Paris in the fifty-third century is, in a word, shiny. Not Times Square shiny—there's a dull sort of jolt in the Doctor's chest as he thinks it—but a glow that seems to emanate from the inside out. The pavements gleam with night-old rain, the strange curlicued street orbs still lit in the cloudy murk of morning.
The Doctor dismisses the first two cafés they pass, but recognizes the third and strides in, ready with a bright "Bonjour!" He gets a surprise when, less than a minute later, he's thrown unceremoniously from the place.
"Forgot about the maître d'," he mutters to Amy in explanation. "His lady friend, she, er… she followed me out the last time I was here. Got rather the wrong impression, I think." He winces, rubbing his neck where the waiter grabbed him.
Amy's trying not to laugh, and she wiggles her eyebrows at him. "Oh. So you didn't—?"
He stares at her, horrified. "No! She was missing teeth!"
Amy snorts with laughter, but there's a strange sort of smugness in her expression that throws him off for a second. He knows it should annoy him, but he's the farthest thing from it. In fact, he's almost… pleased.
All morning, he's been worried about last night, and what he did in his drunken stupor, but Amy hasn't said anything. He doesn't know if it's because he dreamed the words or because she just wrote it off as drunk talk.
You've always been mine, Amelia Pond.
Maybe she has, he muses, watching her saunter down the street ahead of him. A decade of her life, more than three hundred years of his… it's been a long time. He can't help thinking back to the snappy Scottish girl who'd told him about the four psychiatrists she'd bitten, just for telling her he, the Doctor, wasn't real. Involuntarily, his eyes travel down her frame, settling inevitably on her endless legs. They seem to stretch into oblivion between her pumps and the hem of her sheath, which is deliciously short. They're certainly a nicer sight than those of the maître d's madam, who turned out to be somewhat of an exhibitionist.
He shakes his head to clear it. Stop it. Dirty old alien. Think of Rory.
Rory's gone, says a nasty little voice in his head. Has been for years now. It sounds unpleasantly familiar. It sounds like a little man in a fedora and a checkered suit— The only person who hates me as much as I do.
Not so many years, he argues back. He smiles automatically as Amy turns to urge him along, her smile creasing the edges of her eyelids.
How old is she now? Thirty-two? Thirty-three? He can't pretend he's not able to tell, the way she can lose and gain years in the span of a few moments, especially if she's deep in thought.
He wonders if this is their fate. Amy Pond and the Doctor, floating across centuries and galaxies together, two children at first glance but with that ancient ache behind their respective gazes of green and hazel.
And then, just as he thinks it, Amy whirls around, her fiery hair vibrant and in furious motion against Paris's still gray backdrop.
"I just remembered. Paris—they've got to have crêpes somewhere, right? Even in the fifty-third century?"
It takes him a moment to process the question. "Crêpes. Right. Yeah." Recovering, he makes a face at her. "All stomach and eyes today, aren't you, Pond?"
She rolls her eyes. "Yeah, well, all chin and no eyebrows, you are, and that's all the time."
He catches up to her and furiously musses her hair—half out of fun and half to catch the soft ginger tresses between his fingers. Amy smells like rain and sugar, and her laugh is even sweeter.
They do finally find coffee, and crêpes. There isn't the simple sugar and lemon that Amy's used to, though, so the Doctor recommends a couple of flavors. He doesn't get anything.
"Sometimes," she manages later through a mouthful of some kind of savory mix that even he doesn't recognize, "I wonder how you're still standing." She looks meaningfully at his empty place at the table.
"I eat," he replies disdainfully. "I'm just not hungry." He looks at the crêpe in distaste. "Especially not for that."
She gives him a look of outrage. "You told me to get it!"
He sticks out his tongue. "And you're Scottish! You came up with haggis!"
"Don't you hate on the haggis," she threatens, pointing her fork menacingly at him. She takes up another mouthful without a second thought. "Aunt Sharon used to try and make it for me once. Make me feel at home, I s'pose." She grinned. "Guess how many people called the fire department for that one?"
He chuckles and just watches her for a moment. She's no dainty eater, but he can't blame her—she's been on her feet all night, hasn't slept or eaten, and she's, well—human. Sometimes, strange as it seems, he wishes he could be hungry. Physically hungry, with a rumble in his belly, some way to physicalize the twinge in his chest. It gnaws at him when he's concentrating on refusing TARDIS wires, or in the middle of a guided tour across Kaplan-24.
It is hunger, he supposes, but not the kind so easily satisfied by a crêpe or a cup of coffee. And what for, well, he's never quite sure.
"Sure you don't want a bite?" He comes back to the present. She's looking at him intently, and he realizes he's been staring down at her plate, lost in thought.
He searches for words for a few moments, and then smiles up at her. "I'm not hungry."