A/N: So it's no longer a one-shot and sort of carries on from the first one, without terribly needing to. I also don't know if Rory has a mother (I mean, obviously he had a mother) but for the purpose of this chapter, he still has one. Named Jean, if you're interested. Also, I know Rose didn't die in all the times I mention, but it makes it more dramatic if I say she did ;) Perhaps a little OOC for the Doctor nearing the end (sorry) but I hope you read and review. Thanks :)

"You would have given up your life for me." Rory still can't get over it and even though Amy's fed up of him telling her, she lost Rory today and she never wants to again, so she lets him carry on because life's too short and she's in love. She's also being watched, by the Doctor, whose hearts sigh heavily as another companion crawls away as he knows they should. But that doesn't make it any easier.

He stands in the shadow of the door, barely visible but sort of noticeable, if only you really want to look. He kind of wishes the perception filter worked on him sometimes. The awkward silences were becoming even more awkward and he'd be lying if he said he hadn't thought about giving them the TARDIS and finding a lonely planet to live on, because no one ever lives long enough except himself. But then he hears Amy laugh or Martha phones and it's all worth it again.

But now he stands and listens, though he tells himself not to because it's rude, first and foremost, but it's painful too. "Would you want that?"

"Want what?" Amy's kind of distracted because she feels like she's being watched. Which she is, but the Doctor doesn't want her know.

"What we had in the dream world."

"Which dream world?"

"The Leadworth one," Rory smiles.

"Upper Leadworth," Amy reminds him, a glisten in her eyes as she turns and winks at him. "I dunno, I guess so, yeah."

"It would be nice, wouldn't it?" He's starting to daydream again, only this time he's taking Amy with him because this time, Amy's prepared to listen. "We'd have a bedroom for each child-"

"Each?"

"We'd have two: a boy and a girl. Oliver-"

"And Robyn." Amy's getting into the spirit of it and the Doctor can't help but feel his stomach somersault as the TARDIS motions a sigh of desperation. She, too, has had too much loss.

"And we could even have a couple of swings in the garden, and a barbecue for when Mum comes to visit."

"And the Doctor." Amy's bright enthusiasm doesn't carry Rory through.

"Any, he's not going to be around forever, you know." Rory sounds like he's already talking to his daughter, which he quickly notes Amy doesn't appreciate. Almost as much as she didn't appreciate the 'chubs' nickname. He'd thought it really rather cute.

"Of course he will, silly." She laughs and bats his arm because Rory really does say the silliest things sometimes. "He's 907 and looks about 12, somehow I don't think aging is an issue." The Doctor listens intently because Amy didn't see the truth as Rory saw it. She sugar-coats everything because with the Doctor, you learn you have to.

"Amy, that wasn't what I meant. Me and you, we're not going to be on this ship forever. He wouldn't want us to be anyway. I'm sure he's got family, friends of his own. And that girl, in that painting, he could go and find her. He'll have to take you home someday."

"Will you Doctor?" Amy turns to the door, leaving Rory more bemused than usual. "Want us gone, do you?"

"Do what you like, Pond." He walks away, letting the TARDIS do what's natural and shuts him off where Amy won't find him. Though she tries, because that wasn't the response she wanted. She wanted a declaration of friendship, if nothing else. A need to feel wanted by this impossible man who thought her magnificent. Or had thought her magnificent. Now Amy wasn't so sure.

"Wait here," she instructs Rory, who sighs as Amy leaves to find the Doctor. "I'll be back in ten." He knows it'll be far more than ten, but he can't really protest. At the end of the day, she chose him, she died for him and she carried his child. At the end of the day, that was all he needed to know.

The Doctor sighs as the 10 foot virtual screen throws images up at him, from the past, the future; his past, his present. It is times like this he realises just how much he's lost.

Amy searches for him for a while until she gives up and returns to the console room which, she then realises, was where he would be all long. In a manner of speaking. His face cuts a lonely figure on one of the screens above his beloved controls, a pair of headphones helpfully appearing. It appeared the TARDIS wanted Amy to hear.

The Doctor paces the room, hands shrunk deep in his pockets, hair sweeping over his face. He's muttering under his breath at five hundred miles an hour until he stops. Amy cranes her neck closer to her screen, wanting it to zoom out so she can what he's looking at on his. It obliges and she comes face to face with the blonde from the painting.

"She's beautiful," Amy breathes, to no one but herself. Could it be that she has the Doctor all wrong? That he has even more of a past that she doesn't know about?

"Oh, Rose." It's the first time she can hear anything audible and the sadness in his voice is something she's not heard before. "Why do you all do it? Because you do, you all do it, you're all the same." The anger starts to build but it's more at himself than Rose, than anyone else. "She died for Rory in the same way you died for me, oh so many times. The daleks, the Anne-droid, Cassandra, the cybermen. You didn't ever learn. You chose me over your mum, fell into the void, jumped across dimensions and still I didn't learn."

He bangs his head against the side of the screen and the pictures dissolves, replaced with a red-head Amy doesn't recognise as herself. The Doctor spies a vial of the floor, full of grains of sand from Darlig Ulv Stranden: the worst beach in the world.

"I just hope you teach me better this time." Amy doesn't understand, is this Rose with them now? Another of the Doctor's secrets? "The oncoming storm? The eternal battle, more like. The battle I can never win. What is it going to take for me to admit defeat? Amy, what do you think?"

He turns and faces the camera that's been flashing red for the last six minutes (only two of which he's noticed.) He zaps the camera, pockets the vial and Amy's screen goes blank as Rory stumbles in, stifling a yawn.

"Did you find him?" Amy nods, an odd sadness tugging at her heart.

"I think he needs to find himself though," she admits softly, letting Rory's arms embrace her as the Doctor finds warmth in the losses of Time.

"This is for you all," he motions to the large screen which fades to black as he finds his way to the console room. He flicks and switch and the motion starts.

He's taking them home.