13) Please, Help Me

[starjargon]

She needed a hero to help her rescue herself.

All quotes belong to Steven Moffat. No infringement intended.

She didn’t understand.  She wasn’t sure she wanted to understand.  She wasn’t pregnant.  It’d been months since she thought she was.  But when she had children, she was going to raise them and love them and protect them and keep them safe.  This girl- the one in the orphanage- well, by definition an orphan has no parents.  That would never happen to her child.  If she ever had one.

How could she be in the picture?  If she were in the picture that would mean the baby in the picture was hers.  And if the baby in that picture was hers, that meant the girl in all the other pictures, the one who was alone and who apparently lived in this shabby horrible room, she was- Amy couldn’t even finish the horrible thought.

Then the astronaut walked in.  Did it want to kill all of them?  Why?  Did she think Amy’d lead her to the Doctor?  She wouldn’t.  Couldn’t.  She refused to watch him die twice.  Time could be rewritten.

The shield came up.  Her own eyes stared back at her.  Terrified eyes.  Eyes that just watched.

What could she say to this scared child?  This little girl who was still shivering and alone and had no friend in the world.  Who gazed at her- as though she belonged to the woman in the picture.  The woman who couldn’t be Amy.  Who was most definitely Amy.  Who wouldn’t ever be Amy.  Everything was processing so incredibly fast and so incredibly slowly in Amy’s brain.

“I’m sorry.”  For so much.  For what has happened and what will happen and all of what she hoped to prevent from happening.  Such a trivial phrase.

“I didn’t mean to shoot you.”  Great.  Now she was rambling.

“I’m glad I missed.”  She had to get the child to trust her.  She hadn’t known she was capable of hurting another person.  A child.  A scared, defenseless little girl.  She was sorry.  She hoped her voice conveyed how much.

She had come for her.  She always knew she would.  She had stared at that picture every day.  When she was lonely.  When she was happy.  When she couldn’t remember what had happened.  When she was scared.  She didn’t want them to take it from her, so she tried to hide it behind the others.  But now she was really here. She barely dared to accept it.

“But you killed the Doctor.  Or you’re- you’re gonna kill him.”  Those connections weren’t being made fast enough.   A child, not yet born yet standing right in front of her.  An assassin from so long ago in the future.  An orphan who had a mother who wanted her.  It didn’t make sense.

“But who are you?  Just please, tell me, because I don’t understand!”

She wanted to run to her.  To say the one word she had been denied saying her whole life.  To grab her hand and run from this horrible place, and go where they would be together for the rest of their lives. But why was she so confused?  Melody had grown up dreaming of the woman standing in front of her.  She believed she would be so happy and relieved when she found her again, despite what they had told her.  But now she was looking at her and she was scared too.  In her head, she screamed the word.  The precious word.  The secret word. 

But even though she was scared, she was here.  So what came out was the most important phrase in the universe at the moment, because after trying so long to reach someone, anyone she was the one who had come for her.

“Please help me.  Help me.  Please.”

They would leave here now.  They had to.  She had to escape them.  Please.

She saw such fear in the girl’s eyes.  Unsurprising, if this was her life.  But beneath that fear, as she stared at Amy, begging for help, was something else.  It was hope.

Then the Silence came up behind the little girl.  Amy was terrified.  She looked only at them, and all sense of courage left her.  She screamed.  But as she did so, she took one last glance at the petrified little girl.  The girl who couldn’t move when she knew she was surrounded.  Who would kill the Doctor if she couldn’t get away.  Who had pled, again and again and again, for help.  Amy’s help.  And an instinct she wasn’t ready to have yet took over.

It happened so fast, she didn’t even remember deciding to do it.  She put grabbed the child, backing her out the door so she stood between the girl and the Silence.

“Take me!”  She said to them.  A moment she would never remember.

With a quick turn of her head to the would- be, could- be daughter behind her, Amy shouted “RUN!”

Melody Pond waited years for her to come and rescue her.  No matter what they said.  No matter what they did.  She held onto that hope.  Because there was one word.  The most important word in the universe.  It offered freedom and chances and escape and a life so, so different from the one she was forced into.  She had never said it aloud before.  But as she did what that picture- perfect woman told her, when she finally got the courage and opportunity to rescue herself, she ran with one word on her lips.  Mommy.