#two streams

The Girl Who Waited Decades

There would be many, many times in her life that Amelia Pond would question the small choices she’d made in the past. Choices that, no matter how inconsequential they had seemed at the time, would have changed everything. Maybe if she hadn’t had gone back for her camera phone that day. Maybe if she had pressed the green anchor button, instead of the red waterfall. Maybe if she had left a better sign, found a way to boost her mobile signal, hacked the hand bots, or changed the way she asked the interface a question. Maybe if she hadn’t have trusted the raggedy man from space who showed up at her doorstep in a big blue box all those years ago. Any small shift, and everything would be different. Then again in hindsight, everything seemed a bit more obvious. That didn’t mean it could fix things now.

Year one was the easiest. In year one, Amy had known her raggedy man and centenarian would come back for her. It was an irrefutable fact, the same way the sky was blue, or the hand bot thingies were a little creepy if you really sat down and thought about it. Which she did, many times. She also realized rather quickly that while she wasn’t hungry, cravings were still frustrating things, and the cinema made wonderful popcorn. The salt and butter practically melted on your tongue, and the next thing you knew you realized you hadn’t had food in months, and you were laughing through your tears at a movie and taste you would experience countless more times.

It was also a year of learning. She learned that the engine room, indeed, masked her from the handbots (though occasionally a faulty one would wander in and she would have to disable it)

It was also one of the loneliest places in two-stream facility. The safest, but the loneliest. The Interface wouldn’t work in the engine room- for what reason other than whatever caused the handbots to malfunction, she wasn’t sure. But it meant that her contact with any voice, even a sometimes annoying robotic one with an unsettlingly bright light, was impossible there. Nevertheless, as it was the safest, she felt it was the area she would build her home. It started with a curtain she found in the cinema, looped between two pylons, and framed with a large tarp that had been used in the aquarium to cover a tank (at the expense of a few fish. She ate them. They tasted so good that she almost didn’t feel bad for her recently departed friends.)

She explored. Gallery, Cinema, Garden, Aquarium, Rollarcoasters, Mountain Zone. Her favorite eventually became the Mountain Zone. She would sit there on very lonely nights, watching the sun set over mountains made of glass, casting a breathtaking spectrum of light over everything in view. The first night she’d seen it, after she realized that the sun set at nights in the Garden, Gallery, and Mountain Zone, it was seven months and fourteen days after she’d been stranded there. She’d sat on a pile of red sand, feeling cool air brush over her face- the only sound in that part of the facility that wasn’t made by her- watching the glass plains visibly fracture with colors of light, and cried. No, not just cried- Sobbed. Full blown, anguished screaming, sobs. When she crawled back into her makeshift bed last night, covered in sand, she’d listened to the engines woosh. She thought briefly, about how similar it sounded to the TARDIS engine.

It was the first night that she worried that she may die alone at Two Streams.

The first decade after the first year was still relatively easy. Though she ran out of movies in the sixth year, unable to request more as an actual patient there would have from the hand bots, the reruns didn’t exactly bother her. The popcorn still tasted wonderful, as well. Her clothes were in good shape, the small brush she’d carried with her in her pocket hadn’t broke, and the toothpaste located in the bathroom of the gallery lasted quite a while. She developed a nice routine. Mornings she set out to scavenge- or if she couldn’t find anything that day, she spent them exploring the Mountain Zone or riding a coaster. The gallery was saved for the afternoons, when the heat was too much for her in the outdoor rooms. She mainly spent nights in the Cinema, or the Garden. Twice a month still, she would sit and watch the sun set over the glass mountains. On a particularly bad night, she would stare at the night stars and talk to The Interface. She would ask it questions about the distant constellations and planets she could see, and she would tell it stories about the ones she had visited. It was “Doctor” this, and “Doctor” that. Sometimes, if the night was clear enough, she could see Earth. On these nights, she would tell It about Rory. These were the nights that hurt the most. The nights were she would feel tears stream down her face, and her bottom lip would soundlessly quiver. She’d stopped crying out loud in the eighth year.

Decade one was the easiest. In decade one, Amelia Pond was still Amy. She was filled with hope, and always mused to the Interface where she would go and what she would do as soon as that big blue box showed up, with its old wooden frame and wonderful wooshing sound. In Decade one, Amelia Pond hoped.

Decade two was harder. In Decade two, the popcorn became repulsive. Movies became boring, drawn out, and downright terrible. She mocked them until the thought of sitting down for one made her sick. In Decade Two, the sunsets lost their wonder, and fighting the hand bots became a boring routine. Decade two could be characterized with very many things. But the most important thing that Decade Two can be characterized with, is the fact that, on the first night of Decade Two, something inside of Amelia Pond broke. She found herself sitting on the floor of her makeshift hut, amongst different pieces of scrap and salvage, wondering how she’d held so much hope in decade one. After all, hadn’t The Doctor abandoned her before? Yes, many times. And not just her- other people, too. She’d spent that night, and every night after that one, thinking of every story she had ever heard of The Doctor- Raggedy Man, The Oncoming Storm, The Valeyard, Destroyer of Worlds. The names he held stuck in her head, repeating in a terrible symphony of pain.

In Decade Two, Amelia Pond lost hope. She spoke to the interface much less, but when she did, it was with a venom-filled voice. It was snide, cruel, and everything that she had always told herself was wrong in the world. She hated The Doctor, she said. She hated The Doctor, she hated Rory, and she hated that stupid blue box that abducted her as a child. But that wasn’t quite right. Because what she really hated when she said all of those things was herself. She hated herself, for putting blind hope into a fairy tale raggedy man in a box. She hated herself, for running away on the night of her marriage with a strange man she wasn’t quite convinced was real. And then later snogging him. She hated herself, for throwing herself and those she loved into the face of danger because she saw herself as some invincible woman who’d died before, and figured nothing bad could ever happen to her. She hated herself, for ever believing that The Doctor would always come back for her.

In Decade Three, Amelia Pond resigned herself to spending the rest of her life at Two Streams. She found a robot, cut off his arms, and reprogrammed him. Though at one point she would have viewed this as inhumane, all she wanted was companionship in the last couple decades of her life. She didn’t think that was too much to ask for. She drew a face on him with a marker she discovered in a gallery (which, she almost laughed at due to the irony of it. Why would you put a sharpie near a bunch of expensive artwork? She wondered if this was purposeful, for the small children at the facility. Then she tried not to think of the small children.) She then thought for a very long time about what name to give him. She didn’t mean to name him Rory, originally. The stupid robot had stumbled into a pile of scrap she’d been trying to piece together, and she’d gotten frustrated, yelling out Rory’s name and whirling around, before she realized what she’d done, and broke down crying.

She called the robot Rory from then on.

In Decade Three, Amelia Pond re-watched the movies with a newfound interest. She re-read the books she’d found scattered about the facility back in Decade One, and found herself fascinated with the stories once more. Turns out lost hope is actually rather motivating. She found herself enjoying the sights in the Garden, the smell of the flowers, and the glass mountains once more. She ate popcorn, she cried, and she lived what semblance of a life she realized she would be spending here. In Decade Three, Amelia stopped waiting.

And then, at the end of Decade Three, He came. She heard a voice, and she’d ran into the room, and He was there, ginger and scrawny and with those stupid glasses on the tip of his nose. Her Centenarian. Her Rory. She felt a fire of hope. Love. Sadness. She felt everything, all the while pretending to feel nothing. She felt almost humiliated as she showed him what her life had become, and then had the so-called decency to defend her choices, and tell him that she didn’t want to be saved. Because in Decade One, the Decade of hope, when it had still been early enough for denial, she’d been told by herself she would never be saved. That she might as well buckle in for the ride, because it would be a long one. And she hadn’t listened. But now, standing face to face with her younger self three decades later, she changed her mind. She wasn’t sure why she changed her mind. Maybe she never would be sure. But she changed her mind.