My Rival, My Doctor

Chapter 28

Amy continued to talk through the glasses. "You can hear every word of this through those ridiculous glasses, can't you, Raggedy Man?"

"Er, yes," he said to himself, wiping away his tears, "Putting the speaker phone on."

"You told us to wait, and we did," she accused, "A lifetime. It was almost seven lifetimes for Celeste. The disease kept coming and she was a different person."

"Amy-"

"You've got nothing to say to me," Amy scowled.

The Doctor's eyes widened when he noticed the Handbots behind her and warned, "Amy, behind you." She turned around to see the two Handbots. Amy threw her sword to Rory and copied the action that stopped the Handbots her first day; making their hands touch.

"Feedback. Knocks them out," she explained, "Learned that trick on my first day."

Amy walked into the Arrivals Area, Rory following behind and talking to the Doctor, "Okay, so we just take the TARDIS back to the right time stream, yeah? We can stop any of this happening."

The Doctor replied stonily, "We locked on to a timestream, Rory. This is it."

"This is so wrong."

"I got old, Rory," Amy stated angrily, "What did you think was going to happen?"

He got defensive. "Hey, I don't care that you got old. I care that we didn't grow old together. Amy, come on, please." Rory reached out, but she recoiled away. "Don't touch me. Don't do that."

"It's like you're not even her."

Amy stared right into his eyes. "Thirty six years, three months, four days of being here. About twenty years of solitary confinement. This facility was built to give people the chance to live. Celeste and I walked in here and died. Do you have anything to say? Anything, Doctor?"

"Where did you get a sonic screwdriver?" He stared at the pen like sonic, wondering where he's seen that.

"Celeste gave it to me," She answered, "And it's a sonic probe." Rory and Amy approached the door for Temporal Engines room. The lipstick message is smudged away. Rory followed Amy into her home for thirty six years. He noticed the Handbot there, but on its sleek white head, someone drew a smiley face and instead of hands, it had hooks. He stiffened.

"Don't worry about him," Any instructed, "Sit down, Rory." Both the Handbot and Rory sat down.

"You named him after me?"

"Needed a bit of company," she replied gruffly.

"So he's like your pet? Is it safe?"

"Yep. I disarmed it," Amy said dismissively.

"How?" He asked, before realizing she 'disarmed' it, "Oh, you disarmed it."

"Oh, don't get sentimental, it's just a robot," Amy sneered, "You'd have done the same."

The Doctor, still listening in the TARDIS, countered, "I don't know that I would have. Neither would Celeste."

"And there he is. The voice of God," she mocked, "Survive, because no one's going to come for you. Number one lesson. You taught me that."

"Is that really all I taught you?" His voice broke. "What did Celeste teach you?"

Amy's eyes welled up with tears as well. "She was optimistic. Always cracking jokes of the TARDIS being tardy, but when she had the disease, that stopped. By the end of the day, Celeste was a new person. She held it off well for sixteen years, but you broke her," Amy accused, "She realized that you weren't coming and Celeste-she-she shut down. So don't you lecture me, blue-box man flying through time and space on whimsy. All I've got, all I've had for twenty years, is cold, hard reality. So no, I don't have a sonic screwdriver because I'm not off on a romp. I call it what it is. A probe. And I call my life what it is. Hell."