"Can't you sleep?"
Amy stopped with her hand on the door to their room. The Tardis kept changing the lighting in here, even when they were supposed to be resting. At the moment it was several small, very American-looking lamps clinging to the walls. Bit Florida-hotel style, little palm frond motifs on every shade. But when they got up, when the ship landed, it might have switched to a single disco ball for all they knew.
Rory shifted in the bottom bunk, turning onto his side with wide-open eyes to look at her.
Amy pursed her lips. "Caught me."
"Neither can I, really." Rory made a soft grunt of frustration in the back of his throat. "Going to check on him?"
She tightened her grip on the door's metal handle. "It can't really have been just a year. Not for him."
"You know he's not gonna say anything," Rory warned her, propping himself up on an elbow. "He's too…alien."
"He shouldn't be alone."
Her husband's legs came swinging round the cot, feet touching the cold silver floor. Amy watched him rub the space under his right eye for a moment, wearing his wrinkled World's Okayest Nurse tee and pants. She rolled her eyes when he tried to stand, forgot as usual he was in a bunk bed, and hit his head on the frame above him.
"No," she sighed, "stay. Catch up on sleepin' one night without worryin' about Weeping Angels every other hour." She pulled open the door, smirking at him on her way out into the corridor. "I've got it."
It took her less time than usual to find the console room. The Tardis hadn't changed the way during its time half-asleep in the last nine months—either that or it was making this easy on purpose. Amy could never really be sure. The Doctor spoke of his ship like it was sentient—and attractive, which was so him she almost didn't mind. She personally couldn't feel that the Tardis was alive in any way other than the constant changing of its interior. Like traveling in a kaleidoscope. She had to admit that part had personality, even a touch of femininity, because if it did have a mind it clearly couldn't make it up when it came to fashion.
But if it was true, if the Tardis was sentient, and it was helping her reach the console room faster tonight, she blinked up at the nearest light and smiled a thank-you. Just in case. And then she felt silly and the smile was gone.
When she came out of the corridors, into one of the upper levels with a staircase winding down onto the glass floor of the time rotor's level, Amy saw the Doctor before he noticed her.
He was standing with his profile to her, face bathed in the light from the column. In here, the lights had gone very dim, the way they did every time the Tardis's passengers were resting. The Doctor was mostly dark everywhere but his face; the rest of him seemed to be under a shadow. But there wasn't anything casting one. Maybe it was just his expression.
Amy felt her own expression go slack at the sight of him. He looked mainly normal. Still. His lids were hooded and his mouth was neutral, blank. He was staring down at something in his hands, turning the something over and over, twitching all his fingers around it. Fondling it, almost. The Tardis whirred and clicked, spinning through the Vortex in the correct universe at last. Like it was happy to be there. But even those noises were subdued, as though it could see the Doctor too, and was giving him as much privacy as it could afford.
Amy wasn't so polite. She stopped where she stood, moving very slowly into a crouch, holding on to one of the railings in an attempt to make herself smaller. She was going to clear her throat, or call out to him, say something to alert him to her presence. But instead she hid. She watched.
Because the Doctor thought nobody was there. And she had never seen him when he thought nobody was there.
He was holding the fob watch, Will's fob watch. He was looking at the markings on it, tracing them with his fingernails. From here, Amy couldn't see any tears, or hear him make any noises. But she saw him swallow. His jaw began to work, and that was saying something because he had quite a lot of jaw to work with. Every muscle seemed tighter and tighter, the Tardis just the same around him. The console room impossibly quiet.
The Doctor took in a long, slow breath. Nodding to himself so slightly, Amy couldn't be quite sure he was nodding. His mouth even twitched, just once, in one of the corners so that he looked like he might be smiling. A little. Then he was still. The watch was still too, in his hands.
And then he threw it as hard as he could against the opposite wall.
Amy jumped; he'd hit one of the cables or dials on the wall and sparks shot out briefly. The watch clattered to the floor, and the Tardis made a tiny groan and then shut up. Went on churning peaceably through the Vortex. He hadn't really broken anything, not even the watch. When Amy looked at the Doctor again, his face had changed entirely and he seemed to be trying to get control of himself. He was bent over the console, bracing himself against it with both hands, breathing hard now.
The Doctor's jaw worked further, so intensely it might have been hurting his teeth. His eyebrows came down low over green eyes that were burning. Amy would have hated to be a Dalek facing those eyes. Or a Weeping Angel, or a 17th-century slave owner. For a second, she got a glimpse of what those enemies might feel, watching him. And she was almost sorry for them.
Whatever she'd been expecting to catch him at, it wasn't this.
His hand flicked up to push hair aside, and then seemed to get distracted pinching the spot between his eyebrows. He glared at the spot where the watch had been thrown, eyes glassy like he was somewhere else. Absolutely livid.
Amy, feeling a bit numb in the legs as she stood back up, made a small cough. "Doctor?"
The Doctor at once turned to face her, and she got whiplash. His eyes were warm and a little sleepy, his mouth spread right into a slow, distracted little smile, and he stood up straight with arms akimbo. Like a totally different person. So quickly she would have been perfectly fooled if she hadn't seen what she'd seen before. It made her stomach turn.
"Ah, Pond, good, hallo. So! Done with the kip? Because I have got the perfect honeymoon suite lined up, really, top notch. And this time no statues, so gold stars for everyone, eh? I do love a gold star. Any sticker, actually. Do we have stickers here? Add it to the shopping list. Which, now I mention it, needs milk."
He was cavorting around the console as he spoke, pulling and pressing and directing the ship somewhere. Punching in coordinates. Amy's gaze followed every movement with an increasing sense of anxiety.
"You're gettin' emotional."
"Sorry?" The Doctor didn't look up for a moment, typing something in on the little typewriter keys and examining the viewscreen.
"You're gettin' emotional," Amy repeated, carefully, coming down the steps to the console's level. "And you're not okay."
"'Course I'm okay," the Doctor breezed on, and he did look at her, eyes squinting like he was truly confused. "I'm always okay. I would be better with a sticker, though. Gold star sticker, right on the lapel, big one, ooh, what d'you think?" He grinned broadly at her and went back to pressing buttons. "D'you know, nine hundred and seven years of saving the world, time and space, and nobody has ever once given me a gold star sticker."
Amy blinked hard, not responding. Listening. Staring.
"Well, except for Jo, I think, but it didn't stick to velvet, so I lost it fairly quickly, therefore it doesn't count."
"Doctor."
"And it wasn't a star, it was an ice cream, and it wasn't sparkly—"
"Doctor."
"Eh?" The Doctor twisted something red on the console and blinked at her placidly, just for a second, as if he were very busy.
"Stop it," Amy murmured. "Just stop it, okay? You are, you're emotional, and you're always stupid when you get like that. Always."
The Doctor didn't respond. He looked at her properly, face totally calm and open and relaxed. But his gaze was still hooded, and his body still seemed swathed in an invisible shadow. His knuckles were white against the knob of the zigzag plotter.
"And then you go and make bad decisions," Amy went on. "Really bad. Dangerous bad."
"Well," the Doctor muttered. Smirking at her with very little of the faux warmth he'd pushed out a moment ago. "Good job I've got you and Rory, then, eh? Keep an eye on me. Mr. and Mrs. Caretaker. Long as I've got you pair, not much trouble I can get into, is there?"
He did smile then, genuinely, but it was weak. Amy smiled back, because she knew he needed her to.
"Like I say," he added, pointing at her. "What would I do without you?"
What indeed? Amy forced herself not to look at the watch down there on the floor. And she tracked the Doctor as he folded back in on himself, hiding under a confetti of energy and the usual gangly, speedy movements. Rory had been right; Rory was always right. She wouldn't get much more out of her Raggedy Man, not tonight, probably never. But at least he wasn't alone. At least he had them to help. That would have to be enough.
"Right!" The Doctor clapped, gesturing for her to join him at the viewscreen. "Let's have that honeymoon suite, eh?"
"What've you got for us this time?" Amy asked, sighing and coming around to stand with him.
"There is a space liner cruising through the galaxies at this very moment, brilliant staff, twelve hundred different buffets—passes right through a rather interesting, supercharged cloud belt, covers a whole planet. And it has got just enough room for two more passengers…"