(FIC; No Matter How Far, R)
Title: No Matter How Far
Author: agirlnamedtruth
Team: Amy (a.k.a The Legs)
Rating: R (for dark themes, suggestion and swearing)
Prompt: I’m not alone, I have my imaginary friends.
Summary: When Amy is kidnapped, some of The Doctor’s darkest moments and her worst fears are used against her.
Author’s Notes (optional): Beta’d by the amazing lolofielding who was vital to making this happen. Set between The Doctor’s Wife and The Rebel Flesh. Contains references to Classic Who, Big Finish Audios and Sarah Jane Adventures.
It came suddenly, the Cloister bell sounded and The Doctor’s face fell. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t good. The Tardis shook and the lights went out but there was an eerie white glow seemingly coming from nowhere. Amy fell to the floor, her legs betraying her. She looked over at Rory and The Doctor, they weren’t moving. They weren’t dead or unconscious; they’d just stopped, as had the world around her.
“Hello?” She called into the darkness, not sure if she wanted a reply or not.
She stood as confidently as she could, found the Tardis console in the dark and pulled levers at random, forgetting that touching the wrong one could quite possibly destroy time or take away the gravity field. She was lucky; she found the one for the lights before she caused a catastrophe. For a second she was blinded by the sudden change in brightness. When she could see again, she jumped. Standing not ten feet from her was a little girl. Not any little girl either.
“What’s going on?” She asked wearily, she was used to being pitched into strange situations by now and this was not the first time she’d come face to face with herself.
“This is your mind, you tell me.” The younger version of herself replied, a little too steadily.
“What happened to The Doctor and Rory?” She leant out to touch Rory and couldn’t bring her hand to do it.
“They’re fine. It’s yourself you need to worry about.” Amelia held out her hand and Amy’s head snapped up, glaring at her.
“You don’t sound like me and I should know. Who are you?” She held back the urge to scream at the sudden unexplainable terror she felt. “What are you? Why do you look like me?”
“That’s of no importance. Not for the time being.” She advanced on Amy.
“What are you doing? Don’t touch me!” Amy backed away from the little girl and her outstretched hand, knowing instinctively that she didn’t want that hand to touch her. It grabbed her wrist and burned where their skin touched. “Get off me! What are you? Doctor!”
They both vanished and time seemed to start back up again.
“Doctor, what was that!” Rory asked, patting himself down to make sure he was all still there.
“Temporal intrusion. Time was running but it had stopped. Rory, we’ve missed something. Something bad, something important and bad.” The Doctor looked him up and down, eyes darting back and forward.
“But we’re all right though, I’m fine, you’re fine, Amy’s fine and the Tardis doesn’t seem to be making a racket like it normally does.”
“How do you know Amy’s fine, have you asked her?” The Doctor’s eyes had widened, he’d been scanning the Tardis while Rory was babbling.
“No but...” It finally hit Rory and he looked round him like a lost child. “She was right here, just a second ago”
“Like I said, we missed something.”
-x-
“Where am I?” Amy called out, submerged once more in darkness but this time she had no idea how to turn the lights on.
“Where do you want to be?” Her own voice called back at her, all grown up now.
“Home. I want to go home.”
“Very well.”
The lights came back on and she was in her old bedroom. It seemed like an age since she’d slept in that bed, walked these floors.
“Not here, the Tardis, that’s my home now.”
“Is it?” The voice seemed to be coming from the walls, at least there wasn’t another life size version of herself staring back at her and she was thankful for that.
“Of course it is, you just took me away from there, whoever the hell you are.” Amy sat down on the bed, her bed.
“But you don’t belong there, not really.”
“Yeah, I do, actually. I live there, I eat there, I sleep there.”
The voice had changed, it now was the voice of The Tardis, at least the voice she’d borrowed recently. “But it’s not your home, it’s his, him and me, all the universe, after you have long gone”
“Oh, this better not be your idea of a game, Missy! I can just put up with you creating a God awful noise in the small hours of the morning and swinging from side to side like a drunken ship but I will not have you messing with my head. The Doctor might like having a telepathic connection with you but you’re not doing it with me, I’m human.”
“Please, I’m not a ship. I am much more than that.” The voice was her own again and her bedroom melted away, leaving her to fall to the floor in a cold metal room.
-x-
“How could we have missed Amy? It’s Amy” Rory was pacing the bridge from the door to the console and back again.
“More importantly, who’d want Amy and for what? She’s just a girl from Scotland, likes to dress up as a living, why would somebody go to the trouble of stealing her?” The Doctor was not pacing, in fact he was unusually still.
“How did they even get her? Surely she would have put up a fight and we would have noticed”
“Think of it like a bubble only not round; in fact don’t think of a bubble, think of a camera. You know when you take a photo and it shows you a photo and you look at the photo and then it goes back to being a camera but you’ve missed a few seconds between the photo and what’s happening?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s like that.”
“Right. So we were looking the other way while she was taken?” Rory asked, confused.
“Yes. Well, no. It’s like we were on pause and the world went on without us.”
“Why didn’t you just say that then?”
“I was trying to make it simple for you.”
Rory sighed in exasperation. “So how are we going to get her back, Doctor?”
“I don’t know. Mostly because we don’t know where she went and to find someone we have to know where to look.”
“Can’t you press buttons and buzz your screwdriver and magically know where she is?”
“Do you mean; can I press the tracking beacon, follow the signal and materialise the Tardis around her?”
“Yeah” Rory’s face lit up.
“No.”
“Oh.” Rory’s face fell back down again.
-x-
It was hours before the voice came back, hours she spent kicking at the door until she sprained her ankle and screaming for help until her throat ached.
“Nobody’s coming to get you.” Her voice sang at her.
“He will. He’ll come for me” Amy tried her best not to rock back and forth, she was defenceless enough as it was.
“Who, your Doctor? You think he really cares about you? You’re no more than a speck on the wind-shield of his long life. He’s had hundreds like you and what do you think they ended up with?”
“Shut up! I know I’m not the first, I’m not stupid but that does not mean he will just leave me here, he can’t.”
The lights flickered and a girl appeared, fifteen, maybe a bit older with short brown hair and a jumper not unlike one she’d found in the Tardis wardrobe once.
“He left me. He left me to die, along with everyone else, in never ending fire and torment. I was his family and he ran away and left me in hell.”
“He told me he loved me.” Another girl popped up, this time blonde and slightly older; she had an Edwardian look about her. “Then he ignored me, treated me like he didn’t want me there at all. He even said he didn’t.”
“He said worse to me.” This one was brunette, modern but still young. “He said terrible things to me; all in the name of saving the day”
“He left me to babysit one of his rejects because he didn’t want us to inconvenience him. He didn’t even bother to tell me he loved me.” Blonde, well fake blonde and even more modern, only a bit older.
“Shut up! Shut up!” Amy covered her ears; she didn’t want to hear this.
“He left me to spend a lifetime being the wife of a lizard, didn’t even try to save me.”
“He promised me he’d come back for me.”
“At least you remember him. I rushed in and saved the day, risking my own life, thank you very much. Now all I get is a splitting headache and a ta, luv, off you pop back to boredom”
“This is the toughest one though. What happens when it gets so bad you want to leave, just to escape the bloodshed. It’ll ruin you.”
“He didn’t even stop when our best friend died.” The Edwardian girl chipped back in.
“Stop it!” Amy screamed and closed her eyes.
“Did you ever see death or pain before you met him?”
“Did people drop like flies?”
“Were they expendable?”
“Were you?”
Amy began to lose track whose voice was whose, they seemed to blend together in one consciousness.
“He’ll leave you behind.”
“Hasn’t he already done that?”
“Not just now either”
“Poor little girl, cried all night when you realised he’d lied.”
“He does that, he lies and he leaves you.”
“Then he did it again, another two years of waiting, pretending you were happy to live a normal life.”
“What do you think your life will be like when he leaves you once and for all?”
“And never comes back.”
“You’ll be alone.”
“Like you are now.”
“Alone. Alone. Little Amelia Pond. All night. All alone. Making up imaginary friends to make your loneliness bearable.”
“I’m not alone and he is not imaginary! The Doctor will come and get me and he’ll kick your arse from here till next week.” Amy growled, opening her eyes to see that all the girls had disappeared, leaving just one, seven year old child. Amelia.
“I don’t see him, do you?” She laughed and it bounced off the wall, ages after she had disappeared, slowly driving Amy insane.
“He is real. He is real. It’s not in my head. I’m not mad.”
-x-
“What are you doing?” Rory asked for what had to be the twentieth time is as many minutes.
“Thinking.” The Doctor replied.
“Still?”
“Yes, it’s an ongoing process.”
“How’s it going?”
“Considering you keep interrupting me every ten seconds, surprisingly well, thank you!”
“Sorry.”
“Can you hear laughing?”
“No?”
“I can hear laughing, only the barest trace, like someone’s been walking around my mind, laughing, while I’m asleep.”
“Right?”
“It sounds like...no, that’s mad, no...yes!” The Doctor stood up suddenly. “May I borrow your head for a second?”
“I guess.” Rory stood up from where he had been sat since Amy disappeared.
“User interface 713.” The Doctor said and the Tardis screen changed to what looked like CCTV. “Console room, past twenty four hours, linear time.”
“What’s this?” Rory asked, wondering what was going to happen to his head.
“Shush, shush, you’ll confuse her. Aside from authorised persons: Doctor comma The, Pond comma Amelia and Pond comma Rory, have there been any persons authorized in the Tardis?”
The screen flashed the word Negative in capital letters.
“Why am I Rory Pond? That’s not...”
“Shush! Have there been any unauthorized persons present in the Tardis?”
Negative.
“Just as I thought. How many authorized persons present in the Tardis in the last twenty-four hours?”
Four.
“Bingo!”
“What do you mean, how can there be four? There’s just me, you and Amy. Now there’s just you and me.”
“What if it was you, me or Amy?”
“What do you mean, why would you or I kidnap Amy and where would we have put her? And I highly doubt she kidnapped herself.”
“Don’t presume, it’s not good for your health. Think of someone authorized that hasn’t been here today. Think of River, quickly.”
Rory nodded and The Doctor swiped the Sonic Screwdriver in front of his face and then pointed it at the screen. An image of River Song came up.
“Presence of Song comma River in the last twenty-four hours?”
Negative.
“Phew, I wouldn’t have put it past her to be lurking in a corner somewhere.”
“What does that prove; that River didn’t do it?”
“No, it proves the Tardis recognizes your ability to imagine people and override her default settings. That’s good, it means she likes you.”
“Um, thanks?”
“Now think of Amy.” The Doctor placed his hands on Rory’s head. “Don’t mind me, just looking for the right one...NOT THAT! Don’t think about that! Blimey. Yes, that’s better. Yes, that’ll do.”
He repeated the action with the screwdriver but didn’t point it at the console.
“New file, Unauthorized Person. Pond comma CopyCat.”
He pointed the screwdriver at the screen and an image of Amelia Pond flashed on the screen, for all intent and purpose looking like the seven year old The Doctor had accidentally left behind.
“Save.”
“Why is Amy unauthorized?”
“She’s not. It’s just temporary. I had a thought, well more than a thought, an idea.” He turned back to the Tardis. “Presence of Pond comma CopyCat in the last twenty-four hours.”
Positive.
Alarm bells started ringing around the console room.
“Yes, thank you! Bit late now dear, isn’t it?”
-x-
“What are you doing now?” Rory asked, a few hours later when the Doctor emerged from the inner corridors of the Tardis.
“Preparing us. This isn’t going to be easy, there’s going to be something that looks nice but it isn’t. It’ll look like whatever you want to see, in an attempt to endear itself to you. It might even look like me”
“I doubt that. So how would we know that the nice looking thing isn’t just you know, a nice thing. Like what if we kill a kitten and it turns out to be an actual kitten?”
“That’s horrible! Why would you kill a kitten! You monster.” The Doctor gave him a look of horror.
“I’m not planning to! Just how can we tell what’s real?”
“With this, it’ll strip away any form of disguise.” He held up a spray bottle that looked empty.
“That’s what you’ve been doing for all this time, making that?” Rory looked exasperated.
“Making, no, looking for, yes. I got it as a birthday present when I was...oh, about four hundred and fifty. I had to find it; it was under an unbelievable amount of socks.”
“Great, can we go now?” Rory asked impatiently.
“For someone facing almost certain death, torture at the very least, you’re very enthusiastic.”
“They have my wife...what do you mean, certain death?”
“We’re here.”
-x-
“Amy!”
“God, not again. Go away!” She covered her ears and waited for the inevitable battering ram of voices to attack her again.
“Doctor, I think I’ve found her.”
“A little busy!”
“Go away, go away, go away.”
There was a loud crash and the door caved in, making her scream.
“Amy?” Rory took a step towards where she was crouched in a corner.
“Not him. Leave him out of this.” Amy muttered, turning her head to face the wall.
“Amy, we’ve come to rescue you, me and The Doctor.”
“Hello.” The Doctor poked his head round the door before he was dragged away from it by a familiar hand. Amy screamed again, this time from terror, her eyes wide and her body trying to push itself further into the wall.
“Keep him away from me!”
“Who, The Doctor? But we like The Doctor, remember. Raggedy man, mad man with a box, our friend.”
“No. No, you think that. Dangerous. Blood and death and pain and fury. He destroys people. He’ll destroy us. He’ll promise the world and take it away from you, leaving you with less than you started with. If you’re lucky.”
“Amy, what happened?”
“They showed me, all the others, all the girls he’s ruined, all the lives he’s taken away.”
“I think we need to get you into The Tardis.” She shook her head several times “Doctor?”
“Rory, at the moment, I’m fighting off at least twenty versions of myself with nothing but a curtain pole and a bottle of window cleaner because you picked up the wrong bottle! What is it?”
“Where did he get a curtain pole from?” Rory muttered half to himself. “I don’t think she wants to come.”
“Of course she wants to come. Come on, Pond, shake a leg.”
“No!” Amy shouted.
“What?” The Doctor’s head popped round the door.
“See?”
“Amy?”
“Stay away from me!”
“What did you do?” He asked Rory.
“I haven’t done anything; she was like this when I got here.”
“Ah. Amy, you’re not going to like this and I’m sorry.”
“No!”
“Here, hold this.” He handed the curtain pole to Rory and slowly approached Amy.
She tried kicking her legs to keep him back but he ignored it, picking her up and slinging her over his shoulder.
“Let go of me, you bastard!”
“Language!” He took off at a run, haphazardly spraying window cleaner into as many eyes as he could.
He could feel bruises forming where she was kicking and hitting him and his ears were ringing from her screams. He kicked open the doors of the Tardis and dropped her inside, locking her in and leaving her there while he went to rescue Rory.
“Let me out!” She hammered on the doors, until she drew blood from one of her knuckles. She collapsed on the floor and burst into furious tears. She’d trusted him, she’d tried to believe him but fear had eaten away at that.
The large screen in the console room flickered on and caught her eye. It was full of the women who’d poisoned her mind, who’d revealed the dark side of being with The Doctor. But they all seemed to be smiling, some bittersweet but none of them seemed scared of him, none of them hated him. What felt like a million hugs flickered passed on the screen, with men she didn’t recognize but seemed to know they were The Doctor. A few of them had her in them, either her life being saved or her tears being wiped away. A circle of people flying the Tardis while The Doctor beamed at them, like a proud father.
”Just this once, everybody lives”
“You didn't save a civilisation but at least you helped one man.”
“They leave. Because they should or because they find someone else. And some of them, some of them... forget me. I suppose in the end, they break my heart.”
Everything has its time and everything ends.
The last time I was dying, I looked back on all of you, every single one...and I was so proud”
Amy wiped tears away from her eyes, it was like her mind had been shaken and everything and fallen back into place. He might be dangerous, he might be scary but he was her Doctor and he was in danger. A bottle fell from a ledge and she picked it up, no idea what it was.
“Doctor.” She swung the Tardis doors open.
“Ah, it’s the damsel in distress. How are you, still distressing?” The Doctor asked her, almost completely serious.
“Shut up and duck” She chucked the chemical over the nearby creatures, some still looked like the Doctor, others she didn’t recognize but all started bubbling when the liquid hit them. “Get in The Tardis now!”
“Better do as she says, she’s a hell of a kicker.”
“I know she is.” Rory smiled sheepishly.
-x-
Amy had been sitting in the same chair for three awkward hours. Nobody seemed to want to admit what had happened.
“Rory, why don’t you go to bed.” Amy said pointedly.
“You too?”
“In a bit.” She nodded, glad he was finally leaving. Not that she didn’t love him but she needed to talk to The Doctor.
“I’m sorry, Amy.” He said quietly.
“Aren’t I supposed to be saying that.” She laughed nervously.
“You shouldn’t have seen all that, those are things I don’t want people seeing.”
“I can understand that.”
“It was all necessary, for the greater good. And a lot of them had lives to get back to. Don’t think badly of me, I forget sometimes how hard it is to put your faith in a very old man with a very bad habit of making irreparable mistakes.”
“I know, you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth. I should have known better than to let it get to me. I’m sorry for calling you names...and kicking you.”
“It wasn’t your fault. The creatures that kidnapped you, they feed on fear and despair and tasty things like that. They invade ships and collect all the bad thoughts, using them as fuel to make you feel alone and helpless. You must have been very brave; most people don’t leave there with their sanity. They were used as cautionary tales when I was a child, scared the pants off me. Anyway, all forgotten now, the bruises will fade.”
“Will this? Fade I mean, will we be able to go back to normal?” She looked at him sadly.
“Maybe.” He met her eyes for a long moment. “So, somewhere peaceful next? How about the glacial brinks of Kamaz in the summer? It’s all drippy!”
“Where ever you want, Doctor. You know she’ll never land where you ask her too.” She leant over and kissed his forehead. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.” He smiled brightly but didn’t sleep at all that night.
Author: agirlnamedtruth
Team: Amy (a.k.a The Legs)
Rating: R (for dark themes, suggestion and swearing)
Prompt: I’m not alone, I have my imaginary friends.
Summary: When Amy is kidnapped, some of The Doctor’s darkest moments and her worst fears are used against her.
Author’s Notes (optional): Beta’d by the amazing lolofielding who was vital to making this happen. Set between The Doctor’s Wife and The Rebel Flesh. Contains references to Classic Who, Big Finish Audios and Sarah Jane Adventures.
It came suddenly, the Cloister bell sounded and The Doctor’s face fell. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t good. The Tardis shook and the lights went out but there was an eerie white glow seemingly coming from nowhere. Amy fell to the floor, her legs betraying her. She looked over at Rory and The Doctor, they weren’t moving. They weren’t dead or unconscious; they’d just stopped, as had the world around her.
“Hello?” She called into the darkness, not sure if she wanted a reply or not.
She stood as confidently as she could, found the Tardis console in the dark and pulled levers at random, forgetting that touching the wrong one could quite possibly destroy time or take away the gravity field. She was lucky; she found the one for the lights before she caused a catastrophe. For a second she was blinded by the sudden change in brightness. When she could see again, she jumped. Standing not ten feet from her was a little girl. Not any little girl either.
“What’s going on?” She asked wearily, she was used to being pitched into strange situations by now and this was not the first time she’d come face to face with herself.
“This is your mind, you tell me.” The younger version of herself replied, a little too steadily.
“What happened to The Doctor and Rory?” She leant out to touch Rory and couldn’t bring her hand to do it.
“They’re fine. It’s yourself you need to worry about.” Amelia held out her hand and Amy’s head snapped up, glaring at her.
“You don’t sound like me and I should know. Who are you?” She held back the urge to scream at the sudden unexplainable terror she felt. “What are you? Why do you look like me?”
“That’s of no importance. Not for the time being.” She advanced on Amy.
“What are you doing? Don’t touch me!” Amy backed away from the little girl and her outstretched hand, knowing instinctively that she didn’t want that hand to touch her. It grabbed her wrist and burned where their skin touched. “Get off me! What are you? Doctor!”
They both vanished and time seemed to start back up again.
“Doctor, what was that!” Rory asked, patting himself down to make sure he was all still there.
“Temporal intrusion. Time was running but it had stopped. Rory, we’ve missed something. Something bad, something important and bad.” The Doctor looked him up and down, eyes darting back and forward.
“But we’re all right though, I’m fine, you’re fine, Amy’s fine and the Tardis doesn’t seem to be making a racket like it normally does.”
“How do you know Amy’s fine, have you asked her?” The Doctor’s eyes had widened, he’d been scanning the Tardis while Rory was babbling.
“No but...” It finally hit Rory and he looked round him like a lost child. “She was right here, just a second ago”
“Like I said, we missed something.”
-x-
“Where am I?” Amy called out, submerged once more in darkness but this time she had no idea how to turn the lights on.
“Where do you want to be?” Her own voice called back at her, all grown up now.
“Home. I want to go home.”
“Very well.”
The lights came back on and she was in her old bedroom. It seemed like an age since she’d slept in that bed, walked these floors.
“Not here, the Tardis, that’s my home now.”
“Is it?” The voice seemed to be coming from the walls, at least there wasn’t another life size version of herself staring back at her and she was thankful for that.
“Of course it is, you just took me away from there, whoever the hell you are.” Amy sat down on the bed, her bed.
“But you don’t belong there, not really.”
“Yeah, I do, actually. I live there, I eat there, I sleep there.”
The voice had changed, it now was the voice of The Tardis, at least the voice she’d borrowed recently. “But it’s not your home, it’s his, him and me, all the universe, after you have long gone”
“Oh, this better not be your idea of a game, Missy! I can just put up with you creating a God awful noise in the small hours of the morning and swinging from side to side like a drunken ship but I will not have you messing with my head. The Doctor might like having a telepathic connection with you but you’re not doing it with me, I’m human.”
“Please, I’m not a ship. I am much more than that.” The voice was her own again and her bedroom melted away, leaving her to fall to the floor in a cold metal room.
-x-
“How could we have missed Amy? It’s Amy” Rory was pacing the bridge from the door to the console and back again.
“More importantly, who’d want Amy and for what? She’s just a girl from Scotland, likes to dress up as a living, why would somebody go to the trouble of stealing her?” The Doctor was not pacing, in fact he was unusually still.
“How did they even get her? Surely she would have put up a fight and we would have noticed”
“Think of it like a bubble only not round; in fact don’t think of a bubble, think of a camera. You know when you take a photo and it shows you a photo and you look at the photo and then it goes back to being a camera but you’ve missed a few seconds between the photo and what’s happening?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s like that.”
“Right. So we were looking the other way while she was taken?” Rory asked, confused.
“Yes. Well, no. It’s like we were on pause and the world went on without us.”
“Why didn’t you just say that then?”
“I was trying to make it simple for you.”
Rory sighed in exasperation. “So how are we going to get her back, Doctor?”
“I don’t know. Mostly because we don’t know where she went and to find someone we have to know where to look.”
“Can’t you press buttons and buzz your screwdriver and magically know where she is?”
“Do you mean; can I press the tracking beacon, follow the signal and materialise the Tardis around her?”
“Yeah” Rory’s face lit up.
“No.”
“Oh.” Rory’s face fell back down again.
-x-
It was hours before the voice came back, hours she spent kicking at the door until she sprained her ankle and screaming for help until her throat ached.
“Nobody’s coming to get you.” Her voice sang at her.
“He will. He’ll come for me” Amy tried her best not to rock back and forth, she was defenceless enough as it was.
“Who, your Doctor? You think he really cares about you? You’re no more than a speck on the wind-shield of his long life. He’s had hundreds like you and what do you think they ended up with?”
“Shut up! I know I’m not the first, I’m not stupid but that does not mean he will just leave me here, he can’t.”
The lights flickered and a girl appeared, fifteen, maybe a bit older with short brown hair and a jumper not unlike one she’d found in the Tardis wardrobe once.
“He left me. He left me to die, along with everyone else, in never ending fire and torment. I was his family and he ran away and left me in hell.”
“He told me he loved me.” Another girl popped up, this time blonde and slightly older; she had an Edwardian look about her. “Then he ignored me, treated me like he didn’t want me there at all. He even said he didn’t.”
“He said worse to me.” This one was brunette, modern but still young. “He said terrible things to me; all in the name of saving the day”
“He left me to babysit one of his rejects because he didn’t want us to inconvenience him. He didn’t even bother to tell me he loved me.” Blonde, well fake blonde and even more modern, only a bit older.
“Shut up! Shut up!” Amy covered her ears; she didn’t want to hear this.
“He left me to spend a lifetime being the wife of a lizard, didn’t even try to save me.”
“He promised me he’d come back for me.”
“At least you remember him. I rushed in and saved the day, risking my own life, thank you very much. Now all I get is a splitting headache and a ta, luv, off you pop back to boredom”
“This is the toughest one though. What happens when it gets so bad you want to leave, just to escape the bloodshed. It’ll ruin you.”
“He didn’t even stop when our best friend died.” The Edwardian girl chipped back in.
“Stop it!” Amy screamed and closed her eyes.
“Did you ever see death or pain before you met him?”
“Did people drop like flies?”
“Were they expendable?”
“Were you?”
Amy began to lose track whose voice was whose, they seemed to blend together in one consciousness.
“He’ll leave you behind.”
“Hasn’t he already done that?”
“Not just now either”
“Poor little girl, cried all night when you realised he’d lied.”
“He does that, he lies and he leaves you.”
“Then he did it again, another two years of waiting, pretending you were happy to live a normal life.”
“What do you think your life will be like when he leaves you once and for all?”
“And never comes back.”
“You’ll be alone.”
“Like you are now.”
“Alone. Alone. Little Amelia Pond. All night. All alone. Making up imaginary friends to make your loneliness bearable.”
“I’m not alone and he is not imaginary! The Doctor will come and get me and he’ll kick your arse from here till next week.” Amy growled, opening her eyes to see that all the girls had disappeared, leaving just one, seven year old child. Amelia.
“I don’t see him, do you?” She laughed and it bounced off the wall, ages after she had disappeared, slowly driving Amy insane.
“He is real. He is real. It’s not in my head. I’m not mad.”
-x-
“What are you doing?” Rory asked for what had to be the twentieth time is as many minutes.
“Thinking.” The Doctor replied.
“Still?”
“Yes, it’s an ongoing process.”
“How’s it going?”
“Considering you keep interrupting me every ten seconds, surprisingly well, thank you!”
“Sorry.”
“Can you hear laughing?”
“No?”
“I can hear laughing, only the barest trace, like someone’s been walking around my mind, laughing, while I’m asleep.”
“Right?”
“It sounds like...no, that’s mad, no...yes!” The Doctor stood up suddenly. “May I borrow your head for a second?”
“I guess.” Rory stood up from where he had been sat since Amy disappeared.
“User interface 713.” The Doctor said and the Tardis screen changed to what looked like CCTV. “Console room, past twenty four hours, linear time.”
“What’s this?” Rory asked, wondering what was going to happen to his head.
“Shush, shush, you’ll confuse her. Aside from authorised persons: Doctor comma The, Pond comma Amelia and Pond comma Rory, have there been any persons authorized in the Tardis?”
The screen flashed the word Negative in capital letters.
“Why am I Rory Pond? That’s not...”
“Shush! Have there been any unauthorized persons present in the Tardis?”
Negative.
“Just as I thought. How many authorized persons present in the Tardis in the last twenty-four hours?”
Four.
“Bingo!”
“What do you mean, how can there be four? There’s just me, you and Amy. Now there’s just you and me.”
“What if it was you, me or Amy?”
“What do you mean, why would you or I kidnap Amy and where would we have put her? And I highly doubt she kidnapped herself.”
“Don’t presume, it’s not good for your health. Think of someone authorized that hasn’t been here today. Think of River, quickly.”
Rory nodded and The Doctor swiped the Sonic Screwdriver in front of his face and then pointed it at the screen. An image of River Song came up.
“Presence of Song comma River in the last twenty-four hours?”
Negative.
“Phew, I wouldn’t have put it past her to be lurking in a corner somewhere.”
“What does that prove; that River didn’t do it?”
“No, it proves the Tardis recognizes your ability to imagine people and override her default settings. That’s good, it means she likes you.”
“Um, thanks?”
“Now think of Amy.” The Doctor placed his hands on Rory’s head. “Don’t mind me, just looking for the right one...NOT THAT! Don’t think about that! Blimey. Yes, that’s better. Yes, that’ll do.”
He repeated the action with the screwdriver but didn’t point it at the console.
“New file, Unauthorized Person. Pond comma CopyCat.”
He pointed the screwdriver at the screen and an image of Amelia Pond flashed on the screen, for all intent and purpose looking like the seven year old The Doctor had accidentally left behind.
“Save.”
“Why is Amy unauthorized?”
“She’s not. It’s just temporary. I had a thought, well more than a thought, an idea.” He turned back to the Tardis. “Presence of Pond comma CopyCat in the last twenty-four hours.”
Positive.
Alarm bells started ringing around the console room.
“Yes, thank you! Bit late now dear, isn’t it?”
-x-
“What are you doing now?” Rory asked, a few hours later when the Doctor emerged from the inner corridors of the Tardis.
“Preparing us. This isn’t going to be easy, there’s going to be something that looks nice but it isn’t. It’ll look like whatever you want to see, in an attempt to endear itself to you. It might even look like me”
“I doubt that. So how would we know that the nice looking thing isn’t just you know, a nice thing. Like what if we kill a kitten and it turns out to be an actual kitten?”
“That’s horrible! Why would you kill a kitten! You monster.” The Doctor gave him a look of horror.
“I’m not planning to! Just how can we tell what’s real?”
“With this, it’ll strip away any form of disguise.” He held up a spray bottle that looked empty.
“That’s what you’ve been doing for all this time, making that?” Rory looked exasperated.
“Making, no, looking for, yes. I got it as a birthday present when I was...oh, about four hundred and fifty. I had to find it; it was under an unbelievable amount of socks.”
“Great, can we go now?” Rory asked impatiently.
“For someone facing almost certain death, torture at the very least, you’re very enthusiastic.”
“They have my wife...what do you mean, certain death?”
“We’re here.”
-x-
“Amy!”
“God, not again. Go away!” She covered her ears and waited for the inevitable battering ram of voices to attack her again.
“Doctor, I think I’ve found her.”
“A little busy!”
“Go away, go away, go away.”
There was a loud crash and the door caved in, making her scream.
“Amy?” Rory took a step towards where she was crouched in a corner.
“Not him. Leave him out of this.” Amy muttered, turning her head to face the wall.
“Amy, we’ve come to rescue you, me and The Doctor.”
“Hello.” The Doctor poked his head round the door before he was dragged away from it by a familiar hand. Amy screamed again, this time from terror, her eyes wide and her body trying to push itself further into the wall.
“Keep him away from me!”
“Who, The Doctor? But we like The Doctor, remember. Raggedy man, mad man with a box, our friend.”
“No. No, you think that. Dangerous. Blood and death and pain and fury. He destroys people. He’ll destroy us. He’ll promise the world and take it away from you, leaving you with less than you started with. If you’re lucky.”
“Amy, what happened?”
“They showed me, all the others, all the girls he’s ruined, all the lives he’s taken away.”
“I think we need to get you into The Tardis.” She shook her head several times “Doctor?”
“Rory, at the moment, I’m fighting off at least twenty versions of myself with nothing but a curtain pole and a bottle of window cleaner because you picked up the wrong bottle! What is it?”
“Where did he get a curtain pole from?” Rory muttered half to himself. “I don’t think she wants to come.”
“Of course she wants to come. Come on, Pond, shake a leg.”
“No!” Amy shouted.
“What?” The Doctor’s head popped round the door.
“See?”
“Amy?”
“Stay away from me!”
“What did you do?” He asked Rory.
“I haven’t done anything; she was like this when I got here.”
“Ah. Amy, you’re not going to like this and I’m sorry.”
“No!”
“Here, hold this.” He handed the curtain pole to Rory and slowly approached Amy.
She tried kicking her legs to keep him back but he ignored it, picking her up and slinging her over his shoulder.
“Let go of me, you bastard!”
“Language!” He took off at a run, haphazardly spraying window cleaner into as many eyes as he could.
He could feel bruises forming where she was kicking and hitting him and his ears were ringing from her screams. He kicked open the doors of the Tardis and dropped her inside, locking her in and leaving her there while he went to rescue Rory.
“Let me out!” She hammered on the doors, until she drew blood from one of her knuckles. She collapsed on the floor and burst into furious tears. She’d trusted him, she’d tried to believe him but fear had eaten away at that.
The large screen in the console room flickered on and caught her eye. It was full of the women who’d poisoned her mind, who’d revealed the dark side of being with The Doctor. But they all seemed to be smiling, some bittersweet but none of them seemed scared of him, none of them hated him. What felt like a million hugs flickered passed on the screen, with men she didn’t recognize but seemed to know they were The Doctor. A few of them had her in them, either her life being saved or her tears being wiped away. A circle of people flying the Tardis while The Doctor beamed at them, like a proud father.
”Just this once, everybody lives”
“You didn't save a civilisation but at least you helped one man.”
“They leave. Because they should or because they find someone else. And some of them, some of them... forget me. I suppose in the end, they break my heart.”
Everything has its time and everything ends.
The last time I was dying, I looked back on all of you, every single one...and I was so proud”
Amy wiped tears away from her eyes, it was like her mind had been shaken and everything and fallen back into place. He might be dangerous, he might be scary but he was her Doctor and he was in danger. A bottle fell from a ledge and she picked it up, no idea what it was.
“Doctor.” She swung the Tardis doors open.
“Ah, it’s the damsel in distress. How are you, still distressing?” The Doctor asked her, almost completely serious.
“Shut up and duck” She chucked the chemical over the nearby creatures, some still looked like the Doctor, others she didn’t recognize but all started bubbling when the liquid hit them. “Get in The Tardis now!”
“Better do as she says, she’s a hell of a kicker.”
“I know she is.” Rory smiled sheepishly.
-x-
Amy had been sitting in the same chair for three awkward hours. Nobody seemed to want to admit what had happened.
“Rory, why don’t you go to bed.” Amy said pointedly.
“You too?”
“In a bit.” She nodded, glad he was finally leaving. Not that she didn’t love him but she needed to talk to The Doctor.
“I’m sorry, Amy.” He said quietly.
“Aren’t I supposed to be saying that.” She laughed nervously.
“You shouldn’t have seen all that, those are things I don’t want people seeing.”
“I can understand that.”
“It was all necessary, for the greater good. And a lot of them had lives to get back to. Don’t think badly of me, I forget sometimes how hard it is to put your faith in a very old man with a very bad habit of making irreparable mistakes.”
“I know, you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth. I should have known better than to let it get to me. I’m sorry for calling you names...and kicking you.”
“It wasn’t your fault. The creatures that kidnapped you, they feed on fear and despair and tasty things like that. They invade ships and collect all the bad thoughts, using them as fuel to make you feel alone and helpless. You must have been very brave; most people don’t leave there with their sanity. They were used as cautionary tales when I was a child, scared the pants off me. Anyway, all forgotten now, the bruises will fade.”
“Will this? Fade I mean, will we be able to go back to normal?” She looked at him sadly.
“Maybe.” He met her eyes for a long moment. “So, somewhere peaceful next? How about the glacial brinks of Kamaz in the summer? It’s all drippy!”
“Where ever you want, Doctor. You know she’ll never land where you ask her too.” She leant over and kissed his forehead. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.” He smiled brightly but didn’t sleep at all that night.