounding up her stairs, could actually hear his voice now, and she was shaking a little despite her efforts to remain calm and in control. Why does he seem so real? If he's just a delusion, why does this seem so... She squelched the little girl voice inside mercilessly and turned from the window to look around the room at the tools at her disposal. Her eyes fell on last night's costume and the large, trusty cricket bat leaning in the corner. She shimmied into the scanty police woman's uniform hastily, grateful that she hadn't completely stripped down when she'd gotten home. She thought briefly about the smoothness of the wall her fingers grazed as she wrapped her fingers around the grip of that bat, the wall that once had a crack that scared her more than any other thing she had ever encountered in her life...

Ha. But that was before I realized that the things you have to fear the most are the things inside...

II.

She was standing out of breath in her garden watching that damn blue box disappear again. How could he do that to her? Again. He'd begged her to believe in him, and, fool that she was, she'd allowed him to make a crack in her defenses, a crack that was going to be ever-so-much-harder to fix than that one had been in her bedroom wall all those long years ago. She'd allowed herself to trust, to retrieve long-discarded Amelia from her banishment and disgrace, to begin to think that there might just be something to satisfy her long and savagely suppressed need for magic and wonder in this life, in this world. Something that wasn't just ruthlessly practical. Something that didn't have hard edges to it and cut her soul just a little with its square sensibility. Then bang. Just like that. Back into that blue box and fading away like a dream again right before her tear-blurred eyes. At least this time there was Rory. At least this time there was somebody else who'd seen it, seen him, too... She dashed away the saltwater from her eyes with the back of her hand and then reached down as the last of the sound disappeared, and she felt him jump, startled by her gesture, then she felt his hand squeeze hers in return. And if the pressure of his grip was just a little too tight for comfort, if his palm was just a little damp, well, then, that just reminded her that he wasn't going anywhere, didn't it?

III.

The night before her wedding, she knew Rory was out having his stag night with all his ridiculous friends, and she didn't begrudge him the celebration. She hadn't had one herself. To be honest, there weren't any young women in the village she felt close to, never had been. She'd always been the outsider, the odd duck, and so she'd spent the evening alone staring at that slightly-scary white dress hanging in the corner like a ghost come to chide her for her past or warn her of the future.

God, Amy. It's not Hamlet. Get a grip, won't you?

And yet. And still. She knew that tonight was her last night for some things. Rory was a good man and a kind man and a sweet man, but there were some things he just wasn't going to deal well with. Any mention of the Doctor, now that everybody knew that the Doctor wasn't a figment of her childhood imagination (and let me just tell you, didn't that feel righteously and properly good) would send him into a pouting funk complete with sullen silences and cutting comments for days. He seemed to have the stupidest notions about her comparing him to the Doctor, about her wanting him somehow less than the Doctor... But that was just rubbish. And she'd told him so. Repeatedly. Heatedly. With anger. With kisses. But yet. But still.

She sighed, gave up, threw back the covers, reached under her bed as she had done all those many years ago and pulled out a battered and worn red and white suitcase. A smile traced her lips as she laid it gently on her dresser, flipped the metal latches, opened the top to peer down at the contents inside in the bright moonlight streaming down through the sheer white curtains of her bedroom. A child's fantasy of playthings greeted her, dolls made of any material she could find, drawings of increasing skill all hoarded together here. She ran a fingertip over the items, and her mind turned back to him.

In the secret places of her heart, those places she kept hidden and locked up as thoroughly as she did this suitcase, places she looked at just as rarely, he was there. Treasured. Adored. Kept safe. As the images held here had changed through time, so, too, had the images she held in those chambers of her heart altered, too. Some of the more recently-added images, she had to admit, would probably give Rory a heart attack, especially the luscious ones she'd garnered when her Raggedy Doctor had magnificently shed the raggedy.

Now, here, in the silent stillness of these last few minutes of the night before her wedding day, she looked from the crude carving she'd made of the little blue box on her dresser to the shimmering and somehow illogically threatening gossamer creation in white hanging on her closet door, and her heart felt confusion, yearning. But which one was it yearning for? Which one is it that I really want?

Suddenly, her head came up and she froze. It was just the barest whisper of sound at first, but she knew that noise, knew it like the sound of her own heartbeat. She was in motion before her brain had even registered the response, her hands flying to catch up a sweater from the dresser as she went, her feet stumbling over old trainers in her haste to get something, anything on them and herself out the door before he decided to disappear and leave her behind again...

IV.

Full circle now, and this circle has enclosed so very, very much. They were sitting on her bed in her room, she and the Doctor. She and her Doctor. He'd saved her from the Angels, proved himself against her fears of being left again. She'd felt the fear in him, the despair in him when he'd had to go. She'd also felt the need in him when he'd pressed his lips against her forehead, and despite the presence of the woman who nobody seemed to want to say was going to be his wife for some reason nobody seemed to be able to explain to her satisfaction, he'd been more concerned about her, Amelia Pond, than about the mysterious River Song. She found she liked that. In fact, she liked that rather a lot.

Full circle now, and it was time to come clean. It was time to make a choice. Really, though, was there ever truly a choice to make? As she studied him there in that professorial bowtie, those ridiculous red suspenders and that tweedy jacket with its elbow patches, all old man's clothing, all tools he was using as a shield to keep her and everybody else at a respectful distance with this young man's handsome/ugly face, this young man's strong/pretty body, she was swept with longing. She could have told him that she knew something about masks and disguises. That she understood all about keeping up appearances for the neighborhood. About being afraid of what was inside you. But tonight wasn't the time for that. Tonight was about choosing.

So she did. She told him, made the big revelation. Watched it fall flat. Annoyance flashed. God, you're thick. How can anybody who's this brilliant be that... And then it became endearing, the sudden naked fear in his eyes, he who was never afraid of anything, her Doctor now stammering and crawling backward across her bed. Ah, doesn't happen to you every day, does it, Doctor? It made her want to lap him up like rich cream, like honey slowly drizzled on the tongue. He made her chase him, and that too made her laugh, made her purr. But you're who I want, what I want, what I'll...have...

When she kissed him the first time, he eluded her with a suppleness born of desperation babbling the whole time things that probably were very, very reasonable, very, very logical, but not before she felt a spark of something in him that gave her hope. Oi, you're not getting away that easily. Come here...

And she pinned him against the doors of his beloved TARDIS where he could not run anymore.

Her mouth took his even as he dodged, and she felt a surge of triumph as he stilled, as she felt his own instincts overrule his intellect, as she felt the hands that had been trying to push her away fold around her shoulders and grip, hold, pull her closer for those few precious moments. His lips stopped their stream of rejection and began to move with hers, tasting, and she for a flickering instant felt hunger to match her own, hunger blazing like a shooting star, and she pressed closer wanting more, needing more, and then it was gone.

He had once again somehow slipped away in the impossibly small space between them (Lord of Time and Space, indeed, hmph), a new flow of words serving to separate them, something about needing to "get her sorted out," and she had to admit that as far as she was concerned, that sounded just lovely. If you'll just come right over here, I have a few thoughts about that myself, Doctor. Gonna start by untying that bowtie with my teeth...

And then he was shoving her in the TARDIS, staring at her like she was a time bomb that might go off in his arms, and she sighed as he herded her frantically down the ever-shifting hallways toward her room. Once she was alone, though, she licked lips that still tasted of cinnamon and some wild spice, still tasted of him.

V.

He'd gone out and tracked down Rory, shoved him at her like a panicked adult trying to placate a wailing infant in a public place by handing it a favorite toy. She hadn't missed that. Oh no. It hadn't escaped her. Nor had it escaped her that he no longer casually invaded her personal space, crowded her in that proprietary manner he'd had with her since he'd first climbed out of the capsized TARDIS, sat inappropriately close beside her on benches or at tables, touched her casually for no reason with that silly grin on his face, or stood so near her that she could lean back against him if she wanted. He was, in fact, now only running away from her and watching her out of the corners of his eyes. And that made her so mad she could spit. Could throw things. Had thrown things, in fact, when she was sure nobody else was around to see her indulge in that juvenile release of stress.

So that resentment had been kicking around in the back of her head some when they'd gone into the Dream Lord's twisted little world. Then she'd seen her childhood friend, her faithful companion, the man who had loved her enough to try to be whatever it was she wanted him to be cut off that ridiculous but somehow endearing ponytail that was his idea of excitement and daring and then die, and the Doctor had done nothing. Nothing. Anger grew. Oh, she'd seen the agony in his eyes, seen the frustration, the futility and the self-loathing there, and she'd understood in a split second that this wasn't the first time he'd watched one of his companions die. Hadn't others along this strange journey, hadn't the Dream Lord himself told her, warned her about this? At the time, though, kneeling beside the pile of sand that was all that was left of Rory, she hadn't cared. She'd chosen, and even though she'd known that choosing was driving a knife into him, she'd done it. She might have even been a little savagely glad about the hurting at the time. Maybe more than a little...

Now, though, weeks have passed, and she's had time to consider her choice again. Even though she realized that she loved Rory at that moment when she watched him fall to dust, as she's watched the Doctor ghost through the corridors of the TARDIS avoiding them and listened to Rory's Leadworth sensibilities, his placid dreams of a slow small village life that he is absolutely bedrock certain deep down inside they will both be returning to in due time, she knows that what he wants for the future will destroy her. He will always be a sweet boy that she does dearly love in a way, but she can't live that life as her life for all time. There's something else she wants. There's something else she craves. She tasted it a long time ago, the night of the crack in her wall, of prayers to Santa that were answered in the most unusual way, and now it's the only thing that will feed her soul. Tastes a bit like freedom and adventure. Tastes like cinnamon and wild spices...

She gets up and she begins to search for him. It's time they had a little chat.

If you all still like it, it will go on. Let me know.

They're still not mine.