A/N: So Rory's gone. (yay...) Meanwhile, back at the Casbah... (haven't you always wanted to write that?) ... our two delicate lovers have problems to resolve. Don't they always? Sigh...
He that is not jealous is not in love. ~St. Augustine
If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being? ~Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
I.
After Rory left, the Doctor had drawn her into his arms in a comforting hug. She'd felt concern radiating from him, worry about her, and under that, weaker, less important, anger over that last audacious kiss, distant, muted, and layered with relief that Rory was finally gone, that the doors were finally closed. She'd allowed him to hold her, had moved her own hands absently on his back, but she'd slipped away as soon as she could. She could not stand the feeling of anyone holding her at the present, not even him. Her head was whirling, and she felt as though at any moment she was going to scream. She just wanted to be alone. She needed it more than any other thing she could think of in all the universe.
Because I know now what the rope in tug-of-war feels like.
She faked a smile, praying desperately that somehow miraculously he wouldn't know the truth of her turmoil through their bond, or at the very least that if he sensed something he wouldn't press her for the answers she wasn't sure she had, and then she'd told him she was going to her room for awhile to rest. She wasn't at all sure she'd pulled it off successfully since he'd simply looked at her for endless moments, something very much like hurt in his eyes flickering briefly, there and then hidden behind a carefully-constructed blankness, but the corners of his lips turned up slightly.
"Sure, Pond. You must be absolutely worn out. Been a monster of a day, hasn't it, what with one thing and another? Go on. I've things to see to here."
He'd set about adjusting the various settings and checking the various monitors and readouts on the TARDIS console, but as she'd been walking out, she'd glanced back over her shoulder at him to see him standing head down, completely still except for one finger which was idly tracing a single switch there. She paused, and he noticed her gaze.
"Doctor," she began, both wanting to be away in private with her own pain but also recognizing pain in him as well.
He waved her away with a small shooing motion. "Off with you, Pond. Really now. Tons of stuff to catch up on here. Can't neglect the TARDIS and not pay for it at some point." He continued to stand there, oddly still for someone whose chief defining characteristic was to be always in a state of frantic motion.
Confused and tired, she walked away.
II.
Amelia Pond lay on her bed staring at the ceiling. She had some serious thinking to do. Rory's last words to her in the kitchen had clung with tenacious teeth and claws.
"He's not careful, Amy. He thinks he is, but he's not. And that's the most dangerous thing..."
She could see Rory's earnest, pleading face in front of her as she turned his statement over and over, looked at it from every possible angle, shook it to see if it would ring true like silver.
"Oh, he'll weep, and he'll miss you, but you'll be the one who pays..."
That persistent voice pursued her across the landscape of her mind. She could see herself sitting in the darkness with the Weeping Angels all around her, waiting for the end to come, waiting for the touch that would bring...she knew not what. A death he would not even describe for her. She felt again the Venetian "vampire's" bite, the sensation of her life running out with her blood into a monster's mouth, the wondering if this is where she would die because the Doctor had been detained. She shivered when she remembered what it was like to lose all control of herself trying to get rid of Prisoner Zero in a scheme that had been concocted by the Doctor, she and Rory his woefully-unprepared advance guard.
"You'll be the one who pays..."
She sat up suddenly, pushed the pillow she'd been holding away angrily.
No. It's a kind of false safety he believes in. Everybody dies eventually, but not everybody lives. I could have stayed in Leadsworth and gotten hit by a milk truck as I crossed the street one day and never had adventure or StarWhales or ancient history or...or him, at all. I could have lived the little life that Rory wanted and died a little every day. No. Rory is just wrong. He means well, I think, but as it relates to me and the Doctor, he is just wrong.
The set of her jaw changed, became tighter, more determined.
And, well, even if he's not...if there's a price to be paid for all of this, then so be it. Nothing good in life ever truly came for free. At least when it comes time to pay the fare, I'll be able to say I enjoyed the ride, right?
She thought of him again as she'd seen him last, standing alone at the controls of his beloved TARDIS, of the woundedness she'd felt coming from him that he was trying so hard to hide.
Trying to hide it because he didn't want me to see it. Didn't want to add to the load I already carried. Didn't want to cause me more pain than I already had. Thinks of himself, she realized with an awareness coming from both her own knowledge of him and from the bond they shared, as the cause of all my current pain, is taking it all on himself again.
She shook her head, stood up, headed for the door. I've said it before and I'll say it again. For an exceptionally intelligent man, he's incredibly thick sometimes...
II.
She could not find him. He was not in the control room. He was not in the kitchen. With dread, she traced her way to the Armory, expecting to find him bloody, bladed, and fearsome, but it was dark and closed, empty of his presence. He was not in the library or in the pool, nor could she locate him in any of the areas he commonly lurked in fiddling with the TARDIS's inner workings when he was most in need of solitude himself.
Damnation. Where is he?
That slight tug at the corner of her mind caught her attention, and she focused in on it much more readily this time, recognizing it as the same one that had helped her locate him before.
Lead on, then. But hurry.
And she followed that pull down the empty corridors of the TARDIS.
III.
Her steps stopped, to her great surprise, outside the door of the little reading room that had been so much her haunt. She put her hand to the door and it swung open silently. The Doctor was lying on the couch, the soft red throw draped over him, one hand gripped in it like a child might hold a security blanket. The other arm was thrown over his eyes. He did not move as she entered.
She knew immediately that he wasn't sleeping. She could not explain exactly how she knew it, but she knew he was awake, lying there perfectly still on the couch huddled beneath the blanket. She also knew that he wanted her to leave. She could feel his silent will pushing at her like a hundred firm but gentle hands trying to shove her out the door.
No. I'm going nowhere. You can give that up, you know.
His only response was the flexing of the hand that held the blanket.
She walked over to the couch, folded down to sit on the floor beside it, rested her head on her hands beside his.
I'm prepared to be quite persistent with this.
He shifted slightly on the couch. She saw the corners of his mouth turn down, felt the pressure of his will turn up.
Do you really think that's going to work? Do you really think you're going to be able to...to...mind-shove me out of here? I think you're underestimating the girl from Scotland, Doctor.
He removed his arm, rolled his head away to face the back of the couch.
Stubborn childish Time Lord bastard. Why are you being this way?
She reached across him, cupped his cheek, and to her surprise, he did not resist her as she tilted his face back toward hers. His eyes were open, and she saw the swirling conflict in them, the misery, and a resolution that she didn't understand until he began to speak.
"Why are you, Amy?" His voice was soft. He released the blanket to stroke her hair gently, tuck it behind her ear. He said nothing for a moment more. Then, his voice still quiet, "If you like, I can have you home again in the proverbial twinkling of the eye, you know. You have but to ask it."
A small frown furrowed her brow. "What? What do you mean?"
"Amy...I could... feel how much you hurt, how uncertain you were when he left. Maybe...maybe...this wasn't the right choice for you after all. I understand that." His hand was tangling softly in her hair, combing his fingers through it as if savoring the feel of its silky length was somehow comforting to him.
And oh, it will kill me to let you go, Pond, he thought. It will be razors slicing me apart atom by atom to let what is Mine walk away. To never know the beauty of you save in my memories again. Never to hear that music that is your mind singing together with mine again. Never to laugh and run with you from danger into the night again. Never to sit with you in peace and comfort. I might never recover. Might throw myself into the heart of a void and rejoice at the endlessness of the nothing. But if you want to go back to him, if that's truly what would make you happy, then...
"So you want me to go, then. You're saying you want me to go."
He grimaced. "Want you to go? Want you to go? No. Never. I..."
"'Cause that's what I'm hearing, feeling. You're saying that you will take me back to Leadsworth right this second, put me out, close the doors, leave me behind, and it's nothing to you..." She was goading him deliberately, pushing him.
It worked. He sat up, ran his hands through his hair so that it stood up in many different directions, gestured irritably.
"No! No. How does this always go so bloody wrong? I'm trying to say that I know that being with me, our being together, has cost you. I'm trying to say that I know that it can't be easy to stay here with me when I'm unbearable at times. I'm trying to say..." and his voice gentled. "I'm trying to say that I know Rory meant something to you. Something real. Something important. That he was things to you that I may never be able to be. I felt that, Amy. You knew him much longer than ever you knew me. So...basically, I'm trying to say that if you've decided that the cost is too high, I understand." He tried to smile, but it didn't quite make it. "I live with me all the time, you know, and sometimes I want to run away, too, Pond... Look, what I'm saying is that whatever you want, I will give you."
She pushed herself slowly off the floor to sit beside him on the couch. She looked him over, taking in the wildly mussed hair, the frustrated expression, the pain still trying to hide there in his eyes, and she hid her smile.
Ah, Doctor... Her heart filled. She could barely stand it. She knew exactly what she wanted from him, for him, for herself.
"Anything I ask you for, then," she murmured quietly, thoughtfully, seriously.
He went very still, took a deep breath. "Yes, Amy."
"No matter what it is that I decide at this moment, that's the choice you'll honor? You won't get angry or try to argue with me and change my mind... "
He closed his eyes, and he leaned back. She saw his hands press into the fabric of the couch. "No. Your choice is your choice. Always, Amelia."
She nodded. "Okay. Okay, then. I've decided." And she pushed up from the couch.
IV
He watched her stand, but he couldn't bear to watch her go. His head bowed; his heart plummeted. She was really going. She was going to go. No more Pond, no more Amy, no more Amelia...
He wanted to throw back his head and howl at the unfairness of it all... Whatever fool said to have loved and lost is better should try it sometime...
But suddenly, he felt her hands on his shoulders, and he looked up, startled. He managed to raise his hands just in time to put them on her hips as she straddled his lap. Both his hearts kicked into high gear as he looked at her face so near now to his own, at her sweet ripe strawberry mouth only a breath away as she settled herself against him.
"You said you'd give me anything I wanted, Doctor," she flexed her fingers lightly on his shoulders, shifted her weight in a very pleasant way on his lap. His hands gripped her hips. What is this? Isn't she about to ask me to...I thought she was going to tell me she wanted to go home...This isn't the way...What? What? His mind felt as though it were processing through a significant lag, and he realized that she was looking at him as though she expected a response.
His mind rushed to cobble something together. "I... yes. I did. Yes. Anything you want." But what is it that she wants? And why do I feel like I just stepped off a high cliff with no warning...
She smiled, her grin was dangerous, evil, tempting. He wanted to, needed to lick her bottom lip, capture it between his teeth, kiss her, taste her. And then she shifted against him again. He could scent her pheromones rising, could scent the need of his bonded mate, and it was stripping away every other consideration... Her desire demanded satisfaction, and his body was responding.
"Is that a promise, Doctor?" She skimmed her fingertips lightly over his bowtie now, tracing the edges delicately.
*Anything you want, Pond. Name it. Tell me. It will be yours.* Though I have to plunder worlds for it... His breath was coming harder now, and his fingers on her hips were restless, wanted to roam, to seek, to caress, and yet...
They sat separated by only her will, only a handsbreadth. Their heads angled, instinctively preparing for what must come.
"In that case, what I really want you to give me is..."
And everything that was Hers inside him held its breath, prayed prostrate on the floor before its idol, begged that no mercy be given as she leaned forward to end the separation, as her fingers tugged the end of the bowtie, undoing it, as she pressed him back against the couch with fire in her eyes, as she murmured the word he'd hoped to hear but never really expected to receive...
"...you."
Aaaanndd scene. Hmm. Wonder what they'll get up to next? Guesses? I'm thinking a nice quiet evening of crossword puzzles or board games. You?
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(I write faster.)