Work Text:
Between 2009 – 2012
Amy
“It’s all I can do to keep them in line some days,” Amy said to River as they walked along a concourse on the space station Budapest.
“Oh, don’t I know the feeling,” River replied. Amy saw her smile a little at Clint and Coulson, walking up ahead.
That was the moment at which Amy decided she genuinely liked River. She not only liked her, she respected her. River was smart. She was tough. She was brave. She was a spy, which when you got right down to it was just plain cool.
She was even Scottish. River had picked up a strong American accent at some point in her life, but a Scot knew a Scot. River was vague on where she was actually from, but Amy assumed that must just be a spy thing.
As much as she might like and respect River, though, Amy took the young woman with a grain of salt. She didn’t think River would hold that against her. After all, Scots were known for being disturbingly pragmatic at times. Amy wasn’t one-hundred percent sold on River’s trustworthiness.
By River’s own admission she’d done a lot of very bad things, especially before she’d joined SHIELD (she had credited Clint and Coulson with saving her from the Dark Side). Amy certainly wasn’t worried that River was going to snap and kill them all or something, but it was sobering to know what she was capable of.
More importantly, at least to Amy, was the fact that the Doctor didn’t completely trust River. He didn’t talk about it too much, but Amy could tell. And, well, Amy was protective of her Raggedy Man. Always had been.
“You and River seem to have bonded,” the Doctor said after they’d dropped the agents back off at the SHIELD base after one of their trips.
“Yeah. We have. I like her,” Amy said, leaning back against the control console next to the Doctor.
She frowned at the noncommittal noise the Doctor made. “You don’t?”
“I didn’t say that,” the Doctor said, adjusting a dial. He was doing that and now I shall be deliberately casual thing he was so fond of. “I like her perfectly well.”
“You just don’t trust her.”
The Doctor glanced up briefly. For a moment, Amy expected him to start riffing about this or that or the other. That was what he usually did when he didn’t want to talk to her about something.
“She knows too much,” the Doctor said instead. “Her past is my future. Fine. I’ve done that one before, but she knows far too much. She knows how to operate the TARDIS. She knows about the Time Lords. She knows about the Time War.” He flipped a switch with what Amy thought was a bit more vigor than necessary. “She knows that I’m the one who ended it. Why does a secret agent from 21st Century Earth know that?”
In spite of the frustration in his voice, Amy couldn’t hold back a hint of a mischievous smile. “So. Now you know a little what it’s like hanging out with you,” she said.
The Doctor harrumphed. Silently. It was more of an nonverbal air of disapproval.
“Okay, she’s a bit more than just a secret agent,” Amy said. “You figured that out the first time we met them. So, what do you think she is?”
The Doctor had been well and truly flummoxed after they’d stumbled onto the SHIELD base and first met Agents Song, Barton, and Coulson. He’d worn his grumpy face for days, reading through the scans he’d had the TARDIS run on River until he’d gotten bored and moved on to something else. Amy knew that didn’t mean he’d stopped thinking about it, though.
“I’m not sure,” the Doctor said. “She could be a time traveler. Or I suppose she could be an alien, one that the TARDIS doesn’t know how to classify. Maybe she’s just someone that I’ll, for some unknown reason, pop back to visit and tell my deep dark secrets to, though I think that rather unlikely. Or perhaps she once met someone who knows about me and told her about the Time Lords. I must confess, I find that idea a bit unnerving.”
“Well.” Amy crossed her arms. “You must not think she’s completely bad news, otherwise you wouldn’t keep swinging by SHIELD to pick them up and take them traveling.” She frowned, thinking. “Or you really think she’s bad news, so you want to watch her. That would be like you.”
“More the former,” the Doctor said. He looked up. “I wouldn’t knowingly bring them on board with you and Rory if I thought they were a danger.”
Amy allowed that to pass without comment. And God could she ever comment. The Doctor wasn’t exactly given to wrapping her and Rory in cotton wool when it came to danger. On the other hand, he was usually a little more careful about inviting danger aboard the TARDIS, so that was something.
River, for her part, seemed to be perfectly aware that she was a giant question mark. She wasn’t one for offering explanations, but she also never attempted to play dumb. It was a little irritating sometimes, like when an adventure was going off the rails.
“The Doctor said that he’d meet us back here,” Amy said, resisting the urge to punch something.
If she had her choice she’d punch the Doctor, but that was the problem. He wasn’t there. He had sent them all off with the assurance that he’d be right behind them. And now he had, as the SHIELD agents put it, missed the rendezvous.
River had that look going, that I skipped ahead and read the last chapter look. It just made Amy madder.
“What’s Rule One?” River asked.
“The Doctor lies,” Amy replied. River nodded. Amy narrowed her eyes at the other woman. “How do you know so much about him?”
Amy noted that Rory, Coulson, and Clint were listening intently to the conversation while pretending to be so preoccupied with watching out for danger that they couldn’t possibly get involved.
Boys.
River apparently wasn’t in the mood to be enlightening. “One day you’ll know.”
Was it any wonder that Amy had started thinking of the words enigmatic and annoying as synonyms?
“Am I going to like knowing?” she asked with a bit of bite in her voice.
River just gave her an odd smile.
“I’m honestly not sure,” she said.
Well, that cleared that right up, didn’t it? But so long as it didn’t bring any harm down on the Doctor, Amy supposed she could live with it.
* * * * *
Rory
It wasn’t that he had anything personally against the man, but at first glance their approaches to the world were diametrically opposed. Clint Barton was an assassin, a man whose job involved taking lives. Rory was a nurse. His job was to help preserve them. Logic would suggest that they wouldn’t get on well.
They did, though. In fact they hit it off fairly quickly. On one of the early trips with the agents, when they were still in the getting acquainted phase, Clint sat down across from Rory and said, “Just so I’m clear on this, you’re the sane one on this ship, right?”
The question took Rory aback for a second. American directness wasn’t something one encountered much on the TARDIS.
“That’s probably fair to say,” Rory replied. He smiled and shrugged. “Someone on the TARDIS has to be, believe me.”
“Oh, I believe it,” Clint said, looking around the control room. “I get the feeling sanity is in short supply around here some days.”
There was always more to people than what you saw at first glance. Clint was a professional killer, true, but he was also a nice fellow. He was a formidable darts player and had decent taste in music. He was fond of bad puns, liked dogs, and adored his girlfriend, the mildly terrifying Agent Song.
He also wasn’t even slightly in awe of the Doctor, which was a quality that Rory always appreciated.
The Doctor might be one of Rory’s best friends, but Rory still found it disturbing sometimes how so many people were immediately willing to follow him to near certain death or dismemberment just on the man’s say-so. He didn’t think Clint Barton would ever have that problem.
Of course, Rory, for his part, was not all that he appeared to be at first glance, either. He had been a soldier once. Granted, that had been in a different universe, one that technically had never existed. No one had bothered to inform Rory’s mind or memory of that, though. He could remember being a part of the Roman legion. Rory knew the mindset of a soldier. He’d spent two thousand years in it.
So, yes, the Last Centurion and Hawkeye had more common ground than one might think.
Misadventure was always the watchword when you traveled with the Doctor. A sightseeing tour in fifteenth-century England had turned into a mission to rescue a couple of kids. If all went according to plan, King Edward V and his little brother Richard were going to pull a vanishing act. If the Doctor and his companions had anything to say about it, though, the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower wasn’t going to involve their murder.
But first they had to fight their way through a batch of alien foot soldiers that had been spawned by treating the local molds and funguses with radiation. The result was about as pretty as you’d expect. Fortunately, the creatures were susceptible to medieval weaponry and there was a handy armory to raid. Rory’s sword and Clint’s bow covered their escape back to the TARDIS.
“You’re pretty good with that,” Clint remarked once they were safely aboard, nodding at the sword that was still in Rory’s hand.
Rory looked down at his sword. It was funny how holding it still felt so much like second nature.
“I had some training,” Rory said. “I was a Roman for a while.”
“Yeah, so I heard,” Clint replied. When Rory frowned, he went on. “River told us about it. The Pandorica, the Last Centurion. Amy told her.”
“Ah.”
Rory wasn’t quite sure what to think about that, the SHIELD agents comparing notes about him and Amy. Even if it made perfect sense that they would. Rory got the impression that there was very little that River and Clint and Coulson held back from each other.
Clint shook his head. “Two thousand years.” He looked up at the control console where the everyone else was gathered. The Doctor was showing “Eddie” and “Ricky” how to make music come out of the TARDIS’s speaker system. By the look on the princes’ faces, rock and roll was a far cry from harps and pipes. “That’s. . .”
“Insane and therefore contrary to my role on this ship?” Rory asked.
“Nah. I don’t think it’s insane at all. I was going to say that it had to have been hard.”
“I don’t think on it that much,” Rory said. He hefted the sword one more time and then set it aside. “I don’t regret a second of it. It was for Amy. And I suppose I learned how to do some handy things.” He looked back to Clint with a shrug and a half smile. “But as for the rest, I let it lie.”
Spending centuries and centuries alone was a good way to court madness. Just look at the Doctor.
Their resident madman was, at present, apparently trying to teach the princes the finer points of modern (whatever that meant to a Time Lord) dance. Amy and River were rolling their eyes in a nearly identical fashion. Edward looked like he suspected that a joke was being had on him, while Richard was laughing so hard he was leaning against Coulson to stay upright.
“He knows he looks like a drunk giraffe, doesn’t he?” Clint asked.
“You should have seen him at our wedding. Leadworth is probably still talking about it.”
It was always a good day when the Doctor danced.
* * * * *
The Doctor
The Doctor had a notion that the man would laugh if he knew that was how the Time Lord thought of him. He knew that Coulson, working with Clint and River, was used to thinking of himself as the “old man” of the group.
The Doctor could identify. That wasn’t something that happened to him all that often, identifying with a human being. The Doctor liked humans in general, and loved a handful in particular. He delighted in them; nothing was better than seeing the universe, shiny and new, through their eyes. The look of wonder on Clint Barton’s face as he’d stood on the observation deck of the space station Budapest, staring up at the stars—that was what it was all about.
He admired human beings, marveled at how much they managed to pack into their short lives. He had once told Wilfred Mott that to him, humans looked like giants. The Doctor hadn’t been idly flattering, he’d genuinely meant it. He saw in them all the potential that the Time Lords must have had, once upon a time.
For all of that, the Doctor didn’t usually identify with them. His life had simply been too long and too bloody. He was too far removed from the relative innocence that human beings got to enjoy. But he found that he and Phil Coulson shared some common ground.
They both had a dedication to the safety of the world (or universe as the case might be) that ran bone-deep. And, for both of them, the world often seemed to boil down to two particular people.
It was just another day aboard the TARDIS. Another problem solved. Another day saved. Another bad thing thwarted. All’s well that ended well. Well, without the ending. There was always another adventure around the corner, wasn’t there? It had been a bit touch and go there at points, but they had all made it through all right. All six of them.
With the SHIELD agents added to the mix, the Doctor felt like he had a proper gang. He’d always wanted a gang.
River and Clint were down on the main deck of the control room pretending to play darts when in reality they were canoodling. Mortal danger and a near brush with death earlier in the day didn’t seem to be diminishing their good mood any. Quite the contrary, in fact.
The Doctor found Coulson alone on one of the upper walkways, arms resting on the railing, keeping an eye on them. The sight seemed to be making him both happy and slightly pensive. The Doctor quietly joined Coulson at the railing and, after watching the other two agents for a few seconds, he was pretty sure he understood why.
“They love each other very much,” the Doctor said.
The observation seemed to elicit mild surprise, but after a second Coulson responded. “Yes. They do.”
Humans. It was funny, sometimes, what burdens they chose to take on themselves. The Doctor turned to face Coulson, smiling sympathetically.
“That concerns you,” he said.
Coulson took his time about replying.
“Sometimes,” he said at last, watching Clint and River have a friendly argument over their scores. “You know,” Coulson continued, “my mom and dad loved each other like that, and it was great. It’s a great way for a kid to grow up, seeing that every day.”
The agent paused for a moment, seeming to gather his thoughts.
“My dad worked in a rail yard back in Pittsburgh. He was killed in an accident on the job when I was fourteen.” Coulson shook his head. “Mom. . .she never was the same after that. I don’t mean that she was never happy again or that she lost the will to live. Nothing like that. But it was like part of her was gone. She died when I was in college. Cancer. I don’t want to say that she was glad to go, but I don’t think she was completely sorry, either.”
“And given your line of work,” the Doctor said, “you worry that the same would hold true of Clint and River if something were to happen to one of them.”
“I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind,” Coulson replied. He tilted his head a bit, watching his agents. “River? I think she might find a way to bounce back, keep going.” Coulson shook his head. “I’m not sure Clint would ever be able to. I think. . .”
Coulson left the thought unfinished. After a second he ducked his head and looked at the Doctor with a rueful smile. “I’m their supervising officer. This is high on the list of things that, officially-speaking, I’m not supposed to have to worry about.”
“Well that just shows how the official rulebooks are usually written by idiots,” the Doctor said. He leaned his arms on the railing alongside Coulson. “Of course, they’re your agents, but they’re far more than that. They’re your friends. Some of your best friends, I’d wager. They’re your little brother and sister. They’re even, on occasion, your children.”
The Doctor looked to one of the platforms where Amy and Rory were curled up on a sofa, talking. He saw Amy beam as Rory planted a kiss on her temple.
“I know a bit about what that’s like,” the Doctor said.
Coulson had followed his gaze. “I guess you do,” he replied. They stood there in companionable silence for a few minutes before Coulson added, “Did you have children, Doctor? Before the Time War?”
The funny thing about people who knew how to observe was what they managed to overlook sometimes. The Doctor knew what Coulson usually saw when he looked at him: the whimsical madman with the magical box, jaunty bow tie, floppy hair, and clumsy limbs. The agent’s brain just did what agents’ brains were trained to do. Even though Coulson objectively knew that the Doctor was approaching a millennial birthday, his mind noted the Doctor’s youthful appearance and classified his age as being on par with that of Amy and Rory.
But not always. Sometimes, like now, the Doctor knew that Coulson saw him for what he really was: the Time Lord. It was a bit of a relief when people did that. An uncomfortable and not always welcome relief, but a relief nonetheless.
The Doctor looked over at him with a small smile.
“I had grandchildren, Agent Coulson.”
Phil stared at him for a moment, but just silently nodded and didn’t ask any more questions.
The Doctor let the silence settle until things felt comfortable again, then pushed himself up from the railing.
“Well, now we need to decide where we’re going to go next,” he said, clapping his hand together. “I hear the 3418 Olympic Games are absolutely amazing. Or there’s a moon in the Butterfly Nebula where, every ten years, every space pirate in the galaxy gathers for a month-long party. Or we can pop back and judge Albert Einstein’s fourth grade science fair project. Endless possibilities.” The Doctor beamed. “You’ve become part of a bigger universe, Agent Coulson. How does it feel?”
Phil took another look at the scene below where Clint and River had forgotten all about the darts and were now just canoodling. He smiled.
“Pretty damn good, Doctor.”