Think of your family and they'll be there, he says, strapped to the box, about to shoot himself up into the TARDIS's exploding soul, ripping apart space and matter.

(but how can she think of someone if she doesn't even remember them?)

Your family. Think about your family.

She closes her eyes, and as the Doctor becomes busy with not existing, she thinks about Rory, sweet, bumbling Rory. Who somehow always manages to say the right words to make Amy smile.

Mum and Dad. Her short funny dad and her lovely, lovely mum. Blurred faces in a blurred photograph, half smiling into the sun behind the camera. But they're there.

Aunt Sharon. She took her to the psychiatrists. And she tried, even when she had a niece from a sister and a brother-in-law who did not exist anymore. She tried.

. . . Mels? Of course Mels! Amy's best friend in the whole wide world. How could she forget Mels? Impossible, impossibly Mels, who's always ready for a romp or a talk or whatever. Of course there's Mels, she's the one who put Rory and Amy together like jigsaw puzzles before they even knew it themselves. Amy will have to ask her one day how she knew to do that.

A fairy tale that shouldn't exist, faded inside the crinkled pages of a story that little Amelia was never read at bedtime. But however the idea gets there, it survives. An imaginary friend in a blue box to everywhere. He always took Mels, Rory, and Amy on the bestest of adventures.

Fairy tales are enough to move mountains, sometimes.

Sometimes,

sometimes they're just enough

to do something marvelous.

Fairy tales are good at that, surviving. Holding the stitches of the world together.

Once upon a time, there was a princess with red hair who lived in a crumbly house with her aunt, who was wicked but who was also good, sometimes. Rarely sometimes. The princess fell in love with a man who dropped right out of the sky, and he took her away to his kingdom in the stars—

—the princess fell in love with nobody, because there was nobody to fall in love with at all, but her imaginary friend became real to cheer her up, and they went rumbling up to the mountains together, and saved the kingdom and met his friend who was a riv—

—the princess fell in love with a man who dropped out of the sky. Their friend, who came from nowhere, placed them together at a dance, and they shared a first kiss under the stars. The princess was deliriously, deliriously happy, because she was going to marry her stupid, wonderful sky-person, because he loved her too—

Dad places her hand in Rory's, and Rory is all Amy can see, he takes up her whole world. The look on his face, as he saw her walking down the aisle: she knew she'd chosen right.

It was like coming home.

The food is a bit terrible, Rory's squeezing her hand under the table a little too hard, as if he's afraid that now that he has her he'll lose her entirely, and Amy sees a woman outside the window, with hair that defies everything.

For one stupid moment she thinks that Mels came to the wedding after all, but this woman looks nothing like Mels, she's all curls and curves and spy espionage, in that dress, with those pearls.

But she knows that woman, and she finds herself standing, interrupting the wedding party.

Blueblueboxsomeoneso, so you're like a space-squid or . . . something? Are you like a tiny little slug in a human suit? Is that why you walk like that?

Amy, this is me, this is what I really look like!

Who . . . who was that?

"Amy, you okay?" Rory asks her, and Amy Williams blinks.

"Yeah, I-I'm fine." She sits back down.

"Right. Uh . . . you're crying."

"So I am. Why am I doing that?"

(time to remember blue boxes)

". . . I'm not exactly sure how long."

"Two years." She squirts him with the water pistol.

We always set a place for you. It's Christmas, you moron! River's in the kitchen, and Mum and Dad and Aunt Sharon with her new boyfriend—fancy that! Aunt Sharon having a boyfriend! The world must be coming to an end—are stopping by later, and Rory is upstairs wrapping up last minute Christmas gifts, because he's daft and always forgets till last minute, bless.

It's time to come inside Doctor, and meet your family properly. I'm going to go put the kettle on for some tea.

Rory. Mum and Dad (and sometimes Aunt Sharon). RiverMelsMelody Song. The Doctor. Amy Williams.

All together now.

Think of your family and they'll be there.

She closes her eyes, and as the Doctor becomes busy with not existing, she thinks about Rory . . .