A/N: i wrote this in the afternoon literally four hours ago so i apologize for any mistakes. also i don't own Doctor Who.
"Are you alright, Raggedy Man?"
He looked up, smiling reflexively, even though Amy could tell that it didn't quite reach his eyes, "What? Of course I am! You know me. Always alright."
He moved around the console, peering at her curiously, "And you? Are you alright, Amelia? It's... hm, a little late on your end of things."
She waved a hand, "We're in the TARDIS. We don't have time."
He waggled a finger, "Ah, while that may be but relative to you, your body, and the last time you slept though... it's getting a little late. Can't fool me." He grinned proudly.
Amy raised an eyebrow, "Thinking about my body were you?"
He spluttered, brow furrowing as he waved his hands, "Oh- you- Amelia -" her laughter turned his frustration into a childish whine, "Don't do that. You're married."
"And happily too." She chuckled, "You just make it too easy, Doctor."
He glowered sullenly, flicking another switch and moving on quickly, "Back to the question at hand... Why are you up so late, Amy? Trouble sleeping? And what can I do to help?"
She shrugged, "The Pandorica. Are you okay?"
He waved a hand, "Ancient history at this point, and, in a universe that never even existed. Why wouldn't I be?"
She frowned, watching him, "Because you're not happy."
He smiled, raising a brow, "Not happy? Course I'm happy!" He pointed at his smile as if to say, ' See? Look!' She wasn't fooled.
Amelia folded her arms, disapproving, "Because while you may be smiling, Doctor, your eyes aren't."
His grin froze, turning into something more strained, as if he hadn't expected to be seen so easily. He turned his attention back to the console. Amy waited before he broke the silence with a sigh, "It's nothing, Amelia. Nothing to concern yourself about. I'll be fine."
Amelia eyed him carefully as he busied himself with the console. With a sigh she turned around, chewing on her lower lip. After some deliberation she finally spoke, "I just... you know... it must be tough."
"...Tough?" He was genuinely confused.
Amy turned back around, meeting his eyes, her brows raised. He busied himself again with his buttons and levers, refusing to meet her gaze. She tapped her nails on the console, "Yeah, tough. You talked a big game, back at the Pandorica. About the fear that went into making a box like that. A box that would trap you forever and never ever let you die. Alone with yourself till the end of the universe."
His hands had stilled but she kept talking, "A goblin, a trickster, a warrior..." she trailed off recalling his words from that day only a week, or a billion, or two thousand years ago in a universe that had never happened at all, "A nameless, terrible thing, yes? Soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in the entire universe." She leaned forward as he looked away, eyes closed, "Nothing could stop it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down-"
"Yes. Alright." The Doctor looked up, eyes dark and voice hard and trembling with something like anger and something like pain, "What is it that you want, Amy?"
"All I want, Raggedy Man, is to know if you're okay."
He was still holding himself back, jaw working with what he left unsaid. She could see it, in a moment he would clear away that storm, tucking it away, buried down deep inside where it could never ever be opened. Something dark and old and part of him, a secret terror. She couldn't let it go, she couldn't let it keep feeding off of him. One more word, that was it. That was all it would take. Amy licked her lips and pushed him over the edge, "You were the monster in the box- the most feared creature in all the cosmos. They weren't lying, were they?"
"No." He snapped, "They weren't." His lips thinned, "The Pandorica. Pandora's Box. I never thought I would feature so heavily," every word is spat with a bitter fury, "In that tale. You humans opened up that box. Let all the worlds evils out." He waved a hand, laughing dryly, " I am all the evil things in the world. Bit ironic, isn't it?"
Amy reached out, her hand over his, "Doctor, you're forgetting something."
He met her eyes, so very tired and so very old. She'd never thought of him as old, not in the many times he'd said so. But now... now he looked positively ancient, as if he'd seen the birth of the universe, seen it age, and seen it die, as if he'd watched galaxies explode into being and burn in the fires of their own destruction. For all she knew, he could've. She took a breath, "I was raised on that book. I read it over and over. You're forgetting the most important part of the story."
His brows furrowed and Amy smiled, "Silly old Doctor. All the evils escaped the box. But Pandora managed to lock one last thing up. She held onto one thing. To hope."
His eyes widened as Amy nodded, smiling sadly, "Hope, Doctor. Hope is the only thing we can hold onto, even in our darkest hour. We hope that one day things will get better, we hope that one day, the clouds will part and the sun will shine, we hope on a day when the wind stands fair that a Doctor will come to call." Her grip tightened, "Hope is a little girl in a garden, waiting for a man in a big blue box who will drop out of the sky and show her the world."
"Raggedy Man..." she sighed, reaching up and cupping his face, "You are our hope."
"Pond..." he looked away, "...Haven't you ever wondered why hope is with the monsters in that box? Why it was even there in the first place?"
"What?"
He smiled at her, searching her face, "Four psychiatrists." She froze as he continued, "Little Amelia Pond, waiting in that big empty house for a silly man who was whole years and worlds too late. Maybe hope is the greatest enemy of all. Maybe hope is a terrible liar. Tricking people into thinking the world could be something beautiful and amazing and in the end... killing them for it. Maybe hope was in there because it is the most cruel of them all."
Amelia straightened, "Maybe hope is stupid and thick."
The Doctor snorted, still giving her that sad sad smile. She wanted to slap it off of his face- anything but that heartbreaking expression, "Where would we be in a world without hope? We'd be lost, you hear me? Nothing better to look forward too, nothing to hang onto when times get rough, nothing worth waiting for. And have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, it's worth waiting for? Huh?" She jabbed his shoulder with her finger, watching him gape and rub at it with offense as she continued her tirade, "Maybe, Raggedy Man, a hope that is a bit of a liar is better than nothing at all. Maybe it's a price I'm willing to pay."
He startled her then, furious suddenly, wounded as he lashed out, "Well, maybe I'm not! Eh? Maybe I'm old and tired and I don't want to be a- a thinly veiled metaphor!" He ran a hand through his hair, "Maybe, Amelia Pond..." he snapped, "Maybe it isn't worth it. Maybe I'm taking advantage of desperate people to satisfy a lonely prideful old man's appetite for- for adulation!"
Amy raised an eyebrow, unimpressed, "Or maybe, you've forgotten that a friendship is give and take. Show me the world, Raggedy Man, give me hope. I don't care what happens after that. And, all the better if I can ease that loneliness."
"Gah!" He threw out his hands, frustrated, "You're impossible. I'm not a good man. I'm not hope. I'm not fit to be something like that... didn't you see them? Didn't you see what they did to you in order to get to me? What monster inspires that level of fear? That level of destruction? Me." He hit his chest, "Me, Amelia. I do! I scared them that much! Evil evil creatures. The Daleks, the Cybermen- which feel no fear! Me!"
Amy leaned forward, "I don't know about you, Doctor, but if the monster under the bed were afraid of something, I'd damn well want it with me."
He closed his eyes, "It's not... it's not that simple." He opens them again, desperate and earnest, "They took your parents from you, your entire life. That empty house and that little girl all alone in it. They did that because of me, Amy."
"And you gave it back."
"But I may as well have taken it in the first place!"
She snapped, "Doctor, you don't get to dictate that for me. I would never trade the memory of those years for anything, not ever. They gave me you. And you are worth it, every hour, every minute, every year that I waited was worth it. I don't care if you don't believe me. I'll just stay right here until you do, okay Raggedy Man? You may not be a good man, you may not be perfect or be able to spare me of all the pain you may or may not have caused, you may even eventually lead me to my death but that just makes you like anyone else."
His brows furrowed, confused, "Like everyone else?"
She smiled despite herself, "It makes you human, Doctor."
He didn't seem to know what to say to that as she continued, softer now, "You carry so much on those shoulders, more than I'll ever know. But you're mortal. You're fallible. Just like us. You may forget that drifting off in your box to other planets and galaxies but in the end, you're just a boy and his box off to see the stars. You never needed to help. But you do anyway. You gave us hope."
He sighed, shoulders slumping with some sort of defeat, "I'm not human, Amelia Pond." He laughed dryly, "You know that I'm as alien as they come."
"Shut up, you know what I mean." She took his hand, "I mean that despite all this grand scale of saving the universe and traveling through the centuries and- and in between the sand of the hourglass, there's still a person under there. And we can forget that a lot. Sometimes we might think you're a god or an angel, a warrior or a hero here to save the day. We all fall a little bit in love with you, but... underneath all that, there's just you. A man with a little bit of hope off to see the universe, who happens to stop by every now and then in, every day in a billion days, to comfort the children who are crying."
He wouldn't look at her, his head hanging. She squeezed his hand and he squeezed back. Amy waited before he finally lifted his head, smiling, eyes red, "Oh, Amelia Pond... I'm sorry."
She smiled back, leaning into him, resting her head on his shoulder, "Don't be sorry, Raggedy Man. I'm not."
She wasn't. She never would be. She only felt sad to think, that there would come a day when she wasn't by his side anymore. That day would come, soon she felt, that inevitable end. But she wouldn't trade her time with him for the world. Not one day. The Doctor was worth it. He always would be.
Amy Pond leaned her head on her best friend's shoulder and breathed in hope.
A/N: This whole story was originally going to be a rambling tumblr post and it's just like? I love this- how Pandora's box held all the unspecified evils of the world including death and then jumping off of that, the Pandorica held a great "evil" which ended up being the Doctor. But I feel like the writers might have gone one step further in the metaphor as well because what was also in Pandora's box was hope! And I don't think that was an accident. Or I don't want it to be accident. I just like to think that the Doctor looks a lot like hope.