Episode: The Lives and Times of the Raggedy Doctor and Amelia Pond
Chapter: The Girl Who Waited [5/5]
Summary: Amelia wanted someone to fix the crack in her wall. Rory wanted someone to look at the pictures. The Atraxi wanted to recapture Prisoner Zero. Eventually, everyone got what they wanted, though not in the way they wanted it. They got the Raggedy Doctor instead. Or the one where the Master wanted to fix the TARDIS but ended up saving the Earth.
Rating: T
When Amy wakes up in the middle of the night, she's not sure why.
Nerves? Yes, but not enough to wake her up without reason. Need to use the toilet? No, not really. Nightmare? She's pretty sure the answer to that is no as well.
So, why…
And that's when she catches the strange sound growing quieter and stopping.
Only, it isn't that strange. Amy has heard this sound before, thrice, and she will never forget it.
She rushes to the window, heart in her throat, and there it is. The blue box. The Raggedy Doctor is back.
Amy throws a jacket on and rushes outside, half expecting him to have vanished by the time she gets to the garden, but he hasn't. He's outside the box, leaning next to the door, and his smirk widens when their eyes meet.
"Hello, Amelia."
"It's you," Amy whispers, disbelief swept away by recognition at hearing that name, the one only this man insists on using anymore. "You came back. And you changed your clothes," she points out, trying to calm the storm in her mind.
The Doctor grimaces.
"Yeah, well… Not exactly my choice, in a sense. To either of those," he answers with a shrug, looking down at himself instead of elaborating.
He's wearing gray jeans, white trainers, a white sweater and a blue jacket, instead of the pale suit she last saw him in. It is so normal, so human that it takes her a moment to realize he's gone silent, a hand resting on his chest as he looks at his feet almost forlorn.
Amy takes a deep breath, centering herself – and crosses the space between them with two long steps, grabs his arm, and drags him to the house.
"What the—"
"You've got a lot of explaining to do, mister, and I won't risk having you run back into your time traveling box again! So, get in and sit down while I go put on some clothes, and if you dare even think about vanishing, I will find you," she threatens once they're inside, pushing him into the kitchen and channeling all her anger into one very effective glare.
Eyes blown wide in a perfect 'deer in the headlights' impersonation, the Doctor merely gulps.
"Sit."
He sits. Amy nods, satisfied, and makes to go to her room to get dressed, when he tentatively lifts a hand.
Amy feels like laughing, but it looks like the shock is clearing up, as he's smiling sheepishly now, so she keeps up her no-nonsense face.
"You may speak."
"First, I thought you were a kissogram? Where does this dominatrix thing come from?" he asks, no trace of any sheepishness in his grin, and Amy blushes madly. "And second, yeah, I get it, explaining and you being in your nightie and all that. Can I get something to eat while you change? I'm famished."
Still bright red like a tomato, Amy just nods before running away, catching his cackling before she slams the door shut at her back.
A second later, she opens it again and looks at the stairs.
"You're the worst! Make me a sandwich too!"
"Any preferences?!"
"Ham and cheese!"
He laughs again, but Amy closes the door before he can answer. What if she developed a fondness for ham and cheese sandwiches after his first visit when she was seven? Doesn't mean they aren't good.
She dresses in record time, but like all those years ago, he has the stove going and the food already cooking by the time she gets to the kitchen, almost like it had taken her longer or he had made the appliances go faster.
There's a ham and cheese sandwich on a plate in the same spot she sat at when they first met, with an apple in front of what was his seat.
An apple with a smiling face cut into it by clumsy kid hands.
"I put it in my pocket and forgot about it. Found it when I changed and I thought it was about time I ate it," he says over his shoulder when he notices her looking at the apple, and, as if it was an invitation, she picks it up to see if it really is as fresh as it looks. "Yes, it's the same one. Time travel, remember?"
"It still feels like a dream," she whispers, sitting down and, smiling at the apple, she finally puts it down where it belongs.
Amy's about to burst with questions, but she decides to take a deep breath instead and eat her sandwich. In the meantime, he finishes cooking his scrambled eggs, toast and some pancakes, the last of which he shares with her and she almost melts at the fluffiness. Once his plate is clean, Amy rests her hands on the table, back straight, and gives him a very serious look.
"Question time, right? Okay, before we begin, just letting you know I reserve the right to answer," he tells her, leaning back in his seat with a smirk.
"Fair enough," Amy concedes, hoping he will at least answer some of her questions. "Let's start with the basics," she tells him, and he nods in agreement even if the glint in his eyes tells her he's going to give her Hell. "Is your name really Harold Saxon?"
He looks startled, which counts as a win in Amy's book, but he easily replaces the surprise with a wide grin and a hint of pride in his gaze.
"That was fast! Good job! And no, it isn't, I made that up," he tells her like one would a puppy that has learned a new trick, though the pride in his eyes is genuine.
It doesn't make the patronizing tone any less stinging, though, which is why she blurts out her next question with far less control than she would have liked.
"What was that thing last Christmas? What did you do?!"
"Oi, I didn't do anything. I just gave the order to blow up the ship, which saved all of London, must I add. I thought the Racnoss were gone, like the rest of the universe," he answers calmly, shrugging and shifting so that he can rest an arm on the backrest of the chair, the very picture of calm and cool.
Amy frowns.
"The what? Which ship? No, I'm talking about the bloody planet that appeared out of nowhere, and everyone's faces turning into – into yours! What was that?!" she tries again, gesturing a bit, and, this time, he looks lost.
For just a moment.
As soon as he processes her words, when he realizes what she means…
Had Amy slapped him, he wouldn't have looked as pained as he does now, gaze unfocused as he loses himself in his memories, before he turns away from her with a flinch.
The Doctor curls into himself, losing any pretense at coolness, with one hand clutching something under his shirt, before, with a deep breath, his face turns to stone-cold seriousness.
"July 2010. Skaro ablaze, I only meant to skip one day," he hisses dangerously, glaring at the ground, before shifting so he can face Amy again, resting his hands on the table with a bit of difficulty, but keeping his eyes on the empty plate. "Don't worry about last Christmas. It's over. It will never happen again," he tells her, darkness in his voice that makes his calm tone not sound calm at all.
"The faces thing or the planet?" she asks softly, unsure whether she's scared of him or for him.
His hands are shaking, even if he doesn't seem to realize it, and not even their curling into tight fists can hide that.
He's in pain, the memories of whatever happened last Christmas did this, hurt him deeply, and he hasn't healed yet. Him, the Raggedy Doctor, the man who crashed with his time machine in her garden and faced an inquisitive seven-year-old, a crack in space, an alien guard, the very real risk of his time machine burning, being chained to a radiator by a pretend policewoman, confronting and defeating an alien criminal, and sending an alien battlefleet running with their tails between their legs. None of that made him quiver, none of that hurt him, but whatever happened last Christmas did.
He's hurting, and the only thing Amy can do is stretch over the table to grab his cold hand with her own.
The Doctor freezes, looking at the hand on his as if it had appeared out of nowhere. Slowly, though, he turns his own around and squeezes Amy's reassuringly.
"Neither," he answers simply, not as coldly as before, and Amy just nods with a soft 'okay'.
He breaks contact after a minute or so, leaning back once more, though tiredly this time, and rubbing his face with a sigh.
She wants to ask more, ask how long ago was that Christmas for him, ask what happened and how she can make it better, but she doesn't. The Doctor needs time, more than anything, and Amy can give him that much at least.
That, and the apple he seems to have completely forgotten about. Again.
"Here. It'll get rusty otherwise," she tells him, pushing the smiling apple closer to him.
When he drops his hands and sees it, the Doctor snorts, a crooked smirk on his face, and Amy smiles.
Apparently, she can distract him from his pain as well. Good. This man has done so much for her, it's about time she found a way to return the favor. Even if it seems to be with food, every time.
"Wouldn't that be a shame," he answers mockingly, but picks the apple up and makes a show out of biting its 'face' off, growl and all.
Amy rolls her eyes but doesn't say anything, letting him eat in peace.
He's just swallowed his second bite when he leans over the table, eyes alight with excitement in a way that makes them look greener. Amy still doesn't know what color they are, exactly, going from Saxon's brown eyes to the Doctor's amber-green, but one thing they are is expressive. She's pretty sure he could give entire speeches with just his eyes, and the public would be completely moved regardless of the lack of words. Saxon was extremely charismatic, after all – before he went crazy, that is. Maybe she should ask about that.
"Right, I came here for a reason," he tells her, poking at the table with one finger. "See, I've been bothering you a lot, apparently, and that's supposed to be bad manners. So, what would you say I make up for these twelve years of absence? Fourteen now, I guess, but still, the point stands. One trip in the TARDIS, in the time machine. Past or future, your choice. What do you say?"
… Right, Amy had definitely not expected that.
"Uhm. Are you an incredibly clever and charismatic psychopath who has killed and manipulated people to his own aims without remorse?" she blurts out instead, and, as soon as her ears register what she just said, Amy feels like slapping herself.
"More of a sociopath, actually, but yes, I am," he answers sincerely with the widest grin yet, almost literally ear to ear, which makes his eyes crinkle.
He should look insane, he really should. Instead, he looks happy, proud of Amy once more.
"Wait, what?"
"What what?"
"You're crazy!" she shouts, freaking out and at a loss as to what to think, and his adorable confusion turns to an indignant pout.
"Well, of course I am! Do you think I would be doing what I do if I was sane? That'd be crazy!" he explains with some hand gestures that practically scream 'what the Hell'. "No one in my line of work is sane, let's be real. But! I'm far less crazy than I was a couple days ago, I—" he explains with what Amy decides to call his 'politician smile', big and knowing and charming, but the expression freezes before he can actually get to explaining what happened two days ago.
Amy knows what happened two days ago to her. But what does that mean to a time traveler? 'Two days ago' could be two days ago, or it could be two months, two minutes, or—
Last Christmas.
He lets his hands drop, gaze lost on the floor once more, before he reaches for whatever is under his shirt, rubbing it gently.
"You're right. Maybe it's best if I get you a present or something," the Doctor tells her with a blank voice, though there's something heavy dragging it down that makes Amy reach for his hand once more, squeezing it so he meets her eyes again.
"I'd love to come with you, Doctor."
He stiffens, amber eyes widening minutely with a pain that makes them shine with unshed tears, before he looks away and pulls his hand back almost violently.
"Don't call me that. That's not my name, don't call me that," he hisses threateningly, hands clenching into fists, and Amy hesitates, worried for a moment before she realizes he's not moving.
Pain, right. She has to keep reminding herself that he's in pain.
Last Christmas—two days ago—was awful for him. But he said it himself, he said that the time machine is a 'doctor box', and he told the Atraxi that he was the Doctor, the man who stopped all those aliens from invading so many times before the Atraxi even came to Earth for the first time.
… There's the whole Saxon created some killing machines and murdered the President of the United States on live TV while trying to pass it off as some kind of alien invasion thing, too, but that doesn't sound like what she has seen this man do.
Is he really a man, though? The Atraxi said he wasn't 'of this world'. Maybe they meant he wasn't 'of this time', what with him being a time traveler. Definitely from the future, time travel is impossible now. And he looks human. Cold hands, but really, that's no reason to call someone an alien, for Pete's sake.
"What should I call you then?" she asks him once she remembers what they were talking about, and the Doctor hesitates, hands clenching and unclenching, before he frowns at her wall.
"… Not that," he answers at last, and Amy throws her hands up with a huff.
"Right, extremely useful, Raggedy Man. What would I do without you?" she scoffs, earning herself an eyeroll.
He relaxes back in his seat, though, so she counts it as a victory.
"Don't make me answer that," he answers playfully, smirking in a way that is most definitely not playful, but Amy knows him well enough by now to know when he's a serious danger and when he's just trying to scare the pants out of people, so she recognizes this as the second instance.
And Amy Pond is not easily scared, not after growing up with a crack in her wall leading to a prison and chasing an alien criminal down fantastic worlds with a time traveler with a screwdriver and a blue box.
She lifts an eyebrow, unimpressed, and he chuckles.
"Amelia Pond, dragon-kicking and knight-rescuing princess, and minder of crazy time-traveling aliens," he says with a sigh, dropping his head back so he misses Amy's scowl and the following surprise.
"Wait, you're really an alien then? From another world, not just another time?" she asks, deciding to let the matter of the name go for now, and he lifts his head back up to give her a grimace of distaste.
"Oh, come on! You didn't really think I was human, did you? I told you when you were a kid!"
"I thought you were kidding, that you were trying to cheer me up!"
"Why would I do that?"
"I was a kid!"
"And that means I should automatically lie?" he asks, incredulous, and Amy stops herself before retorting with 'why should you not'.
Adults lie to kids. Because it's too complicated, because they're too young, because they're too innocent… Whatever the reason, the truth is that adults lie to children. And yet, here the Raggedy Doctor is, looking for all intents and purposes like he can't wrap his mind around telling a child a lie, even if it is to make them feel better.
"No… No, I guess not. It's just… That's what everyone does. 'It's too complicated', 'you'll know when you're older', that kind of thing," she tells him, and finds herself starting to believe he really is an alien. "Don't you do that in your planet?"
His nose scrunches again, less in distaste and more in anger and something she can't identify.
"No," he tells her simply, with a finality that almost makes her startle, before she shakes her head.
Looks like the Doctor's planet is in the same list as 'Last Christmas'. Touchy subjects.
"Alright. You're a time-travelling alien. Why do you look human?" she asks instead, and he gives her another insulted look.
"I don't look human, we came first. Humans look like Time Lords."
"Time Lords? Oh, that isn't pretentious at all," Amy huffs before she can stop herself, but he grins widely this time.
"Who said they weren't?"
Weren't. Past tense. Is he talking about whoever decided 'Time Lord' was a good name for the species, or is he using the past tense because the species is extinct?
But he's still here. It can't be.
"Right," Amy lets out as she calms down her mind, thoughts running rampart and senselessly all around it. "Being able to travel in time doesn't make you lords of it."
Instead of a verbal answer, he tilts his head back and lets his grin widen from ear to ear, a knowing look in his amused eyes.
"Oh, shut up!"
He makes a really exaggerated 'who, me?' face, before going as far as mime zipping and locking his lips closed, 'pocketing' the key with a tap and a satisfied grin.
"You're a clown, you know that?" Amy snorts, and, to prove her point, he answers her without separating his lips, as if they had really been zipped shut.
Amy laughs and, when she's finally getting her breath back, he takes out the 'key' again and unzips his lips, sending her into renewed laughter.
"I said, yes, I know. Clowns are terrifying, wouldn't you agree?"
"When you grin like that, yes, I agree," she answers when she's managed to calm down, before standing up and picking up the dishes. "So, what about that trip, Raggedy Man?"
"One trip to the past or the future, your choice, and we can be back in five minutes," he tells her, picking up a tea towel to dry the dishes once she's done washing them.
"A five-minute trip?"
"Of course not, we wouldn't even lift off. Time machine, remember? We could go around the Earth in eighty days in the Victorian era, or take a day-long trip to the frozen seas of Woman's Wet, and still be back just five minutes after you left."
"Woman's Wet?"
"… Don't look at me like that, it's the name of the planet, I didn't give it to it."
"Whatever you say, Raggedy Man."
Amy smiles widely and her Raggedy Doctor smiles back.
AN: I based Amelia's part on the scout kids I was leader of, but she somehow comes across as younger than seven… Is that just me? My scouts were eight to ten, and I used the younger ones for inspiration, but still… Writing kids is hard.
The main differences between the Eleventh Doctor and the Master are due to different things. One is that they are not the same person. The other is that the Master is not high on regeneration energy (no slamming into trees and the food mess because the body is new and he doesn't know how to deal with it yet) nor has he regenerated recently, and so is in control of himself. Which, of course, makes him come across as a responsible, if grumpy and weird, adult, and so Amelia can be a kid instead of a babysitter. And that, in turn, will shape the image she has of the Raggedy Doctor in her adulthood.
Also, seven-year-old kid cooking? My dad didn't let me anywhere close to the stove until I was ten, and not without a step to stand on so my eyes weren't level with the fire, so I used my own experience.
Fairies are freaky and seen in the Torchwood episode Small Worlds.
On why no one recognized the Master as Harry Saxon until 2010: Amy was the only one to actually see him in 1996, everyone else saw him through her stories and cartoons and so on. She was seven. Memories get blurred with age and change with how people remember stuff too (like how people always remember something different than it is in the pictures). Also, the Master didn't really change, while Saxon would have surely grown older, so it's impossible for someone to look exactly the same after twelve years. So, yeah, maybe Amy saw one of Saxon's campaigns and thought the guy looked familiar, but couldn't say why. Plus, Saxon's own 'influence' to make him look reliable and trustworthy while the Master hadn't hidden at all, appearing as he was, grumpy and ragged. After learning he's a time travelling alien, though? Amy puts things together quite fast.
The TARDIS looks mostly like the Eleventh Doctor's, but without all the nautical bits and with the console still somewhat organized like the coral TARDIS. Also, lots of bubbles in the time rotor, not just one string. It kind of wrote itself that way, honestly. I planned to have her be like the Eleventh's, but my brain decided that no, it didn't fit. Apparently, the TARDIS agreed. Which, in turn, led to the whole explanation for the coral design and... I don't really know if the Time Reapers are wild TARDISes either, I sincerely don't know where that came from (probably from the whole 'when was TARDIS first coined' and the Time Travel Capsules thing…).
Also, kind of plothole filling with all the resurrection explanation, but well, potions of life and potions of death? Ouch. Just... Ouch. So, yeah, my brain came up with something it liked better, and I've got to agree with it. It helps that it delivers more of a In The Feels punch, though that wasn't my original intention…
TARDIS holographic protocols. Love those. Perfect closure for those left behind… Especially when you're a space-faring and time-travelling race with a somewhat militaristic take on your travels. Time Lord headcanon time: Time Lord is a rank, a position, a job that consists on fixing temporal anomalies. TARDIS are piloted by six Time Lords. Time Lords are formed in the Academy, which has one Chapterschool after each of the six Gallifreyan Chapters, of which Prydon and Arcal are two. So, each Chapterschool specializes on something relating to a Time Lord's duty, teams are formed upon graduation, containing one member from each Chapterschool, and these teams are sent under an experienced Time Lord for their service. After, the Time Lords can either return to their duties on Gallifrey or continue as active Time Lords. Problem is, they are going on missions and they might not return, so they record messages for those left, mostly family.
And yes, I went there. The Doctor was born a woman, regenerated into the First Doctor, and left Gallifrey. Ten Doctors, plus War Doctor, plus Metacrisis, makes twelve incarnations, and the woman Doctor makes thirteen. Regeneration mystery solved!
… The ghost Doctor wasn't in the original drafts, I swear. But now I can't get rid of him, I've plans already… And Koschei needs a new name (insert sigh and facepalm). What am I going to do with you, boys...
Next time: Amy visits Starship UK, and Koschei realizes he wasn't wrong about humans. (Episode title: Monsters of the Cosmos)
I'm going to follow the series until Rory joins the team, mostly because these episodes are pivotal to the series' plot or the characters' development. After that, though, expect deviation.