FIC: Lovers Like Lights on a Midnight Train [AU]
Title: Lovers Like Lights on a Midnight Train
Characters/Pairings: Rory Williams (AU, female), Amy Pond, the Doctor (Eleven), various OCs; Rory/Amy.
Word Count: 6,824.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: Rory isn't like the other girls, and neither is Amy Pond. Is it a line to cross -- is it okay to be the queer girl's friend but too hard to be the girlfriend?
Author's Notes: This fic was spawned by a prompt on eleventy_kink. It was written and completed before "Let's Kill Hitler" aired, so there are only spoilers through "A Good Man Goes to War." One day I may fix it to fit LKH but… not today. Thanks to thinkatory for the beta job. Go read her stuff next. It's way better than mine.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything having to do with Doctor Who. If I did I would stop killing Rory.
At six, Rory plays dress up with the other girls even though she doesn't want to. She does this because her mum says it's important to take turns and that sometimes, we all do things we don't want to do. Besides, she doesn't mind too much, because other times she can talk them into being outside and playing football or being at the park, or it turns into a game of House. Rory doesn't mind House.
Trina tries on a miniature wedding dress that came out of the costume trunk in her playroom, and even though it's still a size or two too big, says, "When I get married, I want a dress just like this."
"Ooh!" Vicky squeals in approval. "Just like that?"
"Yep." Trina steps up beside Rory at the mirror and has a twirl in it. The gaudy sequins glitter in the lighting and the skirt still flies every which direction when she stops. "Maybe more glitter, though."
Rory pulls a face, but stops when she realizes Trina has caught her eye in the mirror and is giving her a Look in return. She concentrates heavily on tying the tie she'd picked up, although not in the nice, neat knot that her mum ties for her dad. Once she has fastidiously done and redone the square knot, she looks up thinking it will be safe, but she is wrong. "What?" Trina demands.
"Nothing," Rory answers quickly.
"Well what are you going to wear when you get married?" she challenges in return. "You can't wear trousers for that!"
Rory opens her mouth to retort, but doesn't have an answer right away. She clearly hasn't spent the time thinking about this that Trina has, but why? She couldn't think of anyone she would want to marry, let alone what she would want to wear while she did. "Who says?" she says, just a bit too slowly to be smart.
Trina looks at her as though she's grown another head. "Everyone," she replies as though that were self-evident.
Rory doesn't answer, simply goes back to the trunk and finds a fedora, jamming it on her head over her ponytail in defiance of the wedding dress edict.
Her mother picks her up when the play date is over and tries to chat with her about it, but Rory is sullen and speaks little. "What's wrong, sweetheart?" she finally asks her daughter.
"Trina says that I have to get married in a dress and that everyone gets married in dresses. I don't want to get married in a dress. It's not fair," she says stubbornly.
It's enough to give her mother clear pause, but to her credit, she recovers quickly. "When you get married, sweetheart, you can wear whatever you want," she says. "Most women do wear dresses, that's true, but nobody is going to make you wear something you don't want to."
"Do you promise?" Rory asks suspiciously.
"I promise," she says solemnly. She stops the car in the driveway and turns off the engine before she shifts to look at her. "If there is ever a time that you will get your way, it will be on your wedding day. It's really the bride's day, after all." She winks at Rory.
The next time Trina makes fun of her for always wearing trousers, she tells her that she's no longer her best friend and even though Trina tells her it was a joke, Rory sticks to her guns. Besides, there's a new girl in town, and her name is Amelia Pond.
---
Rory is ten and Amelia Pond is her best friend. And she has never been so happy in her short little life.
Rory thinks they fit together naturally because people find them both a little strange. Amelia is the girl who claims an imaginary friend the Raggedy Doctor visited her in the night and examined the crack in her wall, and Rory is just a little bit odder than can be brushed off. Rory doesn't know what Amelia thinks about that, but it doesn't bother Rory. Even if the Doctor isn't real, Amelia isn't hurting anyone, and Rory finds her imagination fascinating. She tells a better story than anyone Rory's ever known, even Roald Dahl and her mum (or her mum reading Roald Dahl) and is in general a way better friend than Trina and Vicky or any other girls in Leadworth were.
The first indication she has that Amelia thinks about what other people say at all is when they are dressing up for a game of Raggedy Doctor. "Do you think you're a boy?" she asks with point blank honesty.
Rory's head emerges from the collar of the oversized dress shirt she wears for the game. She blinks and thinks about it. "No," she says, and really doesn't. "I'm a girl. I just like some boy things."
Amelia nods, and Rory is so grateful because she gets it. Even though others tease her, don't understand, or get mean, she thinks that her friend really, truly understands and that makes her happier than she's ever been.
For the first time, Rory dreams of weddings. Chocolate cake, tiger lilies, and two brides.
---
Rory is fourteen and she's just had her first kiss.
Chelsea's parents let her have a boy/girl party for her birthday, and it was only a matter of time before things devolved into Spin the Bottle (which, Chelsea assured them all, was done exactly as it was in the movies, because she'd gone to her cousin's birthday party in Birmingham).
When Vicky spins and it lands on Rory at first, there is a beat of silence before Chelsea declares, "If a girl lands on a girl or a boy lands on a boy you can spin again." Vicky practically jumps on the empty bottle to spin it again.
Rory feels about two feet tall. She wonders if she was the only one who would have kissed boys or girls, and of course she is. Everyone else knows it, that's why it's as though the rest of the party had taken a large sigh of relief. As the game continues, she also thinks that taking out the same sex kissing probably takes out some of the scandal and excitement.
She begins to grow bored and wishes Amelia were there. Rory will still be going to her house after the party, but Amelia called to cancel on the party, saying she just didn't want to be around people. Right now, Rory doesn't blame her.
"Earth to Rory!" breaks through the wall created by her boredom, and she looks up at everyone staring back excitedly at her -- except for Michael Hill, who looks more like a rabbit caught in the headlights, although there is a little bit of curiosity mixed in.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" Chelsea demands. Rory wants to punch her in the throat.
Michael swallows, and begins to lean over the rest of the circle towards Rory. She meets him halfway, and his mouth bumps against hers. The orthodontia is a little uncomfortable, but not too bad, and there has at least been some courtesy gum chewing going on; he tastes like a trip to the dentist's office.
Rory pulls back and takes her turn -- she kisses Tommy McClimon when the bottle lands on him, just a peck, like she kisses her dad. She excuses herself and takes her jacket. She calls her mum to come and get her early ("No, nothing happened, I'm just kind of bored.") and take her to Amelia's.
Amelia opens the door when Rory knocks, and the look on her face tells her everything she needs to know about how she looks. "What happened to you? You look like your dog just got run over by a lorry."
"Michael Hill kissed me and then I had to kiss Tommy McClimon," she answers.
"Had to? What, he made you?" she asks, although she is derisive in her tone.
"Amelia," she whines.
Amelia bristles unexpectedly and stops for a moment. "Well, come in," she said. "Aunt Sharon left us an oven pizza we can make, and she'll be back in the morning -- oh, don't give me that look, what your parents won't know won't hurt them."
Actually, the proper phrase would be 'what they don't know won't get me grounded,' but Rory is less willing to split hairs with her friend. "Sounds great," she says, and leaves her backpack at the foot of the stairs. Amelia sets to heating up the oven and putting the pizza on a baking sheet. "Don't you want to know how the party was?"
"Let me guess," Amelia says. "Chelsea was fluttering about being Queen Bee, until Vicky and Trina tried to start the dancing so they had a reason to be all over Jesse, and then Chelsea got her knickers in a twist because no one was paying attention to her and it was her party, so she did something that would bring the attention back to her. How am I so far?"
"… Cynical but spot on," Rory has to admit. "She got us playing Spin the Bottle."
"Oh so that's why you were kissing Michael and Tommy," she replies, amused. "How was that?"
"Not great," she says honestly.
"Don't worry, they wouldn't be my first choices either. With the braces, I'd feel like I was snogging a cheese grater."
Rory laughs because -- well, it was true. "Amelia!" She can't help but chide her friend anyway.
Amelia stiffens again, and this time doesn't recover. Rory wonders what she's said or done to make her look like that, because she'll do anything to take it back. "Could you call me Amy," she says instead, quite suddenly.
"Uh. Okay." It's just a name, and as the saying goes what's in a name, but it's sudden and the look on Amelia -- Amy's face is just layer after layer of things she's not saying. Per usual. "But why?"
."I don't want to talk about it."
"Was it something at the psychiatrist's?"
"I said I don't want to talk about it."
Definitely something to do with the psychiatrists. "Okay," she says easily, because if Amel -- shit, Amy can accept that Rory likes to wear her hair short and doesn't want to get married in a dress and probably almost definitely likes girls more than boys (not instead of, but in addition to because there are some who set her heart fluttering), then Rory has no business questioning why she wants to be Amy rather than Amelia.
---
Rory is sixteen and Amy makes her heart flutter more than any other girl or boy out there.
She dated Tommy McClimon for about four months, but they've been broken up for about half that by now. He was fun, liked his football and was in general not a bad bloke. But the spark, the chemistry was just… absent.
She's even kissed another girl, a girl in the year below her who plays field hockey and looks every inch a girly girl. But since she made Rory promise not to tell (a promise she breaks -- she tells Amy, because she tells Amy everything), Rory isn't sure that it counts.
Rory wonders what it would be like to really kiss Amy.
Sometimes when it's just them, at the cinema, revising after school, or getting ice cream, she pretends that she and Amy are dating. One reason she's glad she's a girl: no matter what the girl looks like, it's way more socially acceptable to be affectionate in public. Hugs are not looked at oddly; you can get away with holding hands and kisses on the cheek.
One day, she thinks, she may kiss Amy for real.
---
Rory is seventeen and done with A-levels. She most likely even has the marks to be a doctor, like she wants, and she feels great.
Chelsea's having another party, because her parents are insanely permissive (and also not present, Rory notices), but also because they're all so glad to be done. There's alcohol at this party, which explains the slight tilt of the rest of the world as she collapses on the porch with Amy, who isn't having as much fun as everyone else if the look on her face is anything to go by. "Hi," she tries.
"Hi," Amy responds, carefully picking at the label on her bottle with a manicured, purple fingernail. "Having fun?"
It's one of Amy's tricks. When she doesn't want to be the focus of a conversation she starts asking questions. "I'm okay," Rory says honestly. She was good, but if Amy isn't then she can't be. "What about you?"
Amy shrugs, neatly avoiding it. "Glad it's over," she admits.
"How did you do?" Rory pesters.
"Rory."
She stops, and rests against Amy. "If you're not having fun we can just go."
"I mucked it up," she says.
"Sorry?"
"I mucked it up. Badly."
"You don't know that," Rory replies, trying to be comforting. "We won't know anything until we get scores back."
"Well how did you do?" Amy asks smartly.
"… Pretty well. I think." She sees Amy's point and downplays it at the same time. "Sorry."
"Whatever," she says, and puts her head down on Rory's shoulder. Rory's heart flutters a bit, and she leans on her as well.
"I'm sure you did fine," Rory continues after a moment. "Anyway, loads of A-levels isn't everything, right? You're way cleverer than anyone else here, and no one needs any test scores to know that's true -- what?"
Amy is laughing into Rory's shoulder. "If you want to go have fun with the rest of them, you should," she says.
Rory doesn't know how to react for a very long moment, and stays close to Amy. Under normal circumstances she would say nothing and merely remain where she is. Rory has never been one for grand gestures and soporific speech; she has always said exactly what she meant and meant what she said, or said nothing at all. But the alcohol has made her brave (or stupid), the June night is balmy, and Amy is so close she can smell the lavender and vanilla on Amy's skin. "I don't want to be anywhere else," she says.
At first she curses her stupid mouth because Amy sits up, pulling back to look at Rory as though to say, Really, genius? Rory can see the subsequent thoughts streaming through Amy's brain: You should celebrate, really; I'm feeling sorry for myself but of course I don't want you to know that; I don't need your stupid pity, now piss off -- it's how Amy Pond works. Rory knows where it comes from and she wants to make it stop. "I want to kiss you," she blurts out.
Wait. That's not what she'd meant to say.
To Amy's credit, she looks less surprised than Rory expected. Then it occurs to her that she probably hasn't been subtle about slowly falling in love with Amy. She fully expects to be sent back to the party and almost goes to save face, but Amy leans forward and presses her lips to Rory's.
There had been a moment of worry, just before their lips touched, when Rory thought to herself, What if the fantasy is better than the reality?, but this kiss is like Christmas, if Christmas happened when the World Cup was going, and you got birthday cake.
Amy decides when to break the kiss, as usual she's in charge of the situation. Rory thinks she looks a little bewildered at herself for a moment, but smiles back at Rory's own brilliant grin -- she can feel it, her face it hurting. She wants to do it again. "I… have wanted to kiss you," she says, licking her lips.
"I know that, silly."
Again, Rory reflects she probably hasn't been subtle but she blushes all the same. "Should I have said something?"
She contemplates it for a moment. "I think you said something at exactly the right time," she replies, and so Rory ducks her head in for another kiss.
---
Rory is nineteen, and almost finished with nurse's training. There's one more year to go and then she'll be fully licensed. She's back in Leadworth, working at the hospital so she can be near Amy, who she loves more than ever and who loves her. She's pretty sure.
Here have been many kisses and then some more -- okay, a lot more -- since the night of the party, but since Amy is Amy, they are 'girl friends' rather than the more definitive 'girlfriends.' Rory introduces her as her girlfriend to everyone and Amy rejoins, "Sort of."
Leadworth is small, and even though Rory endured everything from ribald jokes to outright bullying in secondary for her appearance and disinterest in boys, Amy hasn't been under the same microscope. She's had her own issues, with the adults in town treating her like she's mentally ill and everyone else their age thinking she's weird, but it's not quite the same thing. She now falls outside the neat little box of "boy likes girl, girl likes boy," and is therefore subject to scrutiny and even ridicule. Rory doesn't care what people say about her, but she decks the first person to call Amy a dyke.
She hurts her hand in this endeavor, but is comforted by the fact that he had to have his jaw wired shut since he hit the corner of the pool table on the way down.
Though some people care about it more than others, the looks and the whispers had never mattered to Amy. But is it a line to cross -- is it okay to be the queer girl's friend but too hard to be the girlfriend? She gets it, to a point; people who think of themselves as straight can be quite thrown when they suddenly find themselves dating a girl. So Rory gives Amy as much room to move as she can stand to without going mad with worry that Amy is drifting away.
After awhile, Rory realizes that this is just what dating Amy is like. She is passionate and exciting in the moment, but if you try to talk about anything beyond the coming weekend she clams up. She'd been the same with the boys she'd gone out with in secondary. Rory supposes she'd been too busy wishing they would go away to notice.
Ultimately, it's worth it to call Amy her girlfriend and beg forgiveness later. Eventually Amy doesn't bring it up at all which is as good as permission in Rory's book.
Since nothing can ever go smoothly for long, once Amy accepts 'girlfriend' as a form of address, things start going weird at work. Patients in the coma ward start appearing outside of the hospital. Rory sees Mrs. Lindley walking down the street with an ice cream, and does a triple take before chalking it up to exhaustion and moving along with her day. In the next few weeks, she sees Mr. Collins, with the large dog that is in the picture that hangs over the bed in the ward, as well as Gerry, the teenaged boy who'd been in a motorbike accident. When she spots Mrs. Lindley again with the same ice cream, she snaps a picture on her Blackberry.
Every time she sees another one, she snaps a photo. It's there in her phone, and in her mind even at night when she's in bed with Amy; she sleeps soundly, while Rory lays awake, wondering if she's going insane.
This of course, is nothing compared to the day when the patients on the ward, first one, then the next, then another, all together begin uttering one word together: "Doctor."
The hair stands up on Rory's arms and there is something at the very center of her chest that goes cold because this is not normal. Their murmuring stops after a moment, leaving Rory with only the sound of the monitors and her own heart in her ears.
She pages Doctor Ramsden immediately, and to say she is Not Pleased to be there would be an understatement. If Rory had to guess, she would say the doctor was somewhere between 'Really Annoyed' and 'Pissed Off'. At least the patients don't make a monkey out of her and do it again, the faint pleas of "Doctor… Doctor… Doctor…" cropping up around them like really creepy popcorn. It's no less unnerving than the first time it happened, but Dr. Ramsden isn't quite so impressed.
She checks Mr. Collins, who seems normal enough. "Don't think they were even conscious," she says in a tone that makes Rory feel about five inches high.
"Doctor Ramsden -- " She is going to make her point, she is, because this is not her losing her mind, this is something completely wrong going on. "There is another sort of, um, funny thing -- "
"Yes, I know," she replies crisply. "Doctor Carver told me about your conversation."
Rory knows it is going to be downhill from there. Not even a minute later, she's thrown off the ward, banished for some 'time off.' Rory kicks herself for even saying anything, it was just the sort of thing Doctor Ramsden didn't like -- it was illogical, even fanciful, and that was why, Rory privately thought, that the supervisor likes the coma ward. Sometimes patients have changes in their status, but day in and day out it was mostly one thing and then more of the same. It was predictable. Rory likes predictability too, to a point, but some things cannot be ignored.
Still cursing Doctor Ramsden by any colorful means she could think of, Rory throws her car into park near the village green and gets out and begins to walk. She looks at the phone in her hand, and thinks, whose idea was it to ever put a camera in a phone anyway? It's certainly caused her enough trouble to last awhile.
Though she feels guilty thinking it, she realizes that this must be what Amy feels like whenever the Raggedy Doctor is brought up. Like maybe she did make it up after all, and convinced herself it was real.
There is an eerie quiet on the green, and at first all Rory sees is the confusion on everyone's faces, and how they are looking at the sky. The sun's gone wonky, like it's about to explode -- which she hopes won't be the case, because her day already sucks -- and they are all filming it. If her day weren't already filled with the weird and unexplained she'd be ready to poke fun at performance artists or, what are they called -- flash mobs, but this is too much.
She turns and there, a good twenty-five meters away, is Mr. Collins and his dog. Automatically, she turns on the camera application on the Blackberry and snaps the photo. One more photo saved to the gallery of pictures that she's never going to show anyone, because she is losing it.
Just as she's about to call Amy -- she worked a party last night, she may not even be awake yet -- her phone is snatched from her hand by a tall, lanky man whose trousers have seen better days. "The sun's going out, and you're photographing a man and a dog. Why?"
She's bewildered by the speed at which he seems to be going. He's standing right there but he stares at her with such wild intensity that he seems to vibrate. It's hard not to be a little intimidated, and her brain cleaves to the next thing it sees in order to cope: Amy, in her police costume. "Amy!"
"Hi!" she cheers, before glancing at the man who just seized Rory's phone. "Oh, uh, this is Rory, she's a -- friend."
"Girlfriend," Rory tacks on.
"Kind of… girlfriend."
This again? "Amy."
"Man and dog! Why!" he interrupts impatiently.
For the first time, Rory looks at him closely. The floppy dark hair, the tie, the blue shirt, pinstriped trousers, and Converse shoes -- he could have jumped off the cartoons that still hung on Amy's wall. "Oh. My god. It's him."
"Just answer his question, please," Amy says, a bit embarrassed.
"It's him, though!" She feels like a skipping CD. "The Doctor, the Raggedy Doctor!"
"Yeah. He -- he came back."
"But he was a story, he was a game -- "
Rory is interrupted as the Doctor grabs her by the front of her hoodie so as to get her full attention. "Man and a dog! Why! Tell me! Now!"
"Sorry." She's too shocked to do anything but answer. "Because… he can't be there, because he's -- "
"In a hospital." The Doctor breaks in, joining Rory. "In a coma." Maybe this was all one massive joke, although it was hardly a proportional response to putting blue food coloring in the milk.
"… Yeah," she finishes.
The Doctor grins. "Knew it. Multiform, you see." She doesn't. "Disguise itself as anything, but it needs a life feed, a psychic link with a living, but dormant mind."
Rory wonders if this is like that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when Buffy was having blackouts and it looked like she was actually in a mental institution and the world where she was a Slayer was her delusion, except you weren't really sure which was real because Joss Whedon can be a dick. Maybe her whole life had been a delusion and now that things were getting really weird she was going to wake up in a rubber room somewhere with her dad, stepmother, and a cadre of doctors and orderlies standing by. So why the hell not follow the Raggedy Doctor and Amy and help save the earth. Why not.
Rory and Amy pile into her car while the Doctor goes to harass Jeff for his laptop, and head back to the hospital. She breaks the speed limit but figures if cops are paying that much attention now they were meant to die in a planet-wide incineration anyway. Why, she asks herself as she tears down the road. Why has she let herself be caught up in the insanity?
She has little time to reflect further as they spring into action. Rory tries to deal with the administration, who have gone into full tilt "Holy Shit, This Is Not A Drill" mode and are no help. She and Amy are on their own as they take the lift up, and get chased by Prisoner Zero -- this time as Mrs. Elsea with two little girls holding on to her hands. Rory doesn't really panic until she sees the teeth -- if you can call those teeth. The Doctor makes a spectacular entrance, at exactly the right moment (although for Rory's money, he could have been about thirty seconds earlier).
Watching him is like watching a child who has consumed too much sugar, even as he's revealing his plan and how they outwitted the escaped prisoner. He's animated, Rory can always see the wheels working in his brain; he seems to see just a little bit further than the rest of them, but it's' almost as though it isn't far enough for him. He's brilliant, completely mad, and everything is somehow more colorful and in sharper focus with him there. She can see why Amy has kept the Doctor close, even after being told time and again that he is not real. He is unreal, in the very best way possible.
The Atraxi recapture Prisoner Zero, and fly off to parts unknown, leaving planet Earth unscathed. But this didn't satisfy the Doctor, oh no. The Doctor calls them back (on her phone) for a scolding they won't soon forget ("Leaving is good, never coming back is better!"), and then runs. Amy runs after, and Rory after her. It's a pathetically literal summation of her life: Amy chases him, and Rory chases Amy.
She finally catches up with Amy in time to watch the big blue police call box in the garden fade away with a noise that sounds like a sick cat taking the throat out of a dying duck. Rory can't see Amy's face, but she can see the disappointed slope to her shoulders.
Rory steps closer and takes her hand. Amy's not the type to cry, and she's not going to cry now, but it would almost be easier if she did.
---
Rory is twenty-one and she's about to either make the most brilliant fuck up of her life, or it's a risk that is going to pay off. Unfortunately there's only one way to tell.
She and Amy are on a blanket in the nature reserve, just north of town. She's not sure they're technically allowed to be there, there were some very stern signs on the trail they took up there, but even so, they've been coming here for years and never been caught. It's a place that only they know, and where they can forget their lives for an afternoon¸ and scare the fauna with their laughter.
But today there's something in Rory's pocket, and something she wants to ask Amy.
She was too nervous to ask before eating their late picnic lunch, could hardly eat as it was, and reasoned that a little fooling around would relax her. Unfortunately that didn't work either. She's not exactly nervous anymore, but she and Amy are laying in the shade, too content to move. Amy's hands rest around Rory's waist, and Rory is playing with her hair. Why would she want to go and interrupt that?
"Amy, I love you," she says quietly.
"I love you," she answers in the same languid tone.
That gave her a good feeling. "So… I want to ask you something."
Beat. "Okay."
Except she had to move. "It's -- I have to get into my pocket." She manages to sit up, and pull the ring from her jeans pocket and hold it in her sweaty hand. She finally musters up the courage to look at Amy in front of her on the blanket, propped up on her elbows and looking at her expectantly. Then… she can't. All of the words and wonderful turns of phrase she thought she'd use tonight leave her brain and seem to float in the air, just maddeningly out of reach. "You're beautiful," she starts.
Amy smiles, her slow gorgeous smile, so Rory decides to take heart and continue. "Just… you're beautiful and I love you… more than anything. I want you more than -- more than I want air. I just… want to marry you, so, will you? Marry me?"
There's a moment of silence, which she had expected, but the moment grows longer and she begins to panic. "Um." Amy is staring at her like she'd just proposed in Swahili. "Amy?"
"You know it's not going to be like… legal marriage, right?" she says, and Rory can feel herself deflate. "I mean, civil union or whatever."
"Yeah, but 'will you marry me' is a lot more romantic than 'will you civilly unionize with me'," she replies numbly. "We'll do the whole thing, a wedding. Cake, dancing, you can get a gorgeous dress -- "
Amy is making a face. The more alarmed version of the Not My Girlfriend face, and Rory realizes that she has probably made a grave error. "I…"
"Forget it. Forget I asked," she breaks in, her face red.
"Rory, stop!" Amy says.
For once Rory doesn't want to do what Amy says. "If you don't want to, fine. Just say so. If you don't…"
She'd been about to dig a hole, and they both knew it. Amy crosses her arms over her chest and says, challenging, "If I don't what?"
"Nothing."
"If I don't what?"
This day was already shit. Why not. "If you don't really love me then you should tell me no. Really, you should tell me to bugger off."
"What are you even talking about," Amy answers coldly.
It's clearly not a question, so Rory doesn't answer. She doesn’t talk about how she sometime worries that Amy will decide she actually is straight, or would rather have a girl like herself who doesn't poke herself in the eye with a mascara wand, or even how she suspects it would be easier for Amy if she were a man. She doesn't discuss why she'd be lost without Amy and how she feels like she's swallowed a pile of rocks. And of course the Raggedy Doctor hangs over them, Amy's ideal, her imaginary friend, the hole in her life that Rory has tried to fill.
Truth be told, it's been exhausting.
She looks back at her girlfriend, and runs her free hand over her hair. The other is still holding the ring. "Just… don’t say no," she nearly begs. No was a closed door.
Amy considers it, and she says, "Let me think about it."
Not the answer she wanted, but it was one she could take. "Okay," Rory says, and she takes a deep breath. She goes closer and holds the ring out to her. "Hold on to it, in the mean time. It's yours."
The look on Amy's face is imperceptible. After this many years, Rory would have thought she'd learn to find even the smallest of clues, but no. She picks up the ring, lets the sunlight play off the diamond, and says, "Would I have to get you one?"
Rory truthfully has not given a thought to it. She tries not to rest her hopes on that one question and what it may imply. "We'll cross that bridge when we get there, yeah?" she says, going for light but it's so forced that it sinks like a rock.
"… Yeah," Amy finally says, her hand closing around the ring. Neither of them seem to know what to say now, and the tension between them grows more awkward with each passing second. "So, ah. Home, d'you reckon?" Amy finally says, pushing herself to stand.
Rory isn't much of a crier either, but she feels like she might. "Yeah," she says, clearing her throat. "I'm just… going to go home, you know. Quiet night."
"Rory…"
And now she feels bad because Amy feels bad -- or trapped, as the case may be. She's not quite ready to take the way out that Rory put up a big old sign for, but not sure if she wants to take the plunge. Or at least that's as far as she'll allow herself to interpret it, because she could go mad if she lets herself go down that road. "It's fine," she says, and clears her throat again as she busies herself by picking up the blanket and shaking it out. "Fine. Just… you know where to find me."
"Yeah. I do," she says, and realizes her awkward slip of the tongue a split second after Rory does.
Rory just folds the blanket and doesn't give further response. When they part ways, she gives her a kiss on the mouth that says a little more than she would have liked and tells her good night. She'd much rather be bringing Amy home with her to celebrate, instead of slinking back in near defeat.
---
Rory is still twenty-one, and wakes up to an odd but somehow familiar noise. She's still on the couch, lights off and telly on, ice cream carton empty where she left it on the table, and there is the disappearing/reappearing police box noise again coming from the garden.
I've gone and done it. I've really snapped the tether, she thinks to herself, and rolls back over to go back to sleep, the one place where something has not gone wrong today. Just as she is falling back to sleep, there is a sharp poke at her shoulder that jerks her awake. "Oi, lazy. Get up."
One eye opens, then the other, because that is definitely Amy's morning greeting, but it's not morning. And Rory came home alone to nurse the feeling of humiliation after being sort of rejected at her marriage proposal. She turns over and squints. Amy's turned on the floor lamp and it hurts to be awake. "What," she manages sleepily.
Rather than give a verbal answer, Amy jumps on the couch with her and gives her a long, and very enthusiastic kiss. She regrets being still half asleep, because she thinks she might enjoy it very much otherwise. "Whoa," is the only word she can come up with to describe it.
"Basically," Amy says with a grin. "Now come on! We have places to go." She grabs Rory's hand and tries to pull her off the couch.
"Amy -- Amy," she replies, resisting. "It's half twelve, the only place open is the pub and the hospital."
"No, not those places, stupid. Other places. The Doctor wants to take both of us."
Rory feels like her teeth are wearing little sweaters, and the mention of the Doctor doesn't do much for the taste in her mouth. "The Doctor."
"Yeah. He came back. … You know, again."
What makes you think he's sticking around. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." Now that she's a little more awake, Rory appreciates the happy glow that Amy has around her, and how her smile reaches all the way to her eyes. "We've already been tons of places -- oh, Winston Churchill. He was kind of a right old bastard, but not as bad as I thought he would be. They never tell you that in history class. Oh! And the Starship UK. Except for Scotland, they got their own ship."
"Amy." Rory blinks blearily. "You're saying words and I don't know what they mean."
"Whatever, you'll find out. Come on, he's going to take us both." She pulls again, and this time manages to get Rory standing.
"I'm in my pyjamas, Amy," she says.
"Yeah, we can fix that. Lots of clothes in the wardrobe, there'll be something to fit you no matter what you fancy."
Rory hesitates again. "Amy -- "
"Do you still want to marry me?" she blurts out.
A stupider question has never been asked. "Of course I do, but what -- "
"Then come with me! Just stop asking questions and -- ugh, you are completely maddening sometimes, you know that?" she asks, and kisses Rory again, this time more quickly.
"Yeah. The feeling's mutual," she says dryly.
"If you come, you can consider it a wedding present to me if you like," Amy adds casually as anything.
She is about to retort I am not trading wedded bliss for a jaunt around Time and Space with your imaginary friend, thank you, when she realizes what Amy said. "Um." A pause. "I just figured we'd, you know, take a really nice honeymoon somewhere…"
"Early honeymoon, then! Come on. Please," she wheedles gently, and Rory knows she's done for because she's pretty sure that Amy just indirectly agreed to marry her.
"Can I at least put on some shoes?" she asks.
"Oh, fine, if you must. But not your hospital shoes, those are ugly," Amy continues as Rory goes for the pile of shoes near the door.
"My hospital shoes stay at the hospital, genius. And if you find a prettier pair of shoes that I can stand for twelve hours in, I'll give them a go."
Amy pulls a face as Rory pulls on her trainers and laces them up. They stand at the door for a minute, looking at the police box in her stepmother's flower bed. She was really not going to be pleased about that. "So. Your Raggedy Doctor." She gives Amy a side glance.
"My Doctor," she echoes, and takes Rory's hand. She can now feel the ring on Amy's slender finger; a perfect fit. "I'm sorry for earlier, at the park. I'm… you know."
"Completely insufferable and overdramatic? Yes." It takes Amy about a second to punch her in the shoulder and even less than that for Rory to pull her in again for a proper kiss. Her hands rest on Amy's shoulders and one of Amy's hands goes automatically to Rory's hip; she feels her through the cotton tank top.
Rory deepens the kiss, one hand threading through Amy's hair, and Doctor or no Doctor, crazy aliens or uphill emotional battles, she knows it doesn't matter. Because for once Amy may be just as much Rory's as she has always been hers.
Amy pulls back a bit more suddenly than Rory would have liked, but her grin is infectious. "So," she says in that flirtatious tone that only makes her more excited, "early honeymoon?"
"Early honeymoon," she says with confidence, and lets Amy take her towards that big, blue box that travels time and space and a mad, clever Doctor, hand in hand.
Characters/Pairings: Rory Williams (AU, female), Amy Pond, the Doctor (Eleven), various OCs; Rory/Amy.
Word Count: 6,824.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: Rory isn't like the other girls, and neither is Amy Pond. Is it a line to cross -- is it okay to be the queer girl's friend but too hard to be the girlfriend?
Author's Notes: This fic was spawned by a prompt on eleventy_kink. It was written and completed before "Let's Kill Hitler" aired, so there are only spoilers through "A Good Man Goes to War." One day I may fix it to fit LKH but… not today. Thanks to thinkatory for the beta job. Go read her stuff next. It's way better than mine.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything having to do with Doctor Who. If I did I would stop killing Rory.
At six, Rory plays dress up with the other girls even though she doesn't want to. She does this because her mum says it's important to take turns and that sometimes, we all do things we don't want to do. Besides, she doesn't mind too much, because other times she can talk them into being outside and playing football or being at the park, or it turns into a game of House. Rory doesn't mind House.
Trina tries on a miniature wedding dress that came out of the costume trunk in her playroom, and even though it's still a size or two too big, says, "When I get married, I want a dress just like this."
"Ooh!" Vicky squeals in approval. "Just like that?"
"Yep." Trina steps up beside Rory at the mirror and has a twirl in it. The gaudy sequins glitter in the lighting and the skirt still flies every which direction when she stops. "Maybe more glitter, though."
Rory pulls a face, but stops when she realizes Trina has caught her eye in the mirror and is giving her a Look in return. She concentrates heavily on tying the tie she'd picked up, although not in the nice, neat knot that her mum ties for her dad. Once she has fastidiously done and redone the square knot, she looks up thinking it will be safe, but she is wrong. "What?" Trina demands.
"Nothing," Rory answers quickly.
"Well what are you going to wear when you get married?" she challenges in return. "You can't wear trousers for that!"
Rory opens her mouth to retort, but doesn't have an answer right away. She clearly hasn't spent the time thinking about this that Trina has, but why? She couldn't think of anyone she would want to marry, let alone what she would want to wear while she did. "Who says?" she says, just a bit too slowly to be smart.
Trina looks at her as though she's grown another head. "Everyone," she replies as though that were self-evident.
Rory doesn't answer, simply goes back to the trunk and finds a fedora, jamming it on her head over her ponytail in defiance of the wedding dress edict.
Her mother picks her up when the play date is over and tries to chat with her about it, but Rory is sullen and speaks little. "What's wrong, sweetheart?" she finally asks her daughter.
"Trina says that I have to get married in a dress and that everyone gets married in dresses. I don't want to get married in a dress. It's not fair," she says stubbornly.
It's enough to give her mother clear pause, but to her credit, she recovers quickly. "When you get married, sweetheart, you can wear whatever you want," she says. "Most women do wear dresses, that's true, but nobody is going to make you wear something you don't want to."
"Do you promise?" Rory asks suspiciously.
"I promise," she says solemnly. She stops the car in the driveway and turns off the engine before she shifts to look at her. "If there is ever a time that you will get your way, it will be on your wedding day. It's really the bride's day, after all." She winks at Rory.
The next time Trina makes fun of her for always wearing trousers, she tells her that she's no longer her best friend and even though Trina tells her it was a joke, Rory sticks to her guns. Besides, there's a new girl in town, and her name is Amelia Pond.
---
Rory is ten and Amelia Pond is her best friend. And she has never been so happy in her short little life.
Rory thinks they fit together naturally because people find them both a little strange. Amelia is the girl who claims an imaginary friend the Raggedy Doctor visited her in the night and examined the crack in her wall, and Rory is just a little bit odder than can be brushed off. Rory doesn't know what Amelia thinks about that, but it doesn't bother Rory. Even if the Doctor isn't real, Amelia isn't hurting anyone, and Rory finds her imagination fascinating. She tells a better story than anyone Rory's ever known, even Roald Dahl and her mum (or her mum reading Roald Dahl) and is in general a way better friend than Trina and Vicky or any other girls in Leadworth were.
The first indication she has that Amelia thinks about what other people say at all is when they are dressing up for a game of Raggedy Doctor. "Do you think you're a boy?" she asks with point blank honesty.
Rory's head emerges from the collar of the oversized dress shirt she wears for the game. She blinks and thinks about it. "No," she says, and really doesn't. "I'm a girl. I just like some boy things."
Amelia nods, and Rory is so grateful because she gets it. Even though others tease her, don't understand, or get mean, she thinks that her friend really, truly understands and that makes her happier than she's ever been.
For the first time, Rory dreams of weddings. Chocolate cake, tiger lilies, and two brides.
---
Rory is fourteen and she's just had her first kiss.
Chelsea's parents let her have a boy/girl party for her birthday, and it was only a matter of time before things devolved into Spin the Bottle (which, Chelsea assured them all, was done exactly as it was in the movies, because she'd gone to her cousin's birthday party in Birmingham).
When Vicky spins and it lands on Rory at first, there is a beat of silence before Chelsea declares, "If a girl lands on a girl or a boy lands on a boy you can spin again." Vicky practically jumps on the empty bottle to spin it again.
Rory feels about two feet tall. She wonders if she was the only one who would have kissed boys or girls, and of course she is. Everyone else knows it, that's why it's as though the rest of the party had taken a large sigh of relief. As the game continues, she also thinks that taking out the same sex kissing probably takes out some of the scandal and excitement.
She begins to grow bored and wishes Amelia were there. Rory will still be going to her house after the party, but Amelia called to cancel on the party, saying she just didn't want to be around people. Right now, Rory doesn't blame her.
"Earth to Rory!" breaks through the wall created by her boredom, and she looks up at everyone staring back excitedly at her -- except for Michael Hill, who looks more like a rabbit caught in the headlights, although there is a little bit of curiosity mixed in.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" Chelsea demands. Rory wants to punch her in the throat.
Michael swallows, and begins to lean over the rest of the circle towards Rory. She meets him halfway, and his mouth bumps against hers. The orthodontia is a little uncomfortable, but not too bad, and there has at least been some courtesy gum chewing going on; he tastes like a trip to the dentist's office.
Rory pulls back and takes her turn -- she kisses Tommy McClimon when the bottle lands on him, just a peck, like she kisses her dad. She excuses herself and takes her jacket. She calls her mum to come and get her early ("No, nothing happened, I'm just kind of bored.") and take her to Amelia's.
Amelia opens the door when Rory knocks, and the look on her face tells her everything she needs to know about how she looks. "What happened to you? You look like your dog just got run over by a lorry."
"Michael Hill kissed me and then I had to kiss Tommy McClimon," she answers.
"Had to? What, he made you?" she asks, although she is derisive in her tone.
"Amelia," she whines.
Amelia bristles unexpectedly and stops for a moment. "Well, come in," she said. "Aunt Sharon left us an oven pizza we can make, and she'll be back in the morning -- oh, don't give me that look, what your parents won't know won't hurt them."
Actually, the proper phrase would be 'what they don't know won't get me grounded,' but Rory is less willing to split hairs with her friend. "Sounds great," she says, and leaves her backpack at the foot of the stairs. Amelia sets to heating up the oven and putting the pizza on a baking sheet. "Don't you want to know how the party was?"
"Let me guess," Amelia says. "Chelsea was fluttering about being Queen Bee, until Vicky and Trina tried to start the dancing so they had a reason to be all over Jesse, and then Chelsea got her knickers in a twist because no one was paying attention to her and it was her party, so she did something that would bring the attention back to her. How am I so far?"
"… Cynical but spot on," Rory has to admit. "She got us playing Spin the Bottle."
"Oh so that's why you were kissing Michael and Tommy," she replies, amused. "How was that?"
"Not great," she says honestly.
"Don't worry, they wouldn't be my first choices either. With the braces, I'd feel like I was snogging a cheese grater."
Rory laughs because -- well, it was true. "Amelia!" She can't help but chide her friend anyway.
Amelia stiffens again, and this time doesn't recover. Rory wonders what she's said or done to make her look like that, because she'll do anything to take it back. "Could you call me Amy," she says instead, quite suddenly.
"Uh. Okay." It's just a name, and as the saying goes what's in a name, but it's sudden and the look on Amelia -- Amy's face is just layer after layer of things she's not saying. Per usual. "But why?"
."I don't want to talk about it."
"Was it something at the psychiatrist's?"
"I said I don't want to talk about it."
Definitely something to do with the psychiatrists. "Okay," she says easily, because if Amel -- shit, Amy can accept that Rory likes to wear her hair short and doesn't want to get married in a dress and probably almost definitely likes girls more than boys (not instead of, but in addition to because there are some who set her heart fluttering), then Rory has no business questioning why she wants to be Amy rather than Amelia.
---
Rory is sixteen and Amy makes her heart flutter more than any other girl or boy out there.
She dated Tommy McClimon for about four months, but they've been broken up for about half that by now. He was fun, liked his football and was in general not a bad bloke. But the spark, the chemistry was just… absent.
She's even kissed another girl, a girl in the year below her who plays field hockey and looks every inch a girly girl. But since she made Rory promise not to tell (a promise she breaks -- she tells Amy, because she tells Amy everything), Rory isn't sure that it counts.
Rory wonders what it would be like to really kiss Amy.
Sometimes when it's just them, at the cinema, revising after school, or getting ice cream, she pretends that she and Amy are dating. One reason she's glad she's a girl: no matter what the girl looks like, it's way more socially acceptable to be affectionate in public. Hugs are not looked at oddly; you can get away with holding hands and kisses on the cheek.
One day, she thinks, she may kiss Amy for real.
---
Rory is seventeen and done with A-levels. She most likely even has the marks to be a doctor, like she wants, and she feels great.
Chelsea's having another party, because her parents are insanely permissive (and also not present, Rory notices), but also because they're all so glad to be done. There's alcohol at this party, which explains the slight tilt of the rest of the world as she collapses on the porch with Amy, who isn't having as much fun as everyone else if the look on her face is anything to go by. "Hi," she tries.
"Hi," Amy responds, carefully picking at the label on her bottle with a manicured, purple fingernail. "Having fun?"
It's one of Amy's tricks. When she doesn't want to be the focus of a conversation she starts asking questions. "I'm okay," Rory says honestly. She was good, but if Amy isn't then she can't be. "What about you?"
Amy shrugs, neatly avoiding it. "Glad it's over," she admits.
"How did you do?" Rory pesters.
"Rory."
She stops, and rests against Amy. "If you're not having fun we can just go."
"I mucked it up," she says.
"Sorry?"
"I mucked it up. Badly."
"You don't know that," Rory replies, trying to be comforting. "We won't know anything until we get scores back."
"Well how did you do?" Amy asks smartly.
"… Pretty well. I think." She sees Amy's point and downplays it at the same time. "Sorry."
"Whatever," she says, and puts her head down on Rory's shoulder. Rory's heart flutters a bit, and she leans on her as well.
"I'm sure you did fine," Rory continues after a moment. "Anyway, loads of A-levels isn't everything, right? You're way cleverer than anyone else here, and no one needs any test scores to know that's true -- what?"
Amy is laughing into Rory's shoulder. "If you want to go have fun with the rest of them, you should," she says.
Rory doesn't know how to react for a very long moment, and stays close to Amy. Under normal circumstances she would say nothing and merely remain where she is. Rory has never been one for grand gestures and soporific speech; she has always said exactly what she meant and meant what she said, or said nothing at all. But the alcohol has made her brave (or stupid), the June night is balmy, and Amy is so close she can smell the lavender and vanilla on Amy's skin. "I don't want to be anywhere else," she says.
At first she curses her stupid mouth because Amy sits up, pulling back to look at Rory as though to say, Really, genius? Rory can see the subsequent thoughts streaming through Amy's brain: You should celebrate, really; I'm feeling sorry for myself but of course I don't want you to know that; I don't need your stupid pity, now piss off -- it's how Amy Pond works. Rory knows where it comes from and she wants to make it stop. "I want to kiss you," she blurts out.
Wait. That's not what she'd meant to say.
To Amy's credit, she looks less surprised than Rory expected. Then it occurs to her that she probably hasn't been subtle about slowly falling in love with Amy. She fully expects to be sent back to the party and almost goes to save face, but Amy leans forward and presses her lips to Rory's.
There had been a moment of worry, just before their lips touched, when Rory thought to herself, What if the fantasy is better than the reality?, but this kiss is like Christmas, if Christmas happened when the World Cup was going, and you got birthday cake.
Amy decides when to break the kiss, as usual she's in charge of the situation. Rory thinks she looks a little bewildered at herself for a moment, but smiles back at Rory's own brilliant grin -- she can feel it, her face it hurting. She wants to do it again. "I… have wanted to kiss you," she says, licking her lips.
"I know that, silly."
Again, Rory reflects she probably hasn't been subtle but she blushes all the same. "Should I have said something?"
She contemplates it for a moment. "I think you said something at exactly the right time," she replies, and so Rory ducks her head in for another kiss.
---
Rory is nineteen, and almost finished with nurse's training. There's one more year to go and then she'll be fully licensed. She's back in Leadworth, working at the hospital so she can be near Amy, who she loves more than ever and who loves her. She's pretty sure.
Here have been many kisses and then some more -- okay, a lot more -- since the night of the party, but since Amy is Amy, they are 'girl friends' rather than the more definitive 'girlfriends.' Rory introduces her as her girlfriend to everyone and Amy rejoins, "Sort of."
Leadworth is small, and even though Rory endured everything from ribald jokes to outright bullying in secondary for her appearance and disinterest in boys, Amy hasn't been under the same microscope. She's had her own issues, with the adults in town treating her like she's mentally ill and everyone else their age thinking she's weird, but it's not quite the same thing. She now falls outside the neat little box of "boy likes girl, girl likes boy," and is therefore subject to scrutiny and even ridicule. Rory doesn't care what people say about her, but she decks the first person to call Amy a dyke.
She hurts her hand in this endeavor, but is comforted by the fact that he had to have his jaw wired shut since he hit the corner of the pool table on the way down.
Though some people care about it more than others, the looks and the whispers had never mattered to Amy. But is it a line to cross -- is it okay to be the queer girl's friend but too hard to be the girlfriend? She gets it, to a point; people who think of themselves as straight can be quite thrown when they suddenly find themselves dating a girl. So Rory gives Amy as much room to move as she can stand to without going mad with worry that Amy is drifting away.
After awhile, Rory realizes that this is just what dating Amy is like. She is passionate and exciting in the moment, but if you try to talk about anything beyond the coming weekend she clams up. She'd been the same with the boys she'd gone out with in secondary. Rory supposes she'd been too busy wishing they would go away to notice.
Ultimately, it's worth it to call Amy her girlfriend and beg forgiveness later. Eventually Amy doesn't bring it up at all which is as good as permission in Rory's book.
Since nothing can ever go smoothly for long, once Amy accepts 'girlfriend' as a form of address, things start going weird at work. Patients in the coma ward start appearing outside of the hospital. Rory sees Mrs. Lindley walking down the street with an ice cream, and does a triple take before chalking it up to exhaustion and moving along with her day. In the next few weeks, she sees Mr. Collins, with the large dog that is in the picture that hangs over the bed in the ward, as well as Gerry, the teenaged boy who'd been in a motorbike accident. When she spots Mrs. Lindley again with the same ice cream, she snaps a picture on her Blackberry.
Every time she sees another one, she snaps a photo. It's there in her phone, and in her mind even at night when she's in bed with Amy; she sleeps soundly, while Rory lays awake, wondering if she's going insane.
This of course, is nothing compared to the day when the patients on the ward, first one, then the next, then another, all together begin uttering one word together: "Doctor."
The hair stands up on Rory's arms and there is something at the very center of her chest that goes cold because this is not normal. Their murmuring stops after a moment, leaving Rory with only the sound of the monitors and her own heart in her ears.
She pages Doctor Ramsden immediately, and to say she is Not Pleased to be there would be an understatement. If Rory had to guess, she would say the doctor was somewhere between 'Really Annoyed' and 'Pissed Off'. At least the patients don't make a monkey out of her and do it again, the faint pleas of "Doctor… Doctor… Doctor…" cropping up around them like really creepy popcorn. It's no less unnerving than the first time it happened, but Dr. Ramsden isn't quite so impressed.
She checks Mr. Collins, who seems normal enough. "Don't think they were even conscious," she says in a tone that makes Rory feel about five inches high.
"Doctor Ramsden -- " She is going to make her point, she is, because this is not her losing her mind, this is something completely wrong going on. "There is another sort of, um, funny thing -- "
"Yes, I know," she replies crisply. "Doctor Carver told me about your conversation."
Rory knows it is going to be downhill from there. Not even a minute later, she's thrown off the ward, banished for some 'time off.' Rory kicks herself for even saying anything, it was just the sort of thing Doctor Ramsden didn't like -- it was illogical, even fanciful, and that was why, Rory privately thought, that the supervisor likes the coma ward. Sometimes patients have changes in their status, but day in and day out it was mostly one thing and then more of the same. It was predictable. Rory likes predictability too, to a point, but some things cannot be ignored.
Still cursing Doctor Ramsden by any colorful means she could think of, Rory throws her car into park near the village green and gets out and begins to walk. She looks at the phone in her hand, and thinks, whose idea was it to ever put a camera in a phone anyway? It's certainly caused her enough trouble to last awhile.
Though she feels guilty thinking it, she realizes that this must be what Amy feels like whenever the Raggedy Doctor is brought up. Like maybe she did make it up after all, and convinced herself it was real.
There is an eerie quiet on the green, and at first all Rory sees is the confusion on everyone's faces, and how they are looking at the sky. The sun's gone wonky, like it's about to explode -- which she hopes won't be the case, because her day already sucks -- and they are all filming it. If her day weren't already filled with the weird and unexplained she'd be ready to poke fun at performance artists or, what are they called -- flash mobs, but this is too much.
She turns and there, a good twenty-five meters away, is Mr. Collins and his dog. Automatically, she turns on the camera application on the Blackberry and snaps the photo. One more photo saved to the gallery of pictures that she's never going to show anyone, because she is losing it.
Just as she's about to call Amy -- she worked a party last night, she may not even be awake yet -- her phone is snatched from her hand by a tall, lanky man whose trousers have seen better days. "The sun's going out, and you're photographing a man and a dog. Why?"
She's bewildered by the speed at which he seems to be going. He's standing right there but he stares at her with such wild intensity that he seems to vibrate. It's hard not to be a little intimidated, and her brain cleaves to the next thing it sees in order to cope: Amy, in her police costume. "Amy!"
"Hi!" she cheers, before glancing at the man who just seized Rory's phone. "Oh, uh, this is Rory, she's a -- friend."
"Girlfriend," Rory tacks on.
"Kind of… girlfriend."
This again? "Amy."
"Man and dog! Why!" he interrupts impatiently.
For the first time, Rory looks at him closely. The floppy dark hair, the tie, the blue shirt, pinstriped trousers, and Converse shoes -- he could have jumped off the cartoons that still hung on Amy's wall. "Oh. My god. It's him."
"Just answer his question, please," Amy says, a bit embarrassed.
"It's him, though!" She feels like a skipping CD. "The Doctor, the Raggedy Doctor!"
"Yeah. He -- he came back."
"But he was a story, he was a game -- "
Rory is interrupted as the Doctor grabs her by the front of her hoodie so as to get her full attention. "Man and a dog! Why! Tell me! Now!"
"Sorry." She's too shocked to do anything but answer. "Because… he can't be there, because he's -- "
"In a hospital." The Doctor breaks in, joining Rory. "In a coma." Maybe this was all one massive joke, although it was hardly a proportional response to putting blue food coloring in the milk.
"… Yeah," she finishes.
The Doctor grins. "Knew it. Multiform, you see." She doesn't. "Disguise itself as anything, but it needs a life feed, a psychic link with a living, but dormant mind."
Rory wonders if this is like that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when Buffy was having blackouts and it looked like she was actually in a mental institution and the world where she was a Slayer was her delusion, except you weren't really sure which was real because Joss Whedon can be a dick. Maybe her whole life had been a delusion and now that things were getting really weird she was going to wake up in a rubber room somewhere with her dad, stepmother, and a cadre of doctors and orderlies standing by. So why the hell not follow the Raggedy Doctor and Amy and help save the earth. Why not.
Rory and Amy pile into her car while the Doctor goes to harass Jeff for his laptop, and head back to the hospital. She breaks the speed limit but figures if cops are paying that much attention now they were meant to die in a planet-wide incineration anyway. Why, she asks herself as she tears down the road. Why has she let herself be caught up in the insanity?
She has little time to reflect further as they spring into action. Rory tries to deal with the administration, who have gone into full tilt "Holy Shit, This Is Not A Drill" mode and are no help. She and Amy are on their own as they take the lift up, and get chased by Prisoner Zero -- this time as Mrs. Elsea with two little girls holding on to her hands. Rory doesn't really panic until she sees the teeth -- if you can call those teeth. The Doctor makes a spectacular entrance, at exactly the right moment (although for Rory's money, he could have been about thirty seconds earlier).
Watching him is like watching a child who has consumed too much sugar, even as he's revealing his plan and how they outwitted the escaped prisoner. He's animated, Rory can always see the wheels working in his brain; he seems to see just a little bit further than the rest of them, but it's' almost as though it isn't far enough for him. He's brilliant, completely mad, and everything is somehow more colorful and in sharper focus with him there. She can see why Amy has kept the Doctor close, even after being told time and again that he is not real. He is unreal, in the very best way possible.
The Atraxi recapture Prisoner Zero, and fly off to parts unknown, leaving planet Earth unscathed. But this didn't satisfy the Doctor, oh no. The Doctor calls them back (on her phone) for a scolding they won't soon forget ("Leaving is good, never coming back is better!"), and then runs. Amy runs after, and Rory after her. It's a pathetically literal summation of her life: Amy chases him, and Rory chases Amy.
She finally catches up with Amy in time to watch the big blue police call box in the garden fade away with a noise that sounds like a sick cat taking the throat out of a dying duck. Rory can't see Amy's face, but she can see the disappointed slope to her shoulders.
Rory steps closer and takes her hand. Amy's not the type to cry, and she's not going to cry now, but it would almost be easier if she did.
---
Rory is twenty-one and she's about to either make the most brilliant fuck up of her life, or it's a risk that is going to pay off. Unfortunately there's only one way to tell.
She and Amy are on a blanket in the nature reserve, just north of town. She's not sure they're technically allowed to be there, there were some very stern signs on the trail they took up there, but even so, they've been coming here for years and never been caught. It's a place that only they know, and where they can forget their lives for an afternoon¸ and scare the fauna with their laughter.
But today there's something in Rory's pocket, and something she wants to ask Amy.
She was too nervous to ask before eating their late picnic lunch, could hardly eat as it was, and reasoned that a little fooling around would relax her. Unfortunately that didn't work either. She's not exactly nervous anymore, but she and Amy are laying in the shade, too content to move. Amy's hands rest around Rory's waist, and Rory is playing with her hair. Why would she want to go and interrupt that?
"Amy, I love you," she says quietly.
"I love you," she answers in the same languid tone.
That gave her a good feeling. "So… I want to ask you something."
Beat. "Okay."
Except she had to move. "It's -- I have to get into my pocket." She manages to sit up, and pull the ring from her jeans pocket and hold it in her sweaty hand. She finally musters up the courage to look at Amy in front of her on the blanket, propped up on her elbows and looking at her expectantly. Then… she can't. All of the words and wonderful turns of phrase she thought she'd use tonight leave her brain and seem to float in the air, just maddeningly out of reach. "You're beautiful," she starts.
Amy smiles, her slow gorgeous smile, so Rory decides to take heart and continue. "Just… you're beautiful and I love you… more than anything. I want you more than -- more than I want air. I just… want to marry you, so, will you? Marry me?"
There's a moment of silence, which she had expected, but the moment grows longer and she begins to panic. "Um." Amy is staring at her like she'd just proposed in Swahili. "Amy?"
"You know it's not going to be like… legal marriage, right?" she says, and Rory can feel herself deflate. "I mean, civil union or whatever."
"Yeah, but 'will you marry me' is a lot more romantic than 'will you civilly unionize with me'," she replies numbly. "We'll do the whole thing, a wedding. Cake, dancing, you can get a gorgeous dress -- "
Amy is making a face. The more alarmed version of the Not My Girlfriend face, and Rory realizes that she has probably made a grave error. "I…"
"Forget it. Forget I asked," she breaks in, her face red.
"Rory, stop!" Amy says.
For once Rory doesn't want to do what Amy says. "If you don't want to, fine. Just say so. If you don't…"
She'd been about to dig a hole, and they both knew it. Amy crosses her arms over her chest and says, challenging, "If I don't what?"
"Nothing."
"If I don't what?"
This day was already shit. Why not. "If you don't really love me then you should tell me no. Really, you should tell me to bugger off."
"What are you even talking about," Amy answers coldly.
It's clearly not a question, so Rory doesn't answer. She doesn’t talk about how she sometime worries that Amy will decide she actually is straight, or would rather have a girl like herself who doesn't poke herself in the eye with a mascara wand, or even how she suspects it would be easier for Amy if she were a man. She doesn't discuss why she'd be lost without Amy and how she feels like she's swallowed a pile of rocks. And of course the Raggedy Doctor hangs over them, Amy's ideal, her imaginary friend, the hole in her life that Rory has tried to fill.
Truth be told, it's been exhausting.
She looks back at her girlfriend, and runs her free hand over her hair. The other is still holding the ring. "Just… don’t say no," she nearly begs. No was a closed door.
Amy considers it, and she says, "Let me think about it."
Not the answer she wanted, but it was one she could take. "Okay," Rory says, and she takes a deep breath. She goes closer and holds the ring out to her. "Hold on to it, in the mean time. It's yours."
The look on Amy's face is imperceptible. After this many years, Rory would have thought she'd learn to find even the smallest of clues, but no. She picks up the ring, lets the sunlight play off the diamond, and says, "Would I have to get you one?"
Rory truthfully has not given a thought to it. She tries not to rest her hopes on that one question and what it may imply. "We'll cross that bridge when we get there, yeah?" she says, going for light but it's so forced that it sinks like a rock.
"… Yeah," Amy finally says, her hand closing around the ring. Neither of them seem to know what to say now, and the tension between them grows more awkward with each passing second. "So, ah. Home, d'you reckon?" Amy finally says, pushing herself to stand.
Rory isn't much of a crier either, but she feels like she might. "Yeah," she says, clearing her throat. "I'm just… going to go home, you know. Quiet night."
"Rory…"
And now she feels bad because Amy feels bad -- or trapped, as the case may be. She's not quite ready to take the way out that Rory put up a big old sign for, but not sure if she wants to take the plunge. Or at least that's as far as she'll allow herself to interpret it, because she could go mad if she lets herself go down that road. "It's fine," she says, and clears her throat again as she busies herself by picking up the blanket and shaking it out. "Fine. Just… you know where to find me."
"Yeah. I do," she says, and realizes her awkward slip of the tongue a split second after Rory does.
Rory just folds the blanket and doesn't give further response. When they part ways, she gives her a kiss on the mouth that says a little more than she would have liked and tells her good night. She'd much rather be bringing Amy home with her to celebrate, instead of slinking back in near defeat.
---
Rory is still twenty-one, and wakes up to an odd but somehow familiar noise. She's still on the couch, lights off and telly on, ice cream carton empty where she left it on the table, and there is the disappearing/reappearing police box noise again coming from the garden.
I've gone and done it. I've really snapped the tether, she thinks to herself, and rolls back over to go back to sleep, the one place where something has not gone wrong today. Just as she is falling back to sleep, there is a sharp poke at her shoulder that jerks her awake. "Oi, lazy. Get up."
One eye opens, then the other, because that is definitely Amy's morning greeting, but it's not morning. And Rory came home alone to nurse the feeling of humiliation after being sort of rejected at her marriage proposal. She turns over and squints. Amy's turned on the floor lamp and it hurts to be awake. "What," she manages sleepily.
Rather than give a verbal answer, Amy jumps on the couch with her and gives her a long, and very enthusiastic kiss. She regrets being still half asleep, because she thinks she might enjoy it very much otherwise. "Whoa," is the only word she can come up with to describe it.
"Basically," Amy says with a grin. "Now come on! We have places to go." She grabs Rory's hand and tries to pull her off the couch.
"Amy -- Amy," she replies, resisting. "It's half twelve, the only place open is the pub and the hospital."
"No, not those places, stupid. Other places. The Doctor wants to take both of us."
Rory feels like her teeth are wearing little sweaters, and the mention of the Doctor doesn't do much for the taste in her mouth. "The Doctor."
"Yeah. He came back. … You know, again."
What makes you think he's sticking around. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." Now that she's a little more awake, Rory appreciates the happy glow that Amy has around her, and how her smile reaches all the way to her eyes. "We've already been tons of places -- oh, Winston Churchill. He was kind of a right old bastard, but not as bad as I thought he would be. They never tell you that in history class. Oh! And the Starship UK. Except for Scotland, they got their own ship."
"Amy." Rory blinks blearily. "You're saying words and I don't know what they mean."
"Whatever, you'll find out. Come on, he's going to take us both." She pulls again, and this time manages to get Rory standing.
"I'm in my pyjamas, Amy," she says.
"Yeah, we can fix that. Lots of clothes in the wardrobe, there'll be something to fit you no matter what you fancy."
Rory hesitates again. "Amy -- "
"Do you still want to marry me?" she blurts out.
A stupider question has never been asked. "Of course I do, but what -- "
"Then come with me! Just stop asking questions and -- ugh, you are completely maddening sometimes, you know that?" she asks, and kisses Rory again, this time more quickly.
"Yeah. The feeling's mutual," she says dryly.
"If you come, you can consider it a wedding present to me if you like," Amy adds casually as anything.
She is about to retort I am not trading wedded bliss for a jaunt around Time and Space with your imaginary friend, thank you, when she realizes what Amy said. "Um." A pause. "I just figured we'd, you know, take a really nice honeymoon somewhere…"
"Early honeymoon, then! Come on. Please," she wheedles gently, and Rory knows she's done for because she's pretty sure that Amy just indirectly agreed to marry her.
"Can I at least put on some shoes?" she asks.
"Oh, fine, if you must. But not your hospital shoes, those are ugly," Amy continues as Rory goes for the pile of shoes near the door.
"My hospital shoes stay at the hospital, genius. And if you find a prettier pair of shoes that I can stand for twelve hours in, I'll give them a go."
Amy pulls a face as Rory pulls on her trainers and laces them up. They stand at the door for a minute, looking at the police box in her stepmother's flower bed. She was really not going to be pleased about that. "So. Your Raggedy Doctor." She gives Amy a side glance.
"My Doctor," she echoes, and takes Rory's hand. She can now feel the ring on Amy's slender finger; a perfect fit. "I'm sorry for earlier, at the park. I'm… you know."
"Completely insufferable and overdramatic? Yes." It takes Amy about a second to punch her in the shoulder and even less than that for Rory to pull her in again for a proper kiss. Her hands rest on Amy's shoulders and one of Amy's hands goes automatically to Rory's hip; she feels her through the cotton tank top.
Rory deepens the kiss, one hand threading through Amy's hair, and Doctor or no Doctor, crazy aliens or uphill emotional battles, she knows it doesn't matter. Because for once Amy may be just as much Rory's as she has always been hers.
Amy pulls back a bit more suddenly than Rory would have liked, but her grin is infectious. "So," she says in that flirtatious tone that only makes her more excited, "early honeymoon?"
"Early honeymoon," she says with confidence, and lets Amy take her towards that big, blue box that travels time and space and a mad, clever Doctor, hand in hand.