"What do you mean, where? You're the one with the encyclopedic knowledge of our options."
"Yes, but I thought perhaps you'd have a request."
Amy flops down into one of the jumpseats and eyes him. He leans back against the console with an eager smile, and toys with his bowtie, expecting her response.
She considers his offer, biting her lip. "I don't know."
He shakes his head, but without easily disguising his mirth at her lack of creativity. "When we left, I said 'anywhere you like', and you seemed rather keen on it, then."
"Yeah, but I didn't think I'd have to come up with ideas out of thin air!" She folds her arms across her chest impertinently. "What's the point of having a tour guide if they don't even list the possible destinations?"
She has a point. "As you wish, Pond," he replies with a chuckle, and swivels back to the controls, coattails fanning out behind him. In nanoseconds, he flips through files in his head that count among numbers well beyond infinity, and grabs the first thing marked novel! marvelous! new! he can catch in the tentacles of thought. "Vienna, 1791. Premiere of The Magic Flute. Sound promising?"
He hears the squeak of the seat as Amy stands and approaches from behind. She presses gently into one side of his back, peeking her head around his shoulder to give him a skeptical look. When it comes to boldness of body contact, he thinks, she's the only one who's ever properly given Jack a run for his money.
And it seems like she's only getting more confident—or perhaps he's just begun to notice it more, ever since the library, when it became apparent how much Amy really thinks about—touching.
"The opera?" she asks, not sounding particularly enthused by the prospect.
"Oh, come, Pond," he reproves. "It's The Magic Flute! Everyone loves The Magic Flute."
She shrugs. "I wouldn't know." At his puzzled expression, she rolls her eyes. "Didn't get much opera in Leadworth, sorry."
"You've never seen it?" he cries, clearly aghast, his face contorting as if it's some personal slight against him. Which it is, because it's a slight against the universe and all creation, and he is (clearly) the living being most representative of the universe and all creation. "Okay," he declares, perhaps louder than necessary, and turns his attention to the controls. "You, Amelia Pond, are an exceptionally lucky lady." He tosses her a grin he knows is robustly winning. "Your first time will be the world's first time."
He waits for her delighted, irresistible giggle, and when it hits him, it's like a shot of adrenaline to the heart. He begins to leap around the console, from levers to zig-zag plotters to buttons he loves to press, which only prompts more giggling from her.
She saunters back to the jumpseat, and falls into the leather, observing gleefully, "I'm just like Eve."
Amy puts up a significant fight when he tells her that they're in the eighteenth century, now, and the short skirt will have to go.
"This skirt is part of my identity," she announces, with her hands on her hips. She stares him down in the middle of the spacious TARDIS wardrobe.
"It's not part of your identity! You're Amy Pond. That's a skirt." He waves a lengthy, period gown that he's randomly selected from the rack at her, in a probably misguided attempt to reason. It's a nice dress—silk with lace trim, both of a deep maroon color, and a high-waisted, full drape with three-quarter sleeves. He's even found a pair of fancy black gloves to match it, but Amy is utterly indignant.
"It's a metaphor, stupid." The determined glare she gives him is unpromising.
"Please, Amy." He looks hopelessly at the dress in his arms. A plan hatches at the back of his mind. "I'm sure you could pull it off."
This appears to intrigue her, her eyes narrowing as she gives him a calculating once-over. "'Course I could pull it off."
He shrugs, letting his eyes go to the floor, but watching her reaction furtively in his periphery. After a moment, she makes a frustrated noise and rips the gown away from him, marching towards the dressing room, not noticing his victorious grin.
"Idiot," she mutters. "I'll show you pulling it off."
She does just that, shows him.
She glides into the console room twenty minutes later, fully dressed and made up, her flaming hair spilling across her shoulders and down her back in loose curls. She doesn't, however, revel smugly in the look on his face (and there most certainly is a look on his face, a brief but noticeable widening of his eyes, his mouth forming a tiny "oh"), because she immediately goes slawjacked at the sight of his clothing change.
She's never seen him in anything other than the bowtie and tweed, he remembers, except for the raggedy get-up when they first met. This makes him seem like an entirely different person, all dapper and to-the-nines in a full tux and top hat. In fact, the transformation is almost so dramatic as to seem ridiculous, which is probably why she spends a lot more time ogling him than he spends ogling her. This body fills the outfit differently than others he's had, and in a very good way.
When he recovers from his own momentary astonishment at the sight of Amy in her dress, his face cracks a remarkable grin, which earns him a laugh and serves as an effective reminder to both of them that he still has the bouncy disposition of a trouble-making nine-year-old, no matter what he's wearing. Effectively, his spell is broken, but that's okay; he figures he's already won.
"You look lovely," he compliments, taking her hand as she comes up the steps.
She doesn't return the flattery. She frowns and tugs the thin, white silk scarf around his shoulders. "What's this?"
"A scarf?"
"What's the point of it?" she asks, her nose wrinkling. "It isn't going to keep you warm."
"You're right. It's for show!" Already bored with this discussion of purposeless accessories, he bounds towards the door, dragging her along behind him. "Come along, Pond. I'm ready for the opera."
They step out into the energetic chill of the night in Vienna, and find their way from a back alley to a main avenue. The theatre sits in the suburbs, so they must walk a ways, but the glittering city brims with evening life. History, but not, because it's the present right now—he steals occasional glances at Amy, at the way she's drinking it in, because it takes a long time for the simultaneous occurrence of past and present to get old.
A flash of the psychic paper and they've got a private box, and he can't help but lean towards her chair every ten seconds with some new factoid or anecdote about the city, the composer, the opera.
"Look!" He gestures towards the orchestra in the pit below, and Amy careens her neck to look downward. "There he is. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart!"
"With the wig?" she asks, sounding unimpressed.
"Yes, with the wig." While she's peering elsewhere, he finds himself examining the ends of her hair, brows knit, as if there were a puzzle to be solved in the mussed, winding ginger strands. "He's going to die in a month."
"Really?" Her head tilts slightly, now trying to spot the signs that the little man waving his arms down there wouldn't live much longer.
"Yes. Though he'll conduct the orchestra on opening night, and be here frequently to see the opera." The Doctor lowers his voice secretively. "I think he likes the applause."
Amy giggles. "Was he really as funny as in that film?"
"What film?"
"You know, the one about Mozart."
"There are more than a few films about Mozart, Pond," he declares. "Dozens before your time and infinitely more afterwards. Time rarely forgets a genius like Mozart. He's like Shakespeare, but singing." He's smiling pleasantly, but a strange expression comes across her face. One that curtails him instantly. He searches in the flinching lips and quirking brows for meaning, and then she frowns and he's taken aback.
"Why've you always got to make everything about how I'm just a puny young human being and you're not?"
It's a question that grows franker as it moves forward, her face darkening ostensibly. He leans away, unsure how to deal with this new, threatening Amy.
When he doesn't speak, she adds, "Don't you think I understand you, sort of? Don't you think we're a bit the same?" She turns away from him, towards the stage, and her tone softens. "You look young. So there's a part of you that's young. Like me."
The Doctor breathes out as steadily as he can manage, unsure what could have prompted the attack, and slumps in his seat. She's gone quiet, and he wishes desperately that he could go back to five minutes ago—when he could mutter in her ear, sharing the string of thoughts firing haphazardly across his mind, and inch nearer than permissible without anyone noticing. But of course she notices; she's Amy, she notices everything, and especially the things he doesn't want her to.
The overture starts up and he clears his throat. "It's about to begin," he announces stupidly, and feels grateful she can't see the nauseated look on his face. She doesn't acknowledge him, or move at all.
The irony of humans is that he loves getting close to them for all the reasons he shouldn't.
Of course aliens show up. Of course they do.
Aliens always show up. He's the Doctor. They always show up.
He's not sure if he invites this somehow, or if he was born with an extra special gene that attracts trouble like flies to honey.
Sometimes it's fun. This time it isn't.
The second act is almost over when the lights flicker to nothingness and the whole building begins to shake, and the crowd screams and screams. The thunderous, terrifying noise deafening them from the standing room below is likely the sound of a stampede, and he shuts his eyes for an instant as some of the cries get muffled, undoubtedly because their owners have fallen prey to the mass, dragged underneath, paralyzed and suffocated. The Doctor and Amy reach out for one another without thinking, and he pulls them into the narrow hallway, where chaos has also invaded—patrons from the other boxes are flooding towards the stairs, pushing and shoving mercilessly.
He turns to Amy, yelling at her to go to the TARDIS and wait for him, trying to push the key into her closed, unreceptive fist. That's his first clue that she isn't going to listen; the next is her hardened, determined stare when she tells him that she won't budge. It's fine, she says—she can do it. He sighs, because that's not the issue.
It takes everything he has, mustering the will to raise his voice so loudly and grip her so hard that she actually looks frightened. Do as I say. He makes it echo in her head too, a psychic exclamation point, and he's already exhausted by the time she finally accepts the key and runs from him. And he's still got a crisis to deal with, though it fails in comparisons of difficulty.
Four hours later, the smoke and dust begin to settle, and the Doctor returns to his ship. He looks barer than he did when they left—he never picked up his hat from where he'd set it down in their box, and he had abandoned his jacket at some point. He's just successfully convinced a crew of Aquarbi explorers that Earth is a quarantine world and therefore prevented their landing a massive spaceship on top of the theatre. It involved a lot of fake coughing and wheezing and coercing a special Time Lord gland to make slime ooze from one of his ears, but the otherwise quick fix was worth it.
The doors are still locked. He bangs on them for a full two minutes, calling her name and asking to be let in. Nothing.
He runs back to the theatre so fast he's tripping over himself, bumping into pedestrians and dodging in front of horse-drawn buggies whose drivers shout expletives at his back. He doesn't think how it'd be quicker to hop in the ship and land at the theatre a couple of seconds later. He doesn't think; he just runs.
He finds Amy sitting alone on the deserted main stage, where the set now sits in ruin. She holds an apparently injured arm to her chest, but looks happy to see him. He rushes towards her and falls to the floor and gathers her up in his arms too quickly to realize that she's actually laughing.
"I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine," she repeats, but he's still holding on to her like she might float away. He presses kisses to her forehead and then to her temple and cheek, descending. She giggles, still trying to reassure him with words he doesn't hear. "One of those weird horse creatures hit me, but it's okay, I hit him harder." She's struggling gently against his neurotic embrace, so it's half-accident when his lips brush hers.
He recoils instantly, pulling back from her, and a horrifying hot blush spills up his neck. "Sorry," he splutters, and swallows a gush of rage, because he's a massive idiot, really, and this can't happen again.
"Don't be," says Amy, grinning manically, and with her good hand she cups the back of his neck and tries to drag their mouths back together. He evades it hastily, scooting away from her on the wood floor.
"No, I am," he asserts, tugging at his lip, his voice shooting up octaves and his face still reddened. "I'm sorry and I didn't mean it, it was a mistake. Now, we've really go to tend to that arm—blimey, if only I hadn't lost that scarf—" He scrambles to his feet and starts looking around the rubble, as if he might find an escape there.
Amy stands, too, and grabs him, searching again for a second kiss. He wrenches away from her, feeling her nails scratch his arm through the fabric of his shirt. It feels oddly metaphoric. Her eyes narrow, unfaltering.
He pleads with her like he's pleading for his life—and it sort of feels as though he is. "Please, Amy. Stop this. I told you it could never work."
"And I said I was thinking of something more temporary," she shoots back, eyebrows lifting.
"Well, I wasn't." It comes out before he can stop it. Nine hundred years and he's gotten fairly good at holding his tongue, but he does commit occasional fallacies. He swallows hard, praying she won't think too hard about that statement.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Amy demands, her arms crossing. Her voice grows dangerously louder. "What are you trying to say?"
The Doctor turns away neatly. His eyes clamp shut and he tries to filter it all properly, and then glue together a coherent explanation. Mostly, he laments on how hard she makes this, and how she ought to shave her head, except not really, though it might help. She persists to invade his space so tenaciously—mental, physical. First the questions, now this. She's intransigent. He brings people along so that he won't be let alone, but she doesn't stop at not alone. The TARDIS picks up on it, even, the raw vitality beating in Amy's chest. Sometimes he'll feel it at night: restless—thinking of him. The ship likes her presence but he only squirms in his bed and feels warm though the temperature is perfect.
She already knows more than he should have told her, and she'll only press him further, and his struggle against the intimacy of it makes him dizzy. If he gives in now, he'll regret it later.
He's nearly a thousand years old; she's twenty-one. His grip may be slipping, but he can win this fight.
Though, his age doesn't seem to be the advantage he'd thought it would. It weighs him down. She's clever and nimble and more of an optimist than she previously claimed.
He breathes deeply, remembering himself, all that thought compressed to one single instant. "I'm saying that our interests do not coincide. What you asked me for that night was something I don't do, engaged or otherwise. It is not my mode of operating—I take enough advantage of my friends, as is." He exhales slowly, and the swings around again, back to face her. He draws energy from the reserves he has piled up in the back of his head and rubs his hands together, grinning broadly. "So! Let's take a look at that arm."
He makes a move back towards her. She's staring at him, her brow furrowed prettily, and she speaks just as he's about to reach for her wounded limb.
"You're saying you'd sleep with me if you were in love with me."
His eyes flutter closed again, but they've reopened in a half a second. He takes her arm with a gentleness that doesn't match his hard expression when he meets her gaze. Amy looks away immediately. He glances at the cut for a couple of seconds. "It'll be fine. We'll bandage it when we get back to the TARDIS," he says gruffly.
"Sorry for not going back when you told me." He shrugs. She's still not looking at him, which he knows because he's stealing little glances at her out of the corner of his eye. It's a regrettable habit, but one he can't help.
He drops her arm and starts for the door with her trailing behind him. They walk to the ship in silence.
She's the last one into the TARDIS, so she shuts the door behind them. He bounds up the steps and engrosses himself in a menial task at the console.
"Do you, though?" she asks suddenly, and when he looks over at her, she's leaning back against the entrance, considering him inscrutably.
"What?" He plays at confusion, because wouldn't it be grand if he actually didn't know what she was referring to?
"Have, you know—" She pushes herself off the door and takes a few steps towards the deck, still expressionless. "—non-platonic inklings." She finally breaks, a smile catching her lips, which would be a beautiful sight if it didn't come with her foolish tongue. "Romanticfeelings." It's the word romantic that gets her; she embellishes it so much she has to giggle.
He slams a fist against the console. "It is not funny, Amelia!" Much like when he reproached her in the library a few days before, his words punch out fast and hard, and he has to catch his breath.
Amy's smile vanishes. She hates it when he scolds her humanity, but really, this is an instance of what he'd call classic human narrow-mindedness. She doesn't see or understand her own mortality; she doesn't realize he will lose her. It hasn't been long enough since his last slip in this department for him to regain any potent hope.
For her, a fling is a night together. For him, it's a half a century and not much more, with each adventure only a second passing by. Because that's all he's allowed with these terrible wonderful little beings, and though from their perspective it's the opposite of taking advantage to spend all that time together, they always fail to accept that he willkeep going. He's sure they would see it differently if they did.
"What's so bad about you fancying me?" she inquires flatly, as if to underscore the singular thought process that will never cease to cause him grief. She climbs the steps and then hesitates to go any closer. He takes a very deep breath, calmness restored, and shakes his head.
"I told you," he replies. "You get older and I don't change. I'm nine hundred and seven."
She snorts. "Sorry, I didn't know there was a cutoff age for loving people." He laughs, exasperated.
"You're getting married." It's an attempt. Perhaps he can start listing out all the problems and that'll convince her of his earnest sincerity. He doubts it, though.
"So? I'm an adult. If I wanted to be with someone else I'd do it," she declares, with stunning, audacious nonchalance. She's begun to glare at him.
"But you don't!" he cries, as the back and forth is starting to wear him down, and Amy shrinks back a little. They'll push at each other until one of them falls, and he knows it'll be him. He can't keep a desperate, sad expression off his face, as hard as he tries. "So there is really no point to this discussion, and we are both better off calling it a night and never speaking about this topic ever again." She's peering at her feet, now. He adjusts a setting on the dashboard, waiting for her to leave.
"I'd like to go home tomorrow," she says quietly. His throat clenches and he feels his head droop. The request makes sense, and it's for the best, but greedily it's not what he wants. Which is probably all the more reason that it needs to happen. "Just to visit Rory, and things," she adds, and he's not sure whether he feels happier or sadder than he did at his first thought. "A few days before the wedding, maybe."
"Right," he coughs, hand going up to scratch the side of his face dumbly. "There will be gauze and bandages in your room when you get there. Leadworth, tomorrow, first thing." She nods appreciatively; the two of them still avoid eye contact, with real dedication. "Goodnight, Pond."
She starts for the door, but not without pausing to wrap a delicate hand around his arm. "Goodnight, Doctor." And then she disappears, and he's left alone with the churning in his stomach.
A/N: So, this is later than I said it would be. I'm just going into finals, very busy, etc. Hopefully it was worth the wait.