[Written for Twelve Shots of Summer: Another D8.]
Sometimes, just sometimes, Mels wondered if she really should kill the Doctor. After all, there was so much of her (first) childhood that she couldn't remember.
(Run. Hide. The Spaceman is going to eat me!)
When she thought back to that orphanage, there were so many gaps in her memory. The only thing she knew for sure was that she had been terrified all the time. Still, she couldn't even remember who wanted her to kill the Doctor, or why. If she couldn't remember any of that, then was killing him something that she should actually do?
(The Doctor must die, and you are the weapon that will do it.)
He had been there, twice. There was the first time, when he was with her mother. Amy Pond in person was even more beautiful than little Melody could have ever imagined, even if her face held none of the love that it had in Melody's most treasured photograph. Melody had thought that maybe they were here to rescue her. The Doctor was dangerous, but maybe they had been wrong. Maybe he was going to help her.
(Help me! Please!)
Instead, beautiful Amy Pond with her fiery hair held up a gun and shot at her only daughter. And then—
("Run!"
"What the hell's going on?"
"Look behind you!")
They left her behind.
Months later, Amy came back. She was inside Melody's room, looking at the picture of her and baby Melody. She kept asking questions, acting like she didn't know who Melody was. It wasn't until years later that Mels realized that maybe this Amy hadn't become a mother yet. But little Melody didn't understand that. She just wanted her mother to save her and take her home.
That, of course, didn't happen. Mels wasn't even sure what did happen, looking back on it. Amy was there, talking to her, and then she was scared of… there was something there that scared Amy even more than the Spaceman scared Melody.
(Amy is screaming and Melody can only helplessly watch as - take her mother away from her.)
It was at that point that Melody accepted that nobody was going to save her, and it was up to her to save herself. Melody Pond couldn't afford to be scared. She had to be brave if she was going to survive. And so she was. She escaped from the Spaceman, and then from the orphanage. Once she started running she didn't stop, and she made it all the way from Florida to New York. When she realized that she was dying, she smiled at a stranger and told him that it was alright. She wasn't entirely sure how she knew this, but she knew that she could fix herself. Melody Pond ceased to exist, and Mels took her place.
Finding her parents became her goal, and she did achieve it, sort of. The parents that she found were so, so young. Mels was delighted to find out that even as a child, Amy Pond was completely brilliant. She was bold and brave and never let anyone control her. She took to Mels very quickly, especially since Mels believed all of her stories about the Raggedy Doctor. Rory was a bit of a different matter, though.
It was hard to reconcile this small, quiet boy with the man he would become. It seemed almost impossible that Rory Williams could one day become the Last Centurion, a man who would face down armies to save the ones he loved. This kid was such a pushover, and it made Mels feel frustrated. She ended up putting most of her focus on Amy, and she was a little mean to Rory. Somehow, though, she was never able to scare him away, and it was that fact that led to her slowly reassessing him. For as timid as he was, Rory was also unbelievably loyal, and even as children it was clear that he worshipped Amy.
("We're coming for you. Wherever you are, we're coming, I swear."
Hearing Rory's promise to Amy had almost been enough for Melody to go to him, but she just couldn't. Not when the Doctor was with him.)
Even though Mels sometimes wished that she could have found her adult parents, she was able to be pretty content like this. At least right now, the Doctor wasn't around to put either of them in danger. Mels might find Leadworth to be the most boring place in existence, but at least that meant Amy and Rory were never in danger. Besides, if anyone or anything dangerous ever did show up, Mels felt confident that she could protect them. She might not remember a lot of her first life, but whatever she had been taught was still ingrained in her. She could fight, and if she had to, she thought she could even kill.
She worried sometimes that if she did kill the Doctor, Amy might hate her forever. The idea of her mother and best friend hating her was one of the only things that scared her now. Even as years went by and Amy slowly stopped talking about the Doctor as much, he still never really left her mind. The fact that she still had the toys she had made of him and the TARDIS in her bedroom showed that she hadn't really let him go. It sometimes made Mels sick to see how her mother obsessed over this man who had promised her the stars and then abandoned her. Sometimes she wanted to scream at her that the Doctor would only bring her devastation. He would cost her her only child. But she couldn't tell her any of that, and even if she could, she wouldn't. She didn't want to find out if even knowing that would not be enough to make Amy stop loving him.
As much as she worried about Amy hating her if she killed the Doctor, it was because of Amy that Mels sometimes really wanted to. Sure, she had this impulse, and this voice in her head that told her that the Doctor must die. But Mels was stubborn, and she didn't like the thought of killing someone for no real reason. But then she saw how over the years, Amy lost hope and grew a little bitter, all because of her childhood imaginary friend. She also saw how Rory pined over her, always ignored in favor of the man that ran away. None of it was fair, and it made Mels so furious.
(Mels was the only one who saw how sad Rory looked every time Amy forced him to dress up as the Raggedy Doctor. He never said no, though, because even as a kid he would do absolutely anything for Amy.)
So, maybe, the Doctor did deserve to die. He deserved it because bad things happened that he could have prevented. He deserved it because Mels didn't get to grow up in a proper family due to him. He deserved it because he made Rory feel inferior, and he made Amy feel unimportant.
At the end of the day, though, it didn't matter. Regardless of how Mels or anyone else felt about it, the Doctor would die, and Mels would be the one to kill him. That fact was imprinted inside of her brain, and she just knew that there was no escaping her fate. She had never wanted to be a killer, but she was well used to the idea that she never really would get what she wanted. Mels Zucker, Melody Pond, was a weapon, and weapons didn't get to decide their fate.
(She didn't know it then, but one day, she would get to choose. And after that, she got to keep choosing, again and again and again, because River Song, Melody Pond, belonged to nobody but herself.)
Noiz: This is insanely super late but here's another TSOS fic, written for the week ten prompts [The Will of the World] and [Doubt].
Back when I started writing this I was in a mood for Mels content, since there's not a whole lot. It's understandable, since we only got an episode of her, but I just find her to be interesting.
Thanks to Aviantei for beta reading this! They're the best, and you should all go check out their fics.
I'll be back next month with something new to post!