[ For timeforamy ; Air-Paris ]

[mmkaternater]

[ OOC: Follows this ]

There are approximately 400 billion stars in the Milky Way. A respectable number, for any galaxy. But that's small potatoes when compared to the number of stars found in the entire universe -- something like ten to the power of twenty-four -- which is a very pragmatic, comfortingly mathematical way of saying that space is big.

Really big.

Bigger than your whole town, much bigger than the little flat you have in the city, with the leaky shower head and the upstairs neighbors who like to stomp around wearing wellies filled with bricks. Space is bigger than your township, your borough, bigger than all the places you have ever been, combined and multiplied by themselves until the math makes you dizzy and you have to lie down for a while. Big. Ten to the power of twenty-four. Countless suns, all burning out in the black. Of those, maybe a little more than half have planets. Of those, approximately half have some form of life. Of those, approximately sixteen-million-five-hundred-and-forty-seven-thousand-one-hundred-and-eighty-six have intelligent life, or some variation of it. Comparatively speaking, that is a depressingly small percentage. But, then again, "intelligence" is relative, especially across star systems.

The Doctor is in the TARDIS's control room, hunched over the console, his nose inches away from a chronofribrilator feed that, apparently, requires up close and personal inspection in order for it to function properly. He's muttering to himself, soft space-themed mutter. Once in a while his eyebrows will jump, as if he's just thought of something, but then he will return to his work, subdued. He left Amy in his bed down the corridor, asleep. He does not quite know what to think about that.

He does know that he needs to take her somewhere -- somewhere spectacular -- and he needs to do it right away. What are you doing, old man? You can't honestly expect to carry this off. Not when you're not even being entirely honest with her. Not when she's only just lost her --

He hears bare feet on the catwalk above his head. "Pond!" he announces, "glad you're finally awake. Listen, we're just about to make landfall. Oh, er', well, spacefall, I suppose you could say. Air-Paris: the entire City of Lights, replicated perfectly, floating in the Sunset Constellation of Ursa Minor Minor. Sort of like Starship U.K., but with much more wine and cheese."

Comments

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

This could be, but Amy doesn't much think so. She's very convinced that she knows what she saw in the alien's features, even if they aren't features she's ever had the pleasure of seeing before. Still, she is fairly sure she knows what she saw.

"It's something a woman tends to pick up on," she says, "feelings, all that. And I did kiss you. That means something, doesn't it?"

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

The Doctor considers her for a moment, his expression thoughtful, green eyes watching her mouth when she presses her lips together to rid them of crepe crumbs.

"Yes," he says quietly. He then takes a gigantic bite of his own crepe, speaking around a mouthful -- "It means you're buying lunch. Come on, Pond!"

He sets out at a brisk walk, munching as he goes.

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

I'm buying lunch? That's what my kissing him means?

For a moment Amy is completely astonished, surprised that the idea of her kissing him is a prompt for his wanting her to buy lunch. But what happened last night is still fresh in her mind, and she knows it meant something to him, too.

She keeps up with him at a fast walk, her hand tucking into the curve of his elbow.

"Yeah? Getting lunch free of charge might mean more than a kiss, you know." Her smirk is cheeky.

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

He shoots her an unfamiliar look -- "more?" -- before her fingers slip round his elbow and pull him back on track. "Oh look --" he pulls her toward a shopfront just off the boulevard, a large plate glass window revealing the interior of a quaint little

"-- piano bar!" the Doctor enthuses, pointing at the neat baby grand that sits in the center of the place. "Looks old, too. Earth old. That piano should be in a museum somewhere, not being made to play New Wave Yu'oal Flesh Punk Classical."

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

Amy forgets about the idea of kissing - or more than kissing - for a few moments, when the piano comes into her line of sight. She lets out a pleased cry and lets her arm thread more comfortably through the Doctor's.

"That's beautiful!" she cries, "so antique, it's amazing! I only played a bit when I was younger, never anything too serious. Do you play?"

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

"A bit," the Doctor admits as she wrings his elbow, "I met Beethoven once. 'Had a bit of trouble with conversation, old Ludwig. He locked me in a cupboard for half an hour until I gave him the melody for his Ninth --"

Then, off Amy's look "-- he wrote most of it. I just, you know, hummed a few bars. Shall we go in?" He stuffs the last of the crepe into his mouth and stuffs the paper into the pocket of his coat, offering her his arm.

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

"Did you?" Amy gives him an incredulous look, her arm slipping through his again. There is a last bite of crepe in her mouth and she chews while they walk through the large doors together.

Air-Paris is as beautiful inside as it is out, and the piano is something out of some sort of fairy tale. Amy has imagined things like this before, but never seen them.

Her palm lays against the piano's edge while they walk past. "I've never seen one this pretty before. Usually, they're just electric keyboards, you know?"

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

"Pianos, oh, pianos are great. I love pianos." He gives the last three notes on the keyboard a playful plinkity-plink.

"Did you know that music is universal? It's true. Search all the planets in all the star systems in the universe and there will always be some alien or other beating on a drum or singing about his homeland. Humans, especially, need music to survive and be happy, I think." He smiles thinly, remembering something. "Time Lords, too."

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

"What was the music like on your planet?" Amy realizes now that she knows so little about the planet he calls home, and part of her wants to know a great deal more. But he is secretive and she can't blame him for it, not if there are less than pleasant memories involved.

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

The Doctor presses a key with the side of his thumb, softly, so that no sound comes out of the instrument. He is looking at the piano now, somewhere past Amy, his face calm and measured by sadness.

"It was very beautiful," he says quietly, touching another key with his index finger. "Sort of...strange...haunting. We had wonderful composers -- like your Mozart and Beethoven -- who created the most incredible melodies. I still hear them, sometimes, in my head, when it is very very quiet inside the TARDIS."

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

"What do they sound like?"

Amy does not raise her voice so much as a half note's volume. She is too entranced by what he is saying and the story the words are creating. Her heart is beating a bit faster in her chest, but she is completely still. The last thing she wants is to break the sort of trance that he is in.

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

The Doctor does not look up, but holds his hands above the keyboard, as if warming them by the heat of potential music. "Sort of like..." he gently presses his fingertips to the keys, playing a strange yet hauntingly interesting single chord. He follows it with another. A third. At first listen, none of the three chords seem to go together. The sound is odd and discordant; a woman sitting in a corner booth even turns her nose up at the noise coming from the piano.

But the Doctor, you see, even though he does not feel the piano is giving him the full range of Gallifrey's musical structure (theirs had at least four more octaves and a couple of other strange adaptations), keeps at it and the "noise" that comes from the instrument begins to sound more and more like real music. It is, as he said, a haunting sound. 'Sort of sits at the bottom of the stomach, like grief tends to do.

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

It is the last thing she has actually expected him to do, and yet Amy can feel nothing other than completely transfixed. He is playing the sound of a planet of which she has never been to - and likely never will - but it is beautiful, even in its sadness.

There is space to sit two on the piano bench and Amy takes it to her advantage, sinking onto the edge quietly so as not to disturb the music. Her eyes are transfixed to his face, watching with the faintest part of her lips.

It's as if he's speaking through music, something people try so hard to achieve and yet only he has managed to accomplish.

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

They did not have pianos, as such, on Gallifrey, and much of what the Doctor remembers is lost to time. He has not thought about the music of his own planet in a while. Perhaps it is because the music, so much more than the towers and spires and mountains and citadels of legend, is more than anything a part of what made Time Lord society the greatest, most fabled civilization in the universe. Music was what the spires and citadels were built for.

He draws his hands over the keyboard, adjusting for the placement of the keys, his long fingers making an easy reach of an octave. He feels Amy beside him. Her knee is very close to his, casting a psychic shadow.

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

Her hands fold against her lap, and Amy dares scarcely to breathe for fear that her own exhale and inhale will prove a poor accompaniment to the musical tale he is telling. Amy has heard music in great volumes, some she never wishes to hear again, but nothing ever before like this. There is poignant, emotional melody behind his fingers, something which does not need words.

Amy lets her gaze move from his face to his hands, watching the movement as the music is born. A few seconds later she closes her eyes, doing nothing but listening - and feeling the nearness of him by her side.

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

He feels himself getting frustrated. There is only so much that the piano can do without sounding (to the Doctor's ears, at least) pathetically one-dimensional. He misses the great theremins of Gallifrey -- those instruments one plays just by moving their hands through the air, without strings or drumheads -- and the way the music shook the chill out of the morning air and seemed to go on all the way to the Mountains of Solace and Solitude.

When the phrase ends, the Doctor is unaware that he has closed his eyes. He sits silently, still as a stone, the tips of his fingers at rest on the edges of the keys.

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

Amy can hear nothing but the sound of her own breathing, and what she thinks might be his, too. There is a lovely, soft kind of rhythm they make together, but it isn't nearly as beautiful as the story his music has just told to her.

And yet he's sad - more so than she believed it would be. Not just his own sadness, but something much greater than anything one man could feel. An all encompassing weight, pressing against either his shoulders or his soul - or perhaps both.

Amy turns her head and shifts her position, laying her cheek against his. The red fall of her hair spills over his shoulder.

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

Warm wave over his cheek, spilling into his collar. To an outsider, they look like they are sharing a memory -- her head tilted against his, their eyes closed, experiencing the same thing again, together -- and for a split second the Doctor actually allows himself a brief slip around the edges of her mind. A peek. Just a tiny one.

She's sad for me.

The Doctor clears his throat.

'Wiggles a half gesture with his fingers.

"You know. Something like that."

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

Amy allows herself another second to lean into him, against him, then turns her chin up to give herself a better look at his face. She is sad for him, more than she knew she was before, and she wants to take that sadness away. But she can't - it's not hers to take away, as much as she wants to.

"It's beautiful."

Her hand rests against his wrist, then higher across the backs of his knuckles. The touch is little, light but there.

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

The Doctor makes the leap, small as it is, and turns her soft palm over to lay his fingers with hers. 'Gives her hand a soft squeeze. "It was," he says, tiptoeing around the verb tense before he looks away altogether. Nostalgia can be a dangerous thing, especially for a Time Lord. If you're not careful, all the things that you did and were will become the only things that you ever think you can be.

For a man who's stood at the brink of a thousand burning civilizations -- a man who lit the spark -- there is great power in the ability to forget.

"Now then," he recovers briskly, "you play a little, don't you? Can't imagine that aunt of yours let you get out of being a kid without a piano lesson or two." He scoots down on the bench to make room.

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

Amy sees that he doesn't want to think about this any more, and tells herself that she won't push it. Not now, at least. There are so many secrets about him she wishes she could learn, but hopefully they will be revealed with time. They have that, too - time.

And she will give him what he wants, a bit of insight into the world that was hers, growing up.

"Oh, just a little," she says, affording a tone of offhandedness. Amy lifts her small hands and settles her fingers over the keys. Her eyes close a half second's time, then she lets the melody move from her hands to the keys.

Moonlight Sonata.

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

Now, there is one thing Amy Pond is not, and that is humble. If she's good at something, she lets you know it or, better yet, she shows you that she is until all you want to do is run home and cry into your pillow because you've been bested by a redheaded kissogram from Leadworth.

Amy begins to play. It's good. Quite good.

The Doctor leans on his elbow to watch.

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

This is likely the most advanced piece she has been able to master, and Amy took a great deal of time at it. It was a song she enjoyed, and therefore that was reason enough to try and master it.

Which, well, she had.

The keys are familiar and comforting under her fingers, and Amy lets her eyes close. She doesn't need to look at them to know which is next in the melody. She can feel his eyes on her, and that might well inspire it that much more.

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

Knowing what he does about her, it almost surprises the Doctor that Amy could ever sit still long enough for anyone to teach her anything, let alone a complicated piano piece. But then again, that's the terrific thing about Amelia Pond: no matter what she does or how she does it, somehow it always ends up surprising him.

Her eyes are closed. She is deeply connected with the music; her shoulders sway gently, wrists lifted high off the keyboard in the classical pose. The Doctor watches her profile as she plays. He knows he shouldn't stare. There are at least a dozen different reasons why he shouldn't stare.

He just can't seem to recall any of them at the moment.

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

The plethora of psychiatrists that had littered their way through her childhood and adolescent years had insisted there be something to occupy Amy (nee Amelia) from fantasies such as blue boxes and imaginary friends. But she hadn't taken to drawing or acting or anything along those lines, and when she had expressed an interest in music, her aunt had immediately jumped towards the chance. Amy had secluded herself away after lessons (the majority of which she spent in silence, speech-wise) with sheet music and the piano her aunt had rented, doing nothing but working away at the keys. Because the most amusing part of this entire attempted diversion was that Amy felt it easier to think of her raggedy Doctor when she was alone with nothing but music.

And there hadn't been a Stardust Sonata, so Moonlight would have to do.

Amy's brow furrows just slightly in hard focus, thinking back to childhood years spent alone in this fashion, when her legs grew long enough to reach the pedals and she could make use of their additions (as she did now) to her song, and the years she'd spent making it not only music but some kind of desperate call.

Did you really think he would hear you and come back? Silly girl.

But maybe she had thought that. Just a little.

Her face relaxes its strain and that lets her fingers move more freely.