[fic] i'm a satellite heart
I'm a Satellite Heart
by liz_hollis
R. Eleven/Amy.
Written mostly pre-finale, so basically jossed now.
Awesome beta by th_esaurus , my aider and abetter in all things Who. Title from the Anya Marina song.
They leave Wales behind them and Amy cries in her sleep.
The Doctor can hear her from his room, the quiet sounds drifting down the hallway, magnified and carried by the tunneled metal corridors of the TARDIS. He lies sleepless on his bed and stares at the ceiling and doesn't get up to go and wake her, try and comfort her. He knows that if he wakes her, Amy won't know why she was crying and she'll only be embarrassed. She isn't much of a crier, not any more at least. Amy Pond owns stock in being tough.
Many nights when the Doctor has been sleepless (because if Amy Pond owns stock in toughness, the Doctor ought to own stock in insomnia), the TARDIS has played music for him; soft old Gallifreyan songs some times, Mozart or Beethoven or Middle Eastern lullabies other times, music from every galaxy and solar system in the wide dark universe. She's put distant stars that twinkle their millenial light on the ceiling of his bedroom.
She does none of that this night. The Doctor's bedroom stays dark and silent.
Amy cries in her sleep, and she doesn't call out for Rory. She just cries and that's the worst part.
---
Amy grins at him over her porridge in the galley kitchen in the morning, dark shadows underneath her eyes. They sit across from each other and spoon cereal into their mouths as the kitchen rocks gently side to side as though it were a real ship's galley floating on a great ocean; it's an affectation Amy adores and the Doctor has found charming before. Today it makes the porridge sit uneasy in the Doctor's stomach. Today it feels reproachful.
Amy nudges the toe of her trainer against his shin and taps her fingertips together impatiently. "So Doctor, where are we going next?"
He lets his spoon drop with a clatter into his half-full bowl. "Porridge is really just gloop, isn't it," he muses morosely. "Just gloopy... stuff. I think I may have used it to patch the engine once. I think I might hate porridge."
"Aww, Doctor," Amy says teasingly. Her hair swings forward, fiery strands brushing against the wooden tabletop as she leans close. "Did someone wake up on the wrong side of the spaceship today?"
"Mm. Yes." His eyes dart around the room. "Entirely wrong."
Amy rolls her eyes and skips over to the cabinets, rustling around in them until a triumphant Aha! echoes weirdly from inside the wood and she pulls back, hefting a large box of sugar.
She pours a rather ridiculous amount of the brown sugar into his bowl and mixes it haphazardly, the crystals creating a swirled vortex within the sticky porridge. She hands him the spoon and rests her chin on her hands, watching him expectantly. He takes a bite and the sweetness spreads across his tongue in trickling streams. Pathetically, it makes him feel better straight away, and he curses this body for turning him into such a complete and utter child. He cracks a smile at Amy.
She snaps her fingers and gives a little cheer. "Re-esult! Alright, now eat it, so you can take me somewhere fabulous."
---
He takes her to see the Beatles play on the Ed Sullivan Show. They stand in the midst of a crowd of screaming girls and boys in balcony seating, and the Doctor straightens his bow tie, plugs his ears and leans across to Amy.
"I've seen entire planets implode without involving this decibel of screaming," he grouses. Amy frowns and waves a shushing hand at him as the band troops out on stage and the screaming becomes, if possible, even louder and more dedicated. The Doctor watches her out of the corner of his eye as she bounces in place and utters a little squeak, clasping her hands together with excitement. She looks happy.
The crowd is pushy, too many teenagers competing to get to the front railing of the balcony and see history they don't even comprehend. A boy shoves between Amy and the Doctor, bumping Amy aside with his shoulder, and the Doctor looks down to find her hand wrapped securely in his. He doesn't even remember taking it. Taking Amy's hand has become a dangerous automatic, a cruise control setting on the Doctor's console. He looks down at her bare white fingers. Her fingernails are purple again.
Amy flashes a wide grin at him, and he can hear the clear ring of her laughter even above all the din. She squeezes his hand quickly and he squeezes back. As they shuffle along in the slow-moving crowd after the concert has finished, Amy swings his hand in hers, their arms cutting a wide arc through the air.
"So," he asks, wiggling his eyebrows. "Was that the ultimate musical experience you've dreamed of your whole life?"
Amy squinches up her mouth, considering. "It was pretty fabulous," she admits with a grin.
"Pretty fabulous?" the Doctor says, disbelief etched across his face. "Amy. Amelia. That was the Beatles. The Beatles, you absolutely mad girl. The Fab Four? Fabulous means nothing, it's in the title."
"Yeah, well, I was always more of a Nirvana fan." The Doctor look at her blankly, looking like nothing so much as a grandfather. Amy sighs. "Yeah, I never thought you for much of a grunge rock fan."
"Grunge rock," the Doctor mouths, shaping the words like it's some foreign language. But they've reached the entrance way and spilled out into the sunny street and Amy drags him along in her wake.
"Yep. Four psychiatrists, Doctor. I was a big Nirvana fan."
---
He wonders, suddenly one morning, whether he ever told Amy he was sorry. Whether he ever apologized to the poor girl for abandoning her for twelve years. Four psychiatrists and Amelia's teeth marks on each one, boxes full of drawings and puppets of a Raggedy Doctor he's not sure he ever was. He tries to remember, but he can't. Those first days are a blur, an overheated fever dream. He is too young and too old.
He can't remember, but he doesn't think he ever did.
In some corners of space, on certain planets in certain galaxies, they call him the Oncoming Storm. He thinks about all the things he has done to Amy Pond and all the things he has taken from her and he wonders what she would call him if she really knew, really understood what being his companion meant.
---
He takes her to Ganamalle where there are twelve moons that rise two by two until they surround the sky, one hanging round and heavy no matter which way she turns, spilling bright moonlight. The grasses are wet from the seasonal rains, but Amy wants to sit and watch the moonrise, so they climb up into the low-hanging branches of a tree.
He follows Amy's long, white legs up through the leaves, his boots slipping against the smooth bark. They settle on two branches set a bit off from each other. The Doctor sits Indian-style and Amy rubs the edge of a purple leaf idly between her fingers.
"What's this tree called, Doctor?"
"Actually, funnily enough," he replies, leaning his back against the rounded trunk, "It translates to 'purpletree'. The Ganamallians are rather... functional in their naming of things, as it were."
Amy hums. "I can't understand how. I mean, look at all this! How could you live amongst all this incredible beauty and not be a bit more imaginative than that?"
The Doctor is quiet for a long time before he answers. "I suppose it might be surprising, but I've found that, as a general species rule; having everything one could dream of, everything one could want... it doesn't lead to creativity or imagination. Quite the opposite, actually. You take things for granted. Like everything beautiful is to be given, not made."
His voice trails off. Amy watches him for a moment then turns her face upwards again, sliding down to lie flat on the branch, legs crossed, arms held out; balancing on an edge. He mirrors her and looks up at the twin curtains of her hair falling down around the arm of the tree. He reaches his arm up until there is nothing but a breath between his fingertips and the red strands.
"So tell me, Doctor. What exactly is so awful about the Ganamallians?"
"Well, for one thing, they're all terribly fat. And every second moon cycle they do this truly disgusting ritual involving-"
"Doctor!" Amy's shout cuts him off and he's on his feet, wobbling on the narrow branch, screwdriver out and ready, his hearts tripping over one another. The leafy arms extending out from the branch Amy lies on have started to curl around her, sliding sinuously around her ankle, her shoulder, her belly. Amy looks at him with wide eyes, her lips pressed together.
"No, it's alright, Amy," he says. "Just lie still. Just wait." Amy looks tense, but like always, she trusts him. The Doctor lies back on his branch and waits, and soon he hears Amy's exclamation of delight as the thin branches circle them in a soft embrace, weaving together to form leafy cradles underneath the stars. Leaves tickle their faces gently, exploring the cartography of their human bodies, mapping them.
"Hello," the Doctor murmurs as a twig tugs lightly at his hair.
"Doctor," Amy breathes with joy in her voice, and it's so easy to forget, just for a moment.
---
The Doctor pulls the accelerator lever down to maximum and the TARDIS shudders and bucks in protest, like an unbroken mare trying to throw off her rider, bucks until he has to hold on to keep from falling over.
"Oh?" he mutters sulkily, letting his hand hover over the lever. The TARDIS thrums steadily, a low growl that gets louder the closer he brings his hand. "Oh, I see, it's like this now." He kicks open the toolbox he's taken lately to keeping by the console and selects a wrenchy sort of thing. He shakes it at the ceiling. "You can punish me all you like. It won't change a thing."
The lights flicker derisively, and he snaps the sleeves of his jacket into place in in a way he hopes communicates that this conversation is over. "I'm rather tiring of being treated like an errant schoolboy. I tried and it didn't work, and what's done is done."
A puff of smoke blooms from the toggle aerator with a sound like a snort.
"What's the holdup, Doctor?" Amy shouts impatiently, coming and leaning down over the railing from the upper deck. "I'm all ready to get my Grecian goddess on." She shimmies slightly, holding her arms out from her toga, white on white, her hair wrapped around her head in intricate braids.
"Nothing," he says to himself, eyeing the gently pulsing console resentfully. "Nothing," he calls out more lightly, turning to face Amy. "Come on, Pond. Want to drive?"
---
On Space Florida, Amy laughs at his bathing suit until she cries. Then she cries for five minutes more, helpless to stop it and completely bewildered, her fists angrily swiping at the tears stubbornly coursing down her cheeks.
The Doctor moves to hug her but she takes a quick step back, draws herself away from him. She looks puzzled, like she doesn't know why.
"It's not catching, Pond." He holds his hands up like a surrender, like she's some skittish wild animal. "I'll take the swimming costume off."
"No." Amy holds up a finger. "No. I'm angry at you. I'm really angry at you right now." She glares at him and steps closer and the Doctor takes a matching step back. "Why am I angry at you?"
He feels guilt rise up like bile in his throat, but he smiles and shrugs and peers up at her through his bangs. "Because I'm an maddening conundrum, confounding space and time at every turn, I threw the box of porridge mix out into the vortex this morning and now I'm wearing a stripey swimming costume from the Roaring Twenties?"
Amy blinks. "Must be it," she murmurs.
On the beach later they lie side by side in the sand, towels abandoned nearby. The sun beats hot on their faces and the Doctor draws a stripe of zinc oxide down the center of Amy's nose. She makes a sand angel and sand threads in delicate milky way patterns through her hair. The air smells like salt and coconut and wind and the Doctor has heard most sounds there are to hear in the universe, but the sound of waves is still one of the most soothing to the soul.
Amy reaches over and slips her fingers in between his, grains of sand rough between their skin. It's an apology for earlier.
The Doctor holds Amy's hand and spreads his toes in the sand and feels quietly restless.
Later, when they are sprinting for the TARDIS, chased by a shockingly fast mob of overly tanned senior Space Florida citizens who took offense to their pale skin and lack of flip flops (how was the Doctor supposed to now it was mandatory footwear on Space Florida?) he feels nothing but relief.
He was always best running.
---
"Why not?" Amy asks when she's got him backed up against the wall, half cornered in the crawlspace under the main deck. Her hands rest lightly on his chest, heat seeping through his shirt. She still smells like the ocean.
"Because- " His hands are wrapped around her wrists, but he's not pulling her away.
"Well said," she whispers and brushes her lips against his neck.
"Don't, Amy," he whispers back.
She pulls back to look at him. "Do you know how long I've waited for you?"
"I- Yes." He rubs a hand over his face. "Amy, this isn't a love story."
"Don't worry, Doctor," and her voice is low and her whole body is pressed against his. "I've never been in love."
When he pulls Amy in closer, his hand a five point compass spread across her back, he feels the hard edges of the box he's never taken from his pocket press into his chest. It makes his hands falter and a sneering whisper that sounds too familiar start up in the back of his mind. It makes him want to pull away. He's going to pull away.
But Amy slides her hands up over his shoulders and pushes his jacket off. It slips down his arms and hits the floor with a quiet sound, and this time when Amy pushes forward against him, all he feels is her warm body against his. He forgets. He makes himself forget.
The soft sole of Amy's foot drags against his skin as she lifts, rests a leg against the bone of his hip. He fits his fingers into the grooves between her ribs and she shivers and places a hand against the small of his back and pulls gently, insistently.
She hisses Doctor on an indrawn breath as he presses into her, slow and sure, into the enveloping heat of her human skin. He buries his face against Amy's neck and thinks, She will never know my name.
He loses himself in her, moving inside an impossible girl. A girl who doesn't make sense. He groans softly as she clenches around him, and he feels the crack in the wall of Amy's bedroom settle in the space between his hearts.
---
He doesn't realize the ring is gone for weeks. When he digs around in his jacket pocket for it one night and comes up with nothing but a boomerang, a dog whistle, an ectoplasmic sensadaptor and some change, he knows where it went.
Amy sits in the swing beneath the deck and the Doctor waits. Whatever it will be is coming soon now. He feels it like the electricity in the air before lightning.
The Doctor in the TARDIS doesn't know. Time can be rewritten.
The Doctor opens his eyes to the ceiling of his room and the crack in the fabric of the universe stares back at him. The TARDIS is still and silent around him, like an indrawn breath.