fic: rewriting
title: rewriting
author: saywheeeee
characters: eleven, amy, river, rory
pairings: slight eleven/amy, amy/rory, and river/eleven
genre: angst/drama/romance
rating: teen for swearing
word count: 4473
summary: Time can be rewritten, but the cost is high.
1.
River calls to him on the psychic paper, and he goes to her, landing the TARDIS on a summer day in Kent and shielding his eyes from the sun as he steps out onto the grass. It’s a strange place for them to meet, but at this point he’s stopped asking questions. He spies her standing under a tree, facing away from him, and walks over.
As soon as she hears his footsteps, she turns around, and her eyes are full of hurt. She is holding onto her own arms as though she’s cold, and she stares at him and says nothing.
He puts his hands in his pockets. “What, no Hello sweetie?”
She doesn’t speak, and so he doesn’t either, bouncing on his feet and taking in their surroundings. They’re in the middle of some kind of park. There’s a light breeze and the smell of barbecue on the air. No horrible monsters or dangerous criminals around, from what he can see. He sniffs and turns his attention back to River, raising his eyebrows in question.
She takes a deep breath and says tremulously, “I have to show you something.”
2.
“I don’t understand,” he protests as she moves gracefully around the TARDIS console, pushing buttons and pulling levers and generally doing all the things that he’s supposed to be doing. “Tell me why you don’t want Amy and Rory coming with.”
“No.”
He scowls and tries to follow her around the console. “What are you doing?”
“Rewriting time,” she replies breathlessly, typing coordinates into the system. He moves to look over her shoulder, but she elbows him away. “You can’t see,” she explains, pushing him backwards with one hand until he falls into one of the chairs. He glares at the back of her head, but doesn’t get up again.
The TARDIS rocks and jolts for a moment, and then River’s deft hands flip on the stabilizers and guide her into a smooth landing. Something goes bong, and River turns around to face the Doctor. “We’re here,” she says, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear and smoothing her dress. Her hands are shaking. “Follow me.”
He scowls again and jumps out of his seat, beating her to the doors and then turning around to stare her down as she approaches more slowly. She looks like she’s about to cry.
“I’m so sorry,” she says before she swings open the door.
3.
They’re in some sort of observation box, a grey room with a single huge window. The Doctor steps out cautiously, keeping one hand on the TARDIS door, while River stands to the side, clasping her hands before her. The room is silent except for the sound of their feet on the metal floor. There is one door on the left wall which reads “DECK B” in faded letters.
The Doctor moves forward to the window. River reaches out a hand as if to stop him, but she freezes before she touches him. He looks at her. He is growing tired of being mystified.
“Go,” she says.
He steps up to the window.
They are above a long platform or hangar, the wall lined with vehicles and the floor littered with bodies. The Doctor leans closer to the glass and stares. In the middle of the chaos he can make out a figure on its knees, back to them, hunched over something, rocking slightly. It takes him a few moments to recognize himself.
He swallows. The glass is thick and no sound from the hangar below penetrates it, but he can imagine what he would hear if he were down there now. He is watching himself losing someone, and both his hearts pound furiously, his hands tightening on the cold window sill. Behind him, River stifles a cough, and he knows she is looking anywhere but at his face.
There is a loud crash somewhere down below, loud enough even to be heard within the observation box, and his future self’s head snaps up, looking to the left. Another crash sounds. The Doctor from the future is still for a few seconds, and then jumps to his feet and runs out of the hangar, allowing his past self to see whose body he was cradling in his arms a moment before.
He feels his breath stop in his throat. It’s Amy.
4.
“No, Doctor!” River screams just before he moves, and she throws her arms around his waist and holds him back as he runs for the door. She isn’t strong enough, and he breaks free from her grasp, seizing the door handle. “Doctor, she’s been dead for over an hour,” River cries behind him, but he ignores her. The handle is jammed, the sonic does nothing. She came here before me, he thinks numbly, hurling himself against the door. It doesn’t work, and he staggers back in pain.
“Let me through,” he demands, whirling around to face River, but she shakes her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. He grabs her by the arms and shouts into her face, “Open the door!”
“No,” she chokes.
“River, let me through!”
“I CAN’T!” she screams, covering her eyes and wrenching herself away from him. The Doctor throws the sonic to the ground and slams his fists against the door and shouts Amy’s name while River sobs behind him, until his voice is hoarse and he can’t move anymore, and he staggers backwards into the wall of the TARDIS and sinks to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” River whispers after a long silence.
He says nothing. His mind feels dull and slow. He leans his head back against the solid wood of the TARDIS and feels so, so tired.
5.
She wipes the coordinates from the TARDIS’s memory, so that he can never look back to see where they were, and she won’t tell him, no matter how he begs her. “This has to happen,” she says, putting her hands on his face and looking up at him. “You have to believe me. I had to show you, and you can’t try to stop it.”
She drops herself off in the 52nd century, and the Doctor doesn’t say goodbye. He sits in the console chair and stares at the floor and the reflections of flashing lights. Eventually, of course, he gets up and tries everything he can think of to retrieve the coordinates from the computer, every cheat and code bypass and virus he can think of, but River knows the TARDIS well, and they are untraceable. He nearly tears the monitor off its frame in frustration, and then he sits back down and cries for a long time.
6.
Amy and Rory are standing exactly where he left them on Thepp, and when the TARDIS doors open for them they walk hesitantly in, each giving the Doctor a weird look as they pass. “Care to explain why you took us to a random planet, left us there for two minutes, and came back?” Rory asks, crossing his arms expectantly.
The Doctor is looking at Amy, who has slung her scarf over a railing and is now using the glass surface of the time rotor as a mirror. His throat tightens as he watches her take her headband off and run her fingers through all that red hair, pulling it back from her face, fixing the headband again and shaking her head so that it settles about her shoulders the way she wants it. It’s something he’s seen her do a thousand times before. He remembers seeing her hair against the concrete floor of River’s hangar, the brightest thing in the room, and it weighs on him like the guilt of blood.
“Doctor?” Rory asks again.
The Doctor turns and stares at him. “Ah, no.” He clears his throat. “It was a, uh…River thing.”
Rory and Amy exchange knowing glances and say no more. The Doctor lets them think whatever they want. Anything but the truth. He grits his teeth and pilots the TARDIS somewhere distracting.
7.
He almost tells her one night in 1693 Spain, when they’re standing on a bridge overlooking a lake studded with stars. Rory is on the shore below, trying to argue with a boatman.
“Look at him,” Amy laughs, nudging the Doctor. “Can you believe him? There’s no way that’s Spanish. I can’t believe he wants to rent an entire boat just to row out and grab some stupid flowers. I told him he can just buy me more.”
The Doctor laughs too, because he’s supposed to-it should be funny, it should be good old Rory up to his hilarious antics, but it’s not-it’s wrenching at his heart.
“Hey.” He feels a poke at his shoulder. Amy is smiling at him. “Where we goin’ next?”
He clears his throat. “I was thinking…maybe ancient Egypt?”
“Oh god, again?” she groans. “What’s with all the Ancient This and Medieval That? We haven’t been to a spaceship or a planet in ages, Doctor! Come on, I’m sick of history.” She loops her arm through his and leans up to him, her pink lips in a pout. He stares at her. “Take us somewhere with lasers and robots. Pleeeeease?”
Her words hit him like ice, but he manages a forced chuckle. “This is part of your education, Pond. I’m not having you say someday, Well, the Doctor was great and all, but he completely missed out the pyramids.”
Amy laughs again, and for a moment he thinks he’s in the clear, but then her expression changes, and she tightens her grip on his arm and looks into his face and says seriously, “Doctor, are you okay?”
He can’t answer. There is something fierce in Amy’s eyes, and he can’t look away, either, and so they fall into a long silence. The faint sound of Rory’s bad Spanish drifts up to them through the fog.
“Whatever it is, you can…” she begins just as the Doctor says her name, and they both stop.
“You first,” Amy murmurs.
He leans forwards and touches his forehead to hers. He can’t help it. She goes very still, and her lips part.
“Amy, what if…” He swallows. “There’s something I can’t-”
“Got it!” Rory shouts.
The two of them break apart, startled. Below them, standing in a rowboat and triumphantly brandishing a soggy bouquet, Rory is grinning, cheerful and oblivious. Amy brushes her hair back from her face, leans over the railing, and shouts back, “Took you long enough, ya numpty!”, to which Rory responds, “Oh shut up, you know you think it’s really romantic of me,” and she grins and swears at him affectionately. The surly boatman begins rowing them back to the shore, and Amy runs down to the end of the bridge to meet him.
The Doctor closes his eyes and hates himself.
8.
If he’s honest with himself, he really thought it could work. If they just stayed in the past, away from advanced technology, they might never find themselves in a steel bunker or a flight deck of any kind, and she might never have to die. But he’s stupid. He’s exhausted and stupid and he’s getting old, and he forgets how things happen. He forgets that aliens can invade the planet at whatever point in history they decide, and when they’re exploring third century Greece and they stumble across a Bravdian technosphere, full of weaponry from the sixth millenium and a malevolent army prepared to use it, his blood freezes in his veins. Nothing happens-the Bravdians are not known for their superior intelligence and it doesn’t take long to destroy their base and send the invasion party fleeing home in their spaceship-but it is too close. It’s not safe anymore. He bundles them all back into the TARDIS for the last time and he knows what he has to do.
He puts it off for as long as he can, until it’s getting late and Rory’s gone into the kitchen to make a pot of tea before bed. Amy is lounging on one of the library sofas. The Doctor leans over the back of it and watches her lie there and flip idly through a magazine, one slippered foot slung over the arm of the sofa, tapping aimlessly in the air.
“Hellooooo,” she says lazily, not bothering to look up.
“Hey,” he says softly.
Amy yawns and turns a few pages.
“Have I ever told you how glad I am that it was your garden I crashed into?” asks the Doctor quietly.
She gives him a sleepy smile. “Awww.” The magazine goes on the floor and she scrambles up to kneel on the sofa cushions and put her arms around his neck. “I’m glad too,” she whispers into his jacket.
He holds her for a few moments, letting himself think, not say, every word he’s ever dreamed of saying to her, and then she pulls back and yawns again and goes, “I’m goin’ to bed, see ya in the morning,” and that’s it. She walks out.
After maybe half an hour, he does the same, passing through the kitchen on his way back to the console room. Rory’s still there, washing out his tea mug. “Night, Doctor,” he says without turning around.
“Rory.”
Rory glances over his shoulder, and then slowly turns off the water and puts down the mug.
The Doctor clears his throat. “You and Amy,” he begins, not really sure what he’s trying to ask. “You’ll always take care of each other, won’t you?”
Rory nods. “Of course we will.”
“Okay.” The Doctor hesitates, and then turns to leave.
“Doctor!”
He turns back. Rory is looking at him with an unreadable expression, and he realizes suddenly that he knows, he’s figured it out. He waits for him to ask why, or to protest, anything, but Rory doesn’t. He simply steps forward and says quietly, “Thank you for everything.”
For a moment the Doctor can’t speak. Finally he half-whispers, “You’re welcome.”
The lights in the console room are unbearably bright by the time he walks in.
9.
What he does-what he has to do, he reminds himself over and over again-makes him feel sick. It makes the TARDIS feel sick too, he can tell, but he forces her to anyway, forces her to become heavy in Rory and Amy’s minds until their sleep is deepened. They don’t stir a muscle as he lifts each of them awkwardly out of bed and carries them outside, into the cold night air of Leadworth, and lays them in the grass behind Amy’s house. He smooths Amy’s hair back from her face and lets his fingertips linger on her cheek. The two of them, Amy and Rory, could have fallen asleep stargazing here. It’s an easy story.
He takes Rory’s left hand and intertwines it with Amy’s right. When they wake up, they will at least have each other.
10.
The next time he sees River, she’s wearing that same damn dress, and it’s all he can do to keep from throwing her out of the TARDIS doors and tossing the psychic paper out with her. She can tell-she can always tell-and so she doesn’t say much, just quietly informs him of the situation and asks for his help. He gives it to her. They save a spaceship and blow up a star, and when they’re back inside he looks at the TARDIS screen, not her, and asks where she wants him to drop her off.
“Nowhere in particular,” she says softly.
Normally he wouldn’t let a reply like that go, of course, but today he thinks, All right, then. He pilots the TARDIS to nowhere in particular and slams the materialization lever a little too viciously for even his own tastes.
River walks silently to the door.
“Wait,” he says. He doesn’t know why. Something’s nagging at him, and he finds himself at a loss for words while she turns around and stands there patiently. “Wait. What’s…”
Her eyes are still sad. Like when he saw her beneath the tree in Kent, ages ago.
Something cold steals into his heart. “You haven’t asked where Amy and Rory are,” he hears himself saying.
River swallows and clears her throat. “Where are they,” she says, but it’s not even a question, it’s there in her voice, and he runs down the steps to where she’s standing and looks into her eyes and pleads with her to not know. “They’re in Leadworth,” he says. He takes her by the shoulders and searches her face desperately. “I left them in Leadworth days ago. They’re gone.”
Her expression doesn’t change.
“River.”
Silence.
He steps back, and his heart sinks. And he should have known, he thinks as he races back to the console and gets them the hell out of there. He should have known.
11.
The military has been developing a covert long range weapons system using alien technology recovered from the old Torchwood base, River explains breathlessly as they run out of the TARDIS, barely stopping to close the doors, but the aliens found out, and now they want it back. They’ve parked their starship above the warehouse-turned-army-base, forty-five minutes out of Leadworth, and no one is prepared to fight back.
“And Amy and Rory are there, because you tricked me.” He sonics the back door of the bunker and throws it open.
River is right on his heels, panting as she tries to keep up with him. “No, Doctor.” She grabs his jacket as he’s about to run down the wrong hallway and steers him in the other direction. “They’re here because they want to see you again.”
12.
Most of the damage has, sadly, already been done. The owners of the stolen technology are not interested in taking over the planet, they just want their machines back. River explains that even though the base is relatively isolated out here in the English countryside, there is a bio-rinse set to go off in five minutes that will kill every human within ten kilometers. People will die. He can save them.
“Where are Amy and Rory?” he demands as they tear around a corner.
“Rory’s locked in an interrogation cell,” she gasps. “Amy went for the bio-rinse device.”
“…oh god, of course she did…” They stop in front of a huge steel door. He searches for the control and finds it on the wall, fishing in his pocket for the sonic screwdriver.
River grabs his hand. “Doctor. It’s in the generator room, through the hangar.”
He doesn’t understand for a second, and then it sinks in. Amy is behind this door.
“River,” he whispers. “Please, can’t…can’t you-”
“The device is bio-locked against human control. It has to be you.”
She squeezes his hand tightly.
After a moment, he squeezes back.
“You have to be fast,” River says urgently, “and you have to be brave. You can still save Rory, and the others. You can still save me.”
For a split second, he doesn’t hate her. Then he sonics the door open.
13.
Amy is collapsed on the floor in a pool of blood. He runs to her, even though he knows it is too late. She’s been dead for over an hour, he remembers. The floor is hard against his knees and he reaches for her, framing her face in his hands, and his eyes sting with tears. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry, Amy.” Her face is cold. There is a long gash down her side, ripped through her white t-shirt, and it makes his stomach turn. He gathers her up in his arms and holds her for a few agonizing seconds, kisses her hair, apologizes, hears his voice breaking, feels her blood soaking into his trouser legs and sticking to his hands. “I’m not ready,” he gasps, tightening his arms around her. “I can’t do this.”
There is a loud explosion somewhere to his left, and he hears River shout from behind him, where she still waits beyond the doorway. He is running out of time. You can still save Rory echoes in his head, and he looks down at Amy, at her white face and closed eyes. Forgive me, he mouths, unable to find his voice.
Another explosion rocks the floor, and he looks over at the foreboding doors of the generator room a few hundred yards away. He will come back to her. He will disable the bio-rinse device, he will save the day, and then he will come back.
He kisses Amy, and he runs.
14.
There is barely time. The sonic won’t work on the device, of course, or anyone could have done it. He has to use his bare hands, and he doesn’t know what to do. The panic sets in and clears his mind, slows things down, numbs him-it takes him less than a minute to figure out the right frequency and about thirty seconds to locate the computer controls and a minute and a half to write a matrix that can infiltrate the system and shut it down.
The ceiling screeches, but the explosions stop. Sparks rain down and snap and hiss against the generators and his hair and clothes. The five minute mark passes and nothing happens. It’s done.
With a heavy sigh, he slumps back from the deactivated console. There’s blood on the floor. He doesn’t really care whose it is. He walks out slowly and sits down beside Amy’s prone body and looks up at the window of the observation box above them, where his TARDIS is materializing away, weeks ago, silent behind the thick glass.
15.
“You did it.” River is running into the hangar. “Oh you brilliant man, you did it. I knew you could do it.”
The Doctor doesn’t look up, but keeps his gaze on Amy. His eyes are dry. He has nothing to say.
River throws herself to her knees and quickly examines Amy’s wound, feeling at her wrists and neck. “She’s not breathing, but I think we can still save her,” she says hurriedly. “There’s a resuscitory kit in my dress pocket, grab it for me.”
The Doctor doesn’t move. River starts ripping off Amy’s shirt.
“Help me!” she demands.
“River,” he begins, feeling dizzy.
“Oh, damn you,” she shouts, reaching into her own pocket and pulling out a mess of portable equipment, “don’t you go useless on me now!”
A mask goes on Amy’s face. River seizes the Doctor’s hand and pulls him forward until he almost falls over, shoving his hand onto the mask to hold it in place, and hands him a cylindrical apparatus. “It’s at tidal volume five hundred milliliters, she might need more, hold it still while I dress her wound. Don’t let go!” she yells.
“River, you bastard,” he gasps.
“Sorry, sweetie,” she mutters. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
16.
Amy lives. She wakes up in the TARDIS sick bay and starts crying, because the Doctor is there, and Rory kisses her on the cheek, whispers something, and leaves them alone together.
“…oh my god, oh my god, it’s you…Doctor…” He leans over and takes her hands in his, and tries to apologize to her, but she won’t listen. “It’s really you. I missed you so much. Oh my god, I missed you so much, I thought you were never coming back…”
“I always come back.”
“…I never thought I was gonna see you again…”
He kisses her hands, and leans forward and kisses her on the forehead, and puts his hands on her tear-stained cheeks and whispers, “I will always come back.”
17.
River calls to him on the psychic paper, and he goes to her. This time it’s winter. She has a different dress on, and for a moment he’s not sure which River he’s seeing, until she holds up the old resuscitory kit and says with a wry smile, “I suppose you’d like me to explain.”
He strolls up to her, hands in his jacket pocket, and offers her a small smile in return. “Yes.”
18.
“You came to me two weeks ago,” she says, wrapping her shrug tighter around her shoulders as the wind howls outside. “You were completely broken. You told me you needed my help.”
She takes a sip of her drink. He waits for her to continue.
“The TARDIS had taken you to Leadworth. There was…a situation. Hostile aliens attacking a military base. The three of you went in to try to stop it. You were separated. There was potential for a massive death toll. A ten-kilometer bio-rinse.”
She pauses. Remembrance is written on her face.
“You told me everything that happened. You ran in to find the device and found Amy instead, barely alive. You thought you could save her and have enough time to stop the bio-rinse. You were wrong.”
He clears his throat. “So they died. All of them.”
“Yes.”
River is silent for a few minutes. The Doctor stares into his own drink and wonders.
“So I came to you and asked you to rewrite time. To fix my own mistake.” He looks up at her.
There are tears in her eyes. “You begged me to. I said no. There were too many fixed points. Amy had to go into the hangar first-there was a back-up bio-rinse device that you didn’t know about, you couldn’t have known about, but Amy must have found out, and she was able to destroy it. No bio-lock, you see. They didn’t expect the humans to find it. She was attacked in the generator room and tried to get back to you, but she collapsed.”
He takes a deep breath. “You could have gone back and told me about the second device.”
“There wouldn’t have been time for you to destroy both of them. Believe me, Doctor, I’ve thought this through a million times. You had to walk through a room with a dying friend on the floor and do nothing. It was impossible.”
She takes another drink, and her hands shake a little.
“What made you change your mind?” he asks quietly.
“You,” she answers. “And the sadness in your voice.” She smiles slightly. “It wasn’t easy, you know. Creating an alternate universe.”
“Time can be rewritten.”
“I’m glad.”
They finish their drinks in silence. The Doctor stands up and waits for River to do the same. Instead she looks up at him. “You know, I’d never seen you like that before,” she murmurs. “And I never want to again.”
“You will, someday.”
She stands up and kisses him. He closes his eyes and doesn’t kiss back. After a few moments she pulls away.
“See you later, River,” he says softly, and he walks back to his TARDIS.
fin
author: saywheeeee
characters: eleven, amy, river, rory
pairings: slight eleven/amy, amy/rory, and river/eleven
genre: angst/drama/romance
rating: teen for swearing
word count: 4473
summary: Time can be rewritten, but the cost is high.
1.
River calls to him on the psychic paper, and he goes to her, landing the TARDIS on a summer day in Kent and shielding his eyes from the sun as he steps out onto the grass. It’s a strange place for them to meet, but at this point he’s stopped asking questions. He spies her standing under a tree, facing away from him, and walks over.
As soon as she hears his footsteps, she turns around, and her eyes are full of hurt. She is holding onto her own arms as though she’s cold, and she stares at him and says nothing.
He puts his hands in his pockets. “What, no Hello sweetie?”
She doesn’t speak, and so he doesn’t either, bouncing on his feet and taking in their surroundings. They’re in the middle of some kind of park. There’s a light breeze and the smell of barbecue on the air. No horrible monsters or dangerous criminals around, from what he can see. He sniffs and turns his attention back to River, raising his eyebrows in question.
She takes a deep breath and says tremulously, “I have to show you something.”
2.
“I don’t understand,” he protests as she moves gracefully around the TARDIS console, pushing buttons and pulling levers and generally doing all the things that he’s supposed to be doing. “Tell me why you don’t want Amy and Rory coming with.”
“No.”
He scowls and tries to follow her around the console. “What are you doing?”
“Rewriting time,” she replies breathlessly, typing coordinates into the system. He moves to look over her shoulder, but she elbows him away. “You can’t see,” she explains, pushing him backwards with one hand until he falls into one of the chairs. He glares at the back of her head, but doesn’t get up again.
The TARDIS rocks and jolts for a moment, and then River’s deft hands flip on the stabilizers and guide her into a smooth landing. Something goes bong, and River turns around to face the Doctor. “We’re here,” she says, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear and smoothing her dress. Her hands are shaking. “Follow me.”
He scowls again and jumps out of his seat, beating her to the doors and then turning around to stare her down as she approaches more slowly. She looks like she’s about to cry.
“I’m so sorry,” she says before she swings open the door.
3.
They’re in some sort of observation box, a grey room with a single huge window. The Doctor steps out cautiously, keeping one hand on the TARDIS door, while River stands to the side, clasping her hands before her. The room is silent except for the sound of their feet on the metal floor. There is one door on the left wall which reads “DECK B” in faded letters.
The Doctor moves forward to the window. River reaches out a hand as if to stop him, but she freezes before she touches him. He looks at her. He is growing tired of being mystified.
“Go,” she says.
He steps up to the window.
They are above a long platform or hangar, the wall lined with vehicles and the floor littered with bodies. The Doctor leans closer to the glass and stares. In the middle of the chaos he can make out a figure on its knees, back to them, hunched over something, rocking slightly. It takes him a few moments to recognize himself.
He swallows. The glass is thick and no sound from the hangar below penetrates it, but he can imagine what he would hear if he were down there now. He is watching himself losing someone, and both his hearts pound furiously, his hands tightening on the cold window sill. Behind him, River stifles a cough, and he knows she is looking anywhere but at his face.
There is a loud crash somewhere down below, loud enough even to be heard within the observation box, and his future self’s head snaps up, looking to the left. Another crash sounds. The Doctor from the future is still for a few seconds, and then jumps to his feet and runs out of the hangar, allowing his past self to see whose body he was cradling in his arms a moment before.
He feels his breath stop in his throat. It’s Amy.
4.
“No, Doctor!” River screams just before he moves, and she throws her arms around his waist and holds him back as he runs for the door. She isn’t strong enough, and he breaks free from her grasp, seizing the door handle. “Doctor, she’s been dead for over an hour,” River cries behind him, but he ignores her. The handle is jammed, the sonic does nothing. She came here before me, he thinks numbly, hurling himself against the door. It doesn’t work, and he staggers back in pain.
“Let me through,” he demands, whirling around to face River, but she shakes her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. He grabs her by the arms and shouts into her face, “Open the door!”
“No,” she chokes.
“River, let me through!”
“I CAN’T!” she screams, covering her eyes and wrenching herself away from him. The Doctor throws the sonic to the ground and slams his fists against the door and shouts Amy’s name while River sobs behind him, until his voice is hoarse and he can’t move anymore, and he staggers backwards into the wall of the TARDIS and sinks to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” River whispers after a long silence.
He says nothing. His mind feels dull and slow. He leans his head back against the solid wood of the TARDIS and feels so, so tired.
5.
She wipes the coordinates from the TARDIS’s memory, so that he can never look back to see where they were, and she won’t tell him, no matter how he begs her. “This has to happen,” she says, putting her hands on his face and looking up at him. “You have to believe me. I had to show you, and you can’t try to stop it.”
She drops herself off in the 52nd century, and the Doctor doesn’t say goodbye. He sits in the console chair and stares at the floor and the reflections of flashing lights. Eventually, of course, he gets up and tries everything he can think of to retrieve the coordinates from the computer, every cheat and code bypass and virus he can think of, but River knows the TARDIS well, and they are untraceable. He nearly tears the monitor off its frame in frustration, and then he sits back down and cries for a long time.
6.
Amy and Rory are standing exactly where he left them on Thepp, and when the TARDIS doors open for them they walk hesitantly in, each giving the Doctor a weird look as they pass. “Care to explain why you took us to a random planet, left us there for two minutes, and came back?” Rory asks, crossing his arms expectantly.
The Doctor is looking at Amy, who has slung her scarf over a railing and is now using the glass surface of the time rotor as a mirror. His throat tightens as he watches her take her headband off and run her fingers through all that red hair, pulling it back from her face, fixing the headband again and shaking her head so that it settles about her shoulders the way she wants it. It’s something he’s seen her do a thousand times before. He remembers seeing her hair against the concrete floor of River’s hangar, the brightest thing in the room, and it weighs on him like the guilt of blood.
“Doctor?” Rory asks again.
The Doctor turns and stares at him. “Ah, no.” He clears his throat. “It was a, uh…River thing.”
Rory and Amy exchange knowing glances and say no more. The Doctor lets them think whatever they want. Anything but the truth. He grits his teeth and pilots the TARDIS somewhere distracting.
7.
He almost tells her one night in 1693 Spain, when they’re standing on a bridge overlooking a lake studded with stars. Rory is on the shore below, trying to argue with a boatman.
“Look at him,” Amy laughs, nudging the Doctor. “Can you believe him? There’s no way that’s Spanish. I can’t believe he wants to rent an entire boat just to row out and grab some stupid flowers. I told him he can just buy me more.”
The Doctor laughs too, because he’s supposed to-it should be funny, it should be good old Rory up to his hilarious antics, but it’s not-it’s wrenching at his heart.
“Hey.” He feels a poke at his shoulder. Amy is smiling at him. “Where we goin’ next?”
He clears his throat. “I was thinking…maybe ancient Egypt?”
“Oh god, again?” she groans. “What’s with all the Ancient This and Medieval That? We haven’t been to a spaceship or a planet in ages, Doctor! Come on, I’m sick of history.” She loops her arm through his and leans up to him, her pink lips in a pout. He stares at her. “Take us somewhere with lasers and robots. Pleeeeease?”
Her words hit him like ice, but he manages a forced chuckle. “This is part of your education, Pond. I’m not having you say someday, Well, the Doctor was great and all, but he completely missed out the pyramids.”
Amy laughs again, and for a moment he thinks he’s in the clear, but then her expression changes, and she tightens her grip on his arm and looks into his face and says seriously, “Doctor, are you okay?”
He can’t answer. There is something fierce in Amy’s eyes, and he can’t look away, either, and so they fall into a long silence. The faint sound of Rory’s bad Spanish drifts up to them through the fog.
“Whatever it is, you can…” she begins just as the Doctor says her name, and they both stop.
“You first,” Amy murmurs.
He leans forwards and touches his forehead to hers. He can’t help it. She goes very still, and her lips part.
“Amy, what if…” He swallows. “There’s something I can’t-”
“Got it!” Rory shouts.
The two of them break apart, startled. Below them, standing in a rowboat and triumphantly brandishing a soggy bouquet, Rory is grinning, cheerful and oblivious. Amy brushes her hair back from her face, leans over the railing, and shouts back, “Took you long enough, ya numpty!”, to which Rory responds, “Oh shut up, you know you think it’s really romantic of me,” and she grins and swears at him affectionately. The surly boatman begins rowing them back to the shore, and Amy runs down to the end of the bridge to meet him.
The Doctor closes his eyes and hates himself.
8.
If he’s honest with himself, he really thought it could work. If they just stayed in the past, away from advanced technology, they might never find themselves in a steel bunker or a flight deck of any kind, and she might never have to die. But he’s stupid. He’s exhausted and stupid and he’s getting old, and he forgets how things happen. He forgets that aliens can invade the planet at whatever point in history they decide, and when they’re exploring third century Greece and they stumble across a Bravdian technosphere, full of weaponry from the sixth millenium and a malevolent army prepared to use it, his blood freezes in his veins. Nothing happens-the Bravdians are not known for their superior intelligence and it doesn’t take long to destroy their base and send the invasion party fleeing home in their spaceship-but it is too close. It’s not safe anymore. He bundles them all back into the TARDIS for the last time and he knows what he has to do.
He puts it off for as long as he can, until it’s getting late and Rory’s gone into the kitchen to make a pot of tea before bed. Amy is lounging on one of the library sofas. The Doctor leans over the back of it and watches her lie there and flip idly through a magazine, one slippered foot slung over the arm of the sofa, tapping aimlessly in the air.
“Hellooooo,” she says lazily, not bothering to look up.
“Hey,” he says softly.
Amy yawns and turns a few pages.
“Have I ever told you how glad I am that it was your garden I crashed into?” asks the Doctor quietly.
She gives him a sleepy smile. “Awww.” The magazine goes on the floor and she scrambles up to kneel on the sofa cushions and put her arms around his neck. “I’m glad too,” she whispers into his jacket.
He holds her for a few moments, letting himself think, not say, every word he’s ever dreamed of saying to her, and then she pulls back and yawns again and goes, “I’m goin’ to bed, see ya in the morning,” and that’s it. She walks out.
After maybe half an hour, he does the same, passing through the kitchen on his way back to the console room. Rory’s still there, washing out his tea mug. “Night, Doctor,” he says without turning around.
“Rory.”
Rory glances over his shoulder, and then slowly turns off the water and puts down the mug.
The Doctor clears his throat. “You and Amy,” he begins, not really sure what he’s trying to ask. “You’ll always take care of each other, won’t you?”
Rory nods. “Of course we will.”
“Okay.” The Doctor hesitates, and then turns to leave.
“Doctor!”
He turns back. Rory is looking at him with an unreadable expression, and he realizes suddenly that he knows, he’s figured it out. He waits for him to ask why, or to protest, anything, but Rory doesn’t. He simply steps forward and says quietly, “Thank you for everything.”
For a moment the Doctor can’t speak. Finally he half-whispers, “You’re welcome.”
The lights in the console room are unbearably bright by the time he walks in.
9.
What he does-what he has to do, he reminds himself over and over again-makes him feel sick. It makes the TARDIS feel sick too, he can tell, but he forces her to anyway, forces her to become heavy in Rory and Amy’s minds until their sleep is deepened. They don’t stir a muscle as he lifts each of them awkwardly out of bed and carries them outside, into the cold night air of Leadworth, and lays them in the grass behind Amy’s house. He smooths Amy’s hair back from her face and lets his fingertips linger on her cheek. The two of them, Amy and Rory, could have fallen asleep stargazing here. It’s an easy story.
He takes Rory’s left hand and intertwines it with Amy’s right. When they wake up, they will at least have each other.
10.
The next time he sees River, she’s wearing that same damn dress, and it’s all he can do to keep from throwing her out of the TARDIS doors and tossing the psychic paper out with her. She can tell-she can always tell-and so she doesn’t say much, just quietly informs him of the situation and asks for his help. He gives it to her. They save a spaceship and blow up a star, and when they’re back inside he looks at the TARDIS screen, not her, and asks where she wants him to drop her off.
“Nowhere in particular,” she says softly.
Normally he wouldn’t let a reply like that go, of course, but today he thinks, All right, then. He pilots the TARDIS to nowhere in particular and slams the materialization lever a little too viciously for even his own tastes.
River walks silently to the door.
“Wait,” he says. He doesn’t know why. Something’s nagging at him, and he finds himself at a loss for words while she turns around and stands there patiently. “Wait. What’s…”
Her eyes are still sad. Like when he saw her beneath the tree in Kent, ages ago.
Something cold steals into his heart. “You haven’t asked where Amy and Rory are,” he hears himself saying.
River swallows and clears her throat. “Where are they,” she says, but it’s not even a question, it’s there in her voice, and he runs down the steps to where she’s standing and looks into her eyes and pleads with her to not know. “They’re in Leadworth,” he says. He takes her by the shoulders and searches her face desperately. “I left them in Leadworth days ago. They’re gone.”
Her expression doesn’t change.
“River.”
Silence.
He steps back, and his heart sinks. And he should have known, he thinks as he races back to the console and gets them the hell out of there. He should have known.
11.
The military has been developing a covert long range weapons system using alien technology recovered from the old Torchwood base, River explains breathlessly as they run out of the TARDIS, barely stopping to close the doors, but the aliens found out, and now they want it back. They’ve parked their starship above the warehouse-turned-army-base, forty-five minutes out of Leadworth, and no one is prepared to fight back.
“And Amy and Rory are there, because you tricked me.” He sonics the back door of the bunker and throws it open.
River is right on his heels, panting as she tries to keep up with him. “No, Doctor.” She grabs his jacket as he’s about to run down the wrong hallway and steers him in the other direction. “They’re here because they want to see you again.”
12.
Most of the damage has, sadly, already been done. The owners of the stolen technology are not interested in taking over the planet, they just want their machines back. River explains that even though the base is relatively isolated out here in the English countryside, there is a bio-rinse set to go off in five minutes that will kill every human within ten kilometers. People will die. He can save them.
“Where are Amy and Rory?” he demands as they tear around a corner.
“Rory’s locked in an interrogation cell,” she gasps. “Amy went for the bio-rinse device.”
“…oh god, of course she did…” They stop in front of a huge steel door. He searches for the control and finds it on the wall, fishing in his pocket for the sonic screwdriver.
River grabs his hand. “Doctor. It’s in the generator room, through the hangar.”
He doesn’t understand for a second, and then it sinks in. Amy is behind this door.
“River,” he whispers. “Please, can’t…can’t you-”
“The device is bio-locked against human control. It has to be you.”
She squeezes his hand tightly.
After a moment, he squeezes back.
“You have to be fast,” River says urgently, “and you have to be brave. You can still save Rory, and the others. You can still save me.”
For a split second, he doesn’t hate her. Then he sonics the door open.
13.
Amy is collapsed on the floor in a pool of blood. He runs to her, even though he knows it is too late. She’s been dead for over an hour, he remembers. The floor is hard against his knees and he reaches for her, framing her face in his hands, and his eyes sting with tears. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry, Amy.” Her face is cold. There is a long gash down her side, ripped through her white t-shirt, and it makes his stomach turn. He gathers her up in his arms and holds her for a few agonizing seconds, kisses her hair, apologizes, hears his voice breaking, feels her blood soaking into his trouser legs and sticking to his hands. “I’m not ready,” he gasps, tightening his arms around her. “I can’t do this.”
There is a loud explosion somewhere to his left, and he hears River shout from behind him, where she still waits beyond the doorway. He is running out of time. You can still save Rory echoes in his head, and he looks down at Amy, at her white face and closed eyes. Forgive me, he mouths, unable to find his voice.
Another explosion rocks the floor, and he looks over at the foreboding doors of the generator room a few hundred yards away. He will come back to her. He will disable the bio-rinse device, he will save the day, and then he will come back.
He kisses Amy, and he runs.
14.
There is barely time. The sonic won’t work on the device, of course, or anyone could have done it. He has to use his bare hands, and he doesn’t know what to do. The panic sets in and clears his mind, slows things down, numbs him-it takes him less than a minute to figure out the right frequency and about thirty seconds to locate the computer controls and a minute and a half to write a matrix that can infiltrate the system and shut it down.
The ceiling screeches, but the explosions stop. Sparks rain down and snap and hiss against the generators and his hair and clothes. The five minute mark passes and nothing happens. It’s done.
With a heavy sigh, he slumps back from the deactivated console. There’s blood on the floor. He doesn’t really care whose it is. He walks out slowly and sits down beside Amy’s prone body and looks up at the window of the observation box above them, where his TARDIS is materializing away, weeks ago, silent behind the thick glass.
15.
“You did it.” River is running into the hangar. “Oh you brilliant man, you did it. I knew you could do it.”
The Doctor doesn’t look up, but keeps his gaze on Amy. His eyes are dry. He has nothing to say.
River throws herself to her knees and quickly examines Amy’s wound, feeling at her wrists and neck. “She’s not breathing, but I think we can still save her,” she says hurriedly. “There’s a resuscitory kit in my dress pocket, grab it for me.”
The Doctor doesn’t move. River starts ripping off Amy’s shirt.
“Help me!” she demands.
“River,” he begins, feeling dizzy.
“Oh, damn you,” she shouts, reaching into her own pocket and pulling out a mess of portable equipment, “don’t you go useless on me now!”
A mask goes on Amy’s face. River seizes the Doctor’s hand and pulls him forward until he almost falls over, shoving his hand onto the mask to hold it in place, and hands him a cylindrical apparatus. “It’s at tidal volume five hundred milliliters, she might need more, hold it still while I dress her wound. Don’t let go!” she yells.
“River, you bastard,” he gasps.
“Sorry, sweetie,” she mutters. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
16.
Amy lives. She wakes up in the TARDIS sick bay and starts crying, because the Doctor is there, and Rory kisses her on the cheek, whispers something, and leaves them alone together.
“…oh my god, oh my god, it’s you…Doctor…” He leans over and takes her hands in his, and tries to apologize to her, but she won’t listen. “It’s really you. I missed you so much. Oh my god, I missed you so much, I thought you were never coming back…”
“I always come back.”
“…I never thought I was gonna see you again…”
He kisses her hands, and leans forward and kisses her on the forehead, and puts his hands on her tear-stained cheeks and whispers, “I will always come back.”
17.
River calls to him on the psychic paper, and he goes to her. This time it’s winter. She has a different dress on, and for a moment he’s not sure which River he’s seeing, until she holds up the old resuscitory kit and says with a wry smile, “I suppose you’d like me to explain.”
He strolls up to her, hands in his jacket pocket, and offers her a small smile in return. “Yes.”
18.
“You came to me two weeks ago,” she says, wrapping her shrug tighter around her shoulders as the wind howls outside. “You were completely broken. You told me you needed my help.”
She takes a sip of her drink. He waits for her to continue.
“The TARDIS had taken you to Leadworth. There was…a situation. Hostile aliens attacking a military base. The three of you went in to try to stop it. You were separated. There was potential for a massive death toll. A ten-kilometer bio-rinse.”
She pauses. Remembrance is written on her face.
“You told me everything that happened. You ran in to find the device and found Amy instead, barely alive. You thought you could save her and have enough time to stop the bio-rinse. You were wrong.”
He clears his throat. “So they died. All of them.”
“Yes.”
River is silent for a few minutes. The Doctor stares into his own drink and wonders.
“So I came to you and asked you to rewrite time. To fix my own mistake.” He looks up at her.
There are tears in her eyes. “You begged me to. I said no. There were too many fixed points. Amy had to go into the hangar first-there was a back-up bio-rinse device that you didn’t know about, you couldn’t have known about, but Amy must have found out, and she was able to destroy it. No bio-lock, you see. They didn’t expect the humans to find it. She was attacked in the generator room and tried to get back to you, but she collapsed.”
He takes a deep breath. “You could have gone back and told me about the second device.”
“There wouldn’t have been time for you to destroy both of them. Believe me, Doctor, I’ve thought this through a million times. You had to walk through a room with a dying friend on the floor and do nothing. It was impossible.”
She takes another drink, and her hands shake a little.
“What made you change your mind?” he asks quietly.
“You,” she answers. “And the sadness in your voice.” She smiles slightly. “It wasn’t easy, you know. Creating an alternate universe.”
“Time can be rewritten.”
“I’m glad.”
They finish their drinks in silence. The Doctor stands up and waits for River to do the same. Instead she looks up at him. “You know, I’d never seen you like that before,” she murmurs. “And I never want to again.”
“You will, someday.”
She stands up and kisses him. He closes his eyes and doesn’t kiss back. After a few moments she pulls away.
“See you later, River,” he says softly, and he walks back to his TARDIS.
fin