Author's note: Spoilers for The Angels Take Manhattan.

Amy lands in 1937 London, surrounded by Angels.

She doesn't realize that she's in London, or that it's 1937. All she knows are the Angels, and that this is not where Rory is, and there is a strange smell of smoke in the air and the night sky is tinged a dirty brown color.

She looks around at the Angels, tears still running down her face, the image of Rory there one moment and gone the next still painfully fresh in her mind, and she yells, "Bring me to him, now!"

And the Angels are impassive.

"Please," she begs, and closes her eyes.

Waits for the stone cold touch and the rush of air.

Nothing.

She opens her eyes. The Angels are still there. They haven't moved.

"Why not?" Amy asks them, as fresh tears course their way down her cheeks.

The Angels, as ever, remain silent.

Amy thinks she knows. They don't need her. For whatever reason. She was never marked to be kept by them. Her travel back in time can feed them, but perhaps they have no room for her. Perhaps all of their victims are alone. Perhaps the Angels are simply cruel to their very core.

The loneliest creatures in the universe, the Doctor had said, once. Perhaps they want their victims to feel as lonely as they do.

"I love him," Amy says.

The Angels stare at her.

Amy stares back.

"Just, please, take me to him." No response. "Or if you won't do that, at least make sure the Doctor thinks we're together. Or something. At least allow me to be buried with him."

No response.

Amy wants to scream. She yells instead. "I swear I'll find him! And when I do, you'll be sorry you ever kept us apart!" She doesn't know how. Still, she glares at them. "Your move."

She closes her eyes, and feels a rush of air, a light wind against her skin. She hopes.

She opens her eyes, and the Angels are gone, and she remains.

Later, when Amy finds the strength to move, she wanders around, discovers from an abandoned newspaper that she's in London, and that it's 1937, and that it's World War II and there's a blitz and she remembers the time a military Dalek offered them tea and wonders if this is before or after.

And the Doctor was there, but Rory isn't. So none of it matters, the before, the after, nothing.

So Amy finds a place to live, and she starts to write her letter to the Doctor, and gets a job in a factory helping to make weapons, and she waits (she is, after all, the girl who always waits) and hopes that one day, she can travel to New York.

She isn't getting any younger.

Eventually, the war ends and River shows up, and by then Amy has gotten a job at a Publishing company in London because she knows that this is what her life is, now. This is how time is written and it can't be unwritten.

Amy begs River to let her use the vortex manipulator, to let her into New York City. River shakes her head.

"I went back and checked; the building is gone," she says. "Father is lost."

"What?" Amy can barely breathe, and tears threaten again. And she promised herself that she wouldn't cry, that she'd stay strong, that she wouldn't give up.

"The Angels have hidden the building away from prying eyes," River says. "Even my vortex manipulator has stopped working now. The Angels got smart; they figured out that we were a threat, and they took care of it."

"There has to be a way."

"Believe me, I tried." River runs a hand through her springy hair. She looks too old. She is old. Impossibly so. "But I was not inactive. And there is something we can do."

"You wrote the book," Amy says.

River reaches inside a brown messenger back and pulls out a thick manuscript. She hands it to Amy, who pushes it away.

"Re-write it," Amy says.

River stares at her. "What?"

"Rewrite it so that the Angels take the both of us. Or so that they never take Rory. Just change it."

"I can't change the past." River is sad.

Amy glares at her. "Oh, come on! Time can be rewritten! That's all the Doctor ever says. Time can be rewritten-"

"Except when it can't," River finishes.

"Well, who the bloody hell gets to decide when that is?" Amy demands. "Why can't I change my past, or future, or whatever the hell I want? I want Rory."

"Rory saved the world," River says. "If I rewrite the past, after we've both already read the book, and lived through everything written in it, there will be another paradox, and the world could be in jeopardy. Time is sometimes fixed, and this is one of those times."

"How do you know?"

"Time lord."

River hands Amy the manuscript and Amy takes it.

"I want to tell him that I love him," Amy says.

"He all ready knows."

Amy sighs. "I've been writing to the Doctor."

"And what are you going to tell him?"

"I don't know. Mostly I've been writing about how much fun I had with him, and that what happened wasn't his fault, and…"

River scrutinizes her. "Time can't be rewritten for everyone," she says after a long moment, "but it can be, for some people."

"What does that mean?" Amy asks, her heart in her throat.

But River only smiles and disappears.

Amy writes about how she wanted things to be. She writes about how the Angels let her and Rory live out their days together. She writes about how they're happy, how their life is good despite having been taken, despite never seeing the Doctor again. Amy tells the Doctor to find someone.

And she loses herself in these words, in this letter, of how life should be. Perhaps this was never meant to be. Her and Rory had never been normal, and when she dreams of them living together, happy and content and never leaving, she knows it is just that, a dream. It has only ever been a dream.

But the Doctor doesn't know that. The Doctor only has Amy's words to go on, and he will believe that Amy and Rory have each other forever, and that there is no more waiting, no more parting, no more tears. And belief is a strong thing, Amy knows that. For the Doctor, Amy's dreams are a reality. Amy's dreams are true.

Amy publishes the book, and the letter, and hopes that Rory will read it and share in her dream, because that is the least she can do for him. And the Doctor will read her letter, and hopefully take her advice, and Amy will live out her life as best she can. Carrying on.

She isn't happy, not really, but she can go on knowing that somewhere, she and Rory had a great life together, there was no more sadness, and the girl who waited no longer had to wait.

Somewhere.