Precipice
Amy doesn’t have any idea how dangerous it is, or she wouldn’t do it. After, the memory of fear will
be so strong it will make her dizzy whenever she thinks of it. But in this moment, all she knows is that
her Doctor is sprawled on a ledge at least six or seven meters down, unmoving, and it’s starting to get
dark.
She has no rope. They hadn’t planned to go down. Amy doesn’t hesitate. She lies down on her belly
and creeps backward to the edge of the cliff, lowering her feet to dig footholds in the cracks. The face
of the cliff has an ever so slight outward slope, and she manages to slink downward for several meters
before a rock gives way under her foot. Fear tenses in her whole body as she realizes she’ll fall to the
ravine below if she misses the ledge; there will be no one to save her. She scrapes down the cliff, clawing
desperately at anything within reach.
She hits the ledge feet-first, thanking whatever guardian angel kept her aim so true. Her knees lock out
and she falls on her back, hair trailing centimeters from the edge, at eye level with the Doctor’s boots.
Oh, thank you. Amy sits up carefully, rubbing her sore ribs and looking him over. His eyes are shut and
one arm is thrown above his head at a funny angle, but his breathing seems steady enough. She knows
better than to move him. She takes his other wrist and unfastens his watch, uses it to keep time while she
checks his pulse. As if his double pulse meant anything to her. She slips his watch back on, satisfied that
his hearts are at least beating.
Amy waits with the Doctor for what feels like hours, grabbing his wrist every five minutes and marking
the increments off in her mind. After exactly thirty-seven minutes, fearful and impatient, she shakes him
lightly. He stirs, eyelids fluttering, and finally manages to squint up at her.
“Doctor!” she exclaims, and he frowns, batting her away with his good hand.
“Pond,” he mumbles, “You mustn’t shout, Pond. I’ve a splitting headache and we’re on the edge of a-
oh, goodness, Amy! You didn’t-oh, you did. What in the name of sanity are you doing down here?”
“I came to get you,” she says simply.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve gotten yourself into, Amy?”
“I have a fair idea.”
“Do you have any plan of how to get back up to the cliff?”
“No, but as someone once said, I have a thing, which is better,” she says a little wickedly.
“Fair enough,” he says, and closes his eyes again.
When he opens his eyes again, it’s so dark Amy can’t read his watch. She has no idea how long they’ve
been stuck on the ledge.
“Doctor, we should really start looking for a way back to the top. Can you get up?”
“I don’t know.” He shifts position, and in the dark, she can just see him wince as he tries to lift his arm.
“Is it broken?”
He grits his teeth and manages to move his shoulder. “It’s out of sorts, yeah. Doesn't seem broken,
though.”
It takes the Doctor several minutes to ease himself into a sitting position, and even on his knees he sways
dangerously. Amy pulls him to his feet and he leans heavily on her arm, backing up to lean against the
cliff face. After a few moments, he takes a long, shuddering breath and pulls himself together.
“Let’s go, then,” he says.
She makes him go first, and they’ve barely managed to crawl a meter before she thinks it was a bad
idea, the two of them in the dark, about to slip and careen into the bottom of the ravine. She doesn’t
say a thing, and they creep onward. They nearly fall at least once; her brain won’t give her an accurate
count for reasons of self-preservation. All she knows is that the scrape of loose rock under his boots, the
roughness of his trousers under her hand as she grasps his leg to keep him from falling, are things she
never wants to hear or feel again.
They stop often, more for his sake than for hers, though she’ll call for a break if she sees him slipping. Day is breaking when they reach the top. Flopping over the edge, they quickly stumble away from it. Giddy with relief, they collapse into a pile, clinging to each other as tightly as they can.