clinging to the rigid rock of ages
Title: clinging to the rigid rock of ages
Fandom/Pairing: Doctor Who, Amy/Rory, River/Eleven
Rating: G
Wordcount: 1697
Summary: River brings them home, and Rory tries to put everything back together again.
River’s vortex manipulator flashes them from Demon’s Run to Leadworth, and Rory wants to cry.
Amy does cry, but silently, her face pressed into Rory’s shoulder as they flash through the vortex and then into her hands when Rory half helps, half carries her to the couch. Rory sits down next to her, close but not quite touching. She seems almost foreign to him, his wife, his Amy, her body worn and weary and bone-pale save for the flush of her cheeks. River disappears into the kitchen, murmuring something about tea, and Rory can’t look at her, can’t think about her, can barely say her name.
It’s me, she said, a smile on her lips that doesn’t match the terror in her eyes, I’m Melody. I’m your daughter.
“Here,” River says, and it takes a moment for Rory to comprehend that she is in front of him, not just in his head. She holds out two mugs of tea and Rory takes them both, and then realizes that only one is for him. The mug is one of Amy’s, ceramic and painted, purple butterflies on a yellow background. It looks strange against his Centurion garb, out of place. Out of time.
A Roman with a cup of tea, he thinks. “Thanks,” he says, belatedly, and River gives him half a smile. It is the sort of smile that reminds him of the Doctor, a half-there-half-not, I-know-something-you-don’t-know sort of smile. It has more of the Doctor in it than it has him or Amy, and Rory isn’t sure how to think about that. A lump rises thick and heavy in his throat and he turns away to her, from his strange and confusing daughter to his far-away wife, farther away now than when she was Flesh instead of Human. “Amy,” he says. “Amy, you should drink something. You’ve been breastfeeding; you need to stay hydrated.” Amy makes a wet sound, somewhere between a whimper and a sob, and Rory knows he’s said the wrong thing, but he keeps talking anyway, because that’s what the Doctor would do-keep talking until he says something right. “Amy, you need to drink something. If you don’t want tea we can get you some water, but the Doctor’s going to bring Melody home to us and you need to be you when she gets here, you need to be ready to be a mum. Her mum. But tea would be good for you, it’d warm you up and you know you get cold when we’ve been through the vortex-”
“Rory, shut up,” Amy rasps, and she reaches out a hand. He hands her the mug with more milk and she lifts her head slowly, as if it’s the heaviest thing in the universe. “Thank you,” she says, and he leans his head against hers briefly. A few strands of her hair slip from behind her ear and into his line of vision, casting the room in an auburn film. He breathes in and she smells like milk and baby skin and salt and underneath all of that she smells like Amy, and he’d know that smell anywhere, has been breathing her in since the first time she hugged him. She shifts slightly and he moves away from her, sitting up and curling both his hands around his mug of tea. His wedding ring clinks against the ceramic.
Amy lifts her mug to her lips and sips it slowly. She swallows and shudders a little, then swallows again. “It’s good,” she says. “Weird. What’s in it?”
“Leaves from the southern forests of Chimeria,” River says quietly. “They’re similar to chamomile, but sweeter and a little more relaxing. It will help you relax, if you drink it while it’s hot.”
“Chimeria,” Amy says. “Do we take you there? Or does the Doctor take you?” Her hands clench tighter around the mug and she looks up at River, eyes too bright. “Do we ever get to take Melody anywhere? Or do we only get you?”
“Amy,” River begins, and then, a little quieter, “Mother-”
“I’m not your mother,” Amy says fiercely. “I’m her mother, I’m Melody’s mother. My daughter is a baby, she’s not a-however old you are, and even if you are her, someday, you’re not her now, you’re someone else, so don’t call me Mother.”
She’s crying by the time she finishes and her tea has sloshed over the side of her mug and onto her hands, turning her skin angry and red. Rory puts his tea down on the floor and attempts to extract Amy’s mug from her shaking grip, but she only tightens her hands around it and shrinks in on herself, curling down around her cup and bending her head. Rory puts one hand on her back but she jerks away from him, and he looks up at River, helpless and a little bit hopeful, because River is clever and knows how to fix everything, so maybe she can fix this, too.
But River just looks sad and shakes her head very slightly, rising to her feet in one slow, tired movement. She puts a hand on Rory’s shoulder, a barely-there touch, and walks away.
Rory looks at Amy, drawn in on herself and away from him, and follows his daughter.
He finds River in the kitchen, standing at the counter. Her body is one straight, rigid line from boots to neck, her shoulders tense and quivering, and Rory wonders if he should do something, or say something, or just give her a hug.
River has always seemed to him like someone who has not been hugged enough.
She turns before he can move toward her, her smile in place like it has never left, the smile she gives the Doctor when she says spoilers, my love. “I’m sorry, Rory,” she says. “I know it’s awful now, but it will get better. She’ll get better. I promise she will.”
“You know,” he says. She nods, but says nothing, and Rory closes his eyes. He feels very heavy and off-balance, like his sword weighs more than the rest of his body. “The Pandorica,” he says, opening his eyes. “You knew who I was.”
“I’ve always known.” River’s smile turns wistful, but it’s a real emotion on her face, and Rory can count on one hand the number of real, honest feelings he’s seen her show. “She told me stories,” she says. “When I was just a baby. The Last Centurion. My father. The one man who would always, always come for me.”
“I didn’t know you.”
She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “You didn’t.”
The day's coming when I'll look into that man's eyes-my Doctor-and he won't have the faintest idea who I am. River’s eyes, distant and sad. And I think it's going to kill me. “I’m sorry, River,” he says. “For everything. For not knowing you. For still not knowing you. That you didn’t get to have a normal life.” River flinches and Rory feels a sharp jab in his stomach. “You don’t, do you? You don’t get to have a normal life. We don’t get you back.”
River makes a soft sound that might be a laugh or a sigh or both and steps toward him, cupping her face in his hands. “Rory,” she says, and then, “Dad. I was conceived in the TARDIS; I was born on an Asteroid three thousand years out of your timeline. My parents are the Last Centurion and the Girl Who Waited, the Doctor’s Companions. How could I have ever had a normal life?”
“That’s not what I asked,” Rory says, and River steps forward and puts her arms around him. It’s not a hug, not really, and he doesn’t return the embrace. She leans her forehead against his for a moment, and then presses her lips to his brow.
“You’re a wonderful father, Rory,” River whispers. “And Amy is a wonderful mother.” She draws away and looks at him, and he realizes for the first time that he is taller than she is, that despite how much larger than life she has always seemed she is actually not so large at all. “I would have been proud to be Melody Williams.”
“Melody Williams is a geometry teacher,” Rory whispers back, and River laughs, shaking her head. Rory does hug her then, fiercely. “If you are Melody,” he says, “even if you changed your name and grew up to be an alien-shooting archaeologist-if you’re my Melody, River, I’m proud to be your father.”
River half sobs and squeezes him tightly, and then pulls away from him. “I should go,” she says. “I shouldn’t have stayed this long.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out two rings-Amy’s engagement ring and wedding band-and presses them into Rory’s hand. “She left these in the room she was kept in. I went back and got them.”
Rory closes his fingers around them. “Thank you.” She reaches for her vortex manipulator and he catches her hand. “Will we see you again?”
“Very soon,” she whispers. Vortex energy crackles around her and she vanishes.
There is a knock at the front door. Rory closes his eyes and tilts his head back and hopes very much that whoever is there will just go away, but the knocking continues. He contemplates taking off his sword and thinks better of it, crossing the living room with his cape billowing behind him. Amy has moved from sitting on the couch to curling into a corner of it. Her eyes are closed, and Rory pauses briefly to brush a few strands of hair from her forehead.
He opens the door to see Mels, a pint of cookie dough ice cream balanced on a pizza box held precariously in her arms. “Oh good, you are home,” she says, and then, “What the hell are you wearing?”
Rory takes the pizza box from her, puts it down on the foyer floor, and starts to cry.