Er yeah so I don't have an excuse for the delay on this one. Just didn't feel entirely happy with it for ages. Sorry. Anyway...
Yay, more reviews! This is the second of the two slower-paced, transitional chapters before we dive into what I suspect will be a fairly lengthy and quite ambitious arc... which will be the last before we finally find out what all that white business is. I hope. My plans have already changed quite often up to this point.
Hopefully you folk don't mind the slower, talky-talky pace of this chapter (which was very lengthy, but I cut out a section at the end to stick onto the next chapter). I suspect we'll miss it before long...
CHAPTER 26. Always Looking Out: 22 March 2011
Another day, another conversation, another ridiculously awkward silence, the Doctor mused as he wrung his hands distractedly, glancing at the once engaged couple. Neither of them were quite managing to meet the other's eyes, although Rory had a deeply concerned furrow still etched into his brow.
Becoming a pattern, this.
The Doctor, Amy and her ex-fiancée had retired to the sitting room as soon as they were inside, Katherine shuffling off to help Jack finish off lunch. Getting inside had proved to be an interesting challenge, due to the presence of a small step at the front door – which, of course, presented something of a problem for Amy. It wasn't exactly taxing for the Doctor to lift her the half-foot required to place her on the step, but by his own admission he could have been gentler. A healthy amount of telepathic gutter-minded abuse reminded him of this fact.
"So..." the Doctor began, as ever trying to play the icebreaker.
No answer. Just the distant chatter of Jack and Katherine in the background, and the unmistakable noises of an opened oven.
"How's Leadworth?" He asked, having another crack.
"Same as ever, really," Rory replied, somewhat more tersely than he'd intended. He couldn't help but glance at Amy, the way her head rolled to the side, the way she stared aimlessly at the opposite wall...
The Doctor sighed. This clearly wasn't going to work whilst he was in the room, he could sense the coiled snake within the young nurse. He couldn't say he blamed him, either, but it would do no one any good if he took a fist to the face. "I'll see how lunch is going. I'm sure you two have plenty to chat about in the meantime." He stood and left, ignoring the sudden stream of psychic objections emanating from the Time Lady.
You wanted this, didn't you? He reminded her as he left the room.
Doctor, seriously. Leaving me in a room with my ex? Where'd you learn that one?
I'm not the jealous type, Amelia. Don't worry, I'm not letting you go any time soon.
Mutual.
Amy sighed."So," she asked, using the despised speaker on her wheelchair to talk once again.
Unexpectedly, Rory burst out laughing, the tension shattering like speared glass. "I can't believe I'm talking to a wheelchair."
"Oh, that's nothing," Amy replied, putting as much nonchalance as the generic American voice could handle into its tone. "A few weeks after we left, we went to a planet populated by mouths. Literally, mouths. No arms or anything, just a great big chattering mouth, like those toys you see in cartoons."
Rory raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"
"Seriously. Touchy folk, too, and faster than they look. We never quite worked out what we'd done to piss them off, although I still reckon the Doctor made a joke about them not brushing their teeth that got up their nerves."
He chuckled for a moment, but the levity died as he was brought back to her current state. "So when did, um, this happen?"
"First of December. It was our first date, too..." She trailed off wistfully. "He still owes me one of those."
He smiled wanly at her. "So you really did get together."
"Yeah. That note really helped, by the way. Thank you for that."
"It was the least I could do. So how's it been? You know, with him." He couldn't avoid putting the emphasis on the last word.
"Well, considering I was in a coma for two months then paralysed for the last six weeks, not much fun. But," she added, before Rory could respond, "He's been amazing for me, Rory. Absolutely amazing. I couldn't have possibly asked for more."
"Do you think you... well... um..."
"Love him?" She paused. "Yeah, yeah, I think I do. But I promise you, Rory," she hastened to add, "I felt the same way about you when we were together. In a way, in a different sort of way, I still do."
"Always looking out for me, huh?"
"Always."
They sat quietly for a moment, considering the other's words. As always, Amy was the first to break the silence.
"So, my sonic phone. Been putting it to good use?"
He laughed – the block-like device had caused Jack, Katherine and him no end of head-scratching over the past few weeks. "I don't understand how the hell you used that thing. There's no rhyme or reason to how the buttons relate to the functions at all. Took us a week for Jack to work out how to actually call you."
She would have shrugged if she could. "I dunno, really. Just seemed to come naturally. Opening and closing doors is definitely nine, though, and five always does something use-" She suddenly cut off mid-sentence, her eyes fluttering closed. The colour had flooded out of her cheeks, her fists clenched and her knuckles white. He could hear soft, pitiful whimpering noises coming from between her tightly-closed lips. As an experienced nurse, he instantly recognised the onset of extreme pain.
What the hell?
"Amy!" He stood, beginning to move across to try and deliver whatever assistance he could. Before he'd taken one step, however, he felt a flutter of air and saw the Doctor appear in front of her as if summoned magically. He leant down before the red-head, unfolding her palm to let her squeeze his fingers, his other hand brushing beads of sweat off her forehead. Rory could only stand and watch as her eyes opened, agony riven within their green depths as they found the Time Lord's face.
"It's OK, Amelia. I'm here, you'll be OK," he murmured. A violent shudder ran through her and her eyelids closed again.
"I know it hurts, I know. You can get through this. Trust me." The shudders increased in intensity and frequency, sweat pouring down her face. A tear squeezed out of the corner of her closed eyes, and was instantly brushed away by the Time Lord as he continued to whisper soft words of reassurance to her, switching after some time to a language that Rory recognised as Gallifreyean – simply because he couldn't make head or tail of the ornate, flowery tongue.
After a minute, her hand finally relaxed, her fingers releasing the Doctor's. Colour returned to her cheeks and her eyes opened again, tears continuing to leak down her cheeks. The Doctor leant forward and kissed the girl on the forehead. "That's my girl. Told you that you'd get through," he murmured.
Her eyes met the Doctor's, their emerald depths filled with shock and helplessness, an expression that was a dagger through Rory's heart. There was nothing, absolutely nothing he could do to help her now. Her mouth opened, slowly, her lower lip trembling.
"Hurts... hurts... so much..." he heard Amy say for the first time, her voice an octave lower than usual and heavily slurred, the words barely distinguishable but given the context completely unmistakable.
"I know," the Doctor told her, pressing his lips to her brow again, stroking her hair gently. "I know it hurts. But I'm afraid it'll only get worse before it gets better. This is an unavoidable part of your mind rebuilding itself. If I could do something for it, I would, but... I'm sorry."
Amazingly, Amy's lips curled into a smile, the first time her face had changed expression since she'd arrived in Leadworth, and she spoke again, despite the fact that she was clearly struggling with even the most basic words. "Sa... stop... say... ing... se... sor... sorry."
He smiled and leaned forward, letting her rest her forehead on his whilst he rubbed the back of her neck sympathetically. "No, Pond, I don't think I ever will." He stood and turned to face Rory. "Sorry about that, probably confused the hell out of you."
"What the hell just happened?" Rory asked in a breathy whisper, his eyes still fixed on his ex-fiancée, her eyes having closed again, her head having rolled onto her left shoulder as she recovered from the ordeal.
"After-effects of the overload. Essentially, what happened was that her nervous system got completely burnt out. Fried. Wiped clean. It's rebuilding itself now, but slowly."
"So... was there anything... permanent?"
"Thankfully, no, her final defences ensured that no lasting damage was done. However, regaining control of a Time Lord nervous system from scratch is a long-winded process, as she basically has to relearn how to use all her muscles again, including those dealing with walking and talking, obviously. In addition, there are also, erm, side effects from the rebuild, as you just saw."
"But you said – you said they'd get worse before they get better."
"Unfortunately, yes, I think so. Getting control of one's body, learning to walk and talk properly – that's a process that usually takes years. We're compressing it into a few months. Brains simply aren't naturally used to such a pace. From time to time, there'll be consequences for that."
"Couldn't you just wait, then? Just let things take their natural course?"
He sighed. "The last time I suggested that to Amy she yelled psychically for a good half-hour at me. Think that tells you everything you need to know."
Rory shook his head. "Well, at least she hasn't changed."
"No," the speaker on Amy's wheelchair suddenly interjected. "No, I haven't."
On account of Amy's weakened state, they decided to have their lunch in the sitting room. This was despite her constant protestations that she was really fine, and she'd jerkily tried to make her way out of the room. However, her mind was in no fit state to make the sort of precise commands that navigating the spaces between the chairs and other pieces of furniture would require. The Doctor eventually had to disable the motor with his sonic after she'd come within an inch of knocking over a vase, and manually push the wheelchair back into position. This was an act which earned him a healthy amount of bilingual abuse and threats, both telepathically and using the speaker (for Rory's benefit), but he didn't care.
Lunch turned out to be roast beef with associated salad and freshly baked bread. The smell of the food as Jack and Katherine carried it into the room – which had been hastily rearranged to fit a few extra tables – instantly invigorated all of Amy's senses, pushing away any thoughts she might have had about having a rest in the meantime.
"This is bloody delicious, Jack, thanks," she told him gratefully as the Doctor forked another piece of tender meat into her waiting mouth.
"Was nothing, really. Kat helped heaps."
Amy made a non-committal grunting noise, which drew a smirk from all present. She was trying her hardest to be friendly towards the blonde, but old habits died a hard death.
"So where've you been? I'm sure there are plenty of long stories you've built up over the last few months."
"Eh, not really. Most of it was me stuck in a coma, and since then we've-OK," she declared suddenly, "This is ridiculous. Doctor, can I have my sonic?"
The Time Lord sighed. "Come on, Amy, it's not that bad."
Please?
He shook his head in amusement, before reaching into his tweed jacket and retrieving a silver-gold sonic screwdriver, a crimson crystal held in the claw-like appendages at the end. Amy twisted her wrist slowly to take the device as he placed it in her palm.
Wrong way around, dolt.
He chuckled and flipped the device around so it was pointing down at the wheelchair.
Thank you.
Her fingers closed around the device, her index and ring fingers squeezing on the activation button. Sparks flew from the side of the wheelchair, causing the three humans present to recoil in alarm.
"Right. So that should be better now," the speaker suddenly intoned, having taken on a much livelier Scottish accent – not quite Amy's voice, but a close approximation. "So, yeah, as I was saying, I was sort of in a coma for two months..." she continued, now much more comfortable with the identity of the electronic voice her wheelchair had taken.
Soon, she and the Doctor found themselves regaling Rory, Katherine and Jack of the experiences ever since they'd left them in Leadworth at the start of November (or late June, depending on the point of view). All three laughed, gasped and shook their heads in disbelief at exactly the right moments as the Doctor described the soaring silver colonnades of Apalapucia, or Amy told them about the sparkling, entrancing Imperial diamond they'd seen the previous week. Eventually, and rather inevitably, the discussion turned to the Time Lord and Lady themselves – and specifically, their relationship.
"So when'd you two work it out?" Jack asked, forever the matchmaker.
"The day before the overload, so almost a month after we left you here," the Doctor replied.
"If you don't mind me asking, what made you, um, see the light? Was it any one moment?"
"No."
"Sort of," Amy replied over him. Everyone turned and looked at the blank-faced red-head in surprise.
"Really?"
"Well, not in that sort of way. After you left, I acted like a complete idiot for a month. In denial, I guess. After Rory left..." She paused for a moment. Clearly the experience was still painful for her. "After we left you guys here, I just sort of went into a shell. I just felt so alone, and I kind of convinced myself that that was how I was going to be forever, just a sad, stupid little girl without anyone to help her. No parents, no Rory, nothing. And I guess even back then I was in love with him, but I didn't want to think about it. In denial, as I said."
"I reckon you both were, honestly, for a while before," Jack pointed out.
"Oi. I was still engaged back then."
"Fair point." He glanced at her pale, slender hands – they were free of jewellery. Hmm. Strange. "So what changed?"
"Well, it was the note Rory left me." Her eyes shifted to fix themselves on her ex-fiancée. "The one in which you told me to move on with my life. To not be sad and lonely all the time, which is exactly what I was doing."
"Oh. So that was it?"
"Sort of. Not straight away, though. The moment I finished reading the note I sort of... lost it."
Rory looked away, his mind suddenly filled with the image of Amy sobbing uncontrollably on the floor beside her bed, ring box in hand. Which was precisely what had happened.
"I don't understand," Katherine interjected. "Where does the Doctor come into this?"
Amy threw a glance at the Doctor as if trying to silently communicate with him – which was probably not far from the truth.
"Well, right now," the Doctor said after a few seconds. "I knew Amy was feeling sad and lonely, and I tried to make it up to her by taking her to all those places we told you about. But I didn't know about the note, so I wasn't exactly expecting to see Amy on the floor, crying her lungs out."
"And then what did you do?"
"Nothing. Was sort of taken out of my hands. I'd just entered when Amy, um, she, well, attacked me."
The blonde blinked in bemusement. Attacked? That doesn't seem to gel properly... She then noticed the colour creeping up the Time Lord's neck. "Oh. Attacked."
"Yes." Thank goodness I didn't need to explain that. His gratitude was quickly shafted, however, when the lips of both Katherine and Jack curled into mischievous smirks.
"Is this where we ask the kids to go to bed?"
"Oi," Amy interjected, "We didn't get that far. He stopped me before I could even get the bow-tie undone. I really wasn't thinking straight at the time, I was just so lonely, and he walked in at exactly the wrong moment. So I went for it."
Is that guilt I hear in her voice? "So was that your... epiphany?"
"Nah. After that, he sort of comforted me a bit, told me I'd never be alone, all that stuff. It sounds stupid, I know, but I really, really needed it at the time. Thank you for that, by the way, it meant a lot to me. Still does."
The Doctor smiled warmly at the ginger, reaching across to entwine his fingers with hers. "It was the least I could do."
Amy squeezed his hand briefly before continuing. "So I asked him to sleep with me that night. No, not like that," she added, having seen three pairs of eyebrows disappear into their owners' hairlines. "Just to give me some company. And it was while he was asleep and I was still awake that it just sort of... hit me. That I was being stupid. That I could have anything and everything I wanted, all I had to do was take it, and it was lying right next to me. So I did."
"So that's why you were basically lying on top of me when I woke up," the Doctor realised.
"Yeah. Don't tell me you didn't like it though."
"You were having a nightmare at the time, which I got half of," he pointed out.
"True. Less of an issue now, though, thanks to you."
The comment was innocent enough, but it perked the Time Lord's senses. Is it now? That's good. Maybe this really is helping her.
"So that's it?"
"That's it. More or less told the Doctor that hey, I like you, you like me, why the hell not? Less words, though, more via the snogging medium. He was a bit reluctant at first, thought he was putting me in too much danger. But that was half the reason I'd fallen for him in the first place."
"Well, if you'd bothered to look in a mirror, you might realise why I was worried, Amy."
"S'only temporary."
"And painful, if you've forgotten."
"I'm a big girl. I can handle it."
He shook his head – she really was irrepressible. But he couldn't forget the agony in her eyes, the deafening screams echoing through his mind. Nor, evidently, was Rory so willing to forget her ordeal, given how he was currently staring at her, his eyes shot with astonished disbelief at her bravado and overriding concern for her welfare. Amy had evidently noticed this, and given that the last thing she wanted was to be mollycoddled right now, she decided a change of tack was in order.
"So how about you lot? Leadworth still as boring as ever, I see." The Doctor chuckled at that, agreeing wholeheartedly with the assessment.
"S'not that bad," Rory replied. "No one trying to kill us, for one thing. Less running up and down corridors."
"True, although there's not been much running of late on my end either. Rolling, more like."
"Yeah, that's a fair point. But nah, life's been OK. Took me a while to get over the break-up, to be fair, but Kat here was a great help."
"I told you, it was nothing," the blonde replied.
"So have you found someone yet?" Amy asked, inverting the conversation. "Someone special?"
"Well..." He couldn't help but throw the blonde a quick glance as he spoke. Unfortunately – or possibly quite fortunately – she happened to do the exact same in reverse, briefly locking their eyes. He quickly averted his eyes, hoping Amy hadn't noticed. "Not quite yet, but I'm sure I'll find someone soon."
Mercifully, for once, she hadn't. "Good. I'm sure whoever you end up finding will be special enough, and if they're good enough for you, it's good enough for me. Although we did meet this rather hot and single girl on a super-colony about three thousand light years from here. Quarter-alien, but. Kinda hyper, too..."
Rory leaned back in his chair, listening peacefully as the Time Lord pair dove into another account of some scarcely-believable adventure. A part of him missed it, tramping around the universe with them... but, really, he was just a nurse.
It was way above his salary.
"So I promise that next Christmas, I won't be in a coma. Promise."
Rory let out a disbelieving laugh as the wheelchair rolled slowly through the garden and towards the police box. The cloud had lifted ever so slightly, the sun threatening to force its way through the dank layer of grey blanketing the village. "You always took Christmas lunch far too seriously."
"Hey, it was one of the only days where I didn't have to cook," Amy reminded him. "Oh, by the way, how's Aunt Sharon?"
"Oh, she's OK, relatively speaking. She's a bit cut up about not ever seeing you again."
Amy blinked several times. "Er – what do you mean?"
"Oh yeah, about that," Jack suddenly called out from inside the TARDIS, where he was helping the Doctor with maintenance. "I was kinda in a rush with the Retcon, so the story about why you weren't getting married and why you aren't living here any more is that you're, well, um..."
Amy narrowed her eyes. "Yes?"
"Missing, presumed dead. Drowned in the river. They even got a little headstone and an empty grave for you."
Amy opened and closed her mouth several times. Missing, presumed dead. "Seriously?"
"Seriously. Sorry. Was in a bit of a hurry, and there were a lot of people to get to."
"Well, that's clean, I guess."
"Quite," Jack affirmed, relieved at not being subjected to the sharper edges of Amy's mood swings. "Do you want to go see her?"
"Yeah, later. We're in a time machine, and it's probably best that I can walk and talk first." She turned the wheelchair to face her ex-fiancée. "Take care while I'm gone, yeah?"
He smiled. "I told the Doctor to make your next visit in five minutes my time. I won't be waiting long."
She laughed through the speaker, an odd, distorted noise. "OK. Might be a bit longer for me, though."
"Don't make it too long. Before you go, by the way, I want to give you a diary."
"I already have a diary," Amy pointed out – although it was rapidly filling up, as she was very diligent in recording every single extraordinary experience between its TARDIS-blue covers. If only to assure herself that yes, those things really did happen.
"Not just any diary." He hesitated, before reaching into his pocket, pulling out a tiny, black spiral-bound diary. It took a moment for her to recognise it, before an audible gasp escaped her lips.
"Is that-"
"Yeah. Found it the other day. I reckon it's important that you have it."
"No. No, I don't want it." Amy was well aware that the contents of this diary were not pleasant, and in many senses acutely shameful to her.
"You can't keep running from your past, Amy. Do you know how much it worried me that despite the fact that I was going to marry you, there's so much about you I still don't know? What you think, how you think?"
Amy's eyes widened at the question, affronted. "I told you everything-"
"You told me everything you felt I needed to know. I'm not blaming you, Amy." He smiled gently and stroked the smooth contours of her cheek, just as he'd done so often once upon a time. "I know you've had a hard life, and you've had to be so, so strong just to get through."
"I don't want pity, I-"
"Don't need it, I know. I'm just saying, I understand why you keep your cards close to your chest, why you don't always show people what's really going on. It's why I told the Doctor to stay out of your head."
"Really?" Amy often forgot – or denied – just how well her ex-fiancée knew her.
"Yeah. It's your memories, it's your right to show him as you choose." Unspoken were the identity of the memories that Rory was referring to, but they both knew exactly what he meant. "When you choose. And Amy, at some point, you will have to show him."
"But even you don't really know what happened there."
"I know enough. I saw what it did to you. I saw what you became. What you put in this diary."
"Which is why I don't want it. I don't want to become like... like that ever again."
"The Doctor thinks you will, if you keep going on like this. It scares him, Amy. Scares him more than it scares me, even."
"He's wrong. I will not become that. I will not." Her eyes had ignited, blazing wells of emerald flame conveying her unshakeable determination, repressed anger rising to the surface once more. There was no way she would let those parts of her mind out of their carefully reconstructed prison. No way Rory could convince her she was wrong.
But he knew she was. And the consequences... he couldn't contemplate it.
"I'm not asking you to read it, Amy. I'm just asking you to take it. For me. Please."
She gazed at him, saw the simplicity, the honesty of his request. His sky-blue puppy-dog eyes applied the perfect pressure to the weakest spots in her armor, her stone-cold facade, piercing through her steel resolve. "OK," she relented. "Fine. Just for you. Put it in the pocket."
He smiled gratefully at her, placing the spiral-bound book in a little pouch on the side of the tech-covered wheelchair. "Thanks, Amy. You won't regret it."
"I'm not going to read it, though," she reminded him.
"I know, but it's important to me that you at least have it." In reality, that wasn't anywhere near good enough for him – she needed to read it. The Doctor needed to read it. She needed to face her internal horrors that she'd been burying for years and the Doctor had to truly know who he was falling in love with, had to know everything about her.
But they would work it out in time.
"Always looking out for me, huh?" She asked wryly.
"Always."
"Mutual. Goodbye, Rory." She raised her wrist and gave him a weak approximation of a wave.
"Bye, Amy. Stay safe," he replied, giving her a tight hug, lifting her off the wheelchair, briefly taking in her scent, her essence before releasing and turning to head back inside. Back to a normal Leadworth life.
But only for five minutes.
100k words!
The next plot arc, by the way, will be very roughly inspired by Peter F. Hamilton's "Void" trilogy. Fine epic-scale space-opera series, has one absolutely killer chapter in the third book that I'd like to try to do something similar to one day. Pity about the slight cop-out ending, but oh well, still a fine read.
How close my plot actually resembles it is very much up in the air, so don't feel as if you automatically know what's going to happen next if you've read it.