Doctor Who: Four times Rory Williams failed to save a life (and one time he succeeded)
Title: Four times Rory Williams failed to save a life (and one time he succeeded)
Author: heleentje
Series: Doctor Who
Characters: Rory Williams, Amy Pond, the Doctor (11th)
Rating: T
Word Count: 6015
Summary: It's Rory's job to help people. He doesn't always do as well as he would like.
Warnings: Death. Spoilers for all of series 5/31/Fnarg
Author's Notes: Once upon a time, after the season finale, a bunny took over my mind and started procreating. This is the result. Thanks to arynis and remaner for their support!
Four times Rory Williams failed to save a life…
I.
When Rory was six, the family dog found a young pigeon.
It was late May, and the pigeons had been taken care of their young for the better part of the month. Rory had found great delight watching the parents fly around, looking for small twigs and bits of straw, then food, and bringing it to their nest. Just the day before, he’d seen one of the other young fly away successfully. This one wasn’t so lucky.
It was early evening when the dog, and consequently Rory, came across the pigeon. It was sitting on the garden path, flapping its wings ineffectively as the dog barked in delight and tried to catch the panicking bird. Rory chased him away and took off his jacket, then carefully wrapped it around the bird and carried it inside, leaving the dog outside for the moment.
“Mum?” he asked, presenting the pigeon to her. She sighed good-naturedly, threw one last glance at the telly, and helped him pick out a cardboard box to put the bird in. She gave him an old newspaper to shred and let him make a small nest out of it, so the bird would be comfortable.
“Now listen carefully, love,” she explained softly, putting a bowl of water in the box and helping the pigeon to drink from it. It made a few half-hearted attempts at drinking that gradually became more vigorous. “This little one is still just a baby. You’re going to have to take very good care of it, do you understand?”
Rory nodded, wide-eyed, and followed his mum to the kitchen, where she helped him to boil an egg and mix it with bread crumbs. When he carried the food back to the bird, it had calmed down enough to pick carefully at the egg food. He spent the rest of the evening sitting next to it, watching as it carefully started grooming its feathers and helping it drink from time to time, like his mum had showed him. At ten, his dad came to sit with him.
“Why didn’t the Mum and Dad help it?” Rory asked, stroking one finger over the back of the bird. It looked at him with wide eyes.
His dad sighed. “They needed to take care of their other kids, Rory,” he said slowly. “But you can take care of it now, and when it’s strong enough it can go back to Mum and Dad. Is that okay?”
Rory wasn’t convinced, but he nodded anyway. When the pigeon could fly again, it would go back to its family and be happy.
“C’mon, son, it’s almost ten o’clock. It’s way past your bedtime, young boys like you should have lots of sleep.”
“It’s Saturday!” Rory protested, but he got up anyway, taking one last look at the bird. “won’t it be cold at night? Shouldn’t we give it a blanket?”
But his dad shook his head. “It doesn’t need a blanket, son. Come on, off you go. It’s bedtime.”
“Dad?” Rory asked when his dad tucked him in bed. “When will it be better?”
His dad hesitated. “It’s very weak, Rory. But I’m sure it’s glad you’re helping it.”
He kissed Rory on the forehead and left the room, flicking off the light as he went. Rory was restless. He spent half an hour trying to find a good position to sleep in before finally giving up and sneaking out of his room. It was too cold for May. He found an old towel they didn’t use anymore and carefully folded it in half, then covered the pigeon with it. It opened its eyes and looked at him until Rory left the room and turned off the light.
When he woke up the next morning, the pigeon had died.
It was lying on its side, eyes closed and head twisted in an uncomfortable angle, with the towel that Rory had found still on top of it. Somewhere during the night, the bird had knocked over the bowl of water, so the newspaper in the box stuck to his fingers when he took out the body. His dad helped him bury it in the garden. Rory drew a small cross on the grave and put a yellow flower on top of it.
“Don’t worry, love,” his mum said. “It’s in a good place.”
Rory looked at the grave and wondered if the Mum and Dad were crying now. Could pigeons cry? He didn’t know, so he cried in their place.
II.
“You will see people die,” Professor Morgan said on Rory’s very first day at med school. “If you cannot handle that, this is not the right profession for you.”
Rory hadn’t been paying attention. He’d been thinking of Amy, who’d been so angry when he’d decided to go to London and become a nurse, and the shouting match they’d had last month, which had ended when he’d yelled that he was doing it for her.
Maybe now she’d finally see him, and not someone to dress up as her Raggedy Doctor, he hadn’t said.
So he hadn’t been paying attention, but somehow he heard the words anyway. The girl next to him put away her cell phone and sat up straighter. Professor Morgan hushed a couple of unruly students before continuing.
“However, it is your job as a nurse to support patients and their family. So don’t ever forget that you’re dealing with people. A good nurse does not merely depend on medical knowledge, but also on empathy. Patients will look to you for support, and it is your duty to provide it.”
Rory nodded unconsciously, fiddling with his pen. He was tempted to take notes, but no one else was writing, so in the end he settled for trying to remember the professor’s words. He thought it might be important to remember, even though he hoped he wouldn’t have to see anyone dying right away.
In the end, he saw more than one person die. While he was interning at Leadworth, he once saw a young boy being rushed in after a car accident. The next day he got told that the kid hadn’t made it, and he spent the rest of the day restless and distracted, until they finally sent him home and Jeff called a couple of mates and dragged him to the pub.
But the worst case was that of Mrs. Taylor.
Mrs. Taylor was 79, and Rory first met her when he was standing in at the oncology ward.
“Lung cancer,” she told him. “But don’t worry, love, the chemo is working. I’ll be better soon.”
She left the hospital that day, only to return a few weeks later for the next chemo session. Rory was picking up a few documents at the reception when she entered, and he offered to help her to the oncology ward. The head nurse was on lunch break anyway. She wouldn’t need the documents for another fifteen minutes.
“My grandson’s going to take his GCSEs next year,” she told him. “He wants to become a vet. He’s the sweetest kid, really, but he lives so far away.”
That was a tale Rory had heard before. The kids had moved away and never came to visit anymore. He nodded along with Mrs. Taylor and tried to cheer her up with stories from when he was a kid. How he fell in the duck pond one day and Amy tried to save him, only for the two of them to end up soaking wet in the police office, waiting for his Mum and Dad and Amy’s aunt Sharon to pick them up.
“Good thing there weren’t any ducks, then!” Mrs. Taylor laughed, petting him fondly on the arm. They turned the corner to the oncology ward and one of the staff nurses rushed forwards when she saw them. “I’m fine now, love, you just go do your job.”
Rory rushed off, delivered the documents to the head nurse and resumed his shift. He didn’t see Mrs. Taylor for another 5 months.
When they did meet again, she was lying in a hospital bed, looking like she hadn’t eaten in weeks, but her eyes were bright and she recognised Rory the instant he entered the room.
“Here I am again, love,” she said, smiling kindly at him. “How are you? Hope you’re not feeling like I am!”
“She stopped coming for chemo,” one of the other nurses explained later. “She’s too weak, her body can’t handle it. Now we’re all just waiting for…” She didn’t complete her sentence, but Rory heard what she was saying clearly enough. From that day on, he tried to visit Mrs. Taylor at least once every day, even though by now he’d been placed at the coma ward and had no need to be near Mrs. Taylor at all.
“You’re being stupid, Rory,” doctor Ramsden told him in no uncertain terms. “She’s probably got family to visit her. You just do your own job.”
But Rory had never seen anyone visit Mrs. Taylor. “It’s important to show empathy,” he said, repeating Professor Morgan’s words from years ago. Doctor Ramsden just shook her head.
“She’s probably going to die anyway. Do your job, Rory.”
Mrs. Taylor looked worse every day he visited her. The nurses told him that she was having trouble breathing, and that the nights were especially hard on her, so one day, on a whim, Rory used his time off to spend the night with her. There was probably something to be said about that involving professional ethics, but Rory couldn’t care less. It was his own free time, after all.
“The kids came by today,” Mrs. Taylor said slowly. “I do hope they’re taking care of themselves. Their fridge broke down, did I tell you that? I told them to buy a new one. You can’t run a decent household without a fridge.”
By midnight, Rory was talking about his mates, and Amy, and how doctor Ramsden said he had to pay more attention to what she said.
“Oh, she just likes to hear herself talk,” Mrs. Taylor said, and Rory laughed his voice echoing through the room. “Rory, love, once I’m back home you’re going to have to come over, all right? And bring that girl of yours too, she sounds like a great girl.”
Rory took her hand. She didn’t have enough strength to take his anymore.
The next week, he spent the night with her once more. Amy had been annoyed, she’d wanted to go see one of the new movies that was playing, but eventually she’d acquiesced once he’d promised her they’d go the next day.
Mrs. Taylor looked even worse than the previous week, if that was possible. She smiled when he came in, but didn’t speak. She hadn’t been able to speak for a few days now. When he took her hand now, it was cold.
He helped her drink several times that night. The night nurse came to check up on them around midnight. He wasn’t supposed to be here, of course, not as a visitor. But the nurses in this ward knew him already, and let him come as long as he didn’t get in their way.
“Get some sleep,” the nurse whispered to him when she left. “You look dead on your feet.”
But Rory didn’t sleep. Mrs. Taylor’s breath was coming in gasps now. He helped her drink again at one and carefully lifted her to put her in a more comfortable position. She weighed nearly nothing. He could feel every bone through her skin and see the fear in her eyes. She was afraid and didn’t want to admit it.
Rory was still awake and holding her hand when Mrs. Taylor died. He could barely bring himself to push the emergency button. When he did, the head doctor of the ward sent him home right away.
“I always thought that old people somehow came to terms with dying,” he told Amy later that day, his head in her lap while she ran her fingers through his hair. “Like some kind of grand realisation when you turned seventy or something. But she was so afraid…”
He closed his eyes. Amy gave him a quick peck on the lips..
“Oh Rory,” she said in the way only she could. “It’s not your fault. I’m sure she was glad you were there.”
It wasn’t much of a consolation, Rory thought, but at least it was something.
III.
“Canis Major, 34th century!” the Doctor announced cheerfully, bringing the TARDIS to a grinding halt that sent them all flying. “Of course, the Chinese were the first to come here and they called it Daquanzuo, so now everyone calls it Txunso. So means constellation, naturally.”
“Naturally,” Amy echoed, rolling her eyes at Rory, who hid a smile.
“And this planet is circling Sirius!” the Doctor continued, throwing open the doors. “Come on then! A whole planet out there, no time to wast- oh.”
“What is it?” Amy asked, looking past the Doctor at the planet they landed on. She frowned. “Doctor, what are those fires?”
Rory joined them both at the TARDIS doors, his expression quickly mirroring Amy’s “What’s going on here? Is there a war or something?”
“No no, no war,” the Doctor said distractedly. “Well, come on then, no place for us to be! How about a nice trip to the Orion Nebula? Best spa in the entire galaxy, even better than the original! Did you know that was in Belgium? Belgium can be a bit of a silly place, but Spa’s a nice town!”
“Doctor, tell us what’s going on here,” Amy interrupted him, slipping out of the doors before either Rory or the Doctor could stop her. She paused a few meters away from the TARDIS. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“It’s nothing, really- Rory, come back!”
Rory didn’t listen. He followed Amy out of the TARDIS and onto the square of what looked like a small village. People were running around, carrying what looked like-
“Doctor, are they burning people?” Amy asked incredulously.
“The fifth great epidemic of the Dog Star,” The Doctor said sadly, joining the two of them. “I can’t believe I didn’t remember.”
“So the fires are to prevent the disease from spreading,” Rory concluded, looking at the people running by. They didn’t look entirely human, but the emotions they were showing were very human indeed. Or maybe they were universal. Rory didn’t know, he just knew that parents were crying over the body of their child.
“Can’t we do something?” he asked. “Anything?”
“There will be a cure in another four hundred years, once the seventh epidemic hits,” the Doctor told them.
“Seventh?” Amy said “You mean there’ll be two more of these? Why’s no one doing anything?”
“You’ve got a time machine!” Rory told him. “Why can’t you just-”
“I can’t interfere here, and you know that,” the Doctor said quickly. “If I bring the cure here, it’ll create a grandfather paradox.”
“These are people! There must be something to help them!”
The Doctor turned around, eyes blazing. “Rory Williams, do you know how many people I’ve witnessed dying? Do you think these people will be the last? I can’t interfere with the course of history, this is how it’s supposed to go!”
“That’s rubbish,” Amy said, grabbing Rory’s hand. “Rory’s right, there must be something we can do!”
“What about us?” Rory asked. “Can we get infected?”
“You’re protected by the TARDIS,” the Doctor said slowly. It was enough for Rory. He turned around just in time to catch an ill child that had been on the verge of falling down. The boy was pale, much paler than Rory thought was humanly possible, but then these people weren’t entirely human. He was joined by Amy, who shrugged off her jacket and covered the kid with it, while Rory tried to make him more comfortable, even amidst the smoke and stench of the burning piles. The Doctor joined them a few minutes later, after a short talk with someone who Rory assumed was the village head.
They stayed the night.
It took 396 more years for a vaccine to be found.
IV.
The Franks had taken the Pandorica not long before the Roman empire fell, but by then the legend of the Lone Centurion had firmly taken hold, so they’d just dropped him and the box off again in some corner in Italy. They had positioned guards for the first couple of decades, but the last one had quietly left after he’d tried attacking Rory while he’d had his back turned. Rory had kindly persuaded him to leave. The myths about the Pandorica and himself had been very effective. The many hours he’d spent practicing with the handgun just to have something to do didn’t hurt either.
More than two centuries had passed since then, though. A village had been built, but the Pandorica was still here, hidden in a large cave. The villagers were aware that the box existed, and that Rory stood guard by it, but they never bothered him and he never bothered them. It was an agreement that had been reached after he’d politely declined the first sacrifices made to him, and it had served him well for over 150 years.
But once in a while he still got visitors.
Little Lucia turned up one spring day near the end of the seventh century. She was lost, alone, and crying when Rory found her. When she saw Rory, she cried even harder. Perhaps the sword wasn’t the greatest idea.
“Hey, it’s all right,” he told her in Latin, because 21st century English wouldn’t be around for another thirteen centuries. She stared at him with big eyes, and he belatedly realised that the girl wouldn’t be speaking the Latin he’d learned all those years ago. She couldn’t understand him.
He sighed and tried again, pointing at himself. “Rory.”
The girl stopped sniffling for a minute and said: “Lucia.” Then she started talking at a speed that could rival the Doctor’s. Rory caught a few words he thought he recognised, but in the end he just gave up trying to listen to her and put one finger on her lips. She stopped talking and went back to looking at him with big eyes.
“Are you lost?” he asked slowly, hoping at least one of the words would get through to her.
“Lost?” Lucia asked. Then she nodded quickly, repeating the word again but with a changed pronunciation. “Yes, lost!”
“Come on,” Rory said, giving her a hand and leading her away from the cave with the Pandorica in it. He felt a small pang of regret about leaving Amy behind, but it wasn’t the first time he’d gone away. Never far, of course. But enough to talk to people, or check on what was going on in the world, or, on one memorable occasion, to hide from a group of people hell-bent on worshipping him.
He got Lucia back to her village safely, and watched from afar as she was reunited with her family. He thought that was the end of it, and that he wouldn’t see another human being for a hundred more years, but Lucia kept coming.
“What’s in the box?” she asked when she was fourteen. They were sitting in front of the cave with the Pandorica. The sun would set soon, but Lucia didn’t look like she wanted to leave.
“I can’t say,” Rory said, shaking his head. She’d taught him the new form of Latin she spoke, though Rory often found himself lapsing in the Latin he’d learned all those years ago, or, when he was talking to Amy, English. He’d tried to teach Lucia a couple of words, but she hadn’t displayed much interest.
Lucia seemed a bit annoyed, for she left quickly after that, but she returned a couple of days later. They’d fallen into a pattern over the years. Lucia would come, sometimes with friends, and they’d talk, then she’d leave again, leaving him alone with Amy. He liked it that way. A few times, Lucia had tried to get him to come with her to the village, but Rory had refused.
“You never change,” she concluded when she was fifteen. “How come?”
She didn’t look particularly afraid. Rory sighed and tried to come up with a way to say he was plastic when plastic wasn’t even close to being invented yet.
“I was cursed,” he said finally. “I made a terrible mistake and now I need to guard this box until a good god comes to open it and lift the curse.” Not quite the truth, but close enough. He just hoped the Doctor’d never find out he’d called him a god.
Lucia didn’t look convinced, and Rory shrugged. How did you explain aliens and time travel, and that he would only be born in thirteen more centuries? Or perhaps not. He was just plastic, the real Rory had never existed.
“So what’s in the box?” Lucia asked again. She hadn’t given up on trying to find out the answer. Rory shook his head, like he always did.
“Sorry, I can’t say.”
When Lucia was seventeen, she got married to a friend of hers, who’d come visit with her a couple of times. Rory, who watched her wedding from afar, had his suspicions about the suddenness of the ceremony, suspicions that got confirmed when Lucia came back a few months later, visibly pregnant. She was happy, and Rory was reminded of the child he could’ve had with Amy in the dream world. It hurt. He wished he could open the Pandorica now and find her completely cured. He’d have to wait until the twentieth century until he could see her again, but it didn’t matter. He’d wait until the end of the universe if that would bring her back.
“How do you feel?” he asked Lucia. He hadn’t specialised in midwifery back at med school, but he’d learned the basics, of course. Lucia had to be about seven months pregnant, considering she’d started showing not long after her wedding.
“I’m fine,” she said. “My legs hurt, though. They’re really swollen.”
“Should you be coming here?”
Lucia waved his concerns away. “I’m fine, it’s not like I have to climb any hills or anything. This isn’t Rome.”
Rory was doubtful. The terrain around the cave with the Pandorica was flat, but it was also rocky and surrounded by dense forests.
“Make sure you rest enough,” he told her finally. “No coming here too often, it’s still dangerous!”
Lucia laughed. “Are you a doctor or something?”
“Or something,” Rory agreed melancholically. “I used to be.”
Have never been at all, he amended mentally. That day he helped Lucia all the way back to the edge of the forest.
Lucia only came one more time after that. The next visitor he got was her husband, and he was panicking.
“She’s doing bad,” the young man explained in between pants. He couldn’t be older than Rory himself had been when he died. “She said you were a doctor, that you could help. The midwife, she’s gone to another village. Please, you have to help her!”
Rory was up and running before the man even had the chance to finish talking. He’d shed most of the armour a few days earlier, so he had more freedom of movement. It was a decision he was now grateful for, if only because it made him look a lot less threatening.
“What happened?” he asked the first person he saw, a woman nearing her forties, who looked a lot like Lucia.
“She fell and started bleeding,” the woman explained nervously. “Yesterday. She said it was fine but then she started getting contractions and she hasn’t stopped bleeding at all-”
“Let me see.” Rory pushed past the woman and into the house. Lucia was there, crouching down and breathing heavily. She didn’t look up when he came in.
“Luce? Lucia? Can you hear me?”
Someone had had the common sense to put on water to boil. Rory grabbed a piece of cloth and wetted it as Lucia’s mother helped her stretch out. Her thighs were coated with blood.
“The baby’s in breech position,” Lucia’s mother said. “It’s too early, it won’t turn!”
Rory swore colourfully - In English, if the confused looks he got were anything to go by. Judging by the pallor of her skin and the sluggishness of her movements, Lucia had already lost a lot of blood. Her heart was beating fast, but he couldn’t decide if that was caused by the pain, the blood loss, or both. If the baby didn’t turn around, she was going to need a Caesarean section. He wasn’t qualified to perform one and even if he had been, he didn’t have the right tools.
“Lucia, deep breaths,” he instructed. “We’re going to try to turn the baby.”
He put his hands on opposite sides of her belly, trying to get a good feel of the baby’s position. Lucia’s mother was right, the child was in breech position. And even worse, it’d already descended a long way. He might not be able to turn it.
But he tried. He tried on his own the first time, then with the help of Lucia’s mother and finally with her husband, who’d been reluctantly drawn into the process. They managed to get the baby into what Rory hoped was a better position to be born, but he was doubtful. Lucia’s breaths were coming faster, as were the contractions rocking her body.
“C’mon, love,” Lucia’s mother was saying. “You can do it. Just push, sweetheart.”
Even then, it took over ten hours for the child to be born, and for once Rory was grateful that he didn’t need sleep. He’d sent Lucia’s husband away to see if no one had anything to stem the blood loss, but he’d returned from his search empty-handed. Lucia was doing bad. Terrible even.
“It’s a boy, love,” Lucia’s mum told her, handing her the baby. The child was crying weakly, but he’d survive. Lucia, on the other hand… Rory put her on the bed together with her husband, then took the man apart.
“I don’t know if she’ll make it,” Rory told him gently. “I’m sorry.”
“She trusted you!” the man was panicking, and Rory saw that he’d been wrong earlier. He was still just a boy, barely older than Lucia herself. “I trusted you!”
“I know, I-” Rory swallowed. “I’m sorry. I can’t do miracles.”
Lucia had her eyes closed. She was clutching her baby, but her breathing had slowed down. She opened her eyes a little when he crouched down next to her.
“Rory? What’s in the box?”
Of all the things she wanted to say-! Rory almost laughed.
“It’s… The woman I love is in there. I made a mistake, and now I will guard her until she can wake up again.”
“The good god will wake her up?”
“I hope so,” Rory said, kissing her on the forehead and making way for her mother and husband. “Goodbye, Lucia.”
He left the house, then, and the village. The Pandorica was still where he’d left it, of course. No one would be stupid enough to take it. He washed the tunic he was wearing first, and then, even though it was pointless, himself. Then he talked to Amy, and cried, and cried and talked.
He returned to the village once more, a few days later, to witness Lucia’s burial from afar. No one saw him, except her husband, who was holding the baby boy and averted his eyes when he spotted Rory. At least the child was healthy. Rory hoped he’d be like Lucia. Deep down, selfishly, he wanted to have something to remember the little girl who’d got lost in the forest all those years ago.
… And one time he succeeded.
V.
“Rome, 15th century,” the Doctor suggested. “How about it?”
“Nah, it’s a stupid place.” Rory took another sip from his beer. At least, the Doctor said it was beer. It had been served by a creature with four arms and only one eye, so Rory wasn’t too sure. They were on one of the most famous shopping planets in the galaxy, according to the Doctor. Amy had been out of the doors before they’d fully recovered from materialising, leaving Rory and the Doctor to find a place to sit and wait for her.
“What makes you say that?” the Doctor asked, getting a new glass from one of the waiters and raising it. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” Rory repeated the gesture. “And there was this one guy, Pius the something-or-other. Bit of a git.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We got stored in some room under the Vatican, and most of the popes just left us alone. Not Pius though. He needed to see the fabled Pandorica with his own eyes. And apparently his own eyes weren’t good enough, because he also brought a bunch of guards.”
The Doctor snorted in his glass. “You’re kidding me.”
“Dead serious. He started going on how I should open the Pandorica in the name of the Lord Thy Saviour, and he got pretty angry when I refused.” Rory rolled his eyes at the memory. On the street next to the pub electric cars were whizzing past. They were a lot quieter than what he was used to, but he’d thought that technology would’ve been a bit more advanced by now.
“Yes, they get a bit uppity, sometimes.” The Doctor said, nodding wisely. Rory drained his glass before continuing.
“And then he started praying. Well, I was getting sick of him and those torches were warm, so I corrected his Latin pronunciation and kindly told him to sod off.”
“You corrected his Latin pronunciation,” the Doctor repeated, letting out a surprised laugh. “Only you, Rory Williams. You corrected the pronunciation of Pope Pius II.”
“It was horrible!” Rory defended himself. “The sounds were all wrong.”
“So he left, then,” the Doctor urged, still snickering.
“Not for long.” Rory pulled a face. “He came back a week later, with an entire group of priests, and started performing an exorcism.”
“Exorcism, really?” the Doctor asked with a wide grin. “A real exorcism? With the psalms and everything?”
“Deus, in nomine tuo salvum me fac, et virtute tua age causam meam,” Rory quoted. “The whole thing. I’d got really fed up with him by then, so I just told him that the box would release untold horrors when opened and that I was on a divine mission to guard it.”
“I hope that was a lie,” Amy said, appearing out of nowhere and dropping half of her bags in Rory’s lap, then shoving the other half in the Doctor’s arms. “I’ll be very cross if that wasn’t a lie.”
“It was definitely a lie,” Rory said, reaching up and kissing her on the cheek. “Had fun?”
Amy hummed and pulled him up. The Doctor hastily threw some money on the table, then tried unsuccessfully to juggle all of Amy’s bags.
“Isn’t this your job?” he grumbled at Rory. “She’s your wife.”
“Can’t exactly give you a hand, mate,” Rory told him, lifting some of the bags he was carrying. Amy looked back to see what was keeping them, and laughed good-naturedly.
“Oh, my boys. Can’t even carry a couple of bags.” She grabbed several bags from both of them. “There. Now let’s just drop that off in the TARDIS and find a place to eat.”
That place turned out to be a quaint little restaurant next to a park in the middle of the city. The owner appeared to know the Doctor, because they got treated exceptionally well, and Rory agreed with Amy when she told the Doctor they’d have to return soon. It had turned dark when they made their way back to the TARDIS, and the atmosphere of the place suddenly reminded Rory a lot of the few times he’d been in Covent Garden.
“Hey, look out!”
Rory jumped, but the warning hadn’t been directed at him. Traffic was coming to a screeching halt all around them. Judging by the quickly forming crowd, something had happened.
“Come on then!” the Doctor shouted, getting out his sonic screwdriver and making his way through the crowd. Rory paused a few seconds to ask what had happened.
“The kid just walked onto the street!” one of the onlookers told him in a shocked voice. “Got hit by a car.”
“Right.” Rory took off after the Doctor, leaving Amy to deal with the crowds. She made a better police officer than he did.
“Doesn’t look that good,” the Doctor told him when he arrived, using his sonic screwdriver as a scanner. “It got the artery in his left arm.”
The boy had two arms on each side, but Rory quickly saw which left arm the Doctor meant. He made short work of the kids’ shirt. It was soaked in blood already, but at least the boy was still conscious.
“They’ve called for help,” Amy reported, kneeling down next to him as he used both hands to put pressure on the wound. “Hey kid, what’s your name?”
The boy rambled off something that sounded like a long string of consonants to Rory, but the Doctor looked delighted, then suddenly very worried again. He took over for Rory for a few seconds, while Rory shrugged off his jacket quickly. He lifted the boy’s arm, instructed him to keep it that way, then used the sleeves of his jacket as a makeshift tourniquet. It wouldn’t hold for long, but he hoped it would be enough until the emergency services arrived.
They didn’t have to wait longer than five minutes, but it seemed to drag on forever to Rory. Amy and the Doctor were taking turns talking to the boy to keep him conscious, while Rory did his best to keep the wound from bleeding too much. The boy had a few more scratches across his arms and legs, but he hadn’t been able to do more than check if any of them were serious. It was only after the medics had taken the boy away for a blood transfusion and assured him that he would make it, that he dared to relax
“You saved him then, good job!” the Doctor said, slapping him on the back when they entered the TARDIS. His hand would be leaving blood all over Rory’s T-shirt, but they were all covered in blood anyway, so it didn’t really matter.
“I guess,” he said slowly. Amy looked up.
“You’re not happy?”
“No, I am!” Rory hastened to correct. “I’m glad he’s alive. But it’s only one person, isn’t it? There are so many others that couldn’t be saved.”
To his surprise, the Doctor started laughing.
“It’s not a joke!” he said indignantly. What was it with aliens and laughing at you?
“No, I’m not laughing at you!” the Doctor said quickly. “Well, I am, but not because of the reason you think!”
“Then what?” Amy said, mirroring Rory’s indignant expression.
“That kid you just saved will be one of the most important people in the next century. Give him another forty years and he’ll create the first Pavo-Indus Supercluster Alliance, resolving a couple off long-running, intergalactic wars in the process,” the Doctor explained, apparently taking great delight in their quickly changing expression. “That enough saving lives for you, Rory Williams?”
“That’s… Wow.” Rory said slowly. Amy hugged him from behind.
“See? Who knows how many people you saved now!” she said happily. But it wasn’t the same, was it? No matter how many people were saved, so many others would still die. Had already died.
The Doctor was busy pulling levers and fiddling with buttons, but one look at Rory’s face apparently told him enough.
“Oh, you humans and your hero complexes. You want to save people, Rory Williams?” He pulled the main lever. “Hang on, you’ll get to save people!”
Author: heleentje
Series: Doctor Who
Characters: Rory Williams, Amy Pond, the Doctor (11th)
Rating: T
Word Count: 6015
Summary: It's Rory's job to help people. He doesn't always do as well as he would like.
Warnings: Death. Spoilers for all of series 5/31/Fnarg
Author's Notes: Once upon a time, after the season finale, a bunny took over my mind and started procreating. This is the result. Thanks to arynis and remaner for their support!
Four times Rory Williams failed to save a life…
I.
When Rory was six, the family dog found a young pigeon.
It was late May, and the pigeons had been taken care of their young for the better part of the month. Rory had found great delight watching the parents fly around, looking for small twigs and bits of straw, then food, and bringing it to their nest. Just the day before, he’d seen one of the other young fly away successfully. This one wasn’t so lucky.
It was early evening when the dog, and consequently Rory, came across the pigeon. It was sitting on the garden path, flapping its wings ineffectively as the dog barked in delight and tried to catch the panicking bird. Rory chased him away and took off his jacket, then carefully wrapped it around the bird and carried it inside, leaving the dog outside for the moment.
“Mum?” he asked, presenting the pigeon to her. She sighed good-naturedly, threw one last glance at the telly, and helped him pick out a cardboard box to put the bird in. She gave him an old newspaper to shred and let him make a small nest out of it, so the bird would be comfortable.
“Now listen carefully, love,” she explained softly, putting a bowl of water in the box and helping the pigeon to drink from it. It made a few half-hearted attempts at drinking that gradually became more vigorous. “This little one is still just a baby. You’re going to have to take very good care of it, do you understand?”
Rory nodded, wide-eyed, and followed his mum to the kitchen, where she helped him to boil an egg and mix it with bread crumbs. When he carried the food back to the bird, it had calmed down enough to pick carefully at the egg food. He spent the rest of the evening sitting next to it, watching as it carefully started grooming its feathers and helping it drink from time to time, like his mum had showed him. At ten, his dad came to sit with him.
“Why didn’t the Mum and Dad help it?” Rory asked, stroking one finger over the back of the bird. It looked at him with wide eyes.
His dad sighed. “They needed to take care of their other kids, Rory,” he said slowly. “But you can take care of it now, and when it’s strong enough it can go back to Mum and Dad. Is that okay?”
Rory wasn’t convinced, but he nodded anyway. When the pigeon could fly again, it would go back to its family and be happy.
“C’mon, son, it’s almost ten o’clock. It’s way past your bedtime, young boys like you should have lots of sleep.”
“It’s Saturday!” Rory protested, but he got up anyway, taking one last look at the bird. “won’t it be cold at night? Shouldn’t we give it a blanket?”
But his dad shook his head. “It doesn’t need a blanket, son. Come on, off you go. It’s bedtime.”
“Dad?” Rory asked when his dad tucked him in bed. “When will it be better?”
His dad hesitated. “It’s very weak, Rory. But I’m sure it’s glad you’re helping it.”
He kissed Rory on the forehead and left the room, flicking off the light as he went. Rory was restless. He spent half an hour trying to find a good position to sleep in before finally giving up and sneaking out of his room. It was too cold for May. He found an old towel they didn’t use anymore and carefully folded it in half, then covered the pigeon with it. It opened its eyes and looked at him until Rory left the room and turned off the light.
When he woke up the next morning, the pigeon had died.
It was lying on its side, eyes closed and head twisted in an uncomfortable angle, with the towel that Rory had found still on top of it. Somewhere during the night, the bird had knocked over the bowl of water, so the newspaper in the box stuck to his fingers when he took out the body. His dad helped him bury it in the garden. Rory drew a small cross on the grave and put a yellow flower on top of it.
“Don’t worry, love,” his mum said. “It’s in a good place.”
Rory looked at the grave and wondered if the Mum and Dad were crying now. Could pigeons cry? He didn’t know, so he cried in their place.
II.
“You will see people die,” Professor Morgan said on Rory’s very first day at med school. “If you cannot handle that, this is not the right profession for you.”
Rory hadn’t been paying attention. He’d been thinking of Amy, who’d been so angry when he’d decided to go to London and become a nurse, and the shouting match they’d had last month, which had ended when he’d yelled that he was doing it for her.
Maybe now she’d finally see him, and not someone to dress up as her Raggedy Doctor, he hadn’t said.
So he hadn’t been paying attention, but somehow he heard the words anyway. The girl next to him put away her cell phone and sat up straighter. Professor Morgan hushed a couple of unruly students before continuing.
“However, it is your job as a nurse to support patients and their family. So don’t ever forget that you’re dealing with people. A good nurse does not merely depend on medical knowledge, but also on empathy. Patients will look to you for support, and it is your duty to provide it.”
Rory nodded unconsciously, fiddling with his pen. He was tempted to take notes, but no one else was writing, so in the end he settled for trying to remember the professor’s words. He thought it might be important to remember, even though he hoped he wouldn’t have to see anyone dying right away.
In the end, he saw more than one person die. While he was interning at Leadworth, he once saw a young boy being rushed in after a car accident. The next day he got told that the kid hadn’t made it, and he spent the rest of the day restless and distracted, until they finally sent him home and Jeff called a couple of mates and dragged him to the pub.
But the worst case was that of Mrs. Taylor.
Mrs. Taylor was 79, and Rory first met her when he was standing in at the oncology ward.
“Lung cancer,” she told him. “But don’t worry, love, the chemo is working. I’ll be better soon.”
She left the hospital that day, only to return a few weeks later for the next chemo session. Rory was picking up a few documents at the reception when she entered, and he offered to help her to the oncology ward. The head nurse was on lunch break anyway. She wouldn’t need the documents for another fifteen minutes.
“My grandson’s going to take his GCSEs next year,” she told him. “He wants to become a vet. He’s the sweetest kid, really, but he lives so far away.”
That was a tale Rory had heard before. The kids had moved away and never came to visit anymore. He nodded along with Mrs. Taylor and tried to cheer her up with stories from when he was a kid. How he fell in the duck pond one day and Amy tried to save him, only for the two of them to end up soaking wet in the police office, waiting for his Mum and Dad and Amy’s aunt Sharon to pick them up.
“Good thing there weren’t any ducks, then!” Mrs. Taylor laughed, petting him fondly on the arm. They turned the corner to the oncology ward and one of the staff nurses rushed forwards when she saw them. “I’m fine now, love, you just go do your job.”
Rory rushed off, delivered the documents to the head nurse and resumed his shift. He didn’t see Mrs. Taylor for another 5 months.
When they did meet again, she was lying in a hospital bed, looking like she hadn’t eaten in weeks, but her eyes were bright and she recognised Rory the instant he entered the room.
“Here I am again, love,” she said, smiling kindly at him. “How are you? Hope you’re not feeling like I am!”
“She stopped coming for chemo,” one of the other nurses explained later. “She’s too weak, her body can’t handle it. Now we’re all just waiting for…” She didn’t complete her sentence, but Rory heard what she was saying clearly enough. From that day on, he tried to visit Mrs. Taylor at least once every day, even though by now he’d been placed at the coma ward and had no need to be near Mrs. Taylor at all.
“You’re being stupid, Rory,” doctor Ramsden told him in no uncertain terms. “She’s probably got family to visit her. You just do your own job.”
But Rory had never seen anyone visit Mrs. Taylor. “It’s important to show empathy,” he said, repeating Professor Morgan’s words from years ago. Doctor Ramsden just shook her head.
“She’s probably going to die anyway. Do your job, Rory.”
Mrs. Taylor looked worse every day he visited her. The nurses told him that she was having trouble breathing, and that the nights were especially hard on her, so one day, on a whim, Rory used his time off to spend the night with her. There was probably something to be said about that involving professional ethics, but Rory couldn’t care less. It was his own free time, after all.
“The kids came by today,” Mrs. Taylor said slowly. “I do hope they’re taking care of themselves. Their fridge broke down, did I tell you that? I told them to buy a new one. You can’t run a decent household without a fridge.”
By midnight, Rory was talking about his mates, and Amy, and how doctor Ramsden said he had to pay more attention to what she said.
“Oh, she just likes to hear herself talk,” Mrs. Taylor said, and Rory laughed his voice echoing through the room. “Rory, love, once I’m back home you’re going to have to come over, all right? And bring that girl of yours too, she sounds like a great girl.”
Rory took her hand. She didn’t have enough strength to take his anymore.
The next week, he spent the night with her once more. Amy had been annoyed, she’d wanted to go see one of the new movies that was playing, but eventually she’d acquiesced once he’d promised her they’d go the next day.
Mrs. Taylor looked even worse than the previous week, if that was possible. She smiled when he came in, but didn’t speak. She hadn’t been able to speak for a few days now. When he took her hand now, it was cold.
He helped her drink several times that night. The night nurse came to check up on them around midnight. He wasn’t supposed to be here, of course, not as a visitor. But the nurses in this ward knew him already, and let him come as long as he didn’t get in their way.
“Get some sleep,” the nurse whispered to him when she left. “You look dead on your feet.”
But Rory didn’t sleep. Mrs. Taylor’s breath was coming in gasps now. He helped her drink again at one and carefully lifted her to put her in a more comfortable position. She weighed nearly nothing. He could feel every bone through her skin and see the fear in her eyes. She was afraid and didn’t want to admit it.
Rory was still awake and holding her hand when Mrs. Taylor died. He could barely bring himself to push the emergency button. When he did, the head doctor of the ward sent him home right away.
“I always thought that old people somehow came to terms with dying,” he told Amy later that day, his head in her lap while she ran her fingers through his hair. “Like some kind of grand realisation when you turned seventy or something. But she was so afraid…”
He closed his eyes. Amy gave him a quick peck on the lips..
“Oh Rory,” she said in the way only she could. “It’s not your fault. I’m sure she was glad you were there.”
It wasn’t much of a consolation, Rory thought, but at least it was something.
III.
“Canis Major, 34th century!” the Doctor announced cheerfully, bringing the TARDIS to a grinding halt that sent them all flying. “Of course, the Chinese were the first to come here and they called it Daquanzuo, so now everyone calls it Txunso. So means constellation, naturally.”
“Naturally,” Amy echoed, rolling her eyes at Rory, who hid a smile.
“And this planet is circling Sirius!” the Doctor continued, throwing open the doors. “Come on then! A whole planet out there, no time to wast- oh.”
“What is it?” Amy asked, looking past the Doctor at the planet they landed on. She frowned. “Doctor, what are those fires?”
Rory joined them both at the TARDIS doors, his expression quickly mirroring Amy’s “What’s going on here? Is there a war or something?”
“No no, no war,” the Doctor said distractedly. “Well, come on then, no place for us to be! How about a nice trip to the Orion Nebula? Best spa in the entire galaxy, even better than the original! Did you know that was in Belgium? Belgium can be a bit of a silly place, but Spa’s a nice town!”
“Doctor, tell us what’s going on here,” Amy interrupted him, slipping out of the doors before either Rory or the Doctor could stop her. She paused a few meters away from the TARDIS. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“It’s nothing, really- Rory, come back!”
Rory didn’t listen. He followed Amy out of the TARDIS and onto the square of what looked like a small village. People were running around, carrying what looked like-
“Doctor, are they burning people?” Amy asked incredulously.
“The fifth great epidemic of the Dog Star,” The Doctor said sadly, joining the two of them. “I can’t believe I didn’t remember.”
“So the fires are to prevent the disease from spreading,” Rory concluded, looking at the people running by. They didn’t look entirely human, but the emotions they were showing were very human indeed. Or maybe they were universal. Rory didn’t know, he just knew that parents were crying over the body of their child.
“Can’t we do something?” he asked. “Anything?”
“There will be a cure in another four hundred years, once the seventh epidemic hits,” the Doctor told them.
“Seventh?” Amy said “You mean there’ll be two more of these? Why’s no one doing anything?”
“You’ve got a time machine!” Rory told him. “Why can’t you just-”
“I can’t interfere here, and you know that,” the Doctor said quickly. “If I bring the cure here, it’ll create a grandfather paradox.”
“These are people! There must be something to help them!”
The Doctor turned around, eyes blazing. “Rory Williams, do you know how many people I’ve witnessed dying? Do you think these people will be the last? I can’t interfere with the course of history, this is how it’s supposed to go!”
“That’s rubbish,” Amy said, grabbing Rory’s hand. “Rory’s right, there must be something we can do!”
“What about us?” Rory asked. “Can we get infected?”
“You’re protected by the TARDIS,” the Doctor said slowly. It was enough for Rory. He turned around just in time to catch an ill child that had been on the verge of falling down. The boy was pale, much paler than Rory thought was humanly possible, but then these people weren’t entirely human. He was joined by Amy, who shrugged off her jacket and covered the kid with it, while Rory tried to make him more comfortable, even amidst the smoke and stench of the burning piles. The Doctor joined them a few minutes later, after a short talk with someone who Rory assumed was the village head.
They stayed the night.
It took 396 more years for a vaccine to be found.
IV.
The Franks had taken the Pandorica not long before the Roman empire fell, but by then the legend of the Lone Centurion had firmly taken hold, so they’d just dropped him and the box off again in some corner in Italy. They had positioned guards for the first couple of decades, but the last one had quietly left after he’d tried attacking Rory while he’d had his back turned. Rory had kindly persuaded him to leave. The myths about the Pandorica and himself had been very effective. The many hours he’d spent practicing with the handgun just to have something to do didn’t hurt either.
More than two centuries had passed since then, though. A village had been built, but the Pandorica was still here, hidden in a large cave. The villagers were aware that the box existed, and that Rory stood guard by it, but they never bothered him and he never bothered them. It was an agreement that had been reached after he’d politely declined the first sacrifices made to him, and it had served him well for over 150 years.
But once in a while he still got visitors.
Little Lucia turned up one spring day near the end of the seventh century. She was lost, alone, and crying when Rory found her. When she saw Rory, she cried even harder. Perhaps the sword wasn’t the greatest idea.
“Hey, it’s all right,” he told her in Latin, because 21st century English wouldn’t be around for another thirteen centuries. She stared at him with big eyes, and he belatedly realised that the girl wouldn’t be speaking the Latin he’d learned all those years ago. She couldn’t understand him.
He sighed and tried again, pointing at himself. “Rory.”
The girl stopped sniffling for a minute and said: “Lucia.” Then she started talking at a speed that could rival the Doctor’s. Rory caught a few words he thought he recognised, but in the end he just gave up trying to listen to her and put one finger on her lips. She stopped talking and went back to looking at him with big eyes.
“Are you lost?” he asked slowly, hoping at least one of the words would get through to her.
“Lost?” Lucia asked. Then she nodded quickly, repeating the word again but with a changed pronunciation. “Yes, lost!”
“Come on,” Rory said, giving her a hand and leading her away from the cave with the Pandorica in it. He felt a small pang of regret about leaving Amy behind, but it wasn’t the first time he’d gone away. Never far, of course. But enough to talk to people, or check on what was going on in the world, or, on one memorable occasion, to hide from a group of people hell-bent on worshipping him.
He got Lucia back to her village safely, and watched from afar as she was reunited with her family. He thought that was the end of it, and that he wouldn’t see another human being for a hundred more years, but Lucia kept coming.
“What’s in the box?” she asked when she was fourteen. They were sitting in front of the cave with the Pandorica. The sun would set soon, but Lucia didn’t look like she wanted to leave.
“I can’t say,” Rory said, shaking his head. She’d taught him the new form of Latin she spoke, though Rory often found himself lapsing in the Latin he’d learned all those years ago, or, when he was talking to Amy, English. He’d tried to teach Lucia a couple of words, but she hadn’t displayed much interest.
Lucia seemed a bit annoyed, for she left quickly after that, but she returned a couple of days later. They’d fallen into a pattern over the years. Lucia would come, sometimes with friends, and they’d talk, then she’d leave again, leaving him alone with Amy. He liked it that way. A few times, Lucia had tried to get him to come with her to the village, but Rory had refused.
“You never change,” she concluded when she was fifteen. “How come?”
She didn’t look particularly afraid. Rory sighed and tried to come up with a way to say he was plastic when plastic wasn’t even close to being invented yet.
“I was cursed,” he said finally. “I made a terrible mistake and now I need to guard this box until a good god comes to open it and lift the curse.” Not quite the truth, but close enough. He just hoped the Doctor’d never find out he’d called him a god.
Lucia didn’t look convinced, and Rory shrugged. How did you explain aliens and time travel, and that he would only be born in thirteen more centuries? Or perhaps not. He was just plastic, the real Rory had never existed.
“So what’s in the box?” Lucia asked again. She hadn’t given up on trying to find out the answer. Rory shook his head, like he always did.
“Sorry, I can’t say.”
When Lucia was seventeen, she got married to a friend of hers, who’d come visit with her a couple of times. Rory, who watched her wedding from afar, had his suspicions about the suddenness of the ceremony, suspicions that got confirmed when Lucia came back a few months later, visibly pregnant. She was happy, and Rory was reminded of the child he could’ve had with Amy in the dream world. It hurt. He wished he could open the Pandorica now and find her completely cured. He’d have to wait until the twentieth century until he could see her again, but it didn’t matter. He’d wait until the end of the universe if that would bring her back.
“How do you feel?” he asked Lucia. He hadn’t specialised in midwifery back at med school, but he’d learned the basics, of course. Lucia had to be about seven months pregnant, considering she’d started showing not long after her wedding.
“I’m fine,” she said. “My legs hurt, though. They’re really swollen.”
“Should you be coming here?”
Lucia waved his concerns away. “I’m fine, it’s not like I have to climb any hills or anything. This isn’t Rome.”
Rory was doubtful. The terrain around the cave with the Pandorica was flat, but it was also rocky and surrounded by dense forests.
“Make sure you rest enough,” he told her finally. “No coming here too often, it’s still dangerous!”
Lucia laughed. “Are you a doctor or something?”
“Or something,” Rory agreed melancholically. “I used to be.”
Have never been at all, he amended mentally. That day he helped Lucia all the way back to the edge of the forest.
Lucia only came one more time after that. The next visitor he got was her husband, and he was panicking.
“She’s doing bad,” the young man explained in between pants. He couldn’t be older than Rory himself had been when he died. “She said you were a doctor, that you could help. The midwife, she’s gone to another village. Please, you have to help her!”
Rory was up and running before the man even had the chance to finish talking. He’d shed most of the armour a few days earlier, so he had more freedom of movement. It was a decision he was now grateful for, if only because it made him look a lot less threatening.
“What happened?” he asked the first person he saw, a woman nearing her forties, who looked a lot like Lucia.
“She fell and started bleeding,” the woman explained nervously. “Yesterday. She said it was fine but then she started getting contractions and she hasn’t stopped bleeding at all-”
“Let me see.” Rory pushed past the woman and into the house. Lucia was there, crouching down and breathing heavily. She didn’t look up when he came in.
“Luce? Lucia? Can you hear me?”
Someone had had the common sense to put on water to boil. Rory grabbed a piece of cloth and wetted it as Lucia’s mother helped her stretch out. Her thighs were coated with blood.
“The baby’s in breech position,” Lucia’s mother said. “It’s too early, it won’t turn!”
Rory swore colourfully - In English, if the confused looks he got were anything to go by. Judging by the pallor of her skin and the sluggishness of her movements, Lucia had already lost a lot of blood. Her heart was beating fast, but he couldn’t decide if that was caused by the pain, the blood loss, or both. If the baby didn’t turn around, she was going to need a Caesarean section. He wasn’t qualified to perform one and even if he had been, he didn’t have the right tools.
“Lucia, deep breaths,” he instructed. “We’re going to try to turn the baby.”
He put his hands on opposite sides of her belly, trying to get a good feel of the baby’s position. Lucia’s mother was right, the child was in breech position. And even worse, it’d already descended a long way. He might not be able to turn it.
But he tried. He tried on his own the first time, then with the help of Lucia’s mother and finally with her husband, who’d been reluctantly drawn into the process. They managed to get the baby into what Rory hoped was a better position to be born, but he was doubtful. Lucia’s breaths were coming faster, as were the contractions rocking her body.
“C’mon, love,” Lucia’s mother was saying. “You can do it. Just push, sweetheart.”
Even then, it took over ten hours for the child to be born, and for once Rory was grateful that he didn’t need sleep. He’d sent Lucia’s husband away to see if no one had anything to stem the blood loss, but he’d returned from his search empty-handed. Lucia was doing bad. Terrible even.
“It’s a boy, love,” Lucia’s mum told her, handing her the baby. The child was crying weakly, but he’d survive. Lucia, on the other hand… Rory put her on the bed together with her husband, then took the man apart.
“I don’t know if she’ll make it,” Rory told him gently. “I’m sorry.”
“She trusted you!” the man was panicking, and Rory saw that he’d been wrong earlier. He was still just a boy, barely older than Lucia herself. “I trusted you!”
“I know, I-” Rory swallowed. “I’m sorry. I can’t do miracles.”
Lucia had her eyes closed. She was clutching her baby, but her breathing had slowed down. She opened her eyes a little when he crouched down next to her.
“Rory? What’s in the box?”
Of all the things she wanted to say-! Rory almost laughed.
“It’s… The woman I love is in there. I made a mistake, and now I will guard her until she can wake up again.”
“The good god will wake her up?”
“I hope so,” Rory said, kissing her on the forehead and making way for her mother and husband. “Goodbye, Lucia.”
He left the house, then, and the village. The Pandorica was still where he’d left it, of course. No one would be stupid enough to take it. He washed the tunic he was wearing first, and then, even though it was pointless, himself. Then he talked to Amy, and cried, and cried and talked.
He returned to the village once more, a few days later, to witness Lucia’s burial from afar. No one saw him, except her husband, who was holding the baby boy and averted his eyes when he spotted Rory. At least the child was healthy. Rory hoped he’d be like Lucia. Deep down, selfishly, he wanted to have something to remember the little girl who’d got lost in the forest all those years ago.
… And one time he succeeded.
V.
“Rome, 15th century,” the Doctor suggested. “How about it?”
“Nah, it’s a stupid place.” Rory took another sip from his beer. At least, the Doctor said it was beer. It had been served by a creature with four arms and only one eye, so Rory wasn’t too sure. They were on one of the most famous shopping planets in the galaxy, according to the Doctor. Amy had been out of the doors before they’d fully recovered from materialising, leaving Rory and the Doctor to find a place to sit and wait for her.
“What makes you say that?” the Doctor asked, getting a new glass from one of the waiters and raising it. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” Rory repeated the gesture. “And there was this one guy, Pius the something-or-other. Bit of a git.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We got stored in some room under the Vatican, and most of the popes just left us alone. Not Pius though. He needed to see the fabled Pandorica with his own eyes. And apparently his own eyes weren’t good enough, because he also brought a bunch of guards.”
The Doctor snorted in his glass. “You’re kidding me.”
“Dead serious. He started going on how I should open the Pandorica in the name of the Lord Thy Saviour, and he got pretty angry when I refused.” Rory rolled his eyes at the memory. On the street next to the pub electric cars were whizzing past. They were a lot quieter than what he was used to, but he’d thought that technology would’ve been a bit more advanced by now.
“Yes, they get a bit uppity, sometimes.” The Doctor said, nodding wisely. Rory drained his glass before continuing.
“And then he started praying. Well, I was getting sick of him and those torches were warm, so I corrected his Latin pronunciation and kindly told him to sod off.”
“You corrected his Latin pronunciation,” the Doctor repeated, letting out a surprised laugh. “Only you, Rory Williams. You corrected the pronunciation of Pope Pius II.”
“It was horrible!” Rory defended himself. “The sounds were all wrong.”
“So he left, then,” the Doctor urged, still snickering.
“Not for long.” Rory pulled a face. “He came back a week later, with an entire group of priests, and started performing an exorcism.”
“Exorcism, really?” the Doctor asked with a wide grin. “A real exorcism? With the psalms and everything?”
“Deus, in nomine tuo salvum me fac, et virtute tua age causam meam,” Rory quoted. “The whole thing. I’d got really fed up with him by then, so I just told him that the box would release untold horrors when opened and that I was on a divine mission to guard it.”
“I hope that was a lie,” Amy said, appearing out of nowhere and dropping half of her bags in Rory’s lap, then shoving the other half in the Doctor’s arms. “I’ll be very cross if that wasn’t a lie.”
“It was definitely a lie,” Rory said, reaching up and kissing her on the cheek. “Had fun?”
Amy hummed and pulled him up. The Doctor hastily threw some money on the table, then tried unsuccessfully to juggle all of Amy’s bags.
“Isn’t this your job?” he grumbled at Rory. “She’s your wife.”
“Can’t exactly give you a hand, mate,” Rory told him, lifting some of the bags he was carrying. Amy looked back to see what was keeping them, and laughed good-naturedly.
“Oh, my boys. Can’t even carry a couple of bags.” She grabbed several bags from both of them. “There. Now let’s just drop that off in the TARDIS and find a place to eat.”
That place turned out to be a quaint little restaurant next to a park in the middle of the city. The owner appeared to know the Doctor, because they got treated exceptionally well, and Rory agreed with Amy when she told the Doctor they’d have to return soon. It had turned dark when they made their way back to the TARDIS, and the atmosphere of the place suddenly reminded Rory a lot of the few times he’d been in Covent Garden.
“Hey, look out!”
Rory jumped, but the warning hadn’t been directed at him. Traffic was coming to a screeching halt all around them. Judging by the quickly forming crowd, something had happened.
“Come on then!” the Doctor shouted, getting out his sonic screwdriver and making his way through the crowd. Rory paused a few seconds to ask what had happened.
“The kid just walked onto the street!” one of the onlookers told him in a shocked voice. “Got hit by a car.”
“Right.” Rory took off after the Doctor, leaving Amy to deal with the crowds. She made a better police officer than he did.
“Doesn’t look that good,” the Doctor told him when he arrived, using his sonic screwdriver as a scanner. “It got the artery in his left arm.”
The boy had two arms on each side, but Rory quickly saw which left arm the Doctor meant. He made short work of the kids’ shirt. It was soaked in blood already, but at least the boy was still conscious.
“They’ve called for help,” Amy reported, kneeling down next to him as he used both hands to put pressure on the wound. “Hey kid, what’s your name?”
The boy rambled off something that sounded like a long string of consonants to Rory, but the Doctor looked delighted, then suddenly very worried again. He took over for Rory for a few seconds, while Rory shrugged off his jacket quickly. He lifted the boy’s arm, instructed him to keep it that way, then used the sleeves of his jacket as a makeshift tourniquet. It wouldn’t hold for long, but he hoped it would be enough until the emergency services arrived.
They didn’t have to wait longer than five minutes, but it seemed to drag on forever to Rory. Amy and the Doctor were taking turns talking to the boy to keep him conscious, while Rory did his best to keep the wound from bleeding too much. The boy had a few more scratches across his arms and legs, but he hadn’t been able to do more than check if any of them were serious. It was only after the medics had taken the boy away for a blood transfusion and assured him that he would make it, that he dared to relax
“You saved him then, good job!” the Doctor said, slapping him on the back when they entered the TARDIS. His hand would be leaving blood all over Rory’s T-shirt, but they were all covered in blood anyway, so it didn’t really matter.
“I guess,” he said slowly. Amy looked up.
“You’re not happy?”
“No, I am!” Rory hastened to correct. “I’m glad he’s alive. But it’s only one person, isn’t it? There are so many others that couldn’t be saved.”
To his surprise, the Doctor started laughing.
“It’s not a joke!” he said indignantly. What was it with aliens and laughing at you?
“No, I’m not laughing at you!” the Doctor said quickly. “Well, I am, but not because of the reason you think!”
“Then what?” Amy said, mirroring Rory’s indignant expression.
“That kid you just saved will be one of the most important people in the next century. Give him another forty years and he’ll create the first Pavo-Indus Supercluster Alliance, resolving a couple off long-running, intergalactic wars in the process,” the Doctor explained, apparently taking great delight in their quickly changing expression. “That enough saving lives for you, Rory Williams?”
“That’s… Wow.” Rory said slowly. Amy hugged him from behind.
“See? Who knows how many people you saved now!” she said happily. But it wasn’t the same, was it? No matter how many people were saved, so many others would still die. Had already died.
The Doctor was busy pulling levers and fiddling with buttons, but one look at Rory’s face apparently told him enough.
“Oh, you humans and your hero complexes. You want to save people, Rory Williams?” He pulled the main lever. “Hang on, you’ll get to save people!”