We don't talk enough about the fact that Amelia Pond, s5 Amelia Pond, before the timeline is reset, isn't just a normal orphan. Her parents didn't die, didn't abandon her, and didn't send her away. They never existed in the first place.
And if her parents never existed, then Amelia cannot exist. She is a causal impossibility.
"People fall out of the world sometimes, but they always leave traces." A photograph. A face carved into an apple. Yes. Sure.
A child.
Now that's too big, surely.
But that's what she is. She is exactly the same as these things. A trace. An echo of something that could never be, never was, never could have been.
And the universe should never allow it. A whole person, that's just too much. She could not have continued to exist indefinitely, in normal circumstances, after her parents never existed.
In normal circumstances.
Because the Doctor didn't just save her from things coming out of the crack in her wall. He saved her from going into it. And he didn't just save her from the threat of going into it simply because of its vicinity.
No, by arriving when he did, he interrupted a process that was probably already in motion. And then by arriving again only moments later on a cosmic relative timestream (too quickly for the process to complete) and yet in the local relative timestream, years later --- years of a potential future caught midway through the process of rewriting -- he solidified that existence. Amy is a creature from another timeline, caught in amber. The Doctor prevented her from never existing, but only after she could already never exist.
And so, no one around Amelia thinks about it. Neither does she. There's some kind of consciousness block, because if you thought about it, really thought about it, for two seconds you'd realize she cannot exist. And the human mind can't deal with that. So, to protect itself, everyone's brain simply slides off it before ever noticing. They just assume that her existence makes sense, and don't question it, and don't notice what they don't question, that is staring them in the face.
But of course, to some extent they do notice. They can't think it, but they notice subconsciously that there's something they can't think. They notice there's something wrong with her, something uncanny. And they don't like it, and they alienate her even more because of it.
"Does it ever bother you Pond that your life existence doesn't make any sense?"
So here's what happens.
For some reason -- work or finances or maybe even simply pity -- a family moves down from Inverness to Leadworth. They move in with Tabetha's sister Sharon, who is an indefinably sad woman who lives alone in a house too big for her (although perhaps, in another universe, she too had a family [how long has this been going on?]) and is more than happy to welcome them into her echoing void. Or perhaps she only claims this, perhaps she does it out of obligation and expectation. This doesn't matter.
The child hates it, of course. She hates everything about it, but above all she hates the emptiness. The absence. And...the crack. The crack in the wall of the room they've given her to sleep in, a room which has always been empty but which they know on some level is a child's bedroom. It terrifies her. It whispers and it eats, she knows it does, although she isn't sure what that means. Did she really move in with so few toys?
Oh well, it's christmas soon so she gets new ones. And on it goes. She begs to be given a different room but her parents laugh and say that's silly. They've already set up her things. She'll get used to it. Adjustment is difficult but she'd feel the same in any other room.
And on it goes. And the crack whispers, and eats, and eats, and eats.
It's easter and her mum is putting her to bed. The crack is worse than usual somehow, glowing almost, and the fear she feels is tangible. "Don't be silly dear" her mum says, as she has said a million times, "it's just an ordinary crack. I'll prove it, see?" And she walks up to it and touches it.
It's easter and her da is putting her to bed. She doesn't have a mum, never has. This is normal, and mundane, that she has somehow been born without one. It doesn't even occur to her to think about, why should it? But fear and loss course through her. The source of the loss is implacable, but the fear is not. "The crack..." she murmers, drawing her covers to her chin. Her da laughs. "Oh Amelia, not that again! It's only a crack in the drywall. See?" And he walks up to it and touches it.
It's easter and Amelia is putting herself to bed. She doesn't have parents, never has. This is normal, and mundane, and not worth a thought, that she has somehow been born without them. But tonight the crack in her wall leers at her, and she feels even more scared of it than usual. She can't sleep. She feels like something horrible has just happened, although she doesn't know what it could be, and something still more horrible is coming. Something like death, but more so.
She gets out of bed and sits down again on top of it, as far from the crack as possible.
She doesn't normally pray, and isn't quite sure where to begin. But something about the night seems to call for it. "Dear Santa..." she begins.
additionally, a part of amys story that really lingers with me is that she remembers this all in season 6. when the timeline is reset, when she lived a whole life with a mum and a dad and a safe home, she also didn't, because she rembers it both ways. and at her wedding in the 'normal' timeline, when she demands the doctor be returned to the universe, someone says 'oh not this again'. meaning amy, even growing up without a crack in her wall, still had enough madness or otherness to shout and scream about her not-so-imaginary raggedy man. meaning the crack likely affeted her beyond the relms of its universe/timeline, meaning she never got to grow up as a normal little girl.
amelia pond had the fabric of the universe, the entirety of space and time, woven into her skin and it never left.
