Chapter 4: Memories
"Doctor, the crack in my wall, how can it be here?" – Amy
"I don't know yet, but I'm working it out. Now, listen. Remember what I told you when you were seven?" – The Doctor
"What did you tell me?" – Amy
"No, no... That's not the point. You have to remember." – The Doctor
"Remember what? Doctor? Doctor?" – Amy
Nights, blanketed by the dark and with Rory asleep, were the only times she felt she could examine her own thoughts. She'd often slip out of bed when Rory started the snores that meant he was truly asleep and tiptoe out of the room, her footsteps masked by the thick carpet, go down the stairs and then ease out the back door, that she kept well greased for this very reason, and go into the garden. The garden was the closest thing she had to the Doctor now. He had made it especially for her; she was sure of it. The garden was bigger on the inside, there were plants and insects there that had never before seen the light of the earth's sun, and most tellingly there were the trees. They looked like earth trees to everyone else, but their leaves changed color not in response to changing seasons but in response to Amy's moods. It took her three months to realize this. The first three months they had been a green so dark that it was nearly black.
She didn't think Rory knew about the mood trees. He rarely came into the garden saying, "he had all the experiences he needed with things that were bigger on the inside than they were on the outside," even River on the rare occasions she visited never spent long in the garden. Rory, precious, wonderful Rory, seemed to have no trouble keeping himself straight inside of his head. Like her he had memories from more than one life, but when questioned he said he simply didn't think about it. After weeks of thinking, laying on her back in the garden staring up at the stars she'd finally come to a conclusion. Rory didn't have trouble with his memories because of his intrinsic Rory-ness. No matter what happened to him he reacted in the same way. He was the same person with the same character in a plastic Centurion body or as a small town nurse.
He was so at peace with himself. She was so at war with herself. If only she could control her memories. Yesterday, her mother asked her to get something from the upstairs guest room, and she had responded without thinking that it wasn't a guest room it was Aunt Sharon's room. This morning Rory told her the movie theater they had gone on their first date was closing and to meet him there after work for one last movie, and she had gone to the wrong theater. When he asked why the only thing she could come up with was she remembered going on her first date there. Rory said it hadn't been their first date, and he looked so sad she wanted to cry.
So once again she was lying under the stars trying to make sense of her memories if only her head didn't ache so much. She had been trying to organize her memories into lists by which Amy they belonged to, but every time she felt like she was making progress pain would shoot through her temples. It took weeks of headaches bad enough to make her throw up before she could even articulate to herself that the bulk of her memories were from two different lives. The life where she grew up in a too big house with only Aunt Sharon for company, and the life where she grew up with her parents. Amy with Aunt Sharon was Amy One. Amy with a family was Amy Two.
Every time she tries to talk to Rory about her life with Aunt Sharon he tells her that those memories shouldn't exist because that life wasn't real. He wants her to concentrate on her family, to concentrate on him and forget any memories of lonely Amy. She tells him she can't forget, but she's not being completely honest. She doesn't want to forget; she is afraid that if she forgets that childhood she'll also forget the Doctor. Remembering brought him back to her what if forgetting sends him into the void again?
She forces her thoughts back to her memories. Amy One's lonely childhood in Leadworth is overlapped by Amy Two's happy memories of two loving parents. In Amy Two's life Aunt Sharon had only been an occasional visitor making remarks about the bad tempers of redheads and offering freckle remedies. The Doctor had given her family back by sacrificing himself to close the cracks in time and space. She was no longer the girl who waited alone and prayed to Santa asking him to send help. Her dad plastered over the quite ordinary crack in the wall, and her mom oversaw her nightly prayers that had been directed away from Santa and in a more traditional direction. She had never been left alone at night. Her memories of Amys One and Two ran parallel in her head until her wedding day when Amy One had disappeared leaving only Amy Two, the new Amy. Now she was daughter Amy, wife Amy, and, although it didn't feel anything like she thought it would, mother Amy.
She remembers so many things, every dream, every nightmare, and every skinned knee growing up. Everything except what is really important. Her head is in a vice – so, so much pain. She needs the Doctor. He would help her sort the memories. Move the inconsequential torrent out of the way so she could see what she was missing, but the Doctor was gone. Gone forever. A moan tore from her throat if only her head didn't hurt so much. Pressing her eyes closed tighter she reaches for a memory. Like a fish stuck in a net it tries to wriggle out of her grasp. She recognizes the shape of the memory. It's about her parents, about how they disappeared from her life. The silver fish bites her hand, another wave of pain, and it is gone.
She knows that silver fish is the most important memory of her life. She couldn't remember. Why couldn't she remember? She remembered everything. She brought back Rory, her family, the Doctor, and even the Tardis by remembering their existence. Why couldn't she remember this? Clenching her hands in frustration she beats her fists on the cold grass and once again stares up at the stars. "Come on Pond," she whispers to herself, "you can do this. You are not a quitter." She reaches into the swirling pool of her memories searching for the one that got away. She sees it, she's getting closer, and as she reaches out to grab it a torrent of memories, a new lifetime of memories, slam into her head, and she loses consciousness.