When Rory Williams came home, his wife was waiting for him in the kitchen. She did not seem pleased.
"Oh no," Rory said. "What happened?"
Amy shrugged. "My mum came over."
Rory tried his best to smile. "Well, that's not too bad, right?"
"I suppose not." Amy looked out the window into their patio.
Rory placed down his work bag. He walked over to his wife, placing his hands on her shoulders. He massaged them gently. Amy smiled, her hand reaching up to hold his. She gave his hand a squeeze, as if to say, "I'm okay." Yet she continued to stare out the window, her eyes watching the backyard carefully – as though somehow, some time, a blue box might fall out of the sky.
"She was worried about me," Amy said. "Kept wanting to know how I was doing."
"She's your mum," Rory reminded her. "Of course she would."
Amy turned towards him. "But what am I supposed to tell her? That my imaginary friend came back for me, and I've been traveling the Universe with him in his little blue box – meeting aliens, creating paradoxes, being an inch away from death just to save the world? She'd never let me go again."
Rory raised an eyebrow. "So you just won't tell her?"
"I don't know," Amy said. She looked into his eyes. "Have you told your dad?"
"No," Rory admitted.
Amy laughed. It came out hollow, almost like a drowning kitten mewing for help. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Rory rushed towards her, wrapping his arms around her. He wanted to protect her. An image flashed into his mind – of plastic, of a red Roman cape, of waiting outside a big black box. Rory held Amy tighter. He would do anything he could to protect her.
"I just don't know what I'm supposed to do," Amy murmured into his shoulder. "I spent twelve years alone after my parents disappeared. Twelve years that never existed and never happened because of the greatest paradox in the history of the Universe – but I still remember as clearly as though they had just happened yesterday. Every change, every shift in time plays out in my head like old movies over and over again – and it never stops." Her voice cracked. "And I can't even complain, because you've been through just as much as me – if not more. The only difference is: I wanted to run away. Sometimes, I still do."
That wasn't completely true, Rory Williams knew. The Doctor had explained it vaguely. Amy had grown up with a crack in her bedroom wall. She remembered things she shouldn't have remembered: events that happened and then didn't happen, times that were and then weren't. Rory had spent plenty of time in the TARDIS and, well, dying and then not being dead – but he hadn't spent twelve years next to a gap in time and space that messed with his memories like Amy. He remembered things – two thousand years of waiting, the feeling of nothingness – but only vaguely. They felt like the time between dreams and waking up: he couldn't quite tell if they had ever really happened.
Besides, what was to say he didn't want to run away either. He didn't want an adventure of his own. The Rory Williams, nurse of Leadworth, had been so boring. It was a wonder Amy even paid a second glance at him. Yet traveling with the Doctor, Rory had learned to be a hero. He had learned what was worth dying for. No matter what happened, Rory Williams knew he would always fight to be with Amy Pond.
"Don't worry," Rory whispered into his wife's hair. He held her tightly in his arms, a silent promise that he would never let her go. "We'll figure it out. We always do."