fic: the one the other will contain
Title: the one the other will contain
Author: ellerigbee
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG
Length: 608
Summary: He saved the world so she could live in it, so she could remember. Heroics do not exist in vacuums and lonely Time Lords can be selfish creatures.
Spoilers: The Big Bang
Pairings/characters: Amy/Eleven, Amy/Rory
Warnings: lite angst, questionable narrative choices
Notes: This began as a kind of Five Things That Might Have Happened at Amy Pond's Wedding, but turned into this somwhere in the middle. Title from a poem by Emily Dickinson.
Disclaimer: Don’t own, own sue.
“Mind if I cut in?”
“I’d rather you didn’t-” Amy cuts Rory off with a kiss and offers the Doctor her hand with a smile.
“How do you stand in those?” he tilts his chin towards her shoes, takes a shuffling half-step backwards to create the illusion of space between them. There’s a new ring on her finger and her husband’s eyes seek them out on the dance floor. Rory Williams who waited two thousand years for this girl to come back to life, who would have waited twenty thousand more-the Doctor wants to trace the linear intricacies of love, the depth of devotion that makes days falling all in a row tolerable.
Amy tips her face towards him, leans forward as though she’s going to share a secret. She laughs in his ear and orders him to spin her.
-
“Did I really meet Vincent Van Gogh?” she asks, leaning against his side. Her fork hovers mid-air over the piece of cake their sharing (on the dance floor the new Mr. Pond shares a dance with his mother-in-law. The Doctor can recognize pieces of her, the bemused smile and her sharp eyes. There are fewer empty spaces now).
“He painted sunflowers for you.”
Amy smiles a little, shakes her head, “Did he?” (And he doesn’t want to see it, but there they are, the differences in front of his eyes. There’s a different kind of brilliance to Amelia Pond here. He’s not allowed to miss what’s never been).
He lifts his fork to his mouth, buries the answer in the sticky-sweet taste of fondant and butter cream.
-
The music stops and amongst catcalls, Rory kneels at her feet. Rory blushes red and Amy giggles, ruffles her dress and pulls her the fabric up, up, up to reveal a garter belt. It’s a deep self-satisfied shade of blue, impossible against the paleness of her skin and the Doctor follows its trajectory over her knee and down her calf, across her ankle.
Rory flings the garter into the crowd of rowdy bachelors. The Doctor does not imagine what it would feel like in his hands.
-
She drags him outside to the garden and kisses him beneath a tree.
“This is exactly the sort of thing your husband-” She laughs against his mouth, tells him to shut up. “You owe me.” She says, so sure of her every word. “I-what? I believe I just orchestrated and ensured the continuation of the entire universe, securing our being here at this very moment.” He stops before the question what do I owe you Amy Pond? because the answer will always be everything. He saved the world so she could live in it, so she could remember. Heroics do not exist in vacuums and lonely Time Lords can be selfish creatures.
His hands close on her waist, a thoughtless gesture, and there she is warm and happy and so very close. He has been alone for such a very long time. He knows what it is to wait. Amy smiles, soft and brilliant, and her hands curl into the white material of his scarf. She tugs him forward. “Yeah, yeah, but you were still late to my wedding.”
Her mouth is sweet (he doesn’t think of before, doesn’t remember her mouth full of disbelief and intent). Her left hand covers the nape of his neck, the metal band of her ring warm against his skin.
He doesn’t stop her. In his defense, he’s only really existed for three and a half hours. He forgets to know better.
-
Back inside he watches her and Rory dance, turn in slow circles, again and again.
End