A/N: Warning! There are extreeeme run-on sentences in this chapter. They're there for a reason... that I don't know. To my readers and reviewers: thank you so much for your support and enthusiasm. It's inspiring to see others reading my work and it makes me awesomely excited. Bye now!
Rambling
Her heart squeezes painfully whenever he's around, and she finally sums up the courage to ask.
"What do your... hearts feel like, because you love someone?"
He raises an eyebrow. "Have you ever fallen into a Blorgian jungle cat trap?"
She snorts, and he scratches the back of his head.
"I guess not. Well, that's all for the best. They do like jungle cats, and finding a human in one instead would probably make them give off that awful stench-"
"Doctor," she cuts in primly, and she's not even annoyed, his Pond, just impatient. The Girl Who Waited, who always waits, who grins when he rambles to himself and rolls her eyes at all the right moments. He wonders briefly if this form of himself blabbers more than the rest, and then he realizes he doesn't care.
He has been with his Amelia for so long that he could trace out the exact expression that settles on her face whenever she doesn't understand a word he's saying. He would have to use one of those excellent pencils with granium infused graphite to capture the glint in her eyes, of course, or the curve of her face. The freckles would need to be spattered haphazardly by the feet of a Chlori flying scorpion-he blinks at the thought of their poison- and her hair... Well, only one flower could possibly produce that sort of ink. If he was any sort of proper artist, it could be hung in a museum and preserved and misinterpreted for all eternity, and perhaps he and Pond could go see it and have a laugh and then... "Any other comparison besides a Blorgian..." Her voice slurs the inflection of their name terribly, and the Blorgians would be set into fits. The Doctor is amused for a moment, and ponders the proper time for a visit, but considering the summer wooden floods- "...jungle cat trap?"
Her expression at these times is not frustration, exactly, but rather a wonder and curiosity so fierce, so explosive, that it makes his hearts...
Ah. There.
"Have you ever had cardiovascular-" He rethinks and corrects "-open heart surgery?" No, that isn't fully it. "While awake?" He's pleased with himself at that one, and then realizes the ridiculous nature of it as soon as it leaves his mouth. Her lips curve up into a smile, and then he thinks that perhaps granium infused pencils won't be enough.
"Uh, no." It tilts upward into a giggle as her last syllable holds. "But I suppose that's good enough, Doctor, I get the jist."
His hearts move again at her, at the lilt of her voice and the way she watches him, listens to him.
Ohhhh. I always get it wrong at first.
But the Doctor keeps the epiphany to himself.
Well, if it settles her. It's nothing like that at all. OR a Blorgian jungle cat trap. Hmm. More like a...
And he loses himself again, until Amelia Pond's hand shudders into his and places them both over her rapidly beating heart.
"This is what mine feels like," she says quietly, and it is a flood of connotation to his ancient mind. She doesn't wait for him to travel the light years to the conclusion, even though he could do it just as quickly as his beloved TARDIS does. "Because I'm in love with you."
Amelia Pond is a complex girl, but he loves her in simplicity just as much. So the Doctor does something special for her, and summarizes the thousands of things he's thinking, the way her hair sounds when it's wet and how her hand still fits into his just as it did years ago, but so differently, the numb panic that swells with her tears, the smell of her laughter-it is grass and abstract art and star swimming and quiet- and the way her anger and hope frame her and make her small self eternal, the way her lips tasted human and human tastes like sorrow and joy swallowed together and forced slickly down the throat, the electricity that resides in her every cell, in every spinning, striking electron, the way she dips her fingers in the bowl of time and takes a lick of custard-
"I love you too, Amelia Pond."
