Strangled sunlight slowly peered past her eyelids, and she vacantly felt a frantic hand fill into hers, and gently guide her off the cold floor. Faintly, Amelia felt it hesitantly dab her forehead, and the incoherent voice muffled, what she believed were, reassuring words as a strong arm wrapped around her waist and the other intertwining with her left arm. She felt as though, if she had the consciousness to see for herself, they were dancing in the blackness, and they were beautiful and graceful and the crowds watched them with baited breath for every single moment their eyes met.
Her companion led her across a familiar sounding floor, and into a smaller room where he gently sat her down, and caressed her face and hair. The only depth she felt gave her the faintest of a small smile, and the running faucet that came as white noise. The warm, steady hands cradled her face, and she breathed in his scent.
"Amelia" He uttered when he had steadied his breath, and immediately dismissed his panic to concentrate away the agonizing duel he felt inside of his Gallifreyan chest. "Pond, can you hear me at all?"
Almost instantly, she produced somewhat of a stupid smile, and her eyelids slowly flickered open and she watched as he quickly swallowed away his suffocating fear, and replaced it with a mask of unwavering expertise.
She watched his eyes as he gently began wiping the dried blood from her forehead, and finally noticing the grip that lightly trembled around her right forearm.
"Hello, Doctor." She said distantly, and he paused to stare for a moment, quickly snapping himself back into carefully stroking her forehead. "If only you'd ditch the bowtie…..then with this you really could be….taken as a medical professional."
With each pause she took for a quiet breath, his touch became softer and his eyes layered with more self-loathing, and he reached under the sink for a large bandage.
Her vision became clear, and she blinked quickly until his face and every small, faded freckle she had noticed before, was as obvious as the eyes looking into hers.
"Amy," He said softly, and then twitched back for a moment, standing up to place the bloodied cloth in the porcelain sink. The Doctor took only a second to stare at his reflection, yet she caught the shadow that lingered past his face.
"Doctor, it was just the throws of the TARDIS." She said quickly, yet her voice was still quiet, and he stopped himself from darting over to her when he saw that she was helping herself up. "Got a bandage for me, yeah? Then again, it's so dried over I'm sure I don't really need one. Best kind of injury to have." She chuckled weakly to lighten his mood, an opportunity he normally would've leapt at, yet he just turned away and nodded.
"Doctor, what is it?" Amelia ignored the nauseating feeling in the pit of her stomach and took a step towards him. "You get sick at the sight of blood, do ya'?" She barely had a smile on her face when he turned his head back to her.
"We borrow, bend, and mostly break time. We woe it, and seduce it, and abuse it." He shook his head to himself, and firmly began massaging the hairless mounds below his forehead. "We rip it and hoard it from reality."
"Doctor, I don't—"
His voice raised, "We take it, and tear it, and soak our hands in its blood. We wear its skin as a cloak for our comfort, and its heart as a compass we constantly disregard."
"What are you—"
His voice raised even more, "It is a child taught the laws of life, and we shroud around it at night and slit its throat and we hang its body over the door of its loved ones! We sacrifice every ounce of its vigorous soul to feed our unquenchable desire!"
Suddenly, he reached and grabbed her arms and pulled her closer to him. She stifled a fearful breath and watched herself in his eyes. "Doctor, what's wrong? What are you talking about?"
Just as soon as the words left her lips, he twitched again, and released her as his tongue rapidly shot out and returned to his mouth, and his eyes flickered and he combed back his bangs with his fingers. He leaned against the long wall of her bathroom and stared down at his feet, until looking up at her with an expression that held several emotions at once.
"We borrow time." He said, and nervously smiled, and Amelia noted that he had just "erased" his outburst from his current consciousness. "We borrow time and bend it and we believe ourselves to not be bound to it. Yet every 'correction' is eventually corrected. Or re-corrected, if you like. We see everything and we know everything and that-." The Doctor casually glanced to the place next to her bed where he had found her, and he concentrated on the small mess of blood on the floor. "Time has its way of eluding even the so-called 'lords' of it. The revenge starts in little steps. But this weight we accumulate eventually drags us down, and we can't run from it forever."
Slowly, he looked back to her, and she tried to hide her confusion and concern. He smiled lightly, "That's the knockout, Pond. As much as we bend, and break, and bullshit time, it always ends, and then we're nothing, and then we die." His eyes drifted away, and his body followed out of the bathroom and down the sloop of stairs that led out of her bedroom.
"Wait, what was that talk of time for?" She uttered as she followed him out, the ache of her forehead slowly stirring, and her eyes inadvertently flickered from a sting of pain.
"That was for me." He said, "To make me finally acknowledge it."
She watched as the back of his head faded into the shadows of her doorway, and she contemplated the faint presence she felt holding her from walking after him.
"Doctor…" Her voice petered to a whisper, and yet her eyes fixated to the shadows, unwavering.
The pain of her forehead slowly returned, and she gently clutched her stomach as she hung her head in submission to nausea. She leaned back into the bathroom, and exhaled slowly, feeling her body slowly grip the sides of the sink to balance herself from collapsing. Her red hair lightly shimmered from the lights, and her eyes fluttered shut.
I just want you to hold me, even if it all is just a lie. I want more. I want your arms around me. I want your eyes. I want your smile. I want your scent. I want your touch. I want your truth. I want your lies. I want your lips. I want your-
The faint knocking of footsteps stirred her from her thoughts, and her hair flickered past her eyelashes to see his face inches from hers. Amelia slowly drifted away from him, yet he calmly followed, and with a quick movement he led her close and kissed her. She believed it to be cliché, thinking she felt some sort of sparks on her lips, and her skin lightly shivered with his hand swooping around her neck and gently holding a mess of her hair between his fingers.
For a moment, they just coasted in the silence, until finally she felt something inside of her snap, and they both released a quick breath as they tore through the open air to kiss without thought or restraint.
It was different. He was different. As she tried to concentrate on his hand slowly, almost hesitantly, releasing his grip of her hair, and brushing back down her neck, she couldn't help but disregard it to analyze what exactly was happening.
His mouth was different, and it would've put her on edge if she wasn't clutching as desperately as he was. That, and the fact that she settled to be blissfully ignorant of thought itself, starving from air yet overflowing from something else. Her attention was diverted to his hand as it paused at her shoulders and felt its way under the thin layer of clothing to brush against her warm skin. They separated almost frantically, and she accidentally moaned as his tongue slid out of her mouth. Amelia pressed her lips together and kept her eyes closed, fearing that it would only take another glance for him to disappear.
He watched as she was drowning herself in embarrassment, and all he could think to do was smile. And never relinquish his hold. Her skin felt like water to his deprived fingertips, though his lips remained excruciatingly still in desire to taste more of her and when she finally glanced up at him, he felt every wall he buried himself in was screaming.
"Are you all right?" He asked in a very quiet voice, his eyes now searching every inch of her face in desperate attempt to avoid eye-contact.
Her eyes lightly fluttered, yet didn't blink, "Are you?" She replied just as quietly, and his face somewhat darted still and he blinked rapidly to bury whatever had arose.
It was desperation. No, deprivation. That seemed simpler. Slowly they released each other, and stood awkwardly in the silence.
"I suppose I'll . . . ." and he turned around in a flinch and combed his hair back as he quietly sighed.
"Wait, Doctor." She said quickly.
He turned his head back hesitantly, and choked the desire for her to coming running at him and delving her mouth into his, his arms smoothing under her simple clothes and touching the skin that burned him, lifting her off the ground with her legs wrapped around his waist, tightening as she arched into—
"I had a nightmare."