Coming out of my hole with a oneshot about my favorite Doctor Who couple! I've loved Amy and Rory from the beginning, but series 6 has been just beautiful with the two of them. I needed to write something. This is a little jumbled and confused and it's sort of supposed to be a Rory stream-of-consciousness thing going on, except in third person, so hopefully it's not too crazy.

What She Does and Doesn't Do

"Mate, seriously," says Tom one day after Amy's left Rory holding her bags in the middle of the street while she trots away after Jeff (who apparently has a stag party to go to where he thinks he can get her a job). "You could do so much better."

"Yeah," Rory says, and it doesn't come out as sarcastically as he means it, but he doesn't have the heart to explain to Tom exactly why it is that everything she does makes everything she doesn't do feel worth it.

Sometimes, yes, Rory would like to be able to go out with Amy without having her be recognized as the ginger kissogram with the legs (the one who's with the scrawny bloke with the big nose who always gets stares of derision and "really? Him?"s). Sometimes he'd like it if he didn't have to see Sean Reilly's face and imagine Amy's lips attached to it because of that time she kissed him while pissed (and she wasn't even working). Sometimes he wishes she didn't get so excited every time she hears the sound of Mr. Piper's car starting half a mile off because if the wind is right it sounds like that old blue box they haven't talked about since the time with the coma patients and the Raggedy Doctor who stole the patients' clothes.

But most of the time, he just remembers that yes, so Amy's a bit flighty and a bit flirty and when she punches him playfully it actually hurts (but not as much as her disappointed face the day the Doctor left), but she's so much more than just the things that make his heart ache. She's the stuff that makes his throat close up and his gut roil with affection, the way that too many sweets sometimes feels like you're made of sugar instead of just mostly filled with it. The lightheaded, sick kind of love that twists his brain all into knots whenever he tries to think of what life would be without her.

It's like, if he thinks about it for only a second, he can see what Tom was on about that day. Amy broke his arm, one time, when they were kids, and Rory immediately apologized through his tears. On the surface, for normal people with normal lives, that's the kind of thing that makes a bloke tell a girl off. That story always got the guys going, and Rory can totally see their point. Except for the fact that in context he can genuinely say he deserved the shove, if not the unintended consequences.

"I don't have to be here," Rory said for the thousandth time as Amy tried to strangle him with a tie (not really, but Rory was eleven, and cross at everything, and it genuinely felt like she was trying to murder him). "I have friends. I have loads of friends."

"Yeah, and they're all hopeless geeks like you," Amy muttered, smoothing the tie one more time before taking a step back. "It's rubbish. You look nothing like him. But you'll do, I suppose."

"I don't need to be here. You need me to be here. Owen won't play doctor with you anymore, and he's your only other friend. You just call me rubbish, and hopeless, and you say I'm stupid. Why should I play doctor with you? Everyone knows you're just a complete nutter, anyway."

So, she pushed him. And, being Rory, and not very good on the balancing thing, he fell. And on the way down, he started thinking. Not in words, because eleven year olds aren't really good with the words bit. It was more like pictures, or flashes of memories and colours. Nothing even specific. He saw things like Amy's house, and her swing, and the garden where she'd cried after her aunt had a new shed put in. He saw the felt-and-fabric Raggedy Doctors she'd tried to hide under her bed that first time his mum had made him go play with her. He saw the empty rooms and Amy's confused expression when he'd asked about her parents. He saw Amy's pale skin wet with tears at her uncle's funeral, when her Aunt Sharon had cried loudly about her family all being gone, and Amy had earnestly told him that if he ever left, she'd find him and kill him. He remembered the way it would have been a threat from anyone else, but the way she'd looked at him kept it more in the realm of a confession of a deep, horrible fear.

He saw those things and just sort of knew, suddenly, that everyone left Amy Pond in the end. Everyone abandoned her. Even her imaginary friend disappeared after promising he'd only be gone five minutes. Life was not fair to Amelia Pond, and he was a fool for not having realized it before.

So he apologized, and forgave her when she held his hand as his mum drove them to hospital. Then he fell in love a bit when she refused to leave the room for anything, screaming at the top of her lungs when a porter tried to carry her out. Then he never really fell out.

It's not just the extreme stuff where she does something and then makes up for it in a wonderful way (although that happens, a bit, or quite a bit, depending on who you ask). The normal stuff can be pretty redeeming, too. Like the time, they were still in secondary school, and Amy came round one day and walked through his house and up his stairs and sat on his bed like she belonged there, perched on the end. He was sitting at his pillow with his maths book in his lap, and he said, "Come on in, Amy," in the sarcastic, flustered way in which he always seemed to say everything when she was around. Her hair was down, and tumbling around her shoulders like she was trying to test the limits of how sexually frustrated a terminally shy bloke could get about a girl before finally asking her out and making a fool of himself and losing her forever.

"You're better than him, you know," she said, looking at him all intensely, as if she was trying to get him to understand something that was only available telepathically.

"Right. Thanks. Who?"

"Jeff. I heard that Sophie turned you down because she fancies him."

"Oh. Is that…? She just said no. I didn't realize…"

"Well, regardless, Rory. The point is that Sophie's just some stupid, daft girl who doesn't get it, okay? You are worth ten of Jeff, and she'll figure that out for herself once she tries to have a conversation with him and realizes he only knows thirty words."

Rory had a laugh at that, and Amy finally smiled and stopped with the creepy. She slapped his knee once, all seriousness gone, and got up from the bed.

"Right, then. I'm off."

"Come back for dinner?" Rory asked as casually as he could manage. Amy shrugged.

"Yeah, sure. Why not? Tell your mum she better make something good."

She bounded off down the stairs without another word. And even though Rory had only asked out Sophie because people were starting to say he fancied Amy (and he really didn't want that bit of information getting back to her, because she'd know it was true the moment someone even hinted to her), he still felt better than he had since she'd turned him down.

No one gets Amy, is the thing. No one understands why she acts the way she does. Everyone has different opinions, of course, though it's not as if they're based on anything other than that person's prejudices. Rory, though, he gets it, and he thinks for a while that's why Amy puts up with the bad parts of him that he can't seem to hide from her, no matter how much he tries (like the fact that he's scared of everything, and that he's not very interested in football like everyone else, and that he wants to be a doctor because of her, not because of telly shows like he said).

But there was this one day, when they were still "just friends", as far as she knew, and he was walking home from visiting his Nan in the hospital. He spotted her sitting on the ground in her garden, in the place where he used to have to pretend with her, before she got too old to hope the Raggedy Doctor would ever come back.

"Hey, Ames," he said, and he hoped that his forced cheerfulness would wake her up a bit, because he hated when she got sad thinking about the stuff that didn't make sense. He'd been four hours with a woman who was slowly forgetting everything she'd ever known. He needed, although he'd never say it, the wilder side of Amy. The side that said they should get pissed for no reason, or go swimming in that lake it took an hour to walk to, or both. He needed the side of Amy that was alive, that was everything that made him forget there was a world beyond her smile and his eyes.

"Rory!" she yelped, jumping to her feet with more enthusiasm than he ever could have even hoped for. "Just the man I was waiting to see."

"What? Yeah? Okay," he stammered, his face cracking open with a smile he couldn't bother to try and hide because she was waiting for him, and he loved it when she said things like that because she didn't say them often.

"Yeah, come here," she said, and he hopped the fence like it was nothing even though he usually was more careful (because nothing, not even death, could be worse than falling on his face in front of Amelia Pond) and sat down in front of her just like he used to do when they were young enough to hope that things would suddenly be better when they were older. "Look, there's something I need to talk to you about, and I've wanted to say it for a while, so if you could just sit there and listen and not interrupt, I would really appreciate it. Yeah?"

"Yeah, of course. Wh-what is it?"

"I don't like saying things, Rory. Things about any of this stuff that goes on in my head. I have this thing with my mind where I think people just know what I'm feeling when I try and hide it. I don't know why. I don't…everything is wrong all the time, and four psychiatrists couldn't help me. People tell me all the things I should do, you know, and it's all rubbish stuff like 'you should explain yourself better' and 'you should remember your parents' and 'you should be happy'. People think…I don't know what they think, I guess, and it's so totally rubbish of me to think that other people will know what I'm feeling just by looking at me." She paused and looked at Rory for a long time – one of those blank stares that always had him feeling like he should get it. He knew what she was saying. "But people don't, and that's the problem. Even you, and you've always understood better than the rest. But what I'm trying to say, I mean, what I think you should know, is that you're really important. You're really important. You're the only person who ever tried to get it, who ever thought that maybe I wasn't just completely mad, and maybe I wasn't just the little girl who needed loads of help. You're the best thing in my life right now, Rory Williams. You may have been the best thing in my life ever, even better than the Raggedy Doctor because you always come back. And I know you came home every weekend from uni because of me, not because of your mum or your Nan, because you promised you'd come back. And Rory, that was just the sweetest thing anyone could have done for me. I wanted to tell you that, because sometimes I think you don't get it, after all."

She took a deep breath as if she was about to go on, but she didn't say another word. Just sat there with her lungs filled with air and her eyes trained hopefully on his. He let out a laugh of a breath, and he wanted to use Amy's own defences against her. He wanted to shrug and smile and pretend like it wasn't serious, because that was what she would do. But he wasn't her.

"Okay," he said. He nodded. "Yeah. I get it. You're just…you've been hurt. You can't remember your parents, and you lost everything, and everyone treats you like you're mad, but you're not. They're mad. And life…life is short, and I know it's a cliché so you can stop giving me that look, Amy Pond, because I don't care. You got your turn to sound ridiculous and now it's mine. You're not mad, Amy. You're perfectly normal. It's everyone else who's insane if they can't understand you. If they don't want to understand you, if they can't see how perfect and wonderful and…how amazing you are…well then they're the ones who need help, aren't they?"

That was when she kissed him, and even though he'd had a few more points to make, he knew it was time to stop talking.

When he'd met her, too, when he'd dropped out of the sky, he'd known she was going to change his life. He didn't know how, of course, but there she was all red hair and smiles and playacting games, and he was so glad he'd fallen off the tree he'd been climbing and had to be rescued by Amy and her aunt Sharon. Amy was so lively and decisive and she didn't take ages to plan her every move like he did. Sometimes it could be a disaster, and he'd end up humiliated, but the times when she'd tell him to do something he didn't think he could do were sometimes amazing, and they sometimes made him realize that he wasn't as rubbish as he usually thought he was. Those were the days he truly loved Amelia Pond, right from the beginning, even if he wasn't quite sure yet what love was.

Amy doesn't like showing it, is basically the point. It being anything. She hasn't, ever since Rory met her. He knew, after a while, why that was. She'd let her guard down too many times and had been hurt by it again and again. When the Doctor had shown up a second time, when Rory's life changed forever, he realized that Amy was Amy because of what the Doctor hadn't done. Seeing her come to life around that Raggedy man was something that threw Rory all for a loop because it was an Amy he had never seen before. As if The Doctor had stolen a piece of her soul and only he could activate it with his return and his magical box and his promise of (very scary, deathish, giant spaceships made of eyes) adventure.

That hurt. Maybe more than Rory let on. Maybe even more than the dismissive way she demoted him to her "Kind-of Boyfriend" only three days after their first kiss, three days after Rory was sure his life was going to be perfect forever, three bloody days after she'd said all those wonderful things about him and then just said "so we're, like, dating now, yeah?" just as happily as if it was nothing, and maybe it was nothing for her, but it wasn't nothing for him.

But things never hurt for long. She doesn't say sorry, not often, and not with words, but she says it in other ways. She doesn't bake a lot, and she doesn't bake exceptionally well most of the time she tries it, but when she's gone and mucked something up for him, she makes him whatever she happens to have on hand. And she tries, and sometimes they're just okay, but sometimes they're delicious, and it's not as if it really matters, anyway, because the fact that she's making him anything at all is what counts. The day the doctor leaves her for a second time, leaves them both, Amy comes round bearing cupcakes.

"I'm sorry," she says, and Rory's halfway through his first treat and nearly chokes to death on it because he can't believe what he's just heard.

"Wmpf?" he asks, and she nods.

"Yeah, Williams. I said it, so there's no need to get that stupid look on your face. I'm sorry."

"What for?" He tries again, and this time she understands, because he's managed to swallow without killing himself.

"Oh, you know. But if you want me to say it, I will, because I am, truly, really…" she breaks off, and he sees that she's starting to get a bit weepy, so he tries to tell her that she doesn't have to finish, but she ignores him. "When I saw him, today, after all those years of being told he wasn't real, I got stupid. I got hopeful and stupid and started thinking about all the things he promised me the first time he said he'd be back in five minutes. And I thought to myself, I can leave right now, and never come back, and no one would care. I could get in that box with the swimming pool in the library and go have adventures. Amazing, wonderful adventures with my Raggedy Doctor who came back for me. I could do that. I could." She takes a deep breath, and finally looks him in the eye. He hadn't even realized she'd been avoiding it. "But you, there you were, Rory Williams, being brilliant. Noticing what other people didn't. And my Raggedy Doctor, he knew. He knew you were special when I was thinking I could just go on and leave you. Why would I think that I could just go on and leave you?"

She sits down heavily, and Rory reaches out a hand to touch her hair. She looks at him as if they've never met, and that kills him a little.

"I get it," he says, but he doesn't, and she knows it.

"Growing up, I always thought he'd come back, but then he didn't, and you were there, through it all. I've thanked you, but not enough. No one stays but you, Rory. No one but you, and you're so stupid for staying, but you keep doing it and you're brilliant. You're so brilliant and smart, but how could you ever love me when I've been nothing but a disappointment?"

So he tells her. He tells her about the time she made him feel better about Sophie, and the time she put on Casablanca and hugged him while he cried the night he found out his Nan was dying. He tells her about the cupcakes, and what they mean to him, and how it doesn't matter if she doesn't say 'sorry' as often as she thinks she should. He tells her about the stars, and that when she looks up at them he knows exactly what she's thinking, and the fact that she doesn't tell him all her mad thoughts about the Doctor anymore should hurt because he knows she feels there's something to hide, but it doesn't hurt because she's trying to hide them from him, and that means he's special to her. He tells her that he knows these things without her needing to say them, because he's Rory Williams and she's Amelia Pond, and he's loved her for so long that he doesn't remember how it feels to exist without her.

"And that's the thing of it," he says, when she's properly crying and he's starting to tear up and get a lump in his throat. "That's the biggest thing. It's okay you're not properly in love with me, and it's okay that you wanted to run away, and it's okay that sometimes you don't know what to say. I love you. I've loved you for a long time, and I've never expected anything from you. I'm not one of those blokes who follows around a girl they love and helps her deal with her problems because I think you'll suddenly fall in love with me. I've never been like that. I help you because you're my friend, you're my Amy, and I'm your Rory, and even if I've been in love with you forever, that's not nearly as important as this, as what we are to each other."

She cries, and he cries, and they kiss, and for that one brief moment everything is perfect.

"One day," she says. "One day I'll show you properly, and you'll understand."

It doesn't matter, though, he realizes, if she does or doesn't. Because she's Amy Pond, and he's Rory Williams, and that's enough for him.

(Although, for the record? Rory would really like to tell Tom about the time Amy called him "Stupidface" and looked into his eyes as River killed the Silence all around them, and he knew that One Day had come.)