Title: Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Gen (Amy/Rory)
Author:
jacqui_hwRating: G
Inspiration: June 6th is apparently Yo-yo Day.
Warnings: Knowledge of 11th Doctor, Amy & Rory needed
Word Count: 538
“It’s strange.”
Up and down. Up and down. Up and down.
“What’s strange?” Rory asked eventually.
He must have said that out loud. He must have said it a while ago.
“Hmm?”
Up and down. Up and down. It was captivating.
“What’s strange?” This time his voice sounded closer, like Rory was moving towards him. “It’s a yo-yo.”
There was a odd hesitation to Rory’s speech patterns. It was rather endearing. The Doctor smiled to himself, even as his eyes remained fixed on the yo-yo. Humans were still fascinating after all these years.
“What’s so special about a yo-yo?” Amy shouted from somewhere unseen. Rory pointed in her general direction. At least The Doctor assumed he did. He was was still concentrating on the yo-yo.
“It’s a bit of wood and a bit of string,” The Doctor said. “It just goes up and down and up and down. And yet...”
“And yet?” Rory sat down on the floor in front of him. The Doctor finally looked at him and smiled.
“And yet you derive such pleasure from it. It’s soothing. It’s fun. A bit of wood and a bit of string and you can make something fun.” He laughed. “Amazing. Brilliant.”
Rory didn’t look convinced. “It’s just a yo-yo.”
Amy appeared behind Rory and placed her hands on his head, tugging at his hair until he winced.
The Doctor pretended not to watch them. He thought they probably didn’t like him watching and cataloguing, learning everything about them.
Well. Rory probably didn’t like it.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a yo-yo before,” Amy was saying. “You’re 900 years old and you have a time machine. You have to have seen a yo-yo before.”
“Of course I have,” The Doctor said. “But I’ve never taken the time to think about it before. I mean, it’s a bit of wood...”
“And a bit of string,” Amy finished. “Yes we know. What’s so thrilling about it?”
That was the other odd thing about humans. How much they took for granted. Someone hands you a yo-yo and says it’s a yo-yo and shows you how to yo-yo with it and you just accept it. You don’t take the time to consider it.
“Someone invented this,” he said, sliding off the chair to kneel with them. He caught the yo-yo in his fist and pushed it between them. “Someone made a spool and knotted string around it and wound it up and invented it.”
They looked blankly at the yo-yo, then at him, then at the yo-yo again.
Rory shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
The Doctor sighed and shifted in a graceful little flop, so he was sitting on the floor with knees raised and his chin resting on them.
“Everything you have,” he said at length, “everything that’s not the earth and air and sea, it was all invented. It was all created. You did that. Humans. Don’t you see? There’s as much ingenuity in this yo-yo as there is in an ipod or a motorcar or an Strawberry Extel Total Imm... ah, best not to spoil that one for you.”
He winked at them and jumped to his feet. “I wonder where my hoop and stick got to.”