Fic: Never meet your heroes
“Is this seat taken?”
Amy had no idea that a short question containing four words could startle someone so much. The dark-haired woman sitting at the table with the only spare seat in the café looked as if she’d almost been run over in the middle of the street. “Uhhh… no, no-one’s sitting there,” she said, shaking her head slightly as if to clear it of whatever fog was preventing her thinking clearly.
“Can I sit here then?” Amy asked. “Knock yourself out,” came the absentminded reply from the dark-haired woman who was now absorbed in her thoughts and her phone.
Gratefully Amy sat down with her cup of tea, and boy did she need it. Travelling with the Doctor involved an alarming amount of running that she was sure, if she hadn’t been as fit as she was, would’ve given her a heart attack (at the very least). Sipping at her tea, she felt revitalised and certainly able to cope with people-watching. The café seemed to amble outwards from the inside towards the street, with tables placed haphazardly round the front of the French doors, and in the warm spring air with nary a cloud in the sky, Amy found herself feeling quite content.
Idly she wondered if the Doctor was alright. They had landed in an alleyway in a hurry because the monitors in the TARDIS in the language that she couldn’t read, no matter how hard she tried, had told the Doctor that some extremely dangerous insect had left its larvae somewhere in the city. Amy had tried pointing out that there was always a dangerous insect leaving its larvae lying around, and why did they have to be some sort of intergalactic pest control?
The Doctor had simply nodded at her, crashed the TARDIS down into some metal bins and sprinted out the door shouting “Metropolis, 21st century!” at her without a backwards glance. Tidying up the control room had taken more time than she had expected and, therefore, tea was required.
After a while, Amy got bored of watching people going to and fro outside and took the opportunity to study the woman sitting opposite her. She was drinking coffee, judging by the smell, and staring out at the street not really paying attention to anything. Dark curly hair framed her face, her whole demeanour saying ‘confident’ and ‘self-assured’, and at this moment in time, ‘bored’. The woman’s phone, sitting on the table, beeped, pulling her out of her reverie to pick it up and read the screen.
The transformation from bored coffee drinker to a woman clearly in love was astonishing. Amy had never seen anything like it. The woman’s eyes met Amy’s over the top of her phone and Amy smiled. “Boyfriend getting in touch?” she asked. The woman nodded, her eyes sparkling, and she was most definitely chewing her lip in that gonna-get-some-later kind of way. “He’s amazing,” the woman said. “I’m Lois, by the way. Lois Lane.”
Amy reached across the table and shook hands with her. “I’m Amy Pond,” she replied, trying not to break into a dance of joy at meeting the real living actual Lois Lane. After all, how many people could say they’d met their heroes? Of all the people to accidentally sit beside, it just had to be Lois. She would kill the Doctor later for not warning her that she was in the Metropolis where Lois Lane existed.
“You’re not from around here,” Lois said, curiosity in her voice, and Amy shook her head. “Nope, I’m from Scotland. Travelling now, with a friend,” she told her companion, trying to be truthful (only not really) and blushing at the same time. “Just a friend?” Lois asked, noticing the blush and taking it the wrong way. “My very own spaceman,” Amy said with a grin. Lois’s eyes took on a knowing look as she answered “I’ve got one of those too. Will you be in Metropolis for long?” Amy scrunched her face up in uncertainty. Who knew how long it would take to get rid of alien insect larvae? It wasn’t as if she had a manual to work from. “I dunno, depends on my friend. He’s the designated driver,” she said, swirling what was left of her tea round in her cup and hoping she wasn’t making an ass of herself in front of the one and only Lois Lane.
Somewhere down the street, a child shouted “Look!” and before long there was more buzz and hubbub round the café than that time the Doctor had taken her to the Cavern Club to see the Beatles. People were looking skywards, and, curious, Amy stood up and looked in the direction of the noise, Lois following suit.
What she saw took her breath away. A magnificent figure in red, blue and yellow was flying - no, gliding - through the sky towards them between the tall buildings, arms outstretched, cape billowing in the wind. “Wow,” Amy whispered. “He really is,” she heard Lois say behind her, as they watched the figure overheard until it was out of sight.
To say she was stunned was probably the understatement of the year. Amy sat back down at her seat completely bewildered. This couldn’t be real, could it? Seeing Superman? Meeting Lois Lane? Lois’s phone rang - to Amy’s amusement, it was ‘Old McDonald’ - and she turned away from Amy to take the call, saying with a smile, “Sorry, it’s Clark.” Clark Kent aka Superman, Amy mentally added.
“Yeah I saw you,” she heard Lois say. She wasn’t trying to listen in to the conversation - it had just turned out that way. “Mmm hmmm….. who am I with? Someone I just met, her name’s Amy Pond. Yeah… yeah, ok.” Lois turned back to Amy, looking apologetic. “Sorry Amy, I have to go. It was really nice meeting you” she said, smiling again. Amy nodded and tried to think of something cool to say, but all she could come up with was, “Nice to meet you too.”
Lois stood up and pulled her bag up from below her chair. “Take care of that spaceman,” Amy called after her; she waved and took off down the street, leaving Amy sitting in a state of more disbelief than when Rory had told her he was going to university. (University? Rory? Really?)
A gust of wind blowing in her ear made her look up and there was the Doctor, the only person she knew who was in a state of perpetual motion even when he was standing still. He reminded her of a giraffe with his uncoordinated limbs and the way he peered at everything all the time.
“Doctor!” she squeaked.
“What? What is it? What’s wrong?” he demanded.
Amy stood up and, looking down the street towards the retreating figure of Lois Lane, tried to point her out. The Doctor followed the direction of her finger and looked back at Amy, confused. “What? What am I looking at?” he demanded again. Amy rolled her eyes and pointed more insistently at the figure now crossing the street. The Doctor looked again and this time, understanding lit his eyes. “The dark-haired woman, yes, what about her?” he asked, looking back at Amy intently, as though what she was trying to tell him was the most important thing he had ever had to listen to.
Amy grabbed the lapels of his jacket to make her point. “That. was Lois. Lane.”
The Doctor’s mouth fell open. “Really?!” he exclaimed, his head swivelling round two-hundred-and-seventy degrees to see her again. “And you met her?” he asked, his eyes rounded in excited surprise. He looked like a small boy at Christmas who’s just realised the present he asked for is right in front of him.
She could only nod at him, still hanging onto his jacket. They probably looked like a couple having a domestic, but she decided she wasn’t bothered. She’d met Lois Lane. The Doctor, misinterpreting her silence for disappointment, composed himself a little and gently tugged her hands free of his jacket. “Well you know what they say, you should never meet your heroes,” he told her soothingly, dusting imaginary fluff off his sleeves. “No,” Amy agreed. “You shouldn’t…. because sometimes they turn out to be more than you imagined.” The Doctor smiled a slow, understanding smile, realising what had happened. Amy smiled back, thanking him for so many things.
“Come along, Pond,” the Doctor said, setting off in the opposite direction to the one Amy was looking in.
Obediently she followed after him, before she remembered she was going to kill him.
“Oi! Doctor! You could’ve told me before you ran away and left me that this was the Metropolis where Lois Lane exists for real. Do all those other worlds exist too?” she asked, catching up with him and poking him in the arm.
“Oh yes,” he replied. “I bumped into Arthur Dent once. He was a very nice man.”
Amy thought about that for a minute before asking, “Can we go and meet Mr. Darcy then?”