A/N: First in a series of three parts; originally was a standalone but then the other two parts popped up in my head. Takes place in right after the Season 5 finale, The Big Bang, and obviously before the 2010 Christmas Special, A Christmas Carol.

Once again, although the character tags are Doctor/Amy, this is an Amy/Rory and Doctor/Rose fic. It's tagged with Amy because she's the main viewpoint character. Hope you enjoy!

"Donna."

"Excuse me?"

Amy looked up at the Doctor, where he was leaned over some twirly gadget on the TARDIS console. Rory was upstairs, changing out of his wedding suit and into something more appropriate for fighting Egyptian goddesses on the Orient Express. Amy was still in her dress. Oh sure, she'd take it off when the three of them got there, but for now she wanted to wear it for as long as she possibly could.

She frowned. Despite the fact that he almost was erased from existence, the Doctor had seemed fine after he turned up for her wedding. Almost too fine. Sure his dance moves were rubbish, but those were just dance moves, weren't they?

"The person who traveled with me before you," he said, not taking his eyes off the console. "Her name was Donna. Had hair just like yours. Dress was similar too."

"Oh," Amy said, looking down at her hair and lifting a strand. She didn't really know what else to say. "Umm… what happened to her?"

"I erased her memories," he said. The Doctor glanced up briefly, probably to see her reaction, before glancing back down and moving on to inspect another piece of the console. "She forgot me, the adventures we had together… everything."

The conversation was heading into awkward territory really fast, and Amy started to wonder if she could just excuse herself to see how Rory was doing upstairs.

But the Doctor was talking to her. He never talked to her. Well, not about himself and the life he had before he crashed his TARDIS into her shed. If anything, he went out of his way to avoid talking about his past. She knew he had one, she knew it was a long one, and that was about where her knowledge ended.

So perhaps if he wanted to talk now, he didn't expect her to say anything. Perhaps he didn't want her to say anything.

With that in mind, Amy slowly made her way over to railing next to the console. She leaned out over it just like she had when she first entered the TARDIS, so very long ago ago and just last night. Glancing over at him, Amy inched over to her right a bit as if to say, "Oi! Lots of empty room over here just in case you want to pour out your soul and actually look at me while you're doing it."

She rather hoped he couldn't read minds. But... even if he could, the Doctor wasn't showing it since he went on wandering around the console as he talked, leaving the space on the railing empty.

"You would have liked her," he said. "Rory would have liked her too. I think. Then again perhaps I'm not the best judge seeing as how I like everybody, so I always think that other people should like everybody too." He paused for a few seconds by the hanging monitor and peered at the random squiggles that were going across. "I had somewhere I was going with that."

"This woman. Donna," Amy heard herself say despite her eariler intentions to keep quiet. "You said she lost her memories. Was she like me then? Cause I forgot you, the TARDIS, River… but then I remembered. Can't she remember too?"

The Doctor turned his head towards her and smiled that smile of his where he should have been happy – because he was smiling – but instead looked as though he was about to break.

Amy hated that smile. Hated the fact that such a good man had to feel so bad at times. Hated that she couldn't do anything about it.

"Oh, Amy," he said. "The girl who remembered."

She moved over a bit more as the Doctor made his way over to the railing and leaned on it with a sigh.

"She can't remember. Can't ever remember," he said. "She saved all of reality, every single universe in existence, and she'll never know."

"Why not?"

"It's her mind. When she saved the universe a very large part of my knowledge went into her brain." The Doctor sighed again. "A human brain wasn't meant to take that kind of knowledge."

"But she's alive, yeah? Somewhere out there in the world, the galaxy… She is from this galaxy, right?"

"From England. Same as you."

"Oi! Scottish, remember?"

"Last time I saw her, she was getting married," he said, apparently ignoring what Amy had just said. "Then again first time I saw her, she was getting married too... How did I not notice that?"

"So," Amy said. "Was she the first?"

"First what?"

"First to go traveling with you."

"Oh no, definitely not. Not by a long shot."

"Anyone else you might want to talk about? Skip around… go straight backwards one by one?"

"Well, before Donna there was Martha. Good old Martha Jones. Though I suppose it's Martha Jones-Smith now."

"Do all your companions end up married?"

Amy regretted saying it as soon as she saw him flinch. It wasn't very noticeable and if someone else was watching they might have passed it off to their imagination, but Amy had traveled with the Doctor enough to know that the least noticeable things were usually the most important.

"Mickey Smith," he eventually said. "She married Mickey Smith. He's a good man, Mickey Smith. Didn't get to see that wedding. Of course, she was engaged to another man before Mickey. Also a good man, though I suppose it just didn't work about between them. Wonder what happened to him after that…"

"Don't you wonder about her?"

"Martha?"

"Yeah."

"Of course."

"So…" Amy said. "Do you visit her? I mean, she's not like Donna. At least I don't think you said she's like Donna. She remembers you, right?"

"Yeah, she remembers."

"So do you visit her?"

"Not… entirely."

Amy stared at him and raised an eyebrow.

"You know how I mentioned things didn't quite work out between her and her old fiancé? Well things didn't quite work out between the two of us either."

Both of her eyebrows went up. "You mean… the two of you were..." She raised up the hand with her wedding ring on it, turned it so that the backside was facing him, and wiggled her fingers slightly.

"No! No! Definitely not! Amy put your hand down. No."

"Alright! I get it. Sorry for asking."

She put her arm back down on the railing and stared straight at the walls of the TARDIS. The Doctor did the same. The TARDIS hummed in the background.

"Before Martha?"

She caught the slump of his shoulders out of the corner of her eye.

"She's with the person that she loves most now," he said. "And I'm happy for her."

He slowly pushed himself off the railing and walked back over to the console. "Been talking too much," he said as fiddled with a few more things. "Shouldn't neglect the old girl."

The TARDIS thrummed as he softly patted one of the panels.

Amy frowned and turned around, her back now leaning on the rail. The Doctor continued to wander around his TARDIS, twisting the occasional knob and pushing the more occasional button.

"What are you doing?" Amy walked up behind him and peered over his shoulder.

"What does it look like?" he said, not turning around as he reached out towards a large corkscrew pin.

"Avoidance," she said simply.

His hand stopped in mid-reach. Amy backed up a couple steps as the Doctor slowly turned to look at her.

"You said the person that she loved the most," Amy said. Something inside her was telling to just stop and shut up, but something else was making her continue. "You didn't mention anything about the person that loved her the most."

"That's… It's not…" He sighed again, something that was quickly becoming a habit in this conversation. "He's the same person, and even if he was here, he's not anymore because his whole life blew up in a shower of atoms, every cell was stripped away, and then… And then I crash-landed into your shed."

They stared at each other.

"And that made no sense whatsoever, did it?"

"No, not really," Amy admitted. "Except for the shed bit."

The Doctor opened his mouth as if he was going to say something else, but then closed it and went back to the TARDIS. Always back to the TARDIS.

"Did you tell her you loved her?"

"What," he said flatly.

"Did. You. Tell. Her. That. You. Loved. Her?"

The Doctor glanced over his shoulder for a couple brief seconds before turning back around.

"Kind of. Not really," he said, still facing away from her. "The whole thing was rather complicated at the time. And I didn't even tell you that I loved her, so before you go swanning off with theories of-"

"Doctor..." She drummed her fingers impatiently on the console.

"Well... theoretically, the first time I tried I got cut off. And then the second time there was someone else to say it for me, so I just kind of... let them."

"Doctor!"

"Look, it was a very confusing time in my life, and I am more than glad to put it behind me, so-"

"Doctor," Amy said, cutting him off before he could continue anymore. "I want you to listen to me very very carefully. I just got married today. Ring, dress, everything. I know about the power of love as horribly cliché as that sounds. Therefore we are skipping the Orient Express, and you are going to go to that girl, sweep her off her feet, and say-"

"I can't."

"Of course you can! Everyone's a bit nervous before they first confess, but trust me. Once you do it, you'll feel a lot better. Unless they reject you. Then it's... not so great."

The Doctor did not look inspired.

"But hey!" Amy said with the most convincing grin she could muster. "It's a lot better than keeping everything locked up inside and never saying anything at all!"

The Doctor grabbed the main lever on the console and pulled it down. "Next stop, the Orient Express." He looked back up at her that smile of his. "Egyptian goddesses don't like to wait."

"Argh! You are... impossible!" She pulled off one her shoes and chucked it at his head. It missed the Doctor by several feet, ricocheted off one the walls and nearly hit Rory in the face as he stepped into the room.

"Amy!" he yelled, shielding his face in a delayed reaction. "What are you doing? We just got married. Today, if you haven't noticed, so can you wait at least six months before you start throwing shoes at me?"

"Sorry, Rory!" she called out with a small grimace. "I wasn't aiming at you."

Rory lowered his arms and looked back and forth between the Doctor and Amy. "Okay," he said, bringing up his two index fingers. "I was gone for five minutes."

"Trust me, Rory Pond. You didn't miss a thing," the Doctor said as Rory bent down and picked up Amy's shoe. "Mrs. Pond over here just wanted to go somewhere else for her honeymoon than a danger infested space train."

"Is that what happened?" Rory asked, looking at her.

Amy looked at the Doctor, once again overly preoccupied with his TARDIS, and then back at Rory. Her husband.

"Yeah, I just… wanted us to go somewhere else," she said with a shrug. It wasn't entirely a lie.

Besides, it was her wedding day. Rory was her husband. The two of them were together in the TARDIS with the Doctor.

Perhaps one day the Doctor would tell her more about his past. Perhaps he would tell Rory as well. But that wasn't now.

No, for now Amy would have to be content with the Orient Express and escaped Egyptian goddesses. With her husband, Rory, and her friend, the Doctor. With the Earth at their backs and everything else in the universe just sitting there for the three of them to explore.

Oh, yes. Until that day, she would be content.