Chapter Text
When Rory met Amy, she was outside his mother’s office. Her striking red hair hung around her like sagging curtains, and she had the expression of an old spinster. She wore a red cardigan, the same colour as her hair, and a white dress, dotted with red tulips. Rory waved his hand at her. But she didn’t seem to realize he was there, or perhaps she didn’t wish to answer. Her face was pudgy and streaked with tears.
The door to his mother’s office burst open, and a woman appeared alongside his mother. “Let’s go, Amelia.” The woman snapped. The ginger girl stood up from her waiting chair and took the woman’s hand. “So, you’ll come back next week? Same day, same time?” Rory’s mother asked. She smiled at Rory but motioned for him to wait. The old woman nodded, squeezing the girl’s hand. “I will. Amelia? Come along.” The girl, resigned, followed the woman, who Rory supposed was the girl’s parent.
His mum sighed when they were out of sight and turned to him. “How was school?” She inquired, spreading her arms wide in an invitation to hug. That was what mum did, Rory knew. Asking people things, hugging or holding their hands when they (her clients, she had taught him) cried.
“Fantastic!” Rory piped, hugging her back. His vocabulary was quite advanced, for a 7-year-old, or so the grown-ups told him. It was all because of his mother. She had book after book. Picture books, comic books, books that didn’t have pictures but were nice to read (novels, mum said), books with interesting diagrams. At home, at her office, and even in his father’s office. “Reads a lot, that woman,” Papa told him when he asked why. “A lot of things I don’t understand.” Rory didn’t understand, either, but he liked the diagrams.
“Papa says you should be back by dinnertime,” Rory told her. “Alright, tell him I will,” Mum answered, and from her pocket, produced a small packet of crackers. “Want one?”
Rory giggled as he popped a cracker in. “Who was she?” He asked. “That girl, I mean.”
“Oh, her?” Mum looked puzzled. “Her name,” she replied, “is Amelia Pond.”
That was how Rory met Amy.
The first thing Amelia remembered were the questions.
“How do you feel?”
“Are you alright?”
“How did he look like?”
“What did he do to you?”
“Did he hurt you?”
“What do you mean, a blue box?”
“What food did he ask for?”
“What were you wearing at the time?”
“What was his name?”
“No, I asked his name. Doctor isn’t a name!”
Then scribbling on clipboards or typing on computers. The looks they gave her.
The hospitals. Clean. Too clean. So unlike her rickety old house, with smelly clothes and dirty tables.
The touching. Strong, forceful with dry encouragements. Her loved cardigan removed, then replaced with patient scrubs.
The clinic, with the same white walls, trophies, and manuscripts the size of giant pound cakes.
The talking. With the adults, with her aunt, with her cousin. Sometimes included, sometimes excluded. Conversation she could only catch a few bits out of. Talks where they pretended she wasn’t there. Whispers between the adults with white gowns. Words she did not understand.
Then the bills. Plastic cards exchanged. White paper with numbers printed out. Her aunt, with her sighing. The look of what’s gotten into you? It was confusing, the feeling of dread and guilt. That she was inconvenient. Strange.
Then, at last, the silence. Silence so tangible. Silence that she didn’t dare break. Silence that was worse than the talking. At least, when there was talk, she could know what was going to happen. In the unfamiliar, eerie silence, she couldn’t predict a thing. What if she made one wrong move and her aunt exploded? What if there was something she didn’t know that she should? What if, in the end, she was mad enough that she would be sent somewhere? What if he was never there?
What if he was never there?
Was he even there?
Amelia looked out the old car’s window. The world flashed along, not caring about her own troubles. Her lips and teeth hurt a bit from biting the last therapist, who told her about ‘imaginary friends’ and how they would be ‘good friends’, but that there would be better friends for her, real ones.
“But he is real. The Doctor in the blue box!”
“You shouldn’t have bit him.”
Aunt Sharon’s voice hit her like a tidal wave. At last. Amelia thought. It was good to know what her aunt’s brooding was about, rather than not know them.
“He said the Doctor wasn’t real,” Amelia said, loudly and more bravely than she felt. If the adults were going to attack her beloved Raggedy Man, she was going to be the lone heroine protecting him.
“And he was right.” Aunt Sharon replied. The car slowed to a stop when they neared the house, and Amelia hopped out of the car and went inside the house. Her footsteps ever-defiant and strong-willed like the cries of a newborn baby.
Aunt Sharon sighed when she shut the door with a loud bang. The ugly scratch on the broken shed looked much more prominent than before. It had taken much money to bring her to various psychiatrists, and fixing up the shed would deflate her budget entirely.
Aunt Sharon thought of the Doctor. She supposed that, at her age, it was normal for Amelia to think of imaginary friends as real friends. But break down the shed because of that silly belief? It was something she couldn’t tolerate. Could a little girl even do that? Sharon could almost believe that ‘the Doctor’ did it, except for the fact that people didn’t travel around in police boxes. What was he, some alien? Had someone broken into the house at night? Had Amelia gotten in the way of harm? Were they both in danger? Sharon sighed, parked her car in her tiny lot, and checked the lock thrice before going into the house.
She felt her heart, weighed down by a million worries.
Amelia was on the car ride to the therapist. Another one. Again.
The atmosphere inside the car was a bit softer than before. “Last one.” Aunt Sharon had promised. “Last one, and then we’re done with people like that.” Amelia hoped Aunt Sharon meant it. It felt like a dream come true to be left alone. Not prodded and poked.
The radio station whispered soft strings of Aunt Sharon’s favourite tune. Amelia clutched at her doll, the Doctor doll she had made about a week ago. Aunt Sharon disproved it greatly, and she had probably suppressed a sigh in her mind when she first saw it. She let Amelia keep it, however, and she considered that a win over the nasty, anti-Doctor adults. She thumbed the edge of her red cardigan. She always fiddled with it so much that the end had laddered beyond repair.
“Here we are.” Aunt Sharon said, and Amelia glanced outside. The building was smaller than she expected. Grey, unlike the hospitals, the structure was about three stories high. She saw something green on top and wondered if there was a greenhouse somewhere above. Maybe even a roof garden with flowers. Amelia liked flowers. She always insisted that Aunt Sharon buy clothes with them, like the ones she wore now, the dress with red little tulips.
“Come one.” Aunt Sharon pulled her closer. “We should go. The appointment’s in five minutes.”
Amelia followed her through the revolving doors and into the building. Inside was a small information desk with a bored-looking security guard sitting behind it.
“Hello, we’re here to see Mrs. Williams, the psychiatrist. Do you know which floor her office is on?” Aunt Sharon asked, in a clipped, tired voice that mimicked the guard’s face.
“Third floor.” The guard pointed to the only elevator.
“Thank you.”
A small, normal conversation. Nothing like the one Amelia was going to have.
The elevator made a creaking noise when it closed, and Aunt Sharon decided to take the stairs next time -if there was a next time. She felt Amelia hold her hand tighter, and she glanced down at the little soul whose whole world was Leadworth. She had never been good with children. She was a horrible guardian, really, and she knew it so well. Amelia had…well. Amelia had just materialized out of thin air. One moment, she was living a normal life, with no plans for marriage or children. The next thing she knew, a five-year-old was at her table, demanding ice cream for dinner. She supposed that the ginger girl had come from somewhere, but the memories of Amelia’s parents were…fuzzy. Like a dream long gone. Sharon didn’t have pictures, diaries, or stories, which Amelia constantly asked for. After ‘the night’, as Sharon had deemed it in her thoughts, raising Amelia was harder.
She had come home after a long night’s work, exhausted and just wanting to go to bed, only to find Amelia, outside, fully dressed, sitting on her toy suitcase, fast asleep. She had carefully woken her up. When the little girl asked, “Where is he?” Sharon had momentarily wondered whether this was one of children’s irrational fears. Ghosts in the closet, monsters under the bed, that sort of thing. But the more Amelia talked, the stranger her story became. Flying blue boxes? Fish custard? This was more ludicrous than her crack-in-the-wall story. So she had told Amelia not to be silly, and brought her inside, only to find the fridge ransacked. Beans splattered in the sink, toast thrown in the bush, and bacon on the floor. Oh, and the shed! Damn that insufferable thing!
She had taken Amelia to numerous physicians, worrying that she might have been hurt by whoever ‘the Doctor’ was. And then to therapists, thinking it might be some defence mechanism. But whoever told Amelia that the man was fake got bit, and after that nobody really wanted to deal with her. Sharon worried. About how Amelia might be bullied at school because of her chitchats. (Oh, how she was wrong!) About how other people might see Amelia.
The elevator dinged.
The third floor’s wallpaper was all ivory, with vases of flowers near the waiting seat. There was another desk, and a young woman typed with surprising speed. The plaque behind it read <Williams Therapy>.
“Hello,” Sharon said. “Do you happen to be Mrs. Williams?”
The woman smiled. “No. I am her secretary, Rachel Land. Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes. I’m pretty sure-”
A door that led deeper into the building opened, and another woman stepped out. “Are you Amelia?” The woman asked, holding out a hand. Amelia took it. She had yellow hair like the colour of sunflowers, and her eyes crinkled when she smiled. “I’m Katherine Williams.” Amy couldn’t say anything. She only nodded. “Come one. We’ll come back in an hour or so, Ms. Pond.” The latter was to Aunt Sharon.
They were sitting in the woman’s office. Amelia sat on the blue beanbag, while she sat on the green one. There were pictures and little paintings around the walls. Bookcases the exact colour of tree bark held leaflets and storybooks. The woman tucked her skirt in, and Amelia suddenly realized the absence of a clipboard.
“How are you, Amy?” The woman asked. “I’m Amelia,” Amelia said with defiance. If the Doctor had said her name was nice, she would keep it.
“Oh.” The therapist said. “But Amelia can sometimes be called Amy. After all, my name is Katherine, but people also call me Kat instead. How about you?”
Amelia thought for a minute.
“I wouldn’t…hate it,” Amy said. Kat laughed.
“Well, Amy. That’s a nice doll you have.” She nodded toward her Doctor doll.
Here it comes. Amy thought. “It’s the Doctor.” She said. She clenched her tighter around her doll. She gritted her teeth as if to test her biting capacity. Kat opened her mouth, and Amy was about to do the same, though for a different purpose.
“Can you tell me about him?”
Amy reconsidered her options.
Of course. She was willing to talk about the Doctor. How she met him. What he said. What he had eaten. What he liked. And most importantly, his promise. Her little secret. But what if she didn’t like the Doctor? What if she was like all other grown-ups?
“His name’s the Doctor.” Amy began slowly. “He had a blue box. A police box.”
“Like the one back in the day?”
Amy shrugged.
“If you say so.”
“And what does the blue box do?”
“It travels about, I think. But not just anywhere. Anytime.” Amy paused to emphasize the fact. “ I think it’s broken. And very old, too. It crashed in my backyard.”
“What did he do?”
Ah. The Questions. Again.
“He was hungry. But he didn’t eat just anything. He said had a- a crav-” Amy thought.
“A craving.” She proudly concluded.
“A craving,” Kat repeated. “What did he crave for?”
“Eh, food. I guess. He liked fish custard.”
“Fish custard?”
“Fish fingers. Dunked in custard.’
“Oh.” Katherine, not really having an answer to that, wondered if she should change the subject. After a while, she intervened. “How do you think the box works?”
Amy looked up. “Hmm?”
“I mean, what does it run on? Oil?”
Amy’s imagination began to whirl, and stories began to spill out.
“What if there’s some special alien oil?” The ginger girl said, her voice marvellously ecstatic.
Katherine was, unlike her appearance, a person who held on to logic and knowledge. But, even so, the stories of children who visited her office made her sway with wonder, revelation, but sometimes shock and consternation. Some of them were bursting with anger, else sadness. Others with energy no one else could handle.
Amy seemed to be on the over-energetic side. Talking, laughing, and expanding her world off to the furthest galaxies. It was as if a dam had burst open. You only had to listen and ask the right things to know what a bright and shiny mind she was.
“If he were really an alien, where is he from?” Kat asked when the talk subsided.
“Space, I suppose,” Amy said. She was strangely aware of time slowing down. The bonfire burned down to a single candle flame, small and feeble, ready to burn up or burn down at any moment.
Katherine was hesitant to talk now. Though it was number than Amy, she could also feel the hour glancing by. “Where is he now?” She said. Then immediately regretted her words.
Because Amy balked. What? No one had ever asked her that. Where could he be? Where could he be?
“I don’t know.” She started. “He said…he said he’d be back but-”
He didn’t.
Sometimes, sometimes, it only takes a few words to snuff out a light.
Now, the only glow in the room was the fluorescent lamp.
The tears that had been vaporizing appeared again.
And this time, it flowed.
When Amy met Rory, she was outside his mother’s office. Her striking red hair hung around her like sagging curtains, and she had an expression of her Aunt Sharon. She wore a red cardigan, the same colour as her hair, and a white dress, dotted with red tulips. Her cheeks felt cold from the tears. She could see movement just out of her eyesight, but she didn’t look towards it. She was waiting for the talk to end. Again. Was it all the same in the end? Would it always end like this?
The door to Katherine’s office burst open, and Aunt Sharon appeared alongside her. “Let’s go, Amelia.” She said. Amy stood up from her seat and took Aunt Sharon’s hand. “So you’ll come back next week? Same day, same time?” Kat asked. She smiled at someone Amy didn’t bother to see and motioned her hand to mean wait. Aunt Sharon squeezed her hand, nodding.
“I will. Amelia? Come along.”
Amy, resigned, followed Aunt Sharon to the elevator outside.
As she walked her heavy steps, she saw something the colour of hay.
And a smile that would rival the sun.
That was how Amy met Rory.