oOo Doctor, oOo
It's a hopeless feeling. What should you do? Staying at the hospital is painful, leaving is painful, anywhere's painful. Your anger doesn't die down, so, before you can flare up at the doctors and nurses who failed when it was most important, you head back to the TARDIS. It'll be better for Theta in the TARDIS than most anywhere else - she's used to having a Time Lord on board.
You sit in your swing underneath the flight deck, trying to calm yourself by tinkering with nuts and bolts and electricity. You would rather be holding Theta, for the little time you have together, but Amy and Rory have insisted on taking him and going to find something for him to eat, and you guess they'll be gone for a while - they've got each other's shoulders to cry on, and they'll most likely take advantage of that. You're alone with the TARDIS, and, much as you love her, her sentience is still wrapped up in a metal - mostly unhuggable.
A few hours later, and your anger has done nothing but boil under the surface. Sparks fly from the machinery you're fiddling with, and fall to the floor, skipping across the smooth surface to meet - Amy's shoes. You look up.
"Amelia. How are you? Why don't you run off back to Rory again? I'm busy."
"Doing what?" She says, voice small.
"Not much," you say. "I am not, for example, spending time with my son, is there a reason for that?"
"He was hungry," she tells you, voice still quiet. "Rory's about to put him to bed."
You say nothing.
"Doctor-" she puts a hand on your arm. "I know you're sad, but there really isn't - I don't think - you probably shouldn't be so angry."
You let out a little laugh. "Right. Do you remember asking me if I had children, a long time ago?"
"Yes."
"Would you like to know something?" You can't help laughing again. "I know how it feels to be a grandparent, too. I know exactly how you feel right now, except worse, a lot worse, because you weren't the one who murdered Theta." Your voice drops. "Ever killed someone, Amy? Yeah, you have. But you've never killed an innocent, right? And you don't know what it's like to have blood on your hands, and you don't know what it feels like to fight, day after day, life after life, always fighting so your children could live safely, and then, at the end, just when you thought you might be able to stop the killing, have you ever turned around and murdered your children and your grandchildren and your mother and your father and - have you ever watched a planet crumble? It starts from the inside, and I swear you can hear the screaming from hundreds miles off. And all of your kind, burning and crying and all their hate pounding on your mind - their consciousnesses all reaching out and making you feel - making you feel them as they -"
You grip Amy's arm, and she gives a shocked sob.
"And then!" You raise a finger. "A second chance. But of course, even though you've begged it pretty please, the universe knows you're not good enough to be a parent, that you'll only end up ruining one more life, and so it kills the child before you can.
"Ever had that happen, Amelia? Then don't tell me I'm angry for no reason."
She backs away, tears coating her eyes. "Doctor."
"I'm not quite the man you thought I was, hey?" Your voice cracks in the middle of the whisper. You twist the swing so you don't have to look at her. But you can still see her reflection in the glass floor of the console room above - she's backing away, terror in her face.
"Go on, then. Run away," you snap.
There's a long pause. You close your eyes. She's gone, hasn't she. She'll never look at you the same way.
"No," she says.
"What?" You open your eyes and let the swing spin back to face her. She's still there.
"No, I will not run away!"
And she's hugging you again, and your mind is struggling to cope with this. She'll still come within a mile of you, after you told her..?
"Oh, Amy," you say, pressing her close. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"Do something, Doctor," she sobs. "Save him, please. Don't let everyone die again."
You put your head in her shoulder. "I can't."
.
You need to lie down - so tired. So tired. It strikes you, for the first time, how empty the TARDIS is. It's huge, but there are no happy voices, no laughter echoing down the corridors.
There is crying, though. You can hear it as you go past a carved door - a baby's voice. Theta. You stop, and lean against the door, just listening. It hurts you. Maybe if you let it cut you to the bone, the scars will last, and you won't ever be able to block out the memory. You won't like that in a hundred years, when remembering re-opens the wounds, but, right now, you want to make sure that no one forgets Theta.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, a high voice cuts through the wails. It takes you a minute to realize it's Amy.
"Travelling man," she sings. "Such secrets to be told."
The crying dies down-
"Alien man, running from the days of old." - and there's nothing but silence and the sweet singing.
"Out of his world, with nothing left to lose… Travelling man … coming down to rescue you."
You smile a little, and close your eyes.
"You're hard to find, Time Lord… Too busy saving everything to stop. The travelling man will save the day - the travelling man will keep you sa-a-afe. Even if he has to die five hundred and seven times -"
Your eyes open. How … how does Amy know? When you were with Sarah Jane, you said you could regenerate five hundred and seven times. What is Amy singing?
"-The travelling man will save the day."
You open your mouth, about to walk in and ask, but then the song picks up - sadder, happier, audibly sung with a smile, and suddenly, it comes to you. You know who wrote this. You told that woman everything. And it is so fitting that her lullaby is soothing your child to sleep. "Everybody knows that everybody dies, but nobody knows it like him. And I think all the lights would drain out of the skies if he ever gave up trying."
You look through the crack in the door to see Amy lean down and whisper in Theta's ear - "Just this once… everybody lives."
Tears well up in your eyes, and they're on your cheeks before you even realize it. You put your hands up, roughly wiping them away.
When was the last time you cried?
"The travelling man will save the day. The travelling man will keep you sa-a-afe - even if he has to die five hundred and seven times, the travelling man will save the day."
There's a quiet rustling noise, then Amy comes out, closing the door after her.
"I've never heard that song before," you say, voice slightly clogged with that lump in your throat. Amy hands over a worn book - a thick, hardcover "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". It's open, and there's a piece of parchment lying there, folded along the crease where the pages meet. You know what it says. You've seen it before. There's a poem there that you never finished reading.
"Why not?" Amy says.
Why didn't you come back to this?
You run your fingers over the slanted, curled words. River didn't like this book much. Didn't see the value in fantasy. But she knew you would eventually read it again - someday, when you were tired and needed something to cheer you up and take your mind off everything.
So why didn't you come back to this?
Remember the times when you stole each other's journals? You kept all the promises, shut your eyes to the past - that wasn't the point in nicking the record of your partner's life. Your real purpose was to graffiti one another's blank futures with love notes. It only happened once or twice, but it brought smiles on a rainy day.
This is like that. She wrote about you, and then put the poems in a book she knew you'd find, eventually.
Why didn't you come back to this?
Because she's dead. And seeing her smiling through the words presses the bruises 'till they bleed.
"I couldn't," you say.
"You should. She wrote some beautiful songs." Amy walks away, but before she can go too far, you grab her hand.
"There's a way, Amy."
"What?" She turns.
You look down at the page, eyes on the words that stand as a testimony to the handful of times you've been able to save every last life. And I think all the lights would drain out of the skies if he ever gave up trying… just this once … everybody lives.
"I'm not going to give up," you say, a watery, hesitant smile creeping onto your face.
"Doctor! If there's a way, why didn't you say so before?" She takes your hand in both her own. "Where? What? When?"
It's a little hard to smile, but you only have to hold the grin for a moment before you turn on your heel and head off to the control room.
She stay behind, staring, and you're halfway up the hallway when you yell, "Come along, Pond!", and she starts after you.