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Counting

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Author's Introduction: Greetings, fellow Whovian, and thanks for deciding to give my latest story a look-see. Now, then. On to basic business. Amy is my favourite companion, and I will always love her heart-warming friendship with the Doctor. This will probably become apparent in later works of mine. And that is why I am writing this story. It functions as a gap-filler and will cover most of Amy's first year waiting for her Raggedy Doctor to show up. It is set in the timeline from The Eleventh Hour; that is, Amy's original timeline when she had the crack in her wall and whatnot. To anyone who is wondering, this story is not in any way an Eleven/Amy story. I in no way ship Amy and the Doctor. They are best friends and family, but they're not romantically involved when she starts travelling with him (even if she did kiss him that one time). Amy will always love Rory, and Eleven will love River. And that's that. Also, it would be strange to be romantically involved with your son-in-law…
But now I shall shut up and let you start reading. I hope you all enjoy. Please remember reviews make me happy.

Rating: K+ for mentions of/implications to child neglect

Estimated Length: 5-9 chapters

For my own reference: 11th fanfiction published, 3rd story for Doctor Who.

Chapter One

.~*~*~*~.

8 April 1996

The early April sky was already warm with the first yellow glow of dawn by the time Amelia Pond woke up, blinking and confused at first as to why she was lying out here in her front garden with her little suitcase under her. But that confusion lasted little more than a second as she remembered last night's funny and wonderful events; and how that raggedy man called the Doctor had shown up.

With the realisation it was already dawn, a touch of alarm filled Amelia: what if the Raggedy Doctor had shown up and she'd been asleep and missed him? But then she reasoned he would have woken her if he'd shown up, and that meant he must not have come back for her yet. She sighed in disappointment and her lower lip broke out in a pout. So much for five minutes. If it was sunrise already then she must have been sleeping out here in her garden for hours.

And she was all ready for her adventures, too; she was clad in her best spring coat with the fancy buttons and her mittens and hat; her red Wellies. Her suitcase she'd packed last night. It didn't have too many things in it, only the bare necessities: a change of clothes or two, a couple of her favourite storybooks, and her teddy. Nothing pointless and silly had been packed, like her homework or her exercise book, so the suitcase wasn't very heavy.

She wondered how much longer she'd have to wait. Hopefully not too much longer. Waiting and doing nothing was boring. But Amelia decided both with typical childish and Scottish stubbornness that she would wait as long as she had to out here. The Raggedy Doctor had been funny and kind and had fixed the crack in her wall and had a time machine. A man like him was worth waiting for forever.

Amelia was still a little sore from half-lying, half-sitting on her suitcase all night. She got up, unbuttoned her jacket and wandered over to the swing set, where she sat and half-heartedly swung. But her mind was elsewhere; her gaze fixed on the skies, her little seven-year-old heart gripped with undaunted, but desperate hope.

Maybe just five more minutes.

Or ten.

Just fifteen more, she told herself, and then the Raggedy Doctor's blue box that was in reality a real, actual time machine would come flying down from the sky.

Except Amelia Pond waited longer than fifteen minutes, sitting on the swings. She waited until the sun had risen fully above the horizon and the sky turned a clear, cheerful blue obscured only by the occasional puffy white cloud in its seeming endlessness. Such clear skies were rather atypical of England, especially this time of year. Amelia waited, her unwavering patience keeping her bound to the swing until a shout from the house interrupted her. "Amelia! Amelia, where are you, love?"

Aunt Sharon was back! Amelia hopped off the swing. She hadn't been expecting her aunt back until the evening at least, and she sighed in misery. Aunt Sharon wasn't going to take the news of the demolished garden shed lightly. But all the same, Amelia shouted, "I'm here, Aunt Sharon!" and ran into the house, taking care to leave her suitcase behind just in case the Raggedy Doctor showed up.

So he knew she was still waiting.

Amelia traipsed back into the house, where she found her aunt in the kitchen. She must have come in through the back or the side door, else Amelia would have seen her coming down the road when she was not-quite- swinging. She shed her jacket and hat, tossing them onto an empty chair and coming to Aunt Sharon's side by the stove. "Here I am."

"Good morning, Amelia — " Aunt Sharon turned away from the pancakes she was cooking and appraised her niece. "Goodness, you're still in your nightie. What were you doing, playing outside without even getting dressed first?" Amelia opened her mouth to answer, but her aunt cut her off as her attention returned to breakfast. "I came in this morning and started breakfast, and the house was all quiet, so I thought you were still asleep in bed, but I went up to your room and you weren't in there … but never mind that. Breakfast's nearly ready now. Did you brush your teeth, at least?"

"Yes," Amelia lied automatically, and her aunt gave a vague hmm of approval as she continued on cooking. She hovered by the stove, wondering for a second if she ought to tell Aunt Sharon about the Raggedy Doctor. She had to tell someone; if she didn't she was sure she was going to burst, and besides, her aunt deserved to know what had happened to the garden shed. So, bouncing on the balls of her feet, Amelia blurted excitedly, "Guess what!?"

"Hmm?" Aunt Sharon gave Amelia a brief smile, then moved the pancakes in the frying pan onto a plate, hot and steaming. A small pile was already beginning to form, and the maple syrup was out of the fridge and on the table. She reached for the glass bowl on the counter next to her, spooning the last of the pancake batter into the frying pan.

Eagerly, Amelia recalled her encounter with the Raggedy Doctor last night to her aunt, every last wonderful detail of it. How his blue box had come in the night and crashed into the shed, and how he'd come climbing out of the box, and asked for an apple, and how she'd let him into her house and he'd been funny and nice even if he hadn't liked the apple, and how he'd eaten the fish fingers and custard and let her eat ice cream from the tub with the scoop! "And then after," Amelia chattered excitedly, following her aunt to the table and fetching the milk from the fridge, "we went up to my room and he fixed the crack in my wall and, oh, he said there was an alien prison behind it and Prisoner Zero had got out and then there was this big eye that was the guard! But he fixed the crack so now no one else can escape, and then he said he had to go fix his box and it was a time machine and he said he'd come back for me in five minutes and I could go travelling with him into space and in time! And then he left and I waited for him, 'cept he hasn't come yet; he's late. But I know he'll be here soon," she finished breathlessly.

Aunt Sharon smiled fondly, pouring herself some milk. "A time machine, eh?"

She nodded enthusiastically, pausing only in her tale to take a couple bites of pancake. "And he really, really said I could go with him, in his blue box; and his box said Police on it except he said he wasn't a policeman, but really I didn't think he was a policeman in the first place because he didn't dress like one or anything and his clothes were all raggedy and dirty and too small." Amelia paused to take another bite of pancake, her eyes shining. "And … his hair was funny, too. All floppy and messy, but I liked it."

Her aunt gave a little chuckle. "Well, it sounds like a lovely dream, Amelia."

The words made Amelia look up and scowl. "It's not a dream," she said. "It was real. The Raggedy Doctor is for real, and his time machine and everything are real too." She wanted to roll her eyes at her aunt; she knew the difference between dreams and real life. And besides, if the Doctor had been part of a dream then she would have woken up in bed, not on top of her little suitcase in the garden, with her jacket over her nightie. If the Doctor had been part of a dream then the crack in her wall would still be there.

And the garden shed, too.

Aunt Sharon was just being a boring grown-up; cynical was the word. (Amelia had learned that word from her friend Rory, who knew lots of big and fancy grown-up words and he told his friends about them). Cynical. Cy-ni-cal. She liked the way it sounded, that word. Yes, Aunt Sharon was just being cynical. Grown-ups like her never wanted to believe in those sorts of things, fairy tale things.

Except for the Raggedy Doctor, of course. He was technically a grown-up, but he wasn't boring at all. He was special, and different, and that was why Amelia had nominated him her new best friend — Rory and Mels would simply have to settle for being just her second-best friends.

Aunt Sharon sighed; it was very much a grown-up sigh. "Oh, Amelia. You're a big girl now. You know there's no such thing as time machines. You just had a very exciting dream, that's all, love."

Amelia's indignance was mounting. "But it wasn't a dream! He's the Doctor, that's what he's called, and he is too real." She glowered up at her aunt, and when she opened her mouth, surely to deliver more boring grown-up advice, Amelia interrupted. A very clever argument had just occurred to her, and she felt very proud of herself for it. She had evidence that her Doctor was real, after all. Didn't she? She could prove he was for real. "I know he was for real, Aunt Sharon! If he was a dream, then …. why is the crack in my wall gone?" She arranged her features into a smug expression.

Her aunt raised her eyebrows. "That crack you were always on about?"

She bobbed her head, up and down, sure she'd emerged victorious. Now Aunt Sharon would have to believe her. "And the garden shed." Ha. She had two pieces of evidence.

But then Aunt Sharon only sighed and gave a little shake of her head accompanied by a tiny smile — not an exasperated one but one of fondness, the kind of shake of head she would give when her friends visited for supper and Amelia told a story, the kind of shake of head she would always give with the words, Oh, well, you know. Little Amelia and her runaway imagination, bless her. With that shake of the head, Amelia got to her feet, walked round to the other side of the table, and gave her aunt's sleeve a tug. "The crack's really, really gone; and the garden shed, too. Come on, Aunt Sharon. I'll show you!"

"Now, really, Amelia, we're having breakfast — "

She tugged again, more insistently. "Come on, Aunt Sharon! You have to see!" Ignoring protests, Amelia tugged hard until her aunt stood up, shook herself free of her clinging niece, and planted her hands on her hips, fixing the seven-year-old with the stern look of a guardian. Amelia gave her a stern look right back, the kind only an especially stubborn Scottish child could give, and finally, a very reluctant and rather impatient Aunt Sharon relented, throwing her hands up in the air.

"All right, then, Amelia. Show me … whatever it is you want to show me, and then I want us to sit down and have a nice breakfast together." Her tone softened, and an uneasy hand lifted to rustle Amelia's shoulder-length fiery red hair. "You can keep playing all you want after breakfast, all right, seeing as school's out today. You can run over and play this game with your friends if you like. But let's have a nice breakfast together, you and me, all right, love?" The awkward hand dropped to her side.

Amelia bit back the bitter retort that sprang to the edge of her tongue: you want to have a nice breakfast together when you're hardly ever home? She might have been only a month and a bit over seven, but it was enough to build up some rather sour feelings against her aunt's near-constant absence. She grabbed a hold of her aunt's sleeve again and tugged her down the corridor to the front door, which she pushed open. The two of them standing in the threshold, Amelia pointed insistently at the splintered remains of the garden shed. They were still smoking slightly.

Much to Amelia's satisfaction, her aunt blanched. "Goodness! Amelia, what … what really happened here?" The damage to the shed was shocking to say the least, and certainly not something her seven-year-old niece could have accomplished, wild though she might be.

Said seven-year-old looked up at her Aunt Sharon with a superior expression on her little face. "I told you already. The Doctor crashed his time machine into it." She hesitated, then added, "It was an accident, though."

"But … it's completely ruined!" Aunt Sharon continued, a hand moving slowly to her mouth as she began to approach the demolished shed. "How can that be?" She sighed. "Oh, just what I bleeding need." She rubbed at her temples. "Go inside and finish your breakfast, Amelia," came the next comment, accompanied by a vague wave of the hand in the general direction of the house and the victorious seven-year-old, whose face promptly fell. "I'll need to phone a man to come and take a look at this; pick up some catalogues and see how much it'll cost to get a new one … " She had taken to muttering, and Amelia, with a sigh, turned on her heel glumly and traipsed back to the kitchen, though not without sparing a quick glance towards the sky.

Upon reaching the kitchen, Amelia took her plate of pancakes and tipped them into the waste disposal unit. And then, for good measure, she did the same to Aunt Sharon's, too.

.~*~*~*~.

She spent the day shut up in her bedroom, alternately gazing for long periods of time and colouring in deep concentration at her little desk with the coloured pencils Santa had given her for Christmas. There was, of course, only one thing she could possibly draw now, and that was the Raggedy Doctor's blue box time machine. She went through three pieces of paper drawing it over and over in one afternoon, and using both sides, as well. She drew his blue box by itself against the white paper, she drew it in her garden, she drew it as she imagined it flying through space, with stars in the background. Although she wasn't very good at drawing people, she drew herself and the Doctor standing in front of it and smiling. She took great care to make his clothes as raggedy as they had been in reality, and in making his chin just as large.

Amelia knew her friends would probably be wanting to play with her, and at one point the doorbell rang, but it happened when Aunt Sharon went out to enquire about putting up a new shed and she didn't get up to answer it. The doorbell rang twice more before whoever had been ringing it gave up and left. Oh, well. It was probably just Rory. Amelia wished she could tell him about the Raggedy Doctor who'd come in the night. But she couldn't risk leaving her house in case he came from her. And she was sure she'd be gone by tomorrow morning.

At some point, Aunt Sharon came home with a man from the hardware shop to take a look at the splintered remains of the garden shed. Amelia could see them from her window. They talked for a while, but the man never came inside and the child couldn't be bothered to go outside.

What did she care about the new garden shed, after all? And why was Aunt Sharon so insistent on putting up a new one when they hadn't ever used it? All that had sat in there was the lawnmower, which was only ever used biannually and mostly sat there collecting dust and spiderwebs; some paint cans that could just as easily be stored in the cellar; and her bike, when she could be bothered to put it away in there. Most of the time her bike remained leaning against the wall of the house by the door, which was precisely where it was now.

Not that it mattered to her, because after some time the man from the hardware shop left, and Aunt Sharon went back inside. Amelia could hear the telly on downstairs. Good. Then her aunt wasn't bothering her, she thought as she reached for the pencil sharpener: the sharp point of the almost-new blue colouring pencil had worn down to little more than a nub.

In the early evening, unfortunately, she was called down to supper. Amelia had only eaten a few bites of breakfast, as well as one of the chocolate bars she kept hidden at the back of her sock drawer, purchased with pocket money. And she realised with a start she was hungry. So she traipsed downstairs in a sullen mood all over again, her cross feelings towards her aunt and the Raggedy Doctor's tardiness doubled since that morning. Supper consisted of macaroni and cheese and salad with dressing from the grocery store. The seven-year-old made a point of picking at her food.

At last, Aunt Sharon looked up in exasperation. "What's gotten into you, Amelia? You've been sulking in your room all day if I'm not mistaken. I thought you would have at least gone out to play with your friends."

"They didn't come," Amelia lied. "And it's too cold out to play. Besides, the Raggedy Doctor is coming."

A sigh. It was a bit of an impatient sigh. Amelia knew Aunt Sharon and her sighs all too well. "Oh, Amelia." It was followed by a strained smile. She opened her mouth, and then, as if suddenly thinking better, she closed it and got up momentarily to set the kettle on the stove. Upon returning to the table, she commented her niece should eat her supper like a good girl, and didn't say much over the rest of the meal. She started talking about the new garden shed, which Amelia instantly labelled in her mind as a boring grown-up topic and tuned her aunt out.

In truth, Sharon was worried. About her niece. Since adopting her, Amelia had been a rather sombre and withdrawn child, keeping only a couple of close friends, and even those bothered Sharon somewhat. There was that Mels girl, a product of the foster system who was forever getting herself into trouble at school; and Rory Williams from down the road, a mild-mannered boy with a slight stutter so tiny it was a wonder he wasn't whisked away at the slightest gust of wind. But they were both very nice children all the same (at least, the latter was; Mels Sharon wasn't certain about) and she tried not to worry herself too much about them. After all, friends were friends and despite her sombre nature her niece proved herself quite capable of being perfectly bossy and stubborn, and unlike her friend Rory, the child was anything but mild-mannered.

She'd been a bit worried, too, when Amelia had developed that obsession with the crack in her wall, saying that it made her room feel wrong and at night she could hear voices behind it. But Sharon had put that down to her niece's hyperactive imagination.

But this … well, this was different. When, this morning, Amelia had mentioned a funny man who'd come at night her mind went to all the natural places. Stories of madmen and children being snatched away had come to the front of her mind. But then Amelia had started talking about the blue box that said Police and after that came fish fingers and custard and next Amelia had taken to chattering about a time machine. But Amelia seemed happy, infatuated with this "raggedy doctor," as she called him, not afraid. Despite her nerves, Sharon put it down to the girl's imagination again, inexplicably destroyed shed or no.

After all, such unusual behaviour (was it unusual?) in the child had to be excused. Given leeway, taking the circumstances into account.

It was probably just a phase, she told herself.

.~*~*~*~.

The suitcase remained outside. Amelia saw to that. Aunt Sharon was making her sleep in her bedroom tonight, even though the girl had protested bitterly. So she sitting up in bed in the nightie she hadn't even changed out of all day, the blankets tucked over her head. Balanced on her knees was another one of her storybooks; a favourite of hers she'd forgotten to pack, The Legend of Pandora's Box, and in one hand she gripped a torch. While her ears were open for the sound of engines outside, she was enraptured enough in her book that she didn't hear the door open. So the seven-year-old startled when suddenly someone was tugging the blankets up and away.

Aunt Sharon sat on the edge of Amelia's bed, gently tugging the torch away and switching it off. "Time for you to go to bed, love. You have school tomorrow."

Amelia sighed grumpily, but she closed her book and set it down on the nightstand, lying down and tugging the covers up to her chest. She glowered up at her aunt, who in response patted one of her hands. "Did you do your homework this weekend?"

"Yes," she lied, and her aunt nodded absently.

"Good, good … now, get some sleep tonight, all right, Amelia? You be a good girl." An uneasy pause followed, then Aunt Sharon bent over to plant a hasty kiss on her niece's forehead. "Goodnight, Amelia." A smile, and she got up to exit the room, but she hovered in the doorway until Amelia gave an obligatory "goodnight" of her own, then she left, shutting the door behind her.

In bed, Amelia waited until she heard her aunt's footsteps going down the corridor to her own room. She waited until the hall light pouring in from under her door went out. And she waited a few more moments after that, until she was sure Aunt Sharon wasn't going to pop back in.

Then she kicked her blankets off, and crossed to her wee desk, dragged the chair over to the window. She fetched her pillow and placed it on the seat, and if she climbed up onto the chair and knelt on it then Amelia was high up enough to rest her elbows on the windowsill. That was how she spent the night, chin in hand and gaze fixed on some distant point in the sky, and it was how she stayed until she fell asleep.