Confidence Man
Title: Confidence Man
Rating: Teen
Wordcount: 2025
Summary: The thing nobody ever mentioned about standing on a hillside in rural Wales on a drizzly April morning while waiting for past versions of yourself and your wife to appear so you could wave at them and keep the timeline intact was that it was both mind-numbingly boring and completely nerve wracking at the same time. Perhaps the reason no one ever mentioned it, though, was because these were the sorts of things that only happened when you were Rory Williams.
A/N: Thanks to GrumpyJenn for the beta!
* * *
“Do you know what next week is?” Amy asked one morning as she reached over Rory’s shoulder to grab her slice from the toaster.
“Uh,” he frantically flipped through his mental calendar-it was April, so not their anniversary, not her birthday, not his, not River’s, his dad’s, or either of her parents-“Should I?”
“It’s 2021, stupid,” she responded amiably from the refrigerator where she was now rummaging for a jar of jam. “God, I miss the Ood.”
Rory shook his head. “Sorry, not following. Is it his birthday next week or something?” What did one even get for an Ood who had briefly been stranded in one’s house and volunteered to become one’s live-in butler? Moreover, how did one deliver said present now that the Ood had been taken back to his own time?
“The fourteenth? We’re meant to be at that drill site in Wales? Remember?” Amy raised her eyebrows the way she always did when he was missing something obvious. Then Rory remembered. The fourteenth. 2021.
“The Silurians? Really? That’s this year?”
“I’d almost forgotten until that thing with their spaceship last month, so I looked up the exact date before we left the TARDIS. I sent you a text, remember?”
Rory vaguely recalled getting a cryptic message one day about making sure he requested time off just as several casualties had arrived at A&E. He’d completely forgotten about it in the ensuing rush.
“And you didn’t request the days, did you?” Amy glared at him. “Please tell me it’s not too late now. We could call the Doctor and get him to take us, but you know how cross he gets when we come and go these days.”
Rory did know. The Doctor had tried valiantly to hide his disappointment when they’d asked to go home after Mercy. It hadn’t worked. The look on his face as they’d said goodbye had weighed heavily on their consciences, and even though they tried to reassure one another that they’d be back soon and that the Doctor and River would probably enjoy some time together without them tagging along, they knew that their decision to spend more time in “real life” than “Doctor life” was slowly breaking their best friend’s hearts.
“No, I should be able to swap shifts with someone.” Rory reached for the jam jar Amy had just set back on the table. “We’ll make a day of it. Just you and me.”
* * *
The thing nobody ever mentioned about standing on a hillside in rural Wales on a drizzly April morning while waiting for past versions of yourself and your wife to appear so you could wave at them and keep the timeline intact was that it was both mind-numbingly boring and completely nerve wracking at the same time. Perhaps the reason no one ever mentioned it, though, was because these were the sorts of things that only happened when you were Rory Williams.
“Are you even sure we’re going to come?” Rory asked. “I mean, we were here before the Doctor re-set the universe. Did any of the things we did that year even really happen?” He rubbed his hands up and down his upper arms again to stay warm. It really was freezing and he’d leant his jacket to Amy seeing as how she’d dressed entirely inappropriately for the occasion. Again.
“I asked him once and he said yes, but then he went off into some long explanation of why that I didn’t quite follow.” Amy looked critically at him. “Are you all right?”
Truth be told, he really wasn’t. Rory’d had a sinking feeling in his stomach all morning, and even though he didn’t want to be the one to bring up the other rather important thing that had happened during this particular trip.
“Just… nervous, I guess.”
“This is about you dying here, isn’t it?” Her tone was flippant, and Rory felt a wave of resentment wash over him. His death wasn’t something they talked about often, but he had the feeling that it continued to disturb him far more than it did her.
“Be fair, Amy. It was kind of a big deal.” Suddenly, Rory was forced to stagger back a few steps from the force of Amy’s unexpected embrace.
“I’ve had a lot of days I thought were the worst of my life, Rory Williams, but the day I lost you…” she didn’t finish the sentence.
“Shhh. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere,” he rubbed her back, unable to contain a smile as he was once again reminded that in spite of the doubts that still sometimes lingered about the site of Amy’s true loyalties, again and again she had chosen him. In the back of his mind he also wondered what they were going to do when the Amy-from-the-past emerged by herself from the church later tonight. Maybe he’d wait in the car.
Just then, the familiar sounds of the TARDIS’s materialization sequence echoed across the small valley.
“You ready for this?” he asked, a falsely cheerful smile pasted on his face.
“Absolutely,” she grinned through her tears.
* * *
“God, I’d forgotten how fluffy his hair used to be!” Amy giggled before she took a sip of her pint. “And that skirt. I know we thought we were going to Rio, but really. What was I thinking?”
“I seem to recall you wore that same skirt last New Year’s when we went dancing,” Rory reminded her drily, feeling pleasantly mellow and only slightly emotionally wrung out after the morning’s tension. His own pint had gone down quite nicely with lunch, thank you, and he was toying with the idea of ordering a second seeing as how they had nowhere to go for several hours yet.
“Shut up, you,” she said, swatting playfully at his arm. “It was not the same skirt. That one is still on the TARDIS, I think. Besides,” she picked up a leftover chip off her plate and pointed it at him. “The one I wore at New Year’s was at least two inches longer than the old one.”
“Not from where I was standing,” Rory murmured, reaching a hand under the table to stroke her knee, thoughts of beer suddenly superseded by thoughts of getting his wife somewhere more private. “And I’m not exactly complaining, either.”
Amy threw the chip at him before snaking her own hand under the table and using it to move his higher up on her thigh. Rory was suddenly very, very glad she’d chosen to wear a skirt again today.
* * *
Later, as Amy dozed on his chest, Rory made a mental note to thank her for suggesting that they get a room at a local B&B. The last hour would have been far less comfortable in the car. His own thoughts began to drift, and he fought to stay awake, realizing that they needed to be back on the hillside in only a few hours.
Well, Amy did, at least.
Memories of the hill brought back those from earlier that day, and the bizarre sight of himself at twenty-one in the flesh. The man he’d been then wasn’t the man he was now. Then again, the man he’d been then was going to die under the earth before the day was over.
Suddenly Rory wasn’t sleepy anymore.
He hadn’t really trusted the Doctor back then, he remembered that clearly enough. The incident with the Dream Master had chilled him-literally and figuratively-to the core, and the night before they’d left for Rio (and landed in Wales) Rory had awoken hours before Amy with his heart pounding from a nightmare. He’d been watching her crumble into dust before his eyes.
The thing about the Doctor, he’d thought at the time, was that while he was brilliant and mad and completely enthralling, he was also shockingly dangerous to other people and to himself. Then again, Doctor hadn’t been the one to die that day, had he? His self-loathing had created the Dream Master, but Rory and Amy (and their imaginary unborn child, whose loss, like Rory’s death under the earth, was deliberately never mentioned when they reminisced about their days living on the TARDIS) had been the ones to pay the real price. What if their deaths hadn’t been just figments of their imagination fueled by some kind of hallucinatory pollen?
Amy hadn’t wanted to talk about what happened at the time, hadn’t wanted to do anything but hold him tight and drag him to bed at the first opportunity. Rory had felt an absurd surge of pride and confidence when he realized that she’d chosen him, him, even when given the option to take off with the Doctor and leave her memories of a quiet, domestic life with him behind. He’d been all too happy to head to Rio, or wherever else Amy wanted. They were together. She’d chosen him.
And then the Doctor had lost her. Rory’d stepped back to the TARDIS for five minutes to put Amy’s engagement ring where she couldn’t lose it, and by the time he’d caught up with the Doctor again he’d acquired four new hangers-on and lost Amy to the depths of the Earth. If Rory had been a different man he might have tried to kill the Doctor then and there, but he hadn’t. On a very fundamental level (and this was something Rory hadn’t know about himself back then when he’d been so insecure about Amy and the Doctor and himself) Rory Williams was a man of peace who could be violent but chose very deliberately not to be except in extreme circumstances.
The circumstances that day had been extreme, but Rory had never regretted his decision to let the Doctor try to get Amy back. Not even when it had gotten him killed. Several things had changed that day for Rory Williams, and death was possibly the least significant of them all.
To begin with, that had been the day he’d realized that he would give his life for Amy’s. He’d always loved her, but love was an emotion with more shades of gray than most people realize on the cusp of adulthood. His dad had loved his mum, but Rory never once thought that he’d have died for her. Their divorce had been painful and raw, but not altogether devastating in the way that a split between two people who’d give their lives for one another should be.
It had also been the day Rory realized that this strange alien who had dominated his childhood imagination and captivated his fiancée trusted and believed in him, Rory Williams, the same way he trusted and believed in Amy. When the Doctor had gone below the surface to bring her back, he’d told the others to listen to Rory, and even ten years later Rory could remember the pride he’d felt when the Doctor told them that Rory could handle the situation. Of course, it had all gone pear shaped, but that hadn’t been Rory’s doing.
The intervening decade hadn’t exactly been easy, but the Doctor’s faith in him had remained a constant. Though he’d never said as much, Rory knew that the Doctor believed in him without reservation, a faith sometimes stronger than Rory’s own. All the amazing things he’d done-plain old Rory Williams from Leadworth whose highest aspiration as a young man had been to marry Amy Pond and grow old with her and their 2.4 children-had started that day. Yes, he’d died, but more importantly, that had been the day he’d realized what it would be like to truly live.
“Mmpff,” Amy said against his chest. “How much longer until we need to leave?”
“We’ve got time yet,” he whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
Rory loved his life. He loved his wife. He loved his job and his house, and even though they’d never have more children, he had no regrets. Ten years ago he’d started learning some very important lessons about himself, and as distressing as today might have been, he realized that he was happier in this moment than he ever could have imagined before he’d died.
Rating: Teen
Wordcount: 2025
Summary: The thing nobody ever mentioned about standing on a hillside in rural Wales on a drizzly April morning while waiting for past versions of yourself and your wife to appear so you could wave at them and keep the timeline intact was that it was both mind-numbingly boring and completely nerve wracking at the same time. Perhaps the reason no one ever mentioned it, though, was because these were the sorts of things that only happened when you were Rory Williams.
A/N: Thanks to GrumpyJenn for the beta!
* * *
“Do you know what next week is?” Amy asked one morning as she reached over Rory’s shoulder to grab her slice from the toaster.
“Uh,” he frantically flipped through his mental calendar-it was April, so not their anniversary, not her birthday, not his, not River’s, his dad’s, or either of her parents-“Should I?”
“It’s 2021, stupid,” she responded amiably from the refrigerator where she was now rummaging for a jar of jam. “God, I miss the Ood.”
Rory shook his head. “Sorry, not following. Is it his birthday next week or something?” What did one even get for an Ood who had briefly been stranded in one’s house and volunteered to become one’s live-in butler? Moreover, how did one deliver said present now that the Ood had been taken back to his own time?
“The fourteenth? We’re meant to be at that drill site in Wales? Remember?” Amy raised her eyebrows the way she always did when he was missing something obvious. Then Rory remembered. The fourteenth. 2021.
“The Silurians? Really? That’s this year?”
“I’d almost forgotten until that thing with their spaceship last month, so I looked up the exact date before we left the TARDIS. I sent you a text, remember?”
Rory vaguely recalled getting a cryptic message one day about making sure he requested time off just as several casualties had arrived at A&E. He’d completely forgotten about it in the ensuing rush.
“And you didn’t request the days, did you?” Amy glared at him. “Please tell me it’s not too late now. We could call the Doctor and get him to take us, but you know how cross he gets when we come and go these days.”
Rory did know. The Doctor had tried valiantly to hide his disappointment when they’d asked to go home after Mercy. It hadn’t worked. The look on his face as they’d said goodbye had weighed heavily on their consciences, and even though they tried to reassure one another that they’d be back soon and that the Doctor and River would probably enjoy some time together without them tagging along, they knew that their decision to spend more time in “real life” than “Doctor life” was slowly breaking their best friend’s hearts.
“No, I should be able to swap shifts with someone.” Rory reached for the jam jar Amy had just set back on the table. “We’ll make a day of it. Just you and me.”
* * *
The thing nobody ever mentioned about standing on a hillside in rural Wales on a drizzly April morning while waiting for past versions of yourself and your wife to appear so you could wave at them and keep the timeline intact was that it was both mind-numbingly boring and completely nerve wracking at the same time. Perhaps the reason no one ever mentioned it, though, was because these were the sorts of things that only happened when you were Rory Williams.
“Are you even sure we’re going to come?” Rory asked. “I mean, we were here before the Doctor re-set the universe. Did any of the things we did that year even really happen?” He rubbed his hands up and down his upper arms again to stay warm. It really was freezing and he’d leant his jacket to Amy seeing as how she’d dressed entirely inappropriately for the occasion. Again.
“I asked him once and he said yes, but then he went off into some long explanation of why that I didn’t quite follow.” Amy looked critically at him. “Are you all right?”
Truth be told, he really wasn’t. Rory’d had a sinking feeling in his stomach all morning, and even though he didn’t want to be the one to bring up the other rather important thing that had happened during this particular trip.
“Just… nervous, I guess.”
“This is about you dying here, isn’t it?” Her tone was flippant, and Rory felt a wave of resentment wash over him. His death wasn’t something they talked about often, but he had the feeling that it continued to disturb him far more than it did her.
“Be fair, Amy. It was kind of a big deal.” Suddenly, Rory was forced to stagger back a few steps from the force of Amy’s unexpected embrace.
“I’ve had a lot of days I thought were the worst of my life, Rory Williams, but the day I lost you…” she didn’t finish the sentence.
“Shhh. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere,” he rubbed her back, unable to contain a smile as he was once again reminded that in spite of the doubts that still sometimes lingered about the site of Amy’s true loyalties, again and again she had chosen him. In the back of his mind he also wondered what they were going to do when the Amy-from-the-past emerged by herself from the church later tonight. Maybe he’d wait in the car.
Just then, the familiar sounds of the TARDIS’s materialization sequence echoed across the small valley.
“You ready for this?” he asked, a falsely cheerful smile pasted on his face.
“Absolutely,” she grinned through her tears.
* * *
“God, I’d forgotten how fluffy his hair used to be!” Amy giggled before she took a sip of her pint. “And that skirt. I know we thought we were going to Rio, but really. What was I thinking?”
“I seem to recall you wore that same skirt last New Year’s when we went dancing,” Rory reminded her drily, feeling pleasantly mellow and only slightly emotionally wrung out after the morning’s tension. His own pint had gone down quite nicely with lunch, thank you, and he was toying with the idea of ordering a second seeing as how they had nowhere to go for several hours yet.
“Shut up, you,” she said, swatting playfully at his arm. “It was not the same skirt. That one is still on the TARDIS, I think. Besides,” she picked up a leftover chip off her plate and pointed it at him. “The one I wore at New Year’s was at least two inches longer than the old one.”
“Not from where I was standing,” Rory murmured, reaching a hand under the table to stroke her knee, thoughts of beer suddenly superseded by thoughts of getting his wife somewhere more private. “And I’m not exactly complaining, either.”
Amy threw the chip at him before snaking her own hand under the table and using it to move his higher up on her thigh. Rory was suddenly very, very glad she’d chosen to wear a skirt again today.
* * *
Later, as Amy dozed on his chest, Rory made a mental note to thank her for suggesting that they get a room at a local B&B. The last hour would have been far less comfortable in the car. His own thoughts began to drift, and he fought to stay awake, realizing that they needed to be back on the hillside in only a few hours.
Well, Amy did, at least.
Memories of the hill brought back those from earlier that day, and the bizarre sight of himself at twenty-one in the flesh. The man he’d been then wasn’t the man he was now. Then again, the man he’d been then was going to die under the earth before the day was over.
Suddenly Rory wasn’t sleepy anymore.
He hadn’t really trusted the Doctor back then, he remembered that clearly enough. The incident with the Dream Master had chilled him-literally and figuratively-to the core, and the night before they’d left for Rio (and landed in Wales) Rory had awoken hours before Amy with his heart pounding from a nightmare. He’d been watching her crumble into dust before his eyes.
The thing about the Doctor, he’d thought at the time, was that while he was brilliant and mad and completely enthralling, he was also shockingly dangerous to other people and to himself. Then again, Doctor hadn’t been the one to die that day, had he? His self-loathing had created the Dream Master, but Rory and Amy (and their imaginary unborn child, whose loss, like Rory’s death under the earth, was deliberately never mentioned when they reminisced about their days living on the TARDIS) had been the ones to pay the real price. What if their deaths hadn’t been just figments of their imagination fueled by some kind of hallucinatory pollen?
Amy hadn’t wanted to talk about what happened at the time, hadn’t wanted to do anything but hold him tight and drag him to bed at the first opportunity. Rory had felt an absurd surge of pride and confidence when he realized that she’d chosen him, him, even when given the option to take off with the Doctor and leave her memories of a quiet, domestic life with him behind. He’d been all too happy to head to Rio, or wherever else Amy wanted. They were together. She’d chosen him.
And then the Doctor had lost her. Rory’d stepped back to the TARDIS for five minutes to put Amy’s engagement ring where she couldn’t lose it, and by the time he’d caught up with the Doctor again he’d acquired four new hangers-on and lost Amy to the depths of the Earth. If Rory had been a different man he might have tried to kill the Doctor then and there, but he hadn’t. On a very fundamental level (and this was something Rory hadn’t know about himself back then when he’d been so insecure about Amy and the Doctor and himself) Rory Williams was a man of peace who could be violent but chose very deliberately not to be except in extreme circumstances.
The circumstances that day had been extreme, but Rory had never regretted his decision to let the Doctor try to get Amy back. Not even when it had gotten him killed. Several things had changed that day for Rory Williams, and death was possibly the least significant of them all.
To begin with, that had been the day he’d realized that he would give his life for Amy’s. He’d always loved her, but love was an emotion with more shades of gray than most people realize on the cusp of adulthood. His dad had loved his mum, but Rory never once thought that he’d have died for her. Their divorce had been painful and raw, but not altogether devastating in the way that a split between two people who’d give their lives for one another should be.
It had also been the day Rory realized that this strange alien who had dominated his childhood imagination and captivated his fiancée trusted and believed in him, Rory Williams, the same way he trusted and believed in Amy. When the Doctor had gone below the surface to bring her back, he’d told the others to listen to Rory, and even ten years later Rory could remember the pride he’d felt when the Doctor told them that Rory could handle the situation. Of course, it had all gone pear shaped, but that hadn’t been Rory’s doing.
The intervening decade hadn’t exactly been easy, but the Doctor’s faith in him had remained a constant. Though he’d never said as much, Rory knew that the Doctor believed in him without reservation, a faith sometimes stronger than Rory’s own. All the amazing things he’d done-plain old Rory Williams from Leadworth whose highest aspiration as a young man had been to marry Amy Pond and grow old with her and their 2.4 children-had started that day. Yes, he’d died, but more importantly, that had been the day he’d realized what it would be like to truly live.
“Mmpff,” Amy said against his chest. “How much longer until we need to leave?”
“We’ve got time yet,” he whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
Rory loved his life. He loved his wife. He loved his job and his house, and even though they’d never have more children, he had no regrets. Ten years ago he’d started learning some very important lessons about himself, and as distressing as today might have been, he realized that he was happier in this moment than he ever could have imagined before he’d died.