A/N: Who doesn't love teenage Amy and Rory! No spoilers, unless you squint. The Doctor will be in the next chapter. :)
2.
She never mentioned the fifth psychiatrist to the Doctor because, technically, the woman was just a "life guidance counselor" and, technically, he wasn't responsible for the issues that sent her there.
(Although, technically, couldn't she trace everything back to him?)
No one was responsible. No one ever told Amy Pond she was fat. She was never bullied about her weight, and it wasn't as if she laid awake at night fretting about her body image. It was like the other ideas that Amy's mind occasionally latched onto. One day when she was fifteen years old, she just decided she was going to be skinnier, and she decided that was going to happen because she ate nothing but carrot sticks. It was just a fad diet that other girls gave up on after three days, but then, Amy had always been dangerously stubborn.
Her Life Guidance Counselor sat her down beside her Aunt Sharon and told them that Amy needed to find one trusted friend to confide in, someone who could be strong for her in the cavernous pit of the lunchroom. Her first thought- she brushed her first thought aside in embarrassment and decided instead to bare her soul to Mels, who would hopefully blow her off as not having a legitimate problem and leave her to her carrot sticks in peace.
Mels, as usual, didn't cooperate. "Well, you've got to eat, brickhead. If you don't, your kids will be born all screwed up, like, birth defects."
"I'm never having kids,"Amy snapped darkly.
(Mels laughed.)
So on the day that Amy almost passed out in her biology lab, over a flaming Bunsen burner, she found Rory at his locker, grabbed his elbow, and whispered, "There's something I need to tell you."
He nodded patiently and listened with the appropriate amount of surprise and concern and composure, but there was something else, this odd longing light in his eyes, like he would squeeze her hand if he could only reach it. He agreed to sit and eat lunch with her every day until it didn't hurt anymore.
(The previous month, Amy's aunt had gone to answer the bell and found Rory Williams on her doorstep, rocking back and forth on his heels, hair rumpled as if he had mussed it up nervously.
"Excuse me, ma'am, but… I'm worried about your niece…")
He closed his locker quickly so she wouldn't notice there was a book on eating disorders lying on the bottom shelf.
She glared at him across the table every day for the winter of that year- she whined and she protested- how would she be bikini-ready by spring?- she liked carrots just an awful lot, really-
"Rory Williams," she hissed in a whisper. "You are going to ruin my life. I am going to die old and fat and alone and surrounded by cats, waiting until my final breath for a man who will never be able to see past my blubber."
"That's not going to happen." He couldn't quite meet her eyes.
(She wanted to believe him. But sometimes she just looked in the mirror and saw those chubby cheeks and felt like such a child, and she would never grow up. She would always be a kid and she would always be waiting.)
Maybe if he was any other boy he would take her hand and tell her she was hot and gorgeous and she would never have to wait another day. But he was stupid Rory and he wanted to be a stupid doctor when he grew up and he just lowered his stupid voice and said, "Go on. You can do it. One more bite."
"I hate you," Amy murmured around the mouthful of rich-in-fiber pasta.
He tried not to take it personally. According to the book in the bottom of his locker, sometimes she felt powerless, and she took her frustration out on the people who were trying to help her.
(In other words, sometimes I hate you was Amy Pond for I hate myself.)