Amy

Finally I

The returning group were sombre and sad. The outing had not been the escape they had hoped for, it had been treacherously cold and morally unpleasant. In the end, Fritz had been the one who, in the name of science, put an end to the poor creature they'd found. His revolver was never loaded, but he still kept the bullets on him. Amy remembered seeing the birds flee from the nearby trees when the bang had sounded, she hadn't been able to look. And then they had left, the Doctor promising that Fritz could have a trip in the TARIDS 'another time,' when he came back to check the mess at the base had all been sorted in 'a while.' It sounded vague, but Amy was sure Eleven wouldn't be able to keep away from him forever (everything up to forever was a different matter, however).

Luke retreated either to his room (well, the guest room, which wasn't in the Bedroom Circle, it was in the hallway afterwards) or to find the Tenth Doctor wherever he was to carry on pestering him to get K-9 fixed so he could leave the TARDIS now he'd seen the ugly side of time travel. Amy remained in Nerve Centre with the Doctor and Jenny, while Adam Mitchell and Martha were off with Nine (the only available Doctor, it seemed) trying to figure out what to do about the fact she couldn't touch anything without either melting or burning it (except for one of the sofa cushions, she'd gone to lean on it without thinking and outright set it on fire, though Adam had put it out).

The room was quite sparse. More than usual. Rory and Mickey were still hiding from Tentoo in another room Amy had never asked the location of, and Jack was in the console room giving the navigation system a once-over after it had been playing up severely for the last three days; whenever anybody tried to input a specific date it overshot significantly. Rose and Tentoo were nowhere to be found as nobody was looking for them, which left River and Donna sat on the other table to herself, Eleven and Jenny, not talking about an awful lot. It was quiet, and nobody was in a particularly good mood.

But of course, on board the TARDIS, nothing could last. It was when Donna had just broached the idea of making a round of tea for everybody, and was about to go into the kitchen to do exactly that, that shouting could be heard coming from the Bedroom Circle. The same shouting they'd all been so sickeningly suffering through for days now. It was Rose and her husband, yet again, arguing about nothing to get away from the real issue.

"I said don't wash what was in the basket!" Rose shouted at Tentoo, finally coming through into the room as its inhabitants all muttered vague curses about the fact they now had to be subjected to this, since avoidance tactics couldn't work forever.

"You did not!" Tentoo yelled right back at her, following her around into the kitchen. Amy stared at the bright white surface of the table in front of her, the gleaming cleanliness of it marred with mug-stains from the Time Lords, all of whom were too ignorant to use a coaster. "You told me, specifically, to wash it."

"There were colours and whites in there! My towels will all be ruined and it's your fault! And you lot – hope you had fun in your nut factory, hmm!?" she rounded mainly on Jenny, who hadn't done anything at all. Thankfully this wasn't one of those times where Jenny did completely the wrong thing for the situation, and she glowered at the table and ignored Rose. "Ignoring me still? All of you?" Amy would have liked to say 'no,' but a), that was a lie, and b), if she said that, she'd have to talk to Rose about these matters. And she didn't want to. So she carried on staring at coffee stains.

"Well why would they want to talk to you when you're being like this!?" Tentoo demanded of her.

"I'm not being 'like' anything! It's all you, you're an idiot!"

"Oh, I'm an idiot, she says! Well you're the one who married this 'idiot', aren't you? And not just an idiot – all the other bloody things you've been calling me for days! You think I don't know you were lying about what happened when I wasn't here!?" Oh, god, Amy thought, he's talking about her sharing a bed with Ten at the Maitlands'… Or, it was more than just 'sharing a bed' to Amy's best understanding. "But I suppose I am an idiot, for believing you for so long!"

"'Married'!? Yeah, sure! Barely! We were on a beach! The bloody priest probably wasn't ordained!"

"We got married there for sentimentality!"

"Some sentiment it was – the beach where I got completely abandoned!?"

"You're abandoning yourself right now!"

"Abandoning myself!? That's rich, coming from you! Self-pity is the only thing you've bloody got going for you at this point, how's that for abandoning yourself!?"

"Oh, and he hasn't been pitying himself for weeks – no, months – no, YEARS!? Hasn't he!?" And now Ten, who wasn't even in the room, had been brought into it.

"Well I've been pitying myself for all the years I've had to spend with you!" There was silence, and Rose should do best to apologise and stop talking right there and do what she was obviously going to in a quieter, more subdued way. But 'quiet' and 'subdued' were not words that Rose Tyler cared to know the meaning of. "I was forced! But I don't know what's forcing me anymore!" Out of her back pocket she took her wedding ring, which she'd removed days ago. "Well you know what!? This ring is just a cage, your cage, and I don't want to be in it anymore! Have it back!" She threw the ring at Tentoo.

"I… Rose…" he choked. No more fight left in him now she'd done that, Amy observed, "N-no, no, I don't mean that! You don't mean that! Put the ring back on, let's talk-" he stooped and picked it up, holding the golden band out to her in his palm.

"I'm done talking! I hate every second I've spent with you, when…." She stopped herself.

"'When' what? When you could've been with him!?" Anger returned to Tentoo.

"It's not about him!"

"OF COURSE IT'S ABOUT HIM!"

"IT'S ABOUT YOU!"

"I HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING WRONG!"

They'd finally gotten down to the meat of the issue, which was that all their problems came from the presence of Ten. Amy didn't believe for one second that Rose had been having an awful time with Tentoo for the last four years, she thought that Rose was lying about that just to make Tentoo leave and get out of her sight, which was clearly where this was going. She didn't care how many tears Rose shed, she was being selfish and Amy didn't want to be anywhere near the fallout.

"JUST GET OUT!"

"Get out where!? I live here too!"

"Go back home! Go back to mum and dad and Tony, go on! Where you want to be!"

"I do not-"

"You're the one who keeps trying to convince me to go home, but I don't want to go home."

"I don't want to go home without you," he pleaded.

"Get out or I swear to god, I'll make you," Rose threatened, and Amy saw her eyes glow gold, and saw the colour of them reflected back in Tentoo's tears.

"Come over and make me then," he was trying not to break down into sobs, "Come on."

"I don't have to go over there to do it. Leave on your own or you'll be standing on that same beach, all alone, without me, or anyone, completely alone. And you've never been alone."

"I was alone for centuries!"

"No you weren't!" Rose shrieked, "You were never alone! You've never had to be! That was him, that was the Doctor, and you are. Not. The. Doctor!" she shouted, and then Tentoo froze unnaturally, and very slowly (or at least, it looked slow), from the feet up, he disintegrated into the golden particles of the time vortex, fading into oblivion. And then Rose halfway cried and halfway screamed and collapsed to her knees on the floor, and Donna was the first one who felt she just had to go and comfort her.

"Should I go?" Eleven whispered to Amy urgently, "Should I help?"

"No," she said eventually. She didn't think sending a Time Lord over there was worth the risk, "Go get Jack, she'll talk to Jack." Eleven, wanting to do anything useful but undamaging, obeyed Amy's advice and slipped off to the left in the opposite direction of Rose, towards the console room. Amy didn't know if Rose teleporting Tentoo back home would even be better in the long-run, she would have to wait to make that judgment. But right then, she decided that the best course of action would be to go deliver the news to the other members of the crew, and find Rory, and then resign herself to her bedroom for the rest of the evening.