Fic: An Enemy Within
Title: An Enemy Within
Author/Artist: rumpelsnorcack
Rating: PG-13
Characters & Pairings: Amy/Rory, Eleven
Content Note: Discussion of infertility and brainwashing
Word Count: 8,314
Summary: When Amy finds out she can't have any more children, she discovers she has more darkness inside her than she had bargained for.
Notes: Many thanks to the wonderful a_phoenixdragon and Mollywheezy who have been extremely supportive through this whole process. I started this fic immediately after the first episode of S7 aired because it frustrated me how quickly the situation was dealt with. But then I let it fester on my hard drive until now. So, here we have it - slightly belated but done all the same!
Disclaimer: Sadly none of the characters are mine, I just enjoy hanging around in their sandbox.
Amy's heart was pounding and she thought it was about to break. Rory was storming off in a cloud of rage, throwing his hands in the air and announcing in a broken voice that he wasn't coming back. Even though this was what Amy had been working towards for several months now, and even though she had technically been the one to throw him out, Amy wanted to call it all off, shout for him to come back. But she knew that for his sake this was the right thing to do, the only thing to do. To prevent the stupid noble git from sacrificing his own needs (which Amy had no doubt he would do because he had already started trying to sublimate his desires for hers) she had to give him up. Instead of running after him, then, Amy just remained standing there, tears falling down her face, watching him walk away while her heart shattered inside her, the only sound she made a broken, tearful, 'Rory!' She had nurtured every teeny piece of resentment into a white hot flame over the last few weeks so he would believe her when she said she didn’t love him anymore. She’d had to delve into some of her darkest thoughts and feelings to convince him, and she now had so much pent-up rage, agony and bitterness from examining those feelings that she almost hated him. But as she watched Rory disappear into the distance, Amy knew it all meant nothing. She loved him, and nothing would ever change that … not even hate.
***
Rory was hurt and confused. No, worse than hurt - he was devastated. He had no idea where this had come from. Oh yes, it had been obvious forever that he was more invested in 'Amy and Rory' as an entity than Amy was, but he'd also always, somewhere deep inside him, had a rock solid understanding of who Amy was, that she needed him and that in her own, weird, stuffed up way she loved him too. But Amy had just thrown him out of the house and he didn't understand it. Okay, so technically Rory could have stayed and tried to fight for their marriage, but he’d fought so many times over the last few months, and Amy just grew colder with each approach. So, what was the point, he argued stubbornly to himself, in staying somewhere you're clearly not wanted? He’d been fighting it for so long now, fighting the growing realisation that Amy had shut him out. He just couldn’t do it, not again.
Before travelling with the Doctor, Rory had accepted that Amy was aloof and distant, that she kept him at arm’s length. That was how the relationship had existed, and it had felt normal then. But since their marriage it had felt to Rory like Amy was just as invested in their relationship as he was. The things they had seen together, been through together - he’d thought they had created a bond which was deeper, which couldn’t be broken. Then, inexplicably, Amy had begun to draw away again. Rory had tried to cross the distance to her, but she just backed further away, her emotions once again hidden deep inside where he couldn’t reach. It was obvious that there was something black in Amy which she was wrestling with, but she always refused to share it with Rory. After having had access to all of her feelings, her thoughts, dreams … her love; after having access to all of who she had become, the loss left him even more bereft. This … this distance, this need to guess how she felt, didn’t feel normal for their relationship now.
In desperation, Rory had tried one last time - and something he’d said, he wasn’t even sure what, had set Amy off. The fight today was intense and far-reaching, addressing everything from his selfishness for wanting children to his failure to keep Melody safe. Threading through her accusations was one incendiary bomb, hinted at but never quite articulated - that it was Rory’s fault, somehow. His failure to protect their baby had led inevitably to this. His failure, his lack. Every word she’d thrown at him had cut like a knife so, wounded and lashing out, he’d shouted back at her - shouted things he knew he’d regret but couldn’t stop himself from throwing at her like grenades while he was so wounded himself. Things that had made her face go white and caused her to explode with ‘Get out! Get out of this house!!’ So here he was now, storming away from the home he had loved, away from the woman he still loved despite the pain of her words ripping him to shreds.
***
Amy dragged herself back to the house. She couldn’t see Rory anymore; his form had blended into the distance so there seemed no further point in hanging around outside hoping he might come back, the way he always had before. The way he never would again. Amy didn’t care that her life had just blown up in the middle of the street where every nosy neighbour could see. But she did care that one of them, with concern on her face and a baby in her arms, was getting ready to approach. Amy couldn’t bear to go over it again with some barely-known stranger, particularly not one who was flaunting the very thing Amy had lost her husband for. Amy knew the lives she and Rory lived seemed odd and fascinating to those who lived around them - they so often disappeared without comment, leaving the mail to pile up behind the door and the newspaper to accumulate on the street outside. They were the source of endless gossip for the street, she knew, especially now that Amy was becoming known as a model and her face was appearing on billboards all over the city. Something public and titillating had finally happened which would allow curiosity to get past the slight distance Amy had always managed to keep between herself and her neighbours, and she knew they’d all inflict themselves on her if she let even one in. She slid inside the house just as the woman got there, her opening commiserations cut off by the closing door.
Amy sat down wearily, scrubbing her hands over her face as she tried to erase the look on Rory’s face when she’d accused him of failing to protect her, and their child. Even though she knew it was unreasonable, Amy did blame him, in part, for the loss of Melody. How could he not have noticed, she thought in her bitterest moments, that she wasn’t herself, that he was kissing a substitute? For goodness’ sake, they had slept together for several months during that time; admittedly in bunk beds for most of it, but even so - how? How could he not have known? Amy was positive she would have known the difference - she ignored the fact that she didn’t notice any differences in the Doctor when he’d had a ganger. That was different, she told herself; Rory was her husband. He’d grown up with her. He should have known. If he had noticed, surely he and the Doctor would have come for her sooner and not given that evil woman the opportunity to take Melody, and with her any hope Amy had of future children. She knew when she’d said it that she’d hit him right where it would pierce him the hardest, and at the time she didn’t care. But now … now the memory of his face as it crumpled in shock and heartbreak stabbed at her. She shook her head, striving to get rid of the memories which were starting to flood back.
Amy could pinpoint with bitter accuracy when it was that she'd realised she wouldn't be having any more children. It was a few months after Demon's Run and she'd woken up one morning with a horrible, cramping pain. Blergh, she'd thought, here it comes just when I don't want it. But she'd never bled and the cramps just kept getting worse. Rory, the nurse, was concerned of course and made her go see a doctor. The doctor had been very kind but adamant, after several tests, that there was nothing she could do - Amy's womb had lost its blood supply and was now effectively dead. The cramps were her body's way of trying to get rid of the useless tissue. Before she knew it, Amy was in a clinical hospital surgery having her uterus removed and it was in a state of shock that she found herself in a car next to Rory as they returned home. She'd never thought about kids before, not really. But now that she couldn't have them she felt ... almost relieved. That didn't seem right. In moments when she allowed herself to remember Melody, Amy recalled the gut-wrenching agony when she realised the baby was a ganger. Back then, while she hadn’t thought of herself as necessarily maternal, Amy had bonded shockingly fast with the tiny girl - so much so that when she disappeared Amy’s screams had been close to hysterical. Now, however, something ugly and heavy disappeared from her heart, and she felt a strange calm as she realised she would never have to deal with a child, never have to hold a baby, never have to raise up a new person. Beside her, however, Rory was babbling. On and on about kids and adoption and how they could find another way and Amy froze in newfound terror at the idea. Her new sense of peace evaporated as she realised what Rory meant - she wasn’t escaping at all. He still wanted, and even expected, children in his life. Suddenly resentful that he seemed to think his own wishes were more important than her aversion, ignoring the knowledge that he couldn’t know she was averse, Amy stared moodily out of the car window trying not to hear his words.
***
Rory sat alone in the bedroom he'd lived in as a child, the room he'd been forced to return to when he'd left Amy and the home they'd made together. His father had welcomed him with astonished alacrity, though Rory could tell Brian thought he just needed time, that somehow this would work itself out. Except that Amy had made it obvious that time was never going to fix this - in fact, the more Rory thought about it, the more his grief turned to anger, and the colder his anger became. He wasn’t sure he could ever forgive Amy’s words to him today. They hung around him, ugly in their truthfulness. Everything she’d said to him was something he had said to himself a million times before, but coming from Amy it all stabbed him in a way his own thoughts never had.
He sighed, his head down, hands scrubbing through his hair distractedly as he tried to work out exactly what had gone wrong. After their last adventure with the Doctor, Amy had seemed cheerful and excited, happy to be with Rory and happily settled into the little suburban paradise they'd carved out for themselves. He'd thought she enjoyed it too. It was, after all, the best of both worlds. They had their own place, a comforting, normal place they returned to between adventuring with the Doctor. It wasn't the life Rory'd dreamed up for them when under the influence of the Dream Lord, but it was pleasant. They got to run away to the stars almost as often as Amy wanted to, while having the peaceful domestic life that Rory had always dreamed of as well. It had seemed to him to be a very nice compromise. But then ... but then, Amy had started with the cramps and Rory had sent her to a doctor and his comfortable life was ripped apart again.
Try as he might, Rory could not find a connection between the cramps, Amy's surgery and the start of her emotional distance from him - he had tried, so hard, to be there for her in the aftermath but she had always been unwilling to talk about it. She seemed to shake it off, returning to her happy-go-lucky self so quickly that it scared the nurse in Rory, who knew she should probably have some reaction to what had happened to her. While he knew the subject of psychiatrists would be a sore point with Amy, he’d asked tentatively, one day, if she wanted to see a counsellor. The stare she turned on him was icy and her refusal was definitive. None of it made sense so he fell back on the explanation she'd eventually given him - she'd grown out of love and wanted to move on. Rory gritted his teeth as agony ripped through him at the thought. He wanted it to not be true, but Amy had always been so hard to pin down that it was something of a wonder that she'd stayed in love with him as long as she had. The things she said today certainly showed just how little she thought of him. You couldn’t say some of those things to someone you loved or respected, so Rory was forced to believe it when she said she no longer loved him.
***
Clear as crystal, Amy could hear Kovarian's voice in her head again. Her unwelcome memories returned her to Demon’s Run and she relived the horror she had felt then. Kovarian was explaining, mercilessly, what she was doing to Amy's body.
'First, we're taking your little girl away from you and then we're going to make sure she's the only baby you'll ever have. Your husband, the centurian, isn't going to like that is he, dear? I've been inside your mind; I know how fearful you are of losing him. I know how much having children means to him; how are you going to explain this one, Amy?'
'I'll just adopt; Rory won't mind. He has a heart,' Amy muttered under her breath, 'Not like you, you old bat.'
'You won't ever adopt, Amy. By the time I'm finished with you, the mere idea of children will fill you with terror.'
Amy stared back at her with defiant eyes. 'Never,' she said. 'You will never be able to ruin what Rory and I have, children or no. Rory is the best of men; he’ll never abandon me. This will never break him.'
Kovarian gave her a poisonous smile. 'Oh, bless you, dear. You think this is about him? I don’t care about him at all.’ She looked right into Amy’s eyes as she added, ‘I’m going to break you; you’re the one who will lose the one thing you care about - the love of that ridiculous man. The centurian feeling pain is just an added bonus.’ She leaned in to Amy with a cheerful grin, while someone else strapped her body down to the table. Amy screamed.
***
When Rory woke the next morning he thought briefly about storming back to the house and confronting Amy, but the brief burst of passion leeched out of him when he remembered one of the last conversations they'd had.
'I don't understand, Amy, why you won't talk about adoption - we can't have our own kids, but that doesn't mean we can't bring some up as our own.'
A shudder rippled down Amy's spine as she faced away from him, but her voice was steely when she said, 'I don't want to, okay Rory. I lost my chance with Melody; I can't face that with another child. I'd always wonder, you know, what she would have been like if we'd been able to bring her up ...' her voice trailed off and Rory winced.
'But she was fine. I mean ... River and, well, yeah okay she was a bit mental when she regenerated and that whole mind control kill-the-Doctor thing, but she got over that. Hurrah.' Rory could feel himself flailing awkwardly as Amy turned to him. The look in her eyes was one of pure hatred and he stepped away from her.
'She wasn't fine; she was screwed in the head, just like her mother. And any other child I had to do with would be screwed in the head too. No, Rory; no adoption. No children. Never.'
There was finality in her tone, and even as he opened his mouth to argue again Rory knew it wasn't any use. There would never be any more children in his life, and his wife - his vibrant, alive, wonderful wife - was blaming herself and becoming something diminished. His face fell and he couldn't quite hide his raw sorrow. His pain was more for how Amy saw herself - broken again, missing something inside, ‘screwed in the head’ - than for the loss of future children, though obviously that was something he needed to come to terms with. He tried to reach for her, to comfort her, tried to tell her children didn’t matter, but she flinched away from his touch and left the room without looking at him. Amy had already been distant with Rory, but following that conversation she had become cold. Cold in a way she never had been before, not even when she hadn’t been sure, truly sure, that marriage and settling down was what she wanted to do. Even then, she had never shut Rory down in quite this way.
Remembering that day, Rory winced again. Amy had made it clear then, and in the few scattered discussions they'd had over the next few days, that she didn't want him anymore. ‘Self-righteous bastard,’ she’d called him. Self-righteous because he told her he didn’t care about having more kids. Self-righteous because he loved her and wanted her, just her, with no strings. Well, if loving her no matter what was self-righteous then what was the point of even trying to talk to her? She was taking the best of him and twisting it into something she could use as a weapon against him. It was painfully obvious to Rory that whatever had been between them, Amy now didn’t feel any of it.
***
Amy threw herself into her work. There was nothing else left for her now that she had let Rory go. She reminded herself this was the right thing to do. Rory was too damn noble to ever leave her just because she couldn't give him what he so desperately wanted, but she'd seen that deep sadness in his eyes when she'd insisted on no children, ever. He couldn't hide the pain he felt when he realised she was serious and Amy knew it was only a matter of time before he started resenting her and the kid-free life she now had to live. He had tried to close the gap, to pretend he didn’t care about children, but Amy was overwhelmed by the memory of that haunted look and terrified that she would back down so she froze him out. Backing out was impossible - one day, she knew, Rory would turn on her. He would throw his sacrifice in her face, she knew. How could he not? Having kids had been his reason for living since before she knew him. Rory had been open about wanting to be a dad from the minute they met when she was eight and crying over something Aunt Sharon had done. In many ways since then he’d played the fatherly protective figure to her lost child, and she knew he would be a brilliant dad. But not with her, never with her. One day he would realise what loving her would mean; what a lifetime of no children would mean, and he would leave her - physically or emotionally - and she would break. Better by far, she reasoned, to make the break herself, on her own terms.
Besides, Amy knew there was something seriously wrong with her. Wrong beyond the useless uterus which had been removed. Wrong beyond any differences that could be attributed to her travels with the Doctor, and she was terrified that she would pass that wrongness onto her children. River. Brilliant, brave, gorgeous River, her daughter, was so screwed up by having Amy for her mother that she was currently serving an extended term in prison for killing the Doctor. She had regenerated in front of Amy’s eyes as a parody of herself, and tried to kill the Doctor on the spot - and how could that not be Amy’s fault for not being there for her?
Much as Amy had loved Mels, her friend, she was broken in some very dark ways too. Whether that would have been different had Amy been able to bring up Melody she would never know. What she did know was that while she was gallivanting around the universe with the Doctor and her husband, her baby had been starving on the streets of New York and bringing herself up. Amy shuddered when she remembered some of Melody’s last words, ‘last time I did this I ended up a toddler in the middle of New York’ - how horrific that must have been, and her parents had just let it happen. That she couldn’t have done anything about it meant nothing to Amy. She should have tried. She had been conditioned to forget her child, to shrug off her loss as if it was perfectly normal to find out you’re pregnant, give birth and lose your child all within a mere few weeks.
Amy knew, intellectually, that her memory loss was not her own fault, (she suspected that whatever was used to dampen her fear and worry for her daughter had something to do with why they had been in America in 1969) and yet she still felt sunk in guilt that her child died and regenerated in New York, all alone and so very young - and even because she had been locked up in an orphanage before that even happened; healthy and looked after maybe, but never cared for, never knowing what it was like to feel a mother’s love. Worse, she had been conditioned herself, designed to lock onto the Doctor and hunt him to death. Amy’s baby had never had a chance at a real childhood, all because no-one had been bothered to save her. How … how could her mother have just laughed that off? What sort of person just went off playing with the universe when her own daughter was missing?
Even if she had known perfectly well that Melody became River and was perfectly fine - marvellous even - Amy felt like she should have been more worried somehow. That she wasn’t ate at her; that Rory wasn’t, when he’d never been through everything at Demon’s Run, infuriated her. Just as he should have noticed that Amy had been replaced, Rory should have been more forceful in searching for their baby. That he wasn’t, that he’d accepted the Doctor’s decision to let her make her own way to become the River he knew and loved, caused Amy her worst resentment towards him. She at least had a reason to have ignored the loss of her child, as inadequate as she found it. He didn’t - just his passivity, his willingness to let others take charge and make the decisions. She’d once loved that about him; now she hated it.
***
Sitting across from Amy with her lawyer dictating terms in the divorce was possibly the hardest thing Rory had ever done. Harder, by far, than being killed. Harder than facing a new monster every time the stepped onto the TARDIS. He felt angry and bitter. So much angrier than he had when they’d last been in the same space. Whatever pain he was feeling had coalesced into this vicious rage and he almost didn’t want to see her again. But masked in the anger was the memory of his old love. As passionately as Rory now hated Amy, he still loved her. And he did hate her for the insinuations she’d made, for shutting him out of the biggest decision of their life, for deciding for him that they would divorce. No, he realised as he looked across the table at her, he didn’t hate her. He hated the things she’d done and the things she’d said, but he loved her. If she had, by any flicker of an eyelash, shown that she regretted kicking him out he would have thrown the divorce papers out with the trash, lawyer or no lawyer, disillusioned hate or no disillusioned hate and started trying to heal whatever it was that had torn them apart. But she didn’t. She stared him down, her look challenging and distant. Still so distant. So Rory carefully hid his love behind his cold anger and stared defiantly right back at her.
***
The problem, as Amy had acknowledged to herself after Rory left that first day and which had been heightened by the encounter with their lawyers, was that she still loved him. Despite all those things that made her so angry and resentful, the mere memory of Rory’s smile could melt her heart. Even his stubborn, set jaw in the meeting was endearing. It reminded Amy of all the times he’d been stubbornly upset with something she and the Doctor were doing. In fact, the more days that passed since he had left, the more she realised what she had given up when she threw him out. There were no loving arms to fold herself into when she felt hurt. There was no-one she could look at and know his thoughts, no-one she could communicate with just by looking at him. She had forgotten, perhaps from long association, just how much Rory was there as her support, as the one who backed her up. She missed the way he told her how mental he thought her projects were, but followed her through them anyway. She missed the way his arms folded around her, how wrapped up in warmth she felt when his hands cradled her head and tangled in her hair. There was no getting away from it. She missed him, and she regretted the decision she had made.
They met again to sign the last of the divorce papers, and while she strutted into the room with bravado, the sight of him rattled her. She covered it as well as she could, speaking to him in dismissive tones all while trying to gauge how he was feeling. The man with the lawyer had been almost the way she remembered him. Hurt, maybe; angry, definitely, but still recognisably the Rory she had grown up with. This man, however, wasn’t her Rory. Something had hardened since that last meeting and this man was cold; he radiated contempt for her. ‘I thought you were just pouting at a camera,’ he’d spat as he left and she gasped, wounded. It was too different from the loving support he’d given when she first started modelling and she half reached out to him as he exited, but he refused to look at her. White faced, Amy allowed her makeup artist to lead her to the chair to be retouched. The half-articulated thought she’d had that she could call it off was erased in the wake of his cold anger. This man, this not-Rory, didn’t love her anymore; that much was obvious. You couldn’t look at someone the way he’d looked at her if you still had any good feelings towards them. Amy steeled herself. If he was going to be like that then she needed to nurture that resentment again - she couldn’t risk letting him see that she loved him still. The pain of his indifference was slicing at her, but she could ensure he never knew the effect he was having on her. Lost in her thoughts, Amy almost didn’t notice as the woman behind her began to transform.
***
The Doctor, now that the daleks seemed to be almost friendly, had time to look at his friends. Not always the most perceptive about human emotions, he nevertheless could tell there was something not quite right. In the past, Pond would light up when Rory turned up, her body would lean towards his even when he was distant from her … and he was seldom distant because Rory was always so revoltingly gooey where she was concerned. Too often, the Doctor was moved to leave them alone when Rory just looked at Amy, let alone when they began their kissy business. Today, however, Rory looked angry. Seriously angry. Not the type of angry he got when the Doctor put him in difficult situations. No, today’s anger was directed towards Amy - and she was acting as if Rory’s anger was normal. Standing back, just ignoring it the way she never would have before. His Pond would usually fight Rory, would fight for Rory. She’d fought, after all, when he was erased from existence. But not now. Now she was just … The Doctor couldn’t quite put his finger on what was off right now, but they were standing apart from each other. Rory even had his back to Amy (and when did he ever do that before?), and though the Doctor could tell Amy was talking to Rory, they weren’t at ease. Not the sort of not-at-ease which came from being surrounded by daleks, the sort of not-at-ease which came from being not-right with each other. Frowning at them, the Doctor adjusted his bowtie. He’d just have to do something about this. Ponds being not-right was just … not right.
The Doctor looked at them more closely. They were definitely emanating waves of hate at each other, but under it the Doctor could see something else. Hurt. Both of them were hurting. Hurting was good. The Doctor grinned. Hurting meant there was still love. Hurt love could be worked through. The Doctor could help here. Oh yes. Just look how well he’d done with Elizabeth Taylor. Oh, she’d kept getting into hurt love over and over, but the Doctor suspected she secretly enjoyed the hurting. The Ponds, however. The Ponds weren’t enjoying this. That much was obvious to him. So. Two missions. The Doctor rubbed his hands together with glee. Get in, get the forcefield down, save Amy and Rory’s marriage, get out. Easy! They had hours after all, and you could do so much in a few hours.
Several hours later, the Doctor was frustrated. He was making progress on getting the forcefield sorted, Soufflé Girl was doing a marvellous job with that; but talking to Pond about ‘the thing’ - as he’d taken to calling it in his head - hadn’t been fruitful. Had been the opposite of fruitful in fact. Very lacking in fruit. She seemed just so … accepting that they had just moved on. How was that even possible? They’d been all lovey when he’d dropped by to collect the ood. Okay, so the Doctor wasn’t very good with time and had no idea how long it had been for them since then, but it didn’t feel like long enough for them to be all not-Pondy. The Doctor huffed.
He was definitely going to have to do something about this. But what? He’d had some hope that this was just a blip when Amy had screamed Rory’s name no less than four times when they were dropped onto the planet, but then she’d been all ‘we split up, what can you do?’ and the tone of her voice had been so light and cheerful that it shocked the doctor who had seen his Pond depressed when Rory ceased to exist and had expected a similar reaction here. That she wasn’t was just so alien that it brought him up short. How do you help someone who so clearly doesn’t want to be helped? The Doctor wished he could talk to Rory - Rory had always been the one who was more open with his emotions and the more persuadable. Surely the Doctor would have got a better insight out of him.
But, the Doctor suddenly clapped his hands together, then into the air in a flash of insight; he could use the wrist band. His Pond would be safe, but if she and Rory thought she wasn’t then perhaps they would actually talk to each other. All he needed to do, really, was find Rory. For that he needed Soufflé Girl, who had suggested she knew where Rory was. When Amy was knocked out by the blast of the exploding dalek, the Doctor surreptitiously put the band on her wrist and swept her into his arms. As expected, when Rory saw him carrying a limp Amy his face whitened and his nursing instincts cut in. Excellent, the Doctor thought with a grin to himself as he watched Rory’s tender ministrations. Excellent Mr Pond. Always doing the right thing, the predictable thing. Then Amy slapped him, and the Doctor rolled his eyes. Pond, Pond, Pond. She obviously still cared - the panic over his safety when they got here proved that - but she was being stubborn. Well, the Doctor could only hope that Rory’s own stubbornness would kick in when he left them alone. He’d certainly acted nicely eager when the Doctor listed ‘save Amy and Rory’s marriage’ as one of his tasks for the day, which was promising even if Amy had immediately shot it down. The Doctor carefully hit them with the idea that they had to fight to keep Amy’s love alive and undeleted, then left them alone. It was up to them now.
***
Uncomfortable, Rory stared at Amy for a few long moments after the Doctor left. She was seated, almost consciously posed the way she would while modelling, with her back to him. He prowled a little behind her, trying to work out how to approach this conversation. He knew he needed to get her to let him put his wrist band on her, but he didn’t know how to get her to agree. This aloof, angry Amy was not one he remembered how to approach. In desperation, he tried to think what the Doctor would do.
‘OK, look at me,’ he said finally. Slowly, so slowly Rory wasn’t sure she was even listening to him, she turned towards him. He approached her cautiously, unwilling to be slapped again, but conscious of a need to get them both out of this alive. ‘I’m going to be logical. Cold and logical, okay? For both of our sakes, both of us, I’m going to take this off my wrist and put it on yours.’ Rory felt like he was being reasonable, but Amy was staring at him like he was crazy.
‘Why? Then they’ll just start converting you. That’s not better.’ Grinding his teeth in frustration, Rory spelled it out. She never used to be this … this ridiculously dense.
‘Yeah. But it will buy us time because it will take longer with me.’
‘Sorry, what?’
‘It subtracts love, that’s what she said.’
‘What’s that got to do with it? What does that even mean?’
‘It’s just arithmetic. It will take longer with me because … we both know, we’ve both always known, that ...’ He waited a beat or two for Amy to respond, to acknowledge the point so he wouldn’t have to say it aloud. He really didn’t want what had always been unspoken between them to be dragged into the open and laid out in all its ugliness, but she still looked unconvinced. Frustrated, he ground out, ‘Amy, basic fact of our relationship is that I love you more than you love me; which today is good news because it might just save both of our lives.’
‘How could you say that?’ What? What did she mean ‘how could he say that?’ It was obvious, had been obvious since the day she ran away before their wedding. In disbelief, Rory went with what seemed to him to be the most obvious example.
‘2000 years, waiting for you, outside a box says this is true, and since you know it’s true give me your arm. Amy!’
He winced internally as soon as he’d said it, knowing it would just prop up her idea that he was self-righteous. He sounded self-righteous even to himself. It didn’t change the fact that over the years he had always felt like he had more riding on their relationship than she did, but he should probably have approached it better. Even so, her slap was unexpected. Well, not exactly out of character - she’d always shown her affection through hitting him, after all, particularly if he’d worried her - but certainly not something he thought would result from such a self-evident declaration as ‘I love you more’ - it had, after all, always been that way. He’d never resented it, exactly, but it was always there as a background to their marriage.
‘Don’t you dare say that to me. Don’t you ever dare.’
Angry again, resentful of the sudden slap, he exclaimed, ‘Amy, you kicked me out.’
‘You want kids. You have always wanted kids, ever since you were a kid. And I can’t have them.’ She was crying now and his heart stopped and his angry resentment melted away. How could he ever have hated her? She looked so scared and vulnerable that even in this deeply, uncomfortably confronting situation, Rory couldn’t help but feel her pain.
‘I know.’ His voice was soft, pained.
‘Whatever they did to me at Demon’s Run … I can’t ever give you children. I didn’t kick you out. I gave you up.’
‘Amy, I … I don’t …’ I don’t understand, he thought as she carried on. If she ‘gave him up’ how had she been so cruel in their last fight? How had she been so cold? She hadn’t seemed like it was any sort of sacrifice for her. He’d lost all hope of any reconciliation because of how dark the fight had been, but Amy was so obviously in pain, so obviously felt all the weight of her sacrifice, that he couldn’t bear it. He moved close to her, still determined to get her to accept the band, but also driven by a need to comfort her.
‘Don’t you dare talk to me about waiting outside a box, because that is nothing, Rory, nothing compared to giving you up.’ Her voice was passionate, and they were so close now. He could have reached forward and kissed her from here, but the weight of her anger still hung between them and Rory had no idea where to go from here. She hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know, but the depth of her emotional response showed there was something here, something more than it appeared on the surface. He did the only thing he could think of to deal with his own roiling emotions.
‘Just give me your arm … let me put this on you,’ Rory said frantically, as he reached for her arm, while staring into her devastated face, knowing this wasn’t what she needed to hear right now, but having no idea what else to say.
‘No, get off,’ Amy cried. While he was aching with the pain of seeing her this way, Rory’s heart was blossoming. Here was his Amy again - the one who opened her emotions to him, who shared her fears, her worries. The Amy he’d been missing for so long. She was angry, she was bitter, yes, but she was finally sharing it with him. All of that made him even more single-minded in his determination to get her protected, to get through this moment so they could talk properly, so he added forcefully, ‘just give me your arm!’
She tried to pull herself out of his grip, with a fiercely determined, ‘don’t touch me!’ She’d begun to close down again, probably because he hadn’t responded as she expected.
However, he’d held on long enough to feel the smooth contours of the band on her wrist and as he noticed it so did she and her struggles ceased. After one long, stunned look at each other, they both stared down at Amy’s wrist in shock, wrung out from the emotional conversation and disbelieving of what they were seeing. The band was benignly glowing blue, already keeping Amy safe.
‘It’s the Doctor’s … when you were sleeping,’ Rory said, his frustration at the alien’s manipulations bleeding into his voice.
‘That timelord. What’s the bet he didn’t even need it,’ Amy said, half laughing through her tears. Rory stared at it for a long moment before backing away and shouting to the empty room around them, ‘then why didn’t he just tell us?’
But he knew why. The Doctor was an interfering old busybody, that’s why, and Rory had had enough. He moved away from Amy, giving her the room she so obviously wanted. While she’d opened to him for that one small moment, she was now withdrawn again. His heart heavy with fatigue, he picked up the control pad for the teleporter and focused his attention on that. He decided it was now up to Amy. He wouldn’t push her again - if she wanted to talk, she could approach him.
***
Amy was gasping from the exertion of trying not to let Rory see her cry, but the way he’d looked, his brow furrowed with pain, his eyes filled with that familiar empathy she’d so missed - he was breaking her heart even more, and she couldn’t stop the tears from falling. She’d fought to pull her wrist away from his grip in one brief flash of self-protection. It would be so easy to fall into his arms again, to drown in the promise of his eyes, but she couldn’t allow herself to do it. Nothing had changed, after all. There was still the knowledge that the lack of children could … would … cause problems in the end. Tears still running down her cheeks, she watched him pick up the controller and quietly move to the other side of the room.
He looked at her. One long, impassioned plea, then a drop of his eyes. He was asking her to trust him, to try to mend; promising too that he would walk away if she still wanted him to. All with just his eyes. God, how she’d missed this. An upwelling of tenderness towards him took her by surprise. He had learned, it seemed, not to push. Her mouth twitched into an unwilling smile as he fiddled with the buttons, not pressing them, just obviously and deliberately not looking at her. But this not-looking wasn’t resentful and filled with anger. She could feel his good will from here, how he was giving her the space she needed, and it warmed her. ‘Rory,’ she whispered to herself so he couldn’t hear. ‘Oh, Rory.’
She moved towards him, not sure whether she wanted to hug him or slap him again, her emotions were still churning so badly. Before she got there the whole room shuddered, throwing them around and raining debris from the ceiling. She looked up, frightened. Rory had grasped the control tightly and glanced at her.
‘How long can we wait?’ He said, slight panic in his voice as his eyes dropped down to the teleporter control, weighing up when to push the buttons. Clearly he didn’t want to stick around in a building that was disintegrating around them, but just as clearly he was determined to ensure the Doctor got safely out too. Amy knew, in a sudden flash, that she couldn’t let him go. Whatever was going on here they could get through it, so long as they stayed together.
‘The rest of our lives,’ she said, staring at him. I love you, the stare said. Please give me another chance. Please let us work this out. His head snapped up and he stared back, obviously trying to read her face as she was reading his.
‘Agreed,’ he whispered softly, answering her unspoken plea. I love you too, I miss you. She moved to him, grabbed his head and kissed him thoroughly. Something broken in her heart began to heal as he responded. She may not have it all worked out, she may still not trust that he wouldn’t resent her for her lack of children, she may still have a million seething resentments towards him, but she did know that being with him felt so much more right than not being with him. They were still kissing when they materialised in the TARDIS. She finally stepped back and took a breath. He looked as dazed as she felt. She grinned at him, already feeling more like her old self.
The doctor dropped them off back at their house, which should have annoyed Amy, who had, after all been stolen from her workplace by the daleks, but for some reason felt right. After waving him off, Amy turned to Rory. The intense look in his eyes made her heart skip a beat. Again he communicated without speaking. This time: Can I come in? Can we try again? Do you really still love me? Did the kiss mean anything, or …? Amy nodded, elated, and she couldn’t keep the elation off her face even as she saw him celebrating outside. It should have annoyed her. Mere weeks ago it would have, but now it was so very, very Rory that she laughed. ‘I can see you,’ she called, a smile in her voice, and he came to her. Finally, after so much time, he was back where he belonged and her heart no longer felt so tiny within her.
Amy grabbed him, intending to pick back up where they left off in the TARDIS, but he stopped her. Hurt, she frowned at him.
‘What?’ She couldn’t keep the pain from her voice, and she saw him wince.
‘We need to talk, Amy. Really talk, I mean. I … I don’t want to go through anything like that again. And for that I think we need to be more open about what happened, about how this happened. I just …’ he flapped his hands awkwardly, obviously grasping for some word, something to explain himself.
‘I know,’ she whispered back, nodding. ‘I feel it too.’ That he felt as fragile about this as she did actually helped Amy calm herself. Always before, he had been the sure one. Knowing that they were on the same level gave her the courage to explain in more detail how she’d been feeling about children, about adoption, about even being around children. She’d taken his hand and drawn him to the couch and she could feel him now, clutching it like it was a lifeline as he took in with horror what she was saying. As she detailed the utter loathing she had for herself over her complete failure as a mother, as a woman, her voice shaky but tear-free, she could see his face getting greener and greener. She even explained how she’d been feeling about him and his part in the whole thing, and he blanched, his distress clear on his face. He’d clearly had no inkling of the depth of what she was feeling (and some of that, she admitted wryly, was because she had refused to let him in) but he didn’t try to interrupt, not even to defend himself. He let her talk herself out and then he pulled her to him in a long, loving hug. And here were those arms she’d missed, the hand in her hair cradling her head as if to shelter her from every bad thing and suddenly she was crying again. But the tears were cathartic and she leaned into him as she sobbed.
‘I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.’ He repeated it over and over, fiercely whispering it into her ear, clutching her so tightly she almost couldn’t breathe. For the first time she believed him, but she still needed one final promise.
‘You have to promise me, Rory. You have to …’ she sobbed out between breaths.
‘Promise what?’
‘That if you ever, and I mean ever, start to resent me for not wanting children, you have to tell me.’ He opened his mouth to protest, and she pushed against him. ‘I’m serious. I don’t ever want you to be unhappy because of me. I couldn’t bear it, so you have to tell me.’
He stared into her eyes, listening to what she wasn’t saying. I need you to do this. I’m still so scared you will leave me. I need this. And he nodded. ‘I promise,’ he whispered and then kissed her, sealing it.
He pulled back a little and looked at her. ‘You have to promise me something too,’ he said, his voice pained.
Slight panic gripped her heart and she gripped his hand tightly. ‘What?’
‘You need to promise that, no matter how you feel, you don’t shut me out like that again. We need to talk about this stuff before we do something stupid - like divorce when we didn’t need to.’ He smiled at her, running his hand along her jaw. His eyes were speaking again. I almost broke when I thought you didn’t love me. Don’t make me do it again, please? She gave him a watery smile in return.
‘Agreed,’ she said, and leaned forward to seal her side of the deal.
As she allowed herself to sink into his arms again, revelling in the solid feel of them around her, Amy knew they weren’t done talking, though grateful that Rory seemed to know that now wasn’t the right time for him to air all his feelings, but she also knew they had time. So long as they were together - and kept talking - they could work through this.
Author/Artist: rumpelsnorcack
Rating: PG-13
Characters & Pairings: Amy/Rory, Eleven
Content Note: Discussion of infertility and brainwashing
Word Count: 8,314
Summary: When Amy finds out she can't have any more children, she discovers she has more darkness inside her than she had bargained for.
Notes: Many thanks to the wonderful a_phoenixdragon and Mollywheezy who have been extremely supportive through this whole process. I started this fic immediately after the first episode of S7 aired because it frustrated me how quickly the situation was dealt with. But then I let it fester on my hard drive until now. So, here we have it - slightly belated but done all the same!
Disclaimer: Sadly none of the characters are mine, I just enjoy hanging around in their sandbox.
Amy's heart was pounding and she thought it was about to break. Rory was storming off in a cloud of rage, throwing his hands in the air and announcing in a broken voice that he wasn't coming back. Even though this was what Amy had been working towards for several months now, and even though she had technically been the one to throw him out, Amy wanted to call it all off, shout for him to come back. But she knew that for his sake this was the right thing to do, the only thing to do. To prevent the stupid noble git from sacrificing his own needs (which Amy had no doubt he would do because he had already started trying to sublimate his desires for hers) she had to give him up. Instead of running after him, then, Amy just remained standing there, tears falling down her face, watching him walk away while her heart shattered inside her, the only sound she made a broken, tearful, 'Rory!' She had nurtured every teeny piece of resentment into a white hot flame over the last few weeks so he would believe her when she said she didn’t love him anymore. She’d had to delve into some of her darkest thoughts and feelings to convince him, and she now had so much pent-up rage, agony and bitterness from examining those feelings that she almost hated him. But as she watched Rory disappear into the distance, Amy knew it all meant nothing. She loved him, and nothing would ever change that … not even hate.
***
Rory was hurt and confused. No, worse than hurt - he was devastated. He had no idea where this had come from. Oh yes, it had been obvious forever that he was more invested in 'Amy and Rory' as an entity than Amy was, but he'd also always, somewhere deep inside him, had a rock solid understanding of who Amy was, that she needed him and that in her own, weird, stuffed up way she loved him too. But Amy had just thrown him out of the house and he didn't understand it. Okay, so technically Rory could have stayed and tried to fight for their marriage, but he’d fought so many times over the last few months, and Amy just grew colder with each approach. So, what was the point, he argued stubbornly to himself, in staying somewhere you're clearly not wanted? He’d been fighting it for so long now, fighting the growing realisation that Amy had shut him out. He just couldn’t do it, not again.
Before travelling with the Doctor, Rory had accepted that Amy was aloof and distant, that she kept him at arm’s length. That was how the relationship had existed, and it had felt normal then. But since their marriage it had felt to Rory like Amy was just as invested in their relationship as he was. The things they had seen together, been through together - he’d thought they had created a bond which was deeper, which couldn’t be broken. Then, inexplicably, Amy had begun to draw away again. Rory had tried to cross the distance to her, but she just backed further away, her emotions once again hidden deep inside where he couldn’t reach. It was obvious that there was something black in Amy which she was wrestling with, but she always refused to share it with Rory. After having had access to all of her feelings, her thoughts, dreams … her love; after having access to all of who she had become, the loss left him even more bereft. This … this distance, this need to guess how she felt, didn’t feel normal for their relationship now.
In desperation, Rory had tried one last time - and something he’d said, he wasn’t even sure what, had set Amy off. The fight today was intense and far-reaching, addressing everything from his selfishness for wanting children to his failure to keep Melody safe. Threading through her accusations was one incendiary bomb, hinted at but never quite articulated - that it was Rory’s fault, somehow. His failure to protect their baby had led inevitably to this. His failure, his lack. Every word she’d thrown at him had cut like a knife so, wounded and lashing out, he’d shouted back at her - shouted things he knew he’d regret but couldn’t stop himself from throwing at her like grenades while he was so wounded himself. Things that had made her face go white and caused her to explode with ‘Get out! Get out of this house!!’ So here he was now, storming away from the home he had loved, away from the woman he still loved despite the pain of her words ripping him to shreds.
***
Amy dragged herself back to the house. She couldn’t see Rory anymore; his form had blended into the distance so there seemed no further point in hanging around outside hoping he might come back, the way he always had before. The way he never would again. Amy didn’t care that her life had just blown up in the middle of the street where every nosy neighbour could see. But she did care that one of them, with concern on her face and a baby in her arms, was getting ready to approach. Amy couldn’t bear to go over it again with some barely-known stranger, particularly not one who was flaunting the very thing Amy had lost her husband for. Amy knew the lives she and Rory lived seemed odd and fascinating to those who lived around them - they so often disappeared without comment, leaving the mail to pile up behind the door and the newspaper to accumulate on the street outside. They were the source of endless gossip for the street, she knew, especially now that Amy was becoming known as a model and her face was appearing on billboards all over the city. Something public and titillating had finally happened which would allow curiosity to get past the slight distance Amy had always managed to keep between herself and her neighbours, and she knew they’d all inflict themselves on her if she let even one in. She slid inside the house just as the woman got there, her opening commiserations cut off by the closing door.
Amy sat down wearily, scrubbing her hands over her face as she tried to erase the look on Rory’s face when she’d accused him of failing to protect her, and their child. Even though she knew it was unreasonable, Amy did blame him, in part, for the loss of Melody. How could he not have noticed, she thought in her bitterest moments, that she wasn’t herself, that he was kissing a substitute? For goodness’ sake, they had slept together for several months during that time; admittedly in bunk beds for most of it, but even so - how? How could he not have known? Amy was positive she would have known the difference - she ignored the fact that she didn’t notice any differences in the Doctor when he’d had a ganger. That was different, she told herself; Rory was her husband. He’d grown up with her. He should have known. If he had noticed, surely he and the Doctor would have come for her sooner and not given that evil woman the opportunity to take Melody, and with her any hope Amy had of future children. She knew when she’d said it that she’d hit him right where it would pierce him the hardest, and at the time she didn’t care. But now … now the memory of his face as it crumpled in shock and heartbreak stabbed at her. She shook her head, striving to get rid of the memories which were starting to flood back.
Amy could pinpoint with bitter accuracy when it was that she'd realised she wouldn't be having any more children. It was a few months after Demon's Run and she'd woken up one morning with a horrible, cramping pain. Blergh, she'd thought, here it comes just when I don't want it. But she'd never bled and the cramps just kept getting worse. Rory, the nurse, was concerned of course and made her go see a doctor. The doctor had been very kind but adamant, after several tests, that there was nothing she could do - Amy's womb had lost its blood supply and was now effectively dead. The cramps were her body's way of trying to get rid of the useless tissue. Before she knew it, Amy was in a clinical hospital surgery having her uterus removed and it was in a state of shock that she found herself in a car next to Rory as they returned home. She'd never thought about kids before, not really. But now that she couldn't have them she felt ... almost relieved. That didn't seem right. In moments when she allowed herself to remember Melody, Amy recalled the gut-wrenching agony when she realised the baby was a ganger. Back then, while she hadn’t thought of herself as necessarily maternal, Amy had bonded shockingly fast with the tiny girl - so much so that when she disappeared Amy’s screams had been close to hysterical. Now, however, something ugly and heavy disappeared from her heart, and she felt a strange calm as she realised she would never have to deal with a child, never have to hold a baby, never have to raise up a new person. Beside her, however, Rory was babbling. On and on about kids and adoption and how they could find another way and Amy froze in newfound terror at the idea. Her new sense of peace evaporated as she realised what Rory meant - she wasn’t escaping at all. He still wanted, and even expected, children in his life. Suddenly resentful that he seemed to think his own wishes were more important than her aversion, ignoring the knowledge that he couldn’t know she was averse, Amy stared moodily out of the car window trying not to hear his words.
***
Rory sat alone in the bedroom he'd lived in as a child, the room he'd been forced to return to when he'd left Amy and the home they'd made together. His father had welcomed him with astonished alacrity, though Rory could tell Brian thought he just needed time, that somehow this would work itself out. Except that Amy had made it obvious that time was never going to fix this - in fact, the more Rory thought about it, the more his grief turned to anger, and the colder his anger became. He wasn’t sure he could ever forgive Amy’s words to him today. They hung around him, ugly in their truthfulness. Everything she’d said to him was something he had said to himself a million times before, but coming from Amy it all stabbed him in a way his own thoughts never had.
He sighed, his head down, hands scrubbing through his hair distractedly as he tried to work out exactly what had gone wrong. After their last adventure with the Doctor, Amy had seemed cheerful and excited, happy to be with Rory and happily settled into the little suburban paradise they'd carved out for themselves. He'd thought she enjoyed it too. It was, after all, the best of both worlds. They had their own place, a comforting, normal place they returned to between adventuring with the Doctor. It wasn't the life Rory'd dreamed up for them when under the influence of the Dream Lord, but it was pleasant. They got to run away to the stars almost as often as Amy wanted to, while having the peaceful domestic life that Rory had always dreamed of as well. It had seemed to him to be a very nice compromise. But then ... but then, Amy had started with the cramps and Rory had sent her to a doctor and his comfortable life was ripped apart again.
Try as he might, Rory could not find a connection between the cramps, Amy's surgery and the start of her emotional distance from him - he had tried, so hard, to be there for her in the aftermath but she had always been unwilling to talk about it. She seemed to shake it off, returning to her happy-go-lucky self so quickly that it scared the nurse in Rory, who knew she should probably have some reaction to what had happened to her. While he knew the subject of psychiatrists would be a sore point with Amy, he’d asked tentatively, one day, if she wanted to see a counsellor. The stare she turned on him was icy and her refusal was definitive. None of it made sense so he fell back on the explanation she'd eventually given him - she'd grown out of love and wanted to move on. Rory gritted his teeth as agony ripped through him at the thought. He wanted it to not be true, but Amy had always been so hard to pin down that it was something of a wonder that she'd stayed in love with him as long as she had. The things she said today certainly showed just how little she thought of him. You couldn’t say some of those things to someone you loved or respected, so Rory was forced to believe it when she said she no longer loved him.
***
Clear as crystal, Amy could hear Kovarian's voice in her head again. Her unwelcome memories returned her to Demon’s Run and she relived the horror she had felt then. Kovarian was explaining, mercilessly, what she was doing to Amy's body.
'First, we're taking your little girl away from you and then we're going to make sure she's the only baby you'll ever have. Your husband, the centurian, isn't going to like that is he, dear? I've been inside your mind; I know how fearful you are of losing him. I know how much having children means to him; how are you going to explain this one, Amy?'
'I'll just adopt; Rory won't mind. He has a heart,' Amy muttered under her breath, 'Not like you, you old bat.'
'You won't ever adopt, Amy. By the time I'm finished with you, the mere idea of children will fill you with terror.'
Amy stared back at her with defiant eyes. 'Never,' she said. 'You will never be able to ruin what Rory and I have, children or no. Rory is the best of men; he’ll never abandon me. This will never break him.'
Kovarian gave her a poisonous smile. 'Oh, bless you, dear. You think this is about him? I don’t care about him at all.’ She looked right into Amy’s eyes as she added, ‘I’m going to break you; you’re the one who will lose the one thing you care about - the love of that ridiculous man. The centurian feeling pain is just an added bonus.’ She leaned in to Amy with a cheerful grin, while someone else strapped her body down to the table. Amy screamed.
***
When Rory woke the next morning he thought briefly about storming back to the house and confronting Amy, but the brief burst of passion leeched out of him when he remembered one of the last conversations they'd had.
'I don't understand, Amy, why you won't talk about adoption - we can't have our own kids, but that doesn't mean we can't bring some up as our own.'
A shudder rippled down Amy's spine as she faced away from him, but her voice was steely when she said, 'I don't want to, okay Rory. I lost my chance with Melody; I can't face that with another child. I'd always wonder, you know, what she would have been like if we'd been able to bring her up ...' her voice trailed off and Rory winced.
'But she was fine. I mean ... River and, well, yeah okay she was a bit mental when she regenerated and that whole mind control kill-the-Doctor thing, but she got over that. Hurrah.' Rory could feel himself flailing awkwardly as Amy turned to him. The look in her eyes was one of pure hatred and he stepped away from her.
'She wasn't fine; she was screwed in the head, just like her mother. And any other child I had to do with would be screwed in the head too. No, Rory; no adoption. No children. Never.'
There was finality in her tone, and even as he opened his mouth to argue again Rory knew it wasn't any use. There would never be any more children in his life, and his wife - his vibrant, alive, wonderful wife - was blaming herself and becoming something diminished. His face fell and he couldn't quite hide his raw sorrow. His pain was more for how Amy saw herself - broken again, missing something inside, ‘screwed in the head’ - than for the loss of future children, though obviously that was something he needed to come to terms with. He tried to reach for her, to comfort her, tried to tell her children didn’t matter, but she flinched away from his touch and left the room without looking at him. Amy had already been distant with Rory, but following that conversation she had become cold. Cold in a way she never had been before, not even when she hadn’t been sure, truly sure, that marriage and settling down was what she wanted to do. Even then, she had never shut Rory down in quite this way.
Remembering that day, Rory winced again. Amy had made it clear then, and in the few scattered discussions they'd had over the next few days, that she didn't want him anymore. ‘Self-righteous bastard,’ she’d called him. Self-righteous because he told her he didn’t care about having more kids. Self-righteous because he loved her and wanted her, just her, with no strings. Well, if loving her no matter what was self-righteous then what was the point of even trying to talk to her? She was taking the best of him and twisting it into something she could use as a weapon against him. It was painfully obvious to Rory that whatever had been between them, Amy now didn’t feel any of it.
***
Amy threw herself into her work. There was nothing else left for her now that she had let Rory go. She reminded herself this was the right thing to do. Rory was too damn noble to ever leave her just because she couldn't give him what he so desperately wanted, but she'd seen that deep sadness in his eyes when she'd insisted on no children, ever. He couldn't hide the pain he felt when he realised she was serious and Amy knew it was only a matter of time before he started resenting her and the kid-free life she now had to live. He had tried to close the gap, to pretend he didn’t care about children, but Amy was overwhelmed by the memory of that haunted look and terrified that she would back down so she froze him out. Backing out was impossible - one day, she knew, Rory would turn on her. He would throw his sacrifice in her face, she knew. How could he not? Having kids had been his reason for living since before she knew him. Rory had been open about wanting to be a dad from the minute they met when she was eight and crying over something Aunt Sharon had done. In many ways since then he’d played the fatherly protective figure to her lost child, and she knew he would be a brilliant dad. But not with her, never with her. One day he would realise what loving her would mean; what a lifetime of no children would mean, and he would leave her - physically or emotionally - and she would break. Better by far, she reasoned, to make the break herself, on her own terms.
Besides, Amy knew there was something seriously wrong with her. Wrong beyond the useless uterus which had been removed. Wrong beyond any differences that could be attributed to her travels with the Doctor, and she was terrified that she would pass that wrongness onto her children. River. Brilliant, brave, gorgeous River, her daughter, was so screwed up by having Amy for her mother that she was currently serving an extended term in prison for killing the Doctor. She had regenerated in front of Amy’s eyes as a parody of herself, and tried to kill the Doctor on the spot - and how could that not be Amy’s fault for not being there for her?
Much as Amy had loved Mels, her friend, she was broken in some very dark ways too. Whether that would have been different had Amy been able to bring up Melody she would never know. What she did know was that while she was gallivanting around the universe with the Doctor and her husband, her baby had been starving on the streets of New York and bringing herself up. Amy shuddered when she remembered some of Melody’s last words, ‘last time I did this I ended up a toddler in the middle of New York’ - how horrific that must have been, and her parents had just let it happen. That she couldn’t have done anything about it meant nothing to Amy. She should have tried. She had been conditioned to forget her child, to shrug off her loss as if it was perfectly normal to find out you’re pregnant, give birth and lose your child all within a mere few weeks.
Amy knew, intellectually, that her memory loss was not her own fault, (she suspected that whatever was used to dampen her fear and worry for her daughter had something to do with why they had been in America in 1969) and yet she still felt sunk in guilt that her child died and regenerated in New York, all alone and so very young - and even because she had been locked up in an orphanage before that even happened; healthy and looked after maybe, but never cared for, never knowing what it was like to feel a mother’s love. Worse, she had been conditioned herself, designed to lock onto the Doctor and hunt him to death. Amy’s baby had never had a chance at a real childhood, all because no-one had been bothered to save her. How … how could her mother have just laughed that off? What sort of person just went off playing with the universe when her own daughter was missing?
Even if she had known perfectly well that Melody became River and was perfectly fine - marvellous even - Amy felt like she should have been more worried somehow. That she wasn’t ate at her; that Rory wasn’t, when he’d never been through everything at Demon’s Run, infuriated her. Just as he should have noticed that Amy had been replaced, Rory should have been more forceful in searching for their baby. That he wasn’t, that he’d accepted the Doctor’s decision to let her make her own way to become the River he knew and loved, caused Amy her worst resentment towards him. She at least had a reason to have ignored the loss of her child, as inadequate as she found it. He didn’t - just his passivity, his willingness to let others take charge and make the decisions. She’d once loved that about him; now she hated it.
***
Sitting across from Amy with her lawyer dictating terms in the divorce was possibly the hardest thing Rory had ever done. Harder, by far, than being killed. Harder than facing a new monster every time the stepped onto the TARDIS. He felt angry and bitter. So much angrier than he had when they’d last been in the same space. Whatever pain he was feeling had coalesced into this vicious rage and he almost didn’t want to see her again. But masked in the anger was the memory of his old love. As passionately as Rory now hated Amy, he still loved her. And he did hate her for the insinuations she’d made, for shutting him out of the biggest decision of their life, for deciding for him that they would divorce. No, he realised as he looked across the table at her, he didn’t hate her. He hated the things she’d done and the things she’d said, but he loved her. If she had, by any flicker of an eyelash, shown that she regretted kicking him out he would have thrown the divorce papers out with the trash, lawyer or no lawyer, disillusioned hate or no disillusioned hate and started trying to heal whatever it was that had torn them apart. But she didn’t. She stared him down, her look challenging and distant. Still so distant. So Rory carefully hid his love behind his cold anger and stared defiantly right back at her.
***
The problem, as Amy had acknowledged to herself after Rory left that first day and which had been heightened by the encounter with their lawyers, was that she still loved him. Despite all those things that made her so angry and resentful, the mere memory of Rory’s smile could melt her heart. Even his stubborn, set jaw in the meeting was endearing. It reminded Amy of all the times he’d been stubbornly upset with something she and the Doctor were doing. In fact, the more days that passed since he had left, the more she realised what she had given up when she threw him out. There were no loving arms to fold herself into when she felt hurt. There was no-one she could look at and know his thoughts, no-one she could communicate with just by looking at him. She had forgotten, perhaps from long association, just how much Rory was there as her support, as the one who backed her up. She missed the way he told her how mental he thought her projects were, but followed her through them anyway. She missed the way his arms folded around her, how wrapped up in warmth she felt when his hands cradled her head and tangled in her hair. There was no getting away from it. She missed him, and she regretted the decision she had made.
They met again to sign the last of the divorce papers, and while she strutted into the room with bravado, the sight of him rattled her. She covered it as well as she could, speaking to him in dismissive tones all while trying to gauge how he was feeling. The man with the lawyer had been almost the way she remembered him. Hurt, maybe; angry, definitely, but still recognisably the Rory she had grown up with. This man, however, wasn’t her Rory. Something had hardened since that last meeting and this man was cold; he radiated contempt for her. ‘I thought you were just pouting at a camera,’ he’d spat as he left and she gasped, wounded. It was too different from the loving support he’d given when she first started modelling and she half reached out to him as he exited, but he refused to look at her. White faced, Amy allowed her makeup artist to lead her to the chair to be retouched. The half-articulated thought she’d had that she could call it off was erased in the wake of his cold anger. This man, this not-Rory, didn’t love her anymore; that much was obvious. You couldn’t look at someone the way he’d looked at her if you still had any good feelings towards them. Amy steeled herself. If he was going to be like that then she needed to nurture that resentment again - she couldn’t risk letting him see that she loved him still. The pain of his indifference was slicing at her, but she could ensure he never knew the effect he was having on her. Lost in her thoughts, Amy almost didn’t notice as the woman behind her began to transform.
***
The Doctor, now that the daleks seemed to be almost friendly, had time to look at his friends. Not always the most perceptive about human emotions, he nevertheless could tell there was something not quite right. In the past, Pond would light up when Rory turned up, her body would lean towards his even when he was distant from her … and he was seldom distant because Rory was always so revoltingly gooey where she was concerned. Too often, the Doctor was moved to leave them alone when Rory just looked at Amy, let alone when they began their kissy business. Today, however, Rory looked angry. Seriously angry. Not the type of angry he got when the Doctor put him in difficult situations. No, today’s anger was directed towards Amy - and she was acting as if Rory’s anger was normal. Standing back, just ignoring it the way she never would have before. His Pond would usually fight Rory, would fight for Rory. She’d fought, after all, when he was erased from existence. But not now. Now she was just … The Doctor couldn’t quite put his finger on what was off right now, but they were standing apart from each other. Rory even had his back to Amy (and when did he ever do that before?), and though the Doctor could tell Amy was talking to Rory, they weren’t at ease. Not the sort of not-at-ease which came from being surrounded by daleks, the sort of not-at-ease which came from being not-right with each other. Frowning at them, the Doctor adjusted his bowtie. He’d just have to do something about this. Ponds being not-right was just … not right.
The Doctor looked at them more closely. They were definitely emanating waves of hate at each other, but under it the Doctor could see something else. Hurt. Both of them were hurting. Hurting was good. The Doctor grinned. Hurting meant there was still love. Hurt love could be worked through. The Doctor could help here. Oh yes. Just look how well he’d done with Elizabeth Taylor. Oh, she’d kept getting into hurt love over and over, but the Doctor suspected she secretly enjoyed the hurting. The Ponds, however. The Ponds weren’t enjoying this. That much was obvious to him. So. Two missions. The Doctor rubbed his hands together with glee. Get in, get the forcefield down, save Amy and Rory’s marriage, get out. Easy! They had hours after all, and you could do so much in a few hours.
Several hours later, the Doctor was frustrated. He was making progress on getting the forcefield sorted, Soufflé Girl was doing a marvellous job with that; but talking to Pond about ‘the thing’ - as he’d taken to calling it in his head - hadn’t been fruitful. Had been the opposite of fruitful in fact. Very lacking in fruit. She seemed just so … accepting that they had just moved on. How was that even possible? They’d been all lovey when he’d dropped by to collect the ood. Okay, so the Doctor wasn’t very good with time and had no idea how long it had been for them since then, but it didn’t feel like long enough for them to be all not-Pondy. The Doctor huffed.
He was definitely going to have to do something about this. But what? He’d had some hope that this was just a blip when Amy had screamed Rory’s name no less than four times when they were dropped onto the planet, but then she’d been all ‘we split up, what can you do?’ and the tone of her voice had been so light and cheerful that it shocked the doctor who had seen his Pond depressed when Rory ceased to exist and had expected a similar reaction here. That she wasn’t was just so alien that it brought him up short. How do you help someone who so clearly doesn’t want to be helped? The Doctor wished he could talk to Rory - Rory had always been the one who was more open with his emotions and the more persuadable. Surely the Doctor would have got a better insight out of him.
But, the Doctor suddenly clapped his hands together, then into the air in a flash of insight; he could use the wrist band. His Pond would be safe, but if she and Rory thought she wasn’t then perhaps they would actually talk to each other. All he needed to do, really, was find Rory. For that he needed Soufflé Girl, who had suggested she knew where Rory was. When Amy was knocked out by the blast of the exploding dalek, the Doctor surreptitiously put the band on her wrist and swept her into his arms. As expected, when Rory saw him carrying a limp Amy his face whitened and his nursing instincts cut in. Excellent, the Doctor thought with a grin to himself as he watched Rory’s tender ministrations. Excellent Mr Pond. Always doing the right thing, the predictable thing. Then Amy slapped him, and the Doctor rolled his eyes. Pond, Pond, Pond. She obviously still cared - the panic over his safety when they got here proved that - but she was being stubborn. Well, the Doctor could only hope that Rory’s own stubbornness would kick in when he left them alone. He’d certainly acted nicely eager when the Doctor listed ‘save Amy and Rory’s marriage’ as one of his tasks for the day, which was promising even if Amy had immediately shot it down. The Doctor carefully hit them with the idea that they had to fight to keep Amy’s love alive and undeleted, then left them alone. It was up to them now.
***
Uncomfortable, Rory stared at Amy for a few long moments after the Doctor left. She was seated, almost consciously posed the way she would while modelling, with her back to him. He prowled a little behind her, trying to work out how to approach this conversation. He knew he needed to get her to let him put his wrist band on her, but he didn’t know how to get her to agree. This aloof, angry Amy was not one he remembered how to approach. In desperation, he tried to think what the Doctor would do.
‘OK, look at me,’ he said finally. Slowly, so slowly Rory wasn’t sure she was even listening to him, she turned towards him. He approached her cautiously, unwilling to be slapped again, but conscious of a need to get them both out of this alive. ‘I’m going to be logical. Cold and logical, okay? For both of our sakes, both of us, I’m going to take this off my wrist and put it on yours.’ Rory felt like he was being reasonable, but Amy was staring at him like he was crazy.
‘Why? Then they’ll just start converting you. That’s not better.’ Grinding his teeth in frustration, Rory spelled it out. She never used to be this … this ridiculously dense.
‘Yeah. But it will buy us time because it will take longer with me.’
‘Sorry, what?’
‘It subtracts love, that’s what she said.’
‘What’s that got to do with it? What does that even mean?’
‘It’s just arithmetic. It will take longer with me because … we both know, we’ve both always known, that ...’ He waited a beat or two for Amy to respond, to acknowledge the point so he wouldn’t have to say it aloud. He really didn’t want what had always been unspoken between them to be dragged into the open and laid out in all its ugliness, but she still looked unconvinced. Frustrated, he ground out, ‘Amy, basic fact of our relationship is that I love you more than you love me; which today is good news because it might just save both of our lives.’
‘How could you say that?’ What? What did she mean ‘how could he say that?’ It was obvious, had been obvious since the day she ran away before their wedding. In disbelief, Rory went with what seemed to him to be the most obvious example.
‘2000 years, waiting for you, outside a box says this is true, and since you know it’s true give me your arm. Amy!’
He winced internally as soon as he’d said it, knowing it would just prop up her idea that he was self-righteous. He sounded self-righteous even to himself. It didn’t change the fact that over the years he had always felt like he had more riding on their relationship than she did, but he should probably have approached it better. Even so, her slap was unexpected. Well, not exactly out of character - she’d always shown her affection through hitting him, after all, particularly if he’d worried her - but certainly not something he thought would result from such a self-evident declaration as ‘I love you more’ - it had, after all, always been that way. He’d never resented it, exactly, but it was always there as a background to their marriage.
‘Don’t you dare say that to me. Don’t you ever dare.’
Angry again, resentful of the sudden slap, he exclaimed, ‘Amy, you kicked me out.’
‘You want kids. You have always wanted kids, ever since you were a kid. And I can’t have them.’ She was crying now and his heart stopped and his angry resentment melted away. How could he ever have hated her? She looked so scared and vulnerable that even in this deeply, uncomfortably confronting situation, Rory couldn’t help but feel her pain.
‘I know.’ His voice was soft, pained.
‘Whatever they did to me at Demon’s Run … I can’t ever give you children. I didn’t kick you out. I gave you up.’
‘Amy, I … I don’t …’ I don’t understand, he thought as she carried on. If she ‘gave him up’ how had she been so cruel in their last fight? How had she been so cold? She hadn’t seemed like it was any sort of sacrifice for her. He’d lost all hope of any reconciliation because of how dark the fight had been, but Amy was so obviously in pain, so obviously felt all the weight of her sacrifice, that he couldn’t bear it. He moved close to her, still determined to get her to accept the band, but also driven by a need to comfort her.
‘Don’t you dare talk to me about waiting outside a box, because that is nothing, Rory, nothing compared to giving you up.’ Her voice was passionate, and they were so close now. He could have reached forward and kissed her from here, but the weight of her anger still hung between them and Rory had no idea where to go from here. She hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know, but the depth of her emotional response showed there was something here, something more than it appeared on the surface. He did the only thing he could think of to deal with his own roiling emotions.
‘Just give me your arm … let me put this on you,’ Rory said frantically, as he reached for her arm, while staring into her devastated face, knowing this wasn’t what she needed to hear right now, but having no idea what else to say.
‘No, get off,’ Amy cried. While he was aching with the pain of seeing her this way, Rory’s heart was blossoming. Here was his Amy again - the one who opened her emotions to him, who shared her fears, her worries. The Amy he’d been missing for so long. She was angry, she was bitter, yes, but she was finally sharing it with him. All of that made him even more single-minded in his determination to get her protected, to get through this moment so they could talk properly, so he added forcefully, ‘just give me your arm!’
She tried to pull herself out of his grip, with a fiercely determined, ‘don’t touch me!’ She’d begun to close down again, probably because he hadn’t responded as she expected.
However, he’d held on long enough to feel the smooth contours of the band on her wrist and as he noticed it so did she and her struggles ceased. After one long, stunned look at each other, they both stared down at Amy’s wrist in shock, wrung out from the emotional conversation and disbelieving of what they were seeing. The band was benignly glowing blue, already keeping Amy safe.
‘It’s the Doctor’s … when you were sleeping,’ Rory said, his frustration at the alien’s manipulations bleeding into his voice.
‘That timelord. What’s the bet he didn’t even need it,’ Amy said, half laughing through her tears. Rory stared at it for a long moment before backing away and shouting to the empty room around them, ‘then why didn’t he just tell us?’
But he knew why. The Doctor was an interfering old busybody, that’s why, and Rory had had enough. He moved away from Amy, giving her the room she so obviously wanted. While she’d opened to him for that one small moment, she was now withdrawn again. His heart heavy with fatigue, he picked up the control pad for the teleporter and focused his attention on that. He decided it was now up to Amy. He wouldn’t push her again - if she wanted to talk, she could approach him.
***
Amy was gasping from the exertion of trying not to let Rory see her cry, but the way he’d looked, his brow furrowed with pain, his eyes filled with that familiar empathy she’d so missed - he was breaking her heart even more, and she couldn’t stop the tears from falling. She’d fought to pull her wrist away from his grip in one brief flash of self-protection. It would be so easy to fall into his arms again, to drown in the promise of his eyes, but she couldn’t allow herself to do it. Nothing had changed, after all. There was still the knowledge that the lack of children could … would … cause problems in the end. Tears still running down her cheeks, she watched him pick up the controller and quietly move to the other side of the room.
He looked at her. One long, impassioned plea, then a drop of his eyes. He was asking her to trust him, to try to mend; promising too that he would walk away if she still wanted him to. All with just his eyes. God, how she’d missed this. An upwelling of tenderness towards him took her by surprise. He had learned, it seemed, not to push. Her mouth twitched into an unwilling smile as he fiddled with the buttons, not pressing them, just obviously and deliberately not looking at her. But this not-looking wasn’t resentful and filled with anger. She could feel his good will from here, how he was giving her the space she needed, and it warmed her. ‘Rory,’ she whispered to herself so he couldn’t hear. ‘Oh, Rory.’
She moved towards him, not sure whether she wanted to hug him or slap him again, her emotions were still churning so badly. Before she got there the whole room shuddered, throwing them around and raining debris from the ceiling. She looked up, frightened. Rory had grasped the control tightly and glanced at her.
‘How long can we wait?’ He said, slight panic in his voice as his eyes dropped down to the teleporter control, weighing up when to push the buttons. Clearly he didn’t want to stick around in a building that was disintegrating around them, but just as clearly he was determined to ensure the Doctor got safely out too. Amy knew, in a sudden flash, that she couldn’t let him go. Whatever was going on here they could get through it, so long as they stayed together.
‘The rest of our lives,’ she said, staring at him. I love you, the stare said. Please give me another chance. Please let us work this out. His head snapped up and he stared back, obviously trying to read her face as she was reading his.
‘Agreed,’ he whispered softly, answering her unspoken plea. I love you too, I miss you. She moved to him, grabbed his head and kissed him thoroughly. Something broken in her heart began to heal as he responded. She may not have it all worked out, she may still not trust that he wouldn’t resent her for her lack of children, she may still have a million seething resentments towards him, but she did know that being with him felt so much more right than not being with him. They were still kissing when they materialised in the TARDIS. She finally stepped back and took a breath. He looked as dazed as she felt. She grinned at him, already feeling more like her old self.
The doctor dropped them off back at their house, which should have annoyed Amy, who had, after all been stolen from her workplace by the daleks, but for some reason felt right. After waving him off, Amy turned to Rory. The intense look in his eyes made her heart skip a beat. Again he communicated without speaking. This time: Can I come in? Can we try again? Do you really still love me? Did the kiss mean anything, or …? Amy nodded, elated, and she couldn’t keep the elation off her face even as she saw him celebrating outside. It should have annoyed her. Mere weeks ago it would have, but now it was so very, very Rory that she laughed. ‘I can see you,’ she called, a smile in her voice, and he came to her. Finally, after so much time, he was back where he belonged and her heart no longer felt so tiny within her.
Amy grabbed him, intending to pick back up where they left off in the TARDIS, but he stopped her. Hurt, she frowned at him.
‘What?’ She couldn’t keep the pain from her voice, and she saw him wince.
‘We need to talk, Amy. Really talk, I mean. I … I don’t want to go through anything like that again. And for that I think we need to be more open about what happened, about how this happened. I just …’ he flapped his hands awkwardly, obviously grasping for some word, something to explain himself.
‘I know,’ she whispered back, nodding. ‘I feel it too.’ That he felt as fragile about this as she did actually helped Amy calm herself. Always before, he had been the sure one. Knowing that they were on the same level gave her the courage to explain in more detail how she’d been feeling about children, about adoption, about even being around children. She’d taken his hand and drawn him to the couch and she could feel him now, clutching it like it was a lifeline as he took in with horror what she was saying. As she detailed the utter loathing she had for herself over her complete failure as a mother, as a woman, her voice shaky but tear-free, she could see his face getting greener and greener. She even explained how she’d been feeling about him and his part in the whole thing, and he blanched, his distress clear on his face. He’d clearly had no inkling of the depth of what she was feeling (and some of that, she admitted wryly, was because she had refused to let him in) but he didn’t try to interrupt, not even to defend himself. He let her talk herself out and then he pulled her to him in a long, loving hug. And here were those arms she’d missed, the hand in her hair cradling her head as if to shelter her from every bad thing and suddenly she was crying again. But the tears were cathartic and she leaned into him as she sobbed.
‘I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.’ He repeated it over and over, fiercely whispering it into her ear, clutching her so tightly she almost couldn’t breathe. For the first time she believed him, but she still needed one final promise.
‘You have to promise me, Rory. You have to …’ she sobbed out between breaths.
‘Promise what?’
‘That if you ever, and I mean ever, start to resent me for not wanting children, you have to tell me.’ He opened his mouth to protest, and she pushed against him. ‘I’m serious. I don’t ever want you to be unhappy because of me. I couldn’t bear it, so you have to tell me.’
He stared into her eyes, listening to what she wasn’t saying. I need you to do this. I’m still so scared you will leave me. I need this. And he nodded. ‘I promise,’ he whispered and then kissed her, sealing it.
He pulled back a little and looked at her. ‘You have to promise me something too,’ he said, his voice pained.
Slight panic gripped her heart and she gripped his hand tightly. ‘What?’
‘You need to promise that, no matter how you feel, you don’t shut me out like that again. We need to talk about this stuff before we do something stupid - like divorce when we didn’t need to.’ He smiled at her, running his hand along her jaw. His eyes were speaking again. I almost broke when I thought you didn’t love me. Don’t make me do it again, please? She gave him a watery smile in return.
‘Agreed,’ she said, and leaned forward to seal her side of the deal.
As she allowed herself to sink into his arms again, revelling in the solid feel of them around her, Amy knew they weren’t done talking, though grateful that Rory seemed to know that now wasn’t the right time for him to air all his feelings, but she also knew they had time. So long as they were together - and kept talking - they could work through this.