Chapter 5: The Girl who was Lost

"Amy... help me." – Madame Kovarian

"You took my baby from me. And hurt her. And now she's all grown up and she's fine, but I'll never see my baby again." – Amy

"But you'll still save me though. Because he would, and you'd never do anything to disappoint your precious Doctor." – Madame Kovarian

"The Doctor is very precious to me, you're right. But do you know what else he is, Madame Kovarian? Not here. River Song didn't get it all from you... sweetie." – Amy

One moment Agent Pond Amy didn't exist the next all of her memories were in Amy's head, and they simultaneously always existed and only came into being a few seconds ago. Ever since Rory found Amy asleep in the garden one morning he wouldn't fall asleep before she did. She missed her time alone under the stars, but at the same time was reluctant to go back out there.

It was an unusual night if she didn't wake up flailing, covered in sweat and sobbing under her breath. She had killed someone. She hadn't given her a choice, hadn't found any mercy and that terrified her. She was more scared by what she was capable of than of anything else that existed in the universe. She began sleeping less and less.

It's not just her actions as Agent Pond that haunted her. If you'd asked her the day she said yes to Rory's proposal she would have sworn nothing could ever happen in any universe to make her betray him, and yet her Doctor shows up and she's off without a second thought. Worse she kisses the Doctor, tries to seduce the Doctor. Now it makes her blush in shame, but at the time she only felt anticipation and mild embarrassment.

It's not that she didn't think herself capable of betrayal and selfishness. She knew she was, but those actions should have come with emotional consequences. They hadn't at the time, but now she was overwhelmed with guilt and could the same person who saved the last star whale turn around and betray the person who loved her the most, who trusted her the most? It didn't make sense. Amy, Amelia, Pond, Williams did not know her own mind. And she had no Doctor to help her. She bottled it up, staying in bed all night every night with her husband for nearly a month before she started sneaking back down to the garden. She hated keeping things from Rory, but telling him the truth would hurt him more.

She remembered it so it happened. She remembered enough Amys to have her own football team, except she was rubbish at football. The Doctor claimed to be an amazing footballer . . . "Focus Amy, Focus." She was talking to herself again, or one of her selves. It was getting so difficult to keep track.

'Oi, Amy, you really are cracked. Not only are you talking to yourself you're talking to multiple versions of yourself who all live in your head.' Her inner voice grew mocking, 'Amelia Pond, the girl who waited, becoming Amy Pond, the girl who saw the universe, and now you are Amy Williams, the girl – no the woman – who is supposed to be done waiting. Instead you sneak into your own garden in the middle of the night to stare up at stars. You are pathetic.'

"I killed someone. Madame Kovarian, in cold blood." – Amy

"In an aborted time-line, in a world that never was..." – River

"Yeah, well, I can remember it, so it happened, so I did it. What does that make me now? I need to talk to the Doctor, but I can't now, can I?" – Amy

And one evening River came. River, her daughter, it was still so hard to comprehend. She was too young to have a daughter, and her daughter was older than she was, and if that wasn't confusing enough she'd named her daughter after her childhood friend who was also her daughter. She'd named her daughter after her daughter. If that wasn't a paradox she didn't know what was. The perils of time travel, her timey-whimey beautiful, confusing daughter. They never had a normal mother daughter relationship and probably never would. She felt like River was her sister, her older sister.

When Amy was a child the other girls her age were playing house and dragging baby dolls around while Amy was playing Raggedy Doctor and dragging Rory around. In secondary school her classmates doodled the name of their current crush in their notebooks and made lists of baby names. Amy drew pictures of the Tardis. Even after she got engaged she would shush Rory anytime he tried to talk about children. She insisted children were too far into the future to be worth thinking about, and now in her early 20s not only did she have a daughter she had one who was older than she was and married to her best friend.

Amy gave herself a little shake and reached forward to hug River.

"He's not dead, he's not dead!" – Amy

"Are you sure, River? Are you really, properly sure" – Rory

"Of course I'm sure. I'm his wife!" – River

"Yes! And I'm his... mother-in-law." – Amy

"Father dear, I think Mummy might need another drink." – River

"Yes. Yes." – Rory

"No. I don't need wine. I need to think." Amy sank back into one of the patio chairs.

"What's there to think about?" Rory is jubilant. "The Doctor is alive!"

"Then why didn't he bring my baby back? He promised."

"Mum." River sinks to the ground next to Amy's chair. "The Doctor lies."

"I know he lies, Rule One." Amy snaps. I also know he keeps his promises."

"He never meant to keep that one, Mum. If he'd brought me back to you I wouldn't have been there on that beach to shoot him. It was a fixed point."

Amy snorts. "It wasn't that fixed, or he would be dead. Someone else could have shot him someone that wouldn't have tried to change history for that matter. He should have brought you back to me."

"Mum, you're not thinking. I spent my childhood with you as your best friend Mels. He couldn't bring me to you. I had already grown up."

"He is a time traveler, River! He could bring you back before that point. He could have rewritten time."

"But then we wouldn't have fallen in love. We wouldn't have gotten married. He couldn't rewrite that."

"River, love, the only one who would remember that possible future would be the Doctor. You wouldn't miss loving him because for you it never would have happened. Do you really think the Doctor would put his own happiness above you having a normal childhood? Do you think he would let you grow up with strangers who didn't love you, strangers that twisted your mind and stole your innocence? Do you think he would let me, his best friend, have her baby torn from her if he could fix it?"

"Well then he couldn't help it. It must have been a fixed point, or"

Amy interrupted her. "No, if he is alive he would have found a way to bring my baby back to me."

Dad, talk some sense into her. She's being irrational."

Rory blinks as if he's just waking up. "Actually River, I've had all the same thoughts that Amy is expressing now. The Doctor has had and lost children before. I don't think he'd put anyone else through that pain."

"Oh, and you know the Doctor do you? You think you know him better than his wife!" River was very nearly yelling at this point.

Rory stepped closer to her. "I don't appreciate your tone."

"Both of you shut it!" Amy shouted. "I need to think."

Why had she, Rory, and the Doctor given up so easily on finding Melody? How long had the Doctor even looked during that two-month period he left them? What had he learned? He seemed so flippant after Melody/River had nearly killed him and then sacrificed her remaining regeneration to save him. Why had he sucked out all of River's remaining regenerations? Surely one would have been plenty. It seemed cruel, and the Doctor hated cruelty. It was even crueler that she could never have her baby back.

And he had announced so casually that they could no longer look for baby Melody because her adult timeline was too entwined with theirs. By growing up with them in Leadworth she had destroyed her chance of a childhood not being raised by psychopaths. Why would the Doctor treat their loss so flippantly and why hadn't it hurt more then? Crushing guilt pours into Amy. It was her fault. She stopped looking for Melody. She should have insisted the Doctor keep looking. She should have gone with him. Why hadn't she? Why had the Doctor given up? Suddenly she knows why.

Amy stands up. "Something else is going on here. Right before you regenerated into your current form you said it took you years to find us. Why would you try to find us, River?"

"Well, I guess I wanted to know my parents."

"You had to know that once you grew up with us you could never have a normal childhood. Were you worried that without your assistance Rory and I would never become a couple and never create you in the first place?"

"No," River's voice is quiet, "I was just lonely."

"Oh, baby." Amy pulls River into a hug. "You never should have been lonely in the first place, but I don't think that's why you found us. I think you were planted there to watch us, and I think the Doctor knew that."

"Mother, you're being crazy."

"Just hear me out. The Doctor didn't bring my baby, our baby," and she reached over and grabbed Rory's hand, "back because . . ." She tries to finish the sentence. Tries to force out the words that are at that exact moment the most important things in the entire universe but she can't. There is a roaring in her ears and she's falling. River shrieks, and Rory is shouting for River to ring an ambulance. Silence falls and Amy knows no more.