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Space/Time Redux; Narcissus	By : DJCo Category: 1 through F > Doctor Who Views: 12845 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: All characters and settings are the property of Steven Moffat and the BBC. I am in no way associated with the owners or producers of "Doctor Who" and make no money from this story. The first chapter is adapted from "Space" and "Time" by Steven Moffat.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
Amy watched him intently.
She had to talk to him now. She'd been putting it off for too long. Taking a deep breath, she edged closer to the console, beneath which the Doctor lay on his back on his little wheeled trolley, tinkering about with the TARDIS. He whistled away to himself as he fumbled about with a long piece of cable, which he then reconnected to the underside of the console. As he reached up with his right hand and felt his way around the controls, searching for a specific one, she steeled herself to approach.
“Hey you,” she said playfully.
For a moment, he wheeled himself out from under the console to greet her, supporting himself with both hands on the console. “Hey!” he said cheerfully, then as quickly as he had appeared, he retracted back underneath the controls of his beloved ship. The image reminded Amy of a typical bloke tinkering about with his motor. In other, less serious circumstances, she would have chuckled.
She watched him for a moment, mulling over the possibility that he was being willfully oblivious to the obvious – she thought – fact that she needed to talk. No matter how close she got to him – that is, as close as the Doctor let anyone get to him – she would never be able to compete with the other woman in his life; the TARDIS. Not wishing to spend the next few minutes struggling to get his attention, she decided to try the direct approach. Bending down to reach him, she placed a hand on his right shoulder and pulled him out from his hiding place. He looked a little surprised at being dragged from one of his favourite pastimes, and vaguely scared as he registered the perturbed look on her face.
“Listen,” she said, “can we talk?”
The Doctor's eyes widened in fear. “RORYYYYYYYY!!!” He screamed without warning, perhaps remembering the last time she had expressed a desire to “talk.” Or rather... something else that involved using her lips – “talk” hadn't exactly been on the agenda.
That wasn't her intention this time.
This time, she really did need to talk. She rolled her eyes as he wheeled himself back under the console, the wheels squeaking as he did so. She grabbed him, this time with both hands, and pulled him back once again. “No. Shut up, I've just got a question, that's all.”
“You OK up there?” came a voice from below the console, which Amy recognised immediately as being that of her husband. She was a little surprised to hear it, for she had assumed that he was elsewhere in the ship, rather than apparently helping the Doctor with his repairs, or upgrades, or whatever it was her boys were doing. She stood up straight and peered through the glass floor to where Rory, wearing a pair of comedy goggles and holding what appeared to be a large wrench of some kind, was fiddling about with various components of the ship. “Yeah, fine, no problem,” the Doctor called out in reply.
“What are you doing?” she demanded of Rory, placing her hands on her hips. Once again, the Doctor disappeared under the console.
“Helping the Doctor,” Rory replied. “Um... it's humming,” he continued, this time to the Doctor, “is that OK?”
“Yeah,” the Doctor answered, popping out again. “It's fine, we're just entering conceptual space. Imagine a banana, or anything curved... actually, don't 'cause it's not curved, or like a banana. Forget the banana.”
Amy rolled her eyes once again, shaking her head in disbelief. For such an intelligent being, he wasn't half scatter-brained, and what's more, he had enlisted Rory as his little apprentice. “Uh, is he helping you fly the TARDIS?” she demanded.
Rather than answer her question directly, he addressed Rory. “Um, attach thermo-couplings 2, 7 and 11, like I showed you.” As he spoke, he got to his feet and gazed down at Rory, addressing him as if he were talking to a child. Clearly whatever Rory was doing was extremely important.
Amy felt a little put-out. “How come he gets a go? You never let me have a go?” she moaned.
The Doctor looked at her, clearly struggling to come up with an answer that wouldn't earn him a light slap in the face. Mercifully, Rory did the job for him. “Uh, Doctor, don't,” he called. “Seriously, I let her drive my car once...”
Oh God, he was bringing that up. “Yeah, to the end of the road,” she scoffed.
“Yeah,” Rory countered, “where, according to Amy, there was an 'unexpected house'...”
She shot him one of those looks. “Aw, he's jealous because I passed my test first time.”
“You cheated,” he shot back, “you wore a skirt.”
“I didn't wear a skirt.”
“Well, that would've worked too...” Rory considered.
Amy chose to ignore the Doctor pottering around the console and sneaking a glance at the miniskirt she was currently nearly wearing – her favourite one that drove all the guys crazy – and quickly looking away like a naughty schoolboy, probably wondering whether she had caught him looking. He'd had his chance.
She suddenly realised that actually, Rory was right. “No, no, I did wear a skirt,” she corrected herself, “but it was any old skirt.”
“You ever seen Amy drive, Doctor?” Rory called out.
“No,” the Time Lord called back curtly, apparently, and thankfully, Amy considered, forgetting their experience in the Dream Lord's Psychic Pollen-induced hallucination. At least in that instance she had been trying to hit the house.
“Neither did her driving examiner...” Rory added cheekily.
“Actually... it was this one,” Amy realised, pointing to her skirt. “It was this skirt.”
Suddenly, the ship was rocked by an almighty tremor that almost forced the trio off their feet. Reflexively, the Doctor and Amy grabbed hold of the console and held on tightly. The entire console room was bathed in a strange, eerie green glow.
Amy held her breath, afraid to exhale. The Doctor looked around for a moment, obviously as uneasy as she was. She hated that. The pair exchanged looks. “What was that?” she asked, her voice no more than a whisper.
The Doctor's expression was one of intense fear, which was scary in itself. “Rory!” he cried, “did you drop a themo-coupling?!”
A moment passed, which seemed to stretch on for ages, before Rory answered. “S...Sorry,” he stuttered awkwardly.
"Aaagh! How did you do that?!” the Doctor cried in dismay. “I told you, don't drop them! I specifically mentioned not dropping!”
Uh, oh, Amy thought. She knew exactly why Rory had dropped the coupling. “I-It was my fault,” she stammered.
The Doctor looked at her with an expression of puzzlement, then began working the console frantically. Why was she trying to cover for Rory? “Of course it wasn't your fault.”
“It kind of was her fault,” Rory said.
“How could it be her fault?!” the Doctor cried exasperatedly.
Amy replied without missing a beat. “Because it was my skirt, and my husband, and your glass floor...” She looked at the Time Lord with a sheepish look of apology.
It took a brief second for him to process what she was saying, then he looked down, his eyes passing from her skirt to the floor. Then, his face crumpled in disgust. “Ohhhh, Rory!!!”
“Sorry,” was all Mr. Pond could say.
“Well, we've landed,” he stated, wasting no more time. He pulled levers and flicked switches on the console. “Emergency materialisation. We should be fine, we should've locked on to the safest space available.” He pulled a lever, and the room was suddenly flooded with light once again.
Out of the corner of her eye – that place she never wanted to look – Amy caught sight of something illuminated by the orange glow of the lights. Something big, that had inexplicably appeared in the control room near the doors. The Doctor and Rory saw it too, and as one, the trio looked towards the foreign object that had caught their attention. A chill passed down Amy's spine as she recognised the very familiar sight. A sight that most definitely should not have been here.
But that's... her mind struggled for an adjective that would adequately describe what they were seeing, and eventually settled on, impossible...
She stared, bewildered and open-mouthed at the impossible thing. Similarly, the Doctor and Rory expressed their shock and surprise, the Doctor stroking his chin and Rory gazing with wide-eyed wonder.
This... can't be, the Doctor thought.
Slowly the travellers moved towards it, in shock at the sheer impossibility of what they were seeing. Or at least, Amy thought, it should have been impossible, but there it was; standing in the middle of the lower level of the console room, was a 1963 British Metropolitan Police Box.
The TARDIS.
But... they were inside the TARDIS. What was going on?! “Doctor...” Amy began, faltering, “what's happened?”
The Doctor looked at the box intently. “Safest spot available,” he said, not averting his gaze from the other TARDIS. “The TARDIS has materialised inside itself.” He moved down the steps to the lower level and made his way toward it, while his companions remained on the upper level, staring intently.
“Is that... supposed to happen?” Rory asked, although he suspected he already knew the answer.
“Take a guess,” the Doctor replied.
“No?” Rory tried, somewhat needlessly.
“That's the one.” The Doctor reached the box, and placed his hand against the door sign, feeling the familiar faint vibration.
“Woah, what are you doing?” Amy asked, worriedly. Perhaps this wasn't the TARDIS? What if it was some kind of alien trick?
The Doctor, as was often the case, seemed very unsure of himself. “I've absolutely no idea,” he replied before suddenly, in a burst of energy, opening the door and moving inside the box.
Instantaneously, another Doctor appeared, entering the TARDIS through the main double doors from outside and slamming it behind him. No, Amy realised, not another Doctor, the Doctor. He was right; the TARDIS was inside itself... somehow. He had stepped into the Police Box here inside the TARDIS, and arrived inside the TARDIS, which was here inside the TARDIS. Her head hurt.
“OK,” she said. “That is a bit weird...”
The Doctor opened the door again and reached outside. At the same time, the door of the box inside the control room opened also, and the Doctor's tweed-clad arm extended out of it, wiggling his fingers.
Rory chuckled in amazement. “That is actually pretty cool,” he said.
The Doctor's arm retracted into the box. “Oh, I'm glad you're entertained, Rory, now that we're stuck here for all eternity. At least you won't be bored.”
Amy didn't like the sound of that one bit. “Wait, what, we're stuck?”
“The inside of the TARDIS is now joined to the outside of the TARDIS. Worse than a time loop, a space loop.” He paused, seemingly for dramatic effect. “Nothing can enter or leave this ship ever again.”
Before Amy and Rory had a chance to absorb this information, the door of the control room – the one they were standing in – opened, and someone entered the TARDIS.
The Doctor wheeled around on his heels to regard the new arrival, as Amy's heart almost leapt out of her mouth. It wasn't just someone, it was her.
Amy Pond.
Another TARDIS, another Amy.
The second Amy strode confidently and purposefully towards the trio, before coming to a halt and addressing them. “OK kids,” she said, “this is where it gets complicated...”
Amy – the Amy indigenous to the present time-frame – stared incredulously at her doppelgänger, unwilling or unable to believe that this woman was in fact her. “Who the hell are you?” she found herself asking, her voice seeming to come from far away.
“I'm you, from your future,” answered her double, her tone carrying an undercurrent of; Isn't that interesting?!
The Doctor took a step towards her. “Tell me exactly what's happened,” he commanded.
“Well,” the second Amy replied, “the exterior shell of the TARDIS has drifted forwards in time. If you step into the box now you step inside the control room a tiny bit into the past.” She smiled, looking pleased with herself.
Amy's eyes glazed over as she stared at her future self. “I... don't understand,” she said.
Her other self peered past the Doctor at her. “Neither do I,” she admitted, conspiratorially.
“But you just said it,” Amy challenged.
“No, I'm just repeating it,” the second Amy replied. “I'm just remembering what I heard myself saying when I was standing where you are now and repeating it. I'm just repeating this too. And this,” she said, then added, “And this... ”
Her younger self shook her head. “I still don't understand.”
The future Amy rolled her eyes. “You still don't,” she said wearily.
The Doctor, who had been looking back and forth between them throughout the preceding conversation as if he were watching a tennis match, spoke up, addressing the Amy from the future. “OK, when does this Amy” – he indicated his Amy Pond – “step inside the box? We need to maintain the timeline.”
“Ah, as soon as she slapped Rory,” the second Amy replied.
“OK,” the present Amy said, unflinching.
Rory had been staring, baffled, befuddled and bewildered while his wife conversed with another version of herself, wondering how and why his life had taken such a bizarre turn for the fantastical of late. Now, he was shaken out of his reverie. “Huh!” he turned to the Amy standing next to him, and then back at the other version of her. “No. Why do I get slapped?”
“Because we have to stick to the established chain of events,” the Doctor replied. “One mistake and the whole timeline could collapse. We'll end up with two Amy Ponds forever, and then what would you do?!” He turned to face Rory.
Rory thought for a moment and, realising that having two Amys around to... satisfy his needs... wouldn't entirely be a bad thing, he opened his mouth to speak. Reading his dirty mind, Amy – his Amy, if the distinction even mattered – let out a shocked vocalised gasp, and slapped him across the face.
“OK, you, into the Police Box now,” the Doctor ordered her.
As Rory nursed his sore cheek, Amy sprinted down the steps to the box. When she reached it, she turned back to the Doctor. “And then I become her?” she asked, indicating her other self.
“Yes. Go, go, go!” the Doctor replied frantically.
Amy looked herself in the eye. It was different from looking in the mirror, somehow. Usually, she only ever saw herself as a reflected image, or in photos, but this wasn't the same. She was looking at herself in the flesh. For the first time, she truly saw herself the way others saw her, and she had to admit, she really liked what she saw.
Her eyes darted up and down her own body admiringly. What's more, she knew that her other self knew what she was thinking. “Do I really look like that?” she asked.
Her future self gave her a faint smile, somewhere between vainglory and lust. “Yeah. Yeah, you do.”
A lascivious smirk beginning to play across her lips, Amy gave her other self the once-over again. “Ooh,” she said, “I'd give you your driving licence...”
“I bet you would,” her other self replied with her best flirtatious pout, the one usually reserved for her husband. Or the Doctor. Or whomever else took her fancy, if she were truly honest with herself.
The Doctor let out a long, vocalised sigh. “This is how it all ends,” he said, wearily. “Pond flirting with herself. True love at last.” Then, remembering Amy's husband standing beside him, he added; “Oh... sorry Rory,” and looked away sheepishly.
“Absolutely no problem at all...” came the dreamy reply. Mr. Pond's mind was obviously far away, and the Doctor knew exactly where it was.
“Now, Amy!” the Doctor said firmly, changing the subject and emphasising the importance of getting into the box.
Amy turned back to her future self. “What's my first line?”
“'OK kids, this is where it gets complicated',” the future Amy replied, echoing the words she had spoken to her seven-year-old self upon being released from the Pandorica in the National Museum.
“Gotcha!” her past self replied, then she gave herself one final, quick flirtatious glance before disappearing into the Police Box and closing the door behind her.
With her other self now a few minutes in the past, the “future” Amy was now aligned with this timeline. They had effectively swapped places. “So, is that it?” Amy asked, quickly moving away from the box to join the Doctor and Rory on the upper level. “Are we OK now?”
“No,” the Doctor replied gravely. “We're still trapped.”
Startled by the sound of the door opening once again, Amy spun around on her heels to see herself re-enter the control room, this time with Rory in tow. Another Rory.
“What are you doing?!” the Doctor demanded of them.
“You told us to get into the Police Box,” the second Rory replied “Well, from your point-of-view you're about to tell us to get into the Police Box, from our point-of-view you just told us to get into the Police Box, which is why we got into the Police Box, which is why we're...” he looked around, “here.”
The Rory who belonged to the Doctor and Amy's timeline blinked in frustration, confusion and disbelief. “Do I have to remember all of that?”
“It just sort of happens...” his future self replied.
The two Amys once again stood eyeing up each other lustfully, Amy Pond's narcissism knowing no bounds.
“Hi!” said the Amy who was standing with the Doctor and Rory, her voice breathy. She gave herself a flirty little wave, which Rory recognised as the kind she would often give him from a distance when they first started dating.
“Hi!” her slightly older self beamed, blushing and returning the wave.
“Hey! Stop that!” the Doctor said, and pushed his Amy and Rory toward the other TARDIS. “You two, into the Police Box now. Run!”
Without argument, they ran to the box and pushed their way through the right-hand door, leaving the other Amy and Rory to take their place in the timeline they had left.
“So, what now?” Amy asked as she and Rory moved toward the Doctor.
“You two!” the Doctor cried, holding up his hand to stop them. “Stay where you are!” He then began to operate the control console, frantically and with purpose.
“What are you doing?” Rory asked.
“I'm setting up a controlled temporal implosion,” he replied. “It's the only way to reset the TARDIS, but unless I find exactly the right lever to control the implosion,” he paused and looked directly at them, “we're all gonna die...”
“You don't know which lever?” Amy said, darkly and with worry. Somehow though, she wasn't surprised.
A thin smile spread across the Doctor's old/young face. “No,” he replied, “but I'm about to find out.”
Just then, the TARDIS door opened once again, making Amy jump, and this time it was another Doctor who entered. Stepping between Amy and Rory, he addressed his other self; “The wibbley lever!”
“The wibbley lever! Thank you,” the present Doctor replied, emphasising it with a hand gesture. He rushed back to the console, pulled the so-called “wibbley lever”, and ran as fast as he could to the Police Box, slamming the door behind him. The box began to dematerialise with the familiar otherworldly wheezing, groaning sound. A strong wind blew up as the dematerialisation disturbed the air around it. Finally, the other TARDIS disappeared completely, the distinctive sound echoing away into the distance, leaving the Doctor, Amy and Rory to breathe a sigh of relief.
“OK, we're back in normal flight,” the Doctor said, moving between his friends and putting his arms around their shoulders. “The TARDIS is no longer inside itself, the localised time field is no longer about to implode and rip a hole in all causality but just in case...” he glanced down at Amy's skirt. “Pond, put some trousers on.”
With that, he bounded back up to the console level, leaving behind a very embarrassed Amy, who rolled her eyes with a smile, heat rising in her cheeks. She caught Rory giving her an awkward glance. “What?” she mouthed. He raised his eyebrows, and went to join the Doctor. A mischievous smile spread across Amy's features, and she moved towards the console, where the Doctor was fiddling about with the controls.
“Well, that was... an experience...” Amy commented wryly.
“Doctor,” Rory began as he approached the Time Lord, “there's just one thing I'm still not getting.”
“Hmm?” the Time Lord replied. “What's that?”
“Well, Amy came back in time a few minutes and told us what was happening... but who told Amy?”
“She did,” the Doctor answered immediately.
“Yeah...” Rory said, “but how did she know what to say?”
That was a question that Amy had wanted to know the answer to as well. “Yeah,” she added, “where did that information come from? I didn't know what I was talking about!”
The Doctor sighed. “Well, you see, it's like this; as time isn't a strict progression of cause to effect, the seemingly logical rules of causality don't always apply.” He sat down in the pilot's chair and crossed his legs. “Imagine if you went back in time and gave Shakespeare a copy of his complete works so that Shakespeare simply copies them out.” He smiled to himself. “Actually I copied them out for him, he sprained his wrist writing sonnets... but, I digress. The plays would then exist for you to take back in time and give to Will, which begs the question; who actually created those plays in the first place?” He paused for just a moment, allowing them to ponder the question. “Well... no-one,” he continued. “You got them from Shakespeare, and Shakespeare got them from you. That's just how it works. It's called an Ontological Paradox or, if you prefer, Bootstrap Paradox – like, Rory, when you rescued me from the Pandorica. Usually that kind of thing would destroy two-thirds of the universe, but as in that case there was less than two-thirds of the universe left, it didn't seem to matter.”
Rory shook his head. “I'm still not getting it.”
The Doctor ran a hand through his unruly mop of hair. “Sometimes, effect leads to cause leads to effect. Don't try to understand it, you'll give yourself a nosebleed.”
Amy snickered. Wibbley wobbley, timey wimey, in other words. As the Doctor leapt to his feet and pirouetted around the console, she had to smile at his awkward, gangly physicality, like he was constantly about to burst out of his own skin.
As she watched the Time Lord, Rory leaned in close to her. “So, uh...” he began, awkwardly, his voice low apparently so that the Doctor wouldn't hear, “would you really... you know...?”
Amy looked at him blankly. “What?” she asked.
“You know...” Rory restated, trying to communicate exactly what he was trying to say with simple facial gestures, such as widening his eyes and nodding suggestively at her, his eyes darting up and down her body. “With yourself?”
Catching on, Amy considered how amusing his reaction to the possibility of having two of her had been, now that she was over the initial shock.
She decided to have some fun.
“Would you like that?” she asked.
He gulped.
Amy pouted in amusement at his little puppy-dog face, seemingly incapable of forming words. Aww... she thought.
“Um... yes. Yes... I'd... like that,” he stammered, unsure how she would take it. “So... would you?”
She made a show of thinking deeply for a moment, raising her eyes and drumming her fingers against her chin. “Well...” she began, “I suppose it –”
Before she could continue, the TARDIS was rocked by an almighty quake, and its occupants struggled to maintain their balance.
Then, there was an eerie silence. “What was that?” Rory whispered.
What now? Amy wondered. She recognised the Doctor's expression as the one he wore when he wanted to allay someone's fears but couldn't quite mask his own; what Amy had come to think of as his, 'Everything's gonna be fine' face. “Oh... nothing,” he lied.
“Doctor...” Amy said warily.
Before the Doctor could reply, the proximity alarm sounded, followed by the haunting Cloister Bell, as the ship began to shake once again. The entire room appeared to distort as if one were looking at it through a kaleidoscope.
“Doctor!” Amy cried out. “What is it!?”
The Doctor knew. He had felt it before. He struggled to reach the console. “Temporal collision!” he cried. “The TARDIS is colliding with...”
He was interrupted by another quake, but Amy had heard enough. “Colliding with what?!”
The Doctor worked the console frantically, trying to realign the dimensional stabilisers. “The TARDIS!”
He wasn't making sense. “What?!” Amy and Rory chorused as Rory struggled to get to his feet.
“Hold on!” The Doctor commanded as the ship was rocked again by some unseen force, causing them to grab hold of whatever they could to stay upright.
“It wasn't me this time!” Rory cried out. If he could have afforded to let go of the console without falling over, he would have held up his hands in protest.
“Hold on, what?” Amy called over the cacophony of sounds. “Now we're gonna collide with ourselves?!” Then, with a hint of a mischievous smile, she added; “Am I going to meet myself again?”
The Doctor rolled his eyes, before he and his companions were thrown to the floor by another quake. After a few moments, the shaking subsided, and the TARDIS seemed to stabilise.
Rory picked himself up as the Doctor mentally checked himself over. “Everyone OK?” he asked, worriedly. “Amy?”
“Yeah,” came the groggy reply as Amy slowly picked herself up off the floor.
“Rory?”
“Yeah, Doctor, I'm fine.”
“Good. Amy?”
“Yeah, I'm good, thanks!” came an upbeat reply as Amy sat herself down in the pilot's chair by the console.
“Good,” the Doctor said. “Now, let's...” His words trailed off and he stopped in his tracks. Slowly, he turned around, his expression a mixture of worry and confusion as his eyes darted back and forth from the Amy Pond who had spoken last, sitting grinning at him, and the Amy Pond who was standing on the other side of the console, her mouth agape as she stared intently at her doppelgänger.
“Doctor...” the standing Amy began, her trembling voice betraying her fearful incredulity.
“Woah...” Rory began as he stumbled to join his Amy. “B-But that's...” he stammered, “impossible! How's that possible? We're back in normal space, right? Doctor, how come there are two Amys again?”
The Doctor drew breath to speak, then shook his head in disbelief. He allowed a small smile to play across his face. “Temporal collision,” he said, voicing his thoughts. “Amy?” He addressed the Amy who was sitting confidently in the pilot's chair. In any case, the other one was too busy staring at herself to take any notice of him.
“Yep,” the new arrival replied. The Doctor nodded.
“Um, Doctor...” said his Amy, who looked pale and as if she might faint in shock, “what the hell is going on now?!”
“We collided with ourselves,” he explained, “at a different point along our time-stream. The shields were down... sorry.” He gave them an apologetic look as Rory rolled his eyes. “The TARDIS has merged with itself in the future,” he continued. “But why are you here alone, Amy? Why only you?” Why now, right after what just happened? he wondered.
“OK,” the new Amy said, “deep breath. Three days from now, you're going to collide with your past selves – that's you now, obviously – and this is what happens. Only, the two TARDISes only half merge, and I was in the half of the control room that merged. Doctor, Rory, you two are still on my TARDIS.”
Rory shook his head. “Hold on,” he said, trying to wrap his head around the notion. “So this isn't the same as what just happened?”
“Of course,” the Doctor said, ignoring Rory's question. “We haven't merged completely, we've just... dented bumpers.”
“Exactly,” said the future Amy.
“So...” her younger self said, “you're me again... only this time from three days in the future?”
“That's right. This is where it gets really complicated.” She winked at herself.
“And because we haven't merged completely with the other TARDIS,” the Doctor explained, “we should be safe from any repercussions. No black holes or supernovae necessary.” Ignoring Rory and the Amys' confused looks, he continued; “So, we just have to wait it out until the TARDISes separate. Amy... um, future Amy, how long are you here?”
“About an hour,” Amy's future self replied.
The Doctor clapped his hands together. “Well, that's fine then!” he beamed. “Amy can get to know herself better and we can all sit down and have a cup of tea and a nice chat. We can have biscuits! Rory, get the Jammy Dodgers.”
“Wait,” Rory began, “how do we tell them apart?”
The Doctor and his two wives looked at him with expressions that bordered on pity.
“Um... they're wearing different clothes,” the Doctor pointed out helpfully.
“Ah,” Rory replied with embarrassment. “Pretend I didn't say that.”
“Besides,” the Doctor added, “it's not like they're trying to keep secret from us which one's which. She's not an alien duplicate out to kill us all...” he indicated the new arrival before his smile faded, his mind wandering to the possibility, and he looked at her intently. “You're not, are you?”
“No!” future Amy replied indignantly.
“Prove it,” the present Amy demanded sceptically, despite having only just met herself a few minutes ago. “Who am I?” Something about this didn't feel right. Encountering her future self twice in two separate incidents in the space of a few minutes? It felt like far too big a coincidence.
Her future self smiled, and walked towards her, invading her personal space. The woman certainly smelled like her – she recognised her own perfume – and did she really wear that much lip gloss? “Amelia Jessica Pond,” she began, “born in Inverness on the twenty-fourth of July 1989 to Tabetha and Augustus Pond. Moved to Leadworth when we were six. Favourite food: Pizza. Raggedy Doctor, fish fingers and custard, four psychiatrists... and...” she leaned in to whisper something in her other self's ear. The younger Amy recoiled slightly before listening for a second. Her eyes widened and a queasy look passed over her face, followed by a wry smile that didn't touch her eyes.
The Doctor and Rory exchanged glances as their Amy turned to them, blushing slightly. “Yep,” she said, “I think she's me.”
The Doctor smiled, and Rory looked worried. “What was that?” he asked. “What did she tell you?”
“Something personal,” his Amy replied.
“About me?” he wanted to know, feeling slightly put out. Husbands and wives weren't supposed to have secrets, were they?
“Rory, look up 'personal' in the dictionary,” the Doctor put in, before adding, emphatically; “Jammy Dodgers.”
Despite the Time Lord's admonishment, Amy answered her husband. “No,” she said, and noting Rory's sigh of relief, she added, teasingly; “Well... not directly, anyway.”
As his expression changed, the future Amy spoke up. “Sorry Doctor, Rory, but me and I are going to have to love you and leave you for a while.”
“We are?” her other self asked curiously.
“Things to discuss. Nothing to worry about,” the older Amy replied.
The Doctor eyed her cautiously. “Right you are,” he said warily, his eyes narrowing. “Just remember,” he warned, “no one should know too much about their own future...”
“Don't worry, I'll take a leaf out of River's book,” the new Amy replied before clarifying her meaning. “Spoilers!”
The Doctor gave her a distracted smile as she turned to her younger self. “Come on,” she said, taking her hand.
“Where?” the “present” Amy asked.
“You'll see,” her older self answered as they descended the stairs and left the Console Room.
Rory watched them go. “Doctor, are you sure we should...?”
“Rory,” the Doctor cut him off, rolling his eyes and slapping the young man's shoulder, “I think we should leave these two lovebirds alone for a little while.”
“Wait,” Rory said, his expression growing very serious, “they touched each other. Shouldn't there have been a spark, like with the screwdrivers in the Pandorica chamber?” He thought for a moment. “It didn't happen with Kazran either...”
The Doctor sighed. “I'll explain later.”
“But...” Rory began, but then a thought struck him. “These two lovebirds”? he thought. No, they're not...? “Hold on... what did you say?!”
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Space/Time Redux; Narcissus