❛❛ I’m not going to leave. I’ll stay as long as you need me to. ❜❜
soft & caring from river @bespokd ; accepting.
She’s shell shocked, she’s hurt, she’s processing. She’s shutting down. River had just brought them home, the Doctor of in the universe to find her daughter, to find Melody. To find River. Amy doesn’t even have the energy to change out of the white gown before she sank into the couch, Rory beside her, and River just carefully hovering. The silence is thick and feels heavy of so many things Amy can’t bring herself to stay. After a moment, Rory excuses himself to go make them some tea. If she hadn’t been hurting, she would have found Rory in his Roman battle wear a lot more attractive.
River takes the abandoned seat of her father, but Amy still just stares at the soft green silk that had Melody’s name sewn into it by the soldier. The TARDIS isn’t near, so it’s back in the language of the forest people, but she’s stared at River long enough to know how to spell it in their own language.
There are so many things she wants to ask, so many things she doesn’t want the answers to. She’d held Melody the entire time, Amy’s sure of it. How could they take her little girl? How did she not know they took her little girl? Melody is going to grow up thinking that Amy didn’t love her, that Rory didn’t love her.
And then she remembers the first time she met River, and she remembers the Angels, remembers how she thought she was going to die, how she had an Angel inside of her. Did River know, even back then, that Amy was her mother? How had Amy looked at her, and how had her soul not known who she was instantly? Or maybe she did know, maybe it’s why she’d instantly trusted River, instantly liked her.
And she remembers the Doctor mentioning that he and River never meet in the right order, that they’re traveling different directions. She wonders if that’s the same for them. Was her first time meeting River the last time River saw her?
And she’s spiraling, and then River speaks, and it’s enough to draw her up short, to silence the worries of a mother that just lost her child, that doesn’t know if she’ll ever get her baby back.
Amy takes River’s hands, holds them in both of hers and finally looks into her eyes. Tears pool at the edges of her eyes, leave wet drops on her lashes as she tries the blink them away so that she can focus on the women her daughter will become.
We’ll never stop looking for you, Amy wants to tell her, I promise we’ll find you. But in a world with time travel and space travel, is that something she can even promise? Instead, Amy tries to smile. “Go with the Doctor, I’m sure he’ll need saving.” And it’s not that Amy can’t look at River, is just that right now, she needs Rory. She needs him to hold her so that she can cry.
“And please know, that no matter where you are, Rory and I will always love you, and we’ll never give up looking for you.”
