In a strange way, the Doctor had started making more sense. Alone in his head, alone for hundreds of years, he had started to understand the mad man with the blue box gallivanting across the universe and time with his collected passel of pretty young girls.
Could he call the Doctor 'old' now? He was older, he thought. It was difficult to keep everything straight in his head. Had the Doctor just left him at the Pandorica? Or had he just lived through the War of the Roses (not nearly as romantic as it sounded, that one.) Or was he working as a security guard, fading out for decades at a time to keep people from catching on?
How old was he even?
And why wasn't he plastic?
I understand. He echoed the thought, hand gripping the Doctor's arm as tightly as he possibly could, afraid to let go and have the Doctor vanish.
"Amy. Amy and Molly." His family. He had a family now. He never thought he'd manage that. But he had them, they were waiting for him as soon as he could back. He had Conner, he had a son. A child who he loved despite the odd situation that had put them together. "Worth it. Amy is worth everything."
No matter how crushing it was, no matter how much it hurt. No matter how often his mind had teetered on the edge of shattering into a million pieces of broken plastic and electronic components.
Everything...everything was looking down at an army commander who knew what he was with a temple full of women and children behind him. Everything was knowing that if he blinked, they would be slaughtered.
Everything was watching them decide to walk away and tangle with the immortal another day. The power of rumor and suggestion and superstition.
Everything was the young boy crouched at his feet and asking how to live forever and teaching him how to live well instead.
Everything was holding his daughter and laying in bed with Amy with none of them in any hurry to go anywhere. A perfect speck of something in the nothing, meaningless for most, but everything for them.
And some small part of him knew that something somehow connected to River and unlikely things to that happy place and he didn't know why. River and Melody were tied together, but his brain was too strained and stretched to examine the tiny fragment of information. To understand what it meant.
Perspective. Perspective didn't make it hurt less, just made clinging to the good moments easier. Made clinging to the soldiers and the children and the healers and the leaders who had been good and smart and tried easier than holding tight to the funerals and the loss and the partings.
'Hello' was so much better than 'goodbye'. But 'goodbye' must come for everyone eventually.
He didn't loosen his hold on the Doctor's wrist, eyes shut tight as he focused on the connection. On the understanding. Who else could, really?
Re: Subthread 1: Pre-fight Memory Download
Could he call the Doctor 'old' now? He was older, he thought. It was difficult to keep everything straight in his head. Had the Doctor just left him at the Pandorica? Or had he just lived through the War of the Roses (not nearly as romantic as it sounded, that one.) Or was he working as a security guard, fading out for decades at a time to keep people from catching on?
How old was he even?
And why wasn't he plastic?
I understand. He echoed the thought, hand gripping the Doctor's arm as tightly as he possibly could, afraid to let go and have the Doctor vanish.
"Amy. Amy and Molly." His family. He had a family now. He never thought he'd manage that. But he had them, they were waiting for him as soon as he could back. He had Conner, he had a son. A child who he loved despite the odd situation that had put them together. "Worth it. Amy is worth everything."
No matter how crushing it was, no matter how much it hurt. No matter how often his mind had teetered on the edge of shattering into a million pieces of broken plastic and electronic components.
Everything...everything was looking down at an army commander who knew what he was with a temple full of women and children behind him. Everything was knowing that if he blinked, they would be slaughtered.
Everything was watching them decide to walk away and tangle with the immortal another day. The power of rumor and suggestion and superstition.
Everything was the young boy crouched at his feet and asking how to live forever and teaching him how to live well instead.
Everything was holding his daughter and laying in bed with Amy with none of them in any hurry to go anywhere. A perfect speck of something in the nothing, meaningless for most, but everything for them.
And some small part of him knew that something somehow connected to River and unlikely things to that happy place and he didn't know why. River and Melody were tied together, but his brain was too strained and stretched to examine the tiny fragment of information. To understand what it meant.
Perspective. Perspective didn't make it hurt less, just made clinging to the good moments easier. Made clinging to the soldiers and the children and the healers and the leaders who had been good and smart and tried easier than holding tight to the funerals and the loss and the partings.
'Hello' was so much better than 'goodbye'. But 'goodbye' must come for everyone eventually.
He didn't loosen his hold on the Doctor's wrist, eyes shut tight as he focused on the connection. On the understanding. Who else could, really?