[ For timeforamy ; chivalric code ]

[mmkaternater]

There aren't a lot of perks in facing your imminent demise come sunrise, but the Doctor has managed to grab on to a few. Perk One: If they know that tonight could very well be your last night on earth, they're going to put you up in very posh lodgings. (Of course, in 14th century England, this roughly equates to a mite-free mattress and not having to share your chamber pot with three other people, but all's fair in love and Medieval diplomacy.) Perk Two: If you are allowed to choose the contents of your last meal and you ask for fish custard, the people who are guarding you are going to give you a very strange look but will not, for the most part, object to you saying that you want to pop down to the bin to make it yourself. Which is when you manage to lose them in the castle's maze of twisting, windy stone corridors.

Actually, this perk might be better than the one about the chamber pot.

Given the volume of the shouting coming from far distant hallways, the Doctor figures he has about fifteen minutes before his dine-and-dash tactic is discovered. 'Plenty of time to find Amy and see that this whole "upon the morning" business is sorted before anyone gets hurt. Specifically, the Doctor himself.

The hallways are like highways, clogged with people and very irritated guards, so the Doctor has taken the overpass. Actually, he's taken the ledge outside one of the castle windows, scooting along the narrow cropping of stone, fingers dug into the mortar. He pokes his head into a window, only to get a chorus of high-pitched screams in return --

"Sorry, ladies! I'll be on my way. Sorry for the intrusion. Lovely bathrobes, by the way!"

-- before he edges along the wall to the next set of windows.

On the massive, four-poster bed in one of the rooms, the Doctor sees a pair of black leggings and a leather jacket. Amy. He grips the window frame and leans in, tapping his knuckle against the leaded glass.

Comments

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

Amy gives him a ghost of a smile. "And they'll be all right here? I keep thinking they need us.."

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

"They'll be fine," the Doctor says briskly, turning from her to take up his place at the console. "We just need to dispatch that --" he points to the baggie and sandwich "-- and history should go right on, you know, unfolding. Right as rain, the sun will come out tomorrow. All that..." he skirts a look toward her "...you know, stuff."

He eases the big gears of the TARDIS into obedience, punching a seemingly nonsense sequence of buttons. "Besides. I think we've interfered in quite enough history for today, don't you? It may be best to keep off the radar for a while."

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

Maybe they have. Maybe things have been disrupted and toyed with enough and it's best they move to another corner of the universe. Amy knows the Doctor wouldn't say it unless it were true, he wouldn't want to cause harm that way.

"Then I guess we have a sandwich to dispatch," she says with a little grin. "How should I dress for our new place? Warm weather, cool? Frigid?"

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

"Whatever you like," the Doctor says, gladder than he can possibly articulate to see that grin make a return appearance (small as it is).

"This place, it's not exactly on the grid. I stumbled on it by accident when I tried making the jump from Alpha Centauri to Proxima Five without waiting half an hour after I'd eaten. Got a time cramp and --" he spreads his hands, helplessly.

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

"A time cramp?"

Amy regards him in disbelief. Of all the things he's told her, this doesn't seem possible at all.

"You're joking, aren't you?"

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

He frowns and strokes a bit of the TARDIS.

"Never joke about the TARDIS," he says, a bit defensive. "She can hear you."

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

"Oh, she got the time cramp? How's that happen, a time cramp?"

Amy lays her hand against the console.

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

"Symbiotic link," the Doctor explains. "She's connected to me, and I'm connected to her. I feel --" he looks up the long column of the central time rotators "-- everything that she feels. Every bump, scrape and jostle. And she knows exactly when I try to jump the time vortex without doing a bit of proper digesting first."

He places his hand over the main controls and feels the TARDIS send a pulse of heat into his palm. He smiles.

"We've been through quite a lot, this old machine and me. We were bound to rub off on one another."

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

Amy didn't know there was so much to the time machine. It was extraordinary every step of the way, of course, but to be an actual feeling being - that was something else entirely. Something new, at that, which sparked a whole world of questions in her mind.

"Have you had her always?"

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

The Doctor shakes his head. "Not always. For a while now, though. She was about to be decommissioned and turned into scrap. I saved her -- well," he corrects himself, "stole her, I suppose is a better verb for that." He does not elaborate.

"She's about the only thing that I have left of home," he says, somewhat more quietly, "other than memories. And those are even getting spotty."

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

There's something like pain in his face, and it tugs at Amy's heart. She can't take it away or change it, but she desperately wishes she could. It's a strange feeling - even after the remembered loss of Rory, she's still so hopelessly drawn to her raggedy Doctor.

"You never talk about your home," she says, her fingertip touching a flashing light. "Is it because you don't want to, or because you don't want me to know?"

[goodwithtime.livejournal.com]

He smiles -- pulled tight over teeth, more a grimace than an actual expression -- and scrubs his thumb over his top lip. "Listen to me," he says, "going on about so many old things. Nah, ignore me. There's been enough gloom today. More than. I almost had to fight a duel." He rocks back on his heels, comprehending the absurdity of that thought. "Blimey."

Of course he's avoiding her questions. Home, the loss of everything familiar: it's too great a weight on the Doctor's hearts. He doesn't want to have to put Amy through it as well. Not today.

"Right. Now." He claps his hands together softly. "Pull that lever and we'll be on our way."

[timeforamy.livejournal.com]

She won't forget this. Not the evasive way he's avoided her questioning, especially when she knows it's something important. Amy isn't a silly girl, she knows better than to believe something isn't significant when she gets that sort of reaction. But today isn't the time to pull it out of him, though she knows she won't give up. Amy is far too stubborn to be doing that.

Instead she curls her palm around the lever and pulls. The TARDIS hums to life again beneath her touch, and it makes her smile.