Relativity - Fic, spoilers to end of TGWW. Amy/Rory, mentions of Eleven
What am I supposed to say? She’s gazing up at me in that wide-eyed way she has, because underneath those come-on outfits and all that attitude she’s looking for the big-brother figure she can trust, and he wants me to lie to her. Not just that, but he won’t even tell me which lie to tell.
Have you ever noticed how he doesn’t make eye contact? Always staring at some screen or other, or dancing and twirling around the controls (you saw the way she followed him out before, didn’t you, copying those little twirls he does?) I couldn’t live like that. Can’t. Won’t. I don’t want the kind of relationship when you can’t look into someone’s eyes and tell them what really went on. Particularly with Amy.
But now, whatever I tell her or tell myself about what did or didn’t happen, who did or didn’t exist, when I look into Amy’s eyes I won’t just see the eyes that I see now. I’ll see the eyes of a woman who’s been on the run for 36 years, eyes that have had any innocence and trust they ever possessed beaten out of them, along with the laughter and the hope and the belief that anyone will ever save her. That’s Amy, too. And I want to forget, but I never will.
Even if he’s right about her ceasing to exist once that time stream gets written over, or whatever he’d call it - and I don’t believe anything he tells me any more, in fact I’m not sure I ever did - even if he’s right, she exists in my mind. My memories. She’ll bleed into every moment she gave me with this Amy I’m with now; she’ll steal our future even as she’s giving it back to me.
You have to forget. You have to stop thinking about it, or you’d go mad. I think the Doctor’s more than half mad himself. Nobody ever stops him. Maybe his people, the ones he never talks about, could stop him once. Maybe they gave him something more useful to do than rattling around the universe charming humans into travelling with him and then destroying their lives.
How many have there been? Loads - Amy says she saw them all once, brilliant, brave, young and female (mostly). Where did they go? He never says. But I can guess. I used to think they all died. Couple of them did, probably, at least. But not all of them. For every one that died, there were probably two or three he just left somewhere, still out there waiting for him to come back and save them, and three or four that said “I can’t do this any more,” and walked.
Most of the time I’m with him I feel like I’m in an Escher print, walking up a flight of stairs that feels normal when all the time there’s someone upside down, going the other way, defying my gravity, their feet touching the same bit of ground as mine and thinking they’re the normal ones.
Normal. Some of us - Amy, more than anybody because he got to her young - think there’s nothing worse than normal, never knowing about all the cool stuff there is out there. But us humans - I can’t speak for the others - we’ve evolved to cope with normal. I’m not saying we can’t change. Once people didn’t see what was wrong with slavery, or women not owning property, or ripping out people’s hearts to keep the Sun God happy. But there’s only so much changing we can do, in our little human lives, before we don’t know what’s up and what’s down any more.
I wonder how many of those people he travelled with knew when they’d reached that point - and stopped.
I imagine them all out there, waiting, telling themselves he’ll come back, when in fact he’s forgotten all about them. Maybe he’s had to. How else do you handle the guilt? Sometimes I wonder if he runs to get away from that. Guilt. Memories. Responsibility. Amy would say we shouldn’t make it any worse for him than it already is. I’m not sure. He brings it on himself a lot of the time.
Charm is a funny thing. It’s not as if he looks gorgeous. I’d find it easier to hate him if he did. Not that it’s all that difficult now. Not since what happened with the baby. I can’t bring myself to use her name. Once I do that, she’s real.
I keep thinking about Amy. Amy No 1 on the top of the stairs, Amy No 2 on the bottom, thinking she’s the one who’s real and it’s everybody else defying the laws of physics.
So we wave a magic wand and poof! She doesn’t exist. Except once we do that, how do we know someone hasn’t done the same somewhere else, and we don’t officially exist, but it feels real enough to us while we’re living it? Nobody told us we didn’t exist any more, so we go right on doing it. Believing in our own reality because, no matter how hellish our lives are, we aren’t set up to believe in anything else.
I can’t do this any more. Except I have to, because if I walk (and even if Amy would come with me) I lose the only chance I’ll ever have to see my child again.
What’s the worst thing that could happen? I could become him. I know exactly how it could happen; all I have to do is lie. Rule number one. The Doctor lies.
But what else can you do?
Have you ever noticed how he doesn’t make eye contact? Always staring at some screen or other, or dancing and twirling around the controls (you saw the way she followed him out before, didn’t you, copying those little twirls he does?) I couldn’t live like that. Can’t. Won’t. I don’t want the kind of relationship when you can’t look into someone’s eyes and tell them what really went on. Particularly with Amy.
But now, whatever I tell her or tell myself about what did or didn’t happen, who did or didn’t exist, when I look into Amy’s eyes I won’t just see the eyes that I see now. I’ll see the eyes of a woman who’s been on the run for 36 years, eyes that have had any innocence and trust they ever possessed beaten out of them, along with the laughter and the hope and the belief that anyone will ever save her. That’s Amy, too. And I want to forget, but I never will.
Even if he’s right about her ceasing to exist once that time stream gets written over, or whatever he’d call it - and I don’t believe anything he tells me any more, in fact I’m not sure I ever did - even if he’s right, she exists in my mind. My memories. She’ll bleed into every moment she gave me with this Amy I’m with now; she’ll steal our future even as she’s giving it back to me.
You have to forget. You have to stop thinking about it, or you’d go mad. I think the Doctor’s more than half mad himself. Nobody ever stops him. Maybe his people, the ones he never talks about, could stop him once. Maybe they gave him something more useful to do than rattling around the universe charming humans into travelling with him and then destroying their lives.
How many have there been? Loads - Amy says she saw them all once, brilliant, brave, young and female (mostly). Where did they go? He never says. But I can guess. I used to think they all died. Couple of them did, probably, at least. But not all of them. For every one that died, there were probably two or three he just left somewhere, still out there waiting for him to come back and save them, and three or four that said “I can’t do this any more,” and walked.
Most of the time I’m with him I feel like I’m in an Escher print, walking up a flight of stairs that feels normal when all the time there’s someone upside down, going the other way, defying my gravity, their feet touching the same bit of ground as mine and thinking they’re the normal ones.
Normal. Some of us - Amy, more than anybody because he got to her young - think there’s nothing worse than normal, never knowing about all the cool stuff there is out there. But us humans - I can’t speak for the others - we’ve evolved to cope with normal. I’m not saying we can’t change. Once people didn’t see what was wrong with slavery, or women not owning property, or ripping out people’s hearts to keep the Sun God happy. But there’s only so much changing we can do, in our little human lives, before we don’t know what’s up and what’s down any more.
I wonder how many of those people he travelled with knew when they’d reached that point - and stopped.
I imagine them all out there, waiting, telling themselves he’ll come back, when in fact he’s forgotten all about them. Maybe he’s had to. How else do you handle the guilt? Sometimes I wonder if he runs to get away from that. Guilt. Memories. Responsibility. Amy would say we shouldn’t make it any worse for him than it already is. I’m not sure. He brings it on himself a lot of the time.
Charm is a funny thing. It’s not as if he looks gorgeous. I’d find it easier to hate him if he did. Not that it’s all that difficult now. Not since what happened with the baby. I can’t bring myself to use her name. Once I do that, she’s real.
I keep thinking about Amy. Amy No 1 on the top of the stairs, Amy No 2 on the bottom, thinking she’s the one who’s real and it’s everybody else defying the laws of physics.
So we wave a magic wand and poof! She doesn’t exist. Except once we do that, how do we know someone hasn’t done the same somewhere else, and we don’t officially exist, but it feels real enough to us while we’re living it? Nobody told us we didn’t exist any more, so we go right on doing it. Believing in our own reality because, no matter how hellish our lives are, we aren’t set up to believe in anything else.
I can’t do this any more. Except I have to, because if I walk (and even if Amy would come with me) I lose the only chance I’ll ever have to see my child again.
What’s the worst thing that could happen? I could become him. I know exactly how it could happen; all I have to do is lie. Rule number one. The Doctor lies.
But what else can you do?