Doctor Who fanfic: From Within (5/6)

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There are bits of this fanfic that could be better (I think?) but I love this chapter, love it love it love it.

Title: From Within
Author: sarah531
Rating: PG13
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Rory, Amy, Eleven, OCs
Pairing: Amy/Rory
Summary: Amy and Rory are enslaved on a hostile world, the Doctor is a prisoner, and things can’t get any worse for them. Unless they’re given to the terrible things which lurk in the planet’s caves, unless they accept what they’re offered…

Previous:
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four

From Within

Amy awoke in her old bedroom, and expected to see Rory, or to see her parents maybe. But she didn’t. And then she remembered where she was, and was on her guard right away. By the door lurked the Freedom angel, blending seamlessly in like it had always been there.

“This is my house, isn’t it?” she yelled at it. “What did you do with Rory?”

But it said nothing, and she looked around and realised it might not be her old bedroom after all. The floor was littered with toys, toys she’d never had, and the wallpaper had changed and the furniture had changed. The television was blaring downstairs. And there were photos on the wall, her and Rory’s wedding photos, and another…

A picture of her, or she thought it was her, and Rory, and two children.

“Oh,” she said. And to the angel, “I’ve been through this! I know it isn’t real! It may be nice but…”

The angel tilted its head as if to say, “but?”

“Let me go!”

She looked at the photo and was startled by her own face, it was a desperate and saddened woman looking out. That wasn’t what she looked like, she’d never looked like that. And then the angel spoke.

“Hug your children, kiss your man
You’re dead but do the best you can
You’ve got your prince, you’ve had your life
That star-loved girl is someone’s wife.
And though you wage a private war
You’re no-one’s hero anymore.
Shut up, sit down, and watch repeats,
While from within the monster eats.”

Infuriated, Amy yelled, “It’s not like that, it’s never like that!”

The angel just smiled and said nothing, and Amy thought she felt it, the crushing hopelessness, but she didn’t know if it was her or the angel doing it. She looked at the pictures of the children. Two boys, she thought, one with red hair and one with reddish-brown. And then she went to the window and looked out at Leadworth, and it looked so very grey and dark, and the inside of her heart felt the same.

*

“Wake up, mechanical man,” said a cold and distant voice.

Rory awoke and found he was on a sofa, and his hand was healed. He stared around with a sinking feeling.

“This…again…huh?” he said, and nearly choked on those casually heroic words.

The angel by the front door gave a smile.

“Two thousand years, but why, and how?
For she goes out without you now.
You think you have your life to spend
When death’s as close as summer’s end
The clouds will soon eclipse the sun,
You can’t save her, or anyone.
It’s him who she loves, him she meets,
While from within the monster eats.”

Rory looked at it and it looked back.

“That’s not going to work,” he said, and those words he didn’t choke on.

*

Down in the prison courtyard, the people were afraid.

“Yes,” the Doctor said, “none of those things will happen.”

“I think they will, actually,” snarled Mort. “You’ve lost.” And in that instant the Doctor thought he looked a little like the Dream Lord, just with brighter colours. Had he looked like that before? The Doctor couldn’t remember.

“No, that’s the thing, I haven’t,” he said. “Because I noticed something while you were dragging me here, that stuff you’ve got on you isn’t blood.”

*

Rory faced the angel.

“Why?” it asked.

“Because I’ve had two thousand years to think about it!”

“Two thousand years, and she calls you stupid and longs for the Doctor.”

“That’s what it sounds like but that’s not what it is. I know Amy, I know her better than anyone, I know she loves me.”

“You follow her and accept her praise and her scoldings like a dog!”

“No I don’t.”

“She loves another!”

“No she doesn’t.”

For the first time the angel, a being of infinite power and darkness, looked annoyed.

“I offer you freedom, freedom from your bonds to an undeserving one!”

“Why would I want freedom from Amy, I’m married to her!”

“I see your soul and feelings-”

“I get jealous sometimes, but I know I don’t have anything to worry about, not really, we’ve been through too much. You don’t know anything about humans, do you? How really really complex and confusing they are.”

The angel sort of flickered, as if about to flash out of the world forever.

“Go away,” Rory said nervously, wondering what sorts of things it could do to him. “Bring Amy back and put things right.”

The angel started to fade, but it seemed unable to resist a parting shot. “Human! You have been an immortal, you have vanished from existance and been put back, you have waited for centuries as reality collapsed! And now you live a mortal life, remembering your legend only as if in dreams! I could have made you more, Rory Williams!”

“It’s Rory Pond, actually,” Rory said. “But thank you?”

*
The Doctor watched Mort as he tried to make sense of the words.

“What do you mean, it’s not blood?” he finally spluttered. “I took it from that human girl there, back when she breathed!”

“Yes, about that,” the Doctor said, “She’s not human.”

“What?”

“She’s an Auton.”

*

Amy walked down the stairs. The angel followed her, glowing green.

“You were asked once if you would give up your life of adventure for your husband-to-be,” it whispered. “And you said through your actions that you would, but did Amy Pond lie?”

“I don’t lie.”

Outside in the garden two children, two boys, were playing. Amy went to the window and watched them.

“What are their names?” she demanded.

“That’s up to you, but perhaps you didn’t love them enough to name them?”

“That’s just stupid,” Amy snapped. As she watched, Rory- older, but without a ponytail- came out of the garden shed carrying a bike. The boys stood up and cheered and laughed and begged to be allowed to be the first to ride it- and Amy saw Rory’s hand, still scarred.

“Can Amy Pond live with this?” the angel said. “An ordinary life, no monsters, no danger, no Doctor? A husband who might as well be a pet for all the autonomy he has? Boredom? Crushing, terrible boredom?”

“Shut up!” Amy said, and watched through the window. The bike- a red bicycle with stablisers- lay on the grass, in front of a tall tree. Dangling from the tree was a rope swing, and beyond that a small climbing frame. And flowers, lots of flowers, sunflowers…

“I wouldn’t lose the Doctor,” she said. “He’d be back, he could still take us away to see the universe whenever we fancied it. It’s not a black-and-white choice, you know, it won’t be when it comes.”

“The Doctor takes companions home and forgets them, forgets all trace of them eventually, there were others before you he’s never spoken of. Before long he will hardly remember you, Pond!”

“He always forgets them?”

“Yes.”

“Then why does he still have Martha Jones’ phone number?”

The angel was silent.

*

Rory lay on the ground, not far from the entrance of the caves. He had lain on a cold floor in a cave once before, trying to imprint Amy’s image in his mind before he died, but this time around things were different, and he was just unconcious, although his hand was red and burnt.

*

“Beloved Amy,” sang the angel, finding its voice again. “You’ll never know the Doctor’s name.”

“So?”

“And there’s you, who’ve changed your name from little girl to troubled woman, and Rory, red in Gaelic, like your hair. The blue box that saved you, Rory’s red, and the Green you might still be. Choose a colour, Amelia Pond!”

“Now you’re just babbling,” snapped Amy. And she looked at the more recent pictures, at the smiling boys, and she thought of the lives they would like, of the people they might be.

“I’ll never have to have a life without the Doctor,” she said. “He won’t forget us. Maybe he forgot people once, but now I don’t think he does.”

“Oh, little girl, little child! You don’t understand. If you had to choose, your husband or that incredible, handsome, human alien, which would it be? Both have been wiped from existance, and you may only bring one back!”

Amy heard noises, the shouting and laughter of children, and turned away from the angel and to the window. One of the children- the one not riding the bike- had climbed onto the rope swing and was swinging back and forward, trying to go as high as possible, trying to bring attention back to himself, because his father was busy with his brother. He swung, swung far too high, and lost his grip, and fell. He hit the ground with a thud.

“No!” Amy yelled, and she left the angel behind and ran to the back door. She charged down the garden, and Rory ran too, and the other little boy climbed off the bicycle and let it fall to the ground.

“John!” cried Amy, picking up the child. “John! John, talk to me! Are you okay?”

The boy took a deep intake of breath and nodded. He started to cry.

“Alec,” Amy said, turning to the other boy, “Alec, I need you to be a big boy and bring mummy the first aid kit, okay? I know you know where it is.”

The older boy nodded and scurried away.

Rory was carefully examining the back of John’s head.

“It’s okay,” he said, “you’re going to be okay.”

Amy remembered the angel, and turned around to look at it. It was glaring. She glared back, daring it to talk, daring it to defy her.

“Not boredom. Never boredom. Not with my boys.” she said.

It scowled at her, and vanished.

*

“She’s a what?” Mort snarled.

“An Auton,” the Doctor said. “Do keep up.”

“And what is that exactly?”

“A robot. A particularly sophisticated one. Especially this one, she’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. She can easily, easily survive gunshots, provided she has time to reboot herself. Which should be any time now, by the way, and she really won’t be pleased…”

Mort looked uncertain.

“Lies!”

“I don’t lie,” said the Doctor.

Alya opened her eyes. Looked around. And rose.

*

Rory awoke to find Amy looking at him.

“You’re okay!”

“Yes!” she screamed, and hugged him.

“Eek, watch the hand, watch the hand!”

“Sorry! I’m sorry! And I’m sorry I called you stupid before!” She took his good hand, and they began to run again…

*

“Hello, Auton Alya!” the Doctor said brightly. “I can’t come to you, could you come to me?”

Alya climbed the stairs to the stage. Through the gunshot wounds circuitry was visible, and Mort stared in horror.

“Are there men with guns behind me?” the Doctor asked. He twisted round to see. “No? Fantastic. Alya, could you-”

But Alya had done it already. She forced Mort to the ground and held him there.

“Could someone please untie me?” the Doctor called. And slowly, one of the old men came and did so.

“Thank you! Right,” he said to the bewildered prisoners, “give me a minute, and you all can go home.”

Amy and Rory came running out of the cave, straight towards the stage.

“Amy! Rory!” the Doctor yelled. “You were in there?”

“Yes!” Amy yelled. “We escaped!”

“My brilliant, brilliant Ponds! Wait, and I’ll hug you both!”

“You all will rot in hell,” Mort snarled.

“Be quiet,” the Doctor said. “Alya, may I take your back panel off?”

“Go ahead,” she said.

The Doctor did so and looked at the circuitry inside. “Hmmm. This kind of job really needs the screwdriver, but as I’m without it…”

“Wait,” Rory said, “Alya…you’re an Auton.”

“Yes,” Alya said. “I am.”

“Very cleverly designed, probably by humans, able to pass as a human as well, but broken,” the Doctor said, fiddling with wires. “When you ended up here, you weren’t working at all like you should, or you would had had no trouble at all escaping.”

“She did fight better than any of us,” Rory said.

“I was a warrior,” Alya said. “One of a great army, but my heart is with those who created me.”

“Same here,” Rory said.

“Right!” the Doctor said, and closed the back panel again. “You’re fixed. Working gun, working everything. Now, Alya, how d’ya feel about leading your fellow prisoners to safety?”

“I think that’s a great idea,” Alya said, actually smiling, and beneath her the prisoners smiled too, barely believing it.

Alya jumped from the stage, leaving the Doctor to hold Mort down.

“Your gun is set to stun,” the Doctor told her. “You’ll have no trouble getting out.”

Alya smiled at him, smiled at Amy and Rory, and then she turned away and one by one the people followed her.

“And now I suppose there’s you,” the Doctor said to Mort. “You tried to kill my friends.”

“You haven’t won yet!” Mort snarled.

“No, I think I have,” the Doctor said. And he got a faraway look on his face. “Whatever was in that cave-”

“Angels,” said Amy.

“Angels, right, they changed people and turned them into soulless husks. And you sent people in there, sent them to their deaths. Hang on, angels?”

“Not the Weeping Angels, something else, they were on about ‘freedom’…”

“Oh, right. Can you not see, Mort, how monsterous that was?”

“I was fighting a war!”

“So was I once.”

Mort smiled. “And you, too, did monsterous things!”

“Yes,” the Doctor said, “but I will never forget it, or forgive myself.”

Amy and Rory shared a look.

“Anyway, I’m putting you away,” the Doctor said. “In the caves, where you’ll never be found again, where you’ll have only these angels to keep you company, and they might take what little soul you have.”

“I would rather die!”

“Tough.”

“You worthless hypocrite,” screamed Mort, “so concerned about death! But suffering, no, all are free to suffer! You prefer to see people suffer and not die, that’s why you don’t kill, isn’t it!”

“Shut up!” Amy shouted at him. “You have no idea…”

“And inspiring the loyality of all the little children! Little children who’ll grow up! These two survived the caves, they don’t need to be saved by you anymore! But you love them, so you’ll never be free!”

Lightening crackled in the sky. Mort’s newfound powers were suddenly making the stage spin…

“Amy, Rory, get down.” said the Doctor quietly.

They did. And lightening struck the stage, and part of it went up in flames.

“You’ll never be free, Doctor, Oncoming Storm!” yelled Mort. “From within, the monster eats!”

And he lifted the fire and brought it down on himself, on the Doctor, but only one of them was plant and he burned in an instant. The Doctor rolled out of the way, down to the ground, and Amy and Rory too fled from the flames. The three of them collapsed together, the heat from the fire all around them, but too far away to hurt.

“Where’s the TARDIS, Doctor?” Amy asked.

“In the Phoenix, I think,” the Doctor said. “And I need the sonic screwdriver to seal the caves…”

They tried to get him to move and come with them. But he seemed too tired to move, so in the end it was Amy and Rory who went to find the screwdriver, and sealed the caves forever, and led the Doctor back to his time machine.