Fic: when I come to terms with this (DW, Amy/Rory, River, Eleven)
Title: when I come to terms with this
Author: aces
Fandom, characters: Doctor Who, Amy/Rory, River, Eleven
Word count: approx. 4200 words
Warning(s): spoilery for all of the new 5th and 6th series; will be completely jossed by the 7th series whenever it starts.
A/N: This story started for two reasons: I thought of the first line, and I totally misheard a line in Tori Amos’ Parasol off the Beekeeper album.
Summary: It’s a sort of fairy tale, if you squint right.
Once upon a time there lived a fairy princess named Amelia Pond, and she lived happily ever after.
This may or may not be her story.
*
the wizard
“Everybody has imaginary friends,” Amy scorned as she stalked down the road, and Rory nodded dutifully as he hurried to catch up, and Mels rolled her eyes and gnawed on a Mars bar and apparently didn’t care if she fell behind or not, though she hadn’t so far. “Everybody, if they have any sort of imagination.”
“Right,” Rory said, “but they don’t tend to insist their imaginary friends are real.” He blinked. “Nor do they usually still have them when they’re 15 years old.”
It was Amy’s turn to roll her eyes; honestly, sometimes Rory was so thick. “It’s not like he’s actually my imaginary friend anymore, though, is it?” she said reasonably. “I haven’t even seen him since I was 7.”
Rory was quite sure there was something wrong there with her logic, but he was damned if he was going to try to reason it out or tell her what it was.
“Crap imaginary friend,” Mels put in her two cents. “You could at least have imagined Sean Paul or somebody cool.”
*
the spinning wheel
“What on earth did you do this time?” Rory asked in exasperation when he showed up at Amy’s front door. “Hello, Mrs. Pond, sir,” he added, nodding to Amy’s parents as she tugged him past them upstairs to the loo.
“Hello, Rory!” Mr. Pond always sounded so cheerful, Rory found it a bit unnerving. Amy found it hilarious. He’d told her once he was waiting for the moment when Mr. Pond would snap, bring out a shotgun and demand to know what Rory’s intentions were toward his daughter. She used to tease him about that, before-well. Before.
“Nothing, just patched up the shed in the yard. I was using the hammer and-missed.” Amy sounded indifferent, then hissed in pain when Rory took her hand to examine it more closely in the bathroom light. She somehow restrained herself from whacking him over the head with her free, non-injured hand. “Ow!”
“You deserve it,” he said, unmoved, and she glared down at the top of his head. He flicked open the mirror cabinet and reached for the first aid kit without bothering to look; it was where it had been the last time Amy injured herself, and the time before that. He’d told her, only half-joking, that he was getting his nursing qualification because of her. “It looks like you also missed with the nail.”
“I might have,” Amy tossed her head. He raised his eyes to look at her for a moment, and she rolled her eyes, and he shook his head and looked back down to disinfect and bandage one of her wounds. There wasn’t a whole lot he could do for the bruise on her knuckle, but he was pretty sure she hadn’t chipped a bone or anything at least. When he happened to look up again, briefly, she was smiling down at him. She’d found herself doing that a lot lately, it was inexplicable.
“What?” he said, smiling reflexively back, and she leant in to kiss the side of his mouth, and his heart always stopped when she did that.
“I’m so glad I have you, Nurse Rory,” she said.
*
a prince charming
Sometimes when Amy slept in the TARDIS, she dreamed about a man. She jokingly thought of him as Price Charming, to go with her wizard in a police box, but his nose was far too ridiculous for that (even though she could never actually remember what he looked like when she woke), and the way he kissed her in her dreams was no chaste kiss from a handsome prince.
She always woke up with tears drying on her face after these dreams, and she didn’t understand why.
She asked the Doctor about it exactly once. He got an uncomfortable look on his face, scratched his head, and took her to the Musée d’Orsay.
She wasn’t really the marrying kind, she told Vincent, but she secretly suspected she just hadn’t found the right person yet.
*
(There were monsters, of course. Any fairy tale princess’ story involves monsters, and dreams, and sleeping for an age, waiting for her Prince Charming to wake her up.
Amelia Pond dealt with plenty of monsters.)
*
They stood at the altar. Her parents were behind her, his behind him, Mels not there at all of course, and she wore little baby roses in her veil and fabulous red shoes on her feet that would probably come off the instant they made it to the reception, and he didn’t look worried for once, for once in his stupid life he did not look in the least worried, and it took all her self-control to wait until they’d said their “I dos” and the minister gave them permission to kiss.
She was worried. She was nervous as hell, and terrified, and certain that she was forgetting the most important thing in the world, but she looked into his calm and happy face, and she could forget all that, at least for a moment.
She stopped just before leaning in to kiss him, and he looked at her inquiringly, and she said, “Love you,” and he grinned, and they didn’t even hear the cheering behind them when they started snogging.
*
Once upon a time there lived a fairytale Prince Charming, with the not-so-fairytale name of Rory Williams, and he lived happily ever after.
This may or may not be his story.
*
a sleeping beauty
1940 was the single longest year in Rory’s life. Other years had been tedious-he’d despaired for entire decades back in the ninth and tenth centuries, and let’s not get started on 1835, and bits of 1666 had been deeply tense for a plastic man like himself-but 1940 gnawed at the back of Rory’s mind, constant fear that only dropped to the pit of his stomach as dread when he heard the first air raid sirens.
1996 was the second longest year. It had got increasingly hard, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to behave himself, to not take a train and a bus up to Leadworth and-see. He knew he couldn’t do it. Even without having seen the Doctor for millennia-and he hadn’t, not a single glimpse of the Time Lord-he could imagine what that would do to the timelines. What timelines were left in this stupidly tiny universe.
He’d had a lot of time to read and think in the past few centuries.
And then one night while he was working his shift at the museum he heard and felt the Pandorica open.
It was the longest five minutes he could ever remember living, that walk from the Egyptian gallery to where the Pandorica was on display. His speed slowed and slowed, and he feared he’d walked into some sort of trap, time quicksand or something, and he was going to drown before he even got there, and he wondered if it was his own dread that slowed him up.
None of that mattered when he saw her standing there, though.
*
the last centurion
They were watching the Laurel & Hardy sketch again, the Doctor dancing rings around the comedians, Amy sitting up on the sofa and Rory’s head in her lap. He kept jiggling every time he laughed at the jokes that still didn’t make any sense to her, and she kept running a hand absently through his short, fine brown hair.
At some point, he quieted, and she looked down, and he was staring at the wall rather than the telly. “Mmm?” she said, and poked him in the shoulder.
“Do you realize,” he said thoughtfully, “I’ve spent loads more centuries as a warrior than I ever did a nurse?”
She found his hand on the sofa and squeezed it, as tightly as she could. “I could go break a limb if you like?” she said, as lightly as she could, and he finally looked away from the wall to look at her, snort and shake his head, and lean up to give her a kiss.
She was strongly tempted to ask how up-to-date he felt about his OB/GYN nursing skills, but every time she thought about it, the fear overwhelmed her again.
Their magic wizard was going to have to show his face sometime, she knew, and then she could figure out what the hell she would tell Rory.
*
the changeling
“It’s a lot to take in,” Rory explained to River, who nodded patiently as she led him and Amy into their house. Amy hadn’t said anything since Demon’s Run, since the Doctor had disappeared into his box, promising to find her daughter, even though her daughter was standing right there in front of her and purposefully searching through her kitchen for the tea things, acting as if she’d been here before. “I mean, I’ve had to take a lot in over the years, right? You have no idea how weird Middle English was to somebody used to modern English and Latin-but your daughter is an adult woman who calls the Doctor ‘sweetie,’ well, that takes a little getting used to. Right?”
“Rory,” Amy said.
“I mean, I am really, really glad you grew up,” Rory was telling River earnestly, and she was still nodding patiently as she boiled water and poured milk and sugar into cups and dug the spiced black tea out of the cabinet, the really strong stuff they kept for emergencies like in-law visits and the internet not working again. “I am so glad you grew up to be this lovely, capable, intelligent woman, even if it does completely unnerve me now every time I hear you call the Doctor ‘sweetie,’ but-”
“Rory,” Amy said.
Rory shook his head, slumped down at the kitchen island. He’d lost his cape somewhere along the way, along with his weaponry, but he still wore most of his Last Centurion uniform, and it was like that Halloween a few years ago, after the party, sitting at her parents’ dining room table (only it hadn’t been her parents’ house then, it had been Aunt Sharon’s, and Aunt Sharon was somehow never around) and drinking some stiff tea in order to sober up before driving himself back home.
“Here, darling,” River said softly, sliding one of the tea mugs across the island to Rory. He lifted the mug for a restorative sip. His hand was shaking, and he had to set the mug down before it reached his lips.
“Rory,” Amy said, and Rory finally looked up, focused on her. River glanced at her quickly and looked away again, mouth twisted down, busying herself once more with the tea things, pouring herself a cup.
“Amy,” Rory said, his face crumpling at the sight of her. He stood up and opened his arms wide, and Amy walked into his embrace, and that was when she started howling.
Eventually, eventually, they found themselves huddled together under the kitchen island. River was seated cross-legged across from them, leaning back against the sofa, her eyes lowered. Three mugs of tea were lined up in front of her neatly.
“I’m sorry, mother,” she said quietly, not looking up but still conscious that the emotional storm was momentarily in abeyance, and they were aware of a little more of the world around them. “I’m sorry, father.”
Amy crawled out of Rory’s lap and across the small space to hug her daughter fiercely. “No,” she said, face tear-streaked and splotchy, and Rory sniffled mightily behind her, and under other circumstances she might have started laughing. “No,” she said, arm still around River’s neck, and she reached behind her blindly, Rory catching her fingers and giving her hand a steadying squeeze. They stayed like that for a long time, anchoring each other.
They had to reheat the tea.
*
doppelgangers
“You keep showing up in multiples,” Rory told Amy the night after they’d left an older version of her to die on Apalapucia. “One of you isn’t enough for the universe?”
She smiled at him, a little sadly, and he couldn’t even bring himself to smile back. They were going to break, he thought. One of these days, something newer and stranger and more outlandish and horrible would happen, and one or both of them would break.
He kept changing his mind about who it would be. Usually he thought it would be himself, but then he would remember something from the past two millennia, or the way Amy had howled the day they’d lost their baby, and he would wonder again who would break first.
“Timey wimey,” he said, and she turned and sat down next to him on the bed, resting her head on his shoulder.
“Timey wimey,” she agreed with a sigh.
*
(Princes Charming fight the monsters. They wake the fairy tale princesses from their dreams, they defeat the bad things, and they make the world safe for happy-ever-afters.
Rory Williams was glad he didn’t have to fight the monsters alone.)
*
Amy bought a lot of Chinese lanterns and fairy lights. She persuaded Rory to help her string them all around their new backyard, and he found himself dangling dangerously off the ladder while his wife said from below, “No, a couple branches over, don’t you see it? It needs to go there.”
She took to sitting outside under the fairy lights every night, waiting. She said she wasn’t, but he knew, and most nights he joined her out there. He thought about installing a really long extension cord for the telly, or at least for a reading lamp. But he could hear the game, or music, from the stereo just inside the house if he cracked open the glass door, and most of the time that was enough.
One day she called him at work and told him about the freak meteor shower, and his heart started beating hard, and it didn’t stop until he got home and peeked out the back and saw his wife and daughter hugging each other and jumping up and down.
Of course, it meant the Doctor was still his son-in-law.
Rory poured a third glass of wine.
*
Once upon a time, as they do, a fairytale Princess and a fairytale Prince Charming got married and lived happily ever after. This particular couple, by the names of Amelia Pond and Rory Williams, conceived a child in a blue police box that traveled through time and space, and when she was born, they named her Melody Pond.
This may or may not be their story.
*
the wizard’s apprentice
“Mother?”
Amy sat at the table in her backyard, staring into the distance. Another bottle-red this time-stood on the table, three glasses waiting.
River stopped in front of her mother, tentatively. “Mother?” she said again, even more gently than she had the first time.
“Do you know a woman named Sarah Jane Smith?” Amy asked, focusing with difficulty on her daughter.
River nodded.
“She contacted Rory and me,” Amy said. “She needed our help, our particular help.”
“Timey wimey,” River guessed, sitting down next to her mother and pouring the wine into the three glasses. The bottle had already been opened.
“Timey wimey,” Amy confirmed. Rory walked out of the house then, looking even more beleaguered than usual, and River stood up to say hello, and he walked right up to her and hugged her tightly.
“Oh no,” River said in sudden understanding, and she hugged her father back as tightly as she could.
“Can you tell us about her?” Amy said from somewhere behind them, and her voice quavered a little. Rory released his daughter, and River handed him a glass. “What you know?”
Rory sat down heavily next to his wife, and River looked down at them both sadly. “I didn’t know her nearly as well or as long as the Doctor did,” she pointed out. “But yes, I can tell you a little.”
Amy reached out and took Rory’s hand. “Good,” she said. “Good.”
*
at the ball
They were dancing, the next time River dropped by, though it might have been earlier in her timeline than theirs. Some of their guests were dancing with them-Snow Patrol playing on the speakers connected to somebody’s iPad-while others sat about at the tables and chairs under the fairy lights, drinking and chatting and laughing. Rory swung Amy out grandly, and she giggled at him as he swung her back in, and he threw his own head back and laughed.
“We can’t,” the Doctor said, coming to a halt and pushing his heels in when River tugged. “No, River, it’s not right, look, they’re happy and with friends-”
“And their daughter and her plus-one can’t join their party?” River said.
“Not when none of the guests even know they have a full-grown daughter,” the Doctor said, and he folded his arms. “Not when the Raggedy Doctor has supposedly died for good.”
“Darling, they know,” River said patiently. “I told them.”
“River!”
River rolled her eyes. “Honestly,” she said, and dragged him into the backyard.
Amy squealed, Rory laughed again-he didn’t look worried, not the least bit, not even when the Doctor came up and shook his hand and possibly stammered uncomfortably-and they went around introducing their dear friends River and-Doctor Smith, but you can just call him the Doctor, thanks.
“What’s the occasion?” River asked some time later, when they were all taking a break in the dancing (the Doctor’s moves were still…astonishing) and partaking in some refreshment under the fairy lights.
“Amy landed a new national modeling contract,” Rory said, and his hand slipped for his wife’s under the table. “And I got accepted into medical school.”
The Doctor stared at him, and Rory looked him right in the eye. “I like helping people more than I like hurting them,” he said with finality, and the Doctor stood up and walked around the table and enveloped Rory in a massive hug.
“Oh,” Rory said, muffled.
The Doctor kissed the top of his forehead. “You’re brilliant, Rory Pond, you are,” he said, pumping Rory’s hand. And then he walked around and gave Amy a hug and a kiss. “And you, Amy Williams, honestly, the pair of you, I don’t-”
“I’m still your mother-in-law,” Amy said, “and you still don’t bring my daughter round often enough for tea.”
The Doctor froze. River snickered into her beer. The Doctor glanced back at Rory, and Rory quirked his eyebrows up, unhelpfully. Amy punched the Doctor in the stomach, lightly, and he looked at her again. “Come round more often,” she told him, looking up at him and smiling a little. “We miss you.”
They stayed after all the other guests had left, in order to help clean up. “Wow,” Rory blinked, surveying the kitchen and back yard in shock. “I think it looks nicer now even then it had before we started.”
The Doctor buffed his nails modestly. River rolled her eyes. “Come along, you,” she said. “I should be getting back, I’m sure they’ve missed me at the prison.” She hugged and kissed her parents. “Love you,” she told them.
“Love you,” they told her, and gave her another hug and kiss for good measure. The Doctor lurked in the background uncertainly until Amy dragged him over for a hug and kiss as well, and then Rory hugged him, and the Doctor grinned at him shyly, and Rory laughed again, and he still didn’t look a bit worried.
They waved from their front stoop, as the Doctor and River disappeared into the TARDIS.
*
an even bigger adventure
Sometimes River felt like she knew what was going to happen. Well, yes, of course she did; quite often she did know what was going to happen, but sometimes walking into a situation about which she had no prior knowledge because nobody could give her the spoilers for it-sometimes she still felt like she’d already been here and done this.
She would have to ask the Doctor sometime if his people had a word for that.
Amy was seated at her little table in her backyard; she usually was, or Rory, when River dropped by. No bottle this time, but there was a pot of tea going cold. River sat down behind it and poured herself a mug; Amy was holding one already, forgotten in her hands.
“I’m pregnant,” Amy said.
River felt a rush of-emotion, something she could not define, could not even tell if it was positive or negative. “Does Rory know?” was the first thing she said.
Amy nodded. She half-smiled, looked down at her tea. “He did the test to confirm. It seemed-appropriate.”
“Are you-happy?” River asked, carefully.
Amy looked at her, then, finally. “I’m terrified,” she said. “Rory’s wandering about like a headless chicken, scratching his head and being useless. And I’m no better.” She sat forward, put her mug on the table. “We haven’t done this before.”
River grinned, suddenly, and the emotion she felt resolved itself into joy. “Oh mum,” she said, and took Amy’s hand. “Of course you did. Granted, I had a few little bumps along the way, but I turned out alright, didn’t I?”
“No, no, River, it’s not the same.” Amy’s hand tightened in River’s, and River squeezed back in response. “A proper baby. Do you know how crap I am at babies? Any of my friends ask me to change their kids’ nappies and I am out the door faster than you can say poo.”
“It’s a good thing you married Rory, then, isn’t it?” River sounded completely reasonable, and Amy glared repressively at her daughter, and River stood up to hug her mother fiercely.
“You have faced Angels, Daleks, vampire fish, and losing me,” River told her quietly. “You and father will be brilliant linear parents.” She stood back and grinned down at her mother, so wide she thought her face might split in two, but she couldn’t help it; she really did know what was coming after all. “And I get to have a baby sibling.”
Amy laughed a little at that, and sobbed, and River wrapped the blanket she’d thrown over herself before River arrived more securely around her mother’s shoulders. She stayed a little while longer, cheering her mother up and calming her down, and then she went through the house to leave, just as Rory came home from doing the shopping, bags filling his hands.
River helped him set the bags down and put the perishables away, and then she gave him a bear hug. “Congratulations, father,” she said, and she kissed him on his silly big nose, and the worried look on his face disappeared in a surprised but pleased smile. “Now go out there and keep mother cheered up, would you? She needs it.”
He squeezed her hand. “I’m glad you could come,” he said. “We both needed to see you, today of all days.”
River could feel tears pricking at her eyes, but she didn’t mind. “Somehow,” she said, “I knew.”
*
Father stood in the backyard under the sunlight, raising his son up and down, up and down, with accompanying silly noises, to the squealing delight of the toddler. Mother was dancing with her daughter, weaving and jigging and skipping, their own laughter commingling with the baby’s.
River paused at the back gate, watching the little tableau, suddenly shy. Rory caught sight of her first and yelled. “River!” he said. “Come meet your sister and brother!”
Amy whirled around, her daughter running into the back of her legs, and River burst into laughter. Red hair, red hair everywhere, at least between mother and daughter; the baby’s hair was blond and would probably shade into something of the brownish tint that was Rory’s, or maybe stay the dirty blonde that was River’s. She was thinking about dying it, though. Red, like her mother’s hair.
“River!” Amy said. “It has been ages, where have you been?”
“Prison,” River said, “traveling. Teaching-I’m a professor now, isn’t that marvelous? You know.” She knelt down and shook her six-year-old sister’s hand gravely. “Hello, Sharon,” she said. “You haven’t met me yet, but I’m your sister River.” She stood up again and took the baby from Rory’s hands, spinning him above her. He gurgled in delight, instantly accepting her as one of his own. “Hello, Vincent,” she sing-songed and lowered him to kiss his forehead.
Amy and Rory were eyeing her suspiciously. River smiled innocently, and they simultaneously rolled their eyes. River laughed.
“You’re staying for lunch,” Amy said, in a tone that would brook no argument. “And dinner. And to read bedtime stories. And to sleep on our couch.”
“It’s a very comfortable couch,” Rory interjected quickly. “We made sure of that when we gave up the guest room.”
River laughed again. “I know,” she told them fondly, “I know it very well.”
*
Once upon a time there was a family, who lived happily ever after.
This is their story, if you feel so inclined.
END
This entry was originally posted here. You can comment there or here.
Author: aces
Fandom, characters: Doctor Who, Amy/Rory, River, Eleven
Word count: approx. 4200 words
Warning(s): spoilery for all of the new 5th and 6th series; will be completely jossed by the 7th series whenever it starts.
A/N: This story started for two reasons: I thought of the first line, and I totally misheard a line in Tori Amos’ Parasol off the Beekeeper album.
Summary: It’s a sort of fairy tale, if you squint right.
Once upon a time there lived a fairy princess named Amelia Pond, and she lived happily ever after.
This may or may not be her story.
*
the wizard
“Everybody has imaginary friends,” Amy scorned as she stalked down the road, and Rory nodded dutifully as he hurried to catch up, and Mels rolled her eyes and gnawed on a Mars bar and apparently didn’t care if she fell behind or not, though she hadn’t so far. “Everybody, if they have any sort of imagination.”
“Right,” Rory said, “but they don’t tend to insist their imaginary friends are real.” He blinked. “Nor do they usually still have them when they’re 15 years old.”
It was Amy’s turn to roll her eyes; honestly, sometimes Rory was so thick. “It’s not like he’s actually my imaginary friend anymore, though, is it?” she said reasonably. “I haven’t even seen him since I was 7.”
Rory was quite sure there was something wrong there with her logic, but he was damned if he was going to try to reason it out or tell her what it was.
“Crap imaginary friend,” Mels put in her two cents. “You could at least have imagined Sean Paul or somebody cool.”
*
the spinning wheel
“What on earth did you do this time?” Rory asked in exasperation when he showed up at Amy’s front door. “Hello, Mrs. Pond, sir,” he added, nodding to Amy’s parents as she tugged him past them upstairs to the loo.
“Hello, Rory!” Mr. Pond always sounded so cheerful, Rory found it a bit unnerving. Amy found it hilarious. He’d told her once he was waiting for the moment when Mr. Pond would snap, bring out a shotgun and demand to know what Rory’s intentions were toward his daughter. She used to tease him about that, before-well. Before.
“Nothing, just patched up the shed in the yard. I was using the hammer and-missed.” Amy sounded indifferent, then hissed in pain when Rory took her hand to examine it more closely in the bathroom light. She somehow restrained herself from whacking him over the head with her free, non-injured hand. “Ow!”
“You deserve it,” he said, unmoved, and she glared down at the top of his head. He flicked open the mirror cabinet and reached for the first aid kit without bothering to look; it was where it had been the last time Amy injured herself, and the time before that. He’d told her, only half-joking, that he was getting his nursing qualification because of her. “It looks like you also missed with the nail.”
“I might have,” Amy tossed her head. He raised his eyes to look at her for a moment, and she rolled her eyes, and he shook his head and looked back down to disinfect and bandage one of her wounds. There wasn’t a whole lot he could do for the bruise on her knuckle, but he was pretty sure she hadn’t chipped a bone or anything at least. When he happened to look up again, briefly, she was smiling down at him. She’d found herself doing that a lot lately, it was inexplicable.
“What?” he said, smiling reflexively back, and she leant in to kiss the side of his mouth, and his heart always stopped when she did that.
“I’m so glad I have you, Nurse Rory,” she said.
*
a prince charming
Sometimes when Amy slept in the TARDIS, she dreamed about a man. She jokingly thought of him as Price Charming, to go with her wizard in a police box, but his nose was far too ridiculous for that (even though she could never actually remember what he looked like when she woke), and the way he kissed her in her dreams was no chaste kiss from a handsome prince.
She always woke up with tears drying on her face after these dreams, and she didn’t understand why.
She asked the Doctor about it exactly once. He got an uncomfortable look on his face, scratched his head, and took her to the Musée d’Orsay.
She wasn’t really the marrying kind, she told Vincent, but she secretly suspected she just hadn’t found the right person yet.
*
(There were monsters, of course. Any fairy tale princess’ story involves monsters, and dreams, and sleeping for an age, waiting for her Prince Charming to wake her up.
Amelia Pond dealt with plenty of monsters.)
*
They stood at the altar. Her parents were behind her, his behind him, Mels not there at all of course, and she wore little baby roses in her veil and fabulous red shoes on her feet that would probably come off the instant they made it to the reception, and he didn’t look worried for once, for once in his stupid life he did not look in the least worried, and it took all her self-control to wait until they’d said their “I dos” and the minister gave them permission to kiss.
She was worried. She was nervous as hell, and terrified, and certain that she was forgetting the most important thing in the world, but she looked into his calm and happy face, and she could forget all that, at least for a moment.
She stopped just before leaning in to kiss him, and he looked at her inquiringly, and she said, “Love you,” and he grinned, and they didn’t even hear the cheering behind them when they started snogging.
*
Once upon a time there lived a fairytale Prince Charming, with the not-so-fairytale name of Rory Williams, and he lived happily ever after.
This may or may not be his story.
*
a sleeping beauty
1940 was the single longest year in Rory’s life. Other years had been tedious-he’d despaired for entire decades back in the ninth and tenth centuries, and let’s not get started on 1835, and bits of 1666 had been deeply tense for a plastic man like himself-but 1940 gnawed at the back of Rory’s mind, constant fear that only dropped to the pit of his stomach as dread when he heard the first air raid sirens.
1996 was the second longest year. It had got increasingly hard, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to behave himself, to not take a train and a bus up to Leadworth and-see. He knew he couldn’t do it. Even without having seen the Doctor for millennia-and he hadn’t, not a single glimpse of the Time Lord-he could imagine what that would do to the timelines. What timelines were left in this stupidly tiny universe.
He’d had a lot of time to read and think in the past few centuries.
And then one night while he was working his shift at the museum he heard and felt the Pandorica open.
It was the longest five minutes he could ever remember living, that walk from the Egyptian gallery to where the Pandorica was on display. His speed slowed and slowed, and he feared he’d walked into some sort of trap, time quicksand or something, and he was going to drown before he even got there, and he wondered if it was his own dread that slowed him up.
None of that mattered when he saw her standing there, though.
*
the last centurion
They were watching the Laurel & Hardy sketch again, the Doctor dancing rings around the comedians, Amy sitting up on the sofa and Rory’s head in her lap. He kept jiggling every time he laughed at the jokes that still didn’t make any sense to her, and she kept running a hand absently through his short, fine brown hair.
At some point, he quieted, and she looked down, and he was staring at the wall rather than the telly. “Mmm?” she said, and poked him in the shoulder.
“Do you realize,” he said thoughtfully, “I’ve spent loads more centuries as a warrior than I ever did a nurse?”
She found his hand on the sofa and squeezed it, as tightly as she could. “I could go break a limb if you like?” she said, as lightly as she could, and he finally looked away from the wall to look at her, snort and shake his head, and lean up to give her a kiss.
She was strongly tempted to ask how up-to-date he felt about his OB/GYN nursing skills, but every time she thought about it, the fear overwhelmed her again.
Their magic wizard was going to have to show his face sometime, she knew, and then she could figure out what the hell she would tell Rory.
*
the changeling
“It’s a lot to take in,” Rory explained to River, who nodded patiently as she led him and Amy into their house. Amy hadn’t said anything since Demon’s Run, since the Doctor had disappeared into his box, promising to find her daughter, even though her daughter was standing right there in front of her and purposefully searching through her kitchen for the tea things, acting as if she’d been here before. “I mean, I’ve had to take a lot in over the years, right? You have no idea how weird Middle English was to somebody used to modern English and Latin-but your daughter is an adult woman who calls the Doctor ‘sweetie,’ well, that takes a little getting used to. Right?”
“Rory,” Amy said.
“I mean, I am really, really glad you grew up,” Rory was telling River earnestly, and she was still nodding patiently as she boiled water and poured milk and sugar into cups and dug the spiced black tea out of the cabinet, the really strong stuff they kept for emergencies like in-law visits and the internet not working again. “I am so glad you grew up to be this lovely, capable, intelligent woman, even if it does completely unnerve me now every time I hear you call the Doctor ‘sweetie,’ but-”
“Rory,” Amy said.
Rory shook his head, slumped down at the kitchen island. He’d lost his cape somewhere along the way, along with his weaponry, but he still wore most of his Last Centurion uniform, and it was like that Halloween a few years ago, after the party, sitting at her parents’ dining room table (only it hadn’t been her parents’ house then, it had been Aunt Sharon’s, and Aunt Sharon was somehow never around) and drinking some stiff tea in order to sober up before driving himself back home.
“Here, darling,” River said softly, sliding one of the tea mugs across the island to Rory. He lifted the mug for a restorative sip. His hand was shaking, and he had to set the mug down before it reached his lips.
“Rory,” Amy said, and Rory finally looked up, focused on her. River glanced at her quickly and looked away again, mouth twisted down, busying herself once more with the tea things, pouring herself a cup.
“Amy,” Rory said, his face crumpling at the sight of her. He stood up and opened his arms wide, and Amy walked into his embrace, and that was when she started howling.
Eventually, eventually, they found themselves huddled together under the kitchen island. River was seated cross-legged across from them, leaning back against the sofa, her eyes lowered. Three mugs of tea were lined up in front of her neatly.
“I’m sorry, mother,” she said quietly, not looking up but still conscious that the emotional storm was momentarily in abeyance, and they were aware of a little more of the world around them. “I’m sorry, father.”
Amy crawled out of Rory’s lap and across the small space to hug her daughter fiercely. “No,” she said, face tear-streaked and splotchy, and Rory sniffled mightily behind her, and under other circumstances she might have started laughing. “No,” she said, arm still around River’s neck, and she reached behind her blindly, Rory catching her fingers and giving her hand a steadying squeeze. They stayed like that for a long time, anchoring each other.
They had to reheat the tea.
*
doppelgangers
“You keep showing up in multiples,” Rory told Amy the night after they’d left an older version of her to die on Apalapucia. “One of you isn’t enough for the universe?”
She smiled at him, a little sadly, and he couldn’t even bring himself to smile back. They were going to break, he thought. One of these days, something newer and stranger and more outlandish and horrible would happen, and one or both of them would break.
He kept changing his mind about who it would be. Usually he thought it would be himself, but then he would remember something from the past two millennia, or the way Amy had howled the day they’d lost their baby, and he would wonder again who would break first.
“Timey wimey,” he said, and she turned and sat down next to him on the bed, resting her head on his shoulder.
“Timey wimey,” she agreed with a sigh.
*
(Princes Charming fight the monsters. They wake the fairy tale princesses from their dreams, they defeat the bad things, and they make the world safe for happy-ever-afters.
Rory Williams was glad he didn’t have to fight the monsters alone.)
*
Amy bought a lot of Chinese lanterns and fairy lights. She persuaded Rory to help her string them all around their new backyard, and he found himself dangling dangerously off the ladder while his wife said from below, “No, a couple branches over, don’t you see it? It needs to go there.”
She took to sitting outside under the fairy lights every night, waiting. She said she wasn’t, but he knew, and most nights he joined her out there. He thought about installing a really long extension cord for the telly, or at least for a reading lamp. But he could hear the game, or music, from the stereo just inside the house if he cracked open the glass door, and most of the time that was enough.
One day she called him at work and told him about the freak meteor shower, and his heart started beating hard, and it didn’t stop until he got home and peeked out the back and saw his wife and daughter hugging each other and jumping up and down.
Of course, it meant the Doctor was still his son-in-law.
Rory poured a third glass of wine.
*
Once upon a time, as they do, a fairytale Princess and a fairytale Prince Charming got married and lived happily ever after. This particular couple, by the names of Amelia Pond and Rory Williams, conceived a child in a blue police box that traveled through time and space, and when she was born, they named her Melody Pond.
This may or may not be their story.
*
the wizard’s apprentice
“Mother?”
Amy sat at the table in her backyard, staring into the distance. Another bottle-red this time-stood on the table, three glasses waiting.
River stopped in front of her mother, tentatively. “Mother?” she said again, even more gently than she had the first time.
“Do you know a woman named Sarah Jane Smith?” Amy asked, focusing with difficulty on her daughter.
River nodded.
“She contacted Rory and me,” Amy said. “She needed our help, our particular help.”
“Timey wimey,” River guessed, sitting down next to her mother and pouring the wine into the three glasses. The bottle had already been opened.
“Timey wimey,” Amy confirmed. Rory walked out of the house then, looking even more beleaguered than usual, and River stood up to say hello, and he walked right up to her and hugged her tightly.
“Oh no,” River said in sudden understanding, and she hugged her father back as tightly as she could.
“Can you tell us about her?” Amy said from somewhere behind them, and her voice quavered a little. Rory released his daughter, and River handed him a glass. “What you know?”
Rory sat down heavily next to his wife, and River looked down at them both sadly. “I didn’t know her nearly as well or as long as the Doctor did,” she pointed out. “But yes, I can tell you a little.”
Amy reached out and took Rory’s hand. “Good,” she said. “Good.”
*
at the ball
They were dancing, the next time River dropped by, though it might have been earlier in her timeline than theirs. Some of their guests were dancing with them-Snow Patrol playing on the speakers connected to somebody’s iPad-while others sat about at the tables and chairs under the fairy lights, drinking and chatting and laughing. Rory swung Amy out grandly, and she giggled at him as he swung her back in, and he threw his own head back and laughed.
“We can’t,” the Doctor said, coming to a halt and pushing his heels in when River tugged. “No, River, it’s not right, look, they’re happy and with friends-”
“And their daughter and her plus-one can’t join their party?” River said.
“Not when none of the guests even know they have a full-grown daughter,” the Doctor said, and he folded his arms. “Not when the Raggedy Doctor has supposedly died for good.”
“Darling, they know,” River said patiently. “I told them.”
“River!”
River rolled her eyes. “Honestly,” she said, and dragged him into the backyard.
Amy squealed, Rory laughed again-he didn’t look worried, not the least bit, not even when the Doctor came up and shook his hand and possibly stammered uncomfortably-and they went around introducing their dear friends River and-Doctor Smith, but you can just call him the Doctor, thanks.
“What’s the occasion?” River asked some time later, when they were all taking a break in the dancing (the Doctor’s moves were still…astonishing) and partaking in some refreshment under the fairy lights.
“Amy landed a new national modeling contract,” Rory said, and his hand slipped for his wife’s under the table. “And I got accepted into medical school.”
The Doctor stared at him, and Rory looked him right in the eye. “I like helping people more than I like hurting them,” he said with finality, and the Doctor stood up and walked around the table and enveloped Rory in a massive hug.
“Oh,” Rory said, muffled.
The Doctor kissed the top of his forehead. “You’re brilliant, Rory Pond, you are,” he said, pumping Rory’s hand. And then he walked around and gave Amy a hug and a kiss. “And you, Amy Williams, honestly, the pair of you, I don’t-”
“I’m still your mother-in-law,” Amy said, “and you still don’t bring my daughter round often enough for tea.”
The Doctor froze. River snickered into her beer. The Doctor glanced back at Rory, and Rory quirked his eyebrows up, unhelpfully. Amy punched the Doctor in the stomach, lightly, and he looked at her again. “Come round more often,” she told him, looking up at him and smiling a little. “We miss you.”
They stayed after all the other guests had left, in order to help clean up. “Wow,” Rory blinked, surveying the kitchen and back yard in shock. “I think it looks nicer now even then it had before we started.”
The Doctor buffed his nails modestly. River rolled her eyes. “Come along, you,” she said. “I should be getting back, I’m sure they’ve missed me at the prison.” She hugged and kissed her parents. “Love you,” she told them.
“Love you,” they told her, and gave her another hug and kiss for good measure. The Doctor lurked in the background uncertainly until Amy dragged him over for a hug and kiss as well, and then Rory hugged him, and the Doctor grinned at him shyly, and Rory laughed again, and he still didn’t look a bit worried.
They waved from their front stoop, as the Doctor and River disappeared into the TARDIS.
*
an even bigger adventure
Sometimes River felt like she knew what was going to happen. Well, yes, of course she did; quite often she did know what was going to happen, but sometimes walking into a situation about which she had no prior knowledge because nobody could give her the spoilers for it-sometimes she still felt like she’d already been here and done this.
She would have to ask the Doctor sometime if his people had a word for that.
Amy was seated at her little table in her backyard; she usually was, or Rory, when River dropped by. No bottle this time, but there was a pot of tea going cold. River sat down behind it and poured herself a mug; Amy was holding one already, forgotten in her hands.
“I’m pregnant,” Amy said.
River felt a rush of-emotion, something she could not define, could not even tell if it was positive or negative. “Does Rory know?” was the first thing she said.
Amy nodded. She half-smiled, looked down at her tea. “He did the test to confirm. It seemed-appropriate.”
“Are you-happy?” River asked, carefully.
Amy looked at her, then, finally. “I’m terrified,” she said. “Rory’s wandering about like a headless chicken, scratching his head and being useless. And I’m no better.” She sat forward, put her mug on the table. “We haven’t done this before.”
River grinned, suddenly, and the emotion she felt resolved itself into joy. “Oh mum,” she said, and took Amy’s hand. “Of course you did. Granted, I had a few little bumps along the way, but I turned out alright, didn’t I?”
“No, no, River, it’s not the same.” Amy’s hand tightened in River’s, and River squeezed back in response. “A proper baby. Do you know how crap I am at babies? Any of my friends ask me to change their kids’ nappies and I am out the door faster than you can say poo.”
“It’s a good thing you married Rory, then, isn’t it?” River sounded completely reasonable, and Amy glared repressively at her daughter, and River stood up to hug her mother fiercely.
“You have faced Angels, Daleks, vampire fish, and losing me,” River told her quietly. “You and father will be brilliant linear parents.” She stood back and grinned down at her mother, so wide she thought her face might split in two, but she couldn’t help it; she really did know what was coming after all. “And I get to have a baby sibling.”
Amy laughed a little at that, and sobbed, and River wrapped the blanket she’d thrown over herself before River arrived more securely around her mother’s shoulders. She stayed a little while longer, cheering her mother up and calming her down, and then she went through the house to leave, just as Rory came home from doing the shopping, bags filling his hands.
River helped him set the bags down and put the perishables away, and then she gave him a bear hug. “Congratulations, father,” she said, and she kissed him on his silly big nose, and the worried look on his face disappeared in a surprised but pleased smile. “Now go out there and keep mother cheered up, would you? She needs it.”
He squeezed her hand. “I’m glad you could come,” he said. “We both needed to see you, today of all days.”
River could feel tears pricking at her eyes, but she didn’t mind. “Somehow,” she said, “I knew.”
*
Father stood in the backyard under the sunlight, raising his son up and down, up and down, with accompanying silly noises, to the squealing delight of the toddler. Mother was dancing with her daughter, weaving and jigging and skipping, their own laughter commingling with the baby’s.
River paused at the back gate, watching the little tableau, suddenly shy. Rory caught sight of her first and yelled. “River!” he said. “Come meet your sister and brother!”
Amy whirled around, her daughter running into the back of her legs, and River burst into laughter. Red hair, red hair everywhere, at least between mother and daughter; the baby’s hair was blond and would probably shade into something of the brownish tint that was Rory’s, or maybe stay the dirty blonde that was River’s. She was thinking about dying it, though. Red, like her mother’s hair.
“River!” Amy said. “It has been ages, where have you been?”
“Prison,” River said, “traveling. Teaching-I’m a professor now, isn’t that marvelous? You know.” She knelt down and shook her six-year-old sister’s hand gravely. “Hello, Sharon,” she said. “You haven’t met me yet, but I’m your sister River.” She stood up again and took the baby from Rory’s hands, spinning him above her. He gurgled in delight, instantly accepting her as one of his own. “Hello, Vincent,” she sing-songed and lowered him to kiss his forehead.
Amy and Rory were eyeing her suspiciously. River smiled innocently, and they simultaneously rolled their eyes. River laughed.
“You’re staying for lunch,” Amy said, in a tone that would brook no argument. “And dinner. And to read bedtime stories. And to sleep on our couch.”
“It’s a very comfortable couch,” Rory interjected quickly. “We made sure of that when we gave up the guest room.”
River laughed again. “I know,” she told them fondly, “I know it very well.”
*
Once upon a time there was a family, who lived happily ever after.
This is their story, if you feel so inclined.
END
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