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Whenever you see a person running in the exact opposite direction of an incoming crowd, you always pay attention.
Your husband stopped a long time ago.
“Rory.”
He opens his pocket watch, old fashioned even for the sixties. Once a week, an older lady coos over his gentlemanly sensibilities. “I think if we make a left turn, here we’ll get to the—“
As two figures in decidedly modern (your own modern) clothing zip their way between pea coats and pressed suits, you want to throw the thing in the Hudson. “Rory!”
He startles. “What? We’ll miss the exhibit if we don’t get on the A Train right now.”
Your husband loves this era just like he loves you. He's trying to mortgage a house in a town that’s greener so you’ll feel more at home. He doesn’t mention missing babies or bow ties—in fact whenever something makes you pause in memory, stop breathing, he pushes you out of it. C’mon, Amy. It’s not worth dwelling. We have our whole lives to live together. He gave us that.
Right now, your name is Amy Williams. You can’t even sign your own credit card checks.
One of the figures lingers at the corner, by a paint-chipped bakery. She's wearing a dark blue coat and has on dark red lipstick. From this far away, that’s all you can see. Before you figure out whether she’s looking at you or something far more sinister that you’ll need to run from—why do you miss the running—she lifts up her hand and waves.
You wave back. The oddity of it all pulls you in, makes you oddly warm.
“Who are you waving at?”
Someone grabs the figure’s hand, tugs her away back into the crowd. You wait for lasers to fire. You wait for Exterminate, Exterminate. You wait for lights in the sky. You wait for bright blue, for a wheeze, for—
A hand on your arm. Concerned, familiar eyes. “Amy, what is it?”
You steal your hand back. “I thought I saw our neighbor,” you say, darting ahead backwards. You tilt your head. “The nice one, not the one who keeps stealing our sugar.”
“Borrowing our sugar. It’s good to be neighborly sometimes. You’d like Mrs. Maloney—she writes too.” He watches you, always trying to see what you’re hiding behind a face set in careful plaster. “You need to make real friends, Amy. The girls at work don’t count if you don’t spend any time with them afterwards.”
You roll your eyes and offer back your hand. You like being the one to offer, to pull along. “Noted, Mr. Williams. The A train, you said? I want to see that Monet, since we can’t just stop by for a drink anymore.”
He takes your hand, gladly, worry still stark in his brow. You spare another glance for the crowd—now all moving the same direction, no more oddities—and walk purposefully down the Subway steps, not holding onto the handrail even for a second.
At first, you think you’re dreaming. It wouldn’t be much of a false assumption. You dream about it a lot.
Sometimes the dreams are amazing and sometimes they’re plain awful—you wake up with your insides on fire and squeezing, scrambling to call numbers that don’t exist yet—but you prefer dreaming. Sometimes. You take a lot of naps now, in any case.
It’s not a wheeze, you realize with hope crushed under a heel. You peel away sweaty bed sheets and run to the window seat regardless, press your nose against the cold pane. It’s not a wheeze, but it’s a whir, a whoosh. Mechanical. Odd.
Rain-wet cement reflects only light from the street lamps; all your lovely neighbors’ windows are darkened. Rows and rows of identical brick townhouses. Your eyes graze the street. Your breath fogs up quick, so you open the latch, just a crack. Even though it could rain again at any moment.
Come on, you think. Come on.
Come on.
Just when you reach for the latch again, stomach an empty cavern, there’s a buzz. Then voices—two of them. “Did you change my settings again? I can't get a clear reading.”
“Maybe you changed them. I'm not the one who changes things just for the hell of it.”
Before you can even think, you grab your robe off the armchair. It’s peach satin and Rory is sound asleep and you’re running down the narrow stairs, out the front door, nearly two steps at a time, still barefoot.
You catch yourself on the outside doorknob, the crystal freezing your hand. You heave and watch those two figures, still several yards away. One is holding a device. You have no idea what the device is and that very fact propels you forward.
They are still bickering, quietly.
You want to say hey and wait and stop, but you’re smarter than that now. You press into the shrubbery instead and keep up with them in the shadows.
Tailing is very fun. Even though you’re shivering. Maybe because you are shivering.
“The readings are just wrong,” one of them says. Her hair hangs choppy at her chin and she’s wearing leather pants, combat boots with spikes all over. Definitely not the sixties.
You smile loudly.
The other one curses. She’s in a blue coat, that much you can see. Blue coat, blue coat—oh. from the museum trip two weeks ago. Oh, you were so right. You are so good.
“Remind me never to accept deals on Spaceport Seven again, they always send us on wild goose chases.” She stares at the device with disdain. “And not even the fun ones.”
Combat Boots smiles, sly. She crosses her arms. “You still want the shiny laser, though.”
Blue Coat sighs. “I do. I do want the shiny laser.” She glares at a responding laugh. “Not for myself, thank you very much, so the Slitheen don’t get their slimy hands on it.”
Her eyes are big and dark, set prettily into her very pretty face. You can glean that well enough, even with the light.
Combat Boots rolls her eyes. “Sure, Oswald. Just keep the button off while we’re back on the ship or you’re on dish duty.”
“Since you asked so nicely, I'll refrain from lasering customers,” Oswald retorts. She boops Combat Boots on the nose, who bats her away.
Ship? your heart stutters. Oswald? She can’t be that Oswald, that’s impossible.
Like cracks in the walls that steal your parents.
And whales that drive a city through space.
You can barely breathe.
The rest of their conversation is nigh on incomprehensible, the quick chatter of two people eager to be quick and most of all, clever. You keep to trees and shrubs and bushes, gleefully messing up your hair. You’re just dying to jump in front of them and ask all the right questions. You have a ship? What kind of ship, exactly? What laser? Is it a shrink-ray?
But you know better. You’re in your robe with no sonic and no leverage and so little information. You know when to wait.
This time, you know when to wait.
They eventually stop cold in front of a Diner. You’ve never seen this Diner before, but it fits right in with the street, nestled between the laundromat and a pawn shop. You easily could have missed it on the way to the subway in the morning. Your head is in the clouds—above the clouds—all the time, according to Rory. You could be dreaming again.
Oswald opens the door with a little key. Inside, there’s a soft white glow. Could be a diner. Could be anything else, everything else.
The impossible things inside you say: no, no you aren’t dreaming.
Most importantly, they say: no, the diner wasn’t there before.
Fuck waiting.
“Hey!” you call out, skidding to a stop. Your feet might be developing frostbite.
They both turn around simultaneously, practiced. Oswald glances sideways at Combat Boots. She sighs. “You owe me a tenner.”
Combat Boots eyes you with an odd precision. Like she knows exactly where she should be looking. “She didn’t sneak into the Diner. Those were my terms.”
You glare, heat rising on your neck. “I happen to know where the laser is, so. If you want to know anything, you’d better stop that.”
Oswald gives her a full once-over, both languid and exactly not. She smiles without teeth. “No, Amy, you really don’t know anything about the laser. But you could.” She tilts her head. “We could use a third for this adventure.”
You freeze. You finally feel the full breadth of the cold. It felt like burning before, you now realize. “You are that Oswald,” you murmur. “How?”
“It’s Clara,” she says. “What do you say, Amy Pond? Want to save the world with us?”
Combat Boots is still giving that unnerving stare. It’s very old, you realize. You’ve only seen a stare like that once before. “I’ve been trying to talk her out of it for two days—the Doctor’s taste in friends is always questionable. Present company included.”
Clara elbows her. “Be nice, Me.”
“Oh, I was insulting myself too.”
“Your name is Me?” you laugh and laugh. “I bet that name comes in handy when you need to get away fast. You’ll leave folks tangling their own words.”
The corners of Me’s mouth turn up. “Funny.”
You preen. “Don’t forget smart.”
Clara gives you the once-over again. “That we can agree on, Amy Pond.”
You love that name, all of a sudden. You want to lavish it on the world again and again, all the old hurt fading away. Amy Pond. You put your hands on your hips and all of a sudden, you’re a pirate again. You’re saving London on the space whale again. Clara Oswin Oswald isn’t a Dalek; she’s staring at you with big, impossible eyes. She and Me are bathed in the diner glow, no longer effigies of a life outside of her grasp, only real in paintings.
“So what kind of laser are we talking about?” She rocks on her heels. “Please tell me it’s a shrink ray.”
It’s not a shrink ray.
After tinkering with the settings, you find the laser buried in the park, under a tree. Discarded like a kids’ toy. You comment that this is pretty boring, for an adventure involving lasers. Clara agrees. Me says you’re both stupid.
Famous last words indeed—ten minutes later, you run from outer-space bounty hunters. They have sharp teeth and two glowing spheres for eyes.
Amy Pond, you hear in your head. Welcome back. The voice sounds like the Doctor, but you don’t want it to. You miss him. You miss you more.
Maybe you’ll see him again, though. Forever means something else when your head’s in the stars—floating right there with them, a hand gently grasping your ankle.
And maybe you won’t. Maybe you have the entire universe to yourself this time.
You run, you dodge, you scheme. You discover. You laugh the whole time.
(And it is a shrink ray—after Clara alters the settings while hiding behind the laundromat.)
The Diner is a TARDIS. An actual TARDIS.
That part hurts, but it would hurt you more if it was yellow and orange and wonky on the inside, stuffed to the brim with gadgetry. This TARDIS is sleek and clean.
Me and Clara have tastes that run opposite—Clara wants bright colors, gears and gizmos. Me wants screens everywhere, eyes on the whole world. Shades of dark greens and greys. In response, the TARDIS stays at factory settings.
She feels different too, this TARDIS. After all, she’s a stranger instead of an old friend: springy and curious. She’s curious about you, why you seem to already understand that the TARDIS breathes, in her way. She drops that emotion right in your empty stomach.
It should be mortifying. How easy it is to leave.
There’s shouting, there’s crying. There’s Rory clinging to your arms, asking you to believe in him, this time. Just him. Just their little life together. They can be happy. They just have to work harder. You remind him it’s a time machine. You can come back. It's a hollow reminder. You say you still love him. That reminder is worse.
You don’t ask him to come with you.
He doesn’t ask you to ask.
Yes, it should be mortifying. It’s already hard as any loss can be, it shudders in your heart, but it’s not wrong. You step onto a new TARDIS in your old leather jacket, a skip in your steps. Clara and Me are talking at the Diner counter. They’re strangers to you now, but one day they won’t be. A future familiarity lingers amongst the Diner stools, beckons you forward.
Clara looks up. She smiles at you, still cheeky. “Good! you’re here. We were just discussing the next trip—oh I like having a third. We waste so much time arguing.”
“Or,” you sing-song. “you’ll just be arguing with two people now.”
After several seconds of stern staring, Me laughs. It’s a hearty bark of a laugh, something earned. “Okay, Amy.” She lifts the counter door. “It’s time to teach you how to use the espresso machine. Believe me, you’ll need it. Clara doesn’t need to sleep anymore and every morning she forgets I do.”
Clara winks. “Early bird catches the Wirrn. Speaking of...they owe us so many credits now.”
“See what I’ve had to deal with?”
“You love it.”
“I love sleeping for a full eight hours, actually.”
“Oh, you have all the time in the world to catch up!”
You want to cry. You will later.
Right now, you’re beaming. Butterfly-light. You’re Amy Pond and you might finally be home.