the sound of stillness

Note: set at the end of The God Complex. Written for the Amy Pond fication at livejournal.

She knows there's something amiss as soon as the TARDIS doors open to welcome them home. Home, her mind echoes firmly. Resolute, all of a sudden. That should be the first sign, and yet...the Doctor's face is resigned (she can read his face now, clearer than ever before, and her stomach sinks.) as he twists knobs and taps buttons in the familiar take off pattern.

His hand hesitates over the final lever; Amy feels as though she could spend days, years, studying the grace and strength of his fingers, and the old feeling of his palm pressed into hers.

She blinks. The Doctor tugs, and they're off.

Amy and Rory are at this point, seasoned TARDIS travellers. They know how to hang on and how to shift their weight as to not go careening into each other. They also know that the first two points are pretty essential to journeying without bruising in uncomfortable places, at least with the Doctor flying. But for whatever reason, this time (that sinking feeling is turning into something gnawing and painful) she lets go, for as long as she can.

Amy teeters in a matter of moments, smacking a hand uncomfortably hard on the console. The Doctor looks up at her with adorable confusion in his gaze. For that split second she is able to convince herself that she's just imagining this...whatever this is. He reaches a hand out to her and she grabs on, something close (too close) to desperation bursting like a dam inside her chest, (don't let go, please Doctor, don't let go I don't want to drown) rising in her throat so air lies trapped neither in nor out.

He lets go as soon as they're stable again, ushering Rory out the doors before Amy can even take in a proper breath. She recovers quickly however, in time to see the house and the car and make a joke, except...

"Nope. Real Earth, real house." He tosses the keys and Amy is thankful that all her reflexes have done nothing but sharpen during all this time. "Real dog."

She's always wanted a dog. The pain is beginning to ache.

Rory's favourite car is bright on the street (brighter than the door that she's really trying to ignore right now) as he exclaims. Amy's heart warms at the notion of the Doctor having just remembered. She presses the house keys into her husband's hand and asks for ten minutes, strangely glad at the chilly air that she can blame for her trembling.

"It's a risk I'm willing to take."

She almost laughs. The notion gives her courage. "You're leaving aren't you?"

The Doctor's joking about his middle name, right? "Why now?"

He turns to her then, and suddenly Amy really is cold. "Because you're still...breathing." She stumbles through another attempt at humour and he's up and moving (like a nine year old, seriously) and that desperation is starting to swirl again.

"You can't just drop me off at my house and say goodbye like we've shared a cab."

The Doctor looks at her (through her) and for a second everything is still. Even her heart. "And what's the alternative, me standing over your grave?" There is an urge, sudden and visceral to tell him to stop, shut up, please but Amy swallows it. "Over your broken body, over Rory's body?"

Something in his face crumples; The Doctor is nine and nine hundred, wheeling through time and space, all alone, soaked in the blood of the innocent, aged on every plane of his cheekbones and crease of his forehead. Amy's eyes fill with tears (damn it) and perhaps it's better that way, so she can't see his when she pulls him close, the way they haven't held each other in who knows how long, and Amy feels hollow. Her fingers trail through the soft hair at the nape of his neck and the Doctor makes a small noise into her shoulder. In the back of her mind Amy registers the feeling of broken and curls her other hand into a fist.

She hates her nails today.

Amy knows what he's doing, knows that he has to or he'll forever have that haunted look in his eyes and the thought is just too much to bear. As much as her being screams with want to lock herself in the TARDIS and never come out, she can't do that. Not to him. Not to Rory. She'll do this for her Doctor because he needs her to.

"Look after you."

He's smiling again, waving, and she responds in kind, laughing in spite of herself at her Raggedy Doctor, already halfway gone (the whir of the TARDIS engines fading, she doesn't dare forget that noise) by the time Rory reappears with champagne and three flutes in hand. Amy loves Rory so much right now.

"What's he doing?"

Everything is still again.

It doesn't hurt so much this time.

"He's saving us."

Author's Note: Because I just realized it's been sitting on my never used livejournal for months, so I thought I'd post it here with everything else.

Thoughts?

Annie