TITLE: Questions for an Imaginary Friend

CHARACTERS/PAIRINGS: The Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond.

RATING: K

SETTING: Early Series 5, most likely between 'The Eleventh Hour' and 'The Beast Below'.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own it, and it would most likely suck if I did. It's the hands of Moffat and the BBC, where it should be.

A/N: The title's awful, two episodes is really not enough time for me to get a feel for the characters and it's unbetaed, so prepare for spelling mistakes up the wazoo. But, hey, at least it's not Rose/Doctor, amirite? (I kid, I kid. But seriously, guys, she left the show in 2006. I'd say 'get over it', but given that practically every single female character who's had more than three lines on the show since it came back has been rumoured to be the Rani at some point, I don't think this fandom is very good at getting over things, do you?)

Amy Pond had known the Doctor since she had been seven years old. She had known him since she had been Amelia Pond, the Scottish orphan in an English village, scared of the crack in her wall. It had been so long now she could barely remember a time before him; before that night, when he had fallen out of the sky and changed her life, and yet not changed it at all. Fourteen years of waiting and wishing for him to return - fourteen years. It was almost her entire life. She had known the Doctor for almost her entire life, but she didn't know him, not really.

It was the Raggedy Doctor she knew. The man who had crashed in her garden in the night, transformed by the imagination of a child into a character from a fairytale. He was a character of her creation, but a character which, to her, had been as real as anything. She had grown up with the Raggedy Doctor, but it was only now that she had begun to realise that her Raggedy Doctor did not exist. Instead, there was the Doctor. An alien who looked human; an impartial observer who saved the world. He was a contradiction, a riddle, and Amy knew absolutely nothing about him.

There were so many questions to ask, but she was almost scared to ask them. Not because she feared the Doctor's reaction, but because she feared his answers. The picture she had painted of the Raggedy Doctor was so perfect, in spite of what he had done, and she couldn't bear the thought of ruining it. Hadn't it been the Doctor himself, though, who'd said that she wasn't afraid of anything?

Amy looked over at the main console of the TARDIS from the railing she leant against. She knew the Doctor was somewhere behind it; she could hear the metallic clangs and his laughter as he messed with something in its machinery. Her fingers drummed against the plastic as she thought.

"How old are you?" She decided to start off small. Maybe she would work up to the big stuff later.

The Doctor's head popped out from behind the opposite side of the console; his hair a mess, smeared in what she hoped was oil and grinning like a lunatic. "What?"

"How old are you?"

The Doctor's eyes narrowed and his head tilted as he considered her. Amy couldn't tell if he looked more like a police sniffer dog, or the detective leading the case.

"People usually ask that later," He mused, "At first it's all 'Who are you?' and 'What are you?' and 'Why are licking my things?' and then they get onto the boring details, but you asked that first. Why?"

Amy shrugged, "It was the first thing I thought of."

"Oh," The Doctor sprung up with the force of a cat jumping onto a fencepost and practically hopped over to Amy, stopping to wipe his hands on his trousers and grab his jacket from where he had left it lying on the console. He'd got it on by the time he reached her, leant in and whispered, "Can you keep a secret?"

"Yeah, of course." She whispered back to nothing, for the Doctor had already leapt to investigate something else on the console.

"Well, you see," He spoke over his shoulder, "I've been telling everyone I'm nine hundred for a while now. I mean, I'd add a couple of years on here and there but, to be honest, I completely made it up. I feel quite bad about it, but, well, you know...Ooh, a transformational circuit booster? You really are spoiling me!" He grinned and knelt down to investigate what looked like, to Amy, the cables from the back of her television.

"You've been telling people you're nine hundred years old?" Amy snorted.

"Okay, maybe I shouldn't have lied, but there's no need to sound so..." The Doctor searched for the right word, but was cut off before he could find it.

"But nine hundred? You could have come up with something, I don't know, believable."

"Incredulous, that's the word!" The Doctor turned to face Amy and jumped up, joining her against the railing, "Anyway, what's so unbelievable about nine hundred? What would you say?"

Amy squinted at him, trying to see past the tweed jacket and bow tie, "Twenty...seven?" She ventured.

The Doctor raised an almost non-existent eyebrow, "Twenty seven?"

"Well, it's better than nine hundred," Amy scowled, "And you never told me how old you actually are."

"That's because I don't know." The Doctor shrugged, then he was off, investigating something else within the mess of machinery which made up the main console.

"You don't know?! How can you not know how old you are?"

"I had a way of knowing, a while ago. But then...well. It's easy to lose track of time in here, and once you've lost it it's even harder to find it again."

"But you must have some idea." Amy pressed, as she came to stand by where the Doctor was currently bent over in study.

"I told you. Not a clue."

"But-"

"Right," The Doctor abandoned his investigation to fix her with his usual wavering stare, "Let me put it this way - how long have we been talking?"

"I don't know...two minutes?" Amy guessed.

"Ah, but how do you know it's been two minutes? For all you know, it could have been twenty. It could have been two hours - it could have been eternity. You've got no way of knowing."

"But I do know, I-"

"No, you don't. You know some time has passed, but you don't have any way of telling how much. It's not like there's a clock in here."

Amy's eyes narrowed in confusion, and she glanced around the vast room, "You're right," She started slowly, "You'd think, with all the equipment in here, there would be a clock..."

"There's a reason for that," The Doctor chewed his lip and his hands began to move, as they tended to do when he was explaining something, though he seemed quite unaware of it, "See, the TARDIS, she can go anywhere. She can go to any minute - every minute- every second. She's of every time - and that means she's of no time. What's the point of knowing it's seven o'clock in here when it's three o'clock out there? Or tunget past krol? Or a planet which doesn't even have a concept of time?

"Time isn't the same everywhere, Amy. It bends and twists and slows and speeds up, depending on who's counting it. The only thing you can guarantee is that it never, ever stops," He paused, and grinned, "And neither do I, which is why I really don't have the time to work out my age. I've gone this long without one and it's never adversely affected me before, but I'll be sure to tell you if it ever does."

"All right, I get it. It's still weird, though." Amy sighed.

The Doctor fixed her with that stare again, and when he spoke again it was serious, "Well, that's the kind of life this is. No Mondays, no weekends, no lunchtimes, no birthdays - I'd say no Christmas but, to be honest, I seem to be experiencing an awful lot of Christmas lately. You eat when you're hungry, you sleep when you're tired and you run when you've got a Giant Kathmerian Horror nipping at your ankles. Are you still sure you can handle it?"

Amy didn't answer at first. She looked about the TARDIS - the timeless, endless ship, with a swimming pool in its wardrobe - and back to its ageless captain, still covered in oil, with his bow-tie all skew-whiff. She grinned.

"Yeah."

The Doctor's grin matched hers as he said, "Good."

Then, just like that, he was gone, charging up the stairs towards the upper levels of the TARDIS and shouting over his shoulder, "Now, I believe it's time for a spot of tea. Tea and biscuits. Tea and Jammy Dodgers. Yes! Tea and Jammy Dodgers! Perfect!"

"I thought you said there was no time in here?" Amy smiled fondly, "You can't make an exception for tea!"

The Doctor stopped. He turned and, with the seriousness of a man about to impart great wisdom upon the world, said, "Amy. One must always make an exception for tea."

Amy rolled her eyes and set off to follow him. There he went - the Doctor, ageless traveller of the universe, ecstatic at the thought of Jammy Dodgers and tea. She wondered whether the Raggedy Doctor would have been so thrilled. She was surprised when she realised that she didn't know. Fourteen years, and she had never bothered to come up with her imaginary friend's reaction to Jammy Dodgers.

It was strange, but it seemed like the more she learned about the Doctor - even if it was, in the end, nothing at all - the less she knew of her Raggedy Doctor. Or maybe it was just her childhood fantasies being replaced by reality. She knew everyone had to go through it sometime. She was just rather glad that, in her case, it seemed that the reality was every bit as wonderful as her fantasies had ever been.