AN: Ok, my excitement for DW is fresh and alive once more. Loving Matt Smith as the new Doctor. I had to write something and this popped out. Hope you enjoy. :D
-------
When I was a little girl I dreamed of time and space. I met a man, this brilliant mad man. His name was the Doctor. He had a craving for apples and spat them out as soon as he tasted them. He wore a raggedy suit and raggedy shirt and he came from a blue overturned police box.
I called him funny, because he was. Funny and mad. I think he already knew he was mad so I didn't tell him that.
"Funny."
"Am I?" He had said, as if he had never known it before, "Funny's good. What's your name?"
"Amelia Pond."
"Ah, that's a brilliant name. Amelia Pond." I remember him annunciating it with pride. It had made me smile. "Like a name in a fairytale."
I used to read fairytales but that was before I met him.
-----
He was a Time Lord, and I spent my life believing in him. That he would come back and take me away, take me out to the stars and into space.
"Five minutes. Give me five minutes and I'll be right back."
"People always say that."
"About people, do I even look like people?" He did, but he didn't act like people. Not like the people I'd met, "Trust me," He'd said, "I'm the Doctor."
I did trust him because he was the Doctor and he didn't act like other people so I went up and packed a bag, filled it with clothes and a toothbrush and my teddy. And I put on my coat and hat, took my suitcase and waited; waited for my raggedy Doctor to return.
He was meant to take five minutes; he took twelve years.
And during those twelve years I grew up.
-----
And the young Amelia Pond, who believed in Santa at Easter and her imaginary friend, faded away and grew into Amy, who believed in so very little these days, but still kept waiting for her raggedy Doctor to return.
------
"You said six months..." The Doctor frowned, "why did you say six months?"
"We've got to go."
I didn't want him to know I was that little girl.
"This matters! Why did you say six months?" He said, with a tone of anger in his voice. As if he had the right to be angry. He was meant to take five minutes! Twelve years was most definitely NOT five minutes.
"Well, why did you say five minutes!" I shouted back.
His face grew expressionless. His voice barely a whisper. "What?"
And with that he knew who I was; who I used to be, but I was not that little girl anymore. I grew up. He was the raggedy Doctor – my raggedy Doctor – and he had finally come back, but I wasn't that little girl anymore; he hadn't come back to that same little girl. He had come back to me – Amy Pond. I was no longer Amelia Pond and I didn't believe in fairytales anymore.
-----
"Who are you?"
"You know who I am..."
He had said it as if it were fact, undeniable in its truth, but did I really? How could I really know?
"No, really, who are you?"
How could he be real? He couldn't be real. I had spent too long waiting and he couldn't be the same man. If he was then he was just another disappointment, and he would just disappoint me again. It was what people did; it was what people always did.
"Catch."
He threw me an apple, the same apple I had given to him twelve years ago. Its smiley face stared up at me like a painful reminder; a wonderful and painful reminder of what was real.
"I'm the Doctor. I'm a time traveller. Everything I told you twelve years ago is true. I'm real. What's happening in the sky is real and if you don't let me go right now then everything you know is over."
"I don't believe you."
But I had to believe him, if only for twenty minutes. It was all I could do. This was bigger than just me. And as much as I didn't want to admit it, I wanted him to be real. I had spent my life dreaming of the Doctor. And now he was here, real, no longer merely an imitation in a cartoon I had drawn, no longer just a figment of my imagination.
He was here. He was real. He was the raggedy Doctor.
And I felt like a little girl again because of it. Reality was still tarnished by his disappointment. I had been waiting and I had grown impatient, but it was real. I knew he had been real.
-----
"Aren't you going to turn your back?" Rory asked from beside me. His own back turned away from the Doctor as he changed.
I smiled, taking in the Doctor with appreciative eyes. "No."
Oh, he was most definitely real.
-----
"Is that it? Is that them gone for good? Who were they?"
I asked the Doctor but when I looked up he was gone. Once again. I hadn't even seen him go.
I raced back to the blue box, hoping to find him; hoping that for once I would get what the little girl I had once been never got – for the Doctor to come and take me away; to save me from my mundane life. I didn't get what I want and there was nothing I could do as I watched the blue box disappear, I felt a twinge in my heart. It was disappointment. I was reminded of that little girl again, still waiting for her Doctor to return.
-----
"It's you. You came back."
I could barely believe my eyes, but yet I always knew that one day he would return. I kept waiting even as I got on with my life; kept waiting for my raggedy Doctor.
"Course I came back. I always come back."
What else could he do but come?
-----
"All that stuff that happened, the hospital, that spaceship, Prisoner Zero-"
He cut me off with a smile practically in his eye, "Oh, that was just the beginning, there's loads more."
He didn't even know; didn't even think to check, did he?
"Yeah, but those things, those amazing things, all that stuff." I stepped forward, closer to him, raising my voice, "That was two years ago!"
His face fell, "Oh-oh. Oops."
That was it. Oops? He had kept me waiting again. Fourteen years since fish custard. Twelve years of raggedy Doctor. Two years of being left behind, knowing he was real but knowing that I was not out there; out among the stars, in time and space. It didn't really matter how long I waited. Time was still time, and I was still the one waiting. For him, no less.
"Amy Pond, the girl who waited. You've waited long enough."
-------
When I was a little girl I dreamed of time and space. Last night all my dreams came true... My name is Amy Pond. When I was seven, I had an imaginary friend. Last night was the night before my wedding and my imaginary friend came back.
-------
AN: Reviews are like fish fingers in custard. Give plentifully. :D