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She had been the first to spot the mysterious crack appearing once again in the cave. They had been running through the Earth’s core through the tunnels back to the Tardis. The whole situation was a bit absurd, she supposed, then again, that was true of much of her life. The crack itself doesn’t scare her. How could it when it had been following her since she was seven? Appearing through time, gathering all of her memories and slowly turning them to dust. She supposed it should when she thought of it like that.
She tries to think it doesn’t scare her, though. Because now things are different. She has Rory and the Doctor, and they stayed; they always stay. The crack that was once in her wall, that absorbed the pieces of her life, now stays at a linger, following but no longer consuming, wherever she goes. But that’s alright, she supposed. She thinks perhaps that’s why she hadn’t been afraid. Because the Doctor kept them running from it now, always staying ahead at a safe distance, unlike how it had been for so much of her early life.
Today, the Doctor hadn’t ran from it. It had been the opposite, actually. He had shoved his hand into the shining light of it, and suddenly she felt the familiar fear that had followed her throughout her childhood. Her raggedy Doctor disappearing again, but this time perhaps forever. That thought had always haunted her in ways that she wasn’t quite sure he completely understood. Even if she wishes sometimes he would.
When would the crack take him as well? She trusted him, but half of her couldn’t help but wonder if this was going to be the time that she had always expected to happen. She stood frozen until she felt Rory’s touch behind her and reality reasserted itself again. Rory, who had never left her, even when she ran from him. Rory was here, Rory who stays, the Doctor who came back, does come back…She drifted back into focus. The Doctor had a hand half-submerged in the light, but still things were ok. No one had disappeared.
A part of her thought maybe the Doctor would actually find something this time, something that would make sense of the crack in her wall. She wondered if it would fix all the fragments in her memories if he did. She couldn’t help the curiosity when the Doctor had pulled some piece of shrapnel from it. Then he had said he didn’t know what it was and that disappointed her in a way she didn’t expect.
Rory was the first to notice Restac with her gun. She should have always known that he would be the first to protect her. He had always stayed by her since childhood, he will always stay. The Doctor had been quick on his feet, like always, telling them to get out of there. It had been too late, though, the gun fired, and for a moment she felt frozen once again. Rory hadn’t froze, he had pushed the Doctor aside while the laser hit him. It took a moment before that realisation had fully reached her.
So many thoughts had flowed through her head while she held onto him that she was not even sure she could put them into words. There was one thought, she recognised, the desperate plea for him not to leave her. He was the one who stayed, the one who… She watched him breathe his last breath while she begged the Doctor to save him. Rory told her she was beautiful, and she felt this strange feeling of resentment because what was the point of that if it didn’t stop everyone from leaving her.
She felt the light from the crack drifting closer to her. None of that seemed to matter in that moment. She was not going to run from it anymore, not without him. He was the one that doesn’t disappear, the one that stayed. All those days she was growing up. Fragments of memories that some she wasn’t quite sure had even existed but Rory, he had always been there.
The Doctor was telling her something about the light and needing to go, and all she could hear was that they weren’t saving him. That he couldn’t fix this. The crack in her wall had fragmented every piece of her existence into nothingness, and she had thought that now things would be different. She remembered, after 14 years, seeing him again appear in that little blue box and hoping that just for once, her life would make sense. That the crack in her wall wouldn’t define her anymore.
She felt the Doctor grabbing her from behind, dragging her away from the light, away from Rory. The light was encompassing everything around them, and all she could think about was his body lying there, cold and alone and forgotten. Disappearing, always disappearing, just like all the people in her fragmented memories had. She couldn’t leave him. He was the one who stayed, the one who always…
She begged the Doctor to go back, to let her go to him, to fix this. She thought if she pleaded enough this time, maybe the universe would listen for a change. She waited, waited all that time. She had been patient, didn’t object to everyone that she loved being stolen from her again and again. She remembered the first time she met the raggedy Doctor, when she was seven. The one who took her seriously, the one who told her things would be ok, and for once in her life, she had actually believed it was true. Even then, she had waited.
She would watch the stars every night, hoping that one day, things would make sense. The crack in the wall would one day no longer be a terrifying light, but simply a crack in her wall. When she was older, Rory would watch the stars with her. She never knew what it was like to feel as if things made sense, but those nights were the closest she had to it. Now the raggedy Doctor from her fairytales was real. This was all real, and the same man she thought, had waited for, to one day make everything right, was now standing there while she sobbed and pleaded for him to just do something... anything. She saw Rory’s body dematerialising into the light. The light that seems to define every piece of her existence.
She can feel the Doctor’s steadying hands on her shoulders. He tells her to hold onto her memories, and she tries. She truly tries. She tells him she can’t and he tells her she can. She wants to believe that, believe him, but she knows. What he doesn’t understand is how she was already too familiar with this. Her whole life, everyone that she ever tried to hold onto, fought to hold onto, fading into nonexistence over and over. Like a barrier that surrounded her, no matter what she did. Everyone leaving her, fading away. It had become a known fact of the universe. Everyone that Amy Pond loves, eventually fades away.